15: Next.js 12, React vs. Svelte, and the Future of Frameworks with Wes Bos

Robbie Wagner: [00:09] Hey, everybody. Welcome to another Whiskey Web and Whatnot with myself, Robbie Wagner, my co-host, as always, Charles W. Carpenter III, and our guest today, Wes Bos, who has his own podcast. You may have heard him on that. Maybe you give a short intro on who you are, what you do.

Wes Bos: [00:27] Yeah. So my name is Wes Bos. I'm a web developer from Canada, and I create web development courses for people to take and learn how to build apps and websites. So you can check it out. It's at wesbos.com. I also have a podcast called Syntax. We do that twice a week, and we just talk about all things web development. Pretty heavy on JavaScript, both server side and client side, as well as CSS and whatnot.

Robbie Wagner: [00:53] Nice. Yeah, I listen to it quite a bit myself.

Wes Bos: [00:57] Oh, right on. It's good to hear.

Chuck Carpenter: [01:00] Two episodes a week. I'm impressed too.

Wes Bos: [01:02] Yeah, we had all these topics that were just shorter topics, and we're like, do we put four of them in an episode, and they're totally unrelated. And we have this idea of, like on Mondays, we do a Hasty Treat, which is 15 minutes long or so. And then on Wednesday, we do like a Tasty Treat, and that's a whole hour-long podcast. So it's nice because we have two different mediums in which we can dive into topics.

Chuck Carpenter: [01:29] Well, that's cool. Yeah. And you're not dissuaded from a topic because it's either too long or too short. You're like.

Wes Bos: [01:36] Totally.

Chuck Carpenter: [01:36] Well, no, these have a logical place to be.

Wes Bos: [01:39] Totally.

Robbie Wagner: [01:40] Yeah. I thought we would start before we talk too much about you. I had. A game that I thought would be fun to play where can guess. I have a few things about myself, you, or both of us. So he needs to guess. Is it Wes, Robbie, or both? So first one.

Chuck Carpenter: [02:01] It's a new thing we're trying out.

Robbie Wagner: [02:02] Yeah, the first one is has a John Deere tractor.

Chuck Carpenter: [02:07] Both.

Robbie Wagner: [02:08] Yeah.

Wes Bos: [02:09] Yeah.

Chuck Carpenter: [02:09] I just had a feeling there.

Robbie Wagner: [02:14] Wife's name is Caitlin.

Chuck Carpenter: [02:16] Robbie.

Robbie Wagner: [02:18] That's both.

Chuck Carpenter: [02:19] Awesome.

Wes Bos: [02:20] Oh, really? Wow.

Robbie Wagner: [02:21] Yeah.

Robbie Wagner: [02:22] Wow. It's almost like Caitlin. How do you spell it, though? There's like 14 different ways to spell it.

Robbie Wagner: [02:27] Oh, yeah, we spell it different. It's K-A-T-E-L-Y-N-N.

Wes Bos: [02:31] Okay. Right on. Yeah, at least it's with a K.

Robbie Wagner: [02:35] Yeah. First website created in 6th grade.

Chuck Carpenter: [02:40] Wes.

Robbie Wagner: [02:42] That's correct.

Wes Bos: [02:43] That's true for me. Yeah, right on.

Chuck Carpenter: [02:45] Okay.

Robbie Wagner: [02:46] Yeah, I just was listening to that before this to get the deets on your origin.

Wes Bos: [02:53] Oh, good. Oh man, we did that one years ago. We're going to update that one as well because it's probably been like four years since we've done that. And there's a lot more to my story now.

Chuck Carpenter: [03:02] Oh, interesting.

Robbie Wagner: [03:04] Few more used to create MySpace layouts for bands.

Chuck Carpenter: [03:09] Robbie.

Robbie Wagner: [03:10] That's both.

Chuck Carpenter: [03:14] Wow.

Wes Bos: [03:15] I was talking to somebody, my barber, the other day, and he's like, how did you get into web development? MySpace? I was like, yeah, actually, I did get into web development on MySpace. Pretty much like half the industry started on MySpace.

Robbie Wagner: [03:26] Yeah. I didn't realize how common it was, but yeah, I guess it's a lot of people.

Wes Bos: [03:31] Yeah. All these punks had to grow up at some point.

Robbie Wagner: [03:37] First SPA framework used was Angular.

Chuck Carpenter: [03:43] Robbie.

Robbie Wagner: [03:44] I actually don't know if you happened to use Angular first. I threw this one in, but I did use Angular first.

Wes Bos: [03:50] Yeah, I did Backbone briefly, but I would say, like, my first proper apps were Angular, so I'd go ahead and say that.

Chuck Carpenter: [03:59] Fair enough. Okay. Another. Both you guys are, like, so alike.

Wes Bos: [04:03] Yeah. The same person.

Chuck Carpenter: [04:04] Yeah.

Wes Bos: [04:05] Tractors and.

Chuck Carpenter: [04:06] That's what we learned.

Wes Bos: [04:07] Ex-punk rockers with tractors.

Robbie Wagner: [04:10] Yeah. I recently moved to the country, and so I've been riding around on my tractor listening to your podcast, and every time I would hear one about stuff that was similar to what I was doing, I was like, wow, there's so much we have in common here.

Wes Bos: [04:27] Where do you live?

Robbie Wagner: [04:28] In Middleburg, Virginia.

Wes Bos: [04:30] You get snow down there then, right? Or not a whole lot.

Robbie Wagner: [04:35] We used to global warming has made us not, but we used to get some.

Wes Bos: [04:40] You don't have, like, a snow blower attachment for your tractor, do you? Because I just put mine on and was cussing at it.

Robbie Wagner: [04:47] No. Are you getting snow already?

Wes Bos: [04:50] Well, I have the tractor up at our cottage, and usually what happens is I'll put it on before it snows. It has snowed already? Yeah, definitely. But not enough that you need a snowblower for it. But eventually, it will. And usually, what happens is you have to park the car at the road, walk in, and then snowblow it and then drive the car in.

Chuck Carpenter: [05:13] Oh, my God. Yikes Yeah. We have vastly different winter experiences. I'm in Phoenix, Arizona.

