Backend Banter

Today we welcome Chuck Carpenter aka Charles The 3rd, co-host at Whiskey Web and Whatnot. As two content creators in the tech scene, we discuss if and how celebrity developers and tech influencers are a good thing for the community, how we should be careful when choosing technologies based on influencers’ opinions, why so many people nowadays want to speedrun their whole career and how that could be self-sabotage, and a lot more! Learn back-end development - https://boot.dev Listen on your favorite podcast player: https://www.backendbanter.fm Whiskey Web and Whatnot: https://whiskey.fm/ Charles' X/Twitter: https://x.com/charleswthe3rd Timestamps: 00:00 Intro 01:27 Does Charles listen to his own podcast episodes? 03:33 Are celebrity developers a good thing? 09:11 Podcasts are usually centered around a business 10:06 We are essentially entertainers 14:04 Tech choices being influenced by creators 17:37 Why ThePrimeagen stood out from other tech influencers 20:26 Career speedrunning 23:44 The biggest miss when starting something 24:51 What is wrong with Full-Stack application frameworks? 29:03 How Frankenstein is the Boot.dev web application stack 37:41 Rolling your own stuff vs using a provider 46:01 It's easy to screw up your architecture 50:53 What is Charles building with in 2024 and what is his preferred stack 56:39 Does it seem like people don't talk about security anymore? 01:00:30 Accessibility 01:02:02 The amount of people that are "kinda" interested in cybersecurity 01:11:03 Have some patience 01:11:37 Where to find Charles

In today’s episode, we bring back Aaron Francis. If you haven’t watched our previous episode with him, he is a software developer, fellow content creator and co-founder of Try Hard Studios. In the past he’s been an accountant at a Big 4 but now he focuses on Laravel, web development and all things business and video. This episode will step away from the usual tech focused content and we’ll talk a bit more about the business side of things, how you have to balance entertainment and education when creating courses, Aaron’s High Performance SQLite course, building a personal brand through the discomfort of centering it around yourself, how good presentation matters and how proactiveness puts you miles ahead of the majority, so stay tuned! Learn back-end development - https://www.boot.dev Listen on your favorite podcast player: https://www.backendbanter.fm Aaron's X/Twitter: https://x.com/aarondfrancis Aaron's Website: https://aaronfrancis.com/ High Performance SQLite: https://highperformancesqlite.com/ Screencasting: https://screencasting.com/ Mostly Technical Podcast: https://mostlytechnical.com/ Timestamps: 00:00 Intro 01:32 Podcast listening going up when having a kid 02:25 Podcast about earning the first million 08:54 You have to choose the entertainment vs education levels 10:37 You have to shape your material to the platforms 16:40 Long hour videos vs 2 minute ones 20:16 Are the videos in the High Performance SQLite in linear order? 24:19 Figuring out the metrics 28:06 Building courses on other domains 31:46 Building brands is difficult 35:55 quick disclaimer 36:30 Personal brand vs company 37:57 Is this sellable? 40:23 Do you need an audience? 44:26 The strategy is simple but it is also hard to execute 49:31 The presentation matters a LOT 51:54 On being proactive 57:00 Where to find Aaron

In today’s episode, we bring Adam Argyle, a CSS Dev Rel at Google, content creator, co-host at CSS Podcast, Bad At CSS Podcast and host of GUI Challenges. He’s also the creator of a bunch of tools and utilities for the front-end. We’re going to touch on a lot of hot topics, regarding the difficulty and power of CSS, how programmers most of the time underestimate and dismiss it as something trivial when in reality it’s one of the hardest things to master in the programming world. We also go over AI, the barriers between designers and developers and a bunch of other topics. Learn back-end development - https://www.boot.dev Listen on your favorite podcast player: https://www.backendbanter.fm Adam's Website: https://nerdy.dev/ Adam's X/Twitter: https://x.com/argyleink Adam on Chrome For Developers: https://chromeextensionsdocs.appspot.com/authors/argyle/ The CSS Podcast: https://thecsspodcast.libsyn.com/ Bad at CSS Podcast: https://badatcss.com/ Timestamps: 00:00 Intro 00:51 CSS Wizard has entered the chat 02:37 HTML and CSS are not programming languages 07:44 There's a case for complex things using CSS 10:28 CSS is declarative by nature 17:58 Writing CSS is a pain 20:43 AI isn't a threat to CSS 21:19 Breaking barriers between designers and developers 26:33 Getting to an entry-level competency on the backend is a bit more difficult when compared to the frontend 31:37 Adam's backstory 33:40 Knowing everything 34:56 The majority of the complexity lives on the frontend a lot of the times 38:48 South Park Reality 39:49 BFF vs BOF (Backend for frontend vs Backend of the Frontend) 47:03 CSS is typed in the browser 51:28 Take on why are there so many mormons and ex-mormons in the webdev and tech influencer scene? 54:08 Where to find Adam

In today’s episode, we welcome Matt Pocock, an educator, content creator and engineer who used to be a voice coach. Now, he teaches Typescript on his YouTube channel and is building Total Typescript, the most comprehensive TypeScript course available out there. We talk about his transition from a completely unrelated field into tech, the importance of great communication, TypeScript’s future, AI tooling and job hunts! A lot more else is covered in this video, so get cozy and tune in into this gem of an episode! Learn back-end development - https://boot.dev Listen on your favorite podcast player: https://www.backendbanter.fm Matt's X/Twitter: https://x.com/mattpocockuk Total Typescript: https://www.totaltypescript.com/ Timestamps: 00:00 Intro 01:15 What did Matt do before becoming a dev? 03:15 Career Transitions from a non-math background 04:02 What makes a good programmer? 06:46 Math knowledge > great communication? 08:55 On writing elaborate PR's 09:58 OCaml my Typescript 11:00 What is Typescript's Future? 14:21 Python type hinting and JSDoc 20:36 null vs undefined 25:02 interfaces vs type aliases 32:35 Does Matt have any rules of thumb when working with types? 37:14 How do you build nice encapsulated components with no external dependencies? 43:43 AI tooling integration 46:15 Will there be fewer jobs? 52:00 How often do you use classes? 54:29 Where to find Matt