[{"type":"blog","content":"\r\n\r\nSince September, I've been running my AI newsletter on https://lspace.swyx.io \r\n\r\n![image](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/225824847-5cc1dfcc-f996-4957-8b17-3b28066b435a.png)\r\n\r\nI've since acquired the https://latent.space domain, but Substack's shitty documentation doesn't offer any help on how to navigate a custom domain change (only how to add one for the first time).\r\n\r\n![image](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/225824802-821cb6a4-97da-4e02-bbf9-e9da9bfe2ec7.png)\r\n\r\nand the Disable Custom Domain button is so scary with zero empathy on how to arrange a fallback for old links to the old custom domain.\r\n\r\n![image](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/225824920-10fc0cec-afca-4585-9375-d8cc7e44a565.png)\r\n\r\nI'm about to execute this change so just making a log of what I did (but also shame on Substack for not documenting this stuff). I am doing this at 11pm Pacific Time so as to minimize disruption.\r\n\r\n---\r\n\r\n1. hitting the Disable Custom Domain immediately chucked my substack address back to the old https://swyx.substack.com/ subdomain. https://lspace.swyx.io/ is 404ing.\r\n2. now I can add a new domain\r\n![image](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/225825310-2d0c5008-86dc-4adf-894c-fedd32426155.png)\r\nhowever it seems it is registered on cloudflare.\r\n\r\n![image](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/225825501-3231398a-c4ef-44d1-bdec-4369d8594f9b.png)\r\n\r\nI went ahead and added the CNAME in my Google Domains panel \r\n![image](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/225825830-a32d7e75-5caa-4c1c-9c50-cab95b7bdc39.png)\r\n\r\nbut substack still reported an issue.\r\n![image](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/225825858-7c91fcd2-ace2-411f-99fb-e891aabff820.png)\r\n\r\nGoogle says \"Changes are published immediately, but may take time to propagate\" so I will wait a few minutes before panicking. \r\n\r\nupdate: when I click \"Check Status\" this is the new report\r\n\r\n![image](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/225826039-b026a7eb-d4d1-4a37-bf7a-ae2ff9c73c35.png)\r\n\r\nbut when i refresh it goes back to the previous screen. seems unstable and buggy.\r\n\r\n15 mins later...\r\n\r\nok www.latent.space seems to work now, but latent.space doesn't. let's try to add a web forwarding thing on google:\r\n\r\n![image](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/225829443-de1c6f2c-93f4-4786-9479-2432abe003e0.png)\r\n\r\nit does not work automatically, but after 10-15 mins it started working for me.","frontmatter":{"category":"note","slug":"substack-change-domain"},"title":"How to change custom domain on Substack ","description":"Since September, I've been running my AI newsletter on https://lspace.swyx.io ","category":"note","tags":[],"slug":"substack-change-domain","date":"2023-03-17T06:01:45.000Z","readingTime":"2 minutes","ghMetadata":{"issueUrl":"https://github.com/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/473","commentsUrl":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/473/comments","title":"How to change custom domain on Substack ","created_at":"2023-03-17T06:01:45Z","updated_at":"2023-03-17T19:14:56Z","reactions":{"url":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/473/reactions","total_count":0,"+1":0,"-1":0,"laugh":0,"hooray":0,"confused":0,"heart":0,"rocket":0,"eyes":0}}},{"type":"blog","content":"\r\nI do a lot of podcast transcription work and had need for it again today. The HuggingFace spaces (like this one https://huggingface.co/spaces/vumichien/whisper-speaker-diarization) always error out so aren't very useful. \r\n\r\nThis is the one that worked for me.\r\n\r\n0. make sure you have the `.wav` for your podcast audio. you can use quicktime or audacity to convert it. this process doesnt work for mp3\r\n1. `pip3 install git+https://github.com/m-bain/whisperx.git` this will take a couple minutes. meanwhile...\r\n2. Read https://github.com/m-bain/whisperX#voice-activity-detection-filtering--diarization. To enable VAD filtering and Diarization, include your Hugging Face access token that you can generate from [Here](https://huggingface.co/settings/tokens) after the --hf_token argument and accept the user agreement for the following models: [Segmentation](https://huggingface.co/pyannote/segmentation) , [Voice Activity Detection (VAD)](https://huggingface.co/pyannote/voice-activity-detection) , and [Speaker Diarization](https://huggingface.co/pyannote/speaker-diarization). make sure to accept them all in your huggingface account.\r\n4. `whisperx YOUR_AUDIO_FILE.wav --hf_token YOUR_HF_TOKEN_HERE --vad_filter --diarize --min_speakers 3 --max_speakers 3 --language en` for 3 speakers in English. remember it must be a .wav file.\r\n\r\n![image](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/221219413-e83cec72-3164-40ad-bd48-0ca41616f224.png)\r\n\r\n\r\nIt takes about 30 seconds to transcribe 30 seconds so be prepared for it to take the time of your audio podcast to transcribe.\r\n\r\n![image](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/221219791-a78b3a39-47d5-47ab-9377-7f89c19bf142.png)\r\n","frontmatter":{"category":"tutorial","slug":"transcribe-podcasts-with-whisper","tag":"podcasts, ai, whisper","cover_image":"https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/221219413-e83cec72-3164-40ad-bd48-0ca41616f224.png"},"title":"How to transcribe podcast audio (WhisperX with speaker diarization)","description":"I do a lot of podcast transcription work and had need for it again today. The HuggingFace spaces (like this one https://huggingface.co/spaces/vumichien/whisper-speaker-diarization) always error out so aren't very useful. ","category":"tutorial","tags":[],"image":"https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/221219413-e83cec72-3164-40ad-bd48-0ca41616f224.png","slug":"transcribe-podcasts-with-whisper","date":"2023-02-24T15:33:15.000Z","readingTime":"1 minute","ghMetadata":{"issueUrl":"https://github.com/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/470","commentsUrl":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/470/comments","title":"How to transcribe podcast audio (WhisperX with speaker diarization)","created_at":"2023-02-24T15:33:15Z","updated_at":"2023-03-17T19:15:19Z","reactions":{"url":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/470/reactions","total_count":0,"+1":0,"-1":0,"laugh":0,"hooray":0,"confused":0,"heart":0,"rocket":0,"eyes":0}}},{"type":"blog","content":"\r\nI have been a guest on a lot of podcasts, but surprisingly for an immutable medium, podcasts don't stay around forever. Domains expire, urls break, stupid mistakes happen. I know I'd love to look back on myself 30 years from now and laugh at how naive I used to be, so step 1 is keeping that around.\r\n\r\nI have been re-syndicating my own appearances on other people's podcast [on my mixtape](https://mixtape.swyx.io), which I at least completely control. This serves dual purposes of fighting bitrot and allowing people to subscribe to this one feed to find me on all podcasts. Today I discovered that my one episode with Jeff Meyerson (RIP)'s [Software Engineering Daily](https://softwareengineeringdaily.com/2019/12/19/no-code-with-shawn-wang/) had been accidentally overwritten and lost to history. This was of course disappointing and I flailed around for a bit looking for the episode.\r\n\r\nTo save you time, [I found it](https://mixtape.swyx.io/episodes/weekend-drop-the-state-of-no-code-in-2019-swyx-on-software-engineering-daily).\r\n\r\nHere's what I ended up doing that worked:\r\n\r\n- Go to Spotify for the podcast (Screw Spotify for ignoring RSS and erecting closed gardens around podcasts) and search (more like scroll, because Spotify didnt implement search lol) for my episode: https://open.spotify.com/show/6UCtBYL29hwhw4YbTdX83N\r\n- Hit play on [the episode](https://open.spotify.com/episode/2mOCnUp5ppOUUyHyFcNsJF) and sniff the devtools to find the backed up mp3 URL \r\n![image](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/216785349-576fc117-bb07-4678-98bb-428f224c3ed2.png)\r\n- paste [that mp3 url](https://dcs.megaphone.fm/SED1552600781.mp3?key=e5be22f4f1578045b8003b93784d889a&request_event_id=2257b6b5-9fcd-46c0-b30b-ef2f177c6e5b) into the browser and download the backed up episode. ( I did try [using youtube-dl](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/59070656/youtube-dl-returning-urlopen-error-errno-101-network-is-unreachable) to do this but ran into inscrutable `ERROR: unable to download video data: ` errors\r\n\r\nIronically, all this is only possible because Spotify hates supporting the indie web and podcast ecosystem so much that it rehosts all the mp3 in order to deny podcasters their analytics (so you have to go to Spotify to get their numbers). Screw you, and thank you Spotify.","frontmatter":{"subtitle":"Fighting bitrot by clawing podcasts back into existence","description":"TLDR, https://megaphone.spotify.com/ rehosts all mp3s","category":"tutorial"},"title":"How to Find Podcasts That Have Been Deleted","subtitle":"Fighting bitrot by clawing podcasts back into existence","description":"TLDR, https://megaphone.spotify.com/ rehosts all mp3s ","category":"tutorial","tags":[],"slug":"how-to-find-podcasts-that-have-been-deleted","date":"2023-02-04T19:13:40.000Z","readingTime":"2 minutes","ghMetadata":{"issueUrl":"https://github.com/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/467","commentsUrl":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/467/comments","title":"How to Find Podcasts That Have Been Deleted","created_at":"2023-02-04T19:13:40Z","updated_at":"2023-02-05T17:25:53Z","reactions":{"url":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/467/reactions","total_count":0,"+1":0,"-1":0,"laugh":0,"hooray":0,"confused":0,"heart":0,"rocket":0,"eyes":0}}},{"type":"blog","content":"\r\nI honestly never expected this to be a topic that was common enough to write up, however, it suddenly hit me today that it is the _ultra niche topics_ that deserve writing up since it is the stuff that is outside the usual SERP riffraff.\r\n\r\n## Context\r\n\r\nMost employees joining a company see a job description, apply, get the offer, and then have to make up their mind whether to join based on just the info they get through this process. However, when joining an early stage (say series B and below) startup, it's possible, even wise, to obtain more information on the company before joining, especially since it is much more uncertain what the future of the company will be (I have had friends laid off 3 months after joining a startup because they pivoted) and there's a lot less public data about the company and its founders (so you can't, say, look up their revenues, or customer reviews, or glassdoor reviews). \r\n\r\nOne way that startups have been helping prospective employees through this information gap is offering interviews with their investors. There are multiple good reasons to do this:\r\n\r\n1. the investor is almost definitionally the most bullish person in the world on the company outside the company, \r\n2. the investor wants to \"add value\" to their founders by helping to \"close\" you as an employee, \r\n3. the employee gets special access to their investor (sometimes boardmember) that they would not normally have, to network or see things from their vantage point, \r\n4. the founder gets a very small chance that some red flag is caught by the investor and the opportunity to prevent a mishire. \r\n \r\nThe more in-demand, and senior, you are, the more likely you'll want to do this anyway to collect info about the company and for them to be comfortable with you (if things go well, you'll be seeing them at board meetings soon enough).\r\n\r\nI've been through this process twice now, and today was asked by another friend going through the same thing. I realized that this is an underserved topic in career advice since very very few people actually end up going through this process.\r\n\r\n![image](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/216241290-fadf1e2f-e22f-4e3e-a6f2-c44a875d2470.png)\r\n\r\n## TLDR\r\n\r\nThis was my answer:\r\n![image](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/216241922-da658bb5-7aec-4da2-814f-498094196aba.png)\r\n\r\nAn expanded version follows.\r\n\r\n## Questions\r\n\r\n- **The Investment Decision**. \r\n\t- Why did you invest? \r\n\t- What did you find during diligence? \r\n\t- What did you struggle with the most before committing? \r\n\t- How was valuation decided?\r\n- **Current state**\r\n\t- **Founders**: What are their best qualities? Who do they most closely remind you of? What do you perceive as their biggest flaws?\r\n\t- **Information**: What have you learned about the company since investing, good and bad?\r\n\t- **Risks**: What do you think is the riskiest assumption of the company? How can we validate that assumption?\r\n\t- **Market**: What is attractive about this market? What do you like about the customers, how do you view the competitive landscape? _(they've likely done an extreme amount of research here, take notes)_\r\n- **Future**\r\n\t- **Base case**: What metrics are you/the company looking for to reach the next round? (_in the short term this is the ballgame you are choosing to play_)\r\n\t- **Best case**: What metrics would make you pre-empt the next round? (_just fun to ask if the investor is particularly in love with the company_)\r\n\t- **Worst case**: What metrics would make you recommend a pivot? (_this is probably most likely scenario for early stage companies - watch for unusual honesty_)\r\n\t- **Exits**: If the company was to be acquired, who would be the natural buyers and why? (_speculation yes, but useful info on how the investor views this asset regardless_)\r\n\t- (good ending question) What is the most ambitious potential of this company? Where does this go if _everything_ goes right? (_assess if this excites you_)\r\n\r\nUltimately, these are just a very generic set of questions for you to start from. There's only one binary decision to be made by the time you reach this stage - **join, or don't join**. Have **extreme focus on asking questions that will help you make that single decision**; everything else is fluff.\r\n\r\nLet me know in the comments if you can think of other questions suitable for investors.","frontmatter":{"subtitles":"Good Questions to ask an Investor as an early Startup Employee","tags":"careers, advice, investing","category":"note","slug":"investor-questions","cover_image":"https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/216241922-da658bb5-7aec-4da2-814f-498094196aba.png"},"title":"How to Reverse Interview Investors","description":"I honestly never expected this to be a topic that was common enough to write up, however, it suddenly hit me today that it is the *ultra niche topics* that deserve writing up since it is the stuff that is outside the usual SERP riffraff. ","category":"note","tags":["careers","advice","investing"],"image":"https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/216241922-da658bb5-7aec-4da2-814f-498094196aba.png","slug":"investor-questions","date":"2023-02-02T05:55:43.000Z","readingTime":"4 minutes","ghMetadata":{"issueUrl":"https://github.com/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/466","commentsUrl":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/466/comments","title":"How to Reverse Interview Investors","created_at":"2023-02-02T05:55:43Z","updated_at":"2023-02-02T06:59:00Z","reactions":{"url":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/466/reactions","total_count":3,"+1":3,"-1":0,"laugh":0,"hooray":0,"confused":0,"heart":0,"rocket":0,"eyes":0}}},{"type":"blog","content":"\r\nLast year I moved [my site to SvelteKit](https://www.swyx.io/rewrite-2022) with a major redesign. This year, I've done only a minor rewrite of my site:\r\n\r\n![image](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/215710631-b5a6f42a-f33c-4bc0-be5b-8a8b3bc7f617.png)\r\n\r\n![image](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/215711204-a6ffcc28-776e-4822-8d53-1e0c502f076f.png)\r\n\r\nIf you're new here, you can see the full source of my site at https://github.com/sw-yx/swyxdotio/ and see the [key design considerations](https://github.com/sw-yx/swyxkit/#key-features-and-design-considerations) on the swyxkit readme.\r\n\r\nSome thoughts on the rewrite:\r\n\r\n- I made this sustainable by maintaining my own \"clean\" blog template with \"[SwyxKit](https://github.com/sw-yx/swyxkit/)\". This let me track the many breaking changes in SvelteKit since I was adopting alpha software in 2022 that only recently became 1.0.\r\n\t- I did also use it as an isolatable example to do things like [improve the YouTube embed](https://swyxkit.netlify.app/faster-youtube-embeds), add [Layout Breakouts](https://swyxkit.netlify.app/layout-breakouts-in-swyxkit), and, my favorite, add [fuzzy+highlighted search](https://swyxkit.netlify.app/ufuzzy-search). These improvements now make their way into swyx.io.\r\n\t- including [table of contents widget](https://github.com/sw-yx/swyxkit/pull/167) and [github utterances comment integration ](https://swyxkit.netlify.app/moving-blog-comments-to-utterances)\r\n- However the migration proved a lot more laborious than I had hoped, with a ton of minor decisions to review. (I expect to have missed some of them, so if you find any broken links please let me know!)\r\n- The migration PR is at https://github.com/sw-yx/swyxdotio/pull/464\r\n- Last instance of 2022 is preserved at https://github.com/sw-yx/swyxdotio2022/ and the preview is at https://63d85fe7688d8600086b5974--scout-videos-51664.netlify.app/\r\n\r\nI do think the current site is \"trying too hard\" to offer all my stuff to the reader, with the result of overwhelming them. I've been swayed by the minimalist and high value aesthetic of https://nat.org/ and want to rewrite the landing page to reflect that more in future.","frontmatter":{"published":true,"description":"Discussing the 2023 migration of swyx.io to the SvelteKit 1.0 and the swyxkit template","category":"note","tags":"Meta, Svelte, Blogging","cover_image":"https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/215710631-b5a6f42a-f33c-4bc0-be5b-8a8b3bc7f617.png","slug":"rewrite-2023"},"title":"The Swyx.io 2023 rewrite","description":"Discussing the 2023 migration of swyx.io to the SvelteKit 1.0 and the swyxkit template ","category":"note","tags":["meta","svelte","blogging"],"image":"https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/215710631-b5a6f42a-f33c-4bc0-be5b-8a8b3bc7f617.png","slug":"rewrite-2023","date":"2023-01-31T08:43:17.000Z","readingTime":"2 minutes","ghMetadata":{"issueUrl":"https://github.com/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/465","commentsUrl":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/465/comments","title":"The Swyx.io 2023 rewrite","created_at":"2023-01-31T08:43:17Z","updated_at":"2023-02-03T19:55:03Z","reactions":{"url":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/465/reactions","total_count":2,"+1":0,"-1":0,"laugh":0,"hooray":0,"confused":0,"heart":0,"rocket":2,"eyes":0}}},{"title":"Talking AI on the Techmeme RideHome podcast","slug":"techmeme-ridehome-ai-chat","tags":["Tech","AI"],"venues":"Techmeme Ridehome","date":"2023-01-13T00:00:00.000Z","url":"https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/techmeme-ride-home/twtr-spc-the-big-ai-discussion-vb0hd4qmEHA/","description":"I joined the Techmeme RideHome duo (Brian McCollough + Chris Messina) to chat AI with the gang!","category":"podcast"},{"title":"Crossing the Chasm with Jack Bridger's Scaling DevTools podcast","slug":"crossing-chasm-scaling-devtools","tags":["Tech","Devrel"],"venues":"Scaling Devtools","date":"2023-01-12T00:00:00.000Z","url":"https://podcast.bitreach.io/episodes/swyx","video":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_xEyt7mVbX8","description":"Everyone in tech should understand the technology adoption cycle and know which stage of the adoption cycle you’re at. Shawn Wang, known on the internet as swyx. Shawn is a writer, speaker and head of DX at Airbyte. He's also the editor of DX.tips. In this episode Shawn shares how DevTools can cross the chasm.","category":"podcast"},{"type":"blog","content":"\r\nWhen money was easy, everyone looked like a genius and even the worst run companies could put up some numbers. But in early 2023, we are now in the midst of a tech recession if not a general economic recession. \r\n\r\nAs Buffett would say; **the tide has gone out, and now we see who has been swimming naked.**\r\n\r\nA friend of mine was recently evaluating job offers and one was clearly a startup that was \"going bad\". It was clear to me but not to them; I figured I would write a post spelling out some things I look at.\r\n\r\n## Why it's worth talking about the Unhappy Path\r\n\r\nPeople love to talk up about startups on the way up. VCs want to demonstrate they saw the potential early, founders want to recruit employees and customers, media want access to a future unicorn, and nobody wants to punch down on the little guy. Outrage and dramatic disasters get the most attention, but a good second place to that is the positive happy vibes of someone genuinely trying to \"make the world a better place\".\r\n\r\nThere's a certain obsequious boosterism that forms around startups in their early days: early milestones are hit, growth numbers are strong, and some form of up-and-to-the-right chart with no Y axis drives the narrative. A rare few even do end up boasting the most meaningful Y axis of all: revenue.\r\n\r\n[![image](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/211840300-add4c403-e42c-4045-b61d-dc150a6dc7f8.png)](https://www.notboring.co/p/ramping-up)\r\n\r\nPositive stories are also a much easier and cleaner story to tell; as Tolstoy would put it, all rocketship startups are alike, but every fading startup is fading in its own way, for entirely different reasons depending on who you ask.\r\n\r\nWe're here to talk about the other side of the S curve. Many startups-going-bad will handwave away their decline by saying it is the post-hype path, but don't be fooled. We're talking about the inconvenient, unspoken part of Paul Graham's Startup Curve:\r\n\r\n![image](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/211847088-618874f4-81e1-4553-92c5-e3a1e9548f52.png)\r\n\r\nWhen I was newer to the startup game I felt that unease, but couldn't really do anything about it (nor had I seen enough to know). But now I see the impact on the work and careers of people who aren't \"clued in\" enough to know when a once-great company is no longer the same. Then, many years after it's obvious to _everybody else but you_, people openly say things like \"[the company was on trajectory of death](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34323674)\" but that's too late when you've made significant career, tech stack, or other forms of investment choices already.\r\n\r\nSo I figured I'd jot down some things I've seen to form a mental checklist, and perhaps get more ideas from others who have seen the same. \r\n\r\n### Disclaimers\r\n\r\nPlease note that this list is informed by experiences **both from companies I've worked at and companies I've only observed via friends/my network**, so don't derive any signal from my work history. \r\n\r\nAlso, companies can often go through phases where they are down and then get revived again (most famously Apple), so down-for-now is not down-for-ever. \r\n\r\nAlright, with all the necessary disclaimers out of the way:\r\n\r\n## Signs that a Startup is Going Bad\r\n\r\nAlthough you can use this to make tech stack and investing decisions, since this is primarily meant to help startup employees evaluate job offers, we will focus on a clear distinction between externally observable indicators (for joining) and internally observable indicators (for leaving).\r\n\r\n- **External signs**\r\n\t- **People**: Key executives leaving in a short period ([Slack's exodus](https://www.computerworld.com/article/3681938/stewart-butterfield-announces-he-s-stepping-down-as-slack-s-ceo.html) is a high profile extreme of this) or builders of key products \"shipping and dipping\" (a common move to end their time at the startup on a personal high note when they have already determined that it's going bad)\r\n\t- **Community**: Response to product launches and company events on social media, and related chatter. When a startup is on the decline, both the quantitative and qualitative reactions will show diminished excitement compared to past glory. This alone is not a decider, as no company can keep up a hot streak forever, but it's a factor.\r\n\t\t- A simple indicator is frequency of company social media posts. This is an obviously flawed metric, and you can overindex on it, but a startup that last updated 6-12 months ago is a little higher risk of having gone bad than one that hasn't tried at all.\r\n\t- **Founder engagement**: If the founder is active on social media (many aren't) - are they visibly less in love with their own startup? Some distraction is OK, but declining engagement with users, declining self promotion/celebration, declining championing of company mission is a sign.\r\n\t- **Product**: \r\n\t\t- Roadmap: (After basic research) If it's unclear what users want to see next from the startup... maybe they don't _care enough_ to want anything at all.\r\n\t\t- Ambition: when was the last time the startup shipped something that was technically hard/blew minds instead of incremental/low hanging fruit?\r\n\t\t- Polish: is there attention to detail in the UX/DX/Docs/Marketing? Is it getting noticeably worse? That's because the # of people who actually give a shit is declining. Is the startup a [feature factory](https://cutle.fish/blog/12-signs-youre-working-in-a-feature-factory), shipping thing after thing in Beta that doesn't add up to a coherent direction?\r\n\t- _Non-Signals_: \r\n\t\t- **Job openings**: I used to track the length of startup careers pages as a proxy for how well they are doing - a fantastic leading indicator of whether or not a startup just got a major round of funding is a sudden 2x-ing of job openings. Whether or not this had any value in the past, it definitely has no value today because startups are all focused on efficiency and not-hiring can be as good of a sign as hiring; therefore this just a nonsignal.\r\n- **Internal signs**\r\n\t- **Transparency**: as a company goes bad, the number of backpatty events and allhands and announcements and emails will trend down since there is less good news to report. A founder that doesn't do at least a (quarterly if small, annual if large) \"state of the union\" is big red flag.\r\n\t\t- \"Shifting Goalposts Down\" is a leading indicator of declining transparency, where more meaningful indicators that no longer look so good are swapped for less meaningful ones that still look good. Watch for the bait-and-switch - and don't be offended because this happens to us all.\r\n\t- **People**: similar to the \"externally visible\" point above, but this time filtered for \"competent people\" based on your understanding of their work and opportunity set (incompetent people leaving is a nonsignal). This is clearly more subjective but inside a company, you can often have more visibility on whether \"the good people\" in the company are voluntarily leaving.\r\n\t\t- Involuntary departures also offer some signal, but I haven't determined how to distinguish \"business as usual\" firings vs \"startup is going bad\" firings yet.\r\n\t\t- Offset this by also considering the high-opportunity-set people coming inbound (e.g. [Sarah Drasner joining Netlify](https://twitter.com/sarah_edo/status/1123226857325891584), [Steve Yegge joining Sourcegraph](https://about.sourcegraph.com/blog/introducing-steve-yegge), [Malte Ubl et al joining Vercel](https://twitter.com/swyx/status/1470791843222753280?s=20))\r\n\t- **Customers**: Churn going up (aka customers leaving) is a clear negative sign. Beyond that, most startups these days openly share revenue numbers internally, so there should be no surprise there, but there is a semi-quantifiable concept of \"[quality of revenue](https://hbr.org/2013/02/what-high-quality-revenue-look)\" that you only get if you look past the headline number. Be honest about whether your revenue comes from selling a dollar's worth of services for ten cents, and whether the value proposition of new sales is increasingly reliant on unsustainable promises.\r\n\t- **NPS/PMF score**: I'll be the first to say that NPS is very flawed, but a bad or declining NPS is actually a red flag (and its easy to measure so not tracking it is also not good). If you think NPS is overdone, you can use a [PMF score](https://www.satismeter.com/pmf) (popularized by [Rahul Vohra](https://review.firstround.com/how-superhuman-built-an-engine-to-find-product-market-fit)) instead.\r\n\r\n\r\nThanks to Vijay (anon) and [Kareem](https://kokocares.org/) for contributing some ideas in this list!\r\n\r\n## What else?\r\n\r\nI wrote this post to send generic startup advice to a friend evaluating some offers, but I probably missed some obvious ones. Please leave comments on other things that can indicate a startup is on it's way down! The less obvious, the more leading-indicator, the better.","frontmatter":{"slug":"startups-going-bad","description":"All rocketship startups are alike, but every fading startup is fading in its own way.","cover_image":"https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/211847088-618874f4-81e1-4553-92c5-e3a1e9548f52.png"},"title":"Signs that a Startup is Going Bad","description":"All rocketship startups are alike, but every fading startup is fading in its own way. ","category":"note","tags":[],"image":"https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/211847088-618874f4-81e1-4553-92c5-e3a1e9548f52.png","slug":"startups-going-bad","date":"2023-01-11T15:31:20.000Z","readingTime":"6 minutes","ghMetadata":{"issueUrl":"https://github.com/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/461","commentsUrl":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/461/comments","title":"Signs that a Startup is Going Bad","created_at":"2023-01-11T15:31:20Z","updated_at":"2023-02-05T07:43:13Z","reactions":{"url":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/461/reactions","total_count":7,"+1":0,"-1":0,"laugh":0,"hooray":0,"confused":0,"heart":7,"rocket":0,"eyes":0}}},{"title":"The State of the Cloud in 2023 with ChitChatMoney","slug":"chitchatmoney-cloud","tags":["Tech","Finance"],"venues":"ChitChatMoney","date":"2023-01-05T00:00:00.000Z","url":"https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/chit-chat-money/the-state-of-the-cloud-in-8r7cCw5kEeL/","description":"The \"Cloud\" in its simplest form refers to servers with data stored on them and those servers can be accessed over the internet. Many companies like Amazon, Microsoft, and Alphabet lead this fast-growing industry. Listen in as Brett and Ryan ask questions about the cloud and what growth will look like over the next few years. Enjoy the show!","category":"podcast"},{"type":"blog","content":"\r\nOne of my biggest and scariest projects of 2022 was co-organizing the first-ever **DEV | WRITERS | RETREAT** in Miami!\r\n\r\n

\r\n\r\n- I've been an admirer of [the Writing Excuses community](https://writingexcuses.com/) for a while, and how they primarily serve their community as a podcast but every so often bring people together for the [Writing Excuses Retreats](https://writingexcuses.com/tag/writing-excuses-retreat/). \r\n- I'd also been accumulating \"How to Write\" style notes for v2 of [my book](https://learninpublic.org/) ([subscribers only link](https://github.com/sw-yx/cracking-the-coding-career-private/issues/92)) for the past 2 years and realized I needed a push to get it out, and probably that the pressure of organizing a writing retreat would both set a deadline and provide valuable feedback.\r\n\r\n**TL;DR**: This post is a brief recount/review of my experience co-organizing the first **DEV | WRITERS | RETREAT** in Miami, sharing lessons and opening up for others who might be interested in doing the same for their own circles (I'll help you!).\r\n\r\n## The Magic of Writing Retreats\r\n\r\nI noticed that:\r\n\r\n- Developers routinely talk about the importance of writing to their careers, and\r\n- the regular writing world regularly improves their craft through writing retreats...\r\n- ...But developers do not.\r\n\r\nThis seemed like an inefficiency and I realized that if developer writing retreats were ever to be a thing, I would probably be one of the few people to try leading one to produce **proof-of-viability**.\r\n\r\nMy hypothesis was that a writing retreat would provide one or more of these services for attendees:\r\n\r\n- Time to **focus** on writing and writing alone\r\n- Ephemeral, curated, in-person **community** of fellow writers\r\n- **Break routine** (from normal environment, calendar, etc) to do something new\r\n- Consecutive days of **immersion** to start a writing habit\r\n- **Exposure** to new techniques and ideas\r\n- Official **excuse** to take time off work to write (as in regular writing retreats, attendees often sign up for retreats but miss all the workshop and social programming to do their own thing)\r\n\r\n## Challenges\r\n\r\nI had just come off a streak of [manifesting meetups](https://www.swyx.io/manifest-meetups) in NY, SF, and London this year, and was looking to [showcase Miami](https://twitter.com/flybayer/status/1517127617010450432?s=20) to more folks during the cold winter months. But I knew I needed a partner to help with organizing, so my first port of call was to Michelle who pulled off a fantastic [React Miami](https://www.reactmiami.com/) in April. She said yes, we picked a date 3 months out (yes a tight timeline! but we wanted to do it before Thanksgiving) and announced it with a lu.ma waitlist:\r\n\r\n{% twitter https://twitter.com/swyx/status/1556775987450347523 %}\r\n\r\nThe format we landed on was as stated [on the invite](https://lu.ma/dwr):\r\n\r\n```\r\nEach day from Monday to Thursday, we will follow a semi-structured program:\r\n\r\nMorning: Talks, workshops, brainstorms (full schedule coming soon!)\r\n\r\nAfternoon: Free (for focused writing or remote work, up to you!)\r\n\r\nMonday: Goal setting, inspiration, aspiration\r\nTuesday: Topic choice + Formats\r\nWednesday: Editing + Craftsmanship\r\nThursday: Marketing your Work + Tactics\r\n\r\nFriday is graduation day - a mass publish event and an Unconference where we share what we worked on, what we learned, and what's next.\r\n```\r\n\r\nWe figured the morning on/afternoon off format would give people flexibility in the afternoon if they had to work remote, or if they wanted to just write, while providing enough content in the mornings that people could learn and discuss something in a more formal setting. Friday we figured would open up for a freestyling [Unconference](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unconference), which has fallen out of style in recent years but we had seen be successful enough to want to try for our group (Jeremy Howard also [recently held an Unconference in Brisbane](https://medium.com/@angelina.yang/unconference-with-jeremy-howard-852012f52393) for the Fast.ai group if you want to use his format). \r\n\r\nI also guesstimated (correctly) that November would be a period when people would be looking to catch up on their writing and have some education budget leftover.\r\n\r\n### Costs\r\n\r\n**The hardest part was estimating costs.** \r\n\r\n- The nature of all in person events is that the organizers take a massive **financial commitment upfront** with no real knowledge of what attendance will be like (particularly for a first instance of an event)\r\n\t- The commitment is not even fixed - venues are step function changes where if attendance goes beyond a certain amount you have to book a totally different space!\r\n\t- Venue choice was an interesting subproblem in itself as you are optimizing for attractiveness, suitability for writing and workshops (Wifi, A/C, etc), proximity to other interesting locations, and of course costs.\r\n- On top of that, you have to pick pricing upfront, but **pricing will be inversely correlated with ticket sales**, with a totally unknown [price elasticity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_elasticity_of_demand)\r\n\t- To make things more fun, most ticket sales will be last minute, somewhat mitigated by early/late bird pricing\r\n\r\nSo in the interest of helping others do event planning in future, here were the rough budget splits for our 22 person Writing Retreat + 52 person Unconference:\r\n\r\n- venue + food: $14k (hotels come with an annoying minimum food spend per each venue)\r\n- swag + signage + materials + organizer expenses: $2k\r\n\r\nWe were standing by for extra Accessibility and AV expenses if needed but we ended up not needing them. Ticket sales ($500 for the 5-day full retreat, $100 for the 1-day Unconference) + sponsorships from [Hashnode](https://twitter.com/MichelleBakels/status/1575875707355287552?s=20&t=Q7CHDRVow5-YOopUlynqHQ) and [Third Web](https://twitter.com/MichelleBakels/status/1585729051724902400?s=20&t=Q7CHDRVow5-YOopUlynqHQ) (thanks to prior work/contacts) ended up covering most of it and I covered the small shortfall (making a profit was a non-goal).\r\n\r\n> **For the future organizer**: We'll review lessons on costs and venue down below, but in case you're worried, I do believe you can significantly bring costs down from where we had it.\r\n\r\n### Marketing\r\n\r\nOnce we were announced, we were committed and had to do marketing. The venue somewhat [sold itself](https://twitter.com/swyx/status/1570880075771396102), Michelle's and my prior event work built some trust, I managed to personally invite two dream attendees [Philip Kiely](https://twitter.com/philip_kiely/status/1570594913838043136) of [Writing For Software Devs](https://wfsd.com/) and [Monica Lent](https://monicalent.com/) of [Blogging For Devs](https://bloggingfordevs.com/) with their own following, and finally some of our own attendees kindly spread the word for us after booking their tickets. \r\n\r\nPart of our goal was also to help build up the Miami tech scene, so Michelle also did [an interview with Refresh Miami](https://refreshmiami.com/this-november-international-developers-will-learn-to-become-better-writers-and-communicators-at-miami-beach-retreat/) and reached out to local student contacts and tech companies. Ultimately these weren't as successful as we hoped but fortunately our online reach was sufficient for us to not really have to worry about the marketing side of things (though it felt a lot shakier going thru it than it does now typing this).\r\n\r\n> **For the future organizer**: Marketing is important, but know that there are many people who are keen to help you even if they personally can't attend (like me!). Building your way up from organizing smaller meetups can help, but also getting a partner like Michelle with large event (400-800 people) experience can help make up for your lack of organizational expertise (or credibility for that matter).\r\n\r\n### Content\r\n\r\nThe part that was my sole responsibility was the workshop content. I've done 2-4 hour workshops before on technical topics for groups of 20-50, but this would be my first time teaching on _writing_ for 2-4 hours a day for 4 straight days 😱 . \r\n\r\n> **For the future organizer**: If you are reading this looking to organize a writing retreat, this might scare you, but you should know that this is also optional. There are writing retreats that have **no \"content\" whatsoever**, and leading the retreat just means communicating what the common schedule is and facilitating discussions.\r\n\r\nPart of what helped with the impostor syndrome was the framing of this thing as a \"retreat\" rather than a \"workshop\". I would be a draw and an authority people can lean on, but far from the final word on things, and people could work on things their way if they wanted and still be a success.\r\n\r\nStill I wanted to give it my best shot. I set a daily theme, and came up with prereadings and exercises for each day. That's really it (well we also came up with extra topics on AI writing, conference speaking, and hiring virtual assistants! based on attendee interest)\r\n\r\nYou can see all the exercises and reads on @Nutlope's repo: https://github.com/Nutlope/devwriting \r\n\r\n(but unfortunately for you and beneficially for attendees, the exercises were definitely more fun and interactive in person! Probably my best decision was to kick off the retreat with \"flash writing exercises\" and no preamble, and then later on to doing interactive quizzes, which I think everyone liked.)\r\n\r\nThe point of the Unconference was that the attendees would come up with their own topics or go deeper on anything we had done during the week, so I was \"off\" on the Friday though I still made a point to bounce around if people wanted my input. Fortunately there were attendees like Mark who ended up just leading his own impromptu sessions on open source :)\r\n\r\n![image](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/210255659-83acc0cd-c89a-40cc-bcab-073ff81c6a65.png)\r\n\r\n![image](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/210255464-f12d089a-90bd-431e-88c9-b29e7ab418bc.png)\r\n\r\n![image](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/210255507-8120ccac-9c11-45aa-980b-6e4e6020a48f.png)\r\n\r\n## Outcomes\r\n\r\nWe did an optional post retreat survey of attendees and there were a lot of learnings, but I am most proud of this:\r\n\r\n![image](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/210254422-c6020264-89e3-447c-886a-664555e961b3.png)\r\n\r\nThe qualitative responses were also great:\r\n\r\n![image](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/210259927-bf5008de-d106-49a9-bc71-90765fb71842.png)\r\n\r\nI was also happy that some attendees got started with their first blogs ever (on Hashnode!), others pumped out half a dozen in a week, and yet others overcame very specific challenges they were running into at work (too many to shout out, but [peek the #devwriters hashtag on Twitter](https://twitter.com/search?q=%23devwriters&src=typed_query)).\r\n\r\n{% twitter https://twitter.com/BazeleyMikiko/status/1602094453052698625?s=20 %}\r\n\r\nWe also hung out for a bunch of social stuff in and around Miami which is perhaps the intangible part of the retreat :)\r\n\r\n![image](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/210254882-8bdd536c-305d-41ab-aa03-26570f747004.png)\r\n\r\n![image](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/210255278-c158457c-9433-49cd-9352-9ccd7494ff27.png)\r\n\r\n![image](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/210255302-174a2866-b1f1-481a-93f9-b536ebd45e03.png)\r\n\r\n![image](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/210255869-318bc03c-0a67-4997-9d92-43cf7e613d2d.png)\r\n\r\n![image](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/210255206-d4777f1d-63b2-46c0-a075-125379e97450.png)\r\n\r\n![image](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/210255247-69dade12-4d8a-4141-8230-1226378245cf.png)\r\n\r\n![image](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/210255835-958157be-2845-4190-9df5-fc34c49fb41e.png)\r\n\r\nMy colleague Justin kindly volunteered to [record all the sessions](https://twitter.com/Chau_codes/status/1591313179954810880) and so we hope to have some form of video recording up for attendees.\r\n\r\n## Misc Lessons for Future Organizers\r\n\r\nFrom a mix of survey feedback and personal reflection:\r\n\r\n- **Venue choice**: This is the biggest lever for costs. We chose to go big and splashy in Miami Beach which was pretty much the highest cost decision you could make. Wifi and food were good, and people enjoyed the retreat-ey vibe, and the open air cabanas helped with Covid concerns, but there was unforeseen construction and background music that proved to be very distracting during the workshops. I made pains to point out the many quieter areas in the hotel that people could work, but almost no-one took advantage of them and just stayed where we met. I still don't know if it was a mistake, as some folks would definitely have enjoyed this over an indoor environment that they might have at home/work, but I do know that the choice of venue directly led to the $500 ticket price and having to stress out about getting sponsors. If we had just booked a large Airbnb for like $4k instead, that would have completely realigned our economics at the cost of slightly less awesome photos.\r\n- **Communication**: Multiple people called out that I only opened up the Discord and sent the pre-readings the weekend before the retreat. People need time to chat and coordinate and get situated, and I kept things to the last minute out of a combination of busyness and indecision and procrastination. So... next time give it 2-4 weeks (more if you want people to coordinate travel and activities together).\r\n- **Expectations**: Related to the above\r\n\t- people were unsure about whether to have started a blog prior to arriving (something I simply assumed everyone would have or could easily set up)\r\n\t- people were unsure about whether they should have prepared stuff for me to review and give 1:1 feedback\r\n\t- people were unsure about whether or not they should be working on 1 broader piece throughout the week (they were, but I didn't do a good enough job of saying so often enough)\r\n\t- A couple of technical writers wanted to see other forms of writing, whereas I am (evidently) very content-marketing/thought-leadery heavy. I agree these are important but also covering _all_ kinds of developer writing in one week would probably spread time too thin and not allow enough depth; so just set the expectation of what kind of writing will be featured and everyone will be aligned.\r\n\t- let's call this \"Company sponsorship eligibility\" - quote\r\n\t\t> \"we had different expectations e.g vacation vs bootcamp. It would've been helpful to know how serious it was and how much content we were going to deliver. My company may have been interested in sponsoring my trip if I'd described it as more structured.\"\r\n- **Assigned Peer Review Buddies**: People wanted more structure for their afternoon free sessions. \r\n\t> \"I had expected more peer review in the afternoon...a lot of us just kind of wandered off. Maybe more explicit like here are two peer review buddies, sync either face-to-face now or offline to make a review plan.\"\r\n\tI actually avoided this because I feared that a mismatch in a buddy system would cause a poor experience for attendees. I think this could have been mitigated if I asked for a smaller group of people opting-in for afternoon peer reviews and then rotating them around each day.\r\n- **Improving Relevance of Workshop Exercises**:\r\n\t>\t\"\"Start a newsletter\" is not a great CTA as it is way too big of an investment to make on a whim. Starting a newsletter is easy, maintaining it is hard. I think a content calendar exercise would be much more effective.\"\r\n >\r\n\t> \"I would have liked if the titles were more focused on topics that we would actually publish as part of our jobs vs. general interest.\"\r\n >\r\n\t> \"The writing genres that we learned most about seemed very promotional. It might be interesting to have a little more focus on other types of writing we often do, such as technical writing, corporate comms, etc.\"\r\n- **Guest Speakers/Attendees**: I had about 6 people holding their own and talking about their areas of expertise at some point in the week. People LOVED these as they get leverage from being in the community of multiple experts rather than just hearing my crappy voice all the time. Recommend actively looking for these folks and making space for them where possible.\r\n- **Social**: You as the organizer and workshop leader do -NOT- have to stay out each night with the attendees. Everyone will understand if you need to turn in early to prep for the next day or simply recharge.\r\n\r\nOn a personal angle, perhaps the hardest part of organizing was juggling this with my day job. My team and I gained responsibility on two major projects that I hadn't anticipated when embarking on this retreat in June/July, and most importantly it meant that we would be running [our company conference](https://movedata.airbyte.com/) (virtual, not in person) just 3 weeks after the writing retreat, with all the requisite speaker and marketing prework. That was quite stressful and definitely could have been planned better but shit always happens and you just roll with it (it gets easier over time).\r\n\r\nAny other questions I can answer for you? Toss them into the comments below :)\r\n\r\n## But most importantly YOU can host one too!\r\n\r\nAs for the post-retreat wrapup, Michelle and I met once more to go through every item of the survey responses, settle the retreat finances and discuss future plans. The biggest question was \"will we do this again?\" We were both interested but with major changes possibly coming in 2023 we could not commit to a Miami date yet (though I love the play of getting everyone to come someplace warm while it's cold). I'll definitely host one again at some point, perhaps with an online component for broader accessibility.\r\n\r\nI got interest from friends on doing London and Bali versions of Dev Writers Retreat, but I don't think I could host them all - it'd be terrible for the planet, and it'd take a bunch of time away from other things I want to do in 2023 (I'm not aiming to be a writing influencer!). \r\n\r\nStill, writing retreats are awesome. As you can tell, they are challenging to pull off, but it was definitely one of the projects I'm proudest of in 2022 _because_ it stretched me in so many ways, and benefited others as well.\r\n\r\nNow that Dev|Writers|Retreat has demonstrated proof-of-viability, I write all this in the hopes that -YOU- could host one! I've laid out the blueprint for you here, and of course you can tweak and adjust to your needs!","frontmatter":{"slug":"dwr-review","cover_image":"https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/210255247-69dade12-4d8a-4141-8230-1226378245cf.png"},"title":"Organizing Developer Writing Retreats","description":"One of my biggest and scariest projects of 2022 was co-organizing the first-ever **DEV | WRITERS | RETREAT** in Miami! ","category":"note","tags":[],"image":"https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/210255247-69dade12-4d8a-4141-8230-1226378245cf.png","slug":"dwr-review","date":"2023-01-02T01:30:15.000Z","readingTime":"12 minutes","ghMetadata":{"issueUrl":"https://github.com/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/460","commentsUrl":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/460/comments","title":"Organizing Developer Writing Retreats","created_at":"2023-01-02T01:30:15Z","updated_at":"2023-01-08T23:21:27Z","reactions":{"url":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/460/reactions","total_count":0,"+1":0,"-1":0,"laugh":0,"hooray":0,"confused":0,"heart":0,"rocket":0,"eyes":0}}},{"type":"blog","content":"\r\n\r\nAs someone who does a lot of my learning via podcasts, I've been putting up picks lists for 3 years straight (see main [2019 list](https://www.swyx.io/fave-podcasts), then my [2020](https://www.swyx.io/fave-podcasts-2020) and [2021](https://www.swyx.io/fave-podcasts-2021) diffs), so it's time to do year 4 (!)\r\n\r\nAs a reminder, this list is just personal recs, so \"new\" means \"new to me\" rather than \"started this year\".\r\n\r\n## Best New Tech Podcasts in 2022\r\n\r\nMy tech interests this year were very skewed by my deepening interests in Data Engineering and AI.\r\n\r\nFor a full read on data podcasts I surveyed, check out [the Airbyte Staff Picks blogpost](https://airbyte.com/blog/best-data-podcasts-2022). But the main ones I would recommend are:\r\n- **The Analytics Engineering Podcast** ([site](https://roundup.getdbt.com/), [RSS](https://analyticsengineeringroundup.libsyn.com/rss))\r\n- **The Data Engineering Podcast** ([site](https://www.dataengineeringpodcast.com/), [twitter](https://twitter.com/dataengpodcast?lang=en), [RSS](https://www.dataengineeringpodcast.com/feed/mp3/))\r\n- **Drill to Detail with Mark Rittman** ([site](https://rittmananalytics.com/drilltodetail/), [twitter](https://twitter.com/drilltodetail), [RSS](https://rittmananalytics.com/drilltodetail?format=rss))\r\n- **Catalog & Cocktails** ([site](https://listen.casted.us/public/127/Catalog-%26-Cocktails-2fcf8728), [twitter](https://twitter.com/honestnobsdata), [RSS](https://anchor.fm/s/2d1dd760/podcast/rss))\r\n- **Analytics Power Hour** ([site](https://analyticshour.io/), [twitter](https://twitter.com/analyticshour), [RSS](https://analyticshour.libsyn.com/rss))\r\n- **Monday Morning Data Chat** ([youtube](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLIlqnK97FLdtQEad5pi22BefNuaSeBt1e), [RSS](https://anchor.fm/s/4abab810/podcast/rss))\r\n\r\nRead thru the Staff Picks blogpost descriptions for a few extra details on why we recommended them. Going thru the backlogs of these will get you up to speed on the history and development of the data engineering/warehousing field in the past decade.\r\n\r\nAs for AI podcasts, this list is relatively new and unvetted, but:\r\n\r\n- **The Inside View - Michaël Trazzi** ([youtube](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLAfrDcogDYV00XPGWiET68-z5X2RumY7S), [audio](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/the-inside-view-micha%C3%ABl-trazzi-VRuDNA_O0gG/)) - introduced me to [Ethan Caballero](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SV87S38M1J4&list=PLAfrDcogDYV00XPGWiET68-z5X2RumY7S&index=16) and [Connor Leahy](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HAFoIRNiKYE&list=PLAfrDcogDYV00XPGWiET68-z5X2RumY7S&index=2)\r\n- **The Gradient Podcast** ([substack podcast](https://thegradientpub.substack.com/s/podcast)) - I enjoyed the [Melanie Mitchell](https://thegradientpub.substack.com/p/melanie-mitchell-abstraction-and) and [Sara Hooker](https://thegradientpub.substack.com/p/sara-hooker-cohere-for-ai-the-hardware) episodes.\r\n- **Yannic Kilcher** ([youtube](https://m.youtube.com/c/YannicKilcher), [podcast](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/yannic-kilcher-videos-audio-only-yannic-WgDiTteZSFO/)) - usually puts out in depth walkthroughs of major papers quite quickly after they drop\r\n- **Machine Learning Street Talk** ([youtube](https://m.youtube.com/c/MachineLearningStreetTalk), [audio](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/machine-learning-street-talk-mlst-machine-exNG8XK0CFn/)) - very very long interviews with academics, with very long monologues as well. A little hard to follow but hopefully will get easier as you go deeper. [Sara Hooker](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7oJui4eSCoY) again was excellent.\r\n- **Vanishing Gradients** by Hugo Bowne-Anderson ([site](https://vanishinggradients.fireside.fm/episodes), [RSS](https://feeds.fireside.fm/vanishinggradients/rss)) - still early but evaluating\r\n\r\nThe only new webdev focused tech podcast I started enjoying this year was [Compressed.fm](https://www.compressed.fm) with Amy Dutton and James Quick, who seem like a powerful duo complementing each other very well. I was a guest on Episode 64 this year, talking about [Part Time Creators](https://www.compressed.fm/search?keywords=swyx).\r\n\r\n\r\n## Best New Business/Crypto Podcasts in 2022\r\n\r\nBy far the biggest business podcast to explode on the scene in 2022 was David Senra's [Founders podcast](https://founders.simplecast.com/), which was previously a private/paid podcast, but opened up to free this year, alongside a media blitz on [Patrick O'Shaughnessy's podcast](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/invest-like-the/david-senra-passion-pain-EzefyQUhrP_/) and [other big pods](https://www.listennotes.com/search/?q=david%20senra&sort_by_date=0&scope=episode&offset=10&date_filter=any&unique_podcasts=1&language=Any%20language&country=Any%20region&len_min=0&len_max=0). I binged the Graham, Bezos, and Jobs episodes like a basic techbro but perhaps the interesting lessons are from the biographies you'd normally never read, like the Edwin Land and Estee Lauder bios.\r\n\r\nCrypto fell apart this year, and accordingly the mood in all cryptoland was very depressed. The only new Crypto podcast I picked up on was [Crypto Critics' Corner](https://cryptocriticscorner.com/), which had excellent coverage of [the Terra/Luna debacle](https://cryptocriticscorner.com/2022/05/04/episode-71-terra-luna-and-algorithmic-stablecoins/) ([my clip here](https://mixtape.swyx.io/episodes/the-best-explanation-of-the-terra-luna-collapse-jonathan-wu)).\r\n\r\nI don't remember how I discovered the [Invent Like An Owner](https://inventlikeanowner.com/) podcast, but it is an incredible oral history about the early days of Amazon by the people who built it. I made [multiple clips](https://mixtape.swyx.io/search?query=invent+like+an+owner) on Amazon Prime, Amazon's Catalog, and the Bias for Action Culture this year.\r\n\r\nTwo \"tech journalist\" podcasts caught my eye this year - less valuable because they tend to be a trailing indicator, but still enjoyable because they feature knowledgeable people who do some real talk about the headlines - [StrictlyVC](https://www.strictlyvc.com/) ([example I enjoyed](https://overcast.fm/+XiHARMbFw)) and [TechCrunch's Found podcast](https://techcrunch.com/2021/04/08/introducing-found-a-new-podcast-from-techcrunch/).\r\n\r\n## Best New Creator/General Podcasts in 2022\r\n\r\nDickie Bush and Nicolas Cole, the Ship30for30 crew, launched the [Digital Writing Podcast](https://www.digitalwritingpodcast.com/) that shares a lot of their ideas in audio format. The audio quality is sometimes rough (because it is just stripped out from their Zoom sessions with their students) but the content is high quality and motivating even if I don't [always agree](https://mixtape.swyx.io/episodes/the-endless-idea-generator-dickie-bush) with their recommendations.\r\n\r\n[The Levels Health podcast](https://www.levelshealth.com/podcasts) repeatedly comes up in my founder circles as a great brandbuilding podcast. It is a strange mix of health and meta-companybuilding content, which is great for Levels but is a little hard to repeat. I was quite inspired by [the Betsy McLoughlin episode](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/the-swyx-mixtape/the-levels-endorsement-that-85yWKcVlPvY/).\r\n\r\nLast year I called out Jay Acunzo's 3 Clips podcast, and his new project [Unthinkable](https://jayacunzo.com/unthinkable-podcast) has been great as well. I loved [his Savannah Bananas, Anthony Bourdain, and New Rockstars episodes](https://www.listennotes.com/search/?q=unthinkable&sort_by_date=0&scope=episode&offset=0&language=Any%20language&len_min=0).\r\n\r\nLastly I also enjoyed Science communicator Tom Lum and crew's venture into podcasting with [Let's Learn Everything](https://www.letslearneverythingpod.com/), and Pushkin's [Hot Money: Who Rules Porn?](https://www.pushkin.fm/podcasts/hot-money).\r\n\r\n## Misc\r\n\r\nI called out [Stevey's Tech Talk](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZfuUWMTtMcC1DZF6HxJhqsGrBXu8Jzi7) last year, but it has now gone on hiatus as [Steve joined Sourcegraph](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=viNB7v3bgx8&list=PLZfuUWMTtMcC1DZF6HxJhqsGrBXu8Jzi7&index=54&t=291s) (announcing on his youtube a littttle bit too early!). The past year was still great though and I've clipped [a bunch of great stories from him](https://www.listennotes.com/search/?q=steve%20yegge&sort_by_date=0&scope=episode&offset=0&language=Any%20language&len_min=0) with more still to go (particularly keen on his legendary [Platforms Rant](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6GL7gykr1ZE&list=PLZfuUWMTtMcC1DZF6HxJhqsGrBXu8Jzi7&index=27&t=465s)).","frontmatter":{"slug":"fave-podcasts-2022"},"title":"My Fave New Podcasts of 2022","description":"As someone who does a lot of my learning via podcasts, I've been putting up picks lists for 3 years straight (see main 2019 list (https://www.swyx.io/fave-podcasts), then my 2020 (https://www.swyx.io/fave-podcasts-2020) and 2021 (https://www.swyx.io/fave-podcasts-2021) diffs), so it's time to do year 4 (!) ","category":"note","tags":[],"slug":"fave-podcasts-2022","date":"2023-01-01T03:05:09.000Z","readingTime":"4 minutes","ghMetadata":{"issueUrl":"https://github.com/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/459","commentsUrl":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/459/comments","title":"My Fave New Podcasts of 2022","created_at":"2023-01-01T03:05:09Z","updated_at":"2023-01-02T00:52:59Z","reactions":{"url":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/459/reactions","total_count":0,"+1":0,"-1":0,"laugh":0,"hooray":0,"confused":0,"heart":0,"rocket":0,"eyes":0}}},{"type":"blog","content":"\r\nFor those who weren't aware (you would be if you were [subscribed](https://lspace.swyx.io/subscribe?simple=true&next=https://lspace.swyx.io/) on email!), I started a separate AI blog, [L-space Diaries](https://lspace.swyx.io/), this year to 1) try out Substack in anger and 2) create a focused feed on a topic rather than a person (I also started [DX Tips](https://dx.tips/) for devtools/devrel writing, but have been accordingly distracted).\r\n\r\nYesterday my first piece to hit 1st place on HN happened and I figured I would share some stats for those who cared.\r\n\r\n## Stats\r\n\r\nIt was on front page of HN for 15 hours on Dec 28: https://hnrankings.info/34165522/\r\n![image](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/210023934-c4e0d515-3fa8-4d14-9be6-adfe54378449.png)\r\n\r\nI had mild traction on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/swyx/status/1608197747592794112?s=20) and [Mastodon](https://sigmoid.social/@swyx/109593202106904206) as well but nothing to write home about. \r\n\r\n![image](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/210024325-1435b05b-1a5c-4ff5-8073-bb73a26ce6cf.png)\r\n\r\n\r\nIt was also featured on [the Ben's Bites](https://bensbites.beehiiv.com/p/reverse-prompt-engineering) daily recap (currently at 15k subs) today.\r\n\r\nThis brought in 27k views and 150 new subs, vs 7k/62 for a \"normal\" issue.\r\n\r\n![image](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/210024027-98255c18-5611-4b59-acda-75fa7ca3b015.png)\r\n\r\n## Feelings and Behind the Scenes\r\n\r\nThe piece probably took about 12 hours to write in total, from doing the initial work on Notion AI, to writing it up (which involved a complete repro of the work to create the reverse prompt engineering tutorial) to publication and post-publish social support.\r\n\r\nI've been enjoying the AI blogging as it is The Current Thing, but feel quite a bit of impostor syndrome since I have no background for it and the knowledge here is very steep. ","frontmatter":{"subtitle":"Lspace Diaries retrospective","category":"note","cover_image":"https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/210024027-98255c18-5611-4b59-acda-75fa7ca3b015.png","slug":"lspace-2022"},"title":"Ranking #1 on HN in the December Dead Zone","subtitle":"Lspace Diaries retrospective","description":"For those who weren't aware (you would be if you were subscribed (https://lspace.swyx.io/subscribe?simple=true\\&next=https://lspace.swyx.io/) on email!), I started a separate AI blog, L-space Diaries (https://lspace.swyx.io/), this year to 1) try out Substack in anger and 2) create a focused feed on a topic rather than a person (I also started DX Tips (https://dx.tips/) for devtools/devrel writing, but have been accordingly distracted). ","category":"note","tags":[],"image":"https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/210024027-98255c18-5611-4b59-acda-75fa7ca3b015.png","slug":"lspace-2022","date":"2022-12-30T00:50:58.000Z","readingTime":"1 minute","ghMetadata":{"issueUrl":"https://github.com/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/458","commentsUrl":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/458/comments","title":"Ranking #1 on HN in the December Dead Zone","created_at":"2022-12-30T00:50:58Z","updated_at":"2023-01-01T02:47:30Z","reactions":{"url":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/458/reactions","total_count":0,"+1":0,"-1":0,"laugh":0,"hooray":0,"confused":0,"heart":0,"rocket":0,"eyes":0}}},{"title":"On ChatGPT with the Changelog","slug":"changelog-chatgpt","tags":["Tech","AI"],"venues":"Changelog","date":"2022-12-09T00:00:00.000Z","url":"https://changelog.com/podcast/519","description":"To wrap up the year we’re talking about what’s breaking the internet, again. Yes, we’re talking about ChatGPT and we’re joined by our good friend Shawn “swyx” Wang. Between his writings on L-Space Diaries and his AI notes repo on GitHub, we had a lot to cover around the world of AI and what might be coming in 2023.","category":"podcast"},{"type":"blog","content":"\r\n> _Discussions on [Hacker News](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33562204) and [Twitter](https://twitter.com/swyx/status/1591094292646604800)._\r\n\r\nI think often about Steve Jobs' most famous take on life:\r\n\r\n{% youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=POKSiisnY1o %}\r\n\r\n> \"_When you grow up you tend to get told the world is the way it is and you're life is just to live your life inside the world. Try not to bash into the walls too much. Try to have a nice family, have fun, save a little money. That's a very limited life._\r\n>\r\n> _Life can be much broader once you discover one simple fact: **Everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you**._\r\n> \r\n> _and you can change it, you can influence it, you can build your own things that other people can use._\r\n> \r\n> _Once you learn that, you'll never be the same again._\" \r\n\r\nIt's hard to know what to take from that; Steve Jobs was clearly a very smart man, without a lot of empathy for lesser beings. So is he saying \"Everything was made up by people no smarter than _Steve Jobs_\", or does he actually mean it that the average world/company/industry leader really is no smarter than *you*?\r\n\r\nAnd then I take a look at the clown show that has been tech in the past few weeks:\r\n\r\n- Elon [adding, and then removing](https://twitter.com/MKBHD/status/1590382566921543680), a second verified checkmark to replace the one he devalued, something any B2C product expert would know is a terrible idea\r\n- Elon proposing a $20/month price for Twitter Blue, and then [immediately dropping to $8](https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1587312517679878144) at the first celebrity pushback, something any pricing expert would know is a terrible idea\r\n- Elon (or his EA?) personally reinterviewing engineers at Twitter and telling them to [print out code](https://twitter.com/caseynewton/status/1586127052767318016) and then changing his mind, something any engineering manager would know is a terrible idea\r\n- Zuck demoing [Legs in Horizon VR that were faked](https://futurism.com/the-byte/zuckerberg-metaverse-legs-staged), something any marketing manger would know is a terrible idea\r\n- Zuck spending [$4b/quarter on the Metaverse](https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=A-bIpJdaCnM&t=2408) entirely unproven, something any lean startup VC would know is a terrible idea\r\n- SBF going from one of the richest people on earth to filling [Chapter 11 Bankruptcy](https://twitter.com/ftx_official/status/1591071832823959552?s=46&t=AcEz5bSwzri_YEa7602_AA) in 1 week, and rediscovering the age old lesson on liquidity: \"[when it rains, it pours](https://twitter.com/SBF_FTX/status/1590709174572572675)\" when it comes to financial stress correlations, something any bank manager or regulator learns in kindergarten\r\n\r\nEven the Collison brothers, the philosopher kings of the Internet, made \"[errors of judgment](https://stripe.com/en-au/newsroom/news/ceo-patrick-collisons-email-to-stripe-employees)\" about the slowdown _and_ lost control of operating costs and so had to lay off 14% of staff, just like [Tobi from Shopify](https://news.shopify.com/changes-to-shopifys-team). Stripe also fumbled their chances of pulling off one of the largest IPOs of all time by waiting too long, surely [disillusioning](https://twitter.com/anothercohen/status/1588936830757789697) an army of early employees.\r\n\r\nHindsight is 20-20, but many of these were probably avoidable mistakes. And I ack that you do have to be more risk-taking than the average bear to be as successful as these people in the first place. \r\n\r\n> Aside: More specifically, to be a billionaire you would probably have to find things that \"any X would know\" that are not true, and do something about it ([Thiel's most famous, but retired, interview question](https://fs.blog/the-single-best-interview-question-you-can-ask/)). Yet it is [ultracrepidarian](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/ultracrepidarian) hubris to expect that success in one domain extends to all others.\r\n\r\nBut my overwhelming lesson from the past few weeks is that even these heroes of tech are just mortals as well who make very very dumb* mistakes. \r\n\r\nAnd if they can make those mistakes, so can you.\r\n\r\n> PS: If you are starting something new, you also have the benefit of a lot of recently freed-up Coinbase/Twitter/Shopify/Stripe/Meta employees with a lot of severance and a chip on their shoulder. There's [$3b in VC waiting for dev startups](https://dx.tips/build-for-builders), so this honestly is a fantastic time to try to make mistakes. [Hit us up!](https://github.com/sw-yx/devtools-angels)\r\n\r\n---\r\n\r\n*Not \"dumb\" like \"oh they took a risk and it didn't work out\", \"dumb\" like \"yeah that had no chance of working, like, at all\".","frontmatter":{"slug":"no-smarter","category":"essay","description":"This post was written as a reflection at the first Dev Writers Retreat. It's been really weird doing this in the PermaParty city while the world seemingly falls apart outside. Here's my attempt to make sense of it."},"title":"The World Is Run By People No Smarter Than You","description":"This post was written as a reflection at the first Dev Writers Retreat. It's been really weird doing this in the PermaParty city while the world seemingly falls apart outside. Here's my attempt to make sense of it. ","category":"essay","tags":[],"slug":"no-smarter","date":"2022-11-11T15:38:07.000Z","readingTime":"3 minutes","ghMetadata":{"issueUrl":"https://github.com/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/457","commentsUrl":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/457/comments","title":"The World Is Run By People No Smarter Than You","created_at":"2022-11-11T15:38:07Z","updated_at":"2023-01-29T07:54:16Z","reactions":{"url":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/457/reactions","total_count":15,"+1":0,"-1":0,"laugh":0,"hooray":0,"confused":0,"heart":15,"rocket":0,"eyes":0}}},{"type":"blog","content":"\r\nWe use Docusaurus at work, and while it shipped v2 this year it still has ([as of v2.3](https://github.com/facebook/docusaurus/issues/2961)) not shipped with any Tailwind support at all. Googled and found [this post](https://dev.to/sajclarke_62/using-tailwindcss-v3-in-docusaurus-in-5-steps-5c26) which was almost everything I needed, but required some stuff in the comments for it to work. \r\n\r\nHere are the requirements I have, that differed from that blogpost:\r\n\r\n- do not activate Tailwind's CSS Reset, [Preflight](https://tailwindcss.com/docs/preflight#disabling-preflight), because it wipes out the rest of Docusuarus' styles\r\n- support Docusaurus' dark mode\r\n\r\njust writing down my version that affirmatively worked for me.\r\n\r\n## Step 1 - install stuff\r\n\r\n```bash\r\n# in the docusarus directory\r\nyarn add tailwindcss postcss autoprefixer\r\ntouch tailwind.config.js # intentionally empty; we'll fill in our own in a bit\r\n```\r\n\r\n## Step 2 - Setup tailwind config and css files\r\n\r\n```js\r\n// tailwind.config.js\r\n/** @type {import('tailwindcss').Config} */\r\nmodule.exports = {\r\n corePlugins: {\r\n preflight: false, // disable Tailwind's reset\r\n },\r\n content: [\"./src/**/*.{js,jsx,ts,tsx}\", \"../docs/**/*.mdx\"], // my markdown stuff is in ../docs, not /src\r\n darkMode: ['class', '[data-theme=\"dark\"]'], // hooks into docusaurus' dark mode settigns\r\n theme: {\r\n extend: {},\r\n },\r\n plugins: [],\r\n}\r\n```\r\n\r\nand also the `@tailwind` includes:\r\n\r\n```css\r\n/* https://dev.to/sajclarke_62/using-tailwindcss-v3-in-docusaurus-in-5-steps-5c26 */\r\n@tailwind base;\r\n@tailwind components;\r\n@tailwind utilities;\r\n\r\n// ...\r\n```\r\n\r\n## Step 3 - Custom docusaurus plugin\r\n\r\nthis part is exactly as per the blogpost:\r\n\r\n```js\r\n// ...\r\n plugins: [\r\n // ....\r\n async function myPlugin(context, options) {\r\n return {\r\n name: \"docusaurus-tailwindcss\",\r\n configurePostCss(postcssOptions) {\r\n // Appends TailwindCSS and AutoPrefixer.\r\n postcssOptions.plugins.push(require(\"tailwindcss\"));\r\n postcssOptions.plugins.push(require(\"autoprefixer\"));\r\n return postcssOptions;\r\n },\r\n };\r\n },\r\n ],\r\n```\r\n\r\nand you are done.\r\n\r\nto test, convert `/docs/whatever.md` to `/docs/whatever.mdx` and insert a React element or component (did you know you can define React components inline in MDX? its weird af, but it works...)\r\n\r\n```markdown\r\nexport function Section() {\r\n return