Wes Bos: [05:23] Okay.

Chuck Carpenter: [05:23] Yes. There is no snow here. And I sometimes put on a jacket.

Wes Bos: [05:32] That's good. No, I've definitely already had the huge down parka on.

Chuck Carpenter: [05:37] Canada Goose. I mean, it has to be, right?

Wes Bos: [05:39] Yeah. Canada Goose.

Chuck Carpenter: [05:42] Should we dive into some whiskey? We're already loosening up here.

Robbie Wagner: [05:46] Yeah. So we didn't all quite get the same whiskey this time, but Chuck and I, I believe, have the 1792. Did you get the small batch?

Chuck Carpenter: [05:57] Yeah, I did. Even though I had a pull to the other one, I decided to do at least us two the same. So in a first, yes, Wes wasn't able to get the same one. We can't ship it to you internationally, oddly enough, but I think you made a good choice.

Wes Bos: [06:15] Yeah. Weird liquor rules here in Canada, and we only have one place that you can buy liquor, and it's called the LCBO, the Liquor Control Board of Ontario. And that's it. You can buy beer at grocery stores starting a couple of years ago, but the closest one that had the one that we were going to do was, like, an hour drive away, and I was like, forget that.

Robbie Wagner: [06:36] Yeah. It's similar in Virginia. It's all state-owned, so you get what you get.

Wes Bos: [06:41] Oh, yeah.

Chuck Carpenter: [06:43] Some good variety there, though. In the Virginia ones, it can be. Although now you're in Middleburg, so your choices are.

Wes Bos: [06:49] I do like the sound that these whiskey bottles make when they.

Robbie Wagner: [06:53] I just accidentally poured way too much.

Chuck Carpenter: [06:57] Or just enough. While the other side of things for me is, it is only 01:00 p.m. And so this is real early to get started.

Robbie Wagner: [07:04] But it's okay. It's a holiday week, right?

Chuck Carpenter: [07:10] Exactly. Perhaps after this. Yeah. And in tradition over the last few episodes for us, I keep forgetting to bring a proper whiskey glass into the office. And so a coffee cup is.

Wes Bos: [07:25] What is a proper whiskey glass? I got this. I don't know.

Robbie Wagner: [07:31] That's closer than what Chuck has.

Wes Bos: [07:31] This is a water glass.

Chuck Carpenter: [07:32] Yeah. I mean, that's kind of like your regular rocks glass or whatever.

Wes Bos: [07:37] Okay.

Chuck Carpenter: [07:37] Yeah, there's nothing wrong with that. So a proper one is called a Glencairn, and it has that kind of tulip shape to it.

Wes Bos: [07:43] Okay.

Robbie Wagner: [07:44] It's this one here.

Wes Bos: [07:46] Okay.

Chuck Carpenter: [07:47] Yeah. So he's got one that's like actually insulated too, so your fingers don't touch the glass and warm the whiskey. I don't know if that matters, but. It does look cool.

Robbie Wagner: [07:56] I'm not sophisticated enough for it to matter, but to some people, it might.

Chuck Carpenter: [08:01] So we are having the 1792 Small Batch. I have a couple of notes on the mash bill of things. So it is 74% corn, 18% rye, and 8% barley. So very corn forward on that.

Robbie Wagner: [08:16.] Where did you find that? Because when I read it, it was like 15% to 20% rye, and it was like a secret mash bill.

Chuck Carpenter: [08:26] I found another website that lists the mash bill of all these different whiskeys.

Wes Bos: [08:31] You say it's corn forward?

Chuck Carpenter: [08:33] Yeah, it should be. I have a drinking problem, some might say, but that's okay. So I was born in Kentucky. I'm really into bourbon. I like a few other whiskeys as well. And so one of the things we talk about is the mash bill or just what grains they use to start it all out. And bourbon has to be 51% corn minimum. So you're always going to get various levels of that, so you might get more sweetness.

Wes Bos: [09:04] Interesting.

Chuck Carpenter: [09:05] Yeah.

Wes Bos: [09:06] Did you guys watch that documentary on the bourbon heist or whatever on Netflix?

Chuck Carpenter: [09:11] I did, yes.

Wes Bos: [09:13] That was pretty cool. That was pretty cool.

Chuck Carpenter: [09:15] Yeah, I thought it was cool. And it doesn't surprise me that there was like all kinds of crazy insider trading going on, to begin with. Good old boys were taking a couple of bottles here and there, and that was fine for 50 years until when somebody got greedy.

Wes Bos: [09:30] All right, well, this is fun.

Chuck Carpenter: [09:33] I'm getting, let's see here. Feel like a little bit of a, and maybe it's just because Wes is here and you're influencing me, but I feel like a little maple in the beginning. A little cinnamon. Tap a tree for us, please. And I know so since you have a different one and we make all these things up. It's not even that serious. Everybody has their own interpretation of the flavors that they're getting. So we'd like to talk a little bit about that, and then we do a rating for it. And you can rate your own independently based on your own whiskey experience. So it's an eight-tentacle scale because we are clever.

Robbie Wagner: [10:16] Yeah.

Chuck Carpenter: [10:16] A tentacled being as our logo, you may have seen. So, yeah, just one to eight. Completely subjective, but yeah, I would say this 1792. It's pretty easily drinkable and fairly inexpensive, too, which was kind of nice. I got it for under $30. Yeah. I don't mind having this just as a sipper, so I would give it better than average. I would say six. It doesn't blow me away. It's not really robust. I'm getting, like, two flavors, no burn whatsoever, which is interesting.

Robbie Wagner: [10:51] Yeah. I think I would give it five simply because it's supposed to be like a normal bourbon, and it's very rye like. So if you wanted a bourbon, this is not for you, but it is good in the rye category. So middle of the roadish, five.

Wes Bos: [11:08] I haven't drank a lot of whiskey to really compare it. It's definitely not Fireball. I say I put it above Fireball.

Chuck Carpenter: [11:16] Oh, yes, that's good.

Wes Bos: [11:18] Yeah, it burns a little. I would appreciate a little bit more flavor, I think, in it. It's kind of just alcoholy, but it's good.

