Developers who move fast still need to do it together
At MS Build, Ryan is joined by Cassidy Williams, Senior Director of Developer Advocacy at GitHub and former Stack Overflow Podcast host, to discuss how agentic coding is shifting dev work towards higher-level strategy while increasing decision fatigue; why human taste, community feedback, and mentorship are becoming more essential than ever for developer careers; and the new GitHub Copilot announcements coming out of Microsoft, including the new GitHub Copilot app.
Episode notes:
This episode was recorded at Microsoft Build. You can learn more about what they announced at the show and what’s new at GitHub here.
Listen to our other episodes recorded at Build on agentic workflows and responsible AI.
Connect with Cassidy on LinkedIn and X.
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Building a global engineering team (plus AI agents) with Netlify
In this episode of Leaders of Code, Stack Overflow’s Chief of Product and Technology, Jody Bailey, sits down with Dana Lawson, CTO at Netlify. Dana shares her insights on leading a lean, globally distributed engineering team that powers 5% of the internet. The conversation touches on the realities of remote work, the importance of maintaining a written culture, and why Dana believes AI and agents are lowering the barrier to entry for builders everywhere.
The discussion also:
Explores how to manage a polyglot environment and the trade-offs between adopting nascent tech and maintaining operational reliability with a globally distributed team.
Highlights Netlify’s approach to AI integration and how Dana addresses the natural scepticism from those hesitant to hand over control to AI.
Covers realities of technical debt and how Netlify balances rapid product work with scaling.
Notes
Connect with Dana Lawson on LinkedIn.
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
“Anyone Can Code Now” - Netlify CEO Talks AI Agents
Netlify's CEO, Matt Biilmann, reveals a seismic shift nobody saw coming: 16,000 daily signups—five times last year's rate—and 96% aren't coming from AI coding tools. They're everyday people accidentally building React apps through ChatGPT, then discovering they need somewhere to deploy them. The addressable market for developer tools just exploded from 17 million JavaScript developers to 3 billion spreadsheet users, but only if your product speaks fluent AI—which is why Netlify's founder now submits pull requests he built entirely through prompting, never touching code himself, and why 25% of users immediately copy error messages to LLMs instead of debugging manually. The web isn't dying to agents; it's being reborn by them, with CEOs coding again and non-developers shipping production apps while the entire economics of software—from perpetual licenses to subscriptions to pure usage—gets rewritten in real-time.
Resources:
Follow Matt Biilmann on X: https://x.com/biilmann
Follow Martin Casado on X: https://x.com/martin_casado
Follow Erik Torenberg on X: https://x.com/eriktorenberg
Stay Updated:
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Find a16z on X: https://x.com/a16z
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Please note that the content here is for informational purposes only; should NOT be taken as legal, business, tax, or investment advice or be used to evaluate any investment or security; and is not directed at any investors or potential investors in any a16z fund. a16z and its affiliates may maintain investments in the companies discussed. For more details please see a16z.com/disclosures.
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20Product: How to Design and Build Products in a World of Agents | Why AI Will Kill Many SaaS Products | What Products Will Thrive and Die in a World of 100M Developers with Matt Biilmann, Co-Founder and CEO @ Netlify
Matt Biilmann is the Co-Founder and CEO @ Netlify. Under his leadership, Netlify has become one of the fastest-growing platforms for modern web development. Matt recently introduced agent experience (AX), a new way of thinking about how software is built and experienced in the AI era. Matt is also known for coining Jamstack, a concept that redefined how developers build for the web.
In Today's Episode We Discuss:
03:43 How Does the Design Process Change When Designing For Agents
06:27 How Does the Product Building Process Change When Building for Agents
12:52 Will AI Kill SaaS Tools
16:12 If Prototyping Becomes Phase 1: Does Figma Survive?
17:35 Is Chat the Best Interface for a World of AI
21:52 Why AI Services Will Be One of the Biggest Economies
27:24 Open vs. Closed Platforms in an Agent-First World
31:09 Specialization of Large Language Models
35:13 Shifting Labor Costs to Agent Spend
36:28 The Future of Stripe and What Happens with 100M Developers in the World
38:39 Quickfire Round: Insights and Predictions
851: The Future of VS Code and Copilot
Wes and Scott talk with Cassidy Williams and Harald Kirschner about exciting new features in VS Code and GitHub Copilot, including custom instructions, UI/UX improvements, and the future of AI and Copilot within different editors.