this is tailwind!

\r\n}\r\n\r\n# Welcome to Docs\r\n\r\nthis works in light and dark mode\r\n\r\n

\r\n\r\nwhoooo it works\r\n```\r\n\r\n## Caveats\r\n\r\nBecause preflight is off, some assumptions break:\r\n\r\n- [add `border-solid` for borders](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/70890444/cant-figure-out-why-my-tailwind-borders-arent-showing) because preflight is off","frontmatter":{"category":"tutorial","slug":"tailwind-docusaurus-2022"},"title":"How to add Tailwind 3 to Docusaurus 2 in 2022","description":"We use Docusaurus at work, and while it shipped v2 this year it still has ( as of v2.3 (https://github.com/facebook/docusaurus/issues/2961)) not shipped with any Tailwind support at all. Googled and found this post (https://dev.to/sajclarke_62/using-tailwindcss-v3-in-docusaurus-in-5-steps-5c26) which was almost everything I needed, but required some stuff in the comments for it to work. ","category":"tutorial","tags":[],"slug":"tailwind-docusaurus-2022","date":"2022-11-01T02:35:34.000Z","readingTime":"3 minutes","ghMetadata":{"issueUrl":"https://github.com/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/456","commentsUrl":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/456/comments","title":"How to add Tailwind 3 to Docusaurus 2 in 2022","created_at":"2022-11-01T02:35:34Z","updated_at":"2023-01-29T07:54:51Z","reactions":{"url":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/456/reactions","total_count":7,"+1":0,"-1":0,"laugh":0,"hooray":0,"confused":0,"heart":7,"rocket":0,"eyes":0}}},{"type":"blog","content":"\r\n> **Why do you want to run multiple scripts?** Multiple reasons, for example you want to run a backend server process and a frontend app process, and kick them off with one command. You can't write `npm start frontend && npm start backend` because `&&` requires the first process to terminate first. (I think) You also don't want to write `npm start frontend & npm start backend` because if one process ends for whatever reason you want the other to end as well (makes it easier to blindly Ctrl+C and rerun the same command when you run into trouble).\r\n\r\nThere are two leaders in the parallel npm scripts game: `concurrently` and `npm-run-all`:\r\n\r\nhttps://npmcharts.com/compare/concurrently,npm-run-all?interval=30\r\n\r\n![image](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/195207504-3943fb5f-a98c-4664-b469-16cb44e10bba.png)\r\n\r\nBoth have very similar features but we will just focus on `concurrently` as it is sliiiightly more flexible and nicely documented (this is not a strong opinion).\r\n\r\n## Step 1 - Install the thing\r\n\r\nDo I really need to explain?\r\n\r\n```bash\r\nnpm i -D concurrently\r\n```\r\n\r\n## Step 2 - Setup Concurrently\r\n\r\nAssuming you have two scripts in package.json you want to run concurrently:\r\n\r\n```js\r\n\t\"scripts\": {\r\n\t\t\"dev\": \"vite dev\",\r\n\t\t\"story:dev\": \"histoire dev\",\r\n\t\t\"start\": \"concurrently \\\"npm run dev\\\" \\\"npm run story:dev\\\"\",\r\n\t}\r\n```\r\n\r\nNow you can start them with `npm start`!\r\n\r\n![image](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/195208086-b3a14445-534b-4a62-b63a-4049ada24b13.png)\r\n\r\nBut wait, this log output is a bit hard to read. Can we do better?\r\n\r\nThis is the beautiful third step.\r\n\r\n## Step 3 - Name and Color\r\n\r\n\r\n```js\r\n\t\"scripts\": {\r\n\t\t// omitted...\r\n\t\t\"start\": \"concurrently --names \\\"APP,HISTOIRE\\\" -c \\\"bgBlue.bold,bgMagenta.bold\\\" \\\"npm run dev\\\" \\\"npm run story:dev\\\"\",\r\n\t}\r\n```\r\n\r\n![image](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/195208385-8b741292-7303-4e8d-b927-b3ee20a2d1a4.png)\r\n\r\nNow you can tell at a glance where logs are coming from!","frontmatter":{"category":"tutorial","slug":"parallel-npm-scripts","description":"Just a quick tutorial and explanation of how best to set up concurrently with named and colored log output since I had to look it up today."},"title":"The Absolute Best Way to Run Multiple npm Scripts in Parallel in 2022","description":"Just a quick tutorial and explanation of how best to set up concurrently with named and colored log output since I had to look it up today. ","category":"tutorial","tags":[],"slug":"parallel-npm-scripts","date":"2022-10-11T22:18:03.000Z","readingTime":"2 minutes","ghMetadata":{"issueUrl":"https://github.com/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/454","commentsUrl":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/454/comments","title":"The Absolute Best Way to Run Multiple npm Scripts in Parallel in 2022","created_at":"2022-10-11T22:18:03Z","updated_at":"2023-01-29T07:54:41Z","reactions":{"url":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/454/reactions","total_count":6,"+1":0,"-1":0,"laugh":0,"hooray":0,"confused":0,"heart":5,"rocket":1,"eyes":0}}},{"title":"Broad Swyx Interview with Infoshare Poland","slug":"infoshare-poland","tags":["Tech"],"venues":"Infoshare","date":"2022-09-28T00:00:00.000Z","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aZnzzMbA7Vg&feature=emb_title","description":"A broad overview of everything I've been working on, including Temporal and Airbyte, Smart Clients vs Smart Servers, The Coding_Career Book, The Operating System of You, React Ecosystem, the case for Techno-Optimism in the face of cynicism.","category":"podcast"},{"title":"Running a $200k side hustle with Stripe Checkout","slug":"stripe-dev-checkout-200k","categories":["Creators","Stripe","CodingCareer"],"description":"In this live session, Shawn Wang joins Paul Asjes and Cecil Phillip to chat about how he uses Stripe Checkout in this side projects. We’ll dive into the integrations and discuss some of the decisions he had to make when it comes to accepting pay.","instances":[{"venue":"Stripe Dev YouTube","date":"2022-09-28","video":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-UxzCtpB74"}],"category":"talk","date":"2022-09-28T00:00:00.000Z"},{"type":"blog","content":"\r\n## Slides \r\n\r\nhttps://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1pvBf4Kw8CrXFef4jcfExpaRds5GuTe6FOnqk5g6vGmk/edit?usp=sharing\r\n\r\n## Photos\r\n\r\n![image](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/191205745-e7bc8f31-2fe3-42e6-99a4-69fa8e59faef.png)\r\n\r\n![image](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/191205853-0c3a8b94-9ddd-4923-8589-0459ca23f385.png)\r\n\r\n![image](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/191205896-d510cf2c-f18a-4cbc-bdf8-fcce1640454f.png)\r\n\r\n![image](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/191205930-161bac60-352e-4860-9f39-709044e6a856.png)\r\n\r\n![image](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/191205951-1cb4018b-c51f-45a5-80b0-d8536f4c240d.png)\r\n\r\n![image](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/191205967-d96a45f0-b5ba-4b1d-a9b8-cc6984975ed4.png)\r\n\r\n![image](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/193697817-25a25e5b-b93a-4cc1-bedf-9542235b4309.png)\r\n\r\n![image](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/193697861-b4140a53-882e-4718-8ce0-1415c492f422.png)\r\n\r\n\r\n## Talk Plan\r\n\r\n- opening\r\n\t- returning to the mainframe\r\n\t- personal computer\r\n\t- going back to the mainframe\r\n- personal story 1\r\n\t- lets say you are a fullstack developer\r\n\t- frontend and backend on laptop\r\n\t- iteration speed fast\r\n\t- 1.0 then you get serverless religion\r\n\t\t- frontend on laptop, backend on cloud\r\n\t\t- redeploy speed slow\r\n\t- 1.1 create a local mock server - netlify-lambda\r\n\t\t- ping the mock server\r\n\t\t- CORS - proxy\r\n\t\t- bugs:\r\n\t\t\t- netlify identity\r\n\t\t\t- netlify routing\r\n\t\t\t- env variables\r\n\t- 1.2 create a bigger mock server - netlify dev\r\n\t\t- compile netlify routing engine to wasm\r\n\t\t- pull down the env variables\r\n\t\t- more bugs\r\n\t\t\t- netlify forms\r\n\t\t\t- netlify build\r\n- personal story 2\r\n\t- aws - lambda and database\r\n\t- local mock cli\r\n\t- very slow deploy\r\n\t- trigger only one at a time, and super slow\r\n\t- so we built datastore - full clone\r\n\t- redeploy was super slow <- look up my modernwebpodcast livestream? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VA3TFymZlW4\r\n\t- more broadly\r\n\t\t- database replication\r\n\t\t- faking, seeding\r\n\t\t- stripping out PII\r\n- personal story 3 - temporal\r\n\t- docker - works on machine, ship machine\r\n\t- dont run docker compose in production\r\n\t- ok... k8s?\r\n\t- cant run k8s on the laptop\r\n\t- wrong version of go, node, need to set up mTLS certs, etc\r\n\t- saas service providers\r\n- summary\r\n\t- if the browser reduced operating systems to \"a poorly debugged set of device drivers\", then **the cloud is reducing the dev machine to a poorly maintained set of environment mocks**.\r\n\t- sisiphyean battle\r\n\t- one clap if you ever worked on a system too big for one machine\r\n\t- two clap if you ever had something work in dev and fail in prod\r\n\t- three claps if you ever started a project and realized you had the wrong environment\r\n\t- four claps if you ever wrote this kind of code - if localhost then x, then y\r\n- end of story time\r\n- start of endoflocalhost pitch\r\n- play clip of sam lambert \r\n- tweeted this out and got a lot of responses\r\n\t- i want to code on a plane\r\n\t- cold dead hands\r\n- Reason 1 - validation by others\r\n\t- future is here, just not evenly distributed - list bigcos that have moved to remote dev\r\n\t- guillermo ipad photo https://twitter.com/rauchg/status/1274766898530357249\r\n\t- ok it works for bigcos but what about me\r\n- Reason 2 - ephemeral, powerful dev machines in the cloud\r\n\t- power: resources, saas services\r\n\t- bootstrapping: new machine\r\n\t- control: locking down what devs do\r\n\t- one solution that has all 3\r\n\t- access - 2k machine for AI SOTA. get it down to 200 chromebook.\r\n- Reason 3 - cloud eating outer loop vs inner loop\r\n\t- deploy previews - netlify, vercel, heroku - useful?\r\n\t- CI/CD - done deal (jenkins, circleci)\r\n\t- latency: have you heard of the speed of light?\r\n\t\t- outlook -> gmail\r\n\t\t- game streaming, browser streaming\r\n\t\t- movies/TV -> netflix\r\n\t\t- adobe -> figma \r\n\t\t- sourcegraph, copilot\r\n\t- independence\r\n\t\t- food, water, electricity\r\n\t- personal preferences\r\n\t\t- having local dev but linking cloud dev\r\n- Solutions that are out there\r\n\t- dont forget ivan's codeanywhere\r\n\t- entirely in browser\r\n\t- remote server, local editor\r\n\t- branching environments\r\n- Still not good enough\r\n\t- latency of netlify drop, cli\r\n\t- branching is still quite new\r\n\t- edge compute as the last mile?\r\n\t- language server protocol shows you can have client diversity\r\n\t\t- environment branching protocol???\r\n- warnings\r\n\t- \r\n\t- new privacy and security concerns\r\n- Closing arguments\r\n\t- not selling you anything\r\n\t- git -> branches are throwaway\r\n\t- branching for code vs branching for environments\r\n\t- commoditization of technology\r\n\t\t- from pets to cattle\r\n\t- closing meme","frontmatter":{"slug":"end-of-localhost-infobip","description":"I returned to Zadar!","category":"note"},"title":"Talk Notes for The End of Localhost (Infobip Shift 2022)","description":"I returned to Zadar! ","category":"note","tags":[],"slug":"end-of-localhost-infobip","date":"2022-09-19T12:13:40.000Z","readingTime":"3 minutes","ghMetadata":{"issueUrl":"https://github.com/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/452","commentsUrl":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/452/comments","title":"Talk Notes for The End of Localhost (Infobip Shift 2022)","created_at":"2022-09-19T12:13:40Z","updated_at":"2022-10-03T22:39:28Z","reactions":{"url":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/452/reactions","total_count":0,"+1":0,"-1":0,"laugh":0,"hooray":0,"confused":0,"heart":0,"rocket":0,"eyes":0}}},{"type":"blog","content":"\r\nI started messing with Stable Diffusion on Sept 3rd. I published [my first post on it](https://lspace.swyx.io/p/multiverse-not-metaverse) yesterday, Sept 17. In that time I've had nice [responses from Emad Mostaque](https://twitter.com/EMostaque/status/1571393537865916417) (founder of Stability AI), [Simon Willison](https://twitter.com/simonw/status/1571242572009590784) (cofounder of Django, and prolific SD blogger), and gotten [new follows](https://twitter.com/swyxio/status/1571452836092809216) from Emad, hardmaru (of Google Brain) and Cristobal Valenzuela (cofounder of Runway ML). At time of writing 14 hours after posting, the post has had 3k views, while the tweet had 49k, on a Saturday evening (typically weekends have about half the engagement of weekdays).\r\n\r\n![image](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/190900854-67669e49-132c-4a1c-a8cf-4d8dd8a4a6a8.png)\r\n![image](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/190901094-e08ff393-a0d3-44ec-991e-920ddbfb662d.png)\r\n\r\nA very good start for a complete noob to the AI space like me.\r\n\r\nOn my personal blog, I wanted to break down how some of this works as strategies for breaking the cold start problem in content creation as a new entrant to any field, and getting the leaders of that field to at least read your writing and know your name.\r\n\r\nOf course, I'm a known writer and have 45k twitter followers, so this advice/breakdown isn't 100% relatable to total newcomers. But I still think there are general lessons I can offer you.\r\n\r\n## Background\r\n\r\nOn Sept 3rd I expressed my personal FOMO on the Stable Diffusion LLM trend of the month, and `@patio11` [encouraged me](https://twitter.com/patio11/status/1565978850823049216) to share notes (we've never talked and don't have any particularly strong relationship, although of course I owe a lot of my thinking to his writing). Per my modus operandi of [Open Source Knowledge](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XoATf7xGoUY), I started [my notes repo](https://github.com/sw-yx/prompt-eng/) that day, but felt so behind the ball I didn't really publicize it, preferring instead to quietly collect datapoints and fill in very basic gaps in my knowledge (for example, everyone says CFG is one of the most important parameters in Stable Diffusion, but nobody explains that the param is actually called `--scale` (?!) - beyond frustrating).\r\n\r\nI spent the next two weeks mucking around with the program itself, and reading/organizing the available literature, which was harder than usual because it is also a moving, decentralized target. The more I read, the more I learned what I didn't know, which increased my impostor syndrome and prevented me from making further public statements.\r\n\r\nThe breakthrough came from my usual [Following the Graph](https://twitter.com/swyx/status/1216519772210388992) method of studying the people behind the projects, and finding out that Emad [used to run a hedge fund](https://www.linkedin.com/in/emostaque/details/experience/) 5 years ago, so was a recent finance to tech crossover like me. This was suddenly extremely relatable, but also shocking - how does a guy with no ML PhD (yes he did do a CS Masters' at Oxford), no years of research, suddenly vault to the seeming top of the field in ~2 years? \r\n\r\nI dug in deeper, and that was to be my first piece - just a straightforward biographical dive into Emad.\r\n\r\nI almost published it.\r\n\r\n![image](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/190900417-974a3997-1b04-4231-bcb4-043b7839f756.png)\r\n\r\n(you can [read it here](https://lspace.swyx.io/p/3060cbd8-2c17-4fbf-a41e-3a9b23f5fe18) if you're curious)\r\n\r\nI don't have a particular reason why I didn't publish it, apart from it was late at night and I usually like to publish in the US morning, so I put it off and then got busy the next day.\r\n\r\nBut then on Saturday (yesterday) I was listening to [Simon on the Changelog podcast](https://changelog.com/podcast/506) talk about his thesis of prompt engineering as spellcasting, and that led me to think about my opposite/alternative view of prompts as search/prompts as portals. \r\n\r\nMy view came about from watching [Pieter Levels](https://twitter.com/levelsio/status/1567907178886959108) find a house he loved, and then in trying to 3D model the house, try to get a different angle on the same house. This was an eerie, out of body experience - for the first time, Stable Diffusion wasn't randomly generated 2D art - for the first time, we weren't trying to get an image of any house, we were trying to get an image of _this_ house. As far as _this house_ knows, it is real, and exists, and we are just peering into it from another universe. \r\n\r\nHence, the multiversal theory. I knew this was more original and insightful than the Emad bio, so I threw away that draft and started the new piece.\r\n\r\nI took Saturday afternoon to write it up (waiting between flights, but that's another story). Picked Substack purely because I felt this topic deserved a different space than my regular blog or dxtips, and had seen the inbuilt network effects work very well for some other writers.\r\n\r\nThen I [published it](https://twitter.com/swyx/status/1571237984988430336), quote tweeted @patio11's original tweet, added a screenshot, tagged Pieter, and also DM'ed it to Simon mentioning it was inspired by his podcast appearance. And left for my flight (12 hours, no internet, I'm sitting in the business lounge on layover right now).\r\n\r\nDuring those 12 hours, it all happened.\r\n\r\n![image](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/190900772-d85a5a01-f9f9-4fdd-96fd-806b1352f1f0.png)\r\n\r\n![image](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/190900758-628365e9-f832-41dc-86da-596058636281.png)\r\n\r\n![image](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/190901660-3dec1921-bde3-43ba-8274-10294dd2520f.png)\r\n\r\n\r\nI have no particular plans for what to do with this, but just wanted to share the blow by blow for people who follow me looking to make their start in whatever field they are in.\r\n\r\n## Tactical Breakdown\r\n\r\nHere is an analysis of what worked, in no particular order:\r\n\r\n- Responding to a `@patio11` prompt: a type of [Pick Up What They Put Down](https://www.swyx.io/puwtpd). He saw and liked my post, but it was not good enough for him to RT.\r\n- Tagging `@levelsio` on my tweet because I feature him in the post: I speak of his work favorably and he follows me already, and he often RTs folks readily, so that got some good distribution right off the bat\r\n - because pieter had already been doing a bunch of work in the space, people who followed him then saw my tweet, and I believe that's probably how `hardmaru`, `balajis`, and Emad saw my tweet and followed me from there.\r\n- DMing the tweet to Simon: again a simple strategy of PUWTPD, this time earning a quote tweet - i had guessed that he'd like the analogy being sort of a liberal artsy techie.\r\n- Embedding screenshot of post in the tweet: necessary because the QT of the patio11 tweet would mean losing the post unfurl; however [Screenshot Essays](https://twitter.com/screenshotessay) are a wellknown engagement format because Twitter favors images as engagement. My above the fold intro demonstrated I had done my homework, and left the last line as a teaser to entice the reader to read the rest.\r\n\r\nThere you go. That's all I know about getting senpai to notice you. Hope it helps.","frontmatter":{"slug":"notice-me","category":"essay","cover_image":"https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/190900854-67669e49-132c-4a1c-a8cf-4d8dd8a4a6a8.png","description":"How to break the cold start problem in content creation as a new entrant to any field, and getting the leaders of that field to at least read your writing and know your name."},"title":"Getting Senpai To Notice You","description":"How to break the cold start problem in content creation as a new entrant to any field, and getting the leaders of that field to at least read your writing and know your name. ","category":"essay","tags":[],"image":"https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/190900854-67669e49-132c-4a1c-a8cf-4d8dd8a4a6a8.png","slug":"notice-me","date":"2022-09-18T12:05:24.000Z","readingTime":"5 minutes","ghMetadata":{"issueUrl":"https://github.com/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/451","commentsUrl":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/451/comments","title":"Getting Senpai To Notice You","created_at":"2022-09-18T12:05:24Z","updated_at":"2023-01-29T07:55:24Z","reactions":{"url":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/451/reactions","total_count":4,"+1":1,"-1":0,"laugh":0,"hooray":0,"confused":0,"heart":2,"rocket":0,"eyes":1}}},{"type":"blog","content":"\r\n\r\nI was interviewed for Livecycle's DevX interview series [here](https://livecycle.io/blogs/devx-project-swyx/). Reproducing for posterity.\r\n\r\n---\r\n\r\nTL;DR Highlights:\r\n\r\n- Why swyx doesn’t like the term “self-taught”\r\n- Tips for a great engineering culture\r\n- Swyx’s ideal stack\r\n- An epic fail he’s seen, and what we can learn from it\r\n- The difference between internal and external developer experience, and how to improve both\r\n- Why swyx is a fan of monorepos\r\n- The risks and opportunities facing FE devs\r\n- How remote dev teams can work better together\r\n\r\n\r\n## When did you decide to become a developer?\r\n\r\nI made the decision when I saw that software is eating the world. I was 30 years old and I was a public markets, hedge fund trader. saw that there were a lot of tech companies that were choosing to remain private and the only IPO when they were done growing essentially. So I realized that if I wanted to learn how to create value and continue to make money, I would probably have more fun and make more money in startups. So I decided to learn to code.\r\n\r\nI did a bootcamp, and then I did, 6 months of online learning. I don’t like the expression “self-taught” though, because that diminishes the work of all the people who tried to teach you for free.\r\n\r\n## What are the key ingredients to a really good engineering culture?\r\n\r\nThe first thing that comes to mind is #9 on Amazon’s list of [16 leadership principles](https://www.amazon.jobs/en/principles) - “a bias for action”.\r\n\r\nI feel like that’s important in this context, because a lot of things don’t get done if you don’t take proactive ownership over them. So this is really important for a healthy, engineering culture.\r\n\r\n A good documentation or design doc culture is pretty important as well. In other words, before you implement something, you should obviously try to design it and think through the propositions and agree on the high-level stuff with everybody. But a good culture takes this one step further. It means that everybody actually reads the doc when they receive it. And that’s quite rare. So a good documentation culture means good writing and also good reading so you catch design issues and mismatched expectations sooner rather than later. \r\n\r\nFinally, when you ship stuff and you’re maintaining things in production, remember that things will always break. So having a blameless post-mortem culture is important too.\r\n\r\n## Let’s say you’re building something from scratch. What does your ideal stack look like?\r\n\r\nIt depends on what I’m building. For most things, I would probably go with some kind of backend as a service. Right now my favorite is [Supabase](https://supabase.com/) which is an open source version of Firebase from Google, and then you know, front-end stack, I’ll probably choose either react or Svelte. depending on the kind of app I’m building. If it’s more webby than Svelte, if it’s more mobile cross-platform then React. , And then if I need to take over my own, infrastructure, I might explore other things CDK or Pulumi. I also started to really dive into data pipelines because I feel like that is a form of comparative advantage.\r\n\r\nSo right now the paradigm that makes the most sense to me is either Apache Airflow or Dexter as a general orchestration layer to do, pipeline work, to kick off jobs and modify databases. I don’t even need a data warehouse, especially for smaller projects, but I still need a pipeline. And if I need the operational equivalent of a pipeline, then I’d use Temporal because I worked there.\r\n\r\n## Tell us about an epic engineering fail you’ve experienced in your career. What did you learn from it?\r\n\r\nHere’s a fail that wasn’t mine, but it was a team next to me that I felt like could have done things better. \r\n\r\nWhenever we rolled out a version of Temporal, we ran a very extensive series of tests. Some of them taking two days to finish. So we thought that we had a really good understanding of how to test these things. Now, the whole premise of offering a managed service to our customers is that we auto-upgrade the service for them, and they don’t need to know. And because we test each release so extensively, we had a lot of confidence in our tests. So in one instance, we roll out our tests. Then we roll out a new version, and then things start breaking in production because essentially there was a bug that only showed up at real scale. Meaning our customers’ scale, not our test scale. \r\n\r\nIn this case, it was a deadlock. Meaning that no progress can be made no matter how many resources you throw at it. Ultimately, it resulted in one of our customers having an outage for eight hours and eventually leaving us. And because we didn’t give them any advanced warning, it felt like there was a mismatch of control there. \r\n\r\nUltimately, what we could have done better was communicate to our customers that we are doing a managed upgrade. We could have picked a time when it’s not the middle of the day at a time when they’re doing their most traffic. We could have done a weekend upgrade to try and minimize the blast radius and we could have done some kind of rolling upgrade instead of trying to upgrade the whole thing at once. That may have allowed us to test more extensively, but that’s easier said than done since you’re really always testing only the last thing that went wrong. So there’s only so much you can do there.\r\n\r\n## How important is “Developer Experience”? Do you see this as a trend that will evolve into dedicated teams/functions for mainstream tech companies?\r\n\r\nI make a distinction between internal DevX and external DevX. Internal DevX is improving the developer productivity of engineers within your company. And external developer experience is promoting your tools to engineers at other companies, and eventually, improving their productivity as well. \r\n\r\nBoth of them require deep empathy with the customer. (I actually have a, have a longer explanation of this on the infraeng.dev site - feel free to [check it out](https://infraeng.dev/swyx/))\r\n\r\nInternal developer experience for developer productivity is simple math. If you think that there is room to improve your developer productivity by one percent every quarter, and you have a team of 50 engineers, then it actually makes mathematical sense to hire, at least one or two, engineers whose job is not to work on the product, but just to make everyone else more productive.\r\n\r\nThe simplest mental model that I found comes from the Netflix developer productivity team. They have 3 stages: ‘zero to dev’, ‘dev to prod’, and then ‘prod to dev’.\r\n\r\nZero to dev is, scaffolding and onboarding and creating new environments. Dev to prod is CI/CD, which is Spinnaker. And then Prod to dev is telemetry or observability, and that is Atlas. That’s one version. Another version would be the Accelerate metrics from Nicole Forsgren. There are specific metrics behind a rollout and specific ways you can measure and improve them. From there, you can try to figure out which part of the process is lacking right now? And once you figure that part of it out, you can work on those pieces and try to improve them. \r\n\r\nI think that these are solid approaches to improve internal developer productivity, on the monetary side of things.\r\n\r\nOn the qualitative side of things, you unlock different kinds of development when people can play with their tools. When the feedback loop goes from one hour to one minute or two seconds, you change the nature of the tool of your operations, right? Instead of checking something in, and then waiting for a compilation, if you can hot reload, or if you can see the impact of your changes right away, then you start playing and discovering new things that you might not know about. This is a very well-known concept exemplified by Bret Victor in his talk: “[Inventing on principle](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PUv66718DII)” where he explained that direct manipulation unlocks a different mode of interaction with your software.\r\n\r\nAnd finally, a lot of people quit jobs for tech stack reasons. They realize: “I don’t totally like my company’s tech stack, and this other company seems to be more of the stuff that I would much rather deal with”. So from a developer experience perspective, you want to keep your engineers happy so that they don’t leave.\r\n\r\nAnd in terms of external developer experience, it’s important to keep in mind that developers don’t like to be marketed to by regular marketing people. Regular marketing people are usually terrible at marketing developers because they follow all the typical marketing advice: talk about benefits, not features, you always want the Fire Mario, not the Fire Flower. These approaches to marketing don’t apply for developers because we deal in building blocks. So, you have to get developers to talk to fellow developers in terms that they know, cut the marketing BS, and try to explain how things work. We (developers) don’t trust magic boxes. Our mindset is - “everything you’re telling me sounds amazing. So what’s the catch?”. We need somebody to be honest about the catch.\r\n\r\n## Let’s take the mono-repo question once and for all - should you ‘go mono’?\r\n\r\nYes. I’ve been converted to mono. I think it takes some training and in my opinion, GitHub is not the best code hosting environment for monorepos. So if you can invest in the tooling that you need - everything from CI/CD to project tracking, to code source searching and all that - then monorepos are better. There used to be a minimum size that you needed to be as a company or as a code base to justify a monorepo. But that ‘minimum size’ has been going down and will continue to go down. Could it go down to as much as one person? Could you feel more productive if you had a monorepo? I think that that is slowly emerging to be the case. It’s definitely not mainstream yet but the massive trend over the past ten years has been towards smaller and smaller teams benefiting from monorepos. So I’d much rather be ahead of the curve now.\r\n\r\nI wrote a whole blog post on this, so anyone interested in reading more is welcome to [check it out](https://www.swyx.io/turborepo-why). \r\n\r\n## What will be the hottest dev trend/adopted technology in the next 12-24 months?\r\n\r\nAside from monorepos, I’ve talked a lot about the end of localhost. The movement towards cloud development is accelerating. I think that more and more people are embracing the data industry like data pipelines, data replication and analytics and all that jazz. So I think that will become more of a thing.\r\n\r\nSomething else that comes to mind isn’t a near-term trend, but a developing thing, and that is the shifting contract between frontend and backend. Meaning, you either want a smart client or a smart server, and the standard rest server contract is constantly being shift shifted. I really like that because it improves performance and it also improves user experience. \r\n\r\nThe problem is that we haven’t really worked out the exact code patterns that are going to become industry standard yet. So we’ll wait and see, but eventually, I think that something will emerge that displaces the current, disconnected client-sever model.\r\n\r\n## Some claim that front-end developers will become irrelevant in the future of no-code tools. Do you see this happening? If so, how soon?\r\n\r\nNo. I don’t think they will become irrelevant. It is possible that no code tools will take up a lot of incremental growth that used to be occupied by having to learn how to code. But I think that is okay. The world’s demand for software and websites is far greater than our ability to supply them manually. As frontend developers, we should be happy about that because that means we’re not converting Photoshop PSD to HTML or something like that. \r\n\r\nBut frontend developers will never become irrelevant because there will always be demand for custom code and apps, and then we get to work on the interesting UI paradigms rather than the boring commoditized stuff. \r\n\r\nOne risk that I will mention, is that I think frontend developers are constantly stuck in framework wars for which they do not get paid. They’re really, they’re wasting a lot of their time on API design debates that are very, very minor. These don’t really move the needle in terms of business, and so frontend devs are wasting their time debating stuff that doesn’t really change, compared to backend developers and database developers who are making fabulous amounts of money doing anything else.\r\n\r\n## Share some tips to help remote teams collaborate better.\r\n\r\nSomething we do in my company is to meet in person once a quarter. It’s frequent enough to get the general non-verbal vibes from others on the team. Something like 80 percent of our communication is non verbal so it’s really important to have an opportunity to experience that. Once you’ve worked with people for a while you get to the point where you don’t have to see each other every week, because then you start to get on each other’s nerves (which I’ve done). So one week a quarter in person is a good balance. You can take the money that you would spend on an office and fly people out to fun locations and make them have a good time with each other for a week, and then not have to see each other again for a few months. \r\n\r\nOther things I would suggest are making sure you have a good, writing and reading culture. Ans also make sure to set the expectation that remote work is a trade-off between flexibility on the one hand and lower bandwidth on the other. With remote work, you have to serialize all your thoughts into some slack messages. Some of it will be lost. Some of it will be misinterpreted. Some of it will be ignored because everyone just has too many Slack messages. So a successful distributed team would have an intentional contract for when something gets missed - how do we pick up on that? How do we hold each other accountable in a healthy way? In my company, it’s a weekly roundup every Friday, and then for all of my one on ones with my direct reports and my boss, we have a running sheet of all the commitments that we have, and we check in on each other, throughout the week. So I think this accountability and communication are key to success here.\r\n\r\n## Do you want to share anything else? Please share anything you think would be of value to the broader developer community:\r\n\r\nI’m publishing a lot of my developer experience thoughts on [dx.tips](https://dx.tips/). So check it out if you’re interested to hear more from me.","frontmatter":{"canonical_url":"https://livecycle.io/blogs/devx-project-swyx/","category":"note"},"title":"Profile on Livecycle.io Devx Project","description":"I was interviewed for Livecycle's DevX interview series here (https://livecycle.io/blogs/devx-project-swyx/). Reproducing for posterity. ","category":"note","tags":[],"canonical":"https://livecycle.io/blogs/devx-project-swyx/","slug":"profile-on-livecycle.io-devx-project","date":"2022-09-15T16:44:19.000Z","readingTime":"11 minutes","ghMetadata":{"issueUrl":"https://github.com/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/450","commentsUrl":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/450/comments","title":"Profile on Livecycle.io Devx Project","created_at":"2022-09-15T16:44:19Z","updated_at":"2023-01-08T23:21:27Z","reactions":{"url":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/450/reactions","total_count":1,"+1":0,"-1":0,"laugh":0,"hooray":0,"confused":0,"heart":1,"rocket":0,"eyes":0}}},{"type":"blog","content":"\r\n## Slides\r\n\r\nhttps://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1RlKAdQ59R7SnKTCKrmJvf93Jq7qn7N71UGe3Ci5kS4I/edit?usp=sharing\r\n\r\n## Video\r\n\r\nVideo isn't up yet but I should be on the Society Livestream:\r\n\r\n{% youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8jkJTWacow&feature=youtu.be %}\r\n\r\n## Outline\r\n\r\n- how we got here\r\n\t- 1st october 2019 https://twitter.com/swyx/status/1176652330680426496\r\n\t\t- https://www.swyx.io/starting-dev-community-meetup\r\n\t- https://twitter.com/swyx/status/1411071913548414976\r\n\t- 2021 10k members https://twitter.com/swyx/status/1411071913548414976\r\n\t- kev fulltime https://twitter.com/kevmodrome/status/1463151477174714373\r\n\t- 2021 recap https://twitter.com/swyx/status/1455962646537068545\r\n\t- how started how going https://twitter.com/swyx/status/1543338895764606981\r\n- what we want\r\n\t- ecosystem https://twitter.com/SvelteSociety/status/1390082681753374723\r\n\t- types of chasms\r\n\t\t- Rogers Curve: enthusiasts, visionaries, pragmatists, conservatives, skeptics\r\n\t\t- other\r\n\t\t\t- gartner hype cycle\r\n\t\t\t- perez surge cycle\r\n\t\t\t- wardley commoditization\r\n\t\t\t\t- genesis\r\n\t\t\t\t- custom built\r\n\t\t\t\t- product\r\n\t\t\t\t- commodity\r\n\t\t\t- invisible asymptotes\r\n\t\t\t\t- breaking through the next tier of users\r\n\t\t\t- metalanguage\r\n\t\t\t\t- https://cdn.hashnode.com/res/hashnode/image/upload/v1653866746845/iOPGgwHFJ.png\r\n\t\t- early vs late\r\n\t\t\t- the tech is the story vs the result is the story\r\n\t\t\t- \"because i can\" vs \"because there's money\"\r\n- what we need\r\n\t- Holotypes\r\n\t\t- Content\r\n\t\t- Ecommerce\r\n\t\t- Dashboard - showing data, doing things\r\n\t\t- Social network (HN, Slack clone)\r\n\t- Building blocks\r\n\t\t- bundler\r\n\t\t- component framework\r\n\t\t- ssr framework\r\n\t\t- styling\r\n\t\t- transitions & animations\r\n\t\t- a11y\r\n\t\t- state management\r\n\t\t- misc: head management, class toggling\r\n\t- ecosystem https://kwokchain.com/2021/02/05/atomic-concepts/\r\n\t\t- evolution - growing a language \r\n\t\t\t- first you have a system\r\n\t\t\t- then you have system with plugins\r\n\t\t\t- then you dogfood system with plugins\r\n\t\t\t- svelte is different. all functionality was plugins. svelte is a language\r\n\t\t- types of \r\n\t\t\t- UI KIt\r\n\t\t\t\t- https://react-spectrum.adobe.com/react-aria/\r\n\t\t\t\t- https://chakra-ui.com/docs/components\r\n\t\t\t\t- https://mui.com/\r\n\t\t\t- Infinite list\r\n\t\t\t- Tables\r\n\t\t\t- Datepickers\r\n\t\t\t- Modals\r\n\t\t\t- Tooltips/Toasts\r\n\t\t\t- nonsvelte\r\n\t\t\t\t- D3\r\n\t\t\t\t- Greensock\r\n\t\t\t\t- Three.js\r\n\t\t\t\t- https://github.com/nosir/cleave.js\r\n\t\t\t\t- https://github.com/daybrush/moveable/tree/master/packages/svelte-moveable\r\n\t\t\t\t- rich text editing?\r\n\t\t\t\t- Video player\r\n\t- ask not what svelte can do for you, ask instead what you can do with svelte","frontmatter":{"title":"10x-ing Svelte (Svelte Summit 2022 Talk Notes)","subtitle":"The Case for the Svelte Supply Chain","slug":"svelte-2022","category":"note","canonical_url":"https://swyx.io/svelte-2022","description":"Some show notes for my Svelte Summit talk for those who are looking for all the references and cut content."},"title":"10x-ing Svelte (Svelte Summit 2022 Talk Notes)","subtitle":"The Case for the Svelte Supply Chain","description":"Some show notes for my Svelte Summit talk for those who are looking for all the references and cut content. ","category":"note","tags":[],"canonical":"https://swyx.io/svelte-2022","slug":"svelte-2022","date":"2022-09-09T08:50:53.000Z","readingTime":"1 minute","ghMetadata":{"issueUrl":"https://github.com/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/448","commentsUrl":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/448/comments","title":"Talk Notes for \"10xing Svelte\" at Svelte Summit 2022","created_at":"2022-09-09T08:50:53Z","updated_at":"2023-01-08T23:21:27Z","reactions":{"url":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/448/reactions","total_count":0,"+1":0,"-1":0,"laugh":0,"hooray":0,"confused":0,"heart":0,"rocket":0,"eyes":0}}},{"type":"blog","content":"\r\n~~GraphCMS~~ Hygraph calls it a [Federated Content Platform](https://hygraph.com/blog/graphcms-is-now-hygraph):\r\n\r\n![image](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/188516049-47913956-ee03-402e-9c8d-78c1375b1e37.png)\r\n\r\nGatsby calls it a [Content Mesh](https://www.gatsbyjs.com/blog/2018-10-04-journey-to-the-content-mesh/):\r\n\r\n![image](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/188516093-0953091f-4698-4682-9e4f-df08056b5ff0.png)\r\n\r\nApollo comes right out and calls it a [Supergraph](https://www.apollographql.com/blog/backend/federation/introduction-to-apollo-federation/):\r\n\r\n![image](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/188516722-2013106e-1dea-469c-95ec-ac68fb2bee08.png)\r\n\r\nThis isn't new, Matt Slotnick perceptively called it [the hardest working graphic in software](https://twitter.com/matt_slotnick/status/1483481776760623105):\r\n\r\n![image](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/188517754-2923d9ee-6daa-4261-84e8-df715e512453.png)\r\n\r\nand the GraphQL devotees have their own data engineering parallels in [Airbyte](https://www.bitstrapped.com/blog/airbyte-elt-data-pipleine) and [Fivetran](https://www.generalcatalyst.com/gcamplified/fivetran-making-data-flow).\r\n\r\n## Thoughts\r\n\r\nThe value proposition is evident - IF ONLY we can get all these messy things to conform to one interface, developers will be able to query them and resolve across them faster, improving developer experience, blah blah blah. \r\nThis problem increases nicely with the size of the company, nobody wants to do it, it's essential for operational and analytical needs, making it a nice meaty problem for startups to go after. Strategy 101, or rather, [Strategy Letter V](https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2002/06/12/strategy-letter-v/).\r\n\r\nBut there's a lot in that IF:\r\n\r\n- **Maintenance cost**: Interfaces break all the time and run into edge cases/perf issues, averaging (1-3hours? its very spiky, averages are kind of meaningless) a week of maintenance\r\n- **Lockin**: People are locking themselves into your SDKs and APIs, and given that none of these God Endpoints have yet stood the test of time (even [GitHub has not managed](https://twitter.com/simonw/status/1562502194150068230) to make GraphQL default/easy), it is a risky proposition. \r\n - In this sense the data eng companies have it easier, because they integrate data, not code, which [lasts longer](https://www.swyx.io/data-outlasts-code-yet-code-keeps-winning).\r\n- **Incentives**: why should the data silos want to let you extract their data? why can't THEY too create a God Endpoint for their users? obligatory https://xkcd.com/927/ reference (bonus points if you know what that xkcd is without clicking)\r\n\r\n\r\n## Standards as God Endpoint\r\n\r\nEach year **hundreds of millions of dollars** are thrown into solving this stuff, both in-house and in vendors. It is probably necessary work, it is messy work, and it is unrewarding in the small/only lasts until the next Big Bang Rewrite for the New God Endpoint flavor of the decade.\r\n\r\nIt feels inelegant though. We are brute forcing this problem by throwing endless bodies and time and money at it but this doesn't solve it like **email** and **terminal outputs** and **HTML** have been \"solved\".\r\n\r\nWhat needs to happen is **standards** - that data producers and data consumers and all in-between tooling can optimize to, that increase the user trust in betting on these. In terms of recent examples, I am inspired by [Opentelemetry](https://opentelemetry.io/), which although it did not have a rocketship outcome for [Lightstep](https://lightstep.com/blog/lightstep-joins-servicenow), seems to be successfully defining a telemetry interface that all producers and consumers are now accepting.\r\n\r\nSometimes standards are designed by committee (in JS, [WinterCG](https://twitter.com/swyx/status/1536253166378835968?s=21&t=v5l-oOw85oiShcjjQTCrCQ) is particularly interesting right now, but lacks teeth), sometimes they are decided by an extremely dominant player (JSX, S3, OCI and Postgres are examples from various domains) that has essentially “won”. Of course this begs a question - since it isn’t necessary to establish a common standard before “winning”, is it even helpful to try? My sense is winning without standards and winning with are comparable to “winning the battle but losing the war”.\r\n\r\n## Language as God Endpoint\r\n\r\nOf course, this being [the Age of LLMs](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=stable%20diffusion&sort=byPopularity&type=story), no blogpost would be complete without considering the first interface evolved by humanity: **natural language**.\r\n\r\n{% twitter https://twitter.com/evanjconrad/status/1566920173671501824 %}\r\n\r\nIn other words, even standards have problems - they require a learning curve, they may have design flaws, and they aren't flexible (almost by definition - the more flexible a standard, the less useful/reliable it is). Standards optimize for machine communication, but Languages optimize for human communication.\r\n\r\nWhat does this look like, potentially?\r\n\r\n- Instead of `SELECT COUNT(*) FROM users INNER JOIN charges ON [users.id](http://users.id/) = charges.user_id WHERE users.email = 'joe@freshpizza.com'`\r\n- [we might write/speak/think](https://blog.seekwell.io/gpt3): `how many payments has Joe from freshpizza.com made?`\r\n\r\nIf you are implementing a system like this, please also implement partial information resolution:\r\n\r\n- Q: how many payments were made?\r\n- A: Insufficient information - how many payments by whom? over what time period?\r\n- Q: oh sorry - by 'joe@freshpizza.com'\r\n- A: ok, looking for the count of payments made by `'joe@freshpizza.com'`... over what time period\r\n- Q: oh sorry again - over the last 3 months!\r\n\r\nThat kind of thing, but for API tokens, logins, and other missing info (I covered some of this in my 2019 [Adaptive Intent-based CLI State Machines](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_w1YWCHXFg) talk, informed by experience from my [2016 Alexa skill](https://sentieo.com/fresh-from-sentieo-mad-science-labs-introducing-the-sentieo-alexa-skill/)). Because this is a human-in-the-loop process, you'll want a [Temporal](https://www.swyx.io/why-temporal/).\r\n\r\n**Isn't this just chatbots**? I've now been in tech long enough to remember the previous time [conversational commerce](https://news.greylock.com/https-news-greylock-com-the-conversational-economy-voice-and-the-new-era-of-multi-modal-computing-96f535c058f6) was hyped and went nowhere ([arguably](https://techcrunch.com/2021/09/01/vista-equity-takes-majority-stake-in-saas-startup-drift-taking-it-to-unicorn-status/) [arguable](https://techcrunch.com/2020/08/04/intercom-hires-a-cfo-as-it-ramps-towards-an-ipo/)), and [AI assistants](https://techcrunch.com/2017/12/22/fin-assistant/#:~:text=For%20%241%20a%20minute%2C%2024,commerce%20and%20customer%20support%20calls.) were going to take over the world. So yes there's a risk that we go through a whole bunch of ceremony just to reinvent Clippy 2022 Edition. But the volume of data on both ends, and the new usecases unlocked by better natural language understanding, perhaps makes it worth another shot.\r\n\r\nYes, this is a 1000x more expensive query to parse, but that could go down over time, and it could be more of a last mile thing to humans, but you could imagine a distant future where LLMs are cheap enough that **_systems_ talk to other systems** in this same way - forever solving the problem of API or standards breaking.","frontmatter":{"slug":"god-endpoints","description":"a brief meditation on why we keep trying to build God Endpoints and why we will fail until we figure out interfaces.","cover_image":"https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/188517748-07a1251b-004f-40a8-8ce8-64e1d94e1be2.png"},"title":"The God Endpoints will continue until morale improves","description":"a brief meditation on why we keep trying to build God Endpoints and why we will fail until we figure out interfaces. ","category":"note","tags":[],"image":"https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/188517748-07a1251b-004f-40a8-8ce8-64e1d94e1be2.png","slug":"god-endpoints","date":"2022-09-05T22:33:58.000Z","readingTime":"4 minutes","ghMetadata":{"issueUrl":"https://github.com/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/447","commentsUrl":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/447/comments","title":"The God Endpoints will continue until morale improves","created_at":"2022-09-05T22:33:58Z","updated_at":"2023-01-08T23:21:26Z","reactions":{"url":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/447/reactions","total_count":1,"+1":1,"-1":0,"laugh":0,"hooray":0,"confused":0,"heart":0,"rocket":0,"eyes":0}}},{"type":"blog","content":"\r\nSome show notes for my CascadiaJS talk for those who are looking for all the references and cut content.\r\n\r\nFinal talk video: \r\n\r\n{% youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KsTAcQJ619o %}\r\n\r\nThe livestream was here https://twitter.com/fubits/status/1565673135940243457\r\n\r\n## Slides\r\n\r\nhttps://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1bGi3KimlbuS0iLG5CCaUnIrzfOno4IbhaZdbI8oBrNQ/edit?usp=sharing\r\n\r\n## Reception\r\n\r\n![image](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/198362649-aa3436b5-d3b3-4bd2-9df5-852eb62ecdf8.png)\r\n\r\n![image](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/198362696-ab552719-e833-443c-9171-bbca72e54425.png)\r\n\r\n![image](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/198362722-4a437079-dcfe-4e09-8530-c60424c5bd0b.png)\r\n\r\n![image](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/198362757-b8c094e1-477e-493b-a92f-bae6c18dd24e.png)\r\n\r\n![image](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/198362785-c255cf23-608a-4388-9cf0-5d839ee0b528.png)\r\n\r\n![image](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/198362823-2ed2e31b-eea2-4d54-9680-7bd7a0cdd7bf.png)\r\n\r\n![image](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/198362940-3bc3aa45-f5f6-4792-a4a4-47188da0cc8b.png)\r\n\r\n\r\n## Intro\r\n\r\n- shtick\r\n\t- why are you not rich?\r\n\t- this talk will change the way you think about your tech career\r\n- What does it mean to be Full Stack?