Chuck Carpenter: [11:26] Based on other any whiskey, too? Like Scotch, Irish whiskeys, any of them. Where would you rate it in comparison to, like, I don't know? Like you said, you don't really drink whiskey that often, but if you did, what would you go buy, or how would you like it?

Wes Bos: [11:42] Oh, I don't even know. I usually only drink whiskey when my buddies offer it up to me. When we're hanging out. I've got a couple of buddies that are into it, so I don't even know what I would list off as a being. We have a pretty cool distillery that's in town, and now I'm wondering if I should know that I know these things corn forward and whatnot, I should try some out.

Chuck Carpenter: [12:06] Yeah.

Wes Bos: [12:06] So I'm going to defer that question until I have a couple more. Maybe have me back in a year, and I'll be super into it. Sort of my personality.

Chuck Carpenter: [12:14] It is a rabbit hole. Be careful. I mean, would you have it again?

Wes Bos: [12:19] Yes, I'll definitely finish this bottle off. I could see myself having a glass of this tonight, watching some HGTV with my wife.

Robbie Wagner: [12:29] Nice. What's your favorite HGTV show?

Wes Bos: [12:31] Oh, man. I'm into a lot of them. We're always big Chip and Joe fans, but they've moved to their own network now. I really like this. There's a bunch of them are in Canada. Property Brothers are often in Canada. Income Properties in Canada. Bryan Balmler he's got a couple of shows. He has this Island of Bryan and whatnot, where he bought, like, an island in the Bahamas or something like that. And he's turning it into a hotel. Yeah. Lots of Canadians on HGTV.

Chuck Carpenter: [13:03] We visited the Silos.

Wes Bos: [13:06] Oh really?

Chuck Carpenter: [13:07] This summer. Yeah.

Wes Bos: [13:08] What was it like? I always wonder, is it like millions of people that are just trying to wear Shiplap T-shirts?

Chuck Carpenter: [13:14] Right? Exactly. Basically, that I mean, it's complex. It was incredible. It was really fun. We took our family there. So I have two small kids. They have this, like, a bunch of food trucks and, like, a little baseball field and then the various shops. So, like, some smaller shops. The big like their big store, their furniture store, the bakery. And then they have a big restaurant in town, too. I think they own half of Waco at this point.

Wes Bos: [13:41] Yeah, I think so. That's pretty cool.

Chuck Carpenter: [13:43] Yeah, it was nice. I would recommend.

Robbie Wagner: [13:45] Half of Waco was, like, the cost of a house here, so they probably do.

Wes Bos: [13:50] They probably bought up half the half the city before it got expensive.

Chuck Carpenter: [13:54] I think they've had a strong influence on the real estate market of Waco, Texas.

Wes Bos: [13:58] Oh, yeah, definitely.

Chuck Carpenter: [14:00] Yeah. And I forgot about the Property Brothers being Canadian. Yeah, they're pretty fun.

Wes Bos: [14:06] Yeah, they're good guys. They stopped doing it, I think, in Canada because it got so depressing with they would do it in Toronto, but then the bidding wars, and nobody would get a house. And it's just kind of hard to film a TV show when nobody can buy something or people are spending $2 million on a crappy house. So I think they moved to places where people have a bit more budget.

Chuck Carpenter: [14:30] Yeah, that kind of makes sense. I have some friends and colleagues in Toronto, and they've described some of the craziness in town trying to get a house in town, and it seems really nuts.

Wes Bos: [14:43] Yeah, it's crazy. We moved out of Toronto just for that exact reason. Bonkers.

Chuck Carpenter: [14:48] You moved out of Toronto and into the complicated how do I have good internet situation. Right.

Wes Bos: [14:55] Yeah. No, we moved to Hamilton, which is like we live downtown, a pretty big city, but we have a cottage in 4 hours away in the middle of nowhere. That's where the tractor and all the rural stuff is with the internet and whatnot. And we had spent because of the pandemic. We had spent, I don't know, probably like six, eight months of the last two years there. So a significant amount. Probably no more than that because we're there all summer, and then we spent like February to June there. Both years.

Robbie Wagner: [15:33] Yeah. I feel the internet woes.

Wes Bos: [15:36] Oh, yeah.

Robbie Wagner: [15:37] We have no cable or anything to the house. So then our only internet option is it gets beamed to us from somewhere around, I don't know.

Wes Bos: [15:48] Yea. Line of sight.

Robbie Wagner: [15:50] Yeah, so it's like ten Mbps on a good day. And it's like hundreds of dollars, which is obnoxious.

Wes Bos: [15:59] Did you sign up for Startlink now?

Robbie Wagner: [16:01] I did, yeah. But it says it's at capacity in my area until potentially the end of next year.

Wes Bos: [16:09] Brutal.

Robbie Wagner: [16:10] Yeah.

Wes Bos: [16:10] That sucks.

Robbie Wagner: [16:11] Yeah. How long did you have to wait for yours?

Wes Bos: [16:13] So I signed up like within 10 minutes of them announcing it opening up in February, and I got it late August, so quite a while. Quite a big wait. But I was the first person that I saw who had it, and I talked to all the neighbors and everything. So now quite a few neighbors have it, but I don't know if it's at capacity or not.

Robbie Wagner: [16:38] Is it still working well?

Wes Bos: [16:40] Yeah, it's awesome. It's like faster than what you can pay for in the city if you don't go. Eventually, I got faster here in the city, but I had to get a business account with them. Just like a residential service. It's like way faster. Starlink is way faster, which is crazy if you think about it.

Robbie Wagner: [17:00] Yeah. I never would have thought we would solve all the internet problems with tons of tiny satellites.

Wes Bos: [17:06] Yeah, it's huge for people who want to live in rural location. It's huge for property values as well. Just if you want to be able to move outside the circle of what spectrum or whatever you have down there, you can do that now.

Chuck Carpenter: [17:21] Yeah. That's very appealing. Basically, garage and connection speeds are the big draws for me. I don't ever want to go back to no garage anymore. I lived in Washington, DC, for about seven years.

Wes Bos: [17:36] Oh yeah. Garage is key.

