CodePen Radio

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, we'll even help optimize them. It's easy to amass a lof of them, as we allow you upload many at a time.

But while we had Bulk Upload, as it were, we didn't offer any other "bulk" actions, until now. Stephen and I talk about how we added more bulk actions for assets, making them all the easier to manage. Shout out to our user with many thousands of assets which helped provide the motivation to get this out.

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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 to the end of your HTML. We're specifically focused on these (not scripts you might add in the HTML by hand, Projects, imports, or otherwise) because we have them in a special database table — good for exactly this kind of data analysis! We're also focusing on just JavaScript this time. We'll look at the top 10 in terms of usage over time.

Whiskey Web and Whatnot is different than your typical dev podcast. We show a lighter, more human side of developers you know and love, like a fireside chat with your favorite devs. Past guests include Tom Preston-Werner, Kent C. Dodds, Charlie Gerard, Wes Bos, and the incomparable Chris Coyier! We have discussed everything from Next.js and TypeScript to Chuck’s past life as a blackjack dealer, favorite power tools, the best casseroles, and of course whiskey!

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 Jake classic Pens, and talked with him about what his professional life has looked like post-CodePen.

Memberful is easy to use, best-in-class membership software for independent creators, publishers, podcasters, educators, and more. We take care of the hard stuff so you and your clients can focus on what you do best, while earning revenue quickly. Memberful seamlessly integrates with the tools you already use, like WordPress, Mailchimp, Discord, and lots more. With Memberful, you have full control and ownership of all things related to your brand, your audience, and your finances. Learn more at Memberful.com and get started for free — no credit card required.

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 top 10 like we did in the show.

Only do things that are either:

• High time, high value
• Low time, low value

As in, they take a long time but are going to make a big difference. Or they won't take too long, don't ask too much of you, but are still helpful. This is the answer to the build vs buy conundrum. It's a buy for everything in between.

Every relationship between people at a company is important, but the relationship between the founders is crucial. It sets the culture and makes everything work. The company cannot continue with a broken relationship at the founder level. They say it is like marriage, and that analogy isn't far off.

Chances are, you’re going to find out you are very different people who think and feel differently about all sorts of things. You need to get along, you need to respect each other, you need to trust each other, but you can’t avoid hard conversations (as much as I would like to).

Do more with less. Just because you didn't write it doesn't mean it's less complex. Just because you did write it doesn't mean it's less complex. You might have to add technology in the short term as you're migrating to what will end up with more minimal tech. It is a focusing of you and your team's expertise.

You’re probably undercharging people for your software product. Software is always difficult to build and maintain. It's likely your intuition leads you toward lower prices, but every experience we've ever had with higher prices (and raising prices) has been positive. Fewer people than you think will care, revenue goes up, and your time is better compensated. Plus, there is a weird correlation between your high-paying customers being chill and low-paying customers being more challenging.

Only do one of these at a time: learn new tech or solve a new problem. Do not do both. One is a magical number. Do one thing at a time.

Making sure everyone is on the same page is hard. There are so many business constructs designed to get everyone there: meetings, documents, emails... and yet, if you think everyone understands what is happening the same way you do, you are not right. But keeping everyone together is still a vital part of the process. Try to get better at expressing what is in your brain and sussing out when you think it might be different than what is in other people you work with's brains. Time spent communicating is time well spent.

Honesty is a fundamental part of your culture. That is, honesty or dishonesty, like it or not. Honesty is better. Be honest about your work, your management, and yourself. Remember that honesty has nothing to do with being nice. Being nice doesn't mean being honest. Being mean doesn't mean being honest. But being honest might mean uncomfortable conversations.

A person's success in life can usually be measured by the number of uncomfortable conversations he or she is willing to have.

Anything and everything is a threat to your time. Slice away what isn’t core to your business. You'll be drowning for time soon enough, so spend it on what really matters to your business. This is where technical debt comes in, and being careful about where you acquire it. You'll make mistakes, but a better you can recover from them. Pay the debts and move on.

