The Function Call

The Function Call

By Austin GilTechnology
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The Function Call episodes

  • Ep 21 - Runtime Type Checking. You Probably Don't Need It

    Grant’s adventure into why compile time type checking isnt enough. Do you have a reliable data source. Is it really, really reliable? If not, you might like runtime type checking! Sometimes rapid parallel development is painful, solve that pain with runtime type checking! Austin and Grant discuss what problems lead to the development of runtime type checking apollo hooks. They cover the initial problem, the attempted solutions, and the process of developing the structure that allows this set of hooks to work.

    Links:

    • Runtypes
    • Io-ts
    • yup
    • Duck typing
    • Shout-outs:

      • Grant: Runtypes, Ski Mask the Slump God, New Bugati by Lil Gnar
      • Austin: Smart AudioBook Player
      • 1 hr 2 min
      • Ep 20: We Like Getting PEGD and Think You'll Like it Too

        We start out this episode with a nice little “Grant Rant” section, then slowly transition into PEGD. If you never got PEGD before, give this episode a listend, and you might get PEGD after.

        What is PEGD? Well it's Progressive Enhancement & Graceful Degradation, of course.

        It’s pretty sweet. You should try it some time.

        Links:

        • Screenity by Alyssa X
        • @Supports https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/@supports
        • https://modernizr.com/
        • Austin’s HTML boilerplate
        • Shout Outs

          • Grant - security cameras
          • Austin - Power tools
          • 1 hr 2 min
          • Ep 19 - Resetting & Getting Back To Normal (with CSS)

            In this episode Austin introduces Grant to the wonderful world of CSS resets and normalizers. We discussed what they are, why you might want one, and what makes them different from a library/framework. Austin had some technical difficulties at the end, but it was a fun show regardless.

            Links:

            • bedrocss
            • Style Check
            • Shoutouts:

              • AJ - Hammocks
              • Grant - Take time off work
              • Austin - bedrocss and Style Check
              • 1 hr 5 min
              • Eb18 - The Why'sest Programmers

                Why did it break? Why does it work?

                In this episode, Grant takes us on a Grant Rant about why the "It works and I have no idea why" meme is troublesome. How this erodes communication, confidence, and leads to a deeper sense of imposter syndrome. Austin goes along for the ride, mostly just for comedic value.

                Shoutouts:

                • Grant: Boss Baby
                • Austin: The Boys
                • 1 hr 2 min
                • Ep17 - Semantics: A Meaningful Conversation About HTML

                  In this episode, Grant and Austin have a MEANINGFUL chat about markup, but it was all just semantics. We covered a wide range of topics from HTML to accessibility to JSON-LD, and more.

                  Links:

                  • Vue dynamic components
                  • How to Build HTML Forms Right: Semantics
                  • JSON-LD
                  • schema.org
                  • CSS Tricks - display: contents
                  • Shoutouts:

                    • Austin: Raised By Wolves
                    • Grant: Ground Keeper
                    • 1 hr 3 min
                    • Ep16 - Go raw, or use a wrapper? Advice for Dates (in software)

                      In this episode, Grant and Austin discuss some recent issues working with dates at work, advice about working with time and dates in JavaScript, what libraries we currently run with, and the future of time in the browser. We also share some takes on storing dates in databases, and the native HTML date input.

                      Links:

                      • moment.js
                      • Bundlephobia
                      • Day.js
                      • Date-fns
                      • Luxon.js
                      • MDN Date input
                      • Date input bug in Safari
                      • Shoutouts:

                        • Grant - The Texas power grid
                        • Austin - Lovecraft Country
                        • 58 min
                        • Ep15 - The Interview About Interviews with Ben Katz

                          In this episode of The Function Call, Austin, Grant, and AJ get a visit from special guest, Ben Katz. Ben shared lots of valuable insights about the interview process, both from the interviewer and interviewee side. For interviewees, we went into tips on getting a job, dealing with LinkedIn, and some things to look for and/or things to avoid. On the interviewer side of things, we talked about the lack of clarity on needs, how resumes are inherently boring, the fact that screening is usually arbitrary and lead to lots of false negatives, and problems with the interview process in general

                          Links:

                          • Leetcode
                          • Bakatz.com
                          • LinkedIn.com/in/bakatz91
                          • Picks

                            • AJ: Amy’s burritos
                            • Grant: Full Face Helmets
                            • Ben: Mechanical watches
                            • Austin: Cracking the Coding Interview
                            • 1 hr 1 min
                            • Ep14 - Analytics: This Title Contains 3rd Party Cookies

                              In this episode of The Function Call, Grant, AJ, and Austin sit silently in a room and just watch you buy your fifth tub of guacamole. Just kidding. We're talking all about analytics. We get into different types of analytics, various ways of implementing them, and some opinions of why we love and/or hate them. This was a very fun topic because it's so relevant today for balancing privacy and performance against business goals.

                              Links:

                              • Google Analytics
                              • Cloudflare Insights
                              • Fathom
                              • Plausible
                              • Microphone Isolation Box
                              • Shoutouts:

                                • AJ: Epsilon Notes
                                • Grant: AdBlock Plus
                                • Austin: Merino wool 🐑
                                • 57 min
                                • 13: Places To Store Your Front End Data

                                  Like shaving yacks? Well this is the episode to listen to! We discuss our pointless opinions about programming and decide once-and-for-all "tabs vs. spaces" and all sorts of other things that don't matter.

                                  TLDR:

                                  • Is html a programming language; NO
                                  • Single vs double quotes vs backticks; SINGLE
                                  • Variable naming case; follow conventions? YES (per project/team)
                                  • Semi colons; YES (but automate it)
                                  • Curly Braces:  1TBS
                                  • Dangling commas, YASSS!
                                  • CSS order: "have structure"
                                  • Ternarys: NO
                                  • Shoutouts:

                                    • AJ: MF DOOM
                                    • Grant: "Sneks" (a.k.a. snakes)
                                    • Austin: Canva
                                    • 1 hr
                                    • Ep 12 (Fixed): Whose Code is it Anyway? Pedantic Opinions About Tech That Really Don’t Matter.

                                      In this episode we covered a whole gamut of client side options for storing data. Here's a list of some of the things we talked about:

                                      • In memory storage ("Throw it on the window" - Grant)
                                      • sessionStorage
                                      • localStorage
                                      • IndexedDB
                                      • Cookies
                                      • Service Worker
                                      • URL
                                      • FileSystem API
                                      • Links:

                                        https://serviceworkies.com/

                                        https://squoosh.app/

                                        https://localforage.github.io/localForage/

                                        Shoutouts:

                                        • Austin - Sleep stories by Wysa
                                        • Grant - sleep train your baby.
                                        • 53 min

                                        About The Function Call

                                        From the publisher's feed

                                        The Function Call is a show about friends, and it’s also a show about programming. We get together and talk about tech, what we're working on, and the little things, like what we had for dinner last…