\r\n\r\n## Part 1: the standard paradigm: frontend/backend\r\n\r\n\r\n\t- the stupid chart\r\n\t- people happy https://2021.stateofjs.com/en-US/opinions\r\n\t\t- but not paid https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2022/#salary-comp-total\r\n\t\t- why not rich \r\n\t- 2010 https://s2.studylib.net/store/data/017738962_1-def8fa4e10b06cfb07eb8f06875cdfed-768x994.png\r\n\t- 2015 https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/our-1-600-hour-javascript-coding-curriculum-d4f151b782d2/\r\n\t- 2017 https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/a-roadmap-to-becoming-a-web-developer-in-2017-b6ac3dddd0cf/\r\n\t- 2022 https://www.freecodecamp.org/learn\r\n\t\t- https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/freecodecamp-certifications/\r\n\t\t- 2021 https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/building-a-data-science-curriculum-with-advanced-math-and-machine-learning/\r\n\t**- client-server, then three tier architecture: client-server-db**\r\n\t\t- LAMP stack, MEAN stack, MERN stack, JAM stack, FOFE/BOFE\r\n\t\t- https://docs.aws.amazon.com/whitepapers/latest/serverless-multi-tier-architectures-api-gateway-lambda/three-tier-architecture-overview.html\r\n\t\t- https://managementmania.com/en/three-tier-architecture\r\n\t\t- maybe in modern paradigm, it is client-server-db-devops\r\n\r\n## Part 2: reality\r\n\r\n\t- name your fave apps \r\n\t\t- holotypes https://twitter.com/arthurwuhoo/status/1470489178186170374/photo/1\r\n- Motivational questions\r\n\t- how do you build this https://hacker-recommended-books.vercel.app/category/0/all-time/page/2/2\r\n\t- arxiv sanity\r\n\t- search engine\r\n\t- shazam https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32520593\r\n\t- all the app types\r\n\t- talk about the feature progress path\r\n\t\t- blog -> features\r\n\t\t\t- ...\r\n\t\t\t- AB test\r\n\t\t\t\t- AB test of AB tests? https://engineering.linkedin.com/blog/2019/06/detecting-interference--an-a-b-test-of-a-b-tests\r\n\t\t- app -> features\r\n\r\n## transition\r\n\r\n\r\n4 departures:\r\n\r\n### 3: The Local First App\r\n\r\n\t\t- here is the standard paradigm\r\n\t\t\t- https://appwrite-todo-with-svelte.vercel.app/#/todos so slow\r\n\t\t- PWA\r\n\t\t- the WASM app: figma\r\n\t\t- client-serverless-server\r\n\t\t- client-server-offline-first\r\n\t\t\t- https://github.com/jlongster/absurd-sql\r\n\t\t\t- https://techcrunch.com/2022/08/04/rill-wants-to-rethink-bi-dashboards-with-embedded-database-and-instant-ux/\r\n\t\t\t- https://stopa.io/post/296\r\n\t\t\t- appsync https://medium.com/capgemini-norway/destroying-backends-with-amplify-appsync-graphql-api-5521c0e62a4c\r\n\t\t\t- https://www.inkandswitch.com/local-first/\r\n\t\t\t- https://riffle.systems/essays/prelude/\r\n\t\t- client-edge-serverless-server\r\n\t\t\t- deno\r\n\t\t- examples\r\n\r\n### 4: The Long Running Jobs\r\n\r\n\t\t- queues\r\n\t\t- schedulers\r\n\t\t\t- fails all the time\r\n\t\t- temporal pitch: https://www.swyx.io/temporal-miami \r\n\t\t- this is a job: \r\n\r\n### 5: Data Engineering Iceberg\r\n\r\n\t\t- https://benn.substack.com/p/the-data-os yc data \r\n\t\t- data blind spot\r\n\t\t\t- https://twitter.com/swyx/status/1528906372917604352/photo/1\r\n\t\t\t- python > js https://www.hntrends.com/2022/june.html?compare=Python&compare=TypeScript&compare=golang&compare=JavaScript&compare=Ruby&compare=Rust&compare=Java&compare=C%2B%2B&compare=C&compare=kotlin\r\n\t\t\t- https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2022/#salary-comp-total\r\n\t\t- Analytical usecase\r\n\t\t\t- ETL\r\n\t\t\t- ELT\r\n\t\t\t- ELT+reverseETL https://medium.com/memory-leak/reverse-etl-a-primer-4e6694dcc7fb\r\n\t\t\t- EtLT?\r\n\t\t\t- ML:\r\n\t\t\t - Explore, Label, Optimize\r\n\t\t\t - Cleaning + Modeling + Training + Predicting + Deployment + Monitoring\r\n\t\t\t - https://www.jcchouinard.com/machine-learning/ breakdown of DE, DA, MLE\r\n\t\t\t - Exciting: Computer Vision, Self Driving, NLP, Deep Learning, Ethics\r\n\t\t\t - Boring: Recommendation ([Embeddings](https://blog.twitter.com/engineering/en_us/topics/insights/2018/embeddingsattwitter)), Classification/NLP, Search & Ranking, Anomaly Detection, A/B Testing, Spam/Fraud Risk\r\n\t\t- Operational usage\r\n\t\t\t- V = f(d)\r\n\t\t\t- feedback\r\n\t\t\t- consistency\r\n\t\t\t- live\r\n\t\t\t- 2000: amazon a store for every customer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F9c1Y7hgGwE\r\n\t\t\t- 2010: google-yahoo\r\n\t\t\t- 2016: netflix https://twitter.com/TrungTPhan/status/1445768114109435923\r\n\t\t\t- 2020: tiktok-google https://www.inc.com/jason-aten/tiktok-just-ended-googles-15-year-rein-as-worlds-most-popular-web-domain.html \r\n\r\n### 6: Software 3.0\r\n\r\n\t\t- https://thealgorithmicbridge.substack.com/p/stable-diffusion-is-the-most-important\r\n\t\t- x https://medium.com/nerd-for-tech/prompt-engineering-the-career-of-future-2fb93f90f117\r\n\t\t\t- meme https://miro.medium.com/max/1376/1*bSyi3uamxCzRjia2IwIBFw.png\r\n\t\t- capabilities (Markov models, Large Language Models)\r\n\t\t\t- how large is large https://miro.medium.com/max/565/1*9pt5d4D7aGJqUqpra1tMzg.png\r\n\t\t\t\t- https://miro.medium.com/max/582/1*C-KNWQC_wXh-Q2wc6VPK1g.png\r\n\t\t\t- translation https://towardsdatascience.com/software-3-0-how-prompting-will-change-the-rules-of-the-game-a982fbfe1e0\r\n\t\t\t\t- generating SQL https://blog.seekwell.io/gpt3\r\n\t\t\t\t- explaining jokes https://twitter.com/karpathy/status/1511359920804876298/photo/1\r\n\t\t\t- Coding:\r\n\t\t\t\t- copilot\r\n\t\t\t\t- https://storage.googleapis.com/deepmind-media/AlphaCode/competition_level_code_generation_with_alphacode.pdf\r\n\t\t\t\t- alpha go, alphafold\r\n\t\t\t- Poetry, Emojis, Lists: https://blog.andrewcantino.com/blog/2021/04/21/prompt-engineering-tips-and-tricks/#a-few-more-examples\r\n\t\t\t- filling in text: https://generative.ink/posts/methods-of-prompt-programming/#by-demonstration-n-shot\r\n\t\t\t- image filling in\r\n\t\t\t\t- figma https://twitter.com/RemitNotPaucity/status/1562319004563173376?s=20&t=fPSI5JhLzkuZLFB7fntzoA\r\n\t\t\t\t- outfilling photoshop https://old.reddit.com/r/StableDiffusion/comments/wyduk1/show_rstablediffusion_integrating_sd_in_photoshop/\r\n\t\t\t- text to image\r\n\t\t\t\t- generative adversarial models https://machinelearningmastery.com/what-are-generative-adversarial-networks-gans/\r\n\t\t\t\t- llama https://pub.towardsai.net/i-spent-15-in-dall-e-2-credits-creating-this-ai-image-and-heres-what-i-learned-52f352912025\r\n\t\t\t\t- medieval wifi https://twitter.com/benjamin_hilton/status/1519417377720524800\r\n\t\t\t\t- https://www.craiyon.com/\r\n\t\t\t\t\t- https://twitter.com/weirddalle/status/1554080896797622273\r\n\t\t\t\t\t- https://twitter.com/weirddalle/status/1553782316832800768\r\n\t\t\t\t\t- https://twitter.com/weirddalle/status/1557723658462035969\r\n\t\t\t\t\t- https://twitter.com/weirddalle/status/1551584953045258240\r\n\t\t\t\t\t- https://twitter.com/weirddalle/status/1554125991307612160\r\n\t\t\t\t\t- https://twitter.com/timsoret/status/1560339610588282880\r\n\t\t\t\t\t- https://twitter.com/maccaw/status/1561716215760011264\r\n\t\t\t\t\t- https://twitter.com/JIYUKENKYU_jp/status/1554758475368243200\r\n\t\t\t\t- https://twitter.com/fabianstelzer/status/1561019187451011074\r\n\t\t\t- image to image https://old.reddit.com/r/StableDiffusion/comments/wy7oa5/img2img_is_just_unreal_im_stunned/\r\n\t\t\t\t- https://huggingface.co/spaces/huggingface/diffuse-the-rest\r\n\t\t\t\t- restoring art https://www.reddit.com/r/StableDiffusion/comments/wyaz3s/i_used_img2img_to_devandalize_ecce_homo/\r\n\t\t\t\t- image prompt https://twitter.com/simonw/status/1563898516950265856\r\n\t\t\t- video to video \r\n\t\t\t\t- https://twitter.com/karenxcheng/status/1564626773001719813\r\n\t\t\t\t- https://twitter.com/paultrillo/status/1562106954096381952\r\n\t\t\t- tricking humans https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/jul/23/google-fires-software-engineer-who-claims-ai-chatbot-is-sentient\r\n\t\t\t\t- fooling humans https://maraoz.com/2020/07/18/openai-gpt3/\r\n\t\t\t\t- art contest https://storage.googleapis.com/deepmind-media/AlphaCode/competition_level_code_generation_with_alphacode.pdf\r\n\t\t\t\t- helping you sleep https://anchor.fm/deepdreams\r\n\t\t\t- business ideas https://ideasai.com/\r\n\t\t\t\t- racoon heist https://twitter.com/simonw/status/1555626060384911360\r\n\t\t\t\t- not picking up humans https://www.aiweirdness.com/gpt-3-tries-pickup-lines/\r\n\t\t\t\t- optimizing titles https://minimaxir.com/2022/08/gpt3-blog-title-optimizer/\r\n\t\t\t- \r\n\t\t- this will be a job https://promptbase.com/\r\n\t\t- there's a book https://generative.ink/posts/methods-of-prompt-programming/\r\n\t\t\t- https://dallery.gallery/the-dalle-2-prompt-book/\r\n\r\n## end\r\n\r\n So. what does it mean to be full stack?\r\n\t- PWAMVCCRUDETL\r\n\t- ","frontmatter":{"title":"Paradigm Lost (CascadiaJS 2022 Talk Notes)","slug":"paradigm-lost","category":"note","canonical_url":"https://swyx.io/paradigm-lost","description":"Some show notes for my CascadiaJS talk for those who are looking for all the references and cut content."},"title":"Paradigm Lost (CascadiaJS 2022 Talk Notes)","description":"Some show notes for my CascadiaJS talk for those who are looking for all the references and cut content. ","category":"note","tags":[],"canonical":"https://swyx.io/paradigm-lost","slug":"paradigm-lost","date":"2022-09-01T20:22:47.000Z","readingTime":"3 minutes","ghMetadata":{"issueUrl":"https://github.com/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/446","commentsUrl":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/446/comments","title":"Talk notes for \"Paradigm Lost\" at CascadiaJS 2022","created_at":"2022-09-01T20:22:47Z","updated_at":"2022-10-27T17:52:50Z","reactions":{"url":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/446/reactions","total_count":1,"+1":1,"-1":0,"laugh":0,"hooray":0,"confused":0,"heart":0,"rocket":0,"eyes":0}}},{"title":"Paradigm Lost","slug":"paradigm-lost-cascadia","categories":["Devtools","AI","Orchestration"],"description":"A talk covering why frontend vs backend is now insufficient for \"full stack\", and how 4 trends are taking over - local first, async, data, and AI are taking my attention.","instances":[{"venue":"CascadiaJS","date":"2022-09-01","video":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KsTAcQJ619o&feature=emb_title"}],"category":"talk","date":"2022-09-01T00:00:00.000Z"},{"title":"Real talk on DevRel with Devmode.fm","slug":"devmode-fm-devrel","tags":["DevRel"],"venues":"Devmode.FM","date":"2022-08-29T00:00:00.000Z","url":"https://devmode.fm/episodes/advocating-for-devrels","description":"Back again with Andrew Welch and crew to talk the evolving meta of DevRel.","category":"podcast"},{"title":"The End of Localhost on InfoQ Podcast","slug":"infoq-localhost","tags":["DevTools"],"venues":"InfoQ","date":"2022-08-29T00:00:00.000Z","url":"https://www.infoq.com/podcasts/localhost-end/","description":"Daniel Bryant interviewed me about my DXTips article on The End of Localhost! a really enjoyable tour through the post with commentary and reactions.","category":"podcast"},{"type":"blog","content":"\r\nOne thing I don't like about most blogs (company and personal) is that their index pages tend to be unappealing reverse chronological lists of links. Basically nobody visits your blog index out of habit, especially if you rarely blog, because the content never changes. So then you build a newsletter, and Twitter presence, to notify/publicize when you do have new stuff out.\r\n\r\n**This seems ass backwards**. But is the overwhelming norm.\r\n\r\nLet's rethink the humble Index Page from first principles.\r\n\r\n1. The most visited content sites in the world are bulletin boards (Reddit, Hacker News) and personalized feeds (FB, Twitter, Linkedin). They are **habit forming** _destination sites_ because they have **constant novelty**. \r\n2. The most clicked and subscribed newsletters are NEWS letters. Basically simple lists of noteworthy stuff. [jsweekly](https://javascriptweekly.com/) and [dailydev](https://daily.dev/) and etc have >100k subscribers. [hackernewsletter](https://hackernewsletter.com/) has 60k subscribers and is fully automated.\r\n3. A blog index is basically just a restricted form of a bulletin board with 1 person/company writing everything and no personalization. Distribution (newsletter/socials) is usually an afterthought and extremely manual.\r\n4. Many people report writers block with blogs, _particularly after a big successful post_, because it's almost impossible to consistently pump out bangers. So people invent other formats like [TILs](https://twitter.com/swyx/status/1477973498656333826?s=20&t=NwgSW_1Wqrx0UhfCAl12gg) - [Lee Byron's take on it](https://twitter.com/leeb/status/1480561516956979202) - and [Second Brains](https://www.swyx.io/obsidian-brain) - to unblock themselves.\r\n\r\nSo what would a Smart Index look like?\r\n\r\n- Anyone/index owner can submit **ALL kinds of content with any level of commentary**. Meanwhile **Reader can facet by content type and topics**. \r\n\t- In other words, **we decouple what the author outputs and what the reader consumes**, by letting the Smart Index serve as an infinitely customizable intermediary.\r\n\t- A blogpost merely becomes one type of content out of many. \r\n\t- You'd also throw talks, podcasts, tweets, github issues, etc in there. This is what I currently do with https://www.swyx.io/ideas !\r\n\t- Heck, PiHole your router to track every page you ever visit and make those searchable (if you are logged in?)\r\n- **Distribution**: Readers can subscribe to RSS/receive a Newsletter based on the filter/interest topics they signed up for\r\n\t- The Newsletter would effectively derive from the same set of filter/facet choices made on the Smart Index\r\n- (optional) **Content scoring system** comprised of reader upvotes, view count, reaction count, comment count, webmention count, HN/Reddit upvotes, author arbitrary score, etc\r\n- (optional) **Personalized faves and recommendation score**, per reader\r\n- At a company level, this basically means **turning your index page into a subreddit run by your writers and developer advocates**. Why not?\r\n\r\nWhat this basically ends up looking like is a \"[personal data warehouse](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25090218)\". This is handrolled by a few brave enthusiasts now, but could be more of a product if someone out there chose to build it.\r\n\r\nHmm...","frontmatter":{"slug":"smart-indexes","title":"What if your Index Page was Smart?","description":"Let's rethink the humble Index Page from first principles."},"title":"What if your Index Page was Smart?","description":"Let's rethink the humble Index Page from first principles. ","category":"note","tags":[],"slug":"smart-indexes","date":"2022-08-27T00:50:52.000Z","readingTime":"2 minutes","ghMetadata":{"issueUrl":"https://github.com/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/444","commentsUrl":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/444/comments","title":"What if your Index Page was Smart?","created_at":"2022-08-27T00:50:52Z","updated_at":"2022-09-13T11:41:27Z","reactions":{"url":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/444/reactions","total_count":0,"+1":0,"-1":0,"laugh":0,"hooray":0,"confused":0,"heart":0,"rocket":0,"eyes":0}}},{"type":"blog","content":"\r\nBottom Line Up Front: You are probably underestimating how much goes into blogging technology these days.\r\n\r\n## Reader Experience\r\n\r\n- Article header and body\r\n\t - Good [typography](https://github.com/sw-yx/spark-joy/blob/master/README.md#typography)\r\n\t - Readable, accessible, branded styling\r\n\t - Embedding rich media (particularly [YouTube and Twitter embeds](https://swyxkit.netlify.app/supporting-youtube-and-twitter-embeds), but also Repl/Sandbox embeds - mind the mobile view)\r\n\t - Footnotes (a really great way to add extra context without bloating main text)\r\n\t - [Truncation marker for pagination](https://twitter.com/sebastienlorber/status/1561792377290997761)\r\n\t - Content [Transclusion](https://twitter.com/sebastienlorber/status/1353722091862958082)\r\n\t - Syntax highlighting of Code (main players: Prismjs, Highlightjs, [Shikijs](https://github.com/shikijs/shiki) - preferred if static - no css/js embed needed)\r\n\t\t - including git diff displays - [I had trouble with this recently](https://swyxkit.netlify.app/simple-notes-from-migrating-to-pluskit)\r\n\t\t - make sure to test overflow code blocks - in general try to implement [defensive CSS](https://ishadeed.com/article/defensive-css)\r\n - render as popover on desktop, as footnote on mobile/email?\r\n- Metadata\r\n\t- Table of Contents extraction/display/highlighting/collapsing\r\n\t- Reading time estimation (debatable)\r\n\t- Reader Comments (Disqus? [Utterances](https://github.com/utterance/utterances)?) and [Webmentions](https://www.swyx.io/clientside-webmentions)\r\n\t\t- Sanitizing/moderating comments?\r\n\t- Social Proof\r\n\t - Reader highlights (like Medium does)\r\n\t - Claps/likes/etc\r\n\t - Meta conversations on HN/Reddit/Twitter/etc\r\n- Theming\r\n - Dark/Light mode toggles - avoid dark-mode [FOUC](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flash_of_unstyled_content)!\r\n - Custom theming (see [Max Bock site](https://mxb.dev/))\r\n- Blog Index Browsing features\r\n\t- Search: Simple filters, fuzzy matches, faceted search\r\n\t- Tags and Categories. Tag hierarchies?\r\n\t- [nprogress loading indicator](https://github.com/nmackey/accessible-nprogress)\r\n\t- [Autolink headers](https://www.swyx.io/gatsby-remark-essential-plugins#gatsby-remark-autolink-headers)\r\n\t- Pagination - for posts, for tags ([example](https://blog.johnnyreilly.com/tags/react))\r\n\t- Archive (unpaginated) ([example](https://blog.johnnyreilly.com/archive)) \r\n\t- Recommendations:\r\n\t\t- Next/previous buttons\r\n\t\t- \"Related\" reads\r\n\t\t- \"You may also like\" recommendations\r\n\t- 404 page - try to [guess what the user wanted](https://github.com/sw-yx/swyxkit/issues/90)\r\n- Accessibility\r\n - Using semantic HTML with proper Heading hierarchy\r\n - [SVG Icons](https://css-tricks.com/accessible-svg-icons/)\r\n - [Tap targets](https://web.dev/tap-targets)\r\n- Security\r\n - [X-Content-Type](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Headers/X-Content-Type-Options)\r\n - [X-Frame-Options](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Headers/X-Frame-Options)\r\n - [X-XSS-Protection](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Headers/X-XSS-Protection)\r\n - [CSP](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/CSP)\r\n - auto add [`target=\"_blank\"` or `rel=\"noopener\"`](https://web.dev/external-anchors-use-rel-noopener/) to links\r\n\r\nAnd everything should look great on mobile devices and (at least not horrible on) ultrawide monitors.\r\n\r\nWeb performance is of course a huge part of the reading experience but I've put it in the section below for even spacing reasons.\r\n\r\n## Author Experience\r\n\r\n- WYSIWYG writing (with keyboard shortcuts) - use a CMS? Roll your own? [Markdown vs Blocks](https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2022/02/thoughts-on-markdown/)?\r\n- If writing in static markdown files, the ability to [colocate static files](https://www.swyx.io/gatsby-remark-essential-plugins#gatsby-remark-copy-linked-file) (eg pdfs) next to the file (instead of dumped in a big fat \"files\" folder with no clue which post it belongs to), and to easily write relative links to them in the markdown that will be transformed to the write path\r\n- Customizable metadata (with good inference when not supplied)\r\n\t- slug\r\n\t- publish date\r\n\t- edited at date\r\n\t- canonical url\r\n\t- description\r\n\t- og:image\r\n\t- layout\r\n- Shortcodes/[Unfurls](https://github.com/MichaelDeBoey/gatsby-remark-embedder)\r\n- Image uploads - best workflow is to paste the image from clipboard right into the textbox and have it upload, [as Github Issues does](https://twitter.com/x/status/1480356418817753088).\r\n- Static data entry\r\n - eg to log [talk](https://github.com/sw-yx/swyxdotio/blob/master/talks.yml) and [podcast](https://github.com/sw-yx/swyxdotio/blob/master/podcasts.yml) appearances\r\n- Analytics\r\n - Server side analytics (Netlify Analytics)\r\n - Google Analytics\r\n - Privacy preserving clientside analytics (eg [Fathom](https://usefathom.com/ref/EEITJV))\r\n- Mobile authoring/editing experience\r\n\r\n## Distribution/Reach\r\n\r\n- [OpenGraph tags](https://github.com/sw-yx/spark-joy/blob/master/README.md#link-rel-tags-and-opengraph) - these will determine unfurls. \r\n- [Autogenerated og:image off a template](https://www.swyx.io/jamstack-og-images)? on request or [at build time](https://phiilu.com/generate-open-graph-images-for-your-static-next-js-site)? Your title/description/og:image will be read by more people than your post itself\r\n- Is a [sitemap](https://cognitiveseo.com/blog/22867/seo-sitemaps/) needed these days?\r\n- [Favicons + Webmanifest](https://github.com/sw-yx/spark-joy/blob/master/README.md#favicons)\r\n- Redirects for moved/broken links\r\n\t- outbound: [broken link checkers](https://github.com/Munter/netlify-plugin-checklinks)\r\n\t- inbound: [redirect checkers](https://www.npmjs.com/package/netlify-plugin-no-more-404)\r\n- RSS feed: even better - customizable RSS feed by topic\r\n- **This is HUGE** for reaching loyal readers: Newsletter publishing on a per-post or weekly-digest basis. IMO this is the big win of Substack, the only platform really taking this seriously\r\n- AMP support? [debatable](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=amp&sort=byPopularity&type=story)\r\n- Web Performance (affects Google ranking so I put it here)\r\n\t- Mind your lighthouse scores \r\n\t\t- Lazy load images ``\r\n\t\t- [Image optimization](https://github.com/sw-yx/spark-joy/blob/master/PERF.md#image-optimization)\r\n\t\t- [try to set image aspect ratios for cumulative layout shift](https://twitter.com/ryanflorence/status/1560274356579622914?s=20&t=8QGjqsERsfdsDmHPzpwSCw)\r\n\t- Find \"lite\" versions of all third party scripts\r\n\t\t- https://github.com/paulirish/lite-youtube-embed\r\n\t\t- Youtube embed: React: https://static-tweet.vercel.app/ , [Svelte](https://twitter.com/swyx/status/1536100509169221633)\r\n\t\t- https://github.com/lukeed/ganalytics\r\n\t\t- or put them in partytown https://github.com/BuilderIO/partytown\r\n\t- CDN caching/serving from Edge workers (Cloudflare, Deno, Fly)\r\n\t- PWA/Offline caching ([example](https://www.gatsbyjs.com/plugins/gatsby-plugin-offline))\r\n\t- [Resource hints/preconnects](https://github.com/sw-yx/spark-joy/blob/master/PERF.md#sample-meta-tags-with-preconnects) \r\n\r\n## Developer Experience\r\n\r\n- Plugin systems for adding every feature above in <10 lines of code ([example](https://www.gatsbyjs.com/plugins/))\r\n- Build times should be <1 minute\r\n- Type safety for data schemas\r\n- Fast content preview (preferably without having to run a local server)\r\n- Monitoring/alerting - when your site goes down or a single popular page disappears for whatever reason, who finds out first? your readers or you?\r\n\r\nThis is often tied with the debate about whether or not the blog should be [Jamstack](https://jamstack.org/) - mostly statically generated and hosted on a CDN, or traditionally mostly [generated on request and cached](https://remix.guide/discover?limit=100&sort=top&resourceId=3mAk7Or2mqa1) for some amount of time.\r\n\r\n## Misc\r\n\r\n- Portability to other platforms in future\r\n- [Popovers and link previews](https://notes.andymatuschak.org/About_these_notes) per Andy Matuschak\r\n- i18n/translations\r\n\r\n## Context\r\n\r\nIt is often said that one of the best ways of learning a new language, from [Ruby](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gzj723LkRJY) to [Rust](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/software-sessions/creating-static-sites-in-dyMtIZ4OlDK/), is to implement a static site generator (fun fact - it was actually my take-home interview for Netlify!). Depending on the requirements, it forces you to learn everything from filesystem access, making network requests, parallelizing code, parsing configs, using libraries, creating plugin systems, injecting javascript, writing a CLI, and deployment.\r\n\r\nBecause there are accordingly [so many static site generators](https://jamstack.org/generators/), most people tend to devalue them, in the \"I could build this in a weekend\" sort of way, and end up building their own blogging platforms every few years as a way to \"stay sharp\". But that's a very 90's view of blogging technology - and the requirements of a modern Blog has diverged a lot from the basics of static site generation in the past 30 years. In the end, your readers have a poorer experience and your blog may not get the reach it might deserve.\r\n\r\nI of course am no exception to this, being maintainer of [my own small blog template](https://github.com/sw-yx/swyxkit/) for the Svelte ecosystem. I am intimately familiar with the modern dev blogging platforms like [Dev.to](https://dev.to/swyx/) and [Hashnode](https://dx.tips/), and these days spend plenty of time reading [the many Data Engineering Substacks](https://twitter.com/swyx/status/1554668085931638785), and only appreciated how much they do for us that you should not handroll (or should consider building if DIY, because it is genuinely such a good feature). \r\n\r\nThis is an appreciation I only arrived at after ~5 years of constant blogging, so I figured I should write down what I see as \"table stakes\", for you to appreciate when considering your next great blogging platform, without trying to sell you any particular solution.\r\n\r\nFor what its worth, I do think most people, even developers, should not handroll their own blogs and should try to use Devto/Hashnode/Substack (Wordpress is of course an option) accordingly, because most people get so caught up in being PM + Dev for their handrolled blogging software that they never get to the writing. Try to do, say, 20 straight weeks of regular blogging, to prove that you are actually going to be a blogger, before you spend a bunch of time coding up blog software you end up not using.\r\n\r\n**The most important feature of a blog is its content** - if you write good content, people will overcome almost any hurdle to come and read it. Don't forget that.\r\n\r\n{% twitter https://twitter.com/markdalgleish/status/1108433814647300097 %}\r\n\r\n","frontmatter":{"tags":"advice, writing","category":"essay","cover_image":"https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/185814244-3e698a67-0827-45bd-986d-0c1d419b0fbb.png"},"title":"The Surprisingly High Table Stakes of Modern Blogs","description":"Bottom Line Up Front: You are probably underestimating how much goes into blogging technology these days. ","category":"essay","tags":["advice","writing"],"image":"https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/185814244-3e698a67-0827-45bd-986d-0c1d419b0fbb.png","slug":"the-surprisingly-high-table-stakes-of-modern-blogs","date":"2022-08-21T20:21:53.000Z","readingTime":"6 minutes","ghMetadata":{"issueUrl":"https://github.com/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/443","commentsUrl":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/443/comments","title":"The Surprisingly High Table Stakes of Modern Blogs","created_at":"2022-08-21T20:21:53Z","updated_at":"2023-01-29T07:56:01Z","reactions":{"url":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/443/reactions","total_count":3,"+1":2,"-1":0,"laugh":0,"hooray":1,"confused":0,"heart":0,"rocket":0,"eyes":0}}},{"type":"blog","content":"\r\nThe Twitter API has changed (from v1 to v2), and Python has gone from 2 to 3, and Google is still serving up loads of outdated results.\r\n\r\nI had to clean up a Twitter account I recently took over so I had to look this up, and it was more annoying than strictly had to be. Here you go. (this is just a script dump meant for developers, do not blindly copy without understanding how to modify this code for your needs)\r\n\r\n```python\r\nimport tweepy\r\nimport os\r\nimport pprint\r\nfrom random import randint\r\nfrom time import sleep\r\n\r\n\r\n# make sure you create an app with read AND write permissions\r\n# oauth 1.0 app worked for me\r\n# https://stackoverflow.com/questions/8389796/why-this-error-read-only-application-cannot-post for more\r\nSCREEN_NAME = os.environ['screen_name']\r\nCONSUMER_KEY = os.environ['api_key']\r\nCONSUMER_SECRET = os.environ['key_secret']\r\nACCESS_TOKEN = os.environ['access_token']\r\nACCESS_TOKEN_SECRET = os.environ['token_secret']\r\n\r\nauth = tweepy.OAuthHandler(CONSUMER_KEY, CONSUMER_SECRET)\r\nauth.set_access_token(ACCESS_TOKEN, ACCESS_TOKEN_SECRET)\r\napi = tweepy.API(auth)\r\n\r\nfollowers = api.get_follower_ids(screen_name=SCREEN_NAME)\r\nfriends = api.get_friend_ids(screen_name=SCREEN_NAME)\r\n\r\n## manually restricted range so that script doesn't go nuts\r\n## using enumerate so as to track progress\r\ncount = 0\r\nfor idx, f in enumerate(friends[2000:3000]):\r\n if f not in followers:\r\n usr = api.get_user(user_id=f)\r\n if usr.followers_count < 100: # arbitrary notability criteria\r\n print(\"Unfollowing https://twitter.com/{0} | name:{1} | followers {2} | description {3} , \".format(usr.screen_name,\r\n usr.name, \r\n usr.followers_count,\r\n usr.description,\r\n ))\r\n # https://stackoverflow.com/a/7663441/1106414\r\n for attempt in range(3): #max retry 3 times\r\n try:\r\n api.destroy_friendship(user_id=f)\r\n count += 1\r\n except Exception as e:\r\n print('failed to try ' + e)\r\n else:\r\n break\r\n else:\r\n # we failed all the attempts\r\n print('all attempts of {0} failed!'.format(f))\r\n sleep(randint(1,10))\r\n print(\"processed index {0}\".format(idx))\r\n \r\nprint(\"done! unfollowed {0}\".format(count)) \r\n```\r\n\r\nYou can run this pretty easily on Replit: https://replit.com/@swyx/tweepy-python-scripting#main.py\r\n\r\n![image](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/185775655-22b5f13d-f207-4d5f-bf71-15bc40a00a0b.png)\r\n","frontmatter":{"category":"snippet","tags":"python, twitter, api","cover_image":"https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/185775655-22b5f13d-f207-4d5f-bf71-15bc40a00a0b.png"},"title":"How to write a Python Twitter Unfollow Script in 2022","description":"The Twitter API has changed (from v1 to v2), and Python has gone from 2 to 3, and Google is still serving up loads of outdated results. ","category":"snippet","tags":["python","twitter","api"],"image":"https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/185775655-22b5f13d-f207-4d5f-bf71-15bc40a00a0b.png","slug":"how-to-write-a-python-twitter-unfollow-script-in-2022","date":"2022-08-21T04:28:59.000Z","readingTime":"2 minutes","ghMetadata":{"issueUrl":"https://github.com/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/442","commentsUrl":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/442/comments","title":"How to write a Python Twitter Unfollow Script in 2022","created_at":"2022-08-21T04:28:59Z","updated_at":"2022-08-22T19:44:22Z","reactions":{"url":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/442/reactions","total_count":3,"+1":0,"-1":0,"laugh":0,"hooray":0,"confused":0,"heart":3,"rocket":0,"eyes":0}}},{"type":"blog","content":"Today's fun emergency at work was a first - writing a security postmortem for a breach of an _open source user_ (aka not a breach of us, which seems the norm).\r\n\r\nYou can see the final result [here](https://airbyte.com/blog/improving-security-for-open-source-airbyte-users). The total turnaround time for this post, from deciding to write something, to having it live, was about 4 hours, including review from about 6 team members.\r\n\r\nIt's not the most gripping piece of literature I've ever penned, but it was a muscle I exercise rarely so I figured I would share some thoughts if you should ever need to do the same.\r\n\r\n## The opening\r\n\r\n- **I prioritized putting the bottom line up front.** In the first sentence, og:description, and on social media, you learn the basic facts of the matter: \"an Airbyte user self-hosting an unsecured instance had their connector credentials stolen\". This is enough for most people to get the gist. I hate when companies bury the lede - especially in our case when people were already talking about the incident in our Slack and screenshots were being shared on social media. Getting the story out in the first sentence also lets people move on with their day if that's all the time they had to spend with us.\r\n- This leads me to the next point: there are multiple audiences for any security blogpost.\r\n - Unsophisticated people whose first animal instinct at the news of every hack is \"uh oh, these guys aren't secure\",\r\n - to more familiar users who would never be caught dead making the same mistakes,\r\n - all the way through the other side to superexpert users who have seen 100 similar mistakes, and, while individually excusable, as a whole bemoan the sorry state of security in our industry. \r\n I ordered my message for the outermost rings first, who have the least attention span, and then focused on reassuring existing users, who care about the details.\r\n- It was important to thread the needle of:\r\n - not placing the entire blame on the user\r\n - reassuring how seriously we take it, with proof\r\n - answering the jabs of our critics\r\n - not hard-selling our managed/hosted Cloud solution to open source users\r\n This was sometimes a tricky thing - I hesitated a lot before landing on the AWS-like messaging of [Shared Responsibility](https://aws.amazon.com/compliance/shared-responsibility-model/) (hey that media training was worth something after all!). In the end, I had one reviewer each that felt we were taking too much blame and pushing too much blame in different parts of the post, and that felt about as good as I could get.\r\n- A last minute review by a new hire reminded us that our transparency was one of the reasons he joined us, and I thought that sounded like a pretty good description of what we were doing, so that went up as the second sentence of the first para: \"Transparency is a core value at Airbyte, so we are choosing to highlight this to our community and discuss the steps we will take to improve Airbyte's security defaults.\" - in other words, we could've just _not_ said anything about this issue, but chose to bring attention to it anyway since \r\n - it was already being discussed by the extremely online types and \r\n - it might have benefit for other users who were out of the loop.\r\n\r\n## Presenting facts\r\n\r\nA chronology with referencable links and version numbers adds credibility - nothing to hide. Giving people the facts as we would if we were talking in person helps our readers explain it to their colleagues as well.\r\n\r\n## Followups\r\n\r\nAfter presenting the \"what happened\", we then laid out:\r\n - \"Action Items\": what you should do and what we will do\r\n - \"FAQs\": our direct responses to criticisms we saw elsewhere, that readers might be thinking, that we answered directly\r\n\r\nPart of the tricky part of Action Items is that Product/Engineering have to agree with you on what we remedial actions we are willing to commit to. This is tricky particularly if you are not really admitting fault or taking _full_ responsibility. Security isn't binary - particularly when discussing security _of defaults_ - there is an unending menu of increasingly secure things we could opt to do, all with tradeoffs of eng time and open source convenience/infrastructure requirements. Fortunately our engineering team either had already planned some of these actions or were more than willing to add them onto the roadmap.\r\n\r\nThe final part of handling FAQs was broadening the thinking to proactively answer questions that hadn't yet been asked but that you might reasonably expect to see in a post like this. Hence putting up a responsible disclosure policy, and phrasing the Airbyte Cloud question more like a cynic might.\r\n","frontmatter":{},"title":"Writing my first Security blogpost","description":"Today's fun emergency at work was a first - writing a security postmortem for a breach of an *open source user* (aka not a breach of us, which seems the norm). ","category":"note","tags":[],"slug":"writing-my-first-security-blogpost","date":"2022-08-19T02:51:52.000Z","readingTime":"4 minutes","ghMetadata":{"issueUrl":"https://github.com/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/441","commentsUrl":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/441/comments","title":"Writing my first Security blogpost","created_at":"2022-08-19T02:51:52Z","updated_at":"2023-01-08T23:21:26Z","reactions":{"url":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/441/reactions","total_count":0,"+1":0,"-1":0,"laugh":0,"hooray":0,"confused":0,"heart":0,"rocket":0,"eyes":0}}},{"title":"How to Thought Lead, the Metacreator Ceiling, and Learning in Public on the Build in Public podcast","slug":"bip-thoughtlead","tags":["LearninPublic"],"venues":"BuildInPublic","date":"2022-08-11T00:00:00.000Z","url":"https://share.transistor.fm/s/398dc0ca","video":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-oTmQhagN4k&feature=youtu.be","description":"KP is the Build in Public guy and invited me on his pod to talk about LIP, but we sidetracked to talk about devrel, the content metagame, and my upcoming post on How to Thought Lead.","category":"podcast"},{"type":"blog","content":"\r\nThis week in a [Svelte Radio recording](https://twitter.com/swyx/status/1555596996744028160), @rich-harris commented that something I said was \"uniquely swyx\": an offhand observation that \"we are all professional streamers now\" [^1]. I responded that I've been calling this behavior \"barbarianism\" - you can listen to the full explanation [when the episode drops in future](https://www.svelteradio.com/).\r\n\r\nThe concept of \"barbarian\" comes from the excellent Alex Danco piece, [The Michael Scott Theory of Social Class](https://alexdanco.com/2021/01/22/the-michael-scott-theory-of-social-class/):\r\n\r\n![image](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/183313203-e6fdab69-99e1-4c89-be5a-05079369a046.png)\r\n\r\n> Several years ago, Michael Church wrote a neat summary of the American social class system, and how the traditional metaphor of “climbing the ladder of social class” is wrong in an important way. **There isn’t one single ladder; there are three – each with different values, norms and goals.** You have the first, and largest ladder, Labour. Next, you have the “Educated Gentry” ladder that corresponds to what we typically call the Upper Middle Class. And finally, you have the elite ladder. And the remarkable thing about these ladders is how perfectly they correspond to the three-tiered pyramid in The Office, of the losers, clueless, and sociopaths. \r\n>\r\n> ...\r\n>\r\n> The Elite ladder has a lot in common with the Labour ladder: it’s straightforward. You move up by getting more money and more power. **The only fundamental difference is that you climb the Labour ladder by working hard, whereas you climb the Elite ladder by acquiring leverage.**\r\n>\r\n> The bottom of this ladder is an entry point – junior Investment Banker roles you can jump into, or founding a startup now also qualifies. The next rung up are the executives who run successful businesses. They are powerful, but nervous. Above them is Old Money: the multigenerational dynasties with power that extends beyond business and into media and politics, like the Bushes and extended Vanderbilts. **And finally, at the top of this ladder, are the Barbarians. These are the scariest people in the world.** \r\n\r\nBarbarians are Shaw's [Unreasonable Men](https://www.fastcompany.com/1780013/it-takes-unreasonable-man-or-woman-succeed) living [Thompson's used up, worn out life](https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/5237.Hunter_S_Thompson). They are politicians, kings, innovators, pioneers, troublemakers, dictators, criminals. Being a **Barbarian** is not strictly an aspirational thing - I am not complimenting this behavior in any way. But I think learning about extremes helps open up minds that may not know they are closed.\r\n\r\nAnd if you don't know about the Barbarians, you almost definitely have a more closed mind than you know.\r\n\r\n**Barbarians famously do not respect borders.** They reject your socially constructed names for things and artificial divisions between concepts - instead they look at _what is really there_ - the natural, real, landscape of hills and valleys and rivers and fields - make plans for what they want accordingly, and go out and get it (famously, with some regrettable collateral damage). Instead of getting into meaningless debates over whether something is called a library or a framework, they understand what it does and how it works, and bulldoze their way toward their goals.\r\n\r\n**I am a Barbarian of good ideas.** I don't particularly care if the idea comes from math or physics or economics or biology or computer science - if it makes sense given one set of assumptions the internal logic can be generalized to more fields than one. This is why I often talk about [making technology choices in my tech career using lessons I learned from my investing career](https://learninpublic.org/), or taking lessons from [my indie creator career](https://www.swyx.io/part-time-creator-manifesto/) to my [developer relations one](https://dx.tips/).\r\n\r\nI think the baseline discipline you need to have to Be Barbarian is **philosophy**, not math or science. A longer discussion on this is on [an upcoming InfoQ podcast](https://twitter.com/danielbryantuk/status/1552579769237209088) but when you [think from first principles](https://www.swyx.io/first-principles-approach#first-principles-thinking) and learn about [epistemology](https://twitter.com/search?q=epistemology%20from%3Aswyx&src=typed_query) you naturally end up being more of a Barbarian than people who learn by analogy and take things as they are presented. A good number of Barbarians are self styled philosophers - **George Soros** was one of the greatest hedge fund managers of all time, and yet he arrived there [by an absolutely bizarre path studying Karl Popper](https://www.ft.com/content/0ca06172-bfe9-11de-aed2-00144feab49a), NOT by getting a CFA or doing 3 years in corporate finance at a bulge bracket investment bank. \r\n\r\nSteve Jobs, who spent a year seeking spiritual enlightenment in India and so on, had this famous saying about the \"secrets of life\":\r\n\r\n{% youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=POKSiisnY1o %}\r\n\r\n> When you grow up, you tend to get told that the world is the way it is and your life is just to live your life inside the world, try not to bash into the walls too much, try to have a nice family life, have fun, save a little money.\r\n> \r\n> That’s a very limited life. Life can be much broader, once you discover one simple fact, and that is that everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you. And you can change it, you can influence it, you can build your own things that other people can use. Once you learn that, you’ll never be the same again.\r\n> \r\n> And the minute that you understand that you can poke life and actually something will, you know if you push in, something will pop out the other side, that you can change it, you can mold it. That’s maybe the most important thing. It’s to **shake off this erroneous notion that life is there and you’re just gonna live in it, versus embrace it, change it, improve it, make your mark upon it.**\r\n> \r\n> I think that’s very important and however, you learn that, once you learn it, you’ll want to change life and make it better, cause it’s kind of messed up, in a lot of ways. Once you learn that, you’ll never be the same again.\r\n\r\nIn Shaan Puri's words - [life is more malleable than you think](https://twitter.com/swyx/status/1556053441495142402).\r\n\r\nI've also been catching up on **Better Call Saul** recently in anticipation of the series finale, and this scene with Hector Salamanca is a perfect (if unpleasant) dramatization of how a Barbarian moves through life:\r\n\r\n{% youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4k7_3vZ162I %}\r\n\r\nAnd of course, Better Call Saul tells a lot of the backstory about Hector's lifelong feud with [Gustavo Fring](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bb-GY9LK9Pg), a more dangerous Barbarian due to his ability to dissemble by playing on two of Church's ladders at once. Both of whom are upstaged by [Walter White](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ca3kPemW2CE), the biggest Barbarian of all in Albuquerque.\r\n\r\nThese are the beliefs and behaviors of the Barbarians. You may or may not subscribe to them. You may use them for good or for selfish gain (or both). But you should not go through life without knowing they are real.\r\n\r\n![rbarian](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/183314384-59e20ca6-742b-4f10-9741-b7f4ab772d65.png)\r\n\r\n---\r\n\r\n## More Barbarians\r\n\r\n- [Ross is lawful good, Phoebe is Barbarian](https://youtu.be/OvDWFi3IMoU?t=70)\r\n- [Linus Torvalds is very Barbarian](https://twitter.com/swyx/status/1536832603411451905) with both Linux and git.\r\n- Please let me know if you think of more examples, I'll try to add over time\r\n\r\n## Footnotes\r\n\r\n[^1]: Abstractly, most of us who work remotely make money by sitting down in front of a table, have our cameras on, speak extemporaneously, and making computers go beep boop, just like gaming and coding streamers. Particularly as a manager of a team now, every meeting I run is basically livestreaming information, and should be entertaining enough to hold interest. It stands to reason that we should explore using the tooling of professional streamers in the workplace, because they have so many years of experience on us. The first wave was hardware - getting [better microphones and cameras](https://www.swyx.io/prerecording-talks#recording-yourself), the next wave is software - I described how I am using the Elgato Streamdeck and [Rogue Amoeba's Loopback](https://rogueamoeba.com/loopback/) to sound effect my live meetings to some success at work.","frontmatter":{"slug":"breaking-barbarian","category":"essay","cover_image":"https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/183314384-59e20ca6-742b-4f10-9741-b7f4ab772d65.png"},"title":"Breaking Barbarian","description":"This week in a Svelte Radio recording (https://twitter.com/swyx/status/1555596996744028160), @rich-harris commented that something I said was \"uniquely swyx\": an offhand observation that \"we are all professional streamers now\" \\ ^1 . I responded that I've been calling this behavior \"barbarianism\" - you can listen to the full explanation when the episode drops in future (https://www.svelteradio.com/). ","category":"essay","tags":[],"image":"https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/183314384-59e20ca6-742b-4f10-9741-b7f4ab772d65.png","slug":"breaking-barbarian","date":"2022-08-07T22:51:07.000Z","readingTime":"6 minutes","ghMetadata":{"issueUrl":"https://github.com/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/440","commentsUrl":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/440/comments","title":"Breaking Barbarian","created_at":"2022-08-07T22:51:07Z","updated_at":"2023-01-29T07:56:15Z","reactions":{"url":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/440/reactions","total_count":0,"+1":0,"-1":0,"laugh":0,"hooray":0,"confused":0,"heart":0,"rocket":0,"eyes":0}}},{"type":"blog","content":"\r\nSociety is splintering in an unacceptable way and I have a metaphor for it.\r\n\r\nImagine, as developers often do, a \"stack\" of the systems, beliefs and things we use in daily life. \r\nList whatever items you feel like, but sort them by some measure of [Maslow's hierarchy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_needs) from base needs to self expression:\r\n\r\n- Religion/Politics\r\n- Spoken/Written Language\r\n- Books/Content/Social Media\r\n- Money/Banking\r\n- TV/Phones\r\n- Clothing\r\n- Science\r\n- Food\r\n- Internet, Electricity, Water, Sewage, Roads\r\n- Land/Citizenship\r\n\r\nYou can plot the political-social divide along these dimensions:\r\n\r\n![image](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/181870590-6f5073b7-be2e-4fbf-b368-bd498734fae1.png)\r\n\r\nThis accurately describes everything from Fox News vs MSNBC, to Truth Social vs Twitter, to Masks vs MAGA hat, even to different interpretations of established Science.\r\n\r\nI used to think that this was where the social divide ended. And then the Crypto culture wars started.\r\n\r\n![image](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/181870594-9a2496c3-01eb-4973-ab03-b805fc95d036.png)\r\n\r\nThis accurately describes: [\"gm\" and \"ser\"](https://www.one37pm.com/nft/nft-twitter-meanings-definitions), The Block vs Bloomberg, TradFi vs DeFi, `.com` vs `.eth`, and even [disrespecting seed oils](https://www.vice.com/en/article/v7djay/the-newest-bitcoin-diet-trend-is-hating-seed-oils) and making [crypto phones](https://solana.com/news/saga-reveal).\r\n\r\nWhere the red and blue lines join is the \"zip\" of society. The current layer at which both sides agree to set aside their differences and not go to war.\r\n\r\nAs divides strengthen over time, due to technological filter bubbles and increasing demonization of the other, society continues to break down by splitting along the divides in lower and lower parts of the stack. The zip slides down. The Red App [acquires a Red Cloud](https://www.reuters.com/markets/deals/social-media-app-parler-buys-cloud-services-provider-2022-09-16/). The Crypto Chain makes a [Crypto Phone](https://solana.com/news/saga-reveal).\r\n\r\nThe last thread tying society together is our physical proximity and legal identity as citizens. Balaji's [Network State](https://thenetworkstate.com/) is the latest attempt at tugging loose the final zip on society, making it come undone. The final step is civil war or secession.\r\n\r\n---\r\n\r\n**Note to reader:** The above was the main idea and body of the post. Everything that follows is extra context and discarded drafts that expand upon thinking because it is likely that one of you will ask.\r\n\r\n---\r\n\r\n## Context\r\n\r\nI remember the day the American Dream ended for me. \r\n\r\nIt was [November 8, 2016](https://edition.cnn.com/2017/11/08/politics/inside-election-day-2016-as-it-happened/index.html). I was a product manager and part time head of the New York office for the startup I worked at. We had a very liberal ops person who was taking her day off in the tiny home-office we had, dialling for Hillary. I remember her cajoling, pleading, begging passionately and bravely with complete strangers on the phone to vote. I of course knew that people did phone banking, but it was my first time actually seeing someone do it in front of me. As I was heading out, I asked her why she did it, slightly bemused. \"Because he could win,\" she answered. The forecasts had Hillary at like a 90% (I don't remember the exact forecasts) at the time. I chuckled at her characteristically overanxious nature and left for the day.\r\n\r\nAs the results rolled in that night, I remembered being very afraid. There was some physical fear - I remembered the Philadelphia crowd taking the streets, flipping cars, and so on when Obama won, and that was a _happy_ crowd - but the more overriding fear was that I was no longer in the America I had crossed the globe to build my life in. Of course in retrospect I learned that NYC was the bluest of blue bubbles, and being part of the coastal elite virtually guaranteed I both was ignorant and didn't care about what was going on in the other states. But that sheer disconnect frightened me.\r\n\r\nWe've all seen the charts of Congress splintering over time (kudos to the mad geniuses who work so hard at quantifying politics):\r\n\r\n\r\n