Chuck Carpenter: [17:39] Even in heat or snow or whatever else.

Wes Bos: [17:42] It's like a must-have for us in the snow because otherwise, every morning, you're scraping off just like ice that's formed on your windshield. It's miserable.

Chuck Carpenter: [17:53] I mean, maple syrup is good, but I don't know, and Canada is very polite. Boy, I don't like the snow.

Robbie Wagner: [18:01] No, I love snow.

Wes Bos: [18:03] Don't come here if you don't like the snow.

Chuck Carpenter: [18:04] Yeah, come there in the summer. I love Toronto.

Wes Bos: [18:08] Oh yeah, it's awesome.

Chuck Carpenter: [18:10] I used to work for a company called Acquia, and I was engineering manager at the time, and some of my teams were in Toronto, so I'd go there every quarter, and it was great except for when it was January. That was the time where I didn't want to go. I was like, how about you guys come to Boston? It's warmer there.

Wes Bos: [18:27] Oh, yeah, it's miserable. Especially in the cities because it's snowy for like an hour, and then everything melts, and it becomes slush, and there's cars splashing gray slush on you. It's a little bit nicer in the rural areas of Canada.

Chuck Carpenter: [18:45] Yeah. I know you did a recent podcast on Next.Js 12 release, and you're deep in the React world and whatnot, although this isn't whatnot. This is web. So yeah what are your feelings around the recent release on Next.js and their whole narrative that they are now the SDK of the web?

Wes Bos: [19:08] I don't think that they're like the SDK of the web. The whole point of the web is that it's open, and it's just a standard language that you can build whatever you want on top of it. But that said, I'm probably the biggest Next.js fanboy out there, so I'm really into it. They're making things really simple for us. They're sort of taking a lot of the hard parts of React and doing away with them and making this just like a really nice framework for building websites on it. I absolutely love Next.js and I'm stoked to see that every single version that they have has some big updates to it.

Chuck Carpenter: [19:49] I love that they're all about performance too. So A, they give you just some standard patterns and guardrails around creating applications versus React is the library to render, and then you have to choose your own adventure all the rest of the way, which there's just so many various paths there. Like the fact that Next is saying no, this is kind of how we should do it with these tools.

Wes Bos: [20:16] Yeah, I think that's really important with these tools is that it does the code splitting and all the performance stuff for you. Because the average web developer is not going to spend any time trying to implement these things themselves. They don't have enough time. They've got deadlines to hit, or they just don't know how. So the tools doing it for you really is the way forward when it comes to doing things perf-wise and different image formats and tree shaking, all that good stuff.

Robbie Wagner: [20:48] Yeah, definitely. How do you feel about Rich Harris joining Vercel? Do you think React is dead now?

Wes Bos: [20:57] I think that was a huge vote of confidence for Svelte and SvelteKit, quite honestly. You look at React, and you look at Svelte, and if those things were both brand new right now, I think Svelte would probably take off over React just because there's still a lot of weird things in React that are kind of annoying to deal with and Svelte just makes those things really simple. Like you can just update a variable, and it just updates state, right? Like you just say the variable equals twelve, and wherever that variable is used, it gets updated. Whereas with React, you got to set state, and you got to have a hook and all this sort of stuff. I know how to use that stuff, so I don't complain too much. But then when you flip over to build something in Svelte, you're like, this is nice, this is really nice. And Vercel doesn't care what's popular as long as they can host it. Right? That's the whole reason why they are pushing Next.js forward is that whatever people are using, whether it's Next or Svelte kit, they're probably going to try hosted on Vercel if that's where the integration guide shows you how to do it. So it's really cool that now we have two really solid options that are being supported by these companies.

Chuck Carpenter: [22:11] And you can wonder though, down the line, if somehow they kind of combine and become like you figure out the greatest efficiencies between the two. Because Next is marketed as its own thing. So it doesn't necessarily have to be have the view layer driven by React, right? Maybe you have options, or they swap it out at some point. That's hard to say.

Wes Bos: [22:30] Yeah, I always wonder that, at some point, there is frameworks out there that will do that already. You can mix and match it. And I often wonder will Next.js become just like web component base where you can use React, or will Next.js roll out some sort of data layer which is like the they have SWC, right? But that's not the thing everybody uses right now. And if they were to be like, all right, React, you have suspense now and whatnot, maybe it's time. React is never going to roll out like an opinionated data layer like SvelteKit is. So maybe Next.js will, I don't know. I don't have any inside info on that. But it would be kind of cool to see it if they did.

Robbie Wagner: [23:17] Yeah, definitely. It'd be really cool to be able to swap your view layers out because I know they also are sponsors of Nuxt, like the Vue version of Next, basically. So yeah, I think they're kind of getting everything together to where they can do that. Hopefully, one day that would be really cool.

Wes Bos: [23:36] That's what Astro is attempting to be is that you can use components from Svelte and React and web components all in one single thing, but that's more of like a website framework. But it's really cool to see that that is starting to be built. So I wouldn't say that it's off the table. I'm sure they've had conversations of, like, what would it look like if Next.js was not React only at some point.

Chuck Carpenter: [24:04] Yeah, I do think it's interesting that these more robust frameworks are kind of choosing a lane at what is the best use case to use them in because Next really seems to be leaning into E-commerce, for example. And then you have something else like Redwood JS, which is saying, oh, we're the framework for startups because we're full stack, we're kind of like so we actually talked to Tom Preston Warner a couple of weeks ago and so to me, it felt a lot. A lot of what he was saying is like, MeteorJS and Ember got together and then had a new baby. So it was a lot of like Ember-like paradigms coming from Rails and then this Meteor like, hey, we're JS for everything but also don't make me unhappy and miserable. Oh, maybe that's Redwood.

Wes Bos: [24:52] Yeah, it's kind of cool to see how that is. And Next, leaning into e-commerce, I think they probably see. Okay, besides hosting, what are some they were rolling out? What was that thing that they announced? Like they're like live, what's it called? They had like a thing that they were going to roll out where you could do like live editing on top of it. And I bet that will probably be a service they offer at some point. They're probably also looking over at Shopify being like that's kind of like a huge freaking one of the largest businesses in the world. Wouldn't mind a little piece of that. Right? Like E-commerce, those are the people that have cash to spend on services and whatnot. So totally could see that as well.