Show Notes 00:00 Welcome to Syntax!
00:32 Cassidy’s keynote at GitHub Universe
03:23 New Copilot features
04:55 Use cases for prompt engineering
09:20 UI and UX enhancements
19:18 Copilot Extensions
20:38 Brought to you by Sentry.io
21:26 Multi-line suggestions?
27:00 How do you develop new ideas in this space? GitHub Next
35:42 Copilot in Xcode GitHub Copilot code completion in Xcode is now available in public preview
39:16 VS Code experimental features @code
Hit us up on Socials! Syntax: X Instagram Tiktok LinkedIn Threads
Wes: X Instagram Tiktok LinkedIn Threads
Scott: X Instagram Tiktok LinkedIn Threads
Randy: X Instagram YouTube Threads
Replay - Memes, Streams & Software with Cassidy Williams
On this Screaming in the Cloud replay, we’re looking back to our conversation with Cassidy Williams, a Senior Director of Developer Advocacy at GitHub and the co-founder and chief product officer of Cosynd, Inc. Prior to these positions, she worked as the principal developer experience engineer at Netlify, an instructor and senior engineer at React Training, director of outreach at cKeys, a senior software engineer at CodePen, head of developer voice programs at Amazon, and a software engineer at Venmo, among other positions. Join Corey and Cassidy as they reflect on what Netlify is and what a developer experience engineer does, how JavaScript started off as a toy language and why everything that can be built with JavaScript will be moving forward, the benefits of using low-code development tools, how discovering TikTok helped Cassidy drum up a major following on social media, how Cassidy's humor is never directed at people or organizations and why that's the case, the differences between recording a podcast and live streaming on Twitch from the speaker's point of view, and more.
Show Highlights
(0:00) Intro
(0:22) Backblaze sponsor read
(0:49) What is Netlify and its role of a principal developer experience engineer
(2:50) Is JavaScript the future?
(7:46) Using low-code tools for web development
(12:12) Having a goofy internet presence in a serious field
(17:23) Social platforms as a means to teach
(24:50) Twitch streaming and its inherent challenges
(28:16) Cassidy’s online coursework and how she answers, “So, what do you do?”
(32:12) Unique ways of tracking Twitter followers
(37:15) Where you can find more from Cassidy
About Cassidy Williams
Cassidy is a Senior Director of Developer Advocacy at GitHub. She's worked for several other places, including Netlify, CodePen, Amazon, and Venmo, and she's had the honor of working with various non-profits, including cKeys and Hacker Fund as their Director of Outreach. She's active in the developer community, and was one of Glamour Magazine's 35 Women Under 35 Changing the Tech Industry and LinkedIn's Top Professionals 35 & Under. As an avid speaker, Cassidy has participated in several events including the Grace Hopper Celebration for Women in Computing, TEDx, the United Nations, and dozens of other technical events. She wants to inspire generations of STEM students to be the best they can be, and her favorite quote is from Helen Keller: "One can never consent to creep when one feels an impulse to soar." She loves mechanical keyboards and karaoke.
Links
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@cassidoo
Newsletter: https://cassidoo.co/newsletter/
Scrimba: https://scrimba.com/teachers/cassidoo
Udemy: https://www.udemy.com/user/cassidywilliams/
Skillshare: https://www.skillshare.com/user/cassidoo
O’Reilly: https://www.oreilly.com/pub/au/6339
Personal website: https://cassidoo.co
Twitter: https://twitter.com/cassidoo
GitHub: https://github.com/cassidoo
CodePen: https://codepen.io/cassidoo/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cassidoo
Original Episode
https://www.lastweekinaws.com/podcast/screaming-in-the-cloud/memes-streams-software-with-cassidy-williams/
Sponsor
Backblaze: https://www.backblaze.com/
11ty goes fully independent
11ty creator Zach Leatherman is taking the open source site generator fully independent in 2024 and he’s back on the pod to tell us why, how & what we all can do to help.
Join the discussion
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Featuring:
Zach Leatherman – Website, GitHub, Mastodon, X
Jerod Santo – GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, X
Nick Nisi – Website, GitHub, Mastodon, X
Show Notes:
I Need Your Help to Make 11ty Fully Independent and Sustainable in 2024
An Organizer’s Retrospective on the 11ty Conference
xkcd: Dependency
Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!