\r\n\t

\r\n Pew \r\n\t

\r\n\r\n [Pew source](https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2013/07/17/partisan-polarization-in-congress-and-among-public-is-greater-than-ever/)\r\n\r\n ![image](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/181866302-b502de4f-24cb-4d22-9b24-62d4a086310a.png)\r\n\r\n

\r\n

\r\n\t

\r\n NYT\r\n \t

\r\n\r\n [NYT source](https://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/12/upshot/polarization-is-dividing-american-society-not-just-politics.html)\r\n \r\n ![image](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/181866306-ffe123a3-d997-48e1-a388-103aae42e77f.png)\r\n \r\n

\r\n\r\n

\r\n\t

\r\n Vox\r\n\t

\r\n\r\n [Vox source](https://www.vox.com/2015/4/23/8485443/polarization-congress-visualization)\r\n ![image](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/181866310-44cae2d2-4aa0-4e18-b40c-af02127b5777.png)\r\n \r\n

\r\n\r\nThis observation is well known in the study of elected offices, but it is much less understood in society. What November 8 2016 did for me was wake me up to the widening divide in **society**.\r\n\r\nOver the next 6 years we've seen sharp divides based on housing, immigration, race, guns, abortion, masks, cryptocurrency and so on. It feels like chaos. It feels like the end of civilization. A common joke on Reddit is that humanity peaked in May 2016 when [Harambe the Gorilla](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harambe) was shot.\r\n\r\nAfter quite a lot of reflection I feel like I have a mental model for understanding what is happening, what might happen, and what we could try to prevent happening.\r\n\r\n## The Importance of the Society Stack\r\n\r\nImagine, as developers often do, a \"stack\" of the systems, beliefs and things we use in daily life. \r\nList whatever items you feel like, but sort them by some measure of [Maslow's hierarchy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_needs) from base needs to self expression:\r\n\r\n- Religion/Politics\r\n- Spoken/Written Language\r\n- Books/Content/Social Media\r\n- Money/Banking\r\n- TV/Phones\r\n- Clothing\r\n- Science\r\n- Food\r\n- Internet, Electricity, Water, Sewage, Roads\r\n- Land/Citizenship\r\n\r\nYou'll notice that I included some weird items in there, like \"Language\" alongside \"Clothing\" (including [sneakers](https://economicinsights.substack.com/p/republicans-buy-sneakers-too)). That's on purpose.\r\n\r\n## Acceptable vs Unacceptable Differences\r\n\r\n**The central assertion is that a society built atop a stack that is more _shared_ is more cohesive than a society that is more _split_.**\r\n\r\nThe [Tower of Babel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tower_of_Babel) is the most literal interpretation of this idea. Working together, humanity could build a tower that could reach the gods. But without a shared language, they stopped being able to understand each other and failed. Modern left-wing and right-wing people signal their affiliation with word choice as well, and are equally incapable of understanding each other (this is complicated; care must be taken to avoid [false equivalence](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_equivalence)).\r\n\r\nAlmost every culture has some concept of \"dinner table topics to avoid\" - no religion, no sex, no politics, etc. Those are very loosely understood to be _unacceptable differences_ - an implicit acknowledgement that as long as we agree on the lower things, I can still break bread with you as long as we never talk about our differences on the higher level things. \r\n\r\nThere is huge variation in this from table to table of course. But there are many versions of acceptable/unacceptable topics on which to base action - [Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964](http://www.eeoc.gov/laws/statutes/titlevii.cfm) prohibits discrimination based on race, gender, sexual orientation, and religion, but not political affiliation. But outside of laws, there is also a moving social contract, and moving social desires, that expand/contract these social divides accordingly.\r\n\r\n## Expectations Differ by Level in the Stack\r\n\r\nMost people are against terrorists and Nazis. It is very common to see demands that the likes of Twitter and Cloudflare expend resources to eliminate terrorists and Nazis from their platforms. Yet, those terrorists and Nazis use the same cell services, electricity, water, roads, and so on. Nobody is calling up AT&T to root out Nazis.\r\n\r\nIn other words, there is some understanding that there are differences between utilities which supply basic human needs for all, and private platforms which have the choice and perhaps responsibility to exclude people who choose to violate the norms of the rest of that community.\r\n\r\nThe challenge comes **when platforms get so big that they are basically utilities.** There it gets fuzzy, and the platforms on the edge of society bear the brunt of its divides.\r\n\r\n","frontmatter":{"title":"The Great Unzippening","subtitle":"What MAGA hats and NFT PFPs have in common","cover_image":"https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/181870590-6f5073b7-be2e-4fbf-b368-bd498734fae1.png","disclosure":"This is a politics blogpost done late on a Friday night whim, I am obviously not a politics expert and haven't rigorously thought through my views on every matter expressed here so I may not be able to defend them under scrutiny."},"title":"The Great Unzippening","subtitle":"What MAGA hats and NFT PFPs have in common","description":"Society is splintering in an unacceptable way and I have a metaphor for it. ","category":"note","tags":[],"image":"https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/181870590-6f5073b7-be2e-4fbf-b368-bd498734fae1.png","slug":"the-great-unzippening","date":"2022-07-30T03:26:29.000Z","readingTime":"6 minutes","ghMetadata":{"issueUrl":"https://github.com/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/439","commentsUrl":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/439/comments","title":"The Great Unzippening","created_at":"2022-07-30T03:26:29Z","updated_at":"2022-10-01T05:48:17Z","reactions":{"url":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/439/reactions","total_count":0,"+1":0,"-1":0,"laugh":0,"hooray":0,"confused":0,"heart":0,"rocket":0,"eyes":0}}},{"type":"blog","content":"\r\nI use iCloud as my syncing engine for my [Obsidian Second Brain](https://www.swyx.io/obsidian-brain), and twice now I've seen iCloud get corrupted into a really bad state. I also [back up everything to github](https://github.com/sw-yx/brain), so I dont really experience much data loss, but it is annoying to see iCloud be so unreliable at even the simple task of syncing mostly text files. \r\n\r\nToday's issue was that I somehow created some files that iCloud didnt like (I renamed one file, and added a few others, in a short period of time, but nothing crazy), which led to something like this:\r\n\r\n![image](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/180661490-c20740cd-9a81-487f-9551-2cae7989ca4d.png)\r\n\r\nand iCloud then refusing to sync _anything else_ that I added or modified to my synced folders from there on out (i was uploading 7kb, not 2gb, which made it even more infuriating that it was getting stuck uploading that trivial of data)\r\n\r\nIf you google this problem you get a lot of really horrible advice from the apple forums, like [turn off your iCloud and on again](https://developer.apple.com/forums/thread/118769) and [again](https://discussions.apple.com/thread/8002857) (which deletes stuff that was just fine! if you have a large icloud account - i use mine for photos - that is ~100gb of stuff that just gets wiped and later has to be resynced), or just a [depressing chain of black box user anecdotes](https://developer.apple.com/forums/thread/651829) that don't offer any confidence whatsoever.\r\n\r\nI also tried killing and restarting Finder itself, to no avail.\r\n\r\nI'll skip straight to the point - [this](https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/264915/icloud-drive-is-stuck-uploading-items-and-no-longer-syncs) is the advice that worked for me.\r\n\r\n```bash\r\n$ ps aux | grep bird\r\n\r\n# output looks something like\r\nswyx 597 1.7 0.1 408320592 38384 ?? S 7:19PM 0:26.45 /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/CloudDocsDaemon.framework/Versions/A/Support/bird\r\n# grab the process ID (PID) from this output - here it is 597\r\n\r\n\r\n# optional: Check current priority of bird process\r\n$ ps -fl -C [PID]\r\n UID PID PPID C STIME TTY TIME CMD F PRI NI SZ RSS WCHAN S ADDR\r\n 501 597 1 0 7:19PM ?? 0:36.11 /System/Library/ 1004004 31 0 408325200 44208 - R 0\r\n\r\n# Change priority of the bird process\r\nsudo renice -n -10 -p [PID]\r\n```\r\n\r\nonce I did this, syncing resumed almost immediately.","frontmatter":{"category":"note"},"title":"What to do when iCloud is stuck on uploading items","description":"I use iCloud as my syncing engine for my Obsidian Second Brain (https://www.swyx.io/obsidian-brain), and twice now I've seen iCloud get corrupted into a really bad state. I also back up everything to github (https://github.com/sw-yx/brain), so I dont really experience much data loss, but it is annoying to see iCloud be so unreliable at even the simple task of syncing mostly text files. ","category":"note","tags":[],"slug":"what-to-do-when-icloud-is-stuck-on-uploading-items","date":"2022-07-24T18:52:42.000Z","readingTime":"3 minutes","ghMetadata":{"issueUrl":"https://github.com/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/437","commentsUrl":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/437/comments","title":"What to do when iCloud is stuck on uploading items","created_at":"2022-07-24T18:52:42Z","updated_at":"2023-03-02T06:25:31Z","reactions":{"url":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/437/reactions","total_count":3,"+1":3,"-1":0,"laugh":0,"hooray":0,"confused":0,"heart":0,"rocket":0,"eyes":0}}},{"type":"blog","content":"\r\nThis week I was visiting NYC for work reasons, and found myself with a gap on my schedule for Thursday night. So I [tweeted out an invite](https://twitter.com/swyx/status/1546219659195826178):\r\n\r\n![image](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/179317298-338ad043-4aa0-4061-86d1-84697e2e8e8b.png)\r\n\r\nand ultimately 25 people showed up! To a personal meetup, on 5 days' notice.\r\n\r\n

\r\n\t

\r\n\t\tMore pictures courtesy of @dorianb\r\n\t

\r\n\r\n\t\r\n![image](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/179317486-50dc2594-a7e6-4ce5-98f0-32298d27af06.png)\r\n\r\n![image](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/179317507-2e729a8c-3349-4d28-8962-db1d29e7d8ef.png)\r\n\r\n![image](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/179317517-e3b3367a-b6f2-4a4f-a599-17d701738954.png)\r\n\r\n![image](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/179317528-7d16e51e-e9e5-4251-bc09-8875d458e3ab.png)\r\n\r\n![image](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/179319070-7c223991-e965-4d69-b6d9-f894feb02cf8.png)\r\n\r\n![image](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/179319086-7ec3a384-4d92-4db2-83d5-fad203256601.png)\r\n\r\n- https://twitter.com/swyx/status/1547767334068137985?s=20&t=UbZh_k7_IF5GzxGW0zgrlg\r\n\r\n

\r\n\r\nHere are a smattering of comments I got about the meetup:\r\n\r\n- Had a blast tonight! Never thought coding and karaoke would go so well together 🤣 - [Julia](https://twitter.com/juliafmorgado/status/1547762353688551424)\r\n- CodeSongBox Karaoke was so awesome last night. Thanks for setting it up - [Dorian](https://twitter.com/DorianCBrwn/status/1547953542429691907?s=20&t=UbZh_k7_IF5GzxGW0zgrlg)\r\n- Thank you so much for having me, I met a ton of awesome people and re-connected with friends, a total blast :) - anon VC\r\n- hey man, thanks for organizing karaoke last night. ton of fun. would love to hang out next time you're back in NYC! - anon VC\r\n- so great to see you last night - that was such a fun event! - anon VC\r\n- I had a great time tonight! Thanks so much for hosting such a fun event :) It was really nice meeting you and we gotta keep in touch! - anon dev\r\n- Thanks for hosting us! Was a great time - anon VC\r\n- It was my first Karaoke ever and tbh it was more fun than i expected. - anon dev\r\n- Loved it ☺️ thanks for the invite!! - anon founder\r\n- This is the shit I miss from the 2010-era optimistic internet - anon dev\r\n\r\nI think overall it was a highlight of the week and a fun spontaneous event in the re-emerging NYC tech scene.\r\n\r\n**You can do this too. Everybody can.**\r\n\r\nI really do believe this. I'm not the most social person in the world - I'm a wallflower at clubs, and am an ambivert at best. But you don't need to be Prom King/Queen to pull something like this off and it can be a big boost to your network/friend group/local tech scene.\r\n\r\nSure, I have 44k followers so I have more reach than most. But, I [did this before in 2019](https://www.swyx.io/starting-dev-community-meetup) with less than half this following, and 2x the turnout (because it was an actual technical meetup featuring the framework creator). And also in 2018 with even less and [much smaller groups](https://twitter.com/search?q=swyx%20react%20ramen&src=typed_query).\r\n\r\nBut you really just need a couple dozen people to pack a small room, and that's pretty much all the energy you'll have for meeting new people in one night anyway.\r\n\r\nI was asked about it by many many folks this week so I decided to write down a little playbook for you to follow.\r\n\r\n## Preparation\r\n\r\nSatya Nadella recently noted that leadership about \"[creating clarity where none exists](https://twitter.com/swyx/status/1385349868026155010)\". It's the same whether you are leading 180,000 Microsoft employees or gathering 18 friends. Decide the parameters of the meetup upfront:\r\n\r\n- **Venue** (may need A/V if you intend to do talks and/or streaming/recording. also note that some venues need preregistration for security)\r\n- **Date & Time & Duration** (6-6.30pm start on a Thursday is fine in NYC, ymmv. I've done random weekend meetups and its fine too)\r\n- **Format** (just drinks? will there be talks? is there food? is it open or closed invite? +1's allowed? )\r\n\t- if there are talks, you will need to secure 1-3 speakers - 0 speakers is also fine, don't worry about it.\r\n- **Theme** (this is super important - what is the shared identity of everyone attending? the mental calendar invite in everyone's heads will shape every conversation they initiate with a stranger. take the exact same people and watch them have completely different conversation at an \"Enterprise Tech meetup\" vs a \"Devtools meetup\". A catchy name will take you far.)\r\n\r\nDon't bother doing a survey - you need to just make a decision on what works for you, vs what works for the city/demographic you are doing this in (you will get a feel for this over time; I've lived in NYC over 7 years and attended ~100 meetups). If you can get a core gang of 1-5 closer friends to come with you, that's great, because no matter what the turnout is you will probably have a good time.\r\n\r\n### Preregister\r\n\r\nRecently I've been leaning towards asking for preregistration, even for a personal meetups where I have no \"leadgen\" intent whatsoever. It just helps keep track of headcount and gives me a way to contact everyone at once if things change last minute. The dominant player in this is [Meetup.com](https://meetup.com/), which has a large existing userbase which will get recommendations and notifications of your new meetup if you hit the right keywords. However the UI is a little dated and the pricing is expensive for what it is. I have used [DownToMeet](https://downtomeet.com/) in the past, and more recently favoring [Lu.ma](https://lu.ma/) for the clean design and helpful featureset (screening questions, event chat, subsequent event invites).\r\n\r\nMeetup organizers often report a no-show rate of about 40-50%. With preregistration, and an invite-only framing (no public links, organizer personally vets/curates everyone who shows up - @nutlope at Nextjs does this well), this will drop to about 20%. \r\n\r\n> Aside: If you'd like even higher compliance, you can charge a nominal fee of, say, $5 for the meetup - this will improve attendance rate at the cost of signups. Some NYC meetups do this, but in general I avoid it because money isn't really a problem for me.\r\n\r\n### Promote\r\n\r\nGet your meetup details (Theme && Format && Venue && Datetimeduration) in front of as many people as possible - Twitter, Meetup, Reddit, Discord, Slack, heck even Craigslist if you feel like it. There are \"what's happening\" websites in most major cities but I haven't tried submitting to those.\r\n\r\n### Name Tags\r\n\r\nThis is a tiny detail but I have come to insist on everyone wearing name tag stickers at my meetups.\r\n\r\nThis is to avoid the worst part of meeting new people - not catching someone's name, having them spell it, or forgetting it. Have it visible, and there will be no doubt.\r\n\r\nBuy a sharpie so that names visible from further away.\r\n\r\nI believe in this so strongly I just carry a set of stickers and sharpies everywhere I go now.\r\n\r\nIf you have the time, get them to add a little detail about themselves alongside the name, like their favorite food, or movie, or Hogwarts House, anything that people may have in common, to get the conversation going. There are [lists of icebreakers](https://party.pro/icebreakers-work/) that you can consult for inspiration. Yes it feels cheesy but don't underestimate how much developers are happy to go along with it since they recognize you're making an effort.\r\n\r\n### Covid Policy\r\n\r\nThe default in most cities now is no masks required indoors, and no vaccination checks. You should feel comfortable changing those defaults if you wish, based on your understanding of what your participants risk.\r\n\r\nSome meetups also offer green/yellow/red stickers, indicating degree of social distancing desired (handshakes fine/elbows only/some distance at all times). It is a very nice gesture to offer this.\r\n\r\n## Running The Event\r\n\r\nTry to arrive early as much as possible to set up and sort out any last minute issues. Nothing worse than a meetup where the host fails to show up.\r\n\r\nSometimes you will find yourself running thin; don't be shy to recruit early birds to help. Often, participants are more than happy to staff registration tables or guide people through tricky elevator logistics - you just have to make a clear ask and let them know when they are done.\r\n\r\nLarger meetups should have a code of conduct - if in doubt, use the [JSConf Code of Conduct](https://jsconf.com/codeofconduct.html) - remember that all IRL meetups involve some amount of personal, physical risk for vulnerable people, and I've had attendees of my meetups experience harassment for which I've had to take action. \r\n\r\nAt the start of your meetup, remind people that this is a professional event, and point out meetup co-organizers that people can go to for help in case of CoC or other problems.\r\n\r\nYou also want to include other major logistics in your event briefing: wifi details, where the bathrooms are, and where to throw trash if not obvious (yes I have had a meetup where this was not addressed and it was _messy_).\r\n\r\nA format I like for technical meetups is one I stole from the TypeScript NYC meetup - 1 beginner talk, 1 intermediate talk, 1 advanced talk. This ensures that there is always something for everyone. You'll probably find the beginner talk slot hardest to fill, because experienced people want show off and new people don't have confidence to speak, so you'll be the pinch hitter here.\r\n\r\nAt smaller, social meetups, you likely won't have the time or space to do all this, but do what you can to make sure everyone has a good time.\r\n\r\n## Post Event\r\n\r\nPost Event marketing is super helpful for getting interest for the next event! Encourage people to send you or tag you in photos and share them. I don't really care about livestreaming talks, but posting talk video on YouTube after the fact can be a huge service to the community and great talks deserve to live on.\r\n\r\nYou can also email your attendees with a collation of the results, related links, slides, etc so that everyone has a good recap email of everything that went down (and leaves with a good impression of you!)\r\n\r\nCongratulations, you have Manifest a Meetup!\r\n\r\nKeep going :)\r\n\r\n## Further Reading\r\n\r\nIf you want to scale it up, you can ask me my thoughts on [running Svelte Summit NYC for 100 people](https://twitter.com/swyx/status/1455702086486663174).\r\n\r\nOrganizing parties\r\n- https://www.priyaparker.com/thebook\r\n- [Impact of room size vs attendee size and meetup energy](https://twitter.com/patrick_oshag/status/1109621591980294146)\r\n- https://partyqs.com/\r\n- https://party.pro/icebreakers-work/\r\n- https://party.pro/speed-icebreakers/","frontmatter":{"slug":"manifest-meetups","canonical_url":"https://www.swyx.io/manifest-meetups","cover_image":"https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/179317486-50dc2594-a7e6-4ce5-98f0-32298d27af06.png"},"title":"How to Manifest a Meetup","description":"This week I was visiting NYC for work reasons, and found myself with a gap on my schedule for Thursday night. So I tweeted out an invite (https://twitter.com/swyx/status/1546219659195826178): ","category":"note","tags":[],"image":"https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/179317486-50dc2594-a7e6-4ce5-98f0-32298d27af06.png","canonical":"https://www.swyx.io/manifest-meetups","slug":"manifest-meetups","date":"2022-07-15T22:48:48.000Z","readingTime":"7 minutes","ghMetadata":{"issueUrl":"https://github.com/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/436","commentsUrl":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/436/comments","title":"How to Manifest a Meetup","created_at":"2022-07-15T22:48:48Z","updated_at":"2022-10-03T03:59:14Z","reactions":{"url":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/436/reactions","total_count":1,"+1":1,"-1":0,"laugh":0,"hooray":0,"confused":0,"heart":0,"rocket":0,"eyes":0}}},{"title":"Bun vs Deno - New Runtimes for the Third Age of JS","slug":"bun-vs-deno","categories":["JS"],"description":"People are tearing up the foundations of JavaScript with new assumptions and a need for speed. Let’s look at the new kids on the block - Bun and Deno and explore how they might someday replace Node in your tech stack.","instances":[{"venue":"RWR YouTube (live)","date":"2022-07-13","video":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORI29ot_Zck"},{"venue":"Swyx YouTube","date":"2022-07-21","video":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=11&v=O7KVEwNau6w&feature=youtu.be"}],"category":"talk","date":"2022-07-13T00:00:00.000Z"},{"title":"Talking DX on Syntax.fm","slug":"syntax-dx","tags":["DevRel"],"venues":"Syntax.fm","date":"2022-07-01T00:00:00.000Z","url":"https://syntax.fm/show/478/supper-club-developer-experience-with-shawn-wang","description":"Syntax.fm is one of the shows I really leaned on when learning the ropes in tech, so it was a huge honor to be invited.","category":"podcast"},{"type":"blog","content":"\r\nAs a writer, once you get past the basic mental block of impostor syndrome/finding good topics, the next constraint to growth is the number of channels where you have output. \r\n\r\n## Motivation\r\n\r\nIf you have ever stopped yourself from saying/writing something because \"it's not at the quality of my other posts\", or because you're worried about your followers dropping out due to your \"signal to noise ratio\", you have felt this constraint. And you have probably shelved that idea/impulse, and it has probably been forgotten forever.\r\n\r\nThis marks an interesting phase transition in every life of a creator/writer:\r\n\r\n1. I have nothing to say\r\n2. I have _too much_ to say\r\n\r\nRarely will you have the exact balance, since you are balancing personal capacity vs your audience's expectations.\r\n\r\nThe way this often happens for developer writers is that your blog starts having an awkward mix between your nontechnical and technical blogposts. Usually one side of your writing will be noticeably more popular than the other, and you will feel tempted to focus to build your audience and improve your signal-to-noise.\r\n\r\nThat's your right, but also you would be depriving the world and your future self of the multifaceted insight machine that you are.\r\n\r\nHere's to deal with it: **Increase your number of outlets**.\r\n\r\n## Our goals\r\n\r\nWe want to:\r\n\r\n- Express every good idea we come across\r\n- Across multiple interest domains\r\n- Limited by our time, not our tools, nor our audience\r\n\r\nand yet\r\n\r\n- Be easily discoverable for those who are new to us\r\n- Maintain high signal-to-noise for those who hate noise\r\n- Develop WIP ideas with those who know our work\r\n\r\nLet's develop 3 ideas that help us meet these goals.\r\n\r\n## Idea 1: Increase Cardinality\r\n\r\nIf you have a blog, that's an `n=1`. The easiest next step is to turn that into `n=2`. **Vicki Boykis** has this exact setup between [her tech blog](https://vickiboykis.com/) and [more personal essays](https://vickiboykis.com/essays/).\r\n\r\n> Aside: A common way that people implement `n=2` is to add a `speaking` page next to their `writing` page. I used to do this too. My feeling is that people who are interested in your views are interested in them across whatever media you can give them. **Shard by topics, not format**. _(although if you can offer both, why not? But default to topics first)_\r\n\r\nOf course, you can increase the `n` to some cardinality that mostly describes you: [Julia Evans](https://jvns.ca/) has no less than `n=33`, although some are clearly no longer current. She has clearly reshaped her blog to fit her interests, rather than be captive to it.\r\n\r\nOf course there's some fuzziness in taxonomy here between a `tags` vs `categories` system. My thoughts are `tags` are unbounded in number, potentially hundreds. `categories` work really well when there are a small number, and potentially have some hierarchy, but also when presented simply as done on Julia's blog.\r\n\r\n## Idea 2: Vary Lengths\r\n\r\n**If you have a longform practice, add a shortform**. Or vice versa. Twitter and Linkedin are the predominant shortform text formats, but you can also do the video equivalent (TikTok and YT Shorts) or audio (audio clips).\r\n\r\nThere's also practitioners of the super longform - Twitch Streams, YouTube Live and Twitter Spaces, where unstructured rambles and Q&A achieve openness and intimacy. I have to confess I don't understand this format very well but there are good practitioners like [Jason](https://www.learnwithjason.dev/) and [Theo](https://m.twitch.tv/theo/about?lang=en) and [KCD](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VVscyWiu1HE).\r\n\r\n## Idea 3: Walled (Digital) Gardens\r\n\r\n**If you have a public practice, add a semiprivate one.** I've found Discord to be far and away the best platform for this, because of how easy it is to join and how it has full retention and good search for free. However other folks have had good experience with group chats in Slack, Telegram, or WeChat. \r\n\r\nThe same benefits of working in public apply in semiprivate: I started a private alt 6 months ago and it has helped me be an outlet for smaller thoughts or get feedback in a smaller context before publishing.\r\n\r\nThe absolute smallest walled garden is your own personal notes, where you have an audience of 1. I try to \"work with the garage door up\" with my [second brain](https://www.swyx.io/obsidian-brain) but not everything can be public.\r\n\r\n## Structuring the Funnel\r\n\r\nGiven the goals we stated, we likely want to offer the highest signal-to-noise to those who are completely new to us, and the highest idea velocity to those who know us well. This implies a simple ordering:\r\n\r\n![image](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/175865173-85d2b98f-91fb-4917-bb84-5efbc86ca068.png)\r\n\r\nWe've now successfully derived the standard marketing/community funnel (or [radiating circles](https://dx.tips/the-radiating-circles-of-developer-experience)?) from first principles. The final part is to make the expectations clear to your audience in each circle, and to let them know how to find the next level at each stage should they choose to progress.\r\n\r\nIt's important to not take on more platforms than you can manage. If this list stresses you out, just know that having a presence across all these formats essentially amounts to building your own personal media operation. It can feel very repetitive to repeat the same content on Twitter, then again on your blog and newsletter, and then again on your group chat.\r\n\r\nHence the last piece of advice for the [part time creator](https://swyx.io/part-time-creator-manifesto): **Shard Yourself** - don't try to do full replication across all the channels you have decided to build out. Have a very clear \"primary key\" on which you know how to route your inbound ideas and thoughts and audience. My investing stuff goes to [devtools-angels](https://github.com/sw-yx/devtools-angels), my devrel stuff goes to [DX Tips](https://dx.tips/), my snarkposts go to my alt.\r\n\r\n","frontmatter":{"subtitle":"Increasing Outlets to Increase Output","description":"An advanced tip for high-volume writers.","cover_image":"https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/175865173-85d2b98f-91fb-4917-bb84-5efbc86ca068.png","tags":"creators, writing, learning in public","slug":"sharding-yourself"},"title":"Sharding Yourself","subtitle":"Increasing Outlets to Increase Output","description":"An advanced tip for high-volume writers. ","category":"note","tags":["creators","writing","learning in public"],"image":"https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/175865173-85d2b98f-91fb-4917-bb84-5efbc86ca068.png","slug":"sharding-yourself","date":"2022-06-27T05:26:37.000Z","readingTime":"4 minutes","ghMetadata":{"issueUrl":"https://github.com/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/433","commentsUrl":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/433/comments","title":"Sharding Yourself","created_at":"2022-06-27T05:26:37Z","updated_at":"2023-01-29T07:59:43Z","reactions":{"url":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/433/reactions","total_count":4,"+1":4,"-1":0,"laugh":0,"hooray":0,"confused":0,"heart":0,"rocket":0,"eyes":0}}},{"type":"blog","content":"\r\nWe had a delightful discussion on the importance of writing weekly updates in this week's [Coding Career Community meetup](https://learninpublic.org/#community). I rarely get so excited about an idea I immediately know I need to start doing it, so I'm choosing to write it up to commit to it, and to share it with you.\r\n\r\nAs well known of a writer I might be externally, I think I am appalling at it at work. I tend to keep my activities and observations to myself, to silo my interactions with people I have 1:1s with, and to only occasionally and verbally share it with my managers. I don't think it helps, but am also worried that if I _really_ share everything I think, I might piss off somebody I work with by errors of commission and omission.\r\n\r\nAfter today's reminder, I'd like to change that.\r\n\r\n## The 15-5 format\r\n\r\nSpecifically, the format that seems to be very popular in tech is **the 15-5 format**. **@GergelyOrosz** [summarizes](https://blog.pragmaticengineer.com/becoming-a-better-writer-in-tech/#build-writing-habits) it as such: \r\n\r\n> \"Spend 15 minutes at the end of each week on a report that can be read in five minutes. Send this out to your manager and a few peers at work.\" \r\n\r\n@EugeneYan reported very good results doing this as a blog and even having some unrelated coworkers subscribe to it!\r\n\r\nBeing a startups guy I knew about [15five](https://www.15five.com/) from Jason Calacanis' [LAUNCH incubator](https://thisweekinstartups.com/e1045-15five-ceo-co-founder-david-hassell-shares-insights-on-remote-work-transitioning-from-in-person-to-remote-tips-for-keeping-employees-engaged-defining-trust-more/) (2012 pitch [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uO7AGEXtxGI)) but I had never really tried it out. I have also admired [Know Your Team](https://knowyourteam.com/) from afar and at AWS we had [a daily survey system called Amazon Connect](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=%22amazon%20connect%22%20feedback&sort=byPopularity&type=comment) (not the call center product, also called Amazon Connect). (please let me know if there are other popular frequent feedback software out there).\r\n\r\nI did some digging and apparently the 15-5 was [created by Yvon Chouinard of Patagonia in the 1980's](https://qz.com/work/1516573/the-5-15-is-an-easy-way-to-improve-communication-at-work/). \r\n\r\nSpecifics of the 15-5 format are unclear:\r\n\r\n- Chouinard's format uses [4 sections](https://axerosolutions.com/blog/how-to-overcome-pettiness-patagonia-s-awesome-5-15-report):\r\n\t- This week (completed activities, notable wins, what's working)\r\n\t- Next week's priorities\r\n\t- Challenges/Roadblocks\r\n\t- Lessons Learned/Opps for improvement\r\n- others have a [7 questions format](https://www.baylor.edu/hr/doc.php/320094.pdf):\r\n\t- What I did\r\n\t- What's working\r\n\t- What's not\r\n\t- How am I feeling? How's the team/group?\r\n\t- What one thing will make the biggest improvement in my work/company?\r\n\t- What concrete steps to make this happen?\r\n\t- What do I want to discuss next meeting?\r\n- the company 15five asks [four questions listed here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uO7AGEXtxGI).\r\n- [Dando uses](https://dandoadvisors.com/5-15-format/) 3 questions:\r\n\t1. Gut check: \r\n\t\t- How’s it going? (10 = Couldn’t be better. 1 = I’m going to quit)\r\n\t\t- Why?\r\n\t2. Issues/Problems/Open Items\r\n\t3. Notables (free-form with context)\r\n\r\n\r\n## Other Authorities\r\n\r\n**Will Larson** also [concurs](https://lethain.com/weekly-updates/): \r\n\r\n> About a year ago I started my most recent approach to sending weekly updates to relevant public (within the company) mailing lists. This practice is sometimes called a [5-15 report](https://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/careers/management/cut-down-on-reports-with-the-5-15-method/article4106997/), reflecting the goal of spending fifteen minutes a week writing a report that can be read in five minutes. Personally, I create a new Google Doc each week and record anything I complete there, spending ten minutes polishing the list into something readable each Friday.\r\n\r\nFinally, **Jay** in our group also shared [Sriram Krishnan's Exec 101 post](https://sriramk.com/exec-101-first-thirty-days) advice which features this:\r\n\r\n> Every single week, write out an update to your entire org on the people you’ve met and some high level observations. Write about yourself and your journey. People want to hear from their leaders and you’ll be surprised how little they know of what you actually do all day. Writing is by far the best way to get them to know you.\r\n> \r\n> The key here is consistency. Send it to the same google group/alias at the same time of week with the same structure.\r\n> \r\n> Finally, at the end of the month, write up a document on everything you observed from step two and send it to the org along with a few themes you want to focus on. This can feel uncomfortable - most execs aren’t used to being transparent so broadly. However, there’s real value here. The org gets to see how you work transparently but also have a mirror shined back on them from an unbiased source. I often find these docs are valuable years after the fact and good ones are the key to changing org behavior and culture.\r\n\r\nThat's enough convincing for me to do it.","frontmatter":{"category":"Note","published":true,"slug":"the-importance-of-writing-weekly-updates"},"title":"On The Importance of 15-5 Updates","description":"We had a delightful discussion on the importance of writing weekly updates in this week's Coding Career Community meetup (https://learninpublic.org/#community). I rarely get so excited about an idea I immediately know I need to start doing it, so I'm choosing to write it up to commit to it, and to share it with you. ","category":"note","tags":[],"slug":"the-importance-of-writing-weekly-updates","date":"2022-06-25T20:09:00.000Z","readingTime":"4 minutes","ghMetadata":{"issueUrl":"https://github.com/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/432","commentsUrl":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/432/comments","title":"On The Importance of 15-5 Updates","created_at":"2022-06-25T20:09:00Z","updated_at":"2022-07-30T01:30:29Z","reactions":{"url":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/432/reactions","total_count":1,"+1":1,"-1":0,"laugh":0,"hooray":0,"confused":0,"heart":0,"rocket":0,"eyes":0}}},{"title":"Talking Careers on Webjoy.fm","slug":"webjoy-careers","tags":["Careers"],"venues":"Webjoy.fm","date":"2022-06-22T00:00:00.000Z","url":"https://webjoy.fm/episode/season-1-episode-4-creating-something-from-nothing-shawn-swyx","description":"We discuss what the career path for a developer advocate might look like, as well as podcast listening tools Listen Notes and Listenbox and how they help allow people to look up and listen to podcasts on their own terms rather than being stuck in a corporate garden.","category":"podcast"},{"title":"AWS, Cloudflare, and Techbro Therapy on AWS.fm","slug":"aws-techbros","tags":["Creators"],"venues":"AWS.fm","date":"2022-06-21T00:00:00.000Z","url":"https://aws.fm/episodes/episode-25-shawn-swyx-wang","description":"Shawn joins Adam to discuss Amplify and its place in the developer ecosystem, whether we should care about Cloudflare, yet, and how to cope with the anxiety that can come with being extremely online. Also, it sounds like Adam is a tech bro and he's NOT happy about it.","category":"podcast"},{"type":"blog","content":"My recent [End of Localhost](https://dx.tips/the-end-of-localhost) piece on [Hacker News](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31669762) came with the usual dash of HN criticism devolving into [blaming beginners for not knowing the same parts of the stack that they consider mandatory](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31669762#31671401):\r\n\r\n![image](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/174450761-7dd68fac-742b-46f2-9576-8eeb170960ed.png)\r\n\r\nThe perennial debate between gatekeeping vs emphasis on fundamentals aside, I was reflecting that the whole situation with [ANGULAR/REACT/SVELTE/etc aka FRAMEWORK YOU BLAME FOR ALL EVIL, hence forth known as $FRAMEWORK] vs The Web Platform™ arose out of multiple constraints:\r\n\r\n- The failure of [HTML imports](https://www.w3.org/TR/html-imports/) to offer sufficient componentization compared to $FRAMEWORK\r\n- [The failure of Web Components](https://dev.to/richharris/why-i-don-t-use-web-components-2cia) to server-side-render and progressively upgrade compared to $FRAMEWORK\r\n- Employers severely overindexing on interviewing for JS skills over HTML, leading bootcamps/other professional prep institutions to respond in kind\r\n- The lack of the Web Platform having approachable, friendly, non-judgemental-or-yelly-graybeard teachers/advocates\r\n\r\nAnalysing the causes of a problem (if this can be called a problem - it is in the small, but not in the large, and yet may be a problem in the very large - there is a more complex trinomial here than either side would have you believe) is a different matter than solving the problem. It may well be that **it cannot be solved**.\r\n\r\nI remember a (since deleted?) comment from Guillermo Rauch, observing that JS build tools (which [do many jobs, as I've documented](https://www.swyx.io/jobs-of-js-build-tools)) [are a Pandora's Box](https://twitter.com/swyx/status/1337833603875569664) - once opened, it cannot be closed. \r\n\r\nI think it is the same for HTML vs JS. We opened the box, and moved stuff from **data** (\"dumb\" HTML) to **code** (\"smart\" JS), and once we saw how much control **code** gave us, we were never going to go back to just writing **data** again. Even the LISPy projects behave more like \"data as code\" rather than \"code as data\".\r\n\r\nThe [fundamental theorem of software engineering](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_theorem_of_software_engineering) goes: \"We can solve any problem by introducing an extra level of indirection.\" When you can reflect, metaprogram, optimize, cross-compile and do basically whatever you want in code, it's hard to give that power up in just data.\r\n\r\nThis is, to me, a more profound and interesting frontier than the distinction between \"imperative\" code and \"declarative\" code - or \"sync\" and \"async\" code - you can easily move the barriers between those, because at the end of the day, you're still dealing with _code_ at the end of the day, which is maximally expressive.\r\n\r\nWhereas dealing with **data** involves interfaces, standards, and encoding a huge number of tradeoffs (different dimensions of performance, learnability, flexibility, futureproofing, etc) to achieve a [Narrow Waist](https://www.swyx.io/narrow-waists).\r\n\r\n> Aside: there is a related Torvalds quote here: \"[Bad programmers worry about the code. Good programmers worry about data structures and their relationships.](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/163185/torvalds-quote-about-good-programmer)\". I have also personally observed that [Data Structures are more important than Algorithms](https://twitter.com/swyx/status/1284636979989057536) ([explanation](https://twitter.com/Coding_Career/status/1395420120793583626)).\r\n\r\nThe cynical subtext behind [the Third Age of JavaScript](https://www.swyx.io/js-third-age) is that every 10 years a new generation of devs come along and rewrite the universe in order to make their name - React is as old as jQuery was when React itself first came out, and there are a [slew of attempts](https://www.swyx.io/third-age-2022/) at making the next generation framework. $FRAMEWORK is likely to last for a long time, but nobody spending all day writing thousands of lines of $FRAMEWORK all day long is under any illusion that any of this code will still run after we're gone. \r\n\r\nBut **data** - you can put data into [the literal Arctic](https://archiveprogram.github.com/arctic-vault/), and 1000 years later, as long as the archaeologists of the future have the right \"decoder ring\" (understanding the schema/having a standards compliant interpreter), they'll be able to get out what we put in.\r\n\r\nI could pad out this essay with a longer discussion on the nuances of getting the \"data\" right, and the many redeeming qualities of code, but I have no conclusion on this beyond a sad observation that all the work we do in code is far more likely to be shorter lived than a single good decision that we have in data. ","frontmatter":{},"title":"Data outlasts Code, yet Code keeps winning","description":"My recent End of Localhost (https://dx.tips/the-end-of-localhost) piece on Hacker News (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31669762) came with the usual dash of HN criticism devolving into blaming beginners for not knowing the same parts of the stack that they consider mandatory (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31669762#31671401): ","category":"note","tags":[],"slug":"data-outlasts-code-yet-code-keeps-winning","date":"2022-06-18T18:56:56.000Z","readingTime":"3 minutes","ghMetadata":{"issueUrl":"https://github.com/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/431","commentsUrl":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/431/comments","title":"Data outlasts Code, yet Code keeps winning","created_at":"2022-06-18T18:56:56Z","updated_at":"2022-07-03T23:03:06Z","reactions":{"url":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/431/reactions","total_count":1,"+1":0,"-1":0,"laugh":0,"hooray":0,"confused":0,"heart":0,"rocket":1,"eyes":0}}},{"type":"blog","content":"\r\nRecently, John Cutler [tweeted](https://twitter.com/johncutlefish/status/1533661807029563392?s=21&t=WJORvdw2EyoLB1ChjQ8NpA) a chart on the view of management:\r\n\r\n![image](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/173915686-6f215bf1-09ba-4427-986c-ddd54a8fe3cf.png)\r\n\r\nThis was a rehash of [work he did in 2019](https://twitter.com/johncutlefish/status/1205989404772143104). I found this compelling because it breaks down the jobs of a manager in a nonprescriptive and visual way that made a lot of sense to me, even though some classifications felt off. \r\n\r\nI will rearrange some of the specific choices to match my thinking:\r\n\r\n1. **Motivator/Team Builder**: You must motivate your team individually and as a group. \r\n2. **Role model/Expert**: Be someone that has personal credibility on doing the job well.\r\n3. **Teacher/Mentor/Coach**: Be someone that can _teach others_ to do their job well.\r\n4. **Champion/Sponsor**: Help your reports advance in their careers (within the company if possible).\r\n5. **Go-between/Shield**: Filter external chaos, Say no to overload/bad fit\r\n6. **Process designer/Organizer**: Define processes for how things are done, redefine them when it needs to improve. Organize chaos.\r\n7. **Goal setter/Driver**: Assign goals to the right people, Hold people accountable to reach them.\r\n8. **Recruiter**. Most managers at rapidly growing companies report spending 20-30% of their time recruiting.\r\n\r\nThere's enough here that you can feasibly spend 1 day a week on each job and still not have enough days in the week. Being able to share tips and systems (to reduce cost) and effectively multiplex (to improve responsiveness) is key to handle all these well.","frontmatter":{"published":true,"category":"note","cover_image":"https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/173915686-6f215bf1-09ba-4427-986c-ddd54a8fe3cf.png"},"title":"The 8 Jobs of Management","description":"Recently, John Cutler tweeted (https://twitter.com/johncutlefish/status/1533661807029563392?s=21\\&t=WJORvdw2EyoLB1ChjQ8NpA) a chart on the view of management: ","category":"note","tags":[],"image":"https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/173915686-6f215bf1-09ba-4427-986c-ddd54a8fe3cf.png","slug":"the-8-jobs-of-management","date":"2022-06-15T20:12:25.000Z","readingTime":"1 minute","ghMetadata":{"issueUrl":"https://github.com/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/430","commentsUrl":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/430/comments","title":"The 8 Jobs of Management","created_at":"2022-06-15T20:12:25Z","updated_at":"2022-11-07T20:29:35Z","reactions":{"url":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/430/reactions","total_count":0,"+1":0,"-1":0,"laugh":0,"hooray":0,"confused":0,"heart":0,"rocket":0,"eyes":0}}},{"type":"blog","content":"\r\nI've been unhappy with my [tweet rendering strategy](https://github.com/sw-yx/swyxkit/issues/61) for a while - Twitter encourages you to use their heavy JS script to render tweets, which undoubtedly heaps all sorts of tracking on the reader, docks your lighthouse performance score by ~17 points, adds ~4 seconds to Time to Interactive, occasionally gets adblocked (so _nothing_ renders!)\r\n\r\n

\r\n\t

\r\n\t\tperf impact screenshots\r\n\t

\r\n\r\nhttps://pagespeed.web.dev/report?url=https%3A%2F%2Fswyxkit.netlify.app%2Fsupporting-youtube-and-twitter-embeds\r\n\r\n![image](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/173247953-8514aef7-ecb8-428a-810c-a520079c5531.png)\r\n\r\nhttps://www.webpagetest.org/result/220612_BiDcVR_5KK/1/details/#waterfall_view_step1\r\n\r\n![image](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/173248017-d33f20bb-9f4d-4bb3-99d4-49769ae0235e.png)\r\n\r\n\r\n

