ALTERNATE UNIVERSE DEV

Syntax - Tasty Web Development Treats

Potluck - Gatsby vs Next × Is Google Home spying on you? × Flat File CMS × CSS Frameworks × Hosting Client Sites × More!

It’s another potluck! In this episode, Scott and Wes answer your questions about Gatsby vs Next, Google Home and privacy, flat file CMS, working with designers, CSS frameworks and more!

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Show Notes

6:15 - Q: Curious if you would ever consider running your course platform on Gatsby instead of NextJs? If not, what dynamic content would prevent you from doing so?

10:48 - Q: What’s the difference between a software developer and a software engineer, in your opinion?

13:11 - Q: How do you deal with designers who design without any thought about how dev will implement it?

15:46 - Q: I saw that Wes has an example in one of his slides where the Array prototype is written onto the Nodelist prototype. Is this safe enough for production as it overrides all regular NodeList behavior?

19:18 - Q: In a potluck episode you mentioned that you do not host your clients’ website. If you don’t host you clients’ website how do you usually go about handling clients that are less tech savvy? Or do you avoid those types of clients?

21:30 - Q: I know you guys (especially Wes) have been pretty insistent recently on not hosting clients’ sites yourself, but what do you guys think about continuously hosting client sites with a service like Netlify? It’s highly unlikely to go down and scales all for you, so it might be a bit of reoccurring income if you bill them yearly for the minimal Netlify fees.

24:44 - Q: I was listening to your episode on “The Smart Home” and I’m very interested in buying a Google Home Mini myself. However, I cannot stop thinking about the privacy implications of an always listening device around the house. What are your thoughts on this topic and on privacy related to online services in general?

29:08 - Q: What are your thoughts about using a CMS that uses flat files vs one that uses a traditional MySQL or Postgres database for a company blog that won’t have insane traffic? We’re currently evaluating Grav CMS and Craft CMS.

32:17 - Q: Have you used data attributes as custom elements in CSS and JS?

37:32 - Q: Why do so many people jump on styled-components/CSS in JS? Are these all people who have never used Sass/SCSS?! It seems like such a PITA to get Sass working with either of these. It feels like coding tables vs HTML 5. To me it seems like a step backwards.

44:26 - Q: When do you, if ever, reach for a component library, like Material or Bootstrap? Currently working a corporate job where it’s almost expected to use one of these for all internal applications. I usually prefer to make my own, but I’m wondering if I’m just making my life more difficult than it needs to be? Any advice?

48:30 - Q: Could you guys chat about Git clients and which ones you guys use and why? Or are you guys hardcore terminal geeks?

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