Netlify CEO Matt Biilmann explains what we'll see with UI 2.0
Biilmann says we can't ignore the impact GenAI is having on developer productivity. One of their engineers created a GPT that automatically generates stories for React + TypeScript components, and after seeing how successful it was internally, Netlify made it open source for the public.
We also chat over the results of their recent State of Web Development survey. The key takeaway is below:
The 80% of developers that have integrated AI into their workflow are quickly reaping the benefits. Seventy percent report using AI to automate manual and repetitive tasks and 42% are using it to improve internal knowledge sharing and increase productivity, freeing up more time for impactful work and enabling faster launch times. Over 50% of developers also realized new opportunities that AI created, such as generating new web projects with a single prompt or reading API documentation.
However, AI experimentation is not without its own unique challenges. Developers are concerned about receiving incorrect answers and information (65%), security issues and leaking confidential information (52%), a lack of regulation (48%), and a decrease in code quality (45%).
So much opportunity, but plenty of risk as well.
Last but not least, Biilmann tells us what he's looking forward to in the near future, specifically apps that can reformat their UI on the fly to be more customized to each user. He calls this UI 2.0, and it sounds a bit like what Google showed off in its recent Gemini demo.
Congrats to our lifeboat winner of the week, Petrus Theron, who answered the question: How can I make a public struct where all fields are public without repeating `pub` for every field?
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Composable architecture
At Netlify Compose 2023, Biilmann announced their new composable web platform.
This isn’t Netlify’s first rodeo—we talked to them for episodes 588 and 456.
You can find Matt Biilmann on X or LinkedIn (and perhaps elsewhere).
Today’s shoutout goes to Dick Lucas who asked a topical question, How to prevent Netlify from treating warnings as errors because process.env.CI = true?, viewed by over 84,000 people.
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Jamstack is evolving toward a composable web
Netlify’s all-in-one development platform gives devs access to build, deploy, and backend services for websites and web apps. Get started with their docs.
Jamstack is a web development architecture based on JavaScript, APIs, and Markup (the JAM in Jamstack). Learn what Jamstack is and what benefits it offers.
Composable architecture has been called “the next big thing” in web development. Netlify defines it as “a development approach [that] provides the ability to more rapidly build technology stacks by making use of logically separated reusable and customizable components.”
Dana is on LinkedIn.
Warm congrats to Lifeboat badge winner hasectic saif, who rescued the question How can I print to standard error in C with 'printf'? from an answerless void.
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Supper Club × Why Netlify bought Gatsby, GraphQL Data Layer, and Headless CMS with Dustin Schau
In this supper club episode of Syntax, Wes and Scott talk with Dustin Schau about Netlify Connect, Gatsby, GraphQL, and more.
Show Notes 00:35 Welcome
01:20 Who is Dustin Schau?
Dustin Schau (@SchauDustin)
Develop and deploy websites and apps in record time | Netlify
02:49 Is Valhalla from Gatsby?
How to Source Content from a Headless CMS | Gatsby
Valhalla Content Hub | Gatsby
Netlify Connect Brings All Content Sources & CMS Apps Together
05:41 Valhalla is now Netlify Connect
09:32 How often should you scrape or cache from another API?
10:36 What about auth?
13:41 Will Netlify Connect be open source or paid?
18:48 Is GraphQL it?
Overview | urql Documentation
GQty
22:35 What odd data sources are you trying to connect?
26:06 How does Gatsby send out to APIs?
29:00 What CMS should people use?
The Markdown CMS | Tina
The platform to bring your best ideas to life | Contentful
The Composable Content Cloud - Sanity.io
31:22 What do you think of component based CMS?
SEO Enterprise Rank Tracker - A Keyword Rank Tracking Tool Like No Other | Nozzle.io
35:36 What are your thoughts on the React ecosystem?
43:33 What’s the future for Gatsby?
46:14 Supper Club questions
folivora.ai - Great Tools for your Mac!