\r\n\r\nThe solution, of course, is to render it yourself, hopefully on the server side. \r\n\r\n## Solution up front\r\n\r\nYou can see my [Svelte REPL solution here](https://svelte.dev/repl/7a576202df06467c957b8ff64dfb2e73?version=3.48.0) and paste in your own `data` generated from any curl request:\r\n\r\n```bash\r\ncurl \"https://api.twitter.com/2/tweets?ids=1441050138806415369&tweet.fields=attachments,author_id,conversation_id,created_at,geo,id,in_reply_to_user_id,lang,public_metrics,referenced_tweets,text,withheld&expansions=attachments.media_keys,attachments.poll_ids,author_id,entities.mentions.username,geo.place_id,in_reply_to_user_id,referenced_tweets.id,referenced_tweets.id.author_id&media.fields=alt_text,duration_ms,height,media_key,preview_image_url,public_metrics,type,url,variants,width&poll.fields=duration_minutes,end_datetime,id,options,voting_status&user.fields=created_at,description,id,name,profile_image_url,username\" -H \"Authorization: Bearer $BEARER_TOKEN\" | pbcopy\r\n``` \r\n\r\nUse https://developer.twitter.com/apitools/api?endpoint=/2/tweets&method=get to construct your curl query; you'll also need a $BEARER_TOKEN from a twitter developers app you have to set up separately.\r\n\r\n## The problem\r\n\r\nHowever, a Tweet isn't just a simple data object. Tweets can have polls, images, videos, quote tweets, likes, retweets, quote tweets, mentions, hashtags, threads/conversations, and on and on. This is a lot of product complexity to model and display correctly.\r\n\r\nThe Next.js team have put together a nextjs component with some nifty AST parsing and serverside cheerio automation: https://static-tweet.vercel.app/ but even here I found that it [doesnt correctly handle video tweets](https://static-tweet.vercel.app/1535727356849135617) and omits displaying retweets.\r\n\r\n![image](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/173245954-2c98d889-95db-4735-9271-596a276f92c9.png)\r\n\r\n(use https://developer.twitter.com/apitools/api?endpoint=/2/tweets&method=get to construct your curl query\r\n\r\n## Basic display\r\n\r\nI started out modeling the component in the Sveltejs REPL: https://svelte.dev/repl/7a576202df06467c957b8ff64dfb2e73?version=3.48.0\r\n\r\n![image](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/173245886-28bcf37d-ac5c-4e9d-9a88-58dc7e0e9e52.png)\r\n\r\nPart of this was just a mix of grabbing [some relevant Nextjs code](https://github.com/lfades/static-tweet/blob/3479880b11d6236efc1b3992892c392c2b1ffa47/lib/twitter/getTweetHtml.js), but then making different design choices like taking Twitter's actual SVG icons and displaying retweets. This was brain numbing and took a couple hours but wasn't too hard.\r\n\r\nMore work can be done to add polls, images and videos but I chose to skip that for my basic implementation.\r\n\r\n## Tweet Body parsing\r\n\r\nThe text parsing became the tricky part.\r\n\r\nSimple text like `@swyx on “learning in public” Have a listen: https://t.co/L4VF9a8ukZ https://t.co/QnVqvu8zRc` rendered on Twitter is enriched into \r\n\r\n```html\r\n

@swyx

on “learning in public”\r\nHave a listen: https://buff.ly/3Qc0MIq

\r\n```\r\n\r\nThis is a very basic part of the twitter experience so I wanted to model it properly.\r\n\r\nHere is the research I did on available options:\r\n\r\n- using a series of regexes to do replacements https://stackoverflow.com/a/66127711/1106414\r\n- Twitter itself actually publishes a `twitter-text` library: https://github.com/twitter/twitter-text/tree/master/js but it uses core-js so is unsuitable for frontend usage\r\n- use [Autolinker](https://github.com/gregjacobs/Autolinker.js): http://greg-jacobs.com/Autolinker.js/api/#!/api/Autolinker\r\n\r\nThe test code I used was this:\r\n\r\n```js\r\nvar twitter = require('twitter-text') // https://github.com/twitter/twitter-text/tree/master/js\r\nvar Autolinker = require('autolinker')\r\nconst text = `\r\n#hello < @world > Joe went to www.yahoo.com\r\n@swyx on “learning in public”\r\nHave a listen: https://t.co/L4VF9a8ukZ https://t.co/QnVqvu8zRc\r\n `\r\nconsole.log('----twitter-text')\r\nconsole.log(twitter.autoLink(twitter.htmlEscape(text)))\r\n\r\nvar autolinker = new Autolinker( {\r\n mention: 'twitter',\r\n hashtag: 'twitter'\r\n} );\r\n\r\nvar html = autolinker.link( text );\r\nconsole.log('----autolinker')\r\nconsole.log(html)\r\n```\r\n\r\nwhich gets you:\r\n\r\n```bash\r\n----twitter-text\r\n#hello < @world > Joe went to www.yahoo.com\r\n@swyx on “learning in public”\r\nHave a listen: https://t.co/L4VF9a8ukZ https://t.co/QnVqvu8zRc\r\n \r\n----autolinker\r\n\r\n#hello < @world > Joe went to yahoo.com\r\n@swyx on “learning in public”\r\nHave a listen: t.co/L4VF9a8ukZ t.co/QnVqvu8zRc\r\n```\r\n\r\nI also found this small library http://blessanm86.github.io/tweet-to-html/ but it seems to use Twitter's v1 API response which is useless for modern needs.\r\n\r\n\r\n## t.co unfurling - the failed attempt\r\n\r\nTwitter's t.co link shortening is user unfriendly because it adds tracking, latency, and makes the url opaque. ([docs](https://help.twitter.com/en/using-twitter/url-shortener), [docs](https://developer.twitter.com/en/docs/tco))\r\n\r\nTo unfurl the t.co URL to something more user friendly, we could add an async process to send a ping to the t.co url, and [get back the redirect header](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/6500721/find-where-a-t-co-link-goes-to) (you can use [the followRedirects in the fetch API](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/58324526/reverse-shortened-url-to-get-the-original-url-before-the-shortening-in-google-sh)). Autolinker does not seem to support [this](https://github.com/gregjacobs/Autolinker.js/issues/187) or [an async replacement](https://github.com/gregjacobs/Autolinker.js/issues/244) function.\r\n\r\nYou can read Loige's blogpost: https://loige.co/unshorten-expand-short-urls-with-node-js/ for the basic intuition and use [his `tall` library](https://www.npmjs.com/package/tall):\r\n\r\n```js\r\nimport { tall } from 'tall'\r\n\r\ntall('http://www.loige.link/codemotion-rome-2017')\r\n .then(unshortenedUrl => console.log('Tall url', unshortenedUrl))\r\n .catch(err => console.error('AAAW 👻', err))\r\n```\r\n\r\nThere is also [a `url-unshort` library](https://github.com/nodeca/url-unshort) to do this with retries and caching:\r\n\r\n```js\r\nconst uu = require('url-unshort')()\r\n\r\ntry {\r\n const url = await uu.expand('http://goo.gl/HwUfwd')\r\n\r\n if (url) console.log('Original url is: ${url}')\r\n else console.log('This url can\\'t be expanded')\r\n\r\n} catch (err) {\r\n console.log(err);\r\n}\r\n```\r\n\r\nI ended up going with `tall` and postprocessing autolinker:\r\n\r\n```js\r\nasync function superautolink(text) {\r\n const urls = []\r\n var autolinker = new Autolinker( {\r\n mention: 'twitter',\r\n hashtag: 'twitter',\r\n replaceFn : function( match ) {\r\n if (match.getType() === 'url') {\r\n const url = match.getUrl();\r\n if (url.startsWith('https://t.co')) urls.push(url)\r\n\t }\r\n return true\r\n }\r\n });\r\n \r\n var html = autolinker.link( text );\r\n for (let url of urls) {\r\n const unfurl = await tall(url);\r\n html = html.replaceAll(url, unfurl) // handle https://t.co links\r\n html = html.replaceAll(url.slice(8), unfurl) // handle raw t.co link text\r\n }\r\n return html\r\n}\r\nconsole.log('----autolinker')\r\nsuperautolink(text).then(console.log)\r\n```\r\n\r\nwhich correctly unshortened the URLs\r\n\r\n```html\r\n#hello < @world > Joe went to yahoo.com\r\n@swyx on “learning in public”\r\nHave a listen: https://www.lastweekinaws.com/podcast/screaming-in-the-cloud/learning-in-public-with-swyx/ https://twitter.com/LastWeekinAWS/status/1535727356849135617/video/1\r\n```\r\n\r\nHowever I found that I needed to run this unshortening in the browser and the `tall` library requires Node.js' `http` module, so back to square one for me.\r\n\r\n## t.co unfurling - the simple way\r\n\r\nA discovery I had in testing these unfurls was the sneaky way that Twitter makes it hard for you to unwrap the url. if you `fetch('https://t.co/L4VF9a8ukZ')`, you get back `https://buff.ly/3Qc0MIq` which basically forces an in-place reload rather than using the proper HTTP redirect headers. annoying!\r\n\r\nHowever, assuming Twitter's redirect response is stable, you can exploit this.\r\n\r\n```js\r\nfetch('https://t.co/QnVqvu8zRc')\r\n .then(res => res.text())\r\n .then(x => x.match(\"(?<=)(.*?)(?=)\")[0]) // https://stackoverflow.com/a/51179903/1106414\r\n .then(console.log) // https://twitter.com/LastWeekinAWS/status/1535727356849135617/video/1\r\n```\r\n\r\net voila...\r\n\r\n![image](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/173249613-d848ce79-19b3-4635-950c-f1d175b130b6.png)\r\n\r\n## Rendering images\r\n\r\nThe API forces you to perform a lookup, which isn't the hardest thing in the world to do. (The CSS is harder)\r\n\r\n![image](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/173249790-37a6bfac-f316-40f1-86dd-0efd90506bb7.png)\r\n\r\n

\r\n\t

\r\n aside: Nextjs gets the aspect ratio presentation wrong\r\n\t

\r\n\r\n![image](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/173249832-d1b40143-fe0c-4a6b-a9fb-aad28a490066.png)\r\n\r\n

\r\n\r\nThen it's just a matter of getting some test cases:\r\n\r\n- 4 images: https://twitter.com/swyx/status/1534575878025678848\r\n- 4 images: https://twitter.com/swyx/status/1534109340072038400\r\n\t![image](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/173252221-eba76c45-4b60-4931-8cf4-f142eeca8665.png)\r\n- 3 images: https://twitter.com/swyx/status/1531330889535602688\r\n\t![image](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/173251302-428e4696-e1d0-45bb-a45d-3ecc869c349e.png)\r\n- 2 images: https://twitter.com/swyx/status/1534793827528998913\r\n\t![image](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/173251504-302a5792-e662-4df4-b96f-5f1bbf8cc339.png)\r\n- 1 image portrait: https://twitter.com/swyx/status/1535271645954588672\r\n- 1 image landscape: https://twitter.com/swyx/status/1534998899592949760\r\n\r\nI wasn't super confident in my css grid ability so I blended some css grid with JS to represent the different layouts (particularly the 3-image layout):\r\n\r\n```html\r\n\r\n{#if tweet.attachments}\r\n

\r\n\t{#each tweet.attachments.media_keys as mediakey, index}\r\n\t $\"todo\"$ fullmedia.media_key === mediakey).url} />\r\n\t{/each}\r\n

\r\n{/if}\r\n```\r\n\r\n## Rendering Video\r\n\r\nThe next thing to do is video. Nextjs [doesnt handle it](https://static-tweet.vercel.app/1532586955296284673) so we'll have to figure this out.\r\n\r\nFor a single embedded video, Twitter provides a bunch of different bitrates:\r\n\r\n```json\r\n {\r\n \"preview_image_url\": \"https://pbs.twimg.com/ext_tw_video_thumb/1532586917866266625/pu/img/WJt1sEy-ZmJChtCQ.jpg\",\r\n \"type\": \"video\",\r\n \"variants\": [\r\n {\r\n \"content_type\": \"application/x-mpegURL\",\r\n \"url\": \"https://video.twimg.com/ext_tw_video/1532586917866266625/pu/pl/5jCHdoj5JVcBsb4T.m3u8?tag=12&container=fmp4\"\r\n },\r\n {\r\n \"bit_rate\": 950000,\r\n \"content_type\": \"video/mp4\",\r\n \"url\": \"https://video.twimg.com/ext_tw_video/1532586917866266625/pu/vid/480x852/HMEUvm-JijggZFcf.mp4?tag=12\"\r\n },\r\n {\r\n \"bit_rate\": 632000,\r\n \"content_type\": \"video/mp4\",\r\n \"url\": \"https://video.twimg.com/ext_tw_video/1532586917866266625/pu/vid/320x568/H51WXWN-QV3UGnie.mp4?tag=12\"\r\n },\r\n {\r\n \"bit_rate\": 2176000,\r\n \"content_type\": \"video/mp4\",\r\n \"url\": \"https://video.twimg.com/ext_tw_video/1532586917866266625/pu/vid/720x1280/cn2RJQ2ZVY4ScC4Y.mp4?tag=12\"\r\n }\r\n ],\r\n \"public_metrics\": {\r\n \"view_count\": 765\r\n },\r\n \"width\": 720,\r\n \"media_key\": \"7_1532586917866266625\",\r\n \"height\": 1280,\r\n \"duration_ms\": 90000\r\n }\r\n```\r\n\r\nI considered offering a custom player, but felt that wasn't worth it. So I just offer a basic video control:\r\n\r\n```html\r\n

\r\n```\r\n\r\nThis was the best blogpost I found on the topic: https://blog.addpipe.com/10-advanced-features-in-html5-video-player/\r\n\r\n## Polls\r\n\r\nHere's a generic search for all polls: https://mobile.twitter.com/search?q=card_name%3Apoll2choice_text_only%20OR%20card_name%3Apoll3choice_text_only%20OR%20card_name%3Apoll4choice_text_only%20OR%20card_name%3Apoll2choice_image%20OR%20card_name%3Apoll3choice_image%20OR%20card_name%3Apoll4choice_image%20&src=typed_query&f=top\r\n\r\nPolls can have:\r\n\r\n- 2 options https://twitter.com/sellvote17/status/1535803865928327168?s=20&t=vE18eWkbFhB4mO_f-73S0Q\r\n- 3 options https://twitter.com/socceraid/status/1536085576784527363?s=20&t=vE18eWkbFhB4mO_f-73S0Q\r\n- 4 options https://twitter.com/IdolRoyalty/status/1535860488700997632?s=20&t=vE18eWkbFhB4mO_f-73S0Q\r\n\r\nIt wasn't too bad:\r\n\r\n```html\r\n\r\n\r\n

\r\n\t\t
\r\n\t\t
\r\n\t\t\t\t{option.label}\r\n\t\t\t\t{#if isWinning}\r\n\t\t\t\t\t🏆\r\n\t\t\t\t\t{/if}{Math.round(percent * 1000)/10}%\r\n\t\t
\t\r\n\t

\r\n

\r\n\t\r\n\t

\r\n{totalvotes} votes ending {new Date(polldata.end_datetime).toDateString()}\r\n\t

\r\n

\r\n```\r\n\r\n![image](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/173254050-4c5c4e0e-91df-48a1-a561-ee1f5a2ac3d2.png)\r\n\r\n\r\n## Other Twitter features\r\n\r\nThere are Twitter Lists, Twitter communities, Twitter Spaces, and others, that I don't handle well, but at least it doesnt look actively horrible:\r\n\r\n![image](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/173254227-70eda685-0594-4ea5-a513-41df03b57fc0.png)\r\n\r\n\r\nTo handle this well I would have to write an \"unfurl\" module to unfurl quote tweets and these other features. Can't be bothered right now.","frontmatter":{"category":"note","cover_image":"https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/173245886-28bcf37d-ac5c-4e9d-9a88-58dc7e0e9e52.png"},"title":"The Hard Problem of Rendering Tweets","description":"I've been unhappy with my tweet rendering strategy (https://github.com/sw-yx/swyxkit/issues/61) for a while - Twitter encourages you to use their heavy JS script to render tweets, which undoubtedly heaps all sorts of tracking on the reader, docks your lighthouse performance score by ~17 points, adds ~4 seconds to Time to Interactive, occasionally gets adblocked (so *nothing* renders!) ","category":"note","tags":[],"image":"https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/173245886-28bcf37d-ac5c-4e9d-9a88-58dc7e0e9e52.png","slug":"the-hard-problem-of-rendering-tweets","date":"2022-06-12T17:47:39.000Z","readingTime":"8 minutes","ghMetadata":{"issueUrl":"https://github.com/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/429","commentsUrl":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/429/comments","title":"The Hard Problem of Rendering Tweets","created_at":"2022-06-12T17:47:39Z","updated_at":"2022-06-27T07:53:55Z","reactions":{"url":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/429/reactions","total_count":0,"+1":0,"-1":0,"laugh":0,"hooray":0,"confused":0,"heart":0,"rocket":0,"eyes":0}}},{"title":"Learning in Public on Screaming in The Cloud","slug":"lip-screaming","tags":["LearninPublic"],"venues":"ScreamingInTheCloud","date":"2022-06-10T00:00:00.000Z","url":"https://www.lastweekinaws.com/podcast/screaming-in-the-cloud/learning-in-public-with-swyx/","description":"Corey Quinn is one of my favorite cloud/creators/podcasters/writers/comedians and I was honored to be invited on his pod!","category":"podcast"},{"type":"blog","content":"\r\n> This post was originally published on my new dedicated DX site: https://dx.tips/the-end-of-localhost\r\n\r\n**Dev environments should be cattle, not pets**. It looks likely that most development will *not* be done on `localhost` in future.\r\n\r\n**Make the ultimate developer experience wishlist** for the average rich-country developer in 2030:\r\n\r\n- Fast gigabit internet is *cheap* and *everywhere* (5G or mesh wifi)\r\n- Dev machines (laptops, tablets, VR) are *cheap* and have multiday battery life\r\n- Your apps build in a second *regardless of scale*, with tests and staging environments/deploy previews ~instantly live after every keystroke\r\n- Your personal dev environment travels with you no matter which device you use\r\n- Any app's environmental dependencies - everything from a HTTPS cert to a sanitized, sandboxed fork of the production database - are immediately available to any teammate ramping up to contribute any feature. No docs, no runbook.\r\n- You can go from idea to first customer in a weekend, using a combination of low-code builders and backends-as-a-service\r\n- You can scale up from MVP to unicorn in weeks, using one of the serverless or \"new Heroku\" platforms, and auth/payments/database/communication needs handled by world-class SaaS teams\r\n\r\nYou will notice that most of these items enable (even *require*) you to run things \"live\" on the cloud, not `localhost`.\r\n\r\nPerhaps most importantly, the time wasted fixing bugs between dev and prod environments **goes from 1-4 hours a week down to 0**, if you can simply eliminate the discrepancy between dev and prod.\r\n\r\n> Aside: Realistically, you will always have *some* discrepancy between \"staging\" and production environments, but the distance between them should be much smaller than between dev and prod. For example, working on `https` is always a pain in `localhost` but is a requirement on prod.\r\n\r\nTo [paraphrase Bob Metcalfe](https://www.wired.com/2012/04/ff-andreessen/), if the browser reduced operating systems to \"a poorly debugged set of device drivers\", then **the cloud is reducing the dev machine to a poorly debugged set of environment mocks**.\r\n\r\n![image.png](https://cdn.hashnode.com/res/hashnode/image/upload/v1654705265316/mTPjVacfU.png align=\"center\")\r\n\r\nThat's it, that's the blogpost. The rest of this article is working out subpoints, examples, trends, and anecdata.\r\n\r\n## But I Need To Code on a Plane?\r\n\r\nMaybe stop flying so much. Or get a good audiobook and rest your eyes. Maybe even talk to your neighbor! (if they seem social)\r\n\r\n## The \"Future is Just Not Evenly Distributed\" Argument\r\n\r\nMany Bigcos who have invested in their developer productivity already work entirely in the cloud. This will be news to some of you, and old hat to others, so I didn't know how much emphasis to place on this.\r\n\r\nBut to my knowledge, this is the first time anyone has collected public info about Bigco dev environments in one place:\r\n\r\n- **Google Cider** is Google's web IDE that \"mounts the enormous Piper file system and provides a super tight integration with internal review, build and testing tools\" without downloading any source code to the local machine ([source](https://www.quora.com/What-does-Googles-web-IDE-look-like), [source](https://medium.com/codesphere-cloud/why-online-coding-is-the-future-e7b9a255f77f)) \r\n- **FB On-Demand** is Facebook's way to do \"on-demand\" environment provisioning that create a live feature preview with more fidelity than local. At FB, \"[local development did not exist](https://twitter.com/gwenshap/status/1533956840240779264?s=20&t=FBNMNXzv8v6vwAdSzkTxDw)\". ([FB alum tweet](https://twitter.com/threepointone/status/1533971160005738496), [YC startup clone](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29164556))\r\n- **Tesla** moved from local to cloud for their vehicle OS development ([source](https://twitter.com/charmcgi/status/1534182983837618176))\r\n- **Palantir** reported a 41% decrease in overall costs when moving to remote ephemeral workspaces ([source](https://blog.palantir.com/the-benefits-of-remote-ephemeral-workspaces-1a1251ed6e53), thanks [Ben Potter](https://twitter.com/bpmct/status/1533932035147980802?s=20&t=FBNMNXzv8v6vwAdSzkTxDw))\r\n- **Shopify** is \"moving the majority of our developers into our cloud development environment, called Spin.\" ([source](https://shopify.engineering/cloud-load-modular-code-shopify-2022), thanks [David Stosik](https://twitter.com/davidstosik/status/1533981379209613312?s=20&t=shjhKXR3Gtrtr54iSqHPnA))\r\n- **Github** \"left our macOS model behind and moved to Codespaces for the majority of GitHub.com development\". ([source](https://github.blog/2021-08-11-githubs-engineering-team-moved-codespaces), [podcast](https://twitter.com/swyx/status/1436602844216500227))\r\n\r\nThe standard response to bringing up a bunch of Bigcos is \"sure, but does it work for my small team?\"\r\n\r\nThe answer is invariably \"maybe yes, but also probably not in this current form\", because most of these moves were done after sizable internal investment and take advantage of lots of proprietary infrastructure. However, as this tech commoditizes, we'll see more and more of it spread out as we find commonalities among audience subsets.\r\n\r\nThe obvious first part of commoditizing preview environments has already been done - one of Netlify's early innovations was making [deploy previews for frontend projects](https://www.netlify.com/products/deploy-previews/) ubiquitous. Virtually every docs site now uses some form of deploy preview system, and Jamstack apps can also use them for their release process ([example](https://twitter.com/philhawksworth/status/1149664004681240577)). With [database branching](https://changelog.com/founderstalk/85) becoming increasingly common, this workflow will make its way further and further up the stack. Let's look at this stack next...\r\n\r\n\r\n## Jobs to Be Done of Localhost\r\n\r\nIn [my original tweet](https://twitter.com/swyx/status/1533910738942562304) calling out this trend I actually conflated different usages of local development (as [Anil Dash observed](https://twitter.com/anildash/status/1534177596593917954)):\r\n\r\n- Editing code in a local IDE\r\n- Running code cloned to a local file directory\r\n- Spinning up a local database instance/cluster of services to code against\r\n\r\nConveniently, they are all under attack (did i miss any? please let me know):\r\n\r\n- Editing code and Running code remotely: GitHub Codespaces, Replit, Coder.com, CodeSandbox, Gitpod\r\n- Editing code locally while it runs on a Remote server: VSCode + [Azure VMs](https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=ms-azuretools.vscode-azurevirtualmachines) or VSCode + [Amazon Workspaces](https://dev.to/aws/how-to-live-stream-meetups-on-twitch-without-any-special-equipment-56cb) or [Jetbrains Fleet](https://www.jetbrains.com/fleet/) \"Distributed IDE\" or [Okteto Sync](https://twitter.com/rberrelleza/status/1534241206514749441?s=20&t=sNeNXfaWqhc2VzuUnSZ7uw)\r\n- Editing code while it runs in a lightweight [JavaScript container](https://tinyclouds.org/javascript_containers) in the browser: Stackblitz\r\n- Running code remotely: [Brev.dev](https://www.brev.dev/)\r\n- Staging resources to code against: Planetscale [Branches](https://docs.planetscale.com/concepts/branching), Stripe [Test mode keys](https://stripe.com/docs/keys#test-live-modes), Railway [Ephemeral Environments](https://docs.railway.app/develop/environments#ephemeral-environments), [Okteto environments](https://www.okteto.com/)\r\n\r\nSo no matter what you're doing in `localhost`, there's probably a well-funded startup or Amazon/Microsoft tool that does it better in the cloud.\r\n\r\n## The Inevitability Argument\r\n\r\nOne of the ironic tensions of humanity is that we **say** we want free will, privacy, self sufficiency and decentralization, but our **actions** tend toward the hive mind, convenience, interdependence and central infrastructure. My theory for this is that social psychology, economics and technology are very powerful centralizing forces.\r\n\r\n- There are a long list of critical life essentials on which we are not self sufficient. Many historians mark agriculture as a starting point of civilization - meaning that *centralizing our food source* helped us move past a subsistence agriculture. Water supply and sanitation centralized [in the 1700s](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_water_supply_and_sanitation). Electricity has basically been centralized from the start.\r\n- Closer to modern times we're also seeing everything we use move to the cloud, from movies/TV (from huge VHS and DVD libraries to a monthly Netflix/Disney/HBO subscription), games (from box games to free-to-play MOBAs and MMORPGs, Google Stadia, xCloud and PS Now), and knowledge (from Encyclopaedia to Wikipedia)\r\n- Even in the B2B domain: \r\n\t- Salesforce's \"no software\" move to SaaS was just the first in a long history of moving every imaginable application to the cloud\r\n\t- Box and Dropbox moved file storage to the cloud\r\n\t- Docusign/Hellosign moved *legal contracts* to the cloud\r\n\t- GAE/AWS/Azure moved the datacenter to the cloud\r\n\t- Most recently [Suhail Doshi's Mighty app](https://www.producthunt.com/stories/suhail-doshi-s-new-company-mighty-is-a-faster-browser-streamed-from-the-cloud) is moving even the *browser* to the cloud\r\n\r\nTo argue *against* `localhost` eventually going the way of the Dodo is to do the developer equivalent of asserting that most people want to run their own generators or grow their own food.\r\n\r\n\r\n## The Outer vs Inner Loop Argument\r\n\r\nYou might argue that developers take so much pride in their tools that they will go out of their way to be self sufficient in them. And yet:\r\n\r\n- Every [Slack](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=status.slack.com&sort=byPopularity&type=story) and [GitHub](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=github%20is%20down&sort=byPopularity&type=story) outage is basically celebrated as a Developer \"Snow Day\" (unscheduled holiday due to acts of god)\r\n- Most companies run separate Build/CI/CD infrastructure anyway - in other words most apps don't get *deployed* without first going through some cloud infra as part of the critical path\r\n\r\nI will grant that there's a difference between \"We use CircleCI\" and \"Let's kill localhost\". The term of art the industry has adopted to describe this difference in dev tooling is the [Dev \"Outer Loop\" vs \"Inner Loop\"](https://twitter.com/beyang/status/1530589936361119744) - the Outer Loop taking the git commit as the atomic unit of developer productivity, and the Inner Loop being all the developer activity that happens *between* commits.\r\n\r\nSo, to use those terms - we're fine with the cloud taking the slow Outer Loop, but people are concerned about network latency affecting the much faster Inner Loop.\r\n\r\n- With Sourcegraph, developers are effectively saying a remote service can do a better job of *searching* their code than they can locally\r\n- With GitHub Copilot, even *autocomplete* is being made better by being cloud-enabled\r\n\r\nThe degree to which the cloud can eat the Inner Loop is probably a question of reliability and latency - we are more than happy to hand over slow activities that take minutes, but nobody will tolerate 300ms latencies to see the result of a keystroke.\r\n\r\n> Aside: It's probably worth a future essay breaking down the various components of the Inner Loop, as there are orders of magnitude differences in the latency of various activities we undertake and so different ideal solutions for each.\r\n\r\n## The Potential of Edge Compute\r\n\r\nUltralow latency is the domain of edge compute, and likely the final frontier of how the cloud can eat that \"last mile\" of the developer Inner Loop.\r\n\r\nAnil Dash, CEO of Glitch, [put it best](https://twitter.com/anildash/status/1534177596593917954?s=20):\r\n\r\n> I think it’s more likely the rise of tech like CRDTs & edge compute will blur the lines of what we actually think of as “local”.\r\n\r\nCloudflare folks working on Cloudflare workers [also agree](https://twitter.com/threepointone/status/1533914337290735616?s=20&t=FBNMNXzv8v6vwAdSzkTxDw):\r\n\r\n> \"wrangler dev\" **actually runs the worker on the edge**, and we use localhost as a proxy. it means you have access to resources/secrets from your real environment, and we implement copy-on-write on stuff like durable objects that gets discarded once your shut down your session\r\n\r\nWhile not as low-latency, serverless folks like [Tim Wagner](https://twitter.com/timallenwagner/status/1534200123252584449) (creator of AWS Lambda), [Emrah Samdan](https://twitter.com/emrahsamdan/status/1533912205594353676?s=20&t=FBNMNXzv8v6vwAdSzkTxDw) (PM @ Serverless.com), and [Tudor Golubenco](https://twitter.com/tudor_g/status/1534443433846358016?s=21&t=Af93P2lzKTPECID5Y0q2KA) (CTO Xata) also have a lot of sympathy with this because of how easy it is to provision/scale serverless resources. \r\n\r\n## Pushback: It's Still Not Good Enough\r\n\r\n**Don't get overexcited here**. My caution on judging this movement with today's technology is that for this to succeed, provisioning must feel so cheap as to be \"throwaway\" - even a latency of 10 seconds to spin up a preview environment is too long for me, though your mileage may vary.\r\n\r\nIt takes a second to deploy a frontend preview with [Netlify Drop](https://www.netlify.com/blog/2018/08/14/announcing-netlify-drop-the-simplicity-of-bitballoon-with-the-added-power-of-netlify/) and ~10 seconds with the Netlify CLI, but I still habitually use localhost for development because my iteration cycle is in *milliseconds*. I can and have moved part of that workflow to remote tools like Codesandbox, Gitpod and Stackblitz, but none of them are fully capable of replicating the full set of dependencies that I need for fullstack development. In fact, after one [particularly bad livestream](https://www.learnwithjason.dev/how-to-use-netlify-identity-and-netlify-functions), I resolved to always use [Netlify Dev](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19615546) (the Netlify local dev solution I used to work on) because the iteration loop of git-push-and-wait-for-deploy was so agonizingly slow (I had the same pain with [AWS Amplify](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VA3TFymZlW4)).\r\n\r\nOther similar sentiments:\r\n\r\n> Localhost has been attempted to be killed for eons, until the network is as fast as my disk, and can the “remoteness” of it can disappear entirely, localhost is here to stay. ([tweet](https://twitter.com/nickhudkins/status/1534344248987897856?s=21&t=XrMtpxYKXroVa45238TsGA))\r\n\r\n> Currently we have local development with impossible physics: assets that load immediately, APIs that respond in under a millisecond. So if dev goes to the cloud because the latency is acceptable, then we are finding a middle point that is acceptable for both devs and real users. ([tweet](https://twitter.com/royalicing/status/1534289848370352128?s=21&t=XrMtpxYKXroVa45238TsGA))\r\n\r\nBut surely you can see that the latency question is a question of letting the Moore's law equivalent of cloud commoditizing infrastructure take its course. If it's not good enough today, then wait 5 years and check back again.\r\n\r\n\r\n## Other Notable responses\r\n\r\nPeople have very extreme:\r\n- positive views\r\n\t- \"General purpose computation on your own machine is probably going to be illegal in 20 years. It will be our greatest accomplishment if we can liberate even 1% of humanity from this soul-stifling metaverse. We increasingly are moving from stone age to bronze age computing. We need a bronze age collapse and the beginning of iron-age computing. In particular, we need computing that escapes the massive centralized palace economy model, even if only for 1% of humanity.\" ([tweet](https://twitter.com/wolftivy/status/1533934249673228288?s=20&t=FBNMNXzv8v6vwAdSzkTxDw))\r\n\t- \"This is already the case in many big companies and killing local dev is going to be a huge win for developers.\" ([Roopak from Bolt](https://twitter.com/roopakv/status/1533916592085422080?s=20&t=FBNMNXzv8v6vwAdSzkTxDw))\r\n- and negative views\r\n\t- \"You pry localhost from my cold dead hands!\" ([tweet](https://twitter.com/coolpatiens/status/1533958291931512832?s=20&t=FBNMNXzv8v6vwAdSzkTxDw))\r\n\t- \"Out of my cold dead hands. This is the final step in the road to the inescapable surveillance dystopia.\" ([tweet](https://twitter.com/zetalyrae/status/1533920071130955776))\r\n\t- \"Nobody wondering whether it's a good idea to hand over what small power we have left as devs to a few private platforms.\" ([tweet](https://twitter.com/sgwil/status/1534068485273305089?s=20&t=FBNMNXzv8v6vwAdSzkTxDw))\r\n\r\n**Dan Abramov** predicted this happens in [5 years](https://twitter.com/dan_abramov/status/1533912835096465408?s=20&t=FBNMNXzv8v6vwAdSzkTxDw), not 10.\r\n\r\n**Paul Biggar** [sees](https://twitter.com/paulbiggar/status/1534185221955932161) a few drivers:\r\n\r\n> - production is harder and harder to replicate locally\r\n> - it's cheaper to pay for cloud dev machines than expensive laptops each year\r\n> - services with high scale (eg Spanner) don't behave the same on localhost anyway - you just have an emulator \r\n> \r\n> Pretty sure we're going to do fewer things locally and a lot more developing directly against the cloud in the future\r\n\r\n**Patrick Mckenzie** [says](https://twitter.com/patio11/status/1533958144090460161?s=20&t=FBNMNXzv8v6vwAdSzkTxDw): \r\n\r\n> It seems to me like all the bits needed to do this are already abundantly available and it’s waiting for a) one solid product team and, crucially, b) becoming The Right Way To Do It for one language/platform that rockets to mainstream success.\r\n> \r\n> You’d want the “curl dockerinthecloudlets.go” to be the first line in all the tutorials and for that to be the last time users ever think about compute substrate or networking.\r\n\r\n\r\n## Further Reading\r\n\r\n- [**James Turnbull**](https://github.com/readme/guides/developer-onboarding): \"I was speaking to the CEO of a developer tools company earlier this year. He told me that the biggest obstacle to contribution is his local development environment.\" \r\n- [**Julius Gamanyi**](https://twitter.com/juliusgb2k/status/1534154613682757635?s=20&t=oquJNGbOl2U8ZLfTR_fMUA) : Wardley mapping of the Cloud IDE workspace https://juliusgamanyi.com/2018/03/16/learning-to-map-cloud-ides-developer-workspaces-fast-time-to-first-line-of-code/\r\n\r\n\r\n","frontmatter":{"title":"The End of Localhost","subtitle":"All the Cloud's A Staging Env, and All the Laptops Merely Clients","canonical_url":"https://dx.tips/the-end-of-localhost","published":true},"title":"The End of Localhost","subtitle":"All the Cloud's A Staging Env, and All the Laptops Merely Clients","description":"> This post was originally published on my new dedicated DX site: https://dx.tips/the-end-of-localhost ","category":"note","tags":[],"canonical":"https://dx.tips/the-end-of-localhost","slug":"the-end-of-localhost","date":"2022-06-08T17:26:56.000Z","readingTime":"10 minutes","ghMetadata":{"issueUrl":"https://github.com/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/427","commentsUrl":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/427/comments","title":"The End of Localhost","created_at":"2022-06-08T17:26:56Z","updated_at":"2022-11-15T16:47:40Z","reactions":{"url":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/427/reactions","total_count":9,"+1":7,"-1":0,"laugh":0,"hooray":0,"confused":0,"heart":0,"rocket":2,"eyes":0}}},{"type":"blog","content":"\r\n2 years ago I [moved all my blogging to Dev.to](https://www.swyx.io/devto-cms). Today [my main blog is on Github Issues](https://www.swyx.io/github-cms) and [I've just launched DXTips on Hashnode](https://twitter.com/swyx/status/1531330889535602688).\r\n\r\nDev.to still has the widest readership, which is great for beginners. But the experience has stagnated since [the big move to Forem](https://dev.to/devteam/announcing-forem-dev-5b38) (which it now actively promotes via a popup on mobile).\r\n\r\n![image](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/173092767-19c7b2f3-4979-4f2d-85a3-6ac425f427ae.png)\r\n\r\n\r\n## Dated UI\r\n\r\nThe brutalist design of Dev.to was appealing in 2017-2020, but now feels a little dated. It has received no updates and I felt like I wanted to see if I could offer my readers something better.\r\n\r\n![image](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/173091427-01bb68af-7e21-4ce7-a66b-24de3c1dc992.png)\r\n\r\n## No editor UX\r\n\r\nThe editor is just raw markdown in a text box, and though I like markdown, I like the niceties of using keyboard shortcuts to add links or bold/italicize text. Also paste-to-unfurl would be nice, but the shortcode syntax required too much customization when I should simply be able to paste in a url (this would also degrade more gracefully)\r\n\r\n![image](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/173091794-e261d69a-82b8-4adc-889d-ce4c21d82695.png)\r\n\r\n## Weird limitations on posting\r\n\r\n![image](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/171433520-d1be59da-cf8b-4179-8416-cc84fe715299.png)\r\n\r\n![image](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/171433743-e59c37cd-0b31-443a-b15d-5b28dbb2edd1.png)\r\n\r\n\r\n## Neutral: performance?\r\n\r\ndev.to is famously notable for their speed so i tossed it into pagespeed insights and was surprised to find a bad score. its probably because of the media heavy nature of the blogpost i picked so not a big deal\r\n\r\n![image](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/173092309-893dbe51-3071-4c2c-9671-f7726050a1f9.png)\r\n\r\n![image](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/173092502-f3637846-cf22-49fb-a548-8c991d86fa5a.png)\r\n\r\nHowever, [webpagetest](https://www.webpagetest.org/result/220610_AiDc8D_9RC/) complained a lot less\r\n\r\n![image](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/173092685-f2196106-fa31-4dfa-86aa-cf3b35150856.png)\r\n\r\nmy swyxkit-based mirror page showed marginally better performance, with the js weight hurting because of the youtube embed.","frontmatter":{"category":"note"},"title":"Why I Moved Off Dev.to","description":"2 years ago I moved all my blogging to Dev.to (https://www.swyx.io/devto-cms). Today my main blog is on Github Issues (https://www.swyx.io/github-cms) and I've just launched DXTips on Hashnode (https://twitter.com/swyx/status/1531330889535602688). ","category":"note","tags":[],"slug":"why-i-moved-off-dev.to","date":"2022-06-01T15:30:26.000Z","readingTime":"1 minute","ghMetadata":{"issueUrl":"https://github.com/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/424","commentsUrl":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/424/comments","title":"Why I Moved Off Dev.to","created_at":"2022-06-01T15:30:26Z","updated_at":"2022-06-25T02:49:33Z","reactions":{"url":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/424/reactions","total_count":7,"+1":7,"-1":0,"laugh":0,"hooray":0,"confused":0,"heart":0,"rocket":0,"eyes":0}}},{"type":"blog","content":"\r\n> This post was originally published on my new dedicated DX site: https://dx.tips/circles\r\n\r\nTo paraphrase Conway's law, **most companies will ship the developer experience of their org charts.** And yet org charts are rarely designed with the user in mind.\r\n\r\nConsider the journey of a typical developer-user: You hear about a tool from either direct advocacy (first-party **content**) or word of mouth (third-party **community**). Then you go through the **docs**, and start interacting with the **product**. That's the work of at least 4 teams, all with different priorities and emphases. \r\n\r\nIf you've ever found a blogpost that should have been in the docs, or learned something about the product only from talking to other users, you've felt the misalignment that arises when **it's nobody's job to design for the end-to-end developer experience**.\r\n\r\nWhat does it take to design a complete+cohesive journey?\r\n\r\nThis is an emerging field I've been calling **DX Architecture**. My favorite mental model for it looks like \"Radiating Circles\":\r\n\r\n![image.png](https://cdn.hashnode.com/res/hashnode/image/upload/v1653865033249/gP_vOxGCg.png)\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n## The Metalanguage Stack: From Code to Humans\r\n\r\nIn his excellent talk on [Taming the Metalanguage](https://frantic.im/meta-language/), Cheng Lou first identified the dizzying array of stuff that accumulates around code to make it palatable to humans:\r\n\r\n![image.png](https://cdn.hashnode.com/res/hashnode/image/upload/v1653866746845/iOPGgwHFJ.png)\r\n\r\nHe spoke of metalanguage as a thing to be tamed, which is true: \r\n\r\n- The best docs are the docs I don't have to read, because the product is so intuitive or teaches me as I go\r\n- The best talks and blogposts are the talks and blogposts I don't have to consume, because the docs clearly said everything there was to be said\r\n- and so on...\r\n\r\nBut still, you can't avoid it, and over time you'll probably want to accumulate more of some things than the other. \r\n\r\n![image.png](https://cdn.hashnode.com/res/hashnode/image/upload/v1653867087999/dEkuiL4-x.png)\r\n\r\n**Adjust to taste**. 4 layers is merely the simplest I can make it. This concentric circle model just represents an idealized proportion of how much of each type of DX effort you might want; based on your situation, you might want more of one thing and less of another.\r\n\r\nFor example, Snowflake and Stripe did not bother having fulltime developer relations for their first 5-7 years of existence, whereas SEO-driven SaaS apps should overindex on content rather than community.\r\n\r\n![image.png](https://cdn.hashnode.com/res/hashnode/image/upload/v1653867257268/g-c1tGIW6.png)\r\n\r\nHaving good docs are non-negotiable, though :)\r\n\r\n###\tExamples: The Metalanguage Stack\r\n\r\nSome folks often want to see more examples to think through this experience so here's a non-exhaustive list of parts of your developer experience to think through either when you launch a new product or when looking at your entire offering holistically:\r\n\r\n- **Product DX**\r\n - Scaffolding/Hello World\r\n - API Design\r\n - Error messages ([that don't make me think](https://www.swyx.io/write-errors-that-don-t-make-me-think-24hg))\r\n - UI affordances/validation/visual feedback\r\n - Auxiliary Devtools, CLIs/Utilities, Editor Integrations\r\n - Speed, speed, speed. Speed is so important it is its own feature.\r\n- **Docs DX**\r\n - API Reference\r\n - Tutorials, Guides, Recipes (shared with Content)\r\n - FAQ and Glossary/Conceptual Explanations\r\n - Debugging guide (\"Common Errors & How To Fix Them\")\r\n - Readme's\r\n - Versioning/Migration\r\n - Search experience\r\n - Information Architecture\r\n- **Content DX**\r\n - Blogposts\r\n - Tutorials, Guides, Recipes (shared with Docs)\r\n - Demos/Workshops\r\n - Shortform Videos\r\n - Longform Videos (including livestream footage and external talks)\r\n- **Community DX** (*More on [Community Heat](https://www.swyx.io/community-heat) in a previous post*)\r\n - Hot Community\r\n - Chat (Slack/Discord)\r\n - Livestream/Meetups/Company Conference\r\n - Social Media (Twitter/LinkedIn/Reddit/etc)\r\n - Cold Community\r\n - Forum posting\r\n - Newsletter\r\n - Quarter/Annual Roundup or Changelog or Survey\r\n\r\nYou can pretty much turn some version of this list into a DX Architecture checklist for every launch/update you do.\r\n\r\n## The Feature Map: Completeness and Sequencing\r\n\r\nThe other Developer Experience ball that often gets dropped is **solely focusing on the happy/beginner path**. \r\n\r\nA lot of developer advocates spend their time only talking about their company's free tier, and doing \"Hello World\" ad infinitum. This comes out of the standard view of DevRel as a pure top-of-funnel function, leaving users with a sharp learning curve the moment they need to wander off the paved road.\r\n\r\nThe central argument of [Developer Exception Engineering](https://www.swyx.io/developer-exception) is that responsible DX should at least *briefly* prepare the user for the less glamorous, unhappy path.\r\n\r\n![image.png](https://cdn.hashnode.com/res/hashnode/image/upload/v1653868607456/Y5GReRiD_.png)\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nMy second realisation about designing a \"complete\" developer experience is that everyone should have the same mental map of what the company's features even *are*. Everyone has their favorite toy feature, but especially in mature projects, it's common to have so many features that not everyone even knows all the features or are aligned on what the company wants to offer for each user persona.\r\n\r\nThe solution for this is **Feature Mapping**, which I will cover in a future blogpost, but you can see [how we applied it at Temporal in this talk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwJHaGRw9mA&t=1706s). The TL;DR is you want to pick the two most important axes that circumscribe your developer experience and make sure that all your users go through them, or can at least easily find them when they need to.\r\n\r\n![image.png](https://cdn.hashnode.com/res/hashnode/image/upload/v1653868864616/ZTOKo_Xl6.png)\r\n\r\n**Must it be a 2x2?** No - make it a pentagon, or [sextagon](https://siliconangle.com/2021/09/29/devops-dummies-author-emily-freeman-introduces-revolutionary-model-modern-software-development-awsq3/), dodecahedron, or whatever you want. Just remember that every extra dimension makes it that much harder to remember and therefore less likely to stick.\r\n\r\nSimplicity is a feature.\r\n\r\nFinally, **sequencing**, or providing an opinionated path through your feature map, helps put your developer experience on rails rather than making every branching point a tiring choose-your-own-adventure.\r\n\r\n### Examples: Feature Mapping Axes\r\n\r\nPick from two DX axes that your users care most about:\r\n\r\n- Happy path vs Unhappy path\r\n- Developer vs Operator\r\n- User-facing vs Behind-the-scenes\r\n- [Positive vs Negative Engineering](https://medium.com/the-prefect-blog/positive-and-negative-data-engineering-a02cb497583d)\r\n- Proprietary cloud vs Open source\r\n- Getting started vs Production (Debugging/Testing/Monitoring/Upgrading/Scaling)\r\n- Core architecture vs Plugin development\r\n\r\nBasically, there's always some version of \"eat your vegetables\" part of your developer experience that is consistently overlooked, and some version of \"small\" that looks very different when it is \"big\". Figure out what they are and make it a habit to give the overlooked part as much care as the flashier parts of your DX. Your users will appreciate it - and be more successful as a result.\r\n\r\n## Putting Both Together\r\n\r\nHaving gone through the exercise of the Metalanguage Stack and the Feature Map, you can simply paste one atop the other, and evaluate your current experience against your ideal:\r\n\r\n![image.png](https://cdn.hashnode.com/res/hashnode/image/upload/v1653865033249/gP_vOxGCg.png)\r\n\r\nThis is basically a two dimensional checklist that helps you find developer experience gaps and get everyone aligned on what matters to the company and to users!\r\n\r\nYou might be wondering how to apply this, so here's a 30 minute exercise: \r\n\r\n1. Take a devtool company you know well\r\n2. Ask what top 4 things serious users *should* know on the first encounter, and when they adopt for production\r\n3. Taking a critical, unsentimental look at each of their community, content, docs, and product:\r\n - How hard was it to answer those questions?\r\n - How good were those answers?\r\n\r\n## DX starts from the core\r\n\r\nWhy this concept is known as \"Radiating\" Circles is that DX Architecture starts from inside-out. The best docs and devrel in the world don't matter if the product is fundamentally broken. All you'll have is a leaky bucket - People will try you out and then leave right away with a poor first impression.\r\n\r\nSo it makes sense that your DX efforts should **adjust to maturity**: The earlier the product, the more that inner circles should be emphasized over outer ones.\r\n\r\nIf you have a new product/feature launch coming soon, focus on the product *first* (API design, error messages, visual feedback, etc), then the docs, then the content, and so on, in that order. Overweighting outer circles when the inner circles aren't complete will make the experience feel lacking.\r\n\r\nIn practice, things are never that sequential, so this is more of a guideline of where to spend time. Start as close to the product as possible, then work your way outward, doubling back whenever you have a new product launch or discover some new insight about your user's needs.\r\n\r\n## Further Reading\r\n\r\nThe talk version of this blogpost has more context and explanations on some of the design choices behind these mental models:\r\n\r\n%[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d9lo-Ej98l4]\r\n\r\nOther relevant org chart and design thinking posts:\r\n\r\n- [DX at Netlify](https://www.netlify.com/blog/2021/01/06/developer-experience-at-netlify/) by Sarah Drasner\r\n- [DevRel at Vercel](https://leerob.io/blog/devrel-at-vercel) by Lee Robinson\r\n\r\n***Acknowledgements** - thanks to Lee Robinson and Thomas Schranz for reviewing early drafts as well as Pauline Narvas and Mike Nikles for giving the original inspiration to write this up!*","frontmatter":{"title":"The Radiating Circles of DX Architecture","subtitle":"How to design an end to end developer journey","canonical_url":"https://dx.tips/circles","published":true},"title":"The Radiating Circles of DX Architecture","subtitle":"How to design an end to end developer journey","description":"> This post was originally published on my new dedicated DX site: https://dx.tips/circles ","category":"note","tags":[],"canonical":"https://dx.tips/circles","slug":"the-radiating-circles-of-dx-architecture","date":"2022-05-30T21:56:12.000Z","readingTime":"7 minutes","ghMetadata":{"issueUrl":"https://github.com/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/423","commentsUrl":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/423/comments","title":"The Radiating Circles of DX Architecture","created_at":"2022-05-30T21:56:12Z","updated_at":"2022-06-02T16:28:13Z","reactions":{"url":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/423/reactions","total_count":0,"+1":0,"-1":0,"laugh":0,"hooray":0,"confused":0,"heart":0,"rocket":0,"eyes":0}}},{"type":"blog","content":"\r\nNow that the dust has settled on the Plaid-Stripe thing ([initial news](https://techcrunch.com/2022/05/08/the-interchange-stripe-takes-a-swing-at-plaid/) and its [HN discussion](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31263288), [retraction](https://twitter.com/pitdesi/status/1522588229593014272?s=20&t=6rL1v9yKFj7vj87RAFaGMQ), [response from Stripe](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31284031)), I wanted to take up [Shreyas' call to his Twitter Super Followers](https://twitter.com/shreyas/status/1521988227330043904) to learn lessons from this episode, not as a form of criticism of Plaid OR Stripe, but simply as practice/exercise in second order thinking.\r\n\r\n![image](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/170881112-5742ab05-ac25-48c4-adfe-23d0fb5790bc.png)\r\n\r\nThis sort of \"competitive comms\" recurs throughout history - [Slack vs Microsoft Teams](https://twitter.com/stewart/status/793811616760496128), [Apple vs IBM](https://twitter.com/ryanosten/status/1522157276248875008), [Sourcegraph vs GitHub](https://twitter.com/swyx/status/1468656111225999360). If you are at all successful at working on something valuable, expect competition, and expect to have to handle it gracefully in public.\r\n\r\nI found this a very useful exercise and figured I would write stuff down as a reference for myself. This isn't armchair quarterbacking - I view this as something I might have done - so I am eager to \"review the tape\" so to speak.\r\n\r\n## Likely Outcome\r\n\r\nAssuming the facts of the matter were accurately represented by Zach (seems unlikely now), he could have backchanneled his complaints to Patrick first, who from all appearances could have shut down this program if it were truly tainted by bad faith. Misuse of confidential information would have been enforceable under NDA as well. Either of these could have led to a private settlement that was ruled out by public tweeting.\r\n\r\nIn the extremely likely chance that he was not going to have any impact (such as Stripe publicly reversing course/shutting down its launch) then all he was going to do was just tweet words to a small group of extremely-online Twitterfolk. In that case, he should have tried to go for a humorous take, highlighting Plaid's strengths (from being in this game longer), rather than starting drama that would have gone nowhere and just reflected badly. Highlight the differences, not the similarities, on things the buyer cares about.\r\n\r\nFor a \"funny\" take on being cloned I like thinking about [how Ricky Gervais talks about the US version of The Office](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BmTfxyoEqAc).\r\n\r\n## Bad Look\r\n\r\nThe actual \"bad look\" here is that Plaid seems to be admitting they disclosed way too much valuable information during the interview process. \r\n\r\n- This could have been covered by NDA, which is certainly enforceable if the facts of this case were true\r\n- But it also points to a certain naivete/laxness in disclosure - the best way someone put this was \"if you disclose too much info to an interviewee that's a you problem\"\r\n\r\nPlaying victim as CEO isn't strong leadership. \r\n\r\n(Other words used to describe this were: \"lack of maturity\", \"not being intentional\", \"optics of CEO attacking a PM\"\r\n\r\n## Second Order Effects\r\n\r\nMost of these have to do with induced paranoia.\r\n\r\n- Future partnerships with Stripe are now less likely. Future partners of Plaid may also hesitate.\r\n- Executives who may work on adjacent/competitive products in the past/present/future are less likely to interview with Plaid\r\n- Plaid employees get distracted? and become much more suspicious of interviewees/generally paranoid in bizdev/partnerships\r\n- Future acquirers/investors in Plaid get worried about how easy it is to clone\r\n\r\nThe \"loss\" by Plaid (because Stripe had the last word) also further eroded confidence in Plaid's leadership.\r\n\r\n## Less interesting arguments\r\n\r\nThere were some responses I did not agree with:\r\n\r\n- **You shouldn't acknowledge a competitor**: It's Stripe. Not some no-name company. Still, I acknowledge that some part of this is true - it presents Stripe's product as viable competition\r\n- **Demonstrates fear of Stripe**: I don't know about that. Generally I defend people's right to tweet whatever they want (within bounds of professional behavior) and be personally relatable. You're allowed to complain without being read as \"fear\"... but perhaps you have less room to complain if you run a $13b startup.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n","frontmatter":{"published":true,"description":"Now that the dust has settled on the Plaid-Stripe thing it's time to recap lessons learned.","tags":"PR","category":"note","slug":"comms-plaid-stripe","canonical_url":"https://www.swyx.io/comms-plaid-stripe","cover_image":"https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/170881112-5742ab05-ac25-48c4-adfe-23d0fb5790bc.png"},"title":"Lessons in Competitive Comms from the Plaid-Stripe Kerfuffle","description":"Now that the dust has settled on the Plaid-Stripe thing it's time to recap lessons learned. ","category":"note","tags":["pr"],"image":"https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/170881112-5742ab05-ac25-48c4-adfe-23d0fb5790bc.png","canonical":"https://www.swyx.io/comms-plaid-stripe","slug":"comms-plaid-stripe","date":"2022-05-29T15:39:38.000Z","readingTime":"3 minutes","ghMetadata":{"issueUrl":"https://github.com/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/422","commentsUrl":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/422/comments","title":"Lessons in Competitive Comms from the Plaid-Stripe Kerfuffle","created_at":"2022-05-29T15:39:38Z","updated_at":"2022-05-29T16:42:51Z","reactions":{"url":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/422/reactions","total_count":0,"+1":0,"-1":0,"laugh":0,"hooray":0,"confused":0,"heart":0,"rocket":0,"eyes":0}}},{"type":"blog","content":"\r\nDocker is great. Docker Desktop sucks. Here's my fix.\r\n\r\n## TL;DR\r\n\r\n1. `brew install colima` ([colima](https://github.com/abiosoft/colima/) replaces the docker/dockerd binary)\r\n2. Install the right `docker-compose` binary for your chipset from [the releases page](https://github.com/docker/compose/releases)\r\n\t- `sudo curl -L https://github.com/docker/compose/releases/download/v2.5.1/docker-compose-darwin-aarch64 -o /usr/local/bin/docker-compose` for M1 Macs\r\n\t- `chmod +x /usr/local/bin/docker-compose` to let it execute\r\n\r\nNow you can start the docker daemon with `colima start`. You'll need to do this the first time you run the `docker` binary in every session.\r\n\r\nYou can also run `docker-compose up` as per normal but without needing Docker Desktop.\r\n\r\n## Context\r\n\r\nAlthough I am [known](https://twitter.com/swyx/status/1330900941747277826) for loving Docker (the containerization technology), I am also known for being a critic of Docker Desktop (the desktop UI client for Docker) for its poor performance:\r\n\r\n[![image](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/217117458-4533da3f-aa84-4168-bf53-b8c6a626d42e.png)](https://twitter.com/swyx/status/1523368365728837633?s=20)\r\n\r\n\r\nThe [constant upgrade nags](https://forums.docker.com/t/docker-desktop-nag-screen-with-pay-or-update/109290) until you pay them also don't inspire any love whatsoever.\r\n\r\nDocker Desktop is Docker (the company)'s first wedge into getting you to run proprietary software, so Docker strongly guides you to download it as the only way to get started:\r\n\r\n

