JavaScript Jam

We're live at RenderATL to hear from conference speakers and attendees.

Show Notes

Join us on Twitter Spaces every Wednesday at 12pm PST for live discussion about everything JavaScript, Jamstack and composabililty.

We spoke with Dan Abramov live at Remix Conference.

Show Notes

Join us on Twitter Spaces every Wednesday at 12pm PST for live discussion about everything JavaScript, Jamstack and composabililty.

Astro is a hot new tool for building incredibly lean static websites with less JavaScript and your favorite framework including React, Svelte, and Vue.

Show Notes

By default, Astro ships 0 JavaScript to the browser, only loading fully interactive components as needed. Co-creator Fred K. Schott joins us to share how Astro got started and where it's heading. He also gives a demo of the tool itself.

Show Outline

• 01:15 - Schott's background
• 03:57 - What is Astro 
• 07:14 - Lazy hydration
• 10:12 - Astro's origin story
• 12:26 - How modern tech separates Astro from 11ty 
• 17:00 - Astro demo
  • 17:05 - Getting started
  • 21:58 - Starter template 
  • 22:20 - Source directory, where the magic happens!
  • 23:12 - Scope styling  
  • 27:48 - Components 
  • 34:55 - Passing down props
• 38:47 - Who should use Astro
• 41:10 - 1.0 Launch
• 41:29 - Who's currently using Astro 
• 43:30 - Layer0's docs for Astro
• 44:52 - Astro's funding and monetization

Five guests join Ishan in recapping Jamstack Conference 2021, a virtual event for developers and technology leaders contributing to the modern web.

Show Notes

Topics include core themes and messages, and reactions to the keynote, popular talks, the Jammies, and State of the Jamstack Report. What was your opinion of the conference? Let us know what you agree and disagree by visiting us on YouTube: JavaScript Jam

Guests:
• Jeff Escalante, Web Platform Lead at HashiCorp, @jescalan
• Sean C Davis, Developer Experience Engineer at Stackbit, @seancdavis29
• Brian Rinaldi, Developer Advocate at StepZen, @remotesynth
• Anthony Campolo, Developer Advocate at StepZen, @ajcwebdev
• Christopher Burns, CEO at Everfund, @BurnedChris

Key moments:
•  Conference power outage (2:20)
•  90s theme...did it land? (5:45)
•  Recurring messages at the conference (9:27)
•  Keynote target audience and positioning (14:16)
•  Favorite talks (25:31)
•  Do we need the terms "Jamstack" and "Transitional Apps" (31:59)
•  State of the Jamstack Report (39:11)
•  Surprises that came from the conf (43:50)

Anthony Campolo, Lead Developer Advocate on the RedwoodJS team, offers insight for young developers starting on their career path and demos RedwoodJS.

Show Notes

Anthony started coding 3 years ago, worked his way into HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, and then focused his writing on RedwoodJS, a full-stack JavaScript framework. In this episode, he shares his stories and insight as a developer, and gives a great demo of the RedwoodJS framework.

Outline

• Anthony's background and how he got involved with RedwoodJS (1:25)
• What is RedwoodJS (3:15)
• Advise to young developers (4:53)
• Ruby on Rails influence on RedwoodJS (6:31)
• What makes Ruby on Rails great (8:32)
• Team size at Redwood and its history (10:43)
• How RedwoodJS chose which pieces of the JS ecosystem to build on (12:58)
• Core libraries bundled in RedwoodJS (15:25)
• RedwoodJS demo (17:48)
     • Dynamic routing (23:53)
     • Prerending (25:33)
     • Incorporating data from the database (26:49)
     • Post cells (33:33)
     • GraphQL capabilities (37:01)
     • Deploying (37:33)
     • Authentication (46:20)
• RedwoodJS 1.0 and examples already using it (43:23)
• Bison vs. Blitz vs. RedwoodJS (47:14)
• Subscriptions (49:49)
• Future roadmap for RedwoodJS (53:19)

Brandon Bayer, Creator of Blitz.js and Founder of Flightcontrol, walks us through the ideation and creation of the Blitz.js framework.

Show Notes

In this episode you'll learn how this frameworks stands out from competitors like RedwoodJS and Bison.

Outline

• 01:24 - How Brandon got started in software engineering
• 03:21 - How Blitz.js got started from Next.js, Prisma and Ruby on Rails
• 05:10 - Why Ruby on Rails is great for the JavaScript developer
• 07:00 - The "loose" opinions and libraries of Blitz.js
• 09:09 - Core contributors to the framework
• 10:35 - 7-minute demo of Blitz.js
• 22:07 - When is Blitz 1.0
• 23:39 - Biggest companies running with Blitz in prod today
• 25:20 - Challenges users may face in dev or prod pre-1.0
• 28:05 - Benefits of forking Next.js
• 34:33 - Fullstack framework competition and how Blitz stacks up
• 40:24 - How Blitz fits into the Jamstack space
• 42:06 - What is Flightcontrol
• 45:55 - Blitz.js post-1.0

Bud Parr and Régis Philibert, the Founder and Lead Developer of The New Dynamic, join us to discuss their history with the Jamstack.

Show Notes

They share their story of how they began working with static site generators and the Jamstack before the term "Jamstack" was even coined, growing a community along the way. Bud Parr, the founder of The New Dynamic, began working with static site generators and the "Jamstack" back in 2013...that's three years before the term was even coined! Learn how Parr and his partner, Régis Philibert, got started in the field and grew both a business a community of over 700 developers dedicated to building fast and secure modern websites.

Annie Sullivan and Katie Hempenius from Google's Chrome Web Platform team join us for an episode centered around Core Web Vitals.

Show Notes

Core Web Vitals are a set of website metrics which have a major impact on the user experience, and now impact your search ranking. Tune in to get familiar with these metrics, understand the biggest misconceptions for developers trying to improve scores, and where we might expect changes to emerge moving forward.

"The Jamstack" was coined back in 2016. Is it time to retire the term once and for all?

Show Notes

Jamstack was originally defined as: A modern web development architecture based on client-side JavaScript, reusable APIs, and prebuilt Markup. But most websites are built with this architecture, which is why the Jamstack definition continues to evolve. Some say we should flat out stop using the term, others say it’s a spectrum of available capabilities, and many see it as a unifying term that helps bring a larger community together.

While our panelists have different opinions, it’s agreed upon that the end results is the same: whether you’re a small or enterprise site, you still want to produce a great website for users and developers. Watch Jeff Escalante (HashiCorp), Sean C. Davis (Stackbit), Brian Rinaldi (StepZen), Miriam Schwab (Strattic), and Ishan Anand (Edgio) debate the Jamstack definition in a panel moderated by Mark Brocato (Edgio).

This episode is highly visual, as Evan You demo's the Vite platform. Check out JavascriptJam.com for the video.
 
Show Notes
 
Overtime developers have gotten used to using bundlers, like WebPack, and know the struggle of waiting for long builds, especially as project become more complex. Vite works like a simple file server, but provides many enhancements over native ESM imports to support various features that are typically seen in bundler-based setups. In this episode, You walks us through how Vite makes building web apps with build tools easier and faster.