Noodlesoft – Noodlesoft – Simply Useful Software
Dank Mono: The coding typeface for aesthetes
DSchau/dotfiles: :wrench: .files, including ~/.macos — sensible defaults for macOS development (catered to Node.js)
Deploy app servers close to your users · Fly
Hono - Ultrafast web framework for the Edges
Stream Movies & TV Shows | Plex
The Free Software Media System | Jellyfin
56:29 SIIIIICK ××× PIIIICKS ×××
××× SIIIIICK ××× PIIIICKS ××× Arc Browser
Resend React Email
Shameless Plugs Netlify
Netlify Connect
Tweet us your tasty treats Scott’s Instagram
LevelUpTutorials Instagram
Wes’ Instagram
Wes’ Twitter
Wes’ Facebook
Scott’s Twitter
Make sure to include @SyntaxFM in your tweets
Wes Bos on Bluesky
Scott on Bluesky
Syntax on Bluesky
S24:E7 - Navigating Layoffs with Intention (Natalie Davis)
Today, Saron sits down with Natalie Davis, who shares her experience pursuing software engineering after climbing the ladder in the retail industry for 15 years. In their conversation, Natalie talks about what she has learned navigating the tech industry, how she's navigated layoffs, and why she has grown to be more selective and intentional with prospective new opportunities.
Show Links
Partner with Dev & CodeNewbie! (sponsor)
Mark Thompson
Cassidy Williams
Developer Advocate
2FA
Natalie Davis (GitHub)
Natalie Davis (Twitter)
README
Angie Jones
ISA (Income-Share Agreement)
Natalie Davis
Natalie Davis is a software engineer by trade and a curious person by nature. After deciding to step away from her extensive retail career, Natalie took the first steps in her tech journey by graduating from an 18-month long bootcamp. Natalie landed her first engineering role with Foxtrot while still in school, but has since held roles with Netlify and Post.
Celebrating Eleventy 2.0 🎉
Zach Leatherman returns to the show to discuss his progress over the last year since going full-time on Eleventy, including Eleventy 2.0, the release of WebC, and the state of static site generators.
Join the discussion
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KBall Coaching – Free exploratory coaching sessions from JS Party co-host KBall! Click here to get started
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Featuring:
Zach Leatherman – Website, GitHub, Mastodon, X
Nick Nisi – Website, GitHub, Mastodon, X
Christopher Hiller – Website, GitHub, Mastodon, X
Show Notes:
Going full-time on Eleventy (JS Party #217)
Eleventy on YouTube
The JavaScript Site Generator Review, 2023
Astro
WebC - single file web components
is-land
Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!
Supper Club × Edge Functions and Deno with Eduardo Bouças of Netlify
In this supper club episode of Syntax, Wes and Scott talk edge functions and Deno with Eduardo Bouças of Netlify.
Hasura - Sponsor With Hasura, you can get a fully managed, production-ready GraphQL API as a service to help you build modern apps faster. You can get started for free in 30 seconds, or if you want to try out the Standard tier for zero cost, use the code “TryHasura” at this link: hasura.info. We’ve also got an amazing selection of GraphQL tutorials at hasura.io/learn.
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Show Notes 00:36 Welcome
02:31 Who is Eduardo?
EduardoBoucas.com
@eduardoboucas
04:29 What is a serverless function?
06:42 What is the edge and an edge function?
Edge Functions Explained
Deno
08:41 Sponsor: Hasura
09:18 The internet is global, and server locations matter
17:09 Chaining multiple edge functions
20:18 Sponsor: WP Mail SMTP
21:18 Why use Deno?
25:06 What are the limitations of using Deno?
28:12 Why not run NodeJS servers on the edge?
30:02 Do you see a future where people are writing packages that work anywhere?
32:00 Sponsor: Postlight Podcast
32:53 What about databases and serverless functions?
Planetscale
38:14 What language does Netlify use to write apps in?
Netlify Edge Handlers
44:08 Supper Club questions
Warp
S Town Podcast
Shameless Plugs Scott: LevelUp Tutorials
Wes: Wes Bos Tutorials
Tweet us your tasty treats Scott’s Instagram
LevelUpTutorials Instagram
Wes’ Instagram
Wes’ Twitter
Wes’ Facebook
Scott’s Twitter
Make sure to include @SyntaxFM in your tweets
Going full-time on Eleventy
Zach Leatherman recently announced he will now be working on Eleventy – his simpler static site generator – while continuing to work at Netlify. What makes Eleventy special? How’d he convince Netlify to let him do this? What does this mean for the project’s future? How many questions in a row can we type into this textarea? Tune in to find out!