It's easy to poke at problems. Take a guess, try it, and if it seems to work, do it and move on. Don't do that. Draw a line in the sand. Stop poking. Slow down and deeply understand the problem. Read the source code. You'll understand the problem better if you move slowly. Eventually, that style of slow problem-solving will feel smooth, and that smoothness will, ironically, help you move faster.

Slow is smooth and smooth is fast.

If anything has given me, and by extension CodePen, a jump in this world, it is these three things. You can build an audience through writing. An audience of people that trust you and like you and will try the things you make. The ability to communicate well with words will serve you forever, inside and outside your company. Persistence is a byproduct of having a good idea, knowing it, and having the wherewithal to see it through. A business is not built in 6 months. Stick with your good idea, it's the only way. Positivity ties it all together. Writing is your vehicle for telling your tribe, over and over, that everything is going to be great and you'll be there to help make sure it is.

Notion is an amazing collaborative tool that not only helps organize your company’s information but helps with project management as well. We know that all too well here at CodePen, as we use Notion for countless business tasks. Learn more and get started for free at notion.com/codepen. Take your first step toward an organized, happier team, today.

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 writes about them. Just check out the Inter Dimensional Video Player for Lord Huron, for example, or Using Three.js to Hear the Dawn with Jack White. Keep up with Lee on Instagram, Twitter, or his personal site. He's overflowing with ideas, not just doing all the freelancing but taking some of those ideas and scaling them, like he's doing with Turn, Mock, and Listening Party. We got a chance to talk about a handful of Lee's favorite Pens, but there are more in the Collection he made.

Whiskey Web and Whatnot is different than your typical dev podcast. We show a lighter, more human side of developers you know and love, like a fireside chat with your favorite devs. Past guests include Tom Preston-Werner, Kent C. Dodds, Charlie Gerard, Wes Bos, and the incomparable Chris Coyier! We have discussed everything from Next.js and TypeScript to Chuck’s past life as a blackjack dealer, favorite power tools, the best casseroles, and of course whiskey!

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 that all-too-familiar fake-it-til-you-make it early days to being a successful developer and mentoring as a form of industry payback.

We didn't get to talk about as many of them as I would have liked, but Jase graciously made a Collection of some of his favorites. Quite a few explorations of color!

Jase is on Twitter as @CSSBites, has a site of the same name, and is on LinkedIn.

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As a special offer for CodePen listeners, get a free t-shirt when you sign up through our referral link. To start your free two-week trial and claim your free t-shirt, visit reflect.run/codepen.

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 😂. Like our chat with Lea Rosema, we really get into the magic of Shaders. Shaders are certainly of the web, but often feel extraordinary, giving off a "the web can do that?" kind of feeling. Check out: personal website, collaboration with Eliza Struthers-Jobin, shaders tutorial video with Alex Trost, NFTs.

Memberful is easy to use, best-in-class membership software for independent creators, publishers, podcasters, educators, and more. We take care of the hard stuff so you can focus on what you do best, while earning revenue quickly. With Memberful, you have full control and ownership of all things related to your brand, your audience, and your finances.

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 to them. Craig has his own site, motiontricks.com, as well which is an educational resource for animation. We get into all that, some of Craig's own favorite Pens, and some of Craig's other professional history on the show.

Notion is an amazing collaborative tool that not only helps organize your company’s information but helps with project management as well. We know that all too well here at CodePen, as we use Notion for countless business tasks. Learn more and get started for free at notion.com/codepen. Take your first step toward an organized, happier team, today.

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 — his personal site has written articles, resources, courses, and a newsletter. Kevin is a joy to talk to. We took the opportunity to nerd out on a variety of mostly CSS-related things.

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 HTML manipulation on the HTML that you write or that is generated by code you write on CodePen. A tiny example is removing the autofocus attribute when a Pen in shown in a grid view . A more significant example is that we need to inject some of our own JavaScript into your Pen, to power features of CodePen itself, like the console, which receives information from your rendered page (like logs, errors, etc) and can push commands to execute as well. </p>