Chuck Carpenter: [25:36] Yeah, I figured that things like incremental static regeneration was like tailor-made for Ecommerce.

Wes Bos: [25:44] Yeah, it's as helpful for any website, really. If I think about my own website, my website is on Gatsby, and my website has gotten so large that the build times for it are pretty long. And Gatsby is definitely rolling out some stuff to fix that. But I think Next.js is much better suited to doing that, at least right now.

Chuck Carpenter: [26:05] Great. But they're setting some patterns and giving people the opportunity to iteratively work off of that. So pretty cool. A little bit of invent, a little bit of steal. That's all right.

Wes Bos: [26:19] There you go.

Robbie Wagner: [26:20] Yeah. So what are your thoughts on things like Typescript? And we had kind of a little bit of a discussion on this. I guess last week, things like CoffeeScript kind of came out and kind of changed the game and then went away. Do you think Typescript is here to stay? Or will it maybe be included in JavaScript one day, or what do you think of the future of that?

Wes Bos: [26:44] I was just talking to somebody on Twitter about this like 6 minutes ago before we started recording. That's a great question. I think Typescript has definitely won that space. And people are now convinced that, yes, types make authoring an awesome experience. It makes finding edge case bugs really easy. And the benefits of it are very clear to most people. There's certainly downsides, and there's trip-ups to Typescript and whatnot and can be a little slower to author initially, but I think it's here to stay. And what does that look like for the language of JavaScript now? If we all start writing it and I bet we will have some sort of optional Types added to the language at some point. Just like we saw like twelve years ago with jQuery. Everyone's like, just add jQuery to the browser. It's perfect. It does everything we want. It's amazing. The API is really slick. Can we just add it to the browser and so that we don't have to ship this jQuery thing? And they said, well, kind of, we'll give you literally every API. Now you look at jQuery, and it didn't die off because people started moving to react and whatnot. It died off because the browser got good enough. We have query selector all and we have all these parent-child traversing methods, and we can do literally anything we want all the data methods in vanilla JavaScript right now. And I bet that we will see. I don't know what it'll look like, but we'll start to see some proposals for adding types to JavaScript and then what that will look like. I don't know what it will look like. Will it look like exactly like Typescript, or will it look something totally different? Same thing with CSS, right? Like we got variables in CSS, and they're a little bit weird looking, but we certainly got them.

Chuck Carpenter: [28:29] Right.

Robbie Wagner: [28:30] Yeah, it would be nice if it does seem like the standards kind of don't make it their way into the real thing. Like CSS variables are really nice and easy to use, and the nesting is nice and why can't it just be the same in CSS?

Wes Bos: [28:46] But it's weird because CSS doesn't want to break anything. The reason why we have to use dash dash and all that is so that they can maintain backwards compatibility with the language. So that if you loaded a 2021 CSS on IE six, it wouldn't break because the syntax is not different. But with JavaScript, we're certainly okay with adding backticks and stars before functions for generators and things like that. That's totally fine. So I would think that we are in a better spot with JavaScript in that they're like, yeah, we can break the language to add angle brackets or something like that to decipher a type.

Robbie Wagner: [29:25] Yeah, I guess JavaScript has had translation for a long time. I guess so. Maybe they don't care as much because that exists.

Wes Bos: [29:34] Yeah, but the whole reason we got Babel was like six to five, it was called six to five before Babel even came out, and the only reason we got that was because they're like, yeah, we're breaking the language. Like tough noogies.

Chuck Carpenter: [29:51] We're going to move ahead with this, but we'll give you an out.

Wes Bos: [29:54] Yeah. Closure Compiler. That was the one that we had at the time. Maybe they thought I ever getting way back, though.

Robbie Wagner: [30:01] Yeah, but I think PostCSS is kind of newer, I guess, which kind of does similar things for CSS. So maybe we'll get there to where they're less afraid of breaking things, but I don't know.

Wes Bos: [30:15] Yeah, I'd be curious to see even have an answer. Why can't you break CSS if we are okay with it and we know the possible downsides to it as long?

Robbie Wagner: [30:26] As you don't have to support IE anymore, right Chuck?

Wes Bos: [30:29] Yeah.

Chuck Carpenter: [30:31] So, current client, one caveat is must support IE Eleven. So this next twelve upgrade has been challenging. That's what my lesson has been.

Wes Bos: [30:45] So you guys are still supporting IE Eleven? Oh, man. Yeah, I don't know. I actually haven't had to support that in a while. So I don't even know what that pain is.

Chuck Carpenter: [30:57] Yeah. And I hadn't really, and Next does a great job of supporting it with some basic, like, hot-loaded polyfills and stuff. But changing over from Babel to SWC has been, I think that's maybe the change. But yeah, just IE eleven, at least. And this is a very large pharmaceutical distributor manufacturer and their life sciences division. So there's many millions attached, apparently, to these, and they have the metrics that say, yes, you have to do it because oftentimes you can sort of fight that fight and just say, that pool is so small, we can all move on. Evergreen across the board, please.

Wes Bos: [31:41] Yeah. I was actually surprised the vaccine rollout here in Ontario did not support IE Eleven. And I was like. I would have thought if anything would support IE Eleven, it was life-saving medicine, but apparently not. Upgrade your damn browser. I think if anything, they probably would have to support older Android because if you think about people who are vulnerable and whatnot, maybe they have data saying they have older Android phones, that's all they have access to, instead of like, oh, yeah, they have an IE Eleven machine when they could just go download Chrome.

Chuck Carpenter: [32:21] Yeah.

Robbie Wagner: [32:22] The people that have Ie Eleven machines still, I think, are probably not using the internet and knowing about signing up for vaccines online.

Chuck Carpenter: [32:30] Yeah. They are going to a pharmacy and saying. I need this. I have not filled out any forms. Can you print them for me? That's a possibility. And conversely, it's like possibly almost cheaper. Rather than spend multiple teams, developer hours on constantly supporting this small subset is just getting some Chromebooks and going to their houses and saying, here, let's sign up together. I will help you.