Join the discussion
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Sponsors:
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Fastly – Our bandwidth partner. Fastly powers fast, secure, and scalable digital experiences. Move beyond your content delivery network to their powerful edge cloud platform. Learn more at fastly.com
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Featuring:
Zach Leatherman – Website, GitHub, Mastodon, X
Jerod Santo – GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, X
Nick Nisi – Website, GitHub, Mastodon, X
Show Notes:
Eleventy
Zach on JS Party #79
Who Pays for Web Frameworks?
11ty on Open Collective
Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!
Tackling Tech Head-On with Natalie Davis
About Natalie
I'm interested in solving human problems through technology (she/her). Share your screen (or I'll share mine) and we'll figure this out!
Links:
Netlify: https://www.netlify.com/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/codeFreedomRitr
Become a better coder...with this one weird click
Go get your copy of They Key here.
Our frequent collaborator, Cassidy Williams of Netlify, helped design the key and joined this episode to share her love for all things mechanical keyboard.
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Memes, Streams & Software with Cassidy Williams
About Cassidy
Cassidy is a Principal Developer Experience Engineer at Netlify. She's worked for several other places, including CodePen, Amazon, and Venmo, and she's had the honor of working with various non-profits, including cKeys and Hacker Fund as their Director of Outreach. She's active in the developer community, and one of Glamour Magazine's 35 Women Under 35 Changing the Tech Industry and LinkedIn's Top Professionals 35 & Under. As an avid speaker, Cassidy has participated in several events including the Grace Hopper Celebration for Women in Computing, TEDx, the United Nations, and dozens of other technical events. She wants to inspire generations of STEM students to be the best they can be, and her favorite quote is from Helen Keller: "One can never consent to creep when one feels an impulse to soar." She loves mechanical keyboards and karaoke.
Links:
Netlify: https://www.netlify.com/
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@cassidoo
Newsletter: https://cassidoo.co/newsletter/
Scrimba: https://scrimba.com/teachers/cassidoo
Udemy: https://www.udemy.com/user/cassidywilliams/
Skillshare: https://www.skillshare.com/user/cassidoo
O’Reilly: https://www.oreilly.com/pub/au/6339
Personal website: https://cassidoo.co
Twitter: https://twitter.com/cassidoo
GitHub: https://github.com/cassidoo
CodePen: https://codepen.io/cassidoo/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cassidoo
S16:E3 - How to create content and build communities ( Cassidy Williams)
In this episode, we talk about content creation and building communities with Cassidy Williams, principal developer and experience engineer at Netlify. Cassidy talks about her strategy for doing internships, the intersection of content and community, and where she draws inspiration from.
Show Links
Partner with Dev & CodeNewbie! (sponsor)
Cassidy Williams
rendezvous with cassidoo
Cassidy Williams Twitch
Netlify
I love being a woman on the internet
freeCodeCamp
.NET
Hackathon
Black Girls Code
Women Innovate Mobile
Mums who Code
CodePen
React
React Training
Bruno Mars
Hackathon Hackers
Ladies Storm Hackathons
Cassidy Williams
Cassidy likes making memes, dreams, and software. But actually though, she's a Principal Developer Experience Engineer at Netlify, and makes developer-friendly content across the internet to help people learn and laugh.
Build engineering at Apple and the future of deploy previews
Eric was a build engineer at Apple for many years, then started a FeaturePeek which went through Y-combinator. He talks about what he learned from those experiences and how he'll be applying that knowledge to his new job at Netlify.
The teams combined forces to make the process of submitting and gathering feedback on deploy previews easier and more broadly accessible outside technical teams. As Cassidy explained:
“Based on technology from FeaturePeek, Deploy Previews enables reviewers to comment, screen record, and annotate right from the actual preview link. No new tabs. No new tools. Everyone’s feedback is recorded back in the GitHub pull request and can even extend to popular productivity tools such as Clubhouse.io, Linear, and Trello.”
This feature set is near and dear to Ben’s heart. Now folks from marketing and design can offer feedback and be more tightly involved in the development process for new features, products, and websites. All without really learning Git!
Also discussed this episode: weirdware, workflow automation, Jerry Garcia, compound bows, and the spread of Git and branch methodology to areas well outside software development.
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
It’s Not a Data Science Problem, It’s a Data Engineering Problem with Laurie Voss
About Laurie
Laurie has been a web developer for 25 years and cares deeply about making the web bigger and better for everyone. He previously co-founded awe.sm and npm, and is currently a Senior Data Analyst at Netlify.