\r\n\r\nIn fact, new users can go pretty far without even realizing that you don't need Docker Desktop to run the Docker daemon. I've asked multiple people how to do it and nobody had a good answer, or at least, nobody had an answer that worked on M1 Macs, until now.\r\n\r\nFor my [2022 New Mac Setup guide](https://www.swyx.io/new-mac-setup/) I resolved to figure it out once and for all, and what you see here is what I ended up with!\r\n\r\n## OK I'm ready to try it!\r\n\r\nYou already missed the instructions. scroll up to TL;DR :)\r\n\r\n## Troubleshooting 1\r\n\r\nA user [reported](https://fenq.com/weekly-issue-13-some-image-ai-models-impostor-syndrome/) this issue with colima: \r\n\r\n`FATA[0000] error starting vm: error at ‘starting’: exit status 1`\r\n\r\ntry reinstalling:\r\n\r\n```bash\r\nbrew unlink colima # If it is already installed, uninstall it first\r\n\r\nbrew install --HEAD colima\r\n\r\ncolima start --runtime docker\r\n\r\ndocker ps # success \r\n```\r\n\r\n## Troubleshooting 2\r\n\r\nIn the comments, @sreetamdas reported `Cannot connect to the Docker daemon at unix:///var/run/docker.sock.` errors. \r\n\r\n```bash\r\n# In order to use the `docker` runtime:\r\nbrew install docker\r\n\r\n# Start colima\r\ncolima start --runtime docker\r\n\r\n\r\n# https://github.com/abiosoft/colima/blob/main/docs/FAQ.md#cannot-connect-to-the-docker-daemon-at-unixvarrundockersock-is-the-docker-daemon-running\r\nexport DOCKER_HOST=\"unix://${HOME}/.colima/default/docker.sock\"\r\n```\r\n\r\n## Nov 2022 Edit: Podman\r\n\r\nyou could also try Podman: https://podman-desktop.io/ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33536978#33539372","frontmatter":{"category":"note"},"title":"Running Docker without Docker Desktop","description":"Docker is great. Docker Desktop sucks. Here's my fix. ","category":"note","tags":[],"slug":"running-docker-without-docker-desktop","date":"2022-05-27T18:31:21.000Z","readingTime":"2 minutes","ghMetadata":{"issueUrl":"https://github.com/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/421","commentsUrl":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/421/comments","title":"Running Docker without Docker Desktop","created_at":"2022-05-27T18:31:21Z","updated_at":"2023-02-07T00:28:40Z","reactions":{"url":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/421/reactions","total_count":1,"+1":0,"-1":0,"laugh":0,"hooray":0,"confused":0,"heart":1,"rocket":0,"eyes":0}}},{"type":"blog","content":"\r\nI set up my new Macbook Pro (16 inch, 2021 M1 Max 32 GB RAM 1TB HD) today. Here's everything I use on a Mac.\r\n\r\n> Previous versions of this post: [from 2018-2020](https://dev.to/swyx/my-new-mac-setup-4ibi) and [another from 2021](https://www.swyx.io/new-mac-setup-2021/). If I update this post in future, these contents will be archived but this URL will remain.\r\n\r\nScroll all the way to the bottom for lists and other Mac setup tools from friends!\r\n\r\n## Immediate first steps\r\n\r\n- **Browser**: Download Chrome, set to default.\r\n- **Log in to**: (this helps with logins for the other services below)\r\n - Twitter\r\n - Github (more setup instructions below)\r\n - Gmail\r\n\r\n## Things that take a while to install\r\n\r\nGet these going first so they can run in the background\r\n\r\n- Install [ZSH](https://ohmyz.sh/) - `sh -c \"$(curl -fsSL https://raw.github.com/ohmyzsh/ohmyzsh/master/tools/install.sh)\"`\r\n- If M1 mac: `/usr/sbin/softwareupdate --install-rosetta --agree-to-license` to install Rosetta2\r\n\r\n- Install [Homebrew](https://brew.sh/) - `/bin/bash -c \"$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/HEAD/install.sh)\"` and then \r\n\r\n```bash\r\necho 'eval \"$(/opt/homebrew/bin/brew shellenv)\"' >> /Users/swyx/.zprofile\r\neval \"$(/opt/homebrew/bin/brew shellenv)\"\r\n```\r\ni have a bunch more stuff in `brew list` but i'm not sure what i use actively. You can mass install these - dump them in a `packages.txt` and then `brew install $(cat packages.txt)`\r\n\r\n```\r\nbat gdbm libuv python@3.10 pnpm\r\nbrotli gh go ruby\r\ndeno gradle sqlite ripgrep\r\ndiff-so-fancy fnm openjdk yarn\r\nyoutube-dl ffmpeg colima docker\r\nfzf libev openssl@1.1 z\r\n```\r\n - if you run into m1 brew install issues, [this stackoverflow answer](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/64963370/error-cannot-install-in-homebrew-on-arm-processor-in-intel-default-prefix-usr) helped me: `arch -x86_64 brew install YOUR_PACKAGE`\r\n - [Other things to try](https://evanhahn.com/a-decade-of-dotfiles/#tools-i-like):\r\n\t - entr (rerun commands when files change)\r\n\t - tig (git log replacement)\r\n\t - [boop](https://gitlab.com/EvanHahn/dotfiles/-/blob/ece393e625bb8254fe05774df33bb5af8a73d7e7/home/zsh/.config/zsh/aliases.zsh#L48-56)\r\n\t - [murder](https://gitlab.com/EvanHahn/dotfiles/-/blob/ece393e625bb8254fe05774df33bb5af8a73d7e7/home/bin/bin/murder)\r\n\t - running\r\n - Fast/Deterministic Alternative to Homebrew - [Nix](https://nixos.org/download.html) - `sh <(curl -L https://nixos.org/nix/install) --daemon` \r\n - to try in 2023: Nix Flake - [recommended by Johannes](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1dzgVkgQ5mE)\r\n\r\nEither of these will prompt you to install Apple Command Line Tools - takes 15-25 minutes to download the damn thing so do this first. Don't run them in parallel.\r\n\r\n## OS/Browser Settings\r\n\r\n- **System Settings**:\r\n - Disable Spotlight search for all miscellaneous crap except apps and system preferences\r\n - including [stupid Developer option](https://www.howtogeek.com/231829/how-to-disable-developer-search-results-in-spotlight-on-a-mac/) (make sure to add [Xcode.app](http://xcode.app) to /Applications not /user/swyx/Applications)\r\n - Disable Ask Siri\r\n - Set to [Big cursor](https://www.lifewire.com/make-mac-mouse-pointer-bigger-2260808) for accessibility during presentation\r\n - [some reports of memory leaks](https://www.techrepublic.com/article/macos-monterey-has-a-serious-memory-leak-problem-and-the-cause-has-been-found/) when doing this\r\n - Fix trackpad direction: Trackpad -> Scroll & Zoom - Natural off\r\n - Disable dictionary lookup: Trackpad -> Point & Click -> Look up & data detectors off\r\n - (if using windows keyboard) [remap alt and cmd keys](https://superuser.com/questions/158561/how-can-i-remap-windows-and-alt-keys-in-os-x) for ergonomics\r\n- **Finder settings**:\r\n - Preferences → show filename extensions\r\n - Enable showing dotfiles (just hold Cmd + Shift + . (dot) in a Finder window)\r\n - [Show path bar](https://www.tekrevue.com/tip/show-path-finder-title-bar/) in footer for easier navigation\r\n - Prune the excessive sidebar bookmarks\r\n - create \"Work\" folder and pin it\r\n- **Keyboard**:\r\n - [remap command+Q to literally anything else](https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/78948/how-to-disable-command-q-for-quit) - to prevent accidental close-all\r\n - Shortcuts: copy picture of selected area to clipboard -> Cmd+E\r\n- **MacOS Dock:**\r\n - Remove everything from the Dock except: Finder, System Preferences and Trash\r\n - Turn Dock Auto Hiding on\r\n - turn this on for MacOS Menu bar as well\r\n- **Chrome extensions**: (tied to Chrome account)\r\n - Paywall blocker [https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-chrome/](https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-chrome/)\r\n - See Tweets about any page [https://github.com/sw-yx/Twitter-Links-beta](https://github.com/sw-yx/Twitter-Links-beta?organization=sw-yx&organization=sw-yx) ([my blogpost here](https://www.swyx.io/twitter-metacommentary/))\r\n - [Morpheon Dark theme](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/morpheon-dark/mafbdhjdkjnoafhfelkjpchpaepjknad?hl=en)\r\n - [Lastpass](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/lastpass-free-password-ma/hdokiejnpimakedhajhdlcegeplioahd?hl=en-US)\r\n - [Display Anchors](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/display-anchors/poahndpaaanbpbeafbkploiobpiiieko/related?hl=en)\r\n - [React Devtools](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/react-developer-tools/fmkadmapgofadopljbjfkapdkoienihi?hl=en)\r\n - [Refined Github](https://github.com/sindresorhus/refined-github)\r\n - [Code Copy](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/codecopy/fkbfebkcoelajmhanocgppanfoojcdmg?hl=en)\r\n - [Video Speed Controller](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/video-speed-controller/nffaoalbilbmmfgbnbgppjihopabppdk?hl=en) ← VERY HIGHLY RECOMMENDED\r\n - [Palettab](https://palettab.com/)\r\n - [Privacy Badger](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/privacy-badger/pkehgijcmpdhfbdbbnkijodmdjhbjlgp?hl=en-US)\r\n - [RescueTime](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/rescuetime-for-chrome-and/bdakmnplckeopfghnlpocafcepegjeap?hl=en-US)\r\n - [uBlock Origin](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ublock-origin/cjpalhdlnbpafiamejdnhcphjbkeiagm?hl=en)\r\n - [Octolinker](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/octolinker/jlmafbaeoofdegohdhinkhilhclaklkp?hl=en)\r\n\r\nMy full list of extensions I use are here:\r\n\r\n```\r\naapocclcgogkmnckokdopfmhonfmgoek : Slides : version 0_10\r\nahfgeienlihckogmohjhadlkjgocpleb : Web Store : version 0_2\r\namoldiondpmjdnllknhklocndiibkcoe : Twemex: Sidebar for Twitter : version 0_4_4\r\naohghmighlieiainnegkcijnfilokake : Docs : version 0_10\r\napdfllckaahabafndbhieahigkjlhalf : Google Drive : version 14_5\r\nbekmjjakgojplnhahcilegeiklenjbgb : Glow : version 1_0\r\nblpcfgokakmgnkcojhhkbfbldkacnbeo : YouTube : version 4_2_8\r\nbmnlcjabgnpnenekpadlanbbkooimhnj : Honey: Automatic Coupons & Cash Back : version 14_11_0\r\ncfldfgibklhmjhnkfighkbafbkbfcmij : Builder : version 1_0_0\r\ncjpalhdlnbpafiamejdnhcphjbkeiagm : uBlock Origin : version 1_42_4\r\nckolcbmkjpjmangdbmnkpjigpkddpogn : Svelte Devtools : version 1_3_0\r\ndkhfpnphbcckigklfkaemnjdmghhcaoh : netlify-browser-extension : version 1_3_0\r\nfcgckldmmjdbpdejkclmfnnnehhocbfp : Google Finance : version 1_3\r\nfelcaaldnbdncclmgdcncolpebgiejap : Sheets : version 1_2\r\nfmkadmapgofadopljbjfkapdkoienihi : React Developer Tools : version 4_24_6\r\nfpnmgdkabkmnadcjpehmlllkndpkmiak : Wayback Machine : version 3_1\r\ngeancnifhbkbjijfkcjjdnfemppmcjmk : Hacker News : version 3_21_0\r\ngfdkimpbcpahaombhbimeihdjnejgicl : Feedback : version 1_0\r\nghbmnnjooekpmoecnnnilnnbdlolhkhi : Google Docs Offline : version 1_42_0\r\ngieabiemggnpnminflinemaickipbebg : CSS Scan : version 3_8_1\r\nhbdpomandigafcibbmofojjchbcdagbl : TweetDeck by Twitter : version 3_10\r\nhdokiejnpimakedhajhdlcegeplioahd : LastPass: Free Password Manager : version 4_95_0_3\r\nhjgngigpjehgifcepdhlnnikibmgeflc : Upnext - Save it for later! : version 4_2_0\r\nhlepfoohegkhhmjieoechaddaejaokhf : Refined GitHub : version 22_5_22\r\nkljjoeapehcmaphfcjkmbhkinoaopdnd : HyperWrite : version 2_0_29\r\nkmendfapggjehodndflmmgagdbamhnfd : CryptoTokenExtension : version 0_9_74\r\nliecbddmkiiihnedobmlmillhodjkdmb : Loom – Free Screen Recorder & Screen Capture : version 5_3_2\r\nmhjfbmdgcfjbbpaeojofohoefgiehjai : Chrome PDF Viewer : version 1\r\nmjdepdfccjgcndkmemponafgioodelna : DF Tube (Distraction Free for YouTube™) : version 1_13_504\r\nneajdppkdcdipfabeoofebfddakdcjhd : Google Network Speech : version 1_0\r\nnffaoalbilbmmfgbnbgppjihopabppdk : Video Speed Controller : version 0_7_1\r\nnkeimhogjdpnpccoofpliimaahmaaome : Google Hangouts : version 1_3_18\r\nnmmhkkegccagdldgiimedpiccmgmieda : Chrome Web Store Payments : version 1_0_0_6\r\noiaejidbmkiecgbjeifoejpgmdaleoha : Stylebot : version 3_1\r\npachckjkecffpdphbpmfolblodfkgbhl : vidIQ Vision for YouTube : version 3_73_2\r\npbgbbbfhjccnnkplhfcmhdcpmcfmpfoi : toast.log : version 2_3\r\npjkljhegncpnkpknbcohdijeoejaedia : Gmail : version 8_3\r\npoahndpaaanbpbeafbkploiobpiiieko : Display #Anchors : version 1_4\r\n```\r\n\r\n## Setup Terminal\r\n\r\n- Copy my dotfiles (vimrc, zshrc, .gitignore_global): [https://gist.github.com/sw-yx/7fa1009e460ecb818d5e6d9ca4616a05](https://gist.github.com/sw-yx/7fa1009e460ecb818d5e6d9ca4616a05)\r\n\t- Note: good guide to dotfiles here https://dotfiles.github.io/tutorials/ that i have not yet read\r\n- Install [ZSH](https://ohmyz.sh/) (first usage of `git` will prompt you to install git - takes 15 minutes)\r\n - `git config --global init.defaultBranch main`\r\n - `git config --global user.name \"swyx\"`\r\n - `git config --global user.email shawnthe1@gmail.com`\r\n - once you have installed `diff-so-fancy`\r\n \t- set `git config --global core.pager \"diff-so-fancy | less --tabs=4 -RFX\"` - makes for much nicer git diff\r\n - You can also diff with this bash function `dif() { git diff --color --no-index \"$1\" \"$2\" | diff-so-fancy; }` or with VSCode `code --diff file1.js file2.js`.\r\n - You can also try [https://github.com/dandavison/delta](https://github.com/dandavison/delta)\r\n- Download, install, and set font - [Inconsolata for Powerline](https://github.com/powerline/fonts/blob/master/Inconsolata/Inconsolata%20for%20Powerline.otf)\r\n - [autosuggestions](https://github.com/zsh-users/zsh-autosuggestions)\r\n - [syntax highlighting](https://github.com/zsh-users/zsh-syntax-highlighting)\r\n - If you encounter warnings, you may need to [chmod stuff](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/13762280/zsh-compinit-insecure-directories) or warnings show at start of every session\r\n ```\r\n $ sudo chmod -R 755 /usr/local/share/zsh\r\n $ sudo chown -R root:staff /usr/local/share/zsh\r\n ```\r\n- customize the `/oh-my-zsh/themes/agnoster` theme from dotfiles\r\n- For my terminal, I used to use Hyper, but this year I am trying out Warp: https://warp.dev/\r\n\t- only settings I really need to make are setting the font to \"Inconsolata for Powerline\" - which I downloaded above.\r\n\r\nSee previous year for my Hyper terminal recommendations.\r\n\r\n## Set up apps/environments\r\n\r\nYou should have already installed a bunch of stuff with Homebrew as per above. Below I will list other stuff that you may wish to use:\r\n\r\n- [Github CLI](https://github.com/cli/cli): `brew install github/gh/gh`\r\n - you need to **login to git** - if you have 2fa enabled, you cant use your normal github password. try pushing to any random repo and enter in a [Personal Access Token](https://stackoverflow.com/a/34919582) for password.\r\n - then run `gh auth login`\r\n - [add GitHub SSH key](https://docs.github.com/en/github/authenticating-to-github/generating-a-new-ssh-key-and-adding-it-to-the-ssh-agent) (not optional)\r\n- Setup [Node.js/NPM](https://nodejs.org/en/download/) and login to npm: - you should already have [fnm](https://github.com/Schniz/fnm) (a faster alternative to [nvm](https://github.com/creationix/nvm)) from the Homebrew install done above so no separate download needed.\r\n - apaprently running `arch -x86_64 zsh` lets you avoid [weird dotenv errors](https://github.com/motdotla/dotenv/issues/560) but it didnt work for me (just running npm i on [swyxkit](https://github.com/sw-yx/swyxkit/))\r\n - then `fnm install 16`\r\n - `npm login`\r\n - `npm config set loglevel=\"warn\"`\r\n - `sudo npm install netlify-cli -g` then `netlify login`\r\n - `npm i -g sign-bunny fortune-node parrotsay` fun little cli utilities to use\r\n - `npm i -g undollar` for removing $\r\n - `npm install -g npm-check-updates` for updating deps\r\n - `sudo npm install -g trash-cli` to add a `trash` command to so you dont permanently delete files\r\n- `brew install yarn --ignore-dependencies` - [yarn](https://yarnpkg.com/en/docs/install#mac-stable) note\r\n- you may need to [work around Mac OS Sierra](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/43780207/installing-node-with-brew-fails-on-mac-os-sierra)\r\n- `brew install z` - doesnt work out of the box exactly - see my issue on the [rupa/z repo](https://github.com/rupa/z/issues/229) - homebrew changed the default install path of the z.sh script so just make sure you are pointing to the right new path - `/opt/homebrew/etc/profile.d/z.sh`\r\n- Misc - stuff i used to install and maybe dont need anymore\r\n - `pip3 install --user powerline-status`\r\n - go to a neutral folder and `git clone && cd fonts && ./install.sh`\r\n - **[Anaconda](https://www.anaconda.com/download/#macos) Python distro** - be careful they tend to [modify your bash prompt without asking](https://askubuntu.com/questions/1026383/why-does-base-appear-in-front-of-my-terminal-prompt)\r\n\r\nNotes on other stuff we already brew installed\r\n\r\n - `brew install java` - you could download [Java Development Kit](https://www.oracle.com/java/technologies/javase/javase-jdk8-downloads.html) from Oracle but fuck them for putting it behind signup wall\r\n - `brew install go` you may need to `export PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/go/bin`\r\n\r\n## Setup Apps\r\n\r\n- I hate [Docker Desktop](https://hub.docker.com/editions/community/docker-ce-desktop-mac/) so i am using \"docker\" without it\r\n\t- brew installed https://github.com/abiosoft/colima/ and \r\n\t- `sudo curl -L https://github.com/docker/compose/releases/download/v2.5.1/docker-compose-darwin-aarch64 -o /usr/local/bin/docker-compose`\r\n\t- `chmod +x /usr/local/bin/docker-compose`\r\n- `brew install --cask notunes` - so that you [dont launch itunes/apple music](https://github.com/tombonez/noTunes)\r\n- download [Audacity](https://www.audacityteam.org/download/mac/) - and [install ffmpeg](https://manual.audacityteam.org/man/installing_ffmpeg_for_mac.html) for audacity - the instructions are intentionally opaque - just go to https://lame.buanzo.org/#lameosx64bitdl and download and run the pkg - Audacity will detect it from there\r\n- Emojis: I used to use [https://matthewpalmer.net/rocket/](https://matthewpalmer.net/rocket/) but now I just use the naive Mac emoji picker (hit Fn key)\r\n- Privacy unfucker: [Pure Paste](https://apps.apple.com/app/id1611378436) from Sindre Sorhus\r\n- Password Manager: I use 1password for company and lastpass for personal\r\n- Window Manager: https://rectangleapp.com/\r\n- Screenshots: I like [https://cleanshot.com/](https://cleanshot.com/) except that it has limited activations which is annoying for someone with 3 devices - so [https://zapier.com/zappy](https://zapier.com/zappy) is less annoying but has less good annotation capability. [Browser extension - Lightshot](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/lightshot-screenshot-tool/mbniclmhobmnbdlbpiphghaielnnpgdp). Jun 2022: https://shottr.cc/ just launched on HN and I am trying it out.\r\n- [Superhuman for Mac](http://superhuman.com/mac) and [https://mail.superhuman.com](https://mail.superhuman.com/) \r\n- Clipboard Manager: I used to use [https://clipy-app.com/](https://clipy-app.com/) but it no longer stores images on m1 mac's. So trying out [one of the Clipy forks](https://techgaun.github.io/active-forks/index.html#Clipy/Clipy) or\r\n\t- https://pasteapp.io/ ($15/yr - i am using this for now)\r\n\t- https://yippy.mattdavo.com/ (untested)\r\n\t- or https://github.com/p0deje/Maccy\r\n- (trying it out) Cron Calendar app https://cron.com/download/macos\r\n- App Quitter: https://swiftquit.com/ (Close Mac Applications Automatically When Their Windows Close)\r\n- Loom: [https://www.loom.com/desktop](https://www.loom.com/desktop)\r\n- Zoom: [https://zoom.us/download](https://zoom.us/download)\r\n- Caffeine (Keep Mac awake for talks): [https://intelliscapesolutions.com/apps/caffeine](https://intelliscapesolutions.com/apps/caffeine)\r\n - used to be [http://lightheadsw.com/caffeine/](http://lightheadsw.com/caffeine/)\r\n - maintained version: [Amphetamine](https://roaringapps.com/app/amphetamine) (thanks Matt Mischuk!)\r\n- [NoTunes](https://github.com/tombonez/noTunes) - disable itunes/apple music\r\n- Stuff I no longer use often but will bring in when i have the need\r\n\t - Video capture: [https://getkap.co/](https://getkap.co/)\r\n\t - Screen recording feature tours: https://www.screen.studio/\r\n\t - Image editing: to try https://www.pixelmator.com/pro/\r\n\t - Dual Screen: [https://www.duetdisplay.com/](https://www.duetdisplay.com/)\r\n\t - Gifs: [Licecap](https://www.cockos.com/licecap/)\r\n\t - OBS: [https://obsproject.com/](https://obsproject.com/)\r\n\t - Transcribing: [https://www.descript.com/download/mac](https://www.descript.com/download/mac)\r\n\t - SkyFonts: [https://www.fonts.com/web-fonts/google]\r\n\t- Disk Space: [Disk Inventory X](http://www.derlien.com/) - you can clean node modules with [this bash command](https://twitter.com/swyx/status/1064672618450579457?s=20) or as a [cronjob](https://gist.github.com/zephraph/9169b9de4568b858f4b0e45fc41218b7)(https://www.fonts.com/web-fonts/google)\r\n- Chat: [Slack](https://slack.com/downloads/osx) and [Discord](https://discord.com/)\r\n- Note taking:\r\n\t - [Obsidian](https://obsidian.md/download) and set it up as mentioned in my post on [Obsidian as a Second Brain](https://www.swyx.io/obsidian-brain)\r\n\t - Microsoft Todo: [https://apps.apple.com/app/apple-store/id1274495053?mt=8](https://apps.apple.com/app/apple-store/id1274495053?mt=8)\r\n\t - SimpleNote: [https://apps.apple.com/us/app/simplenote/id692867256?ls=1&mt=12](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/simplenote/id692867256?ls=1&mt=12)\r\n\t - Notion: [https://www.notion.so/desktop](https://www.notion.so/desktop)\r\n\t - [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/notion-web-clipper/knheggckgoiihginacbkhaalnibhilkk?hl=en](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/notion-web-clipper/knheggckgoiihginacbkhaalnibhilkk?hl=en)\r\n- Stretchly: [https://hovancik.net/stretchly/](https://hovancik.net/stretchly/)\r\n- Replay: [download](https://www.replay.io/)\r\n\t- Old replay download docs https://www.notion.so/Replay-Docs-56758667f53a4d51b7c6fc7a641adb02\r\n- App Search/Utils: [https://www.alfredapp.com/](https://www.alfredapp.com/)\r\n - set to Alfred Dark\r\n - [airdrop to iphone/ipad](https://github.com/swmoon203/CrossShare/blob/master/Alfred%20Workflow/Cross%20Share%20Airdrop.alfredworkflow)\r\n - [Cupcake Ipsum](http://www.packal.org/workflow/cupcake-ipsum)\r\n- Editor: Download [VS Code](https://code.visualstudio.com/download) (I used to use Insiders but the popups are super annoying). use Settings Sync to sync across machines\r\n - have to set up powerline fonts \"Meslo LG M for Powerline\" ([download](https://github.com/powerline/fonts/blob/master/Meslo%20Slashed/Meslo%20LG%20M%20Regular%20for%20Powerline.ttf))\r\n - auto-close-tag v0.5.6\r\n - auto-rename-tag v0.0.15\r\n - Bookmarks v9.1.0\r\n - code-settings-sync v3.1.2\r\n - debugger-for-chrome v4.10.2\r\n - es7-react-js-snippets v1.8.7\r\n - graphql-for-vscode v1.12.1\r\n - mdx v0.1.0\r\n - prettier-vscode v1.6.1\r\n - python v2018.9.2\r\n - python v0.2.3\r\n - rainbow-brackets v0.0.6 - this is now deprecated, use the native [`\"editor.bracketPairColorization.enabled\": true`](https://code.visualstudio.com/blogs/2021/09/29/bracket-pair-colorization)\r\n - shades-of-purple v3.17.0\r\n - vscode-graphql v0.1.5\r\n - vscode-import-cost v2.9.0\r\n - vscode-styled-components v0.0.23\r\n - vscode-wakatime v1.2.3\r\n - [TabNine](https://www.tabnine.com/) AI completions\r\n - [GitHub Copilot](https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=GitHub.copilot)\r\n - to try: [File Utils](https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=sleistner.vscode-fileutils) - recommended by [Stolinski](https://twitter.com/stolinski/status/1417247358430109697)\r\n - Here's the full list you can run from command line\r\n\r\n ```jsx\r\n\t code --install-extension ahmadawais.shades-of-purple\r\n\t code --install-extension austenc.tailwind-docs\r\n\t code --install-extension bradlc.vscode-tailwindcss\r\n\t code --install-extension cpylua.language-postcss\r\n\t code --install-extension dbaeumer.vscode-eslint\r\n\t code --install-extension dsznajder.es7-react-js-snippets\r\n\t code --install-extension esbenp.prettier-vscode\r\n\t code --install-extension formulahendry.auto-close-tag\r\n\t code --install-extension formulahendry.auto-rename-tag\r\n\t code --install-extension GitHub.copilot\r\n\t code --install-extension golang.go\r\n\t code --install-extension hashicorp.terraform\r\n\t code --install-extension heybourn.headwind\r\n\t code --install-extension kgscott.retreon\r\n\t code --install-extension kumar-harsh.graphql-for-vscode\r\n\t code --install-extension ms-python.python\r\n\t code --install-extension ms-toolsai.jupyter\r\n\t code --install-extension ms-toolsai.jupyter-keymap\r\n\t code --install-extension ms-toolsai.jupyter-renderers\r\n\t code --install-extension ms-vscode-remote.remote-containers\r\n\t code --install-extension msjsdiag.debugger-for-chrome\r\n\t code --install-extension NickScialli.svelte-dark\r\n\t code --install-extension octref.vetur\r\n\t code --install-extension oderwat.indent-rainbow\r\n\t code --install-extension redhat.java\r\n\t code --install-extension rust-lang.rust\r\n\t code --install-extension rust-lang.rust-analyzer\r\n\t code --install-extension sdras.night-owl\r\n\t code --install-extension silvenon.mdx\r\n\t code --install-extension svelte.svelte-vscode\r\n\t code --install-extension TabNine.tabnine-vscode\r\n\t code --install-extension ThreadHeap.serverless-ide-vscode\r\n\t code --install-extension tht13.python\r\n\t code --install-extension vadimcn.vscode-lldb\r\n\t code --install-extension VisualStudioExptTeam.vscodeintellicode\r\n\t code --install-extension vscjava.vscode-java-debug\r\n\t code --install-extension vscjava.vscode-java-dependency\r\n\t code --install-extension vscjava.vscode-java-pack\r\n\t code --install-extension vscjava.vscode-java-test\r\n\t code --install-extension vscjava.vscode-maven\r\n\t code --install-extension WakaTime.vscode-wakatime\r\n\t code --install-extension wix.vscode-import-cost\r\n\t code --install-extension zxh404.vscode-proto3\r\n ```\r\n\r\n- [Screenflow 9](https://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/26915/screenflow/old-versions) download\r\n\t- considering switching to [Davinci Resolve](https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/davinciresolve)\r\n\t\r\n\r\n---\r\n\r\n## Other good \"new laptop setup\" lists:\r\n\r\n- [Christoph Nakazawa](https://twitter.com/cpojer/status/1569797978881400832)'s setup: [Part 1](https://cpojer.net/posts/set-up-a-new-mac-fast), [Part 2](https://cpojer.net/posts/the-perfect-development-environment)\r\n- [Robin Wieruch](https://www.robinwieruch.de/mac-setup-web-development/)'s setup\r\n- [Mina Markham](https://github.com/minamarkham/formation)'s automated mac setup\r\n- [Tania Rascia's setup](https://www.taniarascia.com/setting-up-a-brand-new-mac-for-development/?ck_subscriber_id=591519942)\r\n- [Nick Nisi's dotfiles](https://github.com/nicknisi/dotfiles)\r\n- [Mathias Bynens macos defaults](https://github.com/mathiasbynens/dotfiles/blob/master/.macos)\r\n- [Jamon's MacOS maintenance tips](https://twitter.com/jamonholmgren/status/1175077165848653824)\r\n- VMWare Tanzu house script: https://github.com/pivotal/workstation-setup\r\n- Vendasta: https://github.com/vendasta/setup-new-computer-script\r\n- You can [automate dotfiles/homebrew setup with Sheldon Hull's tool](https://www.sheldonhull.com/docs/shell/#installing-brew-packages)\r\n- Physical equipment setups from prominent people: https://setups.co/\r\n- [A decade of dotfiles](https://evanhahn.com/a-decade-of-dotfiles/) by Evan Hahn\r\n- please send me yours!","frontmatter":{"title":"My 2022 New Mac Setup","description":"I set up a new Mac for work today. Here's everything I use on a Mac for fullstack web development.","tags":"mac, tech","published":true,"slug":"new-mac-setup","category":"note","canonical_url":"https://www.swyx.io/new-mac-setup/"},"title":"My 2022 New Mac Setup","description":"I set up a new Mac for work today. Here's everything I use on a Mac for fullstack web development. ","category":"note","tags":["mac","tech"],"canonical":"https://www.swyx.io/new-mac-setup/","slug":"new-mac-setup","date":"2022-05-22T22:03:12.000Z","readingTime":"12 minutes","ghMetadata":{"issueUrl":"https://github.com/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/420","commentsUrl":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/420/comments","title":"My 2022 New Mac Setup","created_at":"2022-05-22T22:03:12Z","updated_at":"2023-01-12T14:36:18Z","reactions":{"url":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/420/reactions","total_count":9,"+1":6,"-1":0,"laugh":0,"hooray":0,"confused":0,"heart":2,"rocket":1,"eyes":0}}},{"title":"The Third Year of the Third Age of JS on JSParty","slug":"jsparty-third-age","tags":["JS"],"venues":"JSParty","date":"2022-05-20T00:00:00.000Z","url":"https://changelog.com/jsparty/226","description":"I joined JSParty crew to talk more about the Third Age of JS after my Reactathon talk!","category":"podcast"},{"type":"blog","content":"\r\nA very basic principle of financial engineering I learned early on as an options trader is The Law of Conservation of Risk:\r\n\r\n**Risk cannot be created or destroyed, it can only be redistributed**. \r\n\r\n## Context\r\n\r\nI was reminded of this principle when looking over the UST/$LUNA implosion this past week:\r\n\r\n![image](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/168504876-00a8844c-5b3b-4170-9f82-b36dd22d845e.png)\r\n\r\nThat's a token that starts at $1.30, declines to under $0.2, then over 14 months, soared to $115 in April (making it one of the top 10 cryptocurrencies in the world), and then **in one week** crashed from $80-$100ish down to 2% of one cent.\r\n\r\nPerhaps you might think volatility is part of the game with crypto tokens, and I'd agree, but for the fact that $LUNA backs the TerraUSD stablecoin, which is meant to be.. well... _stable_:\r\n\r\n![image](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/168505249-666fc17e-f936-43e6-821b-339f3b8bd74f.png)\r\n\r\nI'll leave it to experts interviewed by journalists (like [Odd Lots](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-05-15/luna-crash-this-crypto-insider-warned-of-terra-ust-s-collapse) or [Crypto Critics Corner](https://cryptocriticscorner.com/2022/05/04/episode-71-terra-luna-and-algorithmic-stablecoins/)) or [Jon Wu’s writeup](https://www.notboring.co/p/terra-to-the-moon-and-back) and [Do Kwon's response](https://twitter.com/stablekwon/status/1524331171189956609?s=21&t=e4XA1sLPJuWN2ftRYyP0vA) to explain what happened, since there's no shortage of explainer content out this week.\r\n\r\nWhat I'm drawn to is the mechanism by which stability was manufactured out of instability. [The Terra whitepaper](https://assets.website-files.com/611153e7af981472d8da199c/618b02d13e938ae1f8ad1e45_Terra_White_paper.pdf) specifically addresses this in the short term and the long term:\r\n\r\n> Luna also serves as the most immediate defense against Terra price fluctuations. The system uses Luna to make the price for Terra by agreeing to be counter-party to anyone looking to swap Terra and Luna at Terra’s target exchange rate. More concretely:\r\n>\r\n> - When TerraSDR’s price < 1 SDR, users and arbitragers can send 1 TerraSDR to the system and receive 1 SDR’s worth of Luna.\r\n> - When TerraSDR’s price > 1 SDR, users and arbitragers can send 1 SDR’s worth of Luna to the system and receive 1 TerraSDR.\r\n>\r\n> The system’s willingness to respect the target exchange rate irrespective of market conditions keeps the market exchange rate of Terra at a tight band around the target exchange rate. An arbitrageur can extract risk-free profit when 1 TerraSDR = 0.9 SDR by trading TerraSDR for 1 SDR’s worth of Luna from the system, as opposed to 0.9 SDR’s worth of assets she could get from the open market. Similarly, she can also extract risk-free profit when 1 TerraSDR = 1.1 SDR by trading in 1 SDR worth of Luna to the system to get 1.1 SDR worth of TerraSDR, once again beating the price of the open market.\r\n>\r\n> The system finances Terra price making via Luna:\r\n> \r\n> - **To buy 1 TerraSDR, the protocol mints and sells Luna worth 1 SDR**\r\n> - By selling 1 TerraSDR, the protocol earns Luna worth 1 SDR\r\n>\r\n> As Luna is minted to match Terra offers, **volatility is moved from Terra price to Luna supply.**\r\n\r\nAs is not news by now, this worked against Terra/Luna's favor this week when there is sharp selling pressure on Terra (faster than miners can respond and therefore faster than it can adjust) and the protocol mindlessly prints more and more Luna in defense. Once too much Luna was being printed and demand for Luna did not keep up, the Terra dollar peg broke down.\r\n\r\n## Stability from Instability\r\n\r\nThere's a few points of view on the Terra/Luna debacle:\r\n\r\n- **The \"bank run\"**: All banks (historically) operate under the assumption that not everybody is going to withdraw their money all at once. Banks usually keep some amount of cash on hand for normal withdrawals, but a bank about to go out of business can suffer a spike in withdrawals, and owe more money than they have liquid. Of course this hasn't happened for centuries because we have learned to credibly backstop banks, but other forms of \"banks\" crop up in every financial system - most famously the Bank of England defending ([unsuccessfully](https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/08/george-soros-bank-of-england.asp)) its European Exchange Rate agreement. We know that Terra **was buying $10b of bitcoin** to capitalize itself, but unfortunately the bulk of the stability was based on $LUNA issuance and the run on this \"bank\" became a self reinforcing loop.\r\n- **Turkey problem**: Terra's [Anchor protocol](https://medium.com/terra-money/introducing-anchor-25d782cbb509) was a wonderful thing to own for a while - a stablecoin savings account that paid an _algorithmically guaranteed_ 20% yield!! Right up to the point it breaks the $1 USD peg. The Terra chart is a form of [Turkey problem](https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/7341343-consider-a-turkey-that-is-fed-every-day-every-single): \r\n \r\n ![image](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/168506246-3d5676ad-af6a-4e4e-bea0-512edc01b304.png)\r\n- **Ponzi scheme**: As I've [written before](https://www.swyx.io/mimicry-reflexivity/), all financial assets are reflexive - they only have value to the extent that everyone believes they have value. What tips something over from normal reflexive system to Ponzi is withdrawal of money from the system by insiders. VC and LFG insiders held a large (I cant find a good source but I gather it's in the 30-40% range) of either the central entity and likely a lot of the token and probably sold on the way up, pulling money out of the system as newer, probably less knowledgeable new investors piled in. Very classic, but also no big deal, lots of people make intentional and accidental Ponzi's.\r\n\r\nWhat I'm interested in what investors should learn from this whole thing. Usually when you're presented with something too good to be true, you want to ask \"where's the catch\" - the problem is the catch is usually opaquely presented under a mountain of verbiage.\r\n\r\nBut the mental model of \"The Law of Conservation of Risk\" can be applied to any analysis that claims to reduce risk in an asset class - in this case, stablecoins.\r\n\r\n![image](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/168507754-3e6d72e8-516c-457a-8f9c-eade7c526d7d.png)\r\n\r\nIn this case, the Terra stability mechanism literally transformed standard token volatility from the normal blue curve to the sharper-yet-fatter-tailed green curve, except that the green curve spike was so close to 0 change it was marketed as \"stable\".\r\n\r\n> Aside: yes the curve was also \"fat\" in the positive direction - for a few months Luna was the best performing crypto in the world, and [skeptics note](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-05-15/luna-crash-this-crypto-insider-warned-of-terra-ust-s-collapse) that it was extremely risky to short Luna for the same reason it was prone to collapse. Unfortunately [risk of ruin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risk_of_ruin) dominates positive tails in long term outcomes.\r\n\r\n## Other Occurrences in the Wild\r\n\r\n### Collateralized Debt Obligations\r\n\r\nThere's a strong similarity in this outcome with the mortgage boom and subsequent crash of the 2000s, fueled by CDOs and [risk models that overfocused on modal outcomes with normal correlations](https://rss.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1740-9713.2012.00538.x). Again, there are countless, variously biased ways to explain this risk:\r\n\r\n{% youtube kxN_qPuefrM %}\r\n\r\nBut the main thing I'll focus on is the transformation of low-rated [MBS](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collateralized_debt_obligation#Subprime_mortgage_boom) into AAA ratings by sheer financial engineering:\r\n\r\n![image](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/168508692-b6484dbf-93f0-488e-ac32-e12c14f4cf8a.png)\r\n\r\nAgain, if you don't look too closely, and under normal conditions, you have created something great from something crappy! Couple this with investor's well documented [risk adverse](https://www.investopedia.com/terms/r/riskaverse.asp) nature, it means that there is an **unlimited** demand from financial investors for credible \"investment grade\" assets that yield more than other alternatives, rather the credibility comes from ratings agencies, the Gaussian copula, or a white paper with a bunch of formulas that proclaims itself stable.\r\n\r\n### Option portfolio wings vs decay\r\n\r\nThis is going to be far too technical for anyone who hasn't been a professional options trader (particularly sellside) but essentially the trick in options portfolio management is having enough gamma that you don't get wiped out on big moves, while not bleeding out from paying too much in time decay of the options that give you that gamma. One of the best ways to get this \"efficiency\" is to take advantage of [the volatility surface](https://www.investopedia.com/articles/stock-analysis/081916/volatility-surface-explained.asp):\r\n\r\n![image](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/168509686-b1e1cd93-187e-4095-bb3b-fc7ce9c9fb67.png)\r\n\r\nThe basic components of a vol surface you can exploit for efficiency are:\r\n\r\n- [Term structure](https://www.optionmatters.ca/term-structure-implied-volatility/) - longer dated options can (sometimes) have higher implied vol than shorter dated ones, or vice versa\r\n- [Vol skew](https://www.investopedia.com/terms/v/volatility-skew.asp) - downside options can have higher implied vol than upside ones (mostly because of conditional probability - if stock market drops it tends to be more volatile than if stock market rises by same amount)\r\n- [Vol smile](https://www.investopedia.com/terms/v/volatilitysmile.asp) - extreme options can have higher implied vol than \"normal\" ones\r\n\r\n> Aside: There are more with every [option greek](https://corporatefinanceinstitute.com/resources/knowledge/trading-investing/option-greeks/) but they are comparatively minor unless built up in aggregate.. which I have also seen particularly with long dated options and interest rate risk.\r\n\r\nBasically to get more efficiency you sell the higher vol and buy the lower vol. A very efficient portfolio works like a dream in normal times - you are making loads of money from [gamma hedging](https://www.investopedia.com/terms/g/gamma-hedging.asp), and paying comparative peanuts in time decay for the privilege. \r\n\r\nBut what you have done to get here is to basically say the market is wrong in pricing these known risks in time and spot price - and when the market goes against you, you lose money.\r\n\r\nOption portfolio efficiency is selling the tail risks in favor of looking good in the normal times. No free lunch - you haven't really created or destroyed any fundamental risk, you've just swept it under a rug.\r\n\r\n## TLDR\r\n\r\nWhen presented with something too good to be true, try to understand how the \"normal\" outcome is being goosed by creating/repackaging more risk in the extremes, and understand the driving factors that lead you to tip towards those extremes.\r\n\r\n**Peter Bernstein's 1998 classic [Against the Gods](https://www.amazon.com/Against-Gods-Remarkable-Story-Risk/dp/0471295639)** tells a lot more versions of our repeated failures to manufacture less risk with no tradeoffs throughout human history, from Greek prehistory to the French Renaissance to modern stock markets.\r\n\r\nIf you're a software engineer reading this and tut-tutting smugly at all these financial frauds shoveling risk around, consider how you are minimizing and managing your own technical, career, and yes, financial, risks as well and what tradeoffs you may know now you are making to achieve your relative level of comfort.","frontmatter":{"title":"The Law of Conservation of Risk","published":true,"description":"Risk cannot be created or destroyed, it can only be redistributed","tags":"Reflections, Finance, Risk","category":"essay","slug":"risk-conservation","canonical_url":"https://www.swyx.io/risk-conservation","cover_image":"https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/168505249-666fc17e-f936-43e6-821b-339f3b8bd74f.png","disclosure":"Personal reflections after the breakdown of Terra/Luna this week, but this is a timeless philosophy I've carried with me since my option trading days."},"title":"The Law of Conservation of Risk","description":"Risk cannot be created or destroyed, it can only be redistributed ","category":"essay","tags":["reflections","finance","risk"],"image":"https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/168505249-666fc17e-f936-43e6-821b-339f3b8bd74f.png","canonical":"https://www.swyx.io/risk-conservation","slug":"risk-conservation","date":"2022-05-16T02:15:58.000Z","readingTime":"7 minutes","ghMetadata":{"issueUrl":"https://github.com/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/419","commentsUrl":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/419/comments","title":"The Law of Conservation of Risk","created_at":"2022-05-16T02:15:58Z","updated_at":"2022-05-16T08:49:35Z","reactions":{"url":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/419/reactions","total_count":0,"+1":0,"-1":0,"laugh":0,"hooray":0,"confused":0,"heart":0,"rocket":0,"eyes":0}}},{"type":"blog","content":"\r\n> Edit: This talk was also picked up on [The New Stack](https://thenewstack.io/the-third-age-of-javascript-an-update-from-reactathon/) and on the [JSParty podcast](https://changelog.com/jsparty/226), thanks to Richard and Jerod for the feature!\r\n\r\nFor the first time, I presented an updated version of my [Third Age of JS talk](https://www.swyx.io/js-third-age/) at Reactathon 2022 this past week. The full talk is available on livestream ([timestamp here](https://youtu.be/Ck-e3hd3pKw?t=19926)) and I will update this post when the separate video is out.\r\n\r\n\r\n{% youtube CGnlBU3K_eM %}\r\n\r\n

