CodePen Radio

CodePen Radio episodes:

• 02.08.2023

  400: Hiatus

  Marie and I jump on the show to tell y'all we're taking a little break! It feels like years since we've been eluding to the fact that we're working on a new major upgrade to CodePen. Rather than keep dancing...

  
• 02.01.2023

  399: Data Munging

  There was a small problem in our database. Some JSON data we kept in a column would sometimes have a string instead of an integer. Like {"tabSize": "5"} instead of {"tabSize": 5} of the like. Investigation on how that happened...

  
• 01.26.2023

  398: DevOops

  Stephen and I hop on the podcast to chat about some of our recent tooling, local development, and DevOps work. A little while back, we cleaned up our entire monorepo's circular dependency problems using Madge and elbow grease. That kind...

  
• 01.18.2023

  397: User-Generated Content Saftey

  I was asked about the paradoxical nature of CodePen itself recently. CodePen needs to be safe and secure, yet we accept and gleefully execute user-authored code, which is like don't-do-that 101 in web security. Marie and I hop on...

  
• 01.11.2023

  396: Open Source

  Robert and I jump on the podcast to have a little chat about open source generally and what we do with open source at CodePen. CodePen itself is not open source, aside from the small bits we've made public and...

  
• 01.04.2023

  395: The Most Hearted of 2022

  Marie and I hop on the show to discuss our recently released Most Hearted of 2022 Pens. We only did the calculations the day before, so this is more of a first reaction than a deep dive. Congrats to Hyperplexed...

  
• 12.14.2022

  394: Very Remote Work

  Rach lives in Australia, so for our otherwise U.S.-based team, that's about as remote as it gets. We've always been remote at CodePen, so we have it built-in to our culture already, but that doesn't mean we don't have to...

  
• 12.07.2022

  393: Challenges in 2022

  Marie and Chris talk about the year in CodePen Challenges. If you participate, this might be an interesting look into how we think about them. If you don't, it might help you understand what they are and how they might...

  
• 11.30.2022

  392: Project Management Refresh

  Dee and Chris chat about our latest take on Project Management (PM), a somewhat tricky topic for us with such a small team where literally everyone is an individual contributor (IC) with a lot on their shoulders aside from PM....

  
• 11.23.2022

  391: Early TypeScript at CodePen

  TypeScript ain't exactly new, but it's a bit new to us. Robert was the most knowledgeable about TypeScript on the team and felt like it could be valuable for us. What does that mean though? Where would we use TypeScript?...

  
• 11.16.2022

  390: The Social Media Zeitgiest

  Marie and I talk about what's going on in the world of social media, and what that might mean for CodePen and front-end developers. Twitter doesn't feel particularly healthy at the moment, but has been the biggest player for front-end...

  
• 11.02.2022

  389: Migrating a Ruby on Rails GraphQL API to a Go GraphQL API

  One thing that's been keeping us very busy at CodePen is moving our main API. We decided on GraphQL long ago and it's served us pretty well. We originally built it in Ruby on Rails alongside a lot of the...

  
• 10.19.2022

  388: Durable Objects

  Robert and I jump on to chat about Cloudflare's product Durable Objects. It's part of their Workers platform, which we already use at CodePen a good bit, but with Durable Objects... Global Uniqueness guarantees that there will be a single instance...

  
• 10.05.2022

  387: CodePen Co-Founders AMA

  A few months back, Alex and I did a 10-year anniversary episode that took the form of 10 bits of advice formed in the fires of running a software company for a decade. That was us talking at you. We...

  
• 09.28.2022

  386: Hakim El Hattab

  This week I got to speak with Hakim El Hattab. I feel pretty special as Hakim told me he doesn't do public stuff very often. I get it! He's a busy man with a family, a successful company, and ambitious...

  
• 09.14.2022

  385: Kristopher Van Sant

  This week I got to talk to Kristopher Van Sant! Again! This time we got to talk about Kristopher's professional work as well as some favorite Pens. Time Jumps Sponsor: Equinix Metal’s Startup Partner Program Equinix Metal’s Startup Partner Program helps early...