Links:
Netlify: https://www.netlify.com/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/seldo
Personal website: https://seldo.com/
It Ain't Real Till You Break Prod
Cassidy helps to write The Overflow newsletter and is two months into a new gig as a Principal Developer Experience Engineer at Netlify. That's where she broke Prod, but it turned out ok.
We chat about Hey what it means for software engineers when prominent coders are arguing with big mobile platforms about the fees that the owners of the OS collect. What's old is new again.
Bot armies are farming gold in World of Warcraft, which takes us down a wandering path of wondering how often people have access to powerful computers, but limited access to money they can spend on essentials.
Last but not least, we try to dissect a great question from our Software Engineering Stack Exchange: ways to explain code when told it doesn't make sense.
Shout out to our lifeboat badge winner of the week, "wizard", who answered the following question: is there an equivalent method to C's scanf in Java.
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Catching up with Gatsby
Dustin Schau joins the party to talk about the state of Gatsby and the changes and improvements to it in the last year. We talk about what Gatsby delivers to the front end and how it does it quickly with improvements to the build system. Dustin also fields our questions and talks about Gatsby Cloud and where things are going.
Join the discussion
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Featuring:
Dustin Schau – Website, GitHub, X
Kevin Ball – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, X
Nick Nisi – Website, GitHub, Mastodon, X
Christopher Hiller – Website, GitHub, Mastodon, X
Show Notes:
JS Party #71: Wow, Gatsby is a mashup on steroids
Gatsby 2019 recap
Announcing Gatsby builds and reports
The cost of client-side rehydration
The cost of JavaScript in 2019
Why Gatsby is better with JavaScript
Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!
There’s no server more secure than one that doesn’t exist
KBall catches up with Phil Hawksworth of Netlify at JAMStackConfSF to dive deep into JAMStack, what it’s about, where the ecosystem is going, and what is still hard.
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Toptal – Freelance development jobs for world-class engineers. Toptal gives you the ability to work on freelance development jobs and projects with top clients who understand the value of elite engineering talent. Choose your rate, control your schedule, enjoy the 100% remote lifestyle. Learn more at toptaljobs.com
Linode – Our cloud server of choice. Deploy a fast, efficient, native SSD cloud server for only $5/month. Get 4 months free using the code changelog2019. Start your server - head to linode.com/changelog.
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Featuring:
Phil Hawksworth – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, X
Kevin Ball – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, X
Show Notes:
JAMStack
Videos from JAMStackConfSF
Modern Web Development on the JAMstack (book)
Netlify Redirects/Rewrites
Gatsby progress towards incremental builds
Sample project doing content sharing using Netlify caching
Netlify Build Plugins
Netlify CMS
Forestry CMS
Netlify deploy previews
ZEIT Now
Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!
Do You Believe in Life After Keyboards?
Tilde Club: It’s your chance to LARP as a 70s sys admin!
What you do on your computer is your business. Don’t be tricked by scammers.
Paul makes the mistake of sharing his Anxiety Box on This American Life
Sara’s favorite Kanye tweet is available, beautifully framed, for only $75.
cKeys is an amazing Seattle non-profit that teaches folks how to make their own keyboards!
When we recorded this episode Cassidy worked at CodePen, but not she works at React Training, so check them out.
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
The future of programming and defining success as a software engineer
On this episode Abadesi talks to Cassidy Williams. Cassidy is a great follow on social media and is a software engineer at CodePen. Prior to CodePen, she worked for Venmo, Amazon, Clarify and others. She is a true maker and a huge mechanical keyboard nerd (which you hear a bit about on the show).
In this episode they discuss...
How she got to where she is today, including lessons learned from working at big and small companies
“It gets more political the more you go up the career ladder. At CodePen, we only have eight people, so you can’t really be promoted, and past Cassidy’s mind might be blown that she can’t be promoted and she’s okay with that.”
Cassidy talks her personal career trajectory and how she learned “the hard way” that big money at big companies isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. She talks a bit about working at Amazon and why it didn’t work out for her and explains why it’s just as valuable to know what you don’t want to do as knowing what you do want to do. She also talks about some of the differences between working at a big company and a small company.
Her personal definition of success as a software engineer
“My definition of success is having the flexibility to build whatever I want. Right now I’m building for CodePen but because my job is so flexible I’m able to build things outside of work. Someday I would love to be able to not have to work and build things for fun, whether for money or not. I love building things in general, whether it be keyboards, code, or Legos.”