\r\n\t

\r\nLivestream version\r\n\t

\r\n\r\n{% youtube Ck-e3hd3pKw %}\r\n\r\n

\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nMeanwhile, please check out [the slides](https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1O6m6J3UR49Cw91xgD9_Zz6SactPglGYqWlDHLRCz_-Q/edit#slide=id.g8c6e57bea8_0_71) and the raw talk plan below, as well as [Richard McManus' fantastic writeup about the talk](https://thenewstack.io/the-third-age-of-javascript-an-update-from-reactathon/) over at the New Stack!\r\n\r\nswyx\r\n\r\n## Original talk\r\n\r\n- If the First Age was about building out a language, and the Second Age was about users exploring and expanding the language, the Third Age is about clearing away legacy assumptions and collapsing layers of tooling.\r\n- In summary: Third Age JS tools will be\r\n\t- Faster\r\n\t- ESM first\r\n\t- Collapsed Layers (One thing doing many things well instead of many things doing one thing well)\r\n\t- Typesafe-er (built with a strongly typed language at core, and supporting TS in user code with zero config)\r\n\t- Secure-er (from dependency attacks, or lax permissions)\r\n\t- Polyglot\r\n\t- Neo-Isomorphic (recognizing that much, if not most, JS should run first at buildtime or on server-side before ever reaching the client)\r\n- The result of all of this work is **both a better developer experience** (faster builds, industry standard tooling) and **user experience** (smaller bundles, faster feature delivery). It is the final metamorphosis of JavaScript from site scripting toy language to full application platform.\r\n\r\n\r\n## Updated talk\r\n\r\nFramework for new developments\r\n- 1. Validation of current bets\r\n\t- ESM is growing\r\n\t- IE11 deader\r\n\t- State of JS 2021\r\n\t\t- React ecosystem npm charts/downloads https://twitter.com/swyx/status/1498761714153947137/photo/1\r\n\t\t- Nextjs default\r\n- 2. Incrementally adoptable tools\r\n\t- eng manager whose #1 priority is reducing yarn start time from minutes to seconds\r\n\t- Tooling shift\r\n\t\t- Node -> Deno\r\n\t\t\t- https://github.com/elsaland/elsa\r\n\t\t\t- https://github.com/boa-dev/boa\r\n\t\t- Webpack -> Vite\r\n\t\t- Babel -> swc\r\n\t\t- Jest -> vitest\r\n\t\t- Prettier -> dprint?\r\n\t\t- eslint -> rslint?\r\n\t\t- nvm -> fnm\r\n\t\t- dprint / rslint\r\n\t\t- TypeScript -> notypescript??\r\n\t\t\t- Prisma\r\n\t\t\t- edgedb builder https://www.edgedb.com/\r\n\t\t- Rust won?\r\n\t\t\t- but swc choosing go\r\n\t\t\t- https://leerob.io/blog/rust\r\n\t\t- Qwik, Solidjs\r\n\t\t- bun: https://github.com/Jarred-Sumner/bun (zig)\r\n\t\t- Partytown\r\n\t\t- Module federation/microfrontends fail\r\n\t- Browser IDEs\r\n\t\t- Stackblitz - WebContainers\r\n\t\t- Gitpod\r\n\t\t- GH Codespaces https://github.blog/2021-08-11-githubs-engineering-team-moved-codespaces/\r\n\t\t- Coder.com, Replit\r\n\t- Monorepos emerging\r\n\t\t- turborepo\r\n\t\t- nx\r\n- 3. New architectures\r\n\t- VC funding - Deno, Rome, Remix, Flightcontrol, Xstate\r\n\t- \"Neo-isomorphic\": ISR, bootloaders, No SSGs\r\n\t\t- eleventy\r\n\t\t- gatsby v4\r\n\t\t- React 18/server components\r\n\t\t- metaframeworks\r\n\t\t\t- Nestjs, Remix, Redwood and Blitz\r\n\t- Smart client vs Smart servers\r\n\t\t- https://www.swyx.io/client-server-battle\r\n\t\t- https://github.com/jlongster/absurd-sql\r\n\t- Incremental First, Edge Second\r\n\t\t- no need for node\r\n\t\t- cheaper than lambda\r\n\t\t- minimal build times\r\n\t\t- deno, cloudflare workers\r\n\t\t- https://nextjs.org/docs/advanced-features/middleware\r\n\t- Rise of Web Standards\r\n\t\t- clientside: Remix\r\n\t\t- serverside: CF Workers and Deno- Wordpress\r\n\t\t- by 2025 more than 50%\r\n- 4. New languages\r\n\t- WASM\r\n\t\t- https://www.w3.org/2019/12/pressrelease-wasm-rec.html.en\r\n\t\t- https://suborbital.network/ vs fermyon? v different\r\n\t\t- https://www.infoworld.com/article/3651503/the-rise-of-webassembly.html\r\n\t\t\t- https://medium.com/disney-streaming/introducing-the-disney-application-development-kit-adk-ad85ca139073\r\n\t\t- Replit used LLVM + WASM to run Python in JS\r\n\t\t- PyScript uses WASM to run Python in Browser\r\n\t\t- Blazor/.NET\r\n\t\t- JavaScript has a WASM story too [via QuickJS](https://blog.scottlogic.com/2022/06/20/state-of-wasm-2022.html)!\r\n\t- Flutter/Dart\r\n\t- Liveview/Phoenix\r\n\t- Hotwire/Rails\r\n\t- Streamlit/Python?\r\n\t- React for everything else\r\n\t\t- Dagster\r\n\t\t- Temporal\r\n\r\n- opportunities\r\n\t- Beginner: Teach\r\n\t\t- scrimba\r\n\t\t- courselift ryan chenkie\r\n\t\t- josh comeau\r\n\t\t- egghead\r\n\t\t- frontendmasters\r\n\t- Intermediate: self provisioning runtimes\r\n\t\t- serverless cloud\r\n\t\t- begin/temporal\r\n\t\t- dev/prod isolation??\r\n\t- Advanced: **Bring back the open web**\r\n\t\t- wordpress https://twitter.com/swyx/status/1507028477345558531\r\n\t\t\t- JS weight - 500kb https://httparchive.org/reports/state-of-javascript - rising 19% in 2020\r\n\t\t\t\t- 36% unused https://almanac.httparchive.org/en/2021/javascript#fig-4\r\n\t\t\t\t- 84% jquery 8% react https://almanac.httparchive.org/en/2021/javascript#fig-25\r\n\t\t\t- low code/no code - budibase, builder.io, prismic/plasmic/stackblitz\r\n\t\t\t- \"visual basic for React\" utopia.app\r\n\t\t- desktop vs mobile\r\n\t\t\t- https://gs.statcounter.com/platform-market-share/desktop-mobile-tablet/worldwide/#monthly-200901-202203 56% mobile 41% desktop\r\n\t\t\t- https://www.mobiloud.com/blog/mobile-apps-vs-mobile-websites\r\n\t\t\t- make hardware\r\n\r\n\r\n## discard pile\r\n- BaaS\r\n\t- supabase, convex, hasura, \r\n\t- planetscale, xata\r\n- telemetry back into dev - sentry, replay, apollo engine\r\n\t- https://www.apollographql.com/docs/devtools/editor-plugins/#performance-insights","frontmatter":{"published":true,"description":"Slides and show notes for my updated Talk at Reactathon","tags":"Strategy, JavaScript","category":"note","slug":"third-age-2022","canonical_url":"https://www.swyx.io/third-age-2022"},"title":"Talk Notes: Third Age of JavaScript - Three Years In","description":"Slides and show notes for my updated Talk at Reactathon ","category":"note","tags":["strategy","javascript"],"canonical":"https://www.swyx.io/third-age-2022","slug":"third-age-2022","date":"2022-05-07T17:25:45.000Z","readingTime":"3 minutes","ghMetadata":{"issueUrl":"https://github.com/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/418","commentsUrl":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/418/comments","title":"Talk Notes: Third Age of JavaScript - Three Years In","created_at":"2022-05-07T17:25:45Z","updated_at":"2022-10-07T05:34:27Z","reactions":{"url":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/418/reactions","total_count":1,"+1":0,"-1":0,"laugh":0,"hooray":0,"confused":0,"heart":1,"rocket":0,"eyes":0}}},{"title":"Third Age of JavaScript - Three Years In","slug":"third-age-3-talk","categories":["JS"],"description":"I updated the epic Third Age talk for Reactathon 2022","instances":[{"venue":"RWR YouTube","date":"2022-05-06","video":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CGnlBU3K_eM"},{"venue":"RWR Livestream","date":"2022-05-06","video":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ck-e3hd3pKw&t=19926"}],"category":"talk","date":"2022-05-06T00:00:00.000Z"},{"title":"Angel Investing your Time on Educative","slug":"investing-educative","tags":["Careers"],"venues":"Educative.io","date":"2022-05-02T00:00:00.000Z","url":"https://www.podbean.com/media/share/pb-n2ntb-1208ead","url2":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NqAGxYWgYZk","description":"I joined Lee Ngo a second time to talk about tech strategy and angel investing!","category":"podcast"},{"title":"Radiating Circles of DevX - Opening Keynote DevXConf Stage B","slug":"radiating-dx","categories":["DX"],"description":"DX expands outward from product to docs to content to community. Here's the full breakdown!","instances":[{"venue":"Gitpod Youtube","date":"2022-05-02","video":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d9lo-Ej98l4"}],"category":"talk","date":"2022-05-02T00:00:00.000Z"},{"type":"blog","content":"\r\nI consider [Will Larson](https://twitter.com/lethain) a mentor-from-a-distance, and was honored to be invited to join Will Larson's [InfraEng](https://infraeng.dev/swyx/) project, a followup to his industry-defining [StaffEng](https://staffeng.com/) project.\r\n\r\nYou can read it in full here: https://infraeng.dev/swyx/","frontmatter":{"description":"a reprint of my interview on Will Larson's InfraEng project.","slug":"infra-eng-interview","category":"note","tags":"DX","canonical_url":"https://infraeng.dev/swyx/"},"title":"Interview on Will Larson's Infrastructure Engineering","description":"a reprint of my interview on Will Larson's InfraEng project. ","category":"note","tags":["dx"],"canonical":"https://infraeng.dev/swyx/","slug":"infra-eng-interview","date":"2022-04-20T07:36:02.000Z","readingTime":"1 minute","ghMetadata":{"issueUrl":"https://github.com/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/417","commentsUrl":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/417/comments","title":"Interview on Will Larson's Infrastructure Engineering","created_at":"2022-04-20T07:36:02Z","updated_at":"2022-04-29T05:55:20Z","reactions":{"url":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/417/reactions","total_count":0,"+1":0,"-1":0,"laugh":0,"hooray":0,"confused":0,"heart":0,"rocket":0,"eyes":0}}},{"type":"blog","content":"\r\nThis is the current state of my talk prep for my React Miami 2022 talk: Temporal - React for the Backend. Includes links and initial draft at the bottom.\r\n\r\n## Video\r\n\r\n{% youtube 0iv0xQrAS84 %}\r\n\r\n(the [raw video](\r\nhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acANSTNpFIs) was posted prior but had some bad artefacts)\r\n\r\n

\r\n

\r\nBehind the Scenes Talk Prep\r\n

\r\n\r\nFor those interested in my working style, i actually recorded the process of me making the slides. some commentary at the start and the end, but otherwise just a lot of crappy music you can fastforward\r\n\r\n{% youtube B5_cvVPlNk8 %}\r\n\r\n

\r\n\r\n\r\n## Slides\r\n\r\nSlides are here: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1xRcSGKxBrknMBkAcT9qGj4KQrWPU_hiNhtKDh5sOhi4/edit?usp=sharing\r\n\r\n## Photos & Social\r\n\r\n

\r\n

\r\nExpand\r\n

\r\n\r\n

\r\n

\r\n\r\n[![image](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/164112979-f7c0a26e-b623-47dc-adb5-8ab620e56b47.png)](https://twitter.com/jackie_ore/status/1516539518542884868?s=20)\r\n\r\n[![image](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/164554925-e6a2791e-4c75-4d5f-8003-2932193d5b25.png)](https://twitter.com/HAJBlack/status/1516530935772155905?s=20)\r\n\r\n[![image](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/164554972-42ca6f9d-7e4b-4ab6-a2fe-f99dd143a036.png)](https://twitter.com/jeffbcross/status/1516529857865437186?s=20)\r\n\r\n\r\n