  
• 09.07.2022

  384: The 300 Sparks Milestone

  We just recently published the 300th CodePen Spark. Marie joins me on the show, as she leads up the creation of the vast majority of Spark newsletters. We get into things like why we do it, how we create it,...

  
• 08.31.2022

  383: Soft Delete All

  In this show, Stephen and Chris get to talk about an internal technical detail we were improving in our database, which led to a public-facing feature for y'all. The idea is that all (most, anyway) database tables should have a...

  
• 08.24.2022

  382: Bulk Actions for Assets

  CodePen will host your assets, like images, data models, libraries, whatever. It's quite useful! They are easy to browse, easy to copy URLs or code snippets of usage, served with the right headers from a fast global CDN, and heck,...

  
• 08.17.2022

  381: Data on External Library Usage

  Marie and I this week! Marie dug up some interesting data about "external library" usage on CodePen. In the Pen Editor (specifically), you have the option of adding external resources. These are literally placed in the Settings area and added...

  
• 08.10.2022

  380: Ol’ Jake

  This week I got to speak with Jake Albaugh. Long-time listeners will remember Jake as an alumnus of Team CodePen. That's a first for a podcast guest! We looked back a bit, where Marie dug up some of the best...

  
• 08.03.2022

  379: Chris & Alex have been running CodePen for 10 Years. What have they learned? Here’s the top 10!

  Both Alex and I, the co-founders of CodePen, spent time trying to whittle down hopefully interesting and practical advice for you from our experience in running a SaaS company for a decade! Let's go back and forth, combining into a...

  
• 07.27.2022

  378: Lee Martin

  This week I got to speak with Lee Martin! Lee is a fascinating fella, due in part to him having a job I think we all want: designing weird cool digital experiences for good bands. Fortunately for us, he often...

  
• 07.20.2022

  377: Jase Smith

  This week I got to speak with Jase Smith, a kindred spirit bouncing across the designer/developer line out of Denver, Colorado. Before you know it, we're doing a bit of a rundown of Jase's career path, all the way from...

  
• 07.13.2022

  376: Ilithya

  This week I got to speak with Ilithya, who put together some favorite Pens, some of which we actually manage to get to during the show

  
• 07.06.2022

  375: Craig Roblewsky

  This week I got to speak with Craig Roblewsky! Craig does a lot of web animation and hangs around the Greensock forums quite a bit, giving him a unique perspective on solving animation problems and coming up with clever solutions...

  
• 07.01.2022

  374: Kevin Powell

  This week I got to speak with Kevin Powell! Kevin has had tremendous success on YouTube educating people about CSS 'n' friends. But like so many good content creators, he'll meet with where you are at and what you need...

  
• 06.22.2022

  373: Script Injection with Cloudflare Workers

  This week Shaw and Chris dig into some deepnerd tech stuff: manipulating HTML. In a perfect world, perhaps we wouldn't need to, but today, and even moreso in the foreseeable future of CodePen, we need to do a smidge of...

  
• 06.15.2022

  372: Trends

  This week Marie and Chris get together to chat about what's been hot hot hot on CodePen lately. We've discovered there is a really taking to the creamy cardstock look, for one thing. Typography is always great, but we're seeing...

  
• 06.08.2022

  371: Jon Kantner

  I got to speak to Jon Kantner! Jon is an incredibly prolific creator, and I believe has the most appearances in the CodePen Spark of any creator. Like so many other creators I've talked to Jon also shares what he...

  
• 06.01.2022

  370: Alex Trost

  This week I got to speak with Alex Trost! Alex has been hard at work created Frontend Horse, a clever brand celebrating the beautiful and clever things in our industry via a newsletter, articles, streaming, a Discord community and more....

  
• 05.25.2022

  369: With Chris Smith

  This week I got to speak with Chris Smith! We got to talk about all sorts of things from blogging, to pushing the boundaries of CSS, to logic in CSS, to digging into some of Chris' most interesting Pens, to...

  
• 05.18.2022

  368: Lea Rosema

  I got to talk with Lea Rosema this week! She's an incredibly talented digital artist and front-end developer. She does quite a bit of art with some of the trickiest web technology out there: shaders! But rather than just learn...