Cassidy says that she used to be obsessed with “climbing the career ladder” and explains why that’s no longer the case for her. She says that she would go into jobs with the intention of collecting titles and experience in order to make a case for a promotion. She’s realized now though that being at the top is less important to her than the freedom to be able to create and do the things she loves.
The future of programming
“When I first started using React, it seemed magical, but over time it has changed to be a lot more granular and less magical. That is a very interesting metaphor for a lot of things that are happening in the tech industry.“
She talks through some of the trends in software engineering, including how programming for the web has changed over the past few years. She explains how and why languages and the way that programmers use them have evolved over time.
“People want to be more granular with their coding and engineering practices. A lot of people want to get to the core of adding more low-level and theoretical computer science practices to web development.”
Why she loves mechanical keyboards so much
“It’s so fun to be able to build something that is both pretty and functional. Typing on them is actually really fun. Typing on a mechanical keyboard feels like actually accomplishing something. When you feel that tactical feedback, it’s great.“
While doing the interview, Cassidy mentions that she had nine different mechanical keyboards sitting next to her. She waxes poetic on the virtues of using and building mechanical keyboards, including a breakdown of some of her favorite builds. She also talks about some of her other favorite non-keyboard products as well.
We’ll be back next week so be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Breaker, Overcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. Big thanks to Copper for their support. 😸
Companies and Products Mentioned In This Episode
Bear — A beautiful, flexible, writing app for notes and prose.
Sennheiser HD 6xx— Cassidy’s favorite headphones.
Spicy fonts and static sites 🌶️
Zach Leatherman joins the party with Divya and Nick to talk about fonts and static site generators! Zach shares his knowledge about font loading, what can go wrong, and how we can avoid issues. Then we discuss Zach’s newest project, Eleventy, a simple static site generator, and the panelists share things they are excited about.
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Sponsors:
Rollbar – We move fast and fix things because of Rollbar. Resolve errors in minutes. Deploy with confidence. Learn more at rollbar.com/changelog.
Algolia – Our search partner. Algolia’s full suite search APIs enable teams to develop unique search and discovery experiences across all platforms and devices. We’re using Algolia to power our site search here at Changelog.com. Get started for free and learn more at algolia.com.
Gauge – Low maintenance test automation! Gauge is free and open source test automation framework that takes the pain out of acceptance testing.
Less code, less maintenance, more acceptance testing. Gauge is a free and open source test automation framework that takes the pain out of acceptance testing. Gauge tests are in Markdown which makes writing and maintaining tests easier.
Fastly – Our bandwidth partner. Fastly powers fast, secure, and scalable digital experiences. Move beyond your content delivery network to their powerful edge cloud platform. Learn more at fastly.com.
Featuring:
Zach Leatherman – Website, GitHub, Mastodon, X
Nick Nisi – Website, GitHub, Mastodon, X
Divya – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, X
Show Notes:
Fonts and font loading
The Mitt Romney Web Font Problem
Google Fonts
Glyphhanger
The Scoville Scale of web font loading opinions
Eleventy
Eleventy - a simpler static site generator
GitHub Actions
Who’s using 11ty?
web.dev
v8.dev
CERN
Support Eleventy
What we’re excited about
Vue
Svelte
Chernobyl
neovim
IndieWeb
Weapons of Math Destruction
Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!
The future of the web is npm, but maybe not JavaScript
In this special episode of JS Party, KBall and Nick are on location at Node + JS Interactive in Vancouver. They talks with Laurie Voss, co-founder and COO of npm Inc. They chat about his talk, “npm and the Future of JavaScript”, JavaScript frameworks, and how the definition of “the fundamentals of the web” is constantly changing.
Join the discussion
Changelog++ members support our work, get closer to the metal, and make the ads disappear. Join today!
Sponsors:
Gauge – Low maintenance test automation! Gauge is free and open source test automation framework that takes the pain out of acceptance testing.
Rollbar – We catch our errors before our users do because of Rollbar. Resolve errors in minutes, and deploy your code with confidence. Learn more at rollbar.com/changelog.
DigitalOcean – DigitalOcean is simplicity at scale. Whether your business is running one virtual machine or ten thousand, DigitalOcean gets out of your way so your team can build, deploy, and scale faster and more efficiently. New accounts get $100 in credit to use in your first 60 days.