Robbie Wagner: [32:58] Yeah.

Chuck Carpenter: [32:59] You've made it through most of the tech topics. Unless you had something in top of mind, Wes.

Wes Bos: [33:05] I could talk about anything.

Robbie Wagner: [33:06] Yeah. What's the hotness?

Chuck Carpenter: [33:09] What is the hotness? Yeah, Next twelve, yo.

Wes Bos: [33:12] Yeah, Next twelve is the hotness right now. Get up. Copilot is the hotness right now. That's a big one.

Chuck Carpenter: [33:20] Yeah, I've been playing.

Wes Bos: [33:21] Have you guys tried that out?

Chuck Carpenter: [33:22] Yeah, it's fun.

Wes Bos: [33:24] Yeah, it's super surprising. I can't believe how good it is. I'm really surprised.

Chuck Carpenter: [33:30] Yeah, I'm getting older. I need machines to think for me more and more.

Wes Bos: [33:35] I'm into it.

Chuck Carpenter: [33:36] This is ticking a box.

Wes Bos: [33:37] I just need to coast into retirement, so it's not like the machines can bring me there.

Chuck Carpenter: [33:41] There you go. Once they implant one into you, then you get to retire. That's really it. Are there any other things you've been dabbling in?

Wes Bos: [33:52] Oh, man. Trying to think about all that different stuff. Like SvelteKit is probably the big one that I've been dipping my toes into as of lately. Not a whole lot. It's been kind of a crazy year, year and a half, just with the business and whatnot. And I haven't got to kind of fiddle with enough. And usually, when I do have time to fiddle, I'm interested in hardware projects, things like that, whether it's electronics or hooking up JavaScript. We just recorded a podcast the other day where this guy works in like an industrial city, and he's using Node.js to automate factories and big industry and all that, and it was just got me thinking like, oh man, that is so cool. And he's like, yeah, there's this whole other side of JavaScript. It's not web development, but it's just automation and internet of things. But for he called it the IIoT, the industrial Internet of things. That's kind of interesting.

Chuck Carpenter: [34:56] That's really cool. I've always wanted to do like a Node Arduino project but just haven't had time. But yeah, exactly what you can do there. It's like control hardware with Node.

Wes Bos: [35:06] Yeah, the Arduino stuff is really fun. Probably about two years ago, I did a drone project where I flew the drone with Node, and then I built a UI in React and that was super fun and really opened my eyes up to how these machines work. Right. It's not like these machines are running JavaScript, it's that you're just sending commands to them in whatever command language they speak, and then you're using JavaScript as the method to send it over. In my case, it was UDP, the protocol.

Chuck Carpenter: [35:39] Yeah, that sounds really fun.

Wes Bos: [35:40] Yeah, I love that kind of stuff, and I don't have as much time to do that before I had three kids. I definitely dabbled in it a lot more, but it's still fun every now and then to dip into it.

Chuck Carpenter: [35:51] Yeah, I can empathize quite a bit. Two young kids, two and five, boy and girl, and they keep me on my toes.

Wes Bos: [36:00] Totally. So at some point, I'll get back into it.

Robbie Wagner: [36:04] Yeah, seems like you're still doing a lot of stuff though. Like I heard the recent podcast about putting the new radio in your van.

Wes Bos: [36:12] Oh yeah. See, that stuff also interests me even though it's like not coding, understanding how electronics work, and I've been doing a lot of hacking my kids' toys that have batteries in them, making them faster, fixing cars, things like that. So I'm also really into that as well. It's just figuring out how real-world stuff works and fixing that and upgrading it.

Chuck Carpenter: [36:39] That reminds me of a podcast. So it was like a Tim Ferriss podcast from a couple of years ago, and he was talking to a guy, Sammy is his name, who does a bunch of ethical hacking in order to point out flaws and things. And he was able to basically turn a kid's toy into a radio function device that could unlock car doors. Isn't that?

Wes Bos: [37:01] Yeah, it's nuts if you think about it. You open it up, and you look at literally the chips that are on these, and they're often just common Texas instrument chips, and you go and look at the spec sheet for what that chip can do and can say, oh, wow, I can send radio frequencies out. The big one was years ago. There was like a little poly pocket diary, and it could send the same frequencies as older garage doors. So the guy could just walk down the street, hit a button, and it would cycle through all 9999 garage door codes, and it would just open every garage door on that street.

Chuck Carpenter: [37:41] Yeah, that stuff is pretty interesting. I like reading about it in the very least.

Robbie Wagner: [37:46] Yeah, I had no idea, having not had kids' toys yet.

Wes Bos: [37:51] It's really fun. And it's also like kids' toys are so simple. And it's a great way, in a low-stakes way, to learn saudering electrical components because almost always they're just some board that doesn't go wrong. And it's usually just some wires are wrong, or the battery is not connected or something like that. And you can really learn a lot. And then if it doesn't work, it's just some, like, $5 kids' toy. You got at a yard sale. Trash it.

Chuck Carpenter: [38:23] I'm inspired.

Wes Bos: [38:24] Yeah. There you go.

Robbie Wagner: [38:27] The fact that chips work at all still just blows my mind. Like hardware.

Wes Bos: [38:31] Yeah, I don't.

Robbie Wagner: [38:31] Just crazy.

Wes Bos: [38:33] The fact.

Wes Bos: [38:34] That chips are like silicone or, sorry, not silicone, silicon. Someone's like we taught sand to think, and that blew my mind. Yeah, maybe we shouldn't have taught sand to think.

Chuck Carpenter: [38:50] Yeah, I mean, that's the big trade for convenience that we've all opted into.

Wes Bos: [38:56] Yeah.

Chuck Carpenter: [38:56] Without getting too dystopian though, in some of your hobbies that you share on your website, I was like digging into that, and you were saying some things haven't been updated in a while, so I just wanted to kind of come back to some of that. Are you still doing vintage road bikes?