\r\n\r\n\r\n## Current talk plan\r\n\r\n### Part 0\r\n\r\n- You have more power than you know. Frontend > React. React > Frontend.\r\n- what does being a React developer mean to you? What does \"I know React\" mean to you?\r\n\t- \"I use React in my job\"\r\n\t- \"I know all the React APIs\"\r\n\t- \"I know React internals\"\r\n\t- React is the most popular framework of all time https://www.npmtrends.com/@angular/core-vs-angular-vs-react-vs-vue\r\n\t- \"I understand React's principles\"\r\n\t\t- recognize good solutions\r\n\t\t- create them\r\n- Intro me - Head of DX\r\n\t- Product (API Design, Integrations, Tooling)\r\n\t- Content (Docs, Writing, Speaking)\r\n\t- Community (Support, Connection, Events)\r\n- What is Temporal?\r\n\t- Temporal is the open source runtime for managing distributed application state at scale.\r\n\t- mention about the history and users\r\n\t- The most valuable, mission-critical workloads in any software company are long-running and tie together multiple services.\r\n\t- rauchg mention: https://twitter.com/rauchg/status/1316808665370820609?s=20\r\n\r\n### Part 1: The Problem\r\n\r\n- How do you solve this problem?\r\n\t- \"full stack uber clone\"\r\n\t- youtube: distributed media transcoding\r\n\t- tweet undos https://twitter.com/swyx/status/1513301310434529288\r\n\t- requirements - reliable (never lose user data), scalable, responsive...\r\n\t- send people to temporal.io/react talk?\r\n\r\n### Part 2: The “Solutions”\r\n\r\n- state of solutions - bad problems\r\n\t- microservices hairball\r\n\t- patchwork - ryland chart and aws chart\r\n\t- programming model\r\n- basic building blocks https://twitter.com/swyx/status/1470831554406408195\r\n\t- https://www.swyx.io/why-temporal/#30-second-pitch\r\n\t\r\n### Part 3: Applying Lessons\r\n\r\n- Lessons from React\r\n\t- React Components\r\n\t\t- jquery hairball. too low level\r\n\t\t- contained local state vs Renderer\r\n\t\t- apply: decompose \r\n\t- React Hooks\r\n\t\t- Minimal\r\n\t\t\t- apply: set of APIs\r\n\t\t- Composable\r\n\t\t\t- apply: custom functionality\r\n\t- React Suspense\r\n\t\t- https://17.reactjs.org/docs/concurrent-mode-suspense.html#what-is-suspense-exactly\r\n\t\t- UX -> DX making async easy\r\n\t\t\t- timers\r\n\t- React devtools\r\n\t- React community\r\n\t\r\n### Part 4: The API\r\n\r\n- Designing the API\r\n\t- workflows\r\n\t- activities\r\n\t\t- retries\r\n\t\t- exponential backoff https://622a7dcda0cc740008dd0443--blissful-borg-8305c0.netlify.app/tutorials/temporal/retry-policy\r\n\t- timers\r\n\t\t- custom functionality\r\n\t\t- wf.condition -> mention acemarke\r\n\t- signals & queries\r\n\r\n\r\n### Part 5: Results\r\n\r\n- Social proof\r\n\t- Netflix, Snap, Datadog\r\n\t- Flightcontrol, Xstate\r\n\t- UI, testing/replay utility\r\n\t- Job opps\r\n\t- download chart\r\n\t- Fundraising\r\n\r\n\r\n### Fin\r\n\r\n- Fin\r\n\t- Go Forth and Solve problems\r\n\t- if you backend engineer, tell them\r\n\t- React is the most popular framework of all time https://www.npmtrends.com/@angular/core-vs-angular-vs-react-vs-vue\r\n\t- 7 lessons https://www.notion.so/7-Lessons-to-Outlive-React-3a8ed4db297c43a49464bbe3338cce36\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n## original talk plan\r\n\r\n- You have more power than you know. Frontend > React. React > Frontend.\r\n- what does being a React developer mean to you? What does \"I know React\" mean to you?\r\n\t- \"I use React in my job\"\r\n\t- \"I know all the React APIs\"\r\n\t- \"I know React internals\"\r\n\t- React is the most popular framework of all time https://www.npmtrends.com/@angular/core-vs-angular-vs-react-vs-vue\r\n\t- \"I understand React's principles\"\r\n\t\t- recognize good solutions\r\n\t\t- create them\r\n- Intro me - Head of DX\r\n\t- Product (API Design, Integrations, Tooling)\r\n\t- Content (Docs, Writing, Speaking)\r\n\t- Community (Support, Connection, Events)\r\n- What is Temporal?\r\n\t- Temporal is the open source runtime for managing distributed application state at scale.\r\n\t- mention about the history and users\r\n\t- The most valuable, mission-critical workloads in any software company are long-running and tie together multiple services.\r\n\t- rauchg mention\r\n- Nerd Snipe\r\n\t- How do you solve this problem?\r\n\t\t- \"full stack uber clone\"\r\n\t\t- youtube: distributed media transcoding\r\n\t\t- tweet undos https://twitter.com/swyx/status/1513301310434529288\r\n\t\t- requirements - reliable (never lose user data), scalable, responsive...\r\n\t\t- send people to temporal.io/react talk?\r\n\t- state of solutions - bad problems\r\n\t\t- microservices hairball\r\n\t\t- patchwork - ryland chart and aws chart\r\n\t\t- programming model\r\n\t- basic building blocks https://twitter.com/swyx/status/1470831554406408195\r\n\t\t- https://www.swyx.io/why-temporal/#30-second-pitch\r\n- Lessons from React\r\n\t- React Components\r\n\t\t- jquery hairball. too low level\r\n\t\t- contained local state vs Renderer\r\n\t\t- apply: decompose \r\n\t- React Hooks\r\n\t\t- Minimal\r\n\t\t\t- apply: set of APIs\r\n\t\t- Composable\r\n\t\t\t- apply: custom functionality\r\n\t- React Suspense\r\n\t\t- https://17.reactjs.org/docs/concurrent-mode-suspense.html#what-is-suspense-exactly\r\n\t\t- UX -> DX making async easy\r\n\t\t\t- timers\r\n\t- React devtools\r\n\t- React community\r\n- Designing the API\r\n\t- workflows\r\n\t- activities\r\n\t\t- retries\r\n\t\t- exponential backoff https://622a7dcda0cc740008dd0443--blissful-borg-8305c0.netlify.app/tutorials/temporal/retry-policy\r\n\t- timers\r\n\t\t- custom functionality\r\n\t\t- wf.condition -> mention acemarke\r\n\t- signals & queries\r\n\t- child workflows\r\n- How does it work?\r\n\t- Worker vs Server separation\r\n\t- Replay - event sourced\r\n\t- just like react git analogy\r\n\t- Persisted\r\n\t- Distributed\r\n\t- show Temporal architecture talk\r\n- Social proof\r\n\t- Netflix, Snap, Datadog\r\n\t- Flightcontrol, Xstate\r\n\t- UI, testing/replay utility\r\n\t- Job opps\r\n\t- download chart\r\n\t- Fundraising\r\n- Fin\r\n\t- Go Forth and Solve problems\r\n\t- if you backend engineer, tell them\r\n\t- React is the most popular framework of all time https://www.npmtrends.com/@angular/core-vs-angular-vs-react-vs-vue\r\n\t- 7 lessons https://www.notion.so/7-Lessons-to-Outlive-React-3a8ed4db297c43a49464bbe3338cce36\r\n\r\n\r\n## pre-pre-planning\r\n\r\nMust hit\r\n- What is Temporal\r\n- Core APIs\r\n- Origin story\r\n\r\nThings to demo\r\n- code samples\r\n- Nextjs example\r\n\r\nQuotes\r\n- Flightcontrol\r\n- Xstate ","frontmatter":{"published":true,"description":"These are the raw notes of my talk prep for my React Miami 2022 talk - Temporal - React for the Backend. Includes links and initial draft at the bottom.","slug":"temporal-miami","category":"note","tags":"Temporal","canonical_url":"https://www.swyx.io/temporal-miami","cover_image":"https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/163968990-5754f1bf-b30e-4f12-a199-190c303f308c.png"},"title":"React Miami: Temporal - React for the Backend","description":"These are the raw notes of my talk prep for my React Miami 2022 talk - Temporal - React for the Backend. Includes links and initial draft at the bottom. ","category":"note","tags":["temporal"],"image":"https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/163968990-5754f1bf-b30e-4f12-a199-190c303f308c.png","canonical":"https://www.swyx.io/temporal-miami","slug":"temporal-miami","date":"2022-04-19T08:59:59.000Z","readingTime":"4 minutes","ghMetadata":{"issueUrl":"https://github.com/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/416","commentsUrl":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/416/comments","title":"React Miami: Temporal - React for the Backend","created_at":"2022-04-19T08:59:59Z","updated_at":"2022-05-07T17:28:11Z","reactions":{"url":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/416/reactions","total_count":0,"+1":0,"-1":0,"laugh":0,"hooray":0,"confused":0,"heart":0,"rocket":0,"eyes":0}}},{"title":"Linking your Microservices with Workflows on Purrfect.dev","slug":"temporal-purrfect-2","tags":["Temporal"],"venues":"Purrfect.dev","date":"2022-04-19T00:00:00.000Z","url":"https://codingcat.dev/podcast/2-21-linking-your-microservices-with-workflows","description":"I joined Brittney and Alex again to talk about Temporal and Self Provisioning Runtimes!","category":"podcast"},{"title":"Part Time Creators on Compressed.fm","slug":"part-time-creators-compressed","tags":["Creators"],"venues":"Compressed.fm","date":"2022-04-14T00:00:00.000Z","url":"https://www.compressed.fm/episode/64","description":"I joined Amy and James to talk about the Part Time Creator Manifesto!","category":"podcast"},{"title":"Career + Luck on Metamuse","slug":"career-luck-metamuse","tags":["Career","LIP"],"venues":"Metamuse","date":"2022-03-30T00:00:00.000Z","url":"https://museapp.com/podcast/53-career/","description":"I joined Adam and Mark who are one of the most thoughtful podcasters to talk about Learning in Public!","category":"podcast"},{"title":"Crossing the Chasm with Richard Feldman","slug":"crossing-chasm-feldman","tags":["DevRel"],"venues":"Software Unscripted","date":"2022-03-25T00:00:00.000Z","url":"https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/software-unscripted/crossing-the-chasm-1-dDJwWER37/","description":"Richard and Shawn Wang discuss how technologies \"cross the chasm\" from early adopters to mainstream","category":"podcast"},{"type":"blog","content":"\r\nI spend a lot of time talking to developers about Temporal, but haven't touched on Temporal's business potential since my [Why Temporal](https://www.swyx.io/why-temporal/#the-business-case-for-temporal) post from last year. \r\n\r\nWe announced [our Series B last month](https://twitter.com/swyx/status/1493994119869657090), and I thought it'd be fun to take my dev hat off and put on my money hat. I won't be discussing \"[So what actually is Temporal?](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30365798)\" here. This piece is focused on making the *business* case that I would as a venture partner getting buy-in to invest in the company.\r\n\r\n*obviously this is personal speculation and I am not confirming the company roadmap or anything. This is going to start off sounding extremely bullish, because it is easy to do that for young startups, but this isn't a puff piece and we'll get a lot more tentative towards the end.*\r\n\r\n![The $100,000,000,000 Bull case (1)](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/157086231-d51b8591-0779-43b7-a756-80de0759d5d9.png)\r\n\r\n## Why Temporal is worth 1.5b\r\n\r\nI'll rule out one form of valuation here, which is \"unicorn by strategic acquisition\" - all the cloud majors have a workflow offering and Temporal would be additive, but Temporal's appeal is inherently multi-cloud, so that would seriously impair the value here (though that has [not stopped Microsoft](https://www.inverse.com/gaming/call-of-duty-xbox-exclusive)). There are other possible acquirers than the cloud majors of course, but those are hard to predict. Salesforce, Stripe, or Twilio perhaps.\r\n\r\n### Unicorn by Comparables\r\n\r\nMaking a unicorn valuation by comps is the easiest, if flimsiest, argument.\r\n\r\nSome notable recent raises by peer devtools, compared with informal data on their revenue trends, gives us confidence that Temporal is in the neighborhood of similar raises:\r\n\r\n- [Chronosphere raised 200m on $1+b](https://techcrunch.com/2021/10/07/chronosphere-raises-200m-at-a-1b-valuation-for-cloud-native-monitoring-adds-granular-distributed-tracing-to-its-dashboard/)\r\n- [Sourcegraph raised 125m on $2.6b](https://techcrunch.com/2021/07/13/sourcegraph-raises-125m-series-d-on-2-6b-valuation-for-universal-code-search-tool/)\r\n- [Airbyte raised 150m on $1.5b](https://airbyte.com/blog/a-150m-series-b-to-power-the-movement-of-data)\r\n\r\nNote that Enterprise Tech valuations have come down a lot in the past 6 months, but let's assume a long time horizon where +/- 6 months doesn't matter.\r\n\r\n### Unicorn by Growth\r\n\r\nMaking a unicorn value based on *fundamentals* is a good deal harder. Let's just say exit price/sales multiples for enterprise software is at 20-40x (optimistic - the [IVP SaaS Valuation Handbook](https://www.ivp.com/saas-fundraising-handbook/) makes the range at 11x-19x for more mature companies - thanks to [Dan Croak](https://twitter.com/croaky) for pointing this out).\r\n\r\nLet's say Temporal would have to bring in $50m in revenue (with say 70-100% growth) for $1.5b valuation to make sense as a standalone public company. It does not make that today. But growth is expected to be a good deal higher and longer than public comparables, and there's a lot of money crowding into the \"obvious\" winners. **What’s a fair price for $X revenue that you think will probably grow the classic “[triple triple double double](https://www.battery.com/blog/helping-entrepreneurs-triple-triple-double-double-double-to-a-billion-dollar-company/)”** for example? That's the sort of handicapping you have to do in top tier startup investing.\r\n\r\nI can't say more here, but I can collate public statements on the *viral expansion* of Temporal:\r\n\r\n- At Uber, Cadence grew from 0 to >100 usecases within 3 years.\r\n- Also while [at Uber](https://docs.temporal.io/blog/oss-startups-podcast), Cadence got adoption at HashiCorp, Coinbase, DoorDash, Box, Checkr on the back of [minimal (but effective) marketing](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJwFxqdSx4Y)\r\n- Temporal open source has disclosed [25% MoM growth](https://www.theregister.com/2022/02/16/temporal_103m_funding/) (which annualizes to about [14x in 1 yr](https://twitter.com/BogieBalkansky/status/1494025245279195136) ) in active clusters (measured by server pings)\r\n- [Datadog reported](https://docs.temporal.io/blog/how-datadog-ensures-database-reliability-with-temporal/) usage \"expanded to more than 100 users across dozens of teams within just one year\" now running [3 million workflows per month](https://youtu.be/Hz7ZZzafBoE?t=100)\r\n- [Netflix reported](https://youtu.be/LliBP7YMGyA?t=197) running 500k workflows a *day* in Oct 2021 and projected 1m a day by end 2021 (Netflix also uses Conductor, now being commercialized as [Orkes](https://twitter.com/orkesio))\r\n- [Stripe hasn't disclosed](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Crkcr1S-NSc) any numbers, but have posted [a second job for their Workflow Engine team](https://stripe.com/jobs/listing/infrastructure-engineer-developer-productivity-workflow-engine/2964407) this year.\r\n\r\nThe natural position of Temporal as a primary tool for the rising [Platform Engineer](https://twitter.com/danielbryantuk/status/1494614250567966732) to provide a scalable stateful reliability primitive (bundling queues, databases, timers, gateways, encryption etc.) means that **the biggest cost of adoption is paid by the first production user**. Every subsequent user after that has a much lower cost to adopt Temporal, because most of the deployment and integration niggles have been worked out (more on this *internal network effect* below). And once the code has been run and is running reliably, the long running and extremely repetitive nature of this workload means there is very little incentive to churn.\r\n\r\nAt minimum this should mean that user acquisition/organic growth should be strong for many years, and in terms of monetization you could see **Net Revenue Retention north of 200%** in the first few years of implementation, which is world-beating ([110% is good, 130% is great](https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/what-is-good-retention-issue-29?utm_source=url), Snowflake is 160-180%, though these numbers are for more mature companies).\r\n\r\n\r\n## Why Temporal will be worth 10b\r\n\r\nLet's level-set here on what it takes to be a ~10b software company in 2022:\r\n\r\n- New Relic: 4b valuation, 750m revenue +20% yoy\r\n- Elastic: 8b valuation, 600m revenue +40% yoy\r\n- Gitlab: 9b valuation, 200m revenue +60% yoy\r\n- Hashicorp: 10b valuation, 300m revenue +50% yoy\r\n- Confluent: 14b valuation, 400m revenue +70% yoy\r\n\r\nSo to be in the neighborhood of 10b you need at least 200-300m revenue growing 50-70% (well into [Centaur territory](https://www.bvp.com/atlas/state-of-the-cloud-2022#Prediction-5-2022-will-be-the-year-of-the-Centaur)), which of course is variable based on a number of other factors including margin, expansion/churn profile, and other revenue quality metrics.\r\n\r\n### Assessing potential\r\n\r\nTemporal can reach this stage with just the existing open source software, but it **must be complemented by a fully generally available Cloud service** equally capable of handling individual developers as it is large enterprises like Snap (now a [public customer](https://docs.temporal.io/blog/series-b-press)). We haven't seen what kind of growth a fully unfettered Cloud service is capable of, even in terms of mature account expansion, much less being able to take on all the inbound interest, nor its ability to convert trial/free tier users. \r\n\r\n**The primary risk to Temporal reaching this milestone is the inability to build a satisfactory Cloud service** in a reasonable time frame. It must move fast to build out all the table stakes accoutrements of the [Enterprise Ready](https://enterpriseready.io/) stack, while not losing customer data or experiencing fatal downtime or security breaches.\r\n\r\nSales don't even have to be particularly international yet (Hashicorp was 75% domestic at IPO, with Confluent 68% and Gitlab 83%), but will need to develop both geographically and vertically - the [top listed usecases](https://temporal.io/use-cases) are each large categories on their own, with significant (e.g. government, finance, healthcare, energy and industrials) verticals not yet publicly represented, and there are [more](https://web.archive.org/web/20210428212024/temporal.io/usecases) not yet fully developed.\r\n\r\n**We aren't even close to understanding the ceiling here.**\r\n\r\n### Everything As Code\r\n\r\nAs a developer's understanding of Temporal grows, the stated benefits and applied use cases tend to shift from the basic promises on reliability and observability, to its ability to offer general purpose orchestration, automation and human-in-the-loop interaction.\r\n\r\nI am really impressed by the [Datadog case study](https://docs.temporal.io/blog/how-datadog-ensures-database-reliability-with-temporal/#outcomes) for spelling this out: \r\n\r\n> \"With Temporal, a single Workflow not only replaces the manual steps but also the need for a human to be monitoring it.... We've done things that we likely wouldn't have done without Temporal.\"\r\n\r\nSimilar has been mentioned at [Descript](https://docs.temporal.io/blog/descript-case-study#whats-next) and [Box](https://docs.temporal.io/blog/temporal-a-central-brain-for-box#whats-next).\r\n\r\nBecause workflows can wait for arbitrarily long amounts of time, and can block on human action or other external input, they are a perfect tool for automating anything long-running, including previously manual, or partially manual, processes. This helps justify **the ridiculously high upper bound** on the potential value of Temporal workflows, because anything that saves or eliminates human labor (especially *developer* labor) has both high marginal profit and linear scalability. **There will be workflows worth millions per year**.\r\n\r\nStill, there is an upper limit. At the end of the day, when we are talking B2B revenue, the money doesn't come from thin air, the budget must come from somewhere, and it is very hard to get businesses to spend money on software that it wasn't spending elsewhere before... ***Unless*** you can convincingly show that the money is being **spent on humans**, and **lost in opportunity cost**. \r\n\r\nOnly *then* can you drop the red-ocean TAM talk and unlock the big bucks.\r\n\r\nOf course, Temporal will **not** capture the bulk of this value, because significant work still needs to be done by developers to realize this benefit (*we will challenge this assumption much later in this essay*).\r\n\r\n### The Workflow Engines Category\r\n\r\nThe general flexibility of Temporal is both why it is difficult to pitch and yet tends to be applied to everything once understood (Index Ventures' tagline for Temporal, \"[Everything is a Workflow](https://www.indexventures.com/perspectives/everything-is-a-workflow-our-investment-in-temporal/)\" is a very common realization once you've worked with Temporal a while). \r\n\r\nThe formal framing of Temporal is as an **Application State Manager**, because that accurately describes the central but limited role that Temporal plays inside of a distributed system/microservice architecture (*doesn't* directly handle big blobs of data, *doesn't* run your code, but *does* route and persist the general state of your application spread across services). **Temporal is the one stateful service in your stack that lets everything else be stateless** (or at least idempotent).\r\n\r\nBut it is often *used* as a \"Workflow Engine\" (of which there are [many](https://github.com/meirwah/awesome-workflow-engines), which underlines Temporal's reluctance to be lumped in the same bucket). I sometimes like to pitch Workflow Engines in general as a kind of \"[special purpose database](https://twitter.com/swyx/status/1493692327562735616)\", much like Search Engines and Analytics Engines: \r\n\r\n- Just like Search and Analytics, you could roll your own, but you'd do a poor job of it. Your homegrown implementation will be fine if your usecase is small, but most people should reach for Elastic or Clickhouse at any decent scale.\r\n- Just like Search and Analytics, once you understand the capabilities and implementation well, you are free to apply them to whatever use cases you can imagine.\r\n- *Unlike* Search and Analytics, Workflow Engines are a sort of \"[Self-Provisioning Runtime](https://www.swyx.io/self-provisioning-runtime/)\" on which you run specialized software (whether using Temporal-style As-Code SDKs or JSON/YML/DAG-style Workflow definitions), rather than making isolated API calls from application code.\r\n\r\nBy the time Temporal is a decacorn, ASM's or Workflow Engines are likely to be a widely-accepted part of the modern developer toolkit, no longer regarded to be [\"quiet\"](https://twitter.com/ChrisSamiullah/status/1417215296834781185) or [\"insider knowledge\"](https://twitter.com/andrewingram/status/1481652733975224322?s=20&t=5wyE8AebdE69ceRts8IvIw), but rather very hyped and probably overhyped. You don't get to this level without getting your [fair share of haters](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2F-DItXtZs).\r\n\r\n## Why Temporal could be worth 100b\r\n\r\nAlright, now let's go [full Dr. Evil](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jTmXHvGZiSY). **What will it take for Temporal to be worth $100,000,000,000?**\r\n\r\nLet's level-set on what it takes to be a multi-decacorn in 2022:\r\n\r\n- Splunk: 18b valuation, 2.5b revenue +20% yoy\r\n- Mongodb: 25b valuation, 780m revenue +50% yoy\r\n- Okta: 27b valuation, 1.2b revenue +60% yoy\r\n- Twilio: 30b valuation, 2.8b revenue +50% yoy\r\n- Cloudflare: 35b valuation, 660m revenue +50% yoy\r\n- Databricks: 38b valuation, 600m revenue +70% yoy\r\n- Datadog: 50b valuation, 1b revenue +80% yoy\r\n- VMWare: 50b valuation, 12.9b revenue +7% yoy\r\n- Snowflake: 82b valuation, 1b revenue +100% yoy\r\n- Shopify: 87b valuation, 4.6b revenue +55% yoy\r\n- IBM: 112b valuation, 57b revenue +6% yoy\r\n- Stripe: 115b valuation, 7.4b revenue +400% yoy?\r\n- Oracle: 200b valuation, 41b revenue +6% yoy\r\n\r\nMost of these are developer household names, and the centicorns are certainly fully household names. It's clear that you want to be more of a Stripe, Snowflake or Datadog than you do an IBM or Oracle. **You need to do at least 2 billion dollars in revenue, growing triple digits, in order to be a centicorn.** \r\n\r\nThis is a tall ask for any company no matter how awesome the underlying technology, and is as much as feat of a world-class sales and marketing operation as it is a technological one. For this essay's audience, we'll focus on just tech/product.\r\n\r\n![image](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/217745320-546e6431-cff4-41d6-ad89-1a9a8d20e60c.png)\r\n\r\nHere the future becomes a good deal murkier for Temporal. Just like Stripe [deepened its relationship with customers on all things money](https://www.readthegeneralist.com/briefing/stripe), Temporal will almost certainly have to roll out a full suite of products for its core customer, the [Platform Engineer](https://softwareengineeringdaily.com/2020/02/13/setting-the-stage-for-platform-engineering/), despite [most second-products being distractions](https://youtu.be/MD_wD5hp7r0), ***and*** to do so in competition with other companies who will almost certainly be converging on the same market needs. *What* products these will ultimately be is up for speculation.\r\n\r\nSo let's speculate!\r\n\r\n### Backward Integration and Multi-cloud\r\n\r\nEach of the centicorn companies lays some credible claim to being more valuable as an independent entity than being one of the Big 3 clouds (and therefore would lose value if acquired).\r\n\r\n- Snowflake took [6-7 years](https://www.snowdba.com/chapter-1-snowflake-history/) to launch Azure and GCP support, and now brands itself as a standalone Data Cloud.\r\n- Stripe has pretty much always been [on AWS](https://aws.amazon.com/solutions/case-studies/stripe/), but considers itself the \"[AWS of payments](https://www.geekwire.com/2017/stripe-co-founder-john-collison-thinks-company-amazon-web-services-payments/)\".\r\n- [Cloudflare is making a very different play](https://www.swyx.io/cloudflare-go/) in order to be the \"fourth major cloud\".\r\n\r\nBecause of Temporal's focus on lightweight application state and orchestration of multiple services, it has a natural position between the big clouds (this is a very contrived scenario, but imagine being able to easily weave together specialized ML services from Google, with the advanced storage options from AWS, inside a well supported .NET environment on Azure). I'm not saying that Temporal *has* to be multi-cloud to be a centicorn, but pretty much every company in this league needs a compelling story *not* to be better off as part of the Big 3.\r\n\r\nEventually, sufficiently sized workloads will force Temporal into providing its own cloud primitives of [compute, storage, and bandwidth](https://twitter.com/swyx/status/1475857610306109440?s=20&t=zESt1zAn4WfC_fKkp04Mkg), up to and including operating or making its own hardware at the very extreme. This should give cost, speed, and scalability advantages. \r\n\r\n### Temporal as Mesh, Temporal API as Protocol\r\n\r\nBelieve it or not, **viewing Temporal as a \"State Manager\" or \"Workflow Engine\" is understating its potential**. The broader, more abstract job it is doing is helping critical long running processes communicate with each other deterministically, designed for extreme fault tolerance and scalability (there's an *even broader* interpretation, which I covered in [Self Provisioning Runtimes](https://www.swyx.io/self-provisioning-runtime)).\r\n\r\nFrom a [2020 interview of Maxim](https://softwareengineeringdaily.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/SED1043-Cadence-Workflow-Orchestration.pdf): \r\n\r\n> Another model, which is I think is more interesting, is that you can think about [Temporal] as a **service mesh**. **A service mesh for longer running operations**, because right now if you think about it [the current conversation about service meshes are] always around short-lived operations...\r\n> \r\n> Inside of [Temporal], workflows can call other activities. When you look at the call, it [looks like a] synchronous request-reply. You make request and then you wait for it in blocking mode and then you get your reply. The difference is that this request can take 5 days or one year. It doesn’t matter...\r\n\r\nWhile \"Temporal as Long Running Service Mesh\" is mostly an analogy for now, it could turn into reality some day. Service Meshes are already Temporal's most immediate adjacency. We can see hints of this in Snap's [detailed overview](https://eng.snap.com/build_a_reliable_system_in_a_microservices_world_at_snap) of their Temporal deployment:\r\n\r\n> To help with more teams in Snap, **our internal Temporal cluster is hosted as a multi-tenant environment which runs on top of Snap’s Service Mesh** where we can get authN, authZ and load balancing support. Also with Service Mesh, team onboarding is as simple as access approval and establishing connection using our vended client libraries which incorporate Service Mesh connections and Temporal SDKs in one.\r\n\r\nThere is [a *ton* of innovation going on in the Service Mesh world](https://thenewstack.io/how-ebpf-streamlines-the-service-mesh/) right now so it's probably better for Temporal to stay un-opinionated about this as long as possible — this was a key factor for Temporal adoption within [Netflix's \"paved road\"](https://twitter.com/swyx/status/1448027262121496578) last year. \r\n\r\nBut we're talking about the $100b future of Temporal, so we're allowed to dream. The more jobs Temporal does, the more value it offers, so we must explore the most obvious adjacencies.\r\n\r\nThe basic language that Temporal establishes around [Timeouts](https://docs.temporal.io/blog/activity-timeouts/), Signaling, Querying, [Migrations](https://docs.temporal.io/docs/go/versioning/), Child Workflows, [Parent Close Policy](https://docs.temporal.io/docs/concepts/what-is-a-parent-close-policy/), [Encryption](https://docs.temporal.io/docs/concepts/what-is-a-data-converter/), [Authorization](https://docs.temporal.io/docs/server/security#authorization), [Visibility](https://docs.temporal.io/docs/temporal-explained/visibility/) and all features to come could become **the lingua franca of all long running services** in Temporal's massive orbit - to the extent that it is quite possible to envision a future where *non*-Temporal software advertises itself as [Temporal-API](https://github.com/temporalio/api)-compatible, much like [S3 Compatibility](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=s3%20compatible&sort=byPopularity&type=story) is now unofficial table stakes for all storage services.\r\n\r\nIf you consider the [7 Layer OSI model](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OSI_model) of protocol abstractions, you can consider **Temporal as Layer 8** (\"fault oblivious\" workflows). Layer 8 does for Layer 7 (HTTP/REST/gRPC) what Layer 4 (TCP) does for Layer 3 (IP) - offering a reliable abstraction over unreliable foundations.\r\n\r\nIf you strip away all implementation detail, Temporal's APIs (already living in a [standalone repo](https://github.com/temporalio/api), though with no formal specification) could become the industry standard protocol for long running operations, much in the same way that HTTP has become the standard protocol for short-lived ones. At first perhaps an informally followed, ill-enforced format like REST, but with enough strictness that it could be like [Relay](https://relay.dev/docs/guides/graphql-server-specification/) or even like HTTP in conformity.\r\n\r\nSince this is a future we all desire, I often wonder if there would be any benefit to formalizing the specification and donating it to a neutral organization like the Linux Foundation or CNCF, a competitor- and integrator-friendly move often done by other aspiring industry standards (as a counterpoint, note that AWS didn't do this with S3 and it is doing just fine).\r\n\r\n### Forward Integration and Network Effects\r\n\r\n**Temporal can build a *services* marketplace**.\r\n\r\nAs a platform tool with a significant learning curve and devops cost, Temporal has a valuable *internal* [growth loop](https://www.reforge.com/blog/growth-loops) built on improving developer experience and tangible results. \r\n- The *second* team to adopt Temporal at a company has a 10x better experience because the infra/ops blockers have been worked out. \r\n- The *twentieth* team to adopt Temporal at a company has a 100x better experience because reusable internal libraries and SDK wrappers start being developed that reflect best practices and domain knowledge accumulated by their colleagues before them.\r\n\r\nHowever, Temporal's *external* network effects are near zero today. The addition of each new Temporal user doesn't materially impact future users, or existing users, beyond sporadic open source and community participation.\r\n\r\nThe easiest way *external* network effects could start happening is through some kind of marketplace. There's nothing inherent in Temporal's design that requires that every Workflow or Activity must be run, or even operated, by you. Yet by its nature, Temporal has knowledge of every critical microservice in its' users organization (this \"knowledge\" is very decoupled for now, and will likely have to be strengthened if this becomes a project priority).\r\n\r\nEach new user could contribute their microservices in some sort of public directory, which can then be invoked by others wishing to reuse them. This treats Temporal as a sort of super-aggregator of services, assuming it has established itself as a preferred protocol for long-running processes, as we discussed above. Temporal should respect [the Mullenweg-Gates Line](https://twitter.com/swyx/status/1360729115372920832) and only take 5% of the total value, but if they can get money flowing here then there is a ton of value to be realized by a third party ecosystem (though we've speculated in the past on a \"[Temporal Token](http://softwareengineeringdaily.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/SED1255-Ryland-Goldstein.pdf)\" economy for farming out this work, we'll likely need far more speed and efficiency than current Web3 technology offers). Temporal wins when vendors on its marketplace win - up to and including every [API Economy](https://www.swyx.io/api-economy/) vendor wrapping their offerings in a Temporal Activity or Workflow for easier consumption.\r\n\r\nThis doesn't even have to happen all at once - Temporal can help offer mesh, catalog, billing, and discovery products internally at very large companies before making any of this publicly available. Snowflake only [launched its private Data Exchange in 2019](https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/snowflake-announces-data-exchange-to-break-down-data-barriers-300861264.html) - before broadening to a public [Data Marketplace](https://www.zdnet.com/article/snowflake-announces-new-data-marketplace-and-powered-collaborations/) in 2021.\r\n\r\nBefore we go all-in on a marketplace, I'm pretty sure there are easier network effect opportunities to establish as well. Auth network effects? In-UI collaboration network effects? [NfX has like 15 of these](https://www.nfx.com/post/network-effects-manual/) to choose from.\r\n\r\n### Temporal as System of Record\r\n\r\n**Temporal can build an *integrations* marketplace.**\r\n\r\nEvery great B2B company is the system of record for *something* crucial within the enterprise. The sheer gravity of this data pulls its own ecosystem of apps and startups into its orbit, further entrenching the company.\r\n\r\nSalesforce is one such ecosystem for customers and sales, which is why it continues to be adopted while everybody complains about it. Let's say Okta is the emerging SoR for SSO logins, and it is beginning to [flex its data](https://www.okta.com/sites/default/files/2022-01/Businesses-at-Work-2022-Annual-Report.pdf). Rippling is the [SoR for employee data](https://twitter.com/EverettRandle/status/1451209431597731840). So on and so forth.\r\n\r\n**Temporal is naturally the System of Record for the most critical long running processes within any company**. How many open transactions do we have running right now? What's the p95 runtime of our customer shopping journeys in the past month? Why was there a spike in manual cancellations of our billing workflow yesterday? \r\n\r\nThis not only positions it for offering the [most important dashboard](https://www.saastr.com/want-go-upmarket-need-great-dashboard/) in the company (though it should not attempt to be a dashboarding company) but perhaps also *control panel* as well. Neither are significant revenue opportunities - but the integrations that come with this data can be.\r\n\r\nOne underappreciated fact is that Temporal is also the System of Record for vendor reliability. We naturally collect the API metrics as part of the basic job, and can do everything from evaluate SLAs to baking off vendor performance, although I don't seriously expect that this use case will be dominant compared to other vendor evaluation criteria.\r\n\r\n### Serverless and Code Hosting\r\n\r\n**Temporal can build a *hosting* marketplace.**\r\n\r\nTemporal is ***not*** serverless today, despite being a \"modern\" technology.\r\n\r\nPeople used to serverless providers and API vendors are often surprised to learn that [Temporal's operational model](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2HjnQlnA5eY) requires you to run and scale your own Worker fleet. Even if you pay Temporal Cloud to host a Cluster for you. \r\n\r\nThis works just fine for enterprises who *prefer* it that way (for compliance, security, control, and just generally fitting into their preferred infrastructure setup) but there is still the majority of the developer market that wants to do as minimal infra and ops as possible.\r\n\r\nThat's a lot of compute revenue left on the table, right there, that Temporal simply says no to. Temporal at $1.5b valuation would much rather be best friends with the likes of Heroku, Render, Railway, and the entire pantheon of EC2 variants, than compete with them. But it certainly suffers a hit to developer experience by needing to bring in Yet Another Vendor. To the extent that Temporal can establish a successful *hosting* marketplace (primarily compute and storage) and be the central point of billing integration, this can be a viable stance for a very long time. But ultimately the best developer experience will only be accomplished with the tight integration of providing first party compute. Even if this business is ultimately low margin, the lower friction leading to accelerated adoption could well be worth getting into this business.\r\n\r\n*The same argument, by the way, can be made for storage revenue and storage developer experience - [Chronosphere's recent presentation at the flagship Temporal meetup](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QTdspo9NY4I) highlights how commonly the state layer needs to work with the storage layer.*\r\n\r\nOne final observation - Temporal essentially breaks Workflow code into dozens of tiny \"[Workflow Tasks](https://docs.temporal.io/docs/concepts/what-is-a-workflow-task/)\", which, when looked at in the right light, are essentially dozens of tiny serverless functions. Workflow Workers can turn serverless well before Activity Workers have to and it would not be a big leap for Temporal to offer this natively. The \"Serverless Containers\" offerings like Fargate, Cloud Run and others could eventually also prove good bases for \"serverless\" Activity Workers too. There's a fair amount of revenue to drive or absorb here.\r\n\r\n*Note that this point can evolve independently of the \"Backward Integration\" point above, because that pertains more to running Temporal Clusters than Temporal Workers. But of course there are overlaps.*\r\n\r\n### Humans in the Loop vs ML in the Loop\r\n\r\nIn the \"Temporal as a 10b company\" section above, we talked about how Temporal's ability to replace manual processes is a key driver to its value. The scope of this is already inestimably large, but ultimately it is rate limited by one of the rarest resources on Earth: *Developers*.\r\n\r\n**Can we write workflows without developers?**\r\n\r\nThis line of thinking might look like I am arguing that Temporal will eventually become a no-code company. For cultural and core competency reasons I don't think this can or should happen - you would have to bet on Temporal successfully incubating a second startup that successfully cracks the \"general purpose no-code\" nut better than Zapier or Make. Better to be arms dealer to the very long tail of no-code and platforms-offering-low-code-workflows services. We are already seeing examples of customers [writing XState Statechart interpreters with Temporal](https://temporal.io/xstate) to implement their own low-code systems with surprising effectiveness.\r\n\r\nNo, I'm more talking about the ability for ***data*** to augment or replace developers for routine or insufficient-data-but-manually-prototypable tasks:\r\n\r\n- Not replacing developers entirely, but enabling product managers and other domain experts to shape workflow decision trees and dynamically adjusting decisions to data without requiring code changes, while still relying on developers to write activities and set up integrations. **This expands Temporal's reach within the organization beyond the engineering org.** \r\n- The simplest version of this is the A/B test - have two versions of a Workflow written up, have Temporal send traffic through each, and decide the winner by human or automated decision criteria. More complex variants can turn the binary decision into value seeking between given min-max ranges - essentially a very slow, iterative form of [backpropagation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backpropagation). Temporal would probably choke under most forms of deep learning today, but there's nothing preventing us implementing simple, explainable learning (read: linear regressions?). Still, the ability of Temporal to function as a distributed computer shouldn't be underestimated: Developers at Uber already have shown examples of [Particle Swarm Optimization](https://github.com/temporalio/samples-go/tree/main/pso) using Workflows.\r\n- Temporal could explicitly model \"cyborg\" nodes - workflows that initially defer to human domain expert decision makers, but then *using the collected data* to switch to automated decision making within sufficiently established ranges, while still yielding back to humans for unobserved ranges or exceeded confidence bounds.\r\n\r\nThis is basically the essence of Andrej Karpathy's [Software 2.0](https://karpathy.medium.com/software-2-0-a64152b37c35) thesis applied to Temporal - how much can we let *data* write Workflows, rather than developers? Many deployments of Temporal are very high volume - in the *millions* of workflows per month - and it is a shame that none of that data currently feeds back in any automated way to improving the workflows themselves.\r\n\r\nIf we have analyzed Temporal's potential via internal and external network effects, then perhaps this section could be termed [data network effects](https://julian.digital/2021/12/20/the-power-of-defaults/).\r\n\r\n## Conclusion\r\n\r\nThis is just me thinking out loud on the potential direction of Temporal. I find order-of-magnitude thought exercises to be a [Brian Chesky-style](https://www.product-frameworks.com/11-Star-Experience.html) mind expander that lifts ambitions and forces you to really think through what moves the needle to get to the next stage.\r\n\r\nVery few people on Earth have ever seen a company through from 1b to 100b and beyond, so I'm definitely missing obvious steps or making some absolute howlers. Please comment below or correct me if you can see these. \r\n\r\nThe final task that remains is to guesstimate - ***how long* is this all going to take**? Stripe is 12 years old, Snowflake is 10, but both of those companies grew up in the [longest bull market in history](https://www.investopedia.com/news/really-longest-bull-market-history/). Even operationally, at this point 2-3 years into Temporal, those companies seem like they are decades away from where we are today. \r\n\r\nThen again, the human mind is incapable of comprehending exponential growth over long periods of time:\r\n\r\n![image](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/217745280-166b3bdf-001f-4c30-aef6-8b0da3b75cc7.png)\r\n\r\n## Acknowledgements\r\n\r\nThanks to Dan Croak, Ryland Goldstein, David Khourshid, Nicholas Oxford, and @qoouep for reviewing drafts of this essay and providing feedback!","frontmatter":{"title":"The $100b Bull Case for Temporal","published":true,"description":"Why Temporal is worth >$1b now, why it will be worth >$10b, and how it *could* be worth $100b","tags":"Temporal","slug":"temporal-centicorn","canonical_url":"https://www.swyx.io/temporal-centicorn","cover_image":"https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/157086231-d51b8591-0779-43b7-a756-80de0759d5d9.png","disclosure":"I am obviously long Temporal stock. No confidential information about Temporal is used here, but it collates publicly available data that has not yet been gathered in one place."},"title":"The $100b Bull Case for Temporal","description":"Why Temporal is worth >$1b now, why it will be worth >$10b, and how it *could* be worth $100b ","category":"note","tags":["temporal"],"image":"https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/157086231-d51b8591-0779-43b7-a756-80de0759d5d9.png","canonical":"https://www.swyx.io/temporal-centicorn","slug":"temporal-centicorn","date":"2022-03-07T17:21:34.000Z","readingTime":"20 minutes","ghMetadata":{"issueUrl":"https://github.com/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/413","commentsUrl":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/413/comments","title":"The $100b Bull Case for Temporal","created_at":"2022-03-07T17:21:34Z","updated_at":"2023-02-09T07:25:48Z","reactions":{"url":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/413/reactions","total_count":1,"+1":0,"-1":0,"laugh":0,"hooray":0,"confused":0,"heart":1,"rocket":0,"eyes":0}}},{"title":"Talking Temporal on Purrfect.Dev","slug":"temporal-purrfect","tags":["Temporal"],"venues":"Purrfect","date":"2022-03-04T00:00:00.000Z","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0P-Uod19NY","description":"I joined Brittney and Alex for the second time, this time to talk about Temporal instead of Svelte!","category":"podcast"},{"type":"blog","content":"\r\nI recently caught the tail end of [a TimescaleDB Twitter space](https://twitter.com/TimescaleDB/status/1496253622891466763) that I wanted to snip for [my mixtape](https://swyx.transistor.fm/) in future. Spaces are only saved for a few days so if you want them beyond that you will have to download it. However, Twitter only lets the host of the space download. I tried using [youtube-dl](https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/issues/29145) for it but it is currently unsupported. \r\n\r\nFortunately `89z` on GitHub is very actively maintaining his own project that interfaces with some arbitrary social media: https://github.com/89z/mech and [answered my questions](https://github.com/89z/mech/issues/18) enough to get me using it!\r\n\r\nThe project bundles releases only for Windows, so here's a quick sequence of **instructions for Mac**.\r\n\r\n## Prerequisites\r\n\r\nIn case you are a nontechnical person arriving from Google - these instructions are meant for developers but written out step by step as faithfully as I can. The only prerequisite you need is:\r\n\r\n- [Git](https://git-scm.com/downloads) and \r\n- [Go](https://golang.org/dl) \r\n \r\nbut I won't spend any time teaching you how to use the terminal.\r\n\r\n## First get the Space ID\r\n\r\nThe primary piece of knowledge you need is the Twitter Space ID. Given a Twitter space URL `https://twitter.com/i/spaces/1YqGoprjyQEJv`, the space ID is `1YqGoprjyQEJv`. No API key is needed as far as I can tell, which is just peachy.\r\n\r\n> IMPORTANT - this process does not work for Twitter Super Follows Spaces as far as I can tell. If you are a developer, you MAY be able to fork the project to modify it. Let me know if you do.\r\n\r\n## The quickest way (June 2022)\r\n\r\nI've now had enough support load that i realize I should just upload the binary myself so you can just use it. \r\n\r\nIf you trust that i'm not doing anything funky, go to https://github.com/sw-yx/mech/releases/tag/swyx-fork-v1 and download that `twitter` binary to somewhere local.\r\n\r\nthen, open your terminal to the same folder where that binary exists, and:\r\n\r\n```bash\r\nchmod +x twitter # for first time only\r\n./twitter -c YOUR_SPACE_ID_HERE \r\n```\r\n\r\nYou may need to also set permissions in `System Preferences`.\r\n\r\n## Instructions to compile it yourself (May 2022)\r\n\r\nWe're going to use @89z's mech project, but as of the time that he used to support Twitter Spaces. so bear with me:\r\n\r\n```bash\r\n# make sure you have `git` installed!\r\ngit clone https://github.com/89z/mech\r\ncd mech\r\ngit reset 5b977a09590b883584662a656a14d393337411c1 --hard # old twitter functionality was removed https://github.com/89z/mech/issues/71\r\ncd cmd/twitter\r\n# make sure you have `go` installed!\r\ngo build\r\n```\r\n\r\nThis builds a binary called `twitter` which you can run:\r\n\r\n```bash\r\n# mac\r\n./twitter -c YOUR_SPACE_ID_HERE \r\n# windows\r\ntwitter -c YOUR_SPACE_ID_HERE \r\n```\r\n\r\nThis starts the download:\r\n\r\n```bash\r\n$ ./twitter -c 1YqGoprjyQEJv \r\nPOST https://api.twitter.com/1.1/guest/activate.json\r\nGET https://twitter.com/i/api/graphql/Uv5R_-Chxbn1FEkyUkSW2w/AudioSpaceById?variables=%7B%22id%22%3A%221RDGlgoYkDkKL%22%2C%22isMetatagsQuery%22%3Afalse%2C%22withBirdwatchPivots%22%3Afalse%2C%22withDownvotePerspective%22%3Afalse%2C%22withReactionsMetadata%22%3Afalse%2C%22withReactionsPerspective%22%3Afalse%2C%22withReplays%22%3Afalse%2C%22withScheduledSpaces%22%3Afalse%2C%22withSuperFollowsTweetFields%22%3Afalse%2C%22withSuperFollowsUserFields%22%3Afalse%7D\r\nGET https://twitter.com/i/api/1.1/live_video_stream/status/28_1496228425874374659\r\nGET https://prod-fastly-us-east-1.video.pscp.tv/Transcoding/v1/hls/Ze8MHZCOuvGIbhBQYBAevAIotnQEwAixsGxoUgsOOJaJsf0Qm6Kxhwt3JH77MIxknSr_2nobkgkUDyYP9YwzbQ/non_transcode/us-east-1/periscope-replay-direct-prod-us-east-1-public/audio-space/playlist_16801097405082696033.m3u8?type=replay\r\n0/1299 /Transcoding/v1/hls/Ze8MHZCOuvGIbhBQYBAevAIotnQEwAixsGxoUgsOOJaJsf0Qm6Kxhwt3JH77MIxknSr_2nobkgkUDyYP9YwzbQ/non_transcode/us-east-1/periscope-replay-direct-prod-us-east-1-public/audio-space/chunk_1645642768437487255_0_a.aac\r\n1/1299 /Transcoding/v1/hls/Ze8MHZCOuvGIbhBQYBAevAIotnQEwAixsGxoUgsOOJaJsf0Qm6Kxhwt3JH77MIxknSr_2nobkgkUDyYP9YwzbQ/non_transcode/us-east-1/periscope-replay-direct-prod-us-east-1-public/audio-space/chunk_1645642768440813639_1_a.aac\r\n2/1299 /Transcoding/v1/hls/Ze8MHZCOuvGIbhBQYBAevAIotnQEwAixsGxoUgsOOJaJsf0Qm6Kxhwt3JH77MIxknSr_2nobkgkUDyYP9YwzbQ/non_transc\r\n# and so on...\r\n```\r\n\r\nThe final file is an `aac` file which is still annoying but at least convertible and playable in Audacity.\r\n\r\n![image](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/156055061-5c4f6bfc-a7e9-4e57-ba83-749476c60667.png)\r\n\r\n\r\n## Old Instructions (Feb 2022)\r\n\r\n```bash\r\n# make sure you have `git` installed!\r\ngit clone https://github.com/89z/mech\r\ncd mech\r\n# update: v1.49 onwards has the twitter spaces support again! https://github.com/89z/mech/issues/18#issuecomment-1058789325\r\ngit reset --hard v1.46.6 # only if you need to pin to a specific version that supports Twitter spaces, otherwise delete this line\r\ncd cmd/twitter\r\ngo build\r\n```\r\n","frontmatter":{"title":"How to Download Twitter Spaces That Aren't Yours","published":true,"description":"Grabbing the audio","tags":"Tips","category":"tutorial","slug":"download-twitter-spaces","canonical_url":"https://www.swyx.io/download-twitter-spaces","cover_image":"https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/156055061-5c4f6bfc-a7e9-4e57-ba83-749476c60667.png"},"title":"How to Download Twitter Spaces That Aren't Yours","description":"Grabbing the audio ","category":"tutorial","tags":["tips"],"image":"https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/156055061-5c4f6bfc-a7e9-4e57-ba83-749476c60667.png","canonical":"https://www.swyx.io/download-twitter-spaces","slug":"download-twitter-spaces","date":"2022-02-28T20:14:56.000Z","readingTime":"3 minutes","ghMetadata":{"issueUrl":"https://github.com/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/412","commentsUrl":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/412/comments","title":"How to Download Twitter Spaces That Aren't Yours","created_at":"2022-02-28T20:14:56Z","updated_at":"2022-12-08T22:20:29Z","reactions":{"url":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/412/reactions","total_count":10,"+1":6,"-1":0,"laugh":0,"hooray":4,"confused":0,"heart":0,"rocket":0,"eyes":0}}},{"type":"blog","content":"\r\n\r\nI was invited by **Sacha Greif** to write the conclusion for [the State of JS 2021 survey](https://2021.stateofjs.com/en-US/), which was just released today. I felt it was a huge honor to be asked so I went ham on the \"financial analyst\" side of me to interpret the results for readers!\r\n\r\nUltimately though, I went way too long and a lot of it had to be cut, mostly because of the need to translate these words into 20 different languages.\r\n\r\nStill... I already did the writeup, so here's the full text!\r\n\r\n[![https://2021.stateofjs.com/images/social/js2021-social.png](https://2021.stateofjs.com/images/social/js2021-social.png)](https://2021.stateofjs.com/en-US/)\r\n\r\n---\r\n\r\n**JavaScript is in a tremendously better state today compared to the first survey in 2016.** Back then, only [21% of you used TypeScript](https://2020.stateofjs.com/en-US/technologies/javascript-flavors/javascript_flavors_experience_ranking), compared to a [nice 69%](https://2021.stateofjs.com/en-US/other-tools/javascript_flavors) today. Where in 2016 we used to joke about a new frontend framework releasing every day, React has now held the top spot [for 6 years running](https://2021.stateofjs.com/en-US/libraries/front-end-frameworks/front_end_frameworks_experience_ranking). The percentage of people reporting that \"JS is moving too fast\" is down [from 59% then, to 38% today](https://2021.stateofjs.com/en-US/opinions/js_ecosystem_changing_to_fast).\r\n\r\nThis is not to say that JS has stood still. Due kudos must be given to the champions of [the Optional Chaining and Nullish Coalescing APIs](https://github.com/tc39/proposal-optional-chaining), which have rocketed up to be **by far the most used new JS APIs** in our survey, despite only being 2 years old. The [6.2% and 13.8%](https://2021.stateofjs.com/en-US/features/language/#nullish_coalescing) of you who have never heard of them should probably give them a try! More good things are on the way from TC39: you reported that date management is a [top missing feature](https://2021.stateofjs.com/en-US/opinions/currently_missing_from_js_wins) and the Temporal API recently reached [Stage 3](https://github.com/tc39/proposal-temporal).\r\n\r\nOver in user-land, **[Solid](https://www.solidjs.com/) made a solid debut** tying with [Svelte](https://svelte.dev/) in first place for the coveted [top spot in frontend satisfaction](https://2021.stateofjs.com/en-US/libraries/front-end-frameworks). By usage, [Vue.js](https://vuejs.org/), now on [version 3](https://blog.vuejs.org/posts/vue-3-as-the-new-default.html), is on track to overtake [Angular](https://angular.io/docs) as the second place framework (after [React](https://reactjs.org/)) sometime in 2022-23. [Backend/Fullstack frameworks](https://2021.stateofjs.com/en-US/libraries/back-end-frameworks) have seen much more innovation, with [SvelteKit](https://kit.svelte.dev/docs), [Astro](https://astro.build/), and [Remix](https://remix.run/) all debuting with very high satisfaction. However, real usage changes much slower than satisfaction, with [Express](https://expressjs.com/) still the undisputed king and [Next.js](https://nextjs.org/) the distant but fastest growing second place. The difference in pace between front and back can be explained by developer happiness: [66% of you are happy](https://2021.stateofjs.com/en-US/libraries/front-end-frameworks/front_end_frameworks_happiness) with frontend frameworks, but less than [50% are happy](https://2021.stateofjs.com/en-US/libraries/back-end-frameworks/back_end_frameworks_happiness) with backend ones.\r\n\r\nIn terms of build tools, **2021 has been the year of Vite**. Vite not only debuted at 98% satisfaction, [the highest scoring library across all of JavaScript](https://2021.stateofjs.com/en-US/libraries/tier_list), but usage is already at 30% in its first year on our survey, eclipsing [esbuild](https://esbuild.github.io/). Vite isn't alone in trying to improve the state of JavaScript Build Tools - 8 of the 12 tools we track today are less than 2 years old! Also notable: for the first time, new entrants like Deno, Rome, swc, and Snowpack are now supported by venture-backed companies, perhaps charting a viable alternative to the fragile open source funding environment.\r\n\r\nAs [the Third Age of JavaScript](https://www.swyx.io/js-third-age/) enters its third year, the opportunities for aspiring open sourcerors and entrepreneurs continue to unfold:\r\n- In our first year of tracking [**monorepo tooling**](https://2021.stateofjs.com/en-US/libraries/monorepo-tools), pnpm, Turborepo, and Nx took the top spots, but only 25% report being happy with the state of monorepo tooling. \r\n- Looking at [**runtimes**](https://2021.stateofjs.com/en-US/other-tools/runtimes), Deno is stable at 5.6% usage but faces fierce competition from the various Serverless and Workers platforms.\r\n- **Teaching** online continues to be a source of incredible opportunity, as most of you report self directed learning, free courses, and paid screencasts and books to be [your top choices in learning](https://2021.stateofjs.com/en-US/resources/first_steps).\r\n\r\nLastly, it's worth mentioning our top write-ins, as it can help correct unintentional biases. This year's top write-ins are [Elm](https://elm-lang.org/), [Stencil](https://stenciljs.com/), and [Platzi](https://platzi.com/). If your favorite library or resource didn't do well this year, keep spreading the word! \r\n\r\nAfter all, last year's [3rd place write in](https://2020.stateofjs.com/en-US/awards/#tool_interest_award) was... **Vite**.\r\n\r\n---\r\n\r\nI was also briefly on the State of JS results livestream, which you can see here\r\n\r\n{% youtube KgLMU6yBW1g %}","frontmatter":{"description":"the full text of my State of JS writeup!","category":"note","cover_image":"https://2021.stateofjs.com/images/social/js2021-social.png","tags":"JS","slug":"state-of-js-2021"},"title":"Unabridged Conclusion to the State of JS","description":"the full text of my State of JS writeup! ","category":"note","tags":["js"],"image":"https://2021.stateofjs.com/images/social/js2021-social.png","slug":"state-of-js-2021","date":"2022-02-16T12:04:45.000Z","readingTime":"3 minutes","ghMetadata":{"issueUrl":"https://github.com/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/411","commentsUrl":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/411/comments","title":"Unabridged Conclusion to the State of JS","created_at":"2022-02-16T12:04:45Z","updated_at":"2022-03-01T17:55:14Z","reactions":{"url":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/411/reactions","total_count":14,"+1":0,"-1":0,"laugh":0,"hooray":7,"confused":0,"heart":7,"rocket":0,"eyes":0}}},{"title":"Temporal Series B Livestream","slug":"temporal-series-b","categories":["Temporal"],"description":"Our community livestream for our Series B","instances":[{"venue":"Temporal Youtube","date":"2022-02-16","video":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=634&v=E40KwlxZJFI&feature=emb_title"}],"category":"talk","date":"2022-02-16T00:00:00.000Z"},{"title":"Temporal SDK Intros","slug":"temporal-sdk-intros","categories":["Temporal"],"description":"Full length SDK intro workshops for Temporal's main SDKs.","instances":[{"venue":"Temporal Youtube","date":"2022-02-16","video":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=66zQ8nrW-mA"},{"venue":"Temporal Youtube","date":"2022-02-16","video":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1RY2lWSuJaA"},{"venue":"Temporal Youtube","date":"2022-02-16","video":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-KWutSkFda8"}],"category":"talk","date":"2022-02-16T00:00:00.000Z"},{"title":"The radiating circles in DevX with Swyx","slug":"radiating-devx-pod","tags":["DX","DevRel"],"venues":"DevXPod","date":"2022-02-15T00:00:00.000Z","url":"https://devxpod.buzzsprout.com/1895030/10012425-the-radiating-circles-in-devx-with-swyx-head-of-developer-experience-temporal","description":"i joined Pauline and Mike to give my updated thoughts on what great developer experience is!","category":"podcast"},{"title":"Self Provisioning Runtimes and Temporal on Serverless Chats","slug":"sls-chats-self-provisioning","tags":["Temporal","Serverless"],"venues":"ServerlessChats","date":"2022-02-14T00:00:00.000Z","url":"https://www.serverlesschats.com/124/","description":"Talking workflow engines and my Self Provisioning Runtimes essay with Jeremy Daly, who is the GM for Serverless Cloud which is one of the best examples of SPRs","category":"podcast"},{"title":"7 minute intro to Temporal","slug":"temporal-intro","categories":["Temporal"],"description":"I made the definitive intro to Temporal - picked up by the Register for our Series B funding announcement.","instances":[{"venue":"Temporal Youtube","date":"2022-02-14","video":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2HjnQlnA5eY"}],"category":"talk","date":"2022-02-14T00:00:00.000Z"},{"type":"blog","content":"\r\nI've written before about the tension between short vs long form, and quick vs considered content in the [Particle Wave Duality Theory of Knowledge](https://www.swyx.io/particle-wave-duality). But only recently have I heard another angle for thinking about it, and it comes from no less than Sonal Chokshi of a16z:\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n> He coined this thing, which I call the McClusky Curve... So if you go first, you want to either be first in the cycle or you want to go later and add a very differentiated, deeper, in depth take that nobody else has where you're adding value to the conversation.\r\n> \r\n> But if you go anywhere in the middle, you're just in the noise.\r\n\r\n_[See full clip and transcript here](https://swyx.transistor.fm/episodes/audience-building-the-mcclusky-curve-sonal-chokshi)_\r\n\r\nI tried my hand at visualizing the McClusky Curve:\r\n\r\n![image](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/153349826-84065831-e24d-41cb-8a17-0db249a8f36f.png)\r\n\r\nI think this is the fundamental tension to staying relevant to the discussion, and therefore growing your readership. Your creation process needs to generate some mix of timely vs insightful, yet of course the worst of all is to try to do both and end up with neither.","frontmatter":{"published":true,"description":"An insightful discussion on how to trade off aiming for viral or permanent posts.","category":"note","slug":"mcclusky-curve","tags":"Writing, Content","cover_image":"https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/153349826-84065831-e24d-41cb-8a17-0db249a8f36f.png"},"title":"The McClusky Curve - Viral vs Evergreen Content","description":"An insightful discussion on how to trade off aiming for viral or permanent posts. ","category":"note","tags":["writing","content"],"image":"https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/153349826-84065831-e24d-41cb-8a17-0db249a8f36f.png","slug":"mcclusky-curve","date":"2022-02-10T06:31:50.000Z","readingTime":"1 minute","ghMetadata":{"issueUrl":"https://github.com/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/410","commentsUrl":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/410/comments","title":"The McClusky Curve - Viral vs Evergreen Content","created_at":"2022-02-10T06:31:50Z","updated_at":"2022-02-18T13:48:22Z","reactions":{"url":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/410/reactions","total_count":0,"+1":0,"-1":0,"laugh":0,"hooray":0,"confused":0,"heart":0,"rocket":0,"eyes":0}}},{"title":"Learning in Public on DevDiscuss","slug":"devdiscuss-lip","tags":["LIP"],"venues":"DevDiscuss","date":"2022-02-09T00:00:00.000Z","url":"https://dev.to/devteam/devdiscuss-is-back-for-season-8-4knb","description":"Chatting LIP with Gift Egwenu, Ben Halpern, and Ridhwana!","category":"podcast"},{"type":"blog","content":"\r\nHere are my requirements for blogging platforms:\r\n\r\n- Should be easy and fast to update - no long or flaky build process\r\n- Should store images easily - as simple as a paste from my clipboard - anything else is unnecessary friction\r\n- Should be easily editable from mobile\r\n- (optional) should support comment system and different layout formats\r\n- (optional) wysiwyg markdown based editing - no funky blocks with lots of lockin\r\n\r\nAfter thinking through local markdown, GraphCMS, Notion, Strapi, Directus, and so on, I've finally settled on using GitHub as a CMS.\r\n\r\nI've long admired the OneGraph approach to blogging:\r\n\r\n- https://github.com/OneGraph/onegraph-blog\r\n- https://github.com/OneGraph/onegraph-changelog/issues?q=is%3Aissue+sort%3Aupdated-desc+is%3Aclosed+label%3APublish\r\n\r\nHowever their use of Relay is a bit too high overhead for me. So I built my own using just the GitHub REST API.\r\n\r\nThe primary problem with GH's API is that it rate limits at 5000 requests an hour, which is dicey for a high traffic blog. So either you prerender at build, or you cache on request (we can also cache on build). Netlify's [On Demand Builders](https://docs.netlify.com/configure-builds/on-demand-builders/) are a partial solution to this - partial because content updates will not be respected. I think this is an acceptable tradeoff for all the other functionality github as a cms offers.\r\n\r\nThe PR for doing this is available here: https://github.com/sw-yx/swyxkit/pull/9\r\n\r\n\r\nEdit: users may also want to explore using Utterances for authed comments https://github.com/utterance/utterances","frontmatter":{"published":true,"description":"Discussing the 2022 migration of swyx.io to SvelteKit and GitHub Issues","category":"note","slug":"github-cms","tags":"Meta, Blogging","canonical_url":"https://swyxkit.netlify.app/moving-to-a-github-cms","cover_image":"https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/151311175-9a15d313-cace-48a0-844e-2361644a21f5.png"},"title":"Moving to a GitHub CMS","description":"Discussing the 2022 migration of swyx.io to SvelteKit and GitHub Issues ","category":"note","tags":["meta","blogging"],"image":"https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/151311175-9a15d313-cace-48a0-844e-2361644a21f5.png","canonical":"https://swyxkit.netlify.app/moving-to-a-github-cms","slug":"github-cms","date":"2022-02-06T20:50:11.000Z","readingTime":"1 minute","ghMetadata":{"issueUrl":"https://github.com/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/409","commentsUrl":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/409/comments","title":"Moving to a GitHub CMS","created_at":"2022-02-06T20:50:11Z","updated_at":"2022-07-30T01:34:13Z","reactions":{"url":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/409/reactions","total_count":0,"+1":0,"-1":0,"laugh":0,"hooray":0,"confused":0,"heart":0,"rocket":0,"eyes":0}}},{"type":"blog","content":"\r\nI've gone through many versions of notetaking systems in the past decade, from literal \"in memory\" storage, to [writing cheatsheets](https://github.com/typescript-cheatsheets/react-typescript-cheatsheet), to blogging everything publicly, to storing private notes in OneNote, then SimpleNote, then Notion. For focused topics, I have a long history of making [markdown repos on GitHub accumulating thousands of stars](https://publish.obsidian.md/swyx/README#Rollup+of+my+Lists). I've also considered [Evernote](https://evernote.com/), [Joplin](https://joplinapp.org/) and [Roam](https://roamresearch.com/) and its less culty competitors [Foam](https://foambubble.github.io/foam/) and [Athens](https://www.athensresearch.org/).\r\n\r\n[Two months ago](https://twitter.com/swyxio/status/1465976030477230080) I moved my notes to [Obsidian](https://obsidian.md/), and I've been fairly happy with the result. Time for a good ole experience report!\r\n\r\n> You can check out the repo, [sw-yx/brain](https://github.com/sw-yx/brain) or the published Obsidian site [https://publish.obsidian.md/swyx/](https://publish.obsidian.md/swyx/)\r\n\r\n## Why a -Public- Second Brain?\r\n\r\nI'll assume you already know [the benefits of Building a Second Brain](https://www.swyx.io/tiago-forte-second-brain) - I was a [mentor for the course](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/the-swyx-mixtape/second-brain-1-the-capture-UQ7nt-6fr5c/) if you need a quick intro. Here my focus is on convincing you why your S.B. should be *public*:\r\n\r\n- [Learning in Public](https://www.swyx.io/learn-in-public/) increases your [Luck Surface Area](https://www.swyx.io/create-luck/#luck-surface-area)\r\n- Creating reusable/referenceable [Open Source Knowledge](https://youtu.be/XoATf7xGoUY) helps you compound knowledge work + [save keystrokes](https://www.hanselman.com/blog/do-they-deserve-the-gift-of-your-keystrokes) when helping people\r\n- Having a [Digital Garden](https://www.swyx.io/digital-garden-tos) to grow drafts in public with lower expectations than blog/social media is inspiring to others - aka [Working with the Garage Door Up](https://notes.andymatuschak.org/Work_with_the_garage_door_up)\r\n- One \"monorepo\" for all your notes frees you/your readers from having to remember where you put your notes + makes related notes more discoverable \r\n\t- aka [Personal Content Warehouse](https://twitter.com/swyx/status/1337519894644940802)?\r\n\r\n## My Criteria for Second Brain Tooling\r\n\r\nAs I reached the limits of SimpleNote/Notion/GitHub, I thought about these factors for my next notetaking tool:\r\n\r\n- **Markdown based**: Friction slows down your speed of thought. Unacceptable.\r\n\t- **If your editor gets in the way then you are paying cognitive overhead.** Notion's blocks are great until you try to select text or move around blocks and it doesn't do what you want.\r\n\t- **If your editor uses proprietary data formats it will be hard to migrate/render**. If you do this right your notes should outlive Notion. And if you wish to render notes publicly from Notion, keep in mind [even expert programmers face a lot of hurdles](https://twitter.com/adamwathan/status/1483523307651670020) because Notion is not an API first company (dev experience will always be a second class citizen). Markdown is Lindy.\r\n\t- (Nice to have) WYSIWYG Markdown writing experience like [Typora](https://typora.io/).\r\n- **Git**: I'm inherently interested in explorable histories of ideas (for [history surfing](https://github.com/pomber/git-history)/idea archaeology), and Git is the only version control system worth considering these days.\r\n- **Offline-ready Mobile app**: Again, a friction point - I have ideas in the shower, on a walk, or otherwise away from the computer, so I need a mobile app. To some extent, if I use Markdown, then that can be a [Narrow Waist](https://www.swyx.io/narrow-waists) interface where I can use apps that speak Markdown and Git, like [GitJournal](https://blog.dendron.so/notes/fDCVPEo3guCFWPdxokXHU/#gitjournal).\r\n- **Bidirectional Linking**: truly the feature popularized by Roam - I think networked thought is [ideal](https://twitter.com/swyx/status/1337519894644940802) and [some of the ways that people use it](https://www.nateliason.com/blog/roam) are truly mindblowing (I'm not personally there yet)\r\n\t- (Nice to have) Graph visualization of links, although I have my doubts about how useful this is in practice\r\n- **Publish with Search**: If you are Git and Markdown based, then GitHub does view and search fine, but the navigation, display and search experience could probably be improved with custom CSS, link previews, backlink lists, Table of Contents tracking, and so on.\r\n- **(Nice to have) Image and File storage**: Being able to store arbitrary images and files freely without friction/consideration of cost would be nice, but in practice i'm so word- and resource-heavy that this has not actually come up as a pain point in the last 2 months\r\n\r\nNotably lacking among these desirables is the idea that the notetaking service should be free. As a serious knowledge worker intent on making this work for the next 40-60 years of my life, I'm quite happy paying $5-20 a month for something that is going to last that I don't have to maintain myself.\r\n\r\nThese factors are why I chose [Obsidian](https://obsidian.md/), with [Obsidian Publish](https://obsidian.md/publish) (which is still relatively new and leaves some things to be desired).\r\n\r\nI admit I was also influenced by Ezell and others in the [Coding Career Community](https://ezell.dev/brain/Ideas/How+to+Create+Value) who have been talking about Obsidian for over a year.\r\n\r\n![Pasted image 20220207020337](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/152694821-6bb353a7-d559-456a-a32e-83ced774b709.png)\r\n\r\n\r\n## Obsidian Tips\r\n\r\n- **Use the [PARA system](https://fortelabs.co/blog/para/)**\r\n\t- It has the right level of simplicity and effectiveness out of any system I've tried, which has always spiraled out of control.\r\n\t- I'm very much not perfect at this (but nobody is). I'm much better at keeping A's and R's than P's, which I still tend to manage in my head.\r\n- **Sync through iCloud and GitHub**\r\n\t- Obsidian has a great ecosystem of core and community plugins. Honestly the main one I get the most use out of is Obsidian Git, which I have set up to sync every 20 minutes.\r\n\t- For the mobile app, you have to use iCloud, which I finally bit the bullet and started paying for after ~10 years of ignoring the stupid iCloud nag.\r\n- **Obsidian Publish**\r\n\t- You can customize the landing page, which I think is important for reader experience.\r\n\t- The search isn't fulltext search, so it leaves a lot to be desired.\r\n\t- You still have to manually publish changes, which feels weird.\r\n\t- You can also customize the CSS and JS, which I haven't yet but feels like an opportunity.\r\n\r\nMore tips from readers in the related thread:\r\n\r\n{% tweet 1490375997329342465 %}\r\n\r\nOverall, I'm the happiest I've ever been with my public notes so far and feel I've been both unblocked and more productive with Obsidian. Not all my notes are public, of course, so I still keep some stuff in Notion.\r\n","frontmatter":{"published":true,"description":"The case for having a -Public- Second Brain, and why I picked Obsidian.","category":"note","slug":"obsidian-brain","tags":"Meta, Learn in Public","cover_image":"https://raw.githubusercontent.com/hungsu/vileplume-obsidian/master/Vileplume.png"},"title":"Moving to Obsidian as a Public Second Brain","description":"The case for having a -Public- Second Brain, and why I picked Obsidian. ","category":"note","tags":["meta","learn in public"],"image":"https://raw.githubusercontent.com/hungsu/vileplume-obsidian/master/Vileplume.png","slug":"obsidian-brain","date":"2022-02-06T18:08:26.000Z","readingTime":"5 minutes","ghMetadata":{"issueUrl":"https://github.com/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/408","commentsUrl":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/408/comments","title":"Moving to Obsidian as a Public Second Brain","created_at":"2022-02-06T18:08:26Z","updated_at":"2022-02-22T23:58:14Z","reactions":{"url":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/408/reactions","total_count":2,"+1":0,"-1":0,"laugh":0,"hooray":0,"confused":0,"heart":1,"rocket":1,"eyes":0}}},{"type":"blog","content":"\r\nAs I build out swyxkit, I am finding that I am no longer prototyping and that I need to be able to refactor with confidence. \r\n\r\nThis makes it the right time to introduce types!\r\n\r\nI was tempted to use TypeScript since I am more familiar with that, but since [SvelteKit is written with JSDoc types](https://twitter.com/Rich_Harris/status/1440447529934417923), I figured I'd finally give that a try as I had never tried it before.\r\n\r\n![image](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/152372196-ded316b8-3111-4690-bb71-1fc801d2c471.png)\r\n\r\n\r\n## Verdict\r\n\r\n**You can see my successful conversion attempt here: https://github.com/sw-yx/swyxkit/pull/23/**\r\n\r\n![image](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/152321965-a5c3d1c5-dd6e-4e70-b66c-02376f94514b.png)\r\n\r\n\r\nI'm pleased to report that I think JSDoc Typechecking is a perfect match for light-logic projects like this blog starter - when you don't want to slow your builds down to strip out types, and you don't REALLY need to strictly typecheck every little thing. IMO you should basically aim to typecheck just the riskiest parts of your code, which are mostly function boundaries, API responses and non-string values like Date.\r\n\r\nThe whole process took me about 30 mins and I already found myself experiencing the benefits of typechecking as I tweaked the return signatures of some functions and changed the props of some components (amazing work by @dummdidumm who maintains the Svelte Language Server - it can even detect when required props are missing!)\r\n\r\nWhat follows here is an intro to Just Enough JSDoc Typechecking so you can get going with this on your own project.\r\n\r\n## Step 1: Simple variable declaration typing\r\n\r\nThe most basic jsdoc typing you can do is typing variable declarations. Since JS does implicit string conversion, I think you get the most mileage out of typing any component prop that isn't a string.\r\n\r\n```html\r\n\r\n```\r\n\r\nThis just helps prevent ugly unintended stringification.\r\n\r\nThe SvelteKit docs also strongly encourage you to annotate the SvelteKit APIs in pages:\r\n\r\n```html\r\n\r\n```\r\n\r\nand API routes:\r\n\r\n```js\r\n// src/routes/api/blog/[slug].json.js\r\n\r\n/**\r\n * @type {import('@sveltejs/kit').RequestHandler}\r\n */\r\nexport async function get() {\r\n\treturn {\r\n\t\tbody: { /* etc */},\r\n\t\theaders: {\r\n\t\t\t'Cache-Control': `max-age=0, s-max-age=${60}` // 1 minute.. for now\r\n\t\t}\r\n\t};\r\n}\r\n```\r\n\r\nOf course, most of your data is gonna come with more complex types, which you will need to reuse...\r\n\r\n## Step 2: Make a `.d.ts` file\r\n\r\nYou're going to pull your types, particularly reusable types, from this file. [Rich says](https://twitter.com/Rich_Harris/status/1489223459649560576) you should put it in `/src/lib/types.d.ts` so you can take advantage of SvelteKit's aliasing. Stub out your types and build them up as you convert the rest of the files...\r\n\r\n```ts\r\n// /src/lib/types.d.ts\r\nexport type GHComment = {\r\n\t// etc\r\n}\r\n\r\nexport type GHMetadata = {\r\n\t// etc\r\n}\r\n```\r\n\r\n## Step 3: Imported typing for variable declaration\r\n\r\nNow you can annotate more complex component props:\r\n\r\n```html\r\n\r\n```\r\n\r\nthat wasn't too bad! Go through all your Svelte files and annotate; you'll probably find that you will need to flesh out your `.d.ts` file types as you go. However, you'll still need to annotate API responses for full safety...\r\n\r\n## Step 4: Typing Node.js functions\r\n\r\nNode.js code probably has the strongest reasons to properly annotate functions since this has the most data risk - you wanna be warned any time the type signature of inputs or outputs change. Here's how to do it:\r\n\r\n```js\r\n/**\r\n * @param {import('$lib/types').GithubIssue} issue\r\n * @returns {import('$lib/types').ContentItem} \r\n */\r\nfunction parseIssue(issue) {\r\n // ...\r\n}\r\n```\r\n\r\nIf you are parsing data and just need to annotate inline functions, that's possible too:\r\n\r\n```js\r\n// before\r\nissues.forEach((issue) => {/* etc */})\r\n\r\n// after\r\nissues.forEach(\r\n\t /** @param {import('$lib/types').GithubIssue} issue */\r\n\t (issue) => {\r\n\t }\r\n)\r\n```\r\n\r\nDate sorting needs a bit of special love and care:\r\n\r\n```js\r\n// normal\r\n_allBlogposts.sort((a, b) => b.date - a.date); // Error: The left-hand side of an arithmetic operation must be of type 'any', 'number' or an enum type\r\n\r\n// ts\r\n_allBlogposts.sort((a, b) => b.date.valueOf() - a.date.valueOf()); // use valueOf to make TS happy https://stackoverflow.com/a/60688789/1106414\r\n```\r\n\r\n## Step 5: Run your code!\r\n\r\nYou can do steps 1-4 entirely in the editor, relying on the language server, but the real test of whether or not you broke anything is just running your code. I caught two big mistakes in my refactor, mostly to do with not properly typing my API responses.\r\n\r\n## Further reading\r\n\r\n- [JSDoc Reference in TypeScript Docs](https://www.typescriptlang.org/docs/handbook/jsdoc-supported-types.html#param-and-returns)\r\n- You can also use JSDoc for libraries! and output a .d.ts file for your consumers! says [Bart Veneman](https://twitter.com/bartveneman/status/1494973762659360768?s=20&t=_YC8Y38oLpjCOexhR2RWuQ)","frontmatter":{"image":"https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/152372196-ded316b8-3111-4690-bb71-1fc801d2c471.png","slug":"jsdoc-swyxkit","category":"tutorial","canonical_url":"https://swyxkit.netlify.app/how-to-add-jsdoc-typechecking-to-sveltekit"},"title":"How to add JSDoc Typechecking to SvelteKit","description":"As I build out swyxkit, I am finding that I am no longer prototyping and that I need to be able to refactor with confidence. ","category":"tutorial","tags":[],"image":"https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/152372196-ded316b8-3111-4690-bb71-1fc801d2c471.png","canonical":"https://swyxkit.netlify.app/how-to-add-jsdoc-typechecking-to-sveltekit","slug":"jsdoc-swyxkit","date":"2022-02-04T10:22:01.000Z","readingTime":"4 minutes","ghMetadata":{"issueUrl":"https://github.com/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/407","commentsUrl":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/407/comments","title":"How to add JSDoc Typechecking to SvelteKit","created_at":"2022-02-04T10:22:01Z","updated_at":"2022-04-18T18:09:06Z","reactions":{"url":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/407/reactions","total_count":3,"+1":3,"-1":0,"laugh":0,"hooray":0,"confused":0,"heart":0,"rocket":0,"eyes":0}}},{"type":"blog","content":"\r\n> Note: there was a [2023 update](https://www.swyx.io/rewrite-2023) since this post.\r\n\r\nI've rewritten this site once again.\r\n\r\n![image](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/151311175-9a15d313-cace-48a0-844e-2361644a21f5.png)\r\n\r\nFor those keeping count:\r\n\r\n- Oct 2017: Used [raw HTML/JS](https://5aa731a27b6ee82f8e825e3a--scout-videos-51664.netlify.app/)\r\n- Nov 2018: I used [Gatsby](https://5befbba205c41716cb2627ba--scout-videos-51664.netlify.app/)\r\n- Aug 2019: [Tried Gatsby Themes](https://5d7699e172ae430007210374--scout-videos-51664.netlify.app/writing/moving-to-novela)\r\n- Sep 2019: [Moved to Svelte and Sapper](https://www.swyx.io/svelte-static)\r\n- Sep 2020: [Moved to Elder.js](https://github.com/sw-yx/swyxdotio/pull/45)\r\n- Jan 2022: Moved to SvelteKit (you are here!)\r\n\r\nIf you want to have the same site without my customizations, I've also open sourced a SvelteKit starter called [swyxkit](https://github.com/sw-yx/swyxkit) that you can use as a starting point.\r\n\r\n## Problems I faced\r\n\r\nI've been very happy with the move to Svelte.js over the years ([Why Svelte?](https://www.swyx.io/why-svelte-short)). Elder.js was very fast (due to the [Islands architecture](https://jasonformat.com/islands-architecture/)) and I loved the shortcodes and flexible data layer. However two choices hobbled my productivity/satisfaction and caused me to consider a rewrite:\r\n\r\n- Having to pregenerate every page and do a full rebuild any time I changed a page\r\n- [Using Dev.to as a Headless CMS](https://www.swyx.io/devto-cms).\r\n\r\nI was excited about using Dev.to as a dual distribution strategy, but unfortunately the community seems to have completely stalled, and the API became extremely flaky (failing 9 out of every 10 calls for reasons I still do not yet understand). Dev.to also imposed additional restrictions I didn't like - an arbitrary max of 5 tweets embedded, max of 4 tags, no support for `details/summary` tags (my favorite HTML tags!) and having to manually upload my images one by one was STILL slower than I would like.\r\n\r\nBuild times also crept up from 2 to 3 minutes... when my builds succeeded.\r\n\r\n![image](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/151313388-8cbf940d-69f1-4e73-bdb0-d120a8a1ebdd.png)\r\n\r\n## Solutions\r\n\r\nI moved to SvelteKit, and used GitHub Issues as my CMS:\r\n\r\n{% twitter 1480356418817753088 %}\r\n\r\nMy builds are back down to 1 minute and I now have a free comment layer/much nicer writing experience.\r\n\r\n![image](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/151314310-442bf42e-102e-4a74-a846-936cdaee4a79.png)\r\n\r\nI also included a bunch of smaller features I've wanted, including a togglable dark mode (previously, dark mode was based on system preferences), as detailed in the swyxkit readme.\r\n\r\n## The new look\r\n\r\nThis was a rewrite, not so much a redesign, because I just wanted to remove the blockers to my writing productivity. Believe it or not I've wanted to do this rewrite for [almost a full year](https://github.com/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/5#issuecomment-624669594) before actually doing it!\r\n\r\nPermalink here: https://61f1ec1ede71a50007f6f3cd--scout-videos-51664.netlify.app/\r\n\r\n![image](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/151311175-9a15d313-cace-48a0-844e-2361644a21f5.png)\r\n\r\n![image](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/151311251-4e8f8009-3e87-4acc-afa9-f4bc1e7a6eed.png)\r\n\r\n![image](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/151311329-51c1bdb3-c978-4fd6-8a31-681d6383c2e2.png)\r\n\r\nI also added almost a year's worth of talks and podcasts that I hadn't been updating on my site.\r\n\r\n![image](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/151314959-6b1aaea9-ec29-430e-8873-87f607aeba9d.png)\r\n\r\n## Todos\r\n\r\nThings I want to add:\r\n\r\n- some \"live\" interactive component with https://replicache.dev/\r\n- some auth+faving system with Supabase\r\n- viewcounts\r\n- recommendations\r\n- lightbox and fullbleed for images\r\n- curated content index like https://jvns.ca/\r\n- user themable site\r\n- nice footnote support like in https://arcana.computer/miscellany/this-site\r\n- lead capture/newsletter drip\r\n- command palette ([Sheldon Hull](https://twitter.com/sheldon_hull/status/1486852148860268545) suggests [ninja-keys](https://github.com/ssleptsov/ninja-keys))\r\n\r\n## Addendum\r\n\r\nIssues that users spotted after I launched:\r\n\r\n{% tweet 1486725434540580871 %}\r\n\r\n- theme-color https://twitter.com/kilianvalkhof/status/1486733537004830724?s=20&t=Nrz48yQ6YNVjBDyPv8AWrQ\r\n- command palette https://twitter.com/sheldon_hull/status/1486852148860268545\r\n- doesnt reload https://twitter.com/Benghamine/status/1486768425934286848?s=20&t=Nrz48yQ6YNVjBDyPv8AWrQ ([fix here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HXg04ySByk0))\r\n- RSS bug - 3 of them\r\n\t- https://twitter.com/rubenartus/status/1486730512072777730?s=20&t=Nrz48yQ6YNVjBDyPv8AWrQ (fixed [here](https://github.com/sw-yx/swyxdotio/commit/b308ac5c5fac0611baee1ad61272d2582b43b4ec) and then\r\n\t- [here](https://github.com/sw-yx/swyxdotio/commit/74ad82dafe105746f209fb52a13ea49878593c7f) - just a lazy oversight issue, would have been spotted if i used typescript)\r\n\t- the render link didnt work with prerender: https://github.com/sw-yx/swyxdotio/pull/406\r\n- skip link and align nav https://twitter.com/Richienb2/status/1486997958595727361?s=20&t=Nrz48yQ6YNVjBDyPv8AWrQ","frontmatter":{"published":true,"description":"Discussing the 2022 migration of swyx.io to SvelteKit and GitHub Issues","category":"note","slug":"rewrite-2022","tags":"Meta, Svelte, Blogging","cover_image":"https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/151311175-9a15d313-cace-48a0-844e-2361644a21f5.png"},"title":"The Swyx.io 2022 Rewrite","description":"Discussing the 2022 migration of swyx.io to SvelteKit and GitHub Issues ","category":"note","tags":["meta","svelte","blogging"],"image":"https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/151311175-9a15d313-cace-48a0-844e-2361644a21f5.png","slug":"rewrite-2022","date":"2022-01-27T07:53:45.000Z","readingTime":"3 minutes","ghMetadata":{"issueUrl":"https://github.com/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/404","commentsUrl":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/404/comments","title":"The Swyx.io 2022 Rewrite","created_at":"2022-01-27T07:53:45Z","updated_at":"2023-01-31T08:47:38Z","reactions":{"url":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/404/reactions","total_count":11,"+1":4,"-1":0,"laugh":1,"hooray":2,"confused":0,"heart":0,"rocket":4,"eyes":0}}},{"title":"Developer Health Space - Courage and Vulnerability with Swyx","slug":"g2i-pod","tags":["LIP"],"venues":"G2i","date":"2022-01-26T00:00:00.000Z","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Qdj8CK7GOk","description":"This week, Shawn \"Swyx\" Wang, Head of Developer Experience at Temporal, joins us to discuss the value of courage and vulnerability for software developers.","category":"podcast"},{"title":"Developer Careers on Cloudcast","slug":"cloudcast-pod","tags":["Temporal","Careers"],"venues":"Cloudcast","date":"2022-01-12T00:00:00.000Z","url":"https://www.thecloudcast.net/2022/01/2022-look-ahead-developer-careers.html","description":"Shawn Wang (@swyx, Head of Developer Experience @Temporalio) talks about the breadth of developer skills needed, how developers learn new technologies, and insights into important future trends for a broad set of developers.","category":"podcast"},{"title":"Temporal as React for the backend on JSParty","slug":"jsparty-pod","tags":["Temporal"],"venues":"JSParty","date":"2022-01-06T00:00:00.000Z","url":"https://changelog.com/jsparty/208","description":"Swyx is known for learning in public, and he joins the party to teach Ali and Nick about what he’s been working on with Temporal IO, what it is, and why he’s excited about it.","category":"podcast"},{"type":"blog","content":"\r\nTurboRepo was [acquired by Vercel](https://vercel.com/blog/vercel-acquires-turborepo) recently and I caught up on Jared Palmer's excellent intro demo to see what the fuss is all about:\r\n\r\n{% youtube YX5yoApjI3M %}\r\n\r\nHere are quick notes for those too busy to view the whole thing, followed by personal reflections at the end.\r\n\r\n## TLDR\r\n\r\nSee the TLDR of this post in thread form:\r\n\r\n{% tweet 1475509463813529601 %}\r\n\r\n## Why Monorepos\r\n\r\nYou can refer to other sources for [definitions of Monorepos](https://www.toptal.com/front-end/guide-to-monorepos), but we'll spend some time on covering why they are a worthwhile goal:\r\n\r\n- You can easily make **cross cutting code changes** across multiple applications (eg `/frontend` and `/backend`) in one atomic commit\r\n- You can easily **search** across all projects\r\n- **Single source of truth** for many environment concerns you will want to standardize across your company, for example:\r\n - dependency management (important deps in one `package.json`)\r\n - code reuse of shared packages (e.g. `/design-system` or `/common-utils` or `/schema`)\r\n - configs (ESlint, TSconfig, etc)\r\n - tests (from unit to e2e)\r\n- For library authors, it is also easier to publish packages with dependencies on each other.\r\n\r\nMajor JS ecosystem tools like React, Jest, pnpm, Next.js, and Yarn itself have moved to Monorepos, as have small startups and large companies like FB and [Google](https://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2016/7/204032-why-google-stores-billions-of-lines-of-code-in-a-single-repository/fulltext).\r\n\r\n## Origin of TurboRepo\r\n\r\nThe origin story of TurboRepo started with this [looongstanding open issue](https://github.com/jaredpalmer/tsdx/issues/122) on TSDX from Nate Moore:\r\n\r\n![Image description](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/op5kdp9dw4ns6yeugdk2.png)\r\n\r\nAs an early volunteer on TSDX I studiously avoided this issue because I never worked at a company with a large monorepo, and thought that it should be solved by dedicated tools like `yarn workspace`, which at the time was just gaining traction itself.\r\n\r\nTo solve this, Jared tried to extract Lerna into a monorepo tool, and when researching how big monorepo shops like Facebook and Google did task running, discovered that a lot of their advanced techniques had not made it into the larger JS ecosystem.\r\n\r\nSo, TurboRepo was started with 3 objectives: \r\n\r\n- make a monorepo tool that utilizes as many of these advanced techniques as possible **with zero config**\r\n- make it easy to **incrementally adopt** (eg when moving from Lerna)\r\n- make sure that it **scales** (eg API design and architectural choices are flexible enough)\r\n\r\nThe fuller story of TurboRepo is told by Jared in this thread:\r\n\r\n{% twitter 1346217789942591488 %}\r\n\r\n## What TurboRepo does\r\n\r\nThe basic principle of TurboRepo is to **never recompute work that has been done before**. \r\n\r\nTo do this, it generates a dependency graph from your build pipeline from a `turbo` config in package.json, executes each task in turn, and fingerprints the input/caches the output of each task. \r\n\r\nWhen it is run a second time, if it finds work that matches a fingerprint, it restores from cache, and **replays the logs**.\r\n\r\n## How to use TurboRepo\r\n\r\nThe main CLI surface area is surprisingly small:\r\n\r\n- `npx create-turbo@latest turbo-demo` scaffolds a monorepo with apps (`docs`, `web`) and packages (design system and shared configs (eslint, tsconfig))\r\n- `turbo run build` builds all apps at once, but importantly, when you run this command again the second build completes in 100ms because everything is cached. There are a [long list of flags you can add](https://turborepo.org/docs/reference/command-line-reference) to modify what `turbo run` does and outputs.\r\n- `turbo prune --scope=` generates a sparse/partial monorepo with a pruned lockfile for a target package.\r\n- Remote Caching commands: `turbo login` and `turbo link` (explained later)\r\n\r\n## The `turbo` config key\r\n\r\nTurboRepo uses a special key in `package.json` called `turbo` ([docs here](https://turborepo.org/docs/reference/configuration)), and it is here that topological relationships between build tasks (and where to fingerprint for cache artifacts) are defined:\r\n\r\n```json\r\n{\r\n \"turbo\": {\r\n \"baseBranch\": \"origin/main\",\r\n \"pipeline\": {\r\n \"build\": {\r\n \"dependsOn\": [\"^build\"],\r\n \"outputs\": [\".next/**\"]\r\n },\r\n \"test\": {\r\n \"dependsOn\": [\"^build\"],\r\n \"outputs\": []\r\n },\r\n \"lint\": {\r\n \"outputs\": []\r\n },\r\n \"dev\": {\r\n \"cache\": false\r\n }\r\n }\r\n }\r\n}\r\n```\r\n\r\nThis helps Turbo create a Directed Acyclic Graph of your build that it can then walk in reverse for building and checking against its cache. You can even use [the `--graph` flag](https://turborepo.org/docs/reference/command-line-reference#--graph) to visualize your build graph with Graphviz.\r\n\r\n![Image description](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/yj4pqsvaws83v8owgxtw.png)\r\n\r\n(Having [tried out visualization tools before](https://twitter.com/swyx/status/1032665787436343297), imo this is a fun demo but not practically all that useful 🤷‍♂️) \r\n\r\nThe other important thing to know is that you can run all these tasks together and Turbo will parallelize as much as possible:\r\n\r\n```bash\r\nturbo run build test lint\r\n```\r\n\r\nTo understand what is running in parallel and debug build pipelines, you can even make Turbo output a profile with the `--profile` flag to inspect the traces in Chrome DevTools!\r\n\r\n![Image description](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/qhydl0cqmbisayfunrks.png)\r\n\r\n## Remote Caching\r\n\r\nRemote caching is a beta feature, but is set to be far and away the showstopper in making TurboRepo scale. Normally, caches are generated and checked locally, so if you are reviewing code that a coworker has written, you'll have to build it locally too. \r\n\r\nSounds inefficient? We can fix that.\r\n\r\nRemote Caching shares that cache globally (this is secure to that extent that hashes are secure), turning TurboRepo from a \"single player\" experience to a \"co-op multiplayer\" mode. The analogy that resonates a lot with users is that this is basically \"Dropbox for your `dist` directory\".\r\n\r\nThis is where Vercel's backing comes in - they are offering **free remote caching** on TurboRepo builds - you'll still need to make a Vercel account, and they may charge for this later - but this works whether or not your app is built or hosted on Vercel. Brilliant move for everyone concerned! All TurboRepo users get free speedups, Vercel gets a bunch of signups (with network effect) and a possible future revenue source.\r\n\r\nUsage is pretty simple:\r\n\r\n```bash\r\nnpx turbo login # login to Vercel\r\nnpx turbo link\r\n```\r\n\r\nThat's it! Could not be easier, and offers free speedups.\r\n\r\n## The Future\r\n\r\nJared ended the livestream by making a few comments on the TurboRepo roadmap\r\n\r\n- Telemetry\r\n- Sharding Parallel Tasks in other processes (currently, TurboRepo runs parallel tasks in the same singlethreaded process like Node does - to actually make use of full concurrency it should distribute that work to other processes. Temporal, [the project I work on](https://www.swyx.io/why-temporal/), could be an interesting tool for that in future\r\n- Presets (referred to as \"Turbo Season 2\")\r\n- Smaller features\r\n - Public/private security model like npm\r\n - More intelligent watch mode\r\n- There will probably be [Enterprise features](https://vercel.com/contact/turborepo) too.\r\n\r\nYou can vote on feature ideas on the TurboRepo [GitHub Community](https://github.com/vercel/turborepo/discussions) as well.\r\n\r\n## What About Nx?\r\n\r\nTurboRepo is most often compared to Nx, so I'm very grateful that Victor Savin (creator of Nx) has written [a page on the Nx docs](https://nx.dev/l/r/guides/turbo-and-nx) detailing the differences he sees vs Turborepo.\r\n\r\nHe's also made benchmarks for Nx vs TurboRepo you can try out:\r\n\r\n{% twitter 1471209016827207689 %}\r\n\r\n## Personal Takeaways\r\n\r\nTurboRepo is a big deal for the JS community not just because it addresses build speeds (which are always a crowd pleaser), but also that it is a well defined abstraction that brings a lot of value out of the box, with a declarative build pipeline, great debugging/profiling options, and great docs.\r\n\r\n![Image description](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/o3cfc9ybz5t6lq7w6htf.png)\r\n\r\nWith 74% of its code in Go, TurboRepo is a great example of the [Systems Core, Scripting Shell](https://www.swyx.io/js-third-age/#the-third-age) thesis, proving out the idea that the age of \"JS tools in JS\" is over because the need for speed on hot paths outweighs contributor learning curve concerns.\r\n\r\nMany people in the JS community (like my old self) have heard about the benefits of monorepos, but have been held back by the lack of good tooling tackling this problem head on. While there is a [long list of monorepo tooling](https://turborepo.org/docs/guides/complimentary-tools) tackling various parts of the problem, I see TurboRepo as leading the charge for the new wave of monorepo tooling that will rise to prominence in the Third Age of JavaScript, thanks to strong backing and great developer marketing from Jared and Team Vercel.\r\n\r\n## Followup: Nx Chat\r\n\r\nI did a followup chat with the Nx founders to learn more about how they think about Monorepo Tooling: \r\n\r\n{% youtube eZQ_jWaTCVM %}\r\n\r\n([share it on Twitter here!](https://twitter.com/swyx/status/1478180887884083200))\r\n\r\n## Further reading\r\n\r\nRobin Wieruch did a much better writeup on [what Monorepos are](https://www.robinwieruch.de/javascript-monorepos/) with code examples and more ideas on use cases!\r\n\r\n([share it on Twitter here!](https://twitter.com/swyx/status/1478180887884083200))","frontmatter":{"source":"devto","devToUrl":"https://dev.to/swyx/why-turborepo-will-be-the-first-big-trend-of-2022-4gfj","devToReactions":277,"devToReadingTime":6,"devToPublishedAt":"2021-12-27T16:08:03.072Z","devToViewsCount":15411