Algolia – Our search partner. Algolia’s full suite search APIs enable teams to develop unique search and discovery experiences across all platforms and devices. We’re using Algolia to power our site search here at Changelog.com. Get started for free and learn more at algolia.com.
Featuring:
Laurie Voss – Website, GitHub, X
Kevin Ball – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, X
Nick Nisi – Website, GitHub, Mastodon, X
Show Notes:
Laurie’s Talk:
npm and the Future of JavaScript slides
npm and the Future of JavaScript recording from NEJS
Methodology of Survey blog post
React Everywhere
React Native
React Desktop
React Router
Other References
CommonJS
WASM
Backbone
Gutenberg
Yarn
Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!
a16z Podcast: Containing the Monolith -- From Microservices to DevOps
What happens when monolithic architectures are broken down into containers and microservices (or when things are broken down into smaller units, not just in infrastructure but perhaps even in company structure too)? From building more dynamic websites to monitoring the enterprise cloud to elastically scaling applications, where are developers in the enterprise going now and next?
This episode of the a16z Podcast, based on a panel by and for developers recorded at the a16z Summit in November 2017 and moderated by general partner Martin Casado, features Matt Billmann, CEO and co-founder of Netlify; Florian Leibert, CEO and co-founder of Mesophere; and Karthik Rau, CEO and co-founder of SignalFX.
The views expressed here are those of the individual AH Capital Management, L.L.C. (“a16z”) personnel quoted and are not the views of a16z or its affiliates. Certain information contained in here has been obtained from third-party sources, including from portfolio companies of funds managed by a16z. While taken from sources believed to be reliable, a16z has not independently verified such information and makes no representations about the enduring accuracy of the information or its appropriateness for a given situation.
This content is provided for informational purposes only, and should not be relied upon as legal, business, investment, or tax advice. You should consult your own advisers as to those matters. References to any securities or digital assets are for illustrative purposes only, and do not constitute an investment recommendation or offer to provide investment advisory services. Furthermore, this content is not directed at nor intended for use by any investors or prospective investors, and may not under any circumstances be relied upon when making a decision to invest in any fund managed by a16z. (An offering to invest in an a16z fund will be made only by the private placement memorandum, subscription agreement, and other relevant documentation of any such fund and should be read in their entirety.) Any investments or portfolio companies mentioned, referred to, or described are not representative of all investments in vehicles managed by a16z, and there can be no assurance that the investments will be profitable or that other investments made in the future will have similar characteristics or results. A list of investments made by funds managed by Andreessen Horowitz (excluding investments and certain publicly traded cryptocurrencies/ digital assets for which the issuer has not provided permission for a16z to disclose publicly) is available at https://a16z.com/investments/.
Charts and graphs provided within are for informational purposes solely and should not be relied upon when making any investment decision. Past performance is not indicative of future results. The content speaks only as of the date indicated. Any projections, estimates, forecasts, targets, prospects, and/or opinions expressed in these materials are subject to change without notice and may differ or be contrary to opinions expressed by others. Please see https://a16z.com/disclosures for additional important information.
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JAMstack, Netlify CMS, and 10x-ing Smashing Magazine (Interview)
Matt Biilman and Chris Bach joined the show to talk about JAMstack, Netlify CMS, how open source drives standards, and 10x-ing the speed of Smashing Magazine.
Join the discussion
Changelog++ members support our work, get closer to the metal, and make the ads disappear. Join today!
Sponsors:
Linode – Our cloud server of choice! Get one of the fastest, most efficient SSD cloud servers for only $5/mo. Use the code changelog2017 to get 4 months free!
Toptal – Hire the top freelance software developers, designers, and finance experts with Toptal. Email adam@changelog.com for a personal introduction.
GoCD – GoCD is an on-premise open source continuous delivery server created by ThoughtWorks that lets you automate and streamline your build-test-release cycle for reliable, continuous delivery of your product.
Featuring:
Matt Biilmann – Website, GitHub, X
Chris Bach – Website, X
Adam Stacoviak – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, X
Jerod Santo – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, X
Show Notes:
JAMstack (JavaScript, APIs, and Markup) is a new way of building websites and apps that delivers better performance, higher security, lower cost of scaling, and a better developer experience.
Netlify CMS is an open-source CMS built with JAMstack principles designed around a fully Git workflow.
Smashing Magazine just got 10x faster
Meet The Next Smashing Magazine
Why Static Site Generators Are The Next Big Thing
next.smashingmagazine.com
Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!