  
• 05.11.2022

  367: With Micah Godbolt

  I got to talk with Micah Godbolt this week! Micah is is a long-hauler at Microsoft working on Design Systems and such. His CodePen account looks a lot like mine: steady consistent usage of "just trying to figure something out"...

  
• 05.05.2022

  366: Paulina Hetman

  I got to talk to Paulina Hetman this week! Paulina is a heck of a creative coder, using her skills as an illustrator and all-around web developer to make ideas come to life. And she doesn't keep all those ideas...

  
• 04.27.2022

  365: Klare

  Klare is moving on from design at CodePen to design at GitHub. Huge congrats Klare! If you didn't know Klare was our one and only dedicated designer here at CodePen and left a massive mark here in the design and...

  
• 04.20.2022

  364: Varun Vachhar

  I got to talk to Varun! Varun is an incredible artist and would have been interesting to talk with him about literally anything, but since he's dipped numerous toes into the world of NFTs, I wanted to chat with him...

  
• 04.13.2022

  363: Kyle Shook

  This week I got a chance to talk to Kyle Shook. Kyle has started a new job at Foxtrot so we talked about what that process was like. In addition to creating all sorts of incredibly creative work on CodePen...

  
• 04.06.2022

  362: Chris Nager

  This week I got to speak with Chris Nager! I've known Chris quite a while. I remember being inspired by his hand-drawn SVG plus symbol and subsequent guide to commands, which inspired my own shortly after I was properly...

  
• 03.31.2022

  361: Forks in a New Tab

  If you Command (Mac) or Control (PC) click the Fork button, it will open the newly forked Pen in a new tab in your browser. That's new behavior. Before, it would open the fork in the same tab, no matter...

  
• 03.23.2022

  360: Sarah Fossheim

  I got to talk to Sarah Fossheim this week! One of the impressive things that Sarah does is near photograph-quality recreations of iconic old technology in HTML & CSS. I enjoyed the fact that neither of us quite totally knows...

  
• 03.16.2022

  359: Tiffany Choong

  I had tons of fun talking to Tiffany Choong this week! I loved learning her process on creating countless code art Pokémon characters. Just look at it and wing it! Wild. While I'm not nearly as creative as Tiffany, I...

  
• 03.09.2022

  358: CJ Gammon

  I got to chat with CJ Gammon this week! CJ is a creative technologist, a term he's tried to hang onto as he does more development work, so he can continue to communicate that he's a designer as well. CJ...

  
• 03.02.2022

  357: Ryan Mulligan

  This week I get to talk to Ryan Mulligan! Ryan put together a Collection of some of his personal picks for favorite Pens and we get a chance to talk through a lot of them. There are some classic moments...

  
• 02.23.2022

  356: Amit Sheen

  I got to talk with Amit Sheen this week about his journey into creative coding. Even his early work is incredibly interesting and recent work is downright stunning. Now he's entering a phase of sharing what he knows with workshops...

  
• 02.16.2022

  355: With Adam Argyle

  I grabbed Adam intending to chat about all sorts of CSS stuff and his work at Google and on VisBug. But then we chatted pretty much the entire time about color and what's coming there to the web platform. Time...

  
• 02.09.2022

  354: With Steve Gardner

  We've got Steve Gardner on this week! We get into all sorts of nitty gritty detail on the ol' Christmas Cannon, a Pen of pure joy. Steve has some absolute classics that show off the web at it's very best,...

  
• 02.02.2022

  353: With Louis Hoebregts

  Louis Hoebregts (aka Mamboleoo) has been creating wonderfully creative Pens on CodePen for many years. His early work, as we learn on this episode, was inspired by the CSS trickery of Lea Verou! He rotates his tools between HTML and...

  
• 01.26.2022

  352: With Aysenur Turk

  Aysenur Turk had a number of appearances on this year's Top Hearted of 2021, including #1! In this podcast, I get to catch up with her, find out where she gets ideas and inspiration, how much time it takes to...

  
• 01.20.2022

  351: Moving to PostgreSQL from MySQL

  As you read this, CodePen is 100% on PostgreSQL for our main relational database. It was a transition that took a couple weeks of pretty intense effort, and lots of planning and prep before that. I've got Alex on the...