Wes Bos: [39:16] I actually just got out of the game maybe like a month ago, but probably for twelve years, I had been buying and selling old Italian and Canadian road bikes, fixing them up and selling them, and yeah, it was a super fun hobby. I kept a couple of my good ones, but between running out of room in the garage and we've had our garage broken into a couple of times, and I've had some of my like the best ones stolen. So I said, you know what, I've got so many other hobbies right now. I get into stuff, I go deep, and then I'm done with it. I move on to the next thing once I've sort of done it. And road bikes is probably one of the longest hobbies I've had, but I think I can say I'm officially done with that hobby. Except for my own personal bikes.

Chuck Carpenter: [40:06] I can dig the hole, like go down a rabbit hole, and then there I am, forever becoming a quasi-expert or whatever. And I speak for myself. As far as the quasi-parts, I've worked on cars and things like that, but I've always wanted to get into the hardware part.

Wes Bos: [40:26] Yeah, it's fun to do that stuff. Like, I got super into small engines in the last year and a half. Little kids ATV, boat motor I found in the dump, I fixed and got running and just gone deep on how two-stroke engines work. And now I feel like I have a pretty good idea, and I'll probably still work on them here and there, but I'm not crazy about that. And now I move on to the next thing you know.

Chuck Carpenter: [40:51] Yeah. So what's up with the Big Green Egg, then?

Wes Bos: [40:54] That is just a barbecue that I actually have three of them.

Robbie Wagner: [41:01] Wow.

Wes Bos: [41:02] I'm pretty into that. That's something I haven't given up on. And it's, like, a really good barbecue that you'll have forever. It's an amazing barbecue. It makes amazing-tasting food. It's a smoker. It's a pizza oven. And I'm really into products like that that are lasting forever, because I often go and sneak into the dump and just pick around at what they got in there. And one of the most popular things in the dump is, unfortunately, barbecues that look like they're three years old. And it kind of bums me out that people buy these $400 barbecues, and they use it for three or four years, and then they throw it in the dump, and hopefully, it's being recycled. But to me, it's just like there's just something really nice about buying something and having it for, like, I've had mine for, like, nine years, and it's still brand new, and I use it, like, two or three times a week.

Chuck Carpenter: [41:55] Wow, that's great.

Robbie Wagner: [41:57] I have some follow-up questions to that. So you have three. Are they, like, three different sizes or for three different types of food?

Wes Bos: [42:10] Initially? I bought a large about nine years ago, and that's, like, your standard one. And then I bought a what's called a MiniMax. It's probably, like, 40 or 50 pounds. It's pretty heavy, but you can bring it with you places. So we used to rent cottages and whatnot, and I would just bring it so we could have, like, the worst thing is when you rent, like, an Airbnb, and they have worse stuff than you have at home. Wow. This bed is not as comfortable. These knives are not as sharp as what I have at home. In my case, it was this barbecue sucks, and I can't make as good as food as I have at home. And when you're on vacation, you want better food than you have regularly. Right?

Robbie Wagner: [42:52] Right.

Wes Bos: [42:53] So I got a MiniMax for Christmas one year from my wife, and it's awesome you bring it around, but then when, a couple of years ago, we bought our own cottage. I had just been on the lookout for a used one for the cottage, and I found an XL, which is huge. So I snapped that up. So now I have. I don't use the MiniMax hardly at all. I've always thought about getting rid of it, but I just used a large here in the XL at the cottage.

Chuck Carpenter: [43:21] Yeah, the one day you travel, you're going to be like, I wish I had that.

Wes Bos: [43:24] Yeah, it's super heavy, and then you also have to wait like 3 hours for it to cool down, so it's not even something unless you had a truck you can't just throw it in the back of your car because the thing is smoking for 3 hours after.

Chuck Carpenter: [43:39] So I had a neighbor in DC that had a Big Green Egg, and I did some cooks with him over a few years, and I'm curious because there's all these crazy hacks you can do too. So you can set up an Arduino device and a fan that will just monitor the temperature and change the fan to keep your temperature more consistent and all that. Do you have those things?

Wes Bos: [44:04] Yeah, when I first got it, I was really into all the gadgets and the wireless thermometer and the iPhone app and everything like that, and honestly, I don't use any of it now. I got so good at opening and closing the vents, and basically, you could just throw it on and dial the vents in. You come back and check it 20 minutes later, make sure it's not like on fire, and then you just sort of know like you've got a cheap little instant read thermometer you poke in the food every now and then. But what I love so much about the Big Green Egg is that its charcoal, it's wood, it's fire, it's very simple, you don't have to plug it in, there's no WiFi. What's really popular now is to get these pellet smokers that have, like, an iPhone app and whatnot, and you often see those being sold super rusted out, or people are saying it needs a new Bluetooth board. And I'm like. I have enough problems with my day-to-day with technology. I don't need any technology in my food. And there's just something so nice about it being this primitive wood and charcoal and fire, and you don't have to fuss with it. So I don't even use the wireless thermometer anymore.

Robbie Wagner: [45:21] People cook for thousands of years without any technology.

Wes Bos: [45:25] Yeah, it's a bit of an art form to get it dialed in, but once you sort of know how it works, and I learned with thermometers, but now I know how it works, I know what will happen if I do certain things.

Chuck Carpenter: [45:40] There's sort of like a ritual and relaxation like meditative state to some more manual processes, too, right? Like you can get a robot lawn mower or something, but going out and doing some yard work is actually kind of cathartic to me.

Wes Bos: [45:59] I totally agree there. I probably wouldn't rule out the robot lawn mower myself just because I don't necessarily enjoy I had a lawn mowing business as a kid, so I still mow the lawn, but I certainly would like a robot to do that. But yeah, the cooking process to me is very enjoyable, and I like to do it, whereas some people just say, no, I want the end result, but I don't actually enjoy the process of it, the planning it, the prepping of the food and checking on it and drinking eleven beers while you're waiting for it and all that.

Chuck Carpenter: [46:31] Right, exactly. All of those things.

Robbie Wagner: [46:34] Yeah. I've only tried to do so. I haven't done a lot of smoking. I did try to do pulled pork twice, and both times did not go well, but I had, like, a really cheap three-in-one smoker grill, all this kind of stuff. It just was not good at its job.

Wes Bos: [46:54] Yeah, pulled pork is tricky to get right just because it can dry out quickly, and also, it takes a long time. You hit this thing called the stall, where the food starts releasing enough of its moisture that it maintains the same temp forever. And you have to get it past that stall in order for it to hit the temps to fall apart. And it's at that stall that a lot of people sort of give up. And it's still good if you just slice it with the knife, too, though.

Chuck Carpenter: [47:23] Yeah, but you got to get to the pinnacle. The achievement is there. I mean, I've watched enough of those, like, barbecue shows with the whole pig, whole hog roasting and stuff, and they turn it over, and they're just like.

Wes Bos: [47:34] Oh, man. My buddy did it a couple of weeks ago. He did one of those for my friend's birthday, and I helped him out for a bit of it. It was really fun. Now it makes me think, like, oh, maybe I should have a whole hog pit. And then I went down. Maybe I should learn to weld, you know.

Chuck Carpenter: [47:51] Right, maybe you should. In a real prepper kind of world, those are skills that would be useful.

Robbie Wagner: [47:58] Yeah.

Chuck Carpenter: [47:59] Let me know and do it in the summer, and I will. Canada. I do like Canada. I just don't like snow.

Wes Bos: [48:07] No, that's fair.

Robbie Wagner: [48:08] Yeah, I do like snow. We went to Mont Tremblant and skied some, and we loved it there.

Wes Bos: [48:17] Oh, yeah.

Robbie Wagner: [48:18] We would like more snow.

Wes Bos: [48:20] I ate it so hard on Mont Tremblant when I was in high school, and I've not gone snowboarding or skiing since. I just like, you know what? I'm going to break my neck. That's just not something I need to do. Or I'll sit home with my pulled pork, and you guys can go snowboarding. There's a lot of conferences that do, like, a ski and conference, and I'm always like, you know what? I'm going to pass on this one.

Chuck Carpenter: [48:47] Yeah, I'm going to opt-out.

Robbie Wagner: [48:49] I'm not good at the skiing part either. We were doing the green, really almost flat hill. Right. And that was my jam. I could do that one, okay. But then we did, like, a slightly more hilly one, and it was like, towards the end of closing for that lift, and I didn't make it to the bottom before the lift closed, so I couldn't get back to the other side.

Wes Bos: [49:15] Oh no.

Robbie Wagner: [49:15] We had to take a bus all the way back. It was miserable.

Wes Bos: [49:20] Brutal.

Robbie Wagner: [49:21] Yeah.

Chuck Carpenter: [49:23] I retired, like, five years or so ago. I was snowboarding last, and I skied for a long time, too, but you get a little older and weekends where you have to go wait in line to do two runs all day.

Wes Bos: [49:36] Yeah, no, thanks.

Robbie Wagner: [49:39] Yeah, I don't like lines. Anytime I can skip lines, I do.

Chuck Carpenter: [49:45] It's not a sport. So there's an amusement park in Cincinnati called Kings Island. If you ever watch The Brady Bunch. They actually went there in one episode. Yeah, in the 70s, of course. And I just remember as a kid where you're waiting in line for different roller coasters. They'd have these signs saying, line jumping is not a sport.

Robbie Wagner: [50:07] Got you. I didn't know what you were referring to.

Chuck Carpenter: [50:10] Yeah, I had to give you context.

Wes Bos: [50:13] That was obscure reference.

Chuck Carpenter: [50:15] Yeah. I oftentimes have the joke in my head, and it doesn't land. My wife tells me all the time you got to tell people what you're talking about. It doesn't make any sense. Yeah. All right. I've got one last question for you, Wes.

Wes Bos: [50:26] Sure.

Chuck Carpenter: [50:27] How many episodes of Whiskey Web and Whatnot have you listened to? I'm just really wondering. And it's okay if it's zero. I mean, I am going to cry, but it's okay if it's zero.

Wes Bos: [50:39] I turned it on for about 10 minutes when you invited me, just to kind of make sure you weren't some deranged lunatic.

Chuck Carpenter: [50:49] Turns out we are.

Wes Bos: [50:50] That's about it. It's funny because they don't the reason we now that we just are shooting the shit here. Maybe I will tune in. But I usually don't listen to technical podcasts, and the whole reason we started Syntax was that most technical podcasts are not very good because the people on them are just, like, very stark and talking about very technical things, and it's not very interesting to me. And it's nice to have a little bit of fun on a podcast, and it keeps people engaged and talk about your tractor and all that kind of stuff.

Chuck Carpenter: [51:24]I appreciate that, then, so I appreciate that you took the time to accept the invite. It wasn't just for the free booze, so that's cool. And yeah, that's exactly kind of what we were trying to do. We were just trying to have a little bit of fun, drink some whiskey, talk tech, talk about the things we're interested in, and see if anybody cares.

Wes Bos: [51:43] That's good. It's fun to do because this is what conferences used to be before me and before Corona canceled all the conferences. So I haven't done that in a while.

Chuck Carpenter: [51:52] For sure.

Robbie Wagner: [51:52] Yeah, there's, like, a little fireside chat with some developers.

Wes Bos: [51:56] Yeah, there you go.

Chuck Carpenter: [51:58] And me.

Robbie Wagner: [52:01] Because you don't develop.

Chuck Carpenter: [52:03] I do, but yeah, if you listen to some older ones, you'll hear about how I'm striving to become a YAML developer.

Wes Bos: [52:14] It'll be the very first.

Chuck Carpenter: [52:16] No, they call those guys DevOps. Yeah.

Robbie Wagner: [52:20] All right, well, I don't know exactly what time we started, but I think we're about a time here. So thanks, everybody, for listening. If you liked it, please subscribe. See you guys next time.

Chuck Carpenter: [52:33] Thanks for listening to Whiskey Web and Whatnot. This podcast is brought to you by Ship Shape and produced by Podcast Royale. If you like this episode, consider sharing it with a friend or two and leave us a rating, maybe a review, as long as it's good.

Robbie Wagner: [52:48] You can subscribe to future episodes on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. For more info about Ship Shape and this show, check out our website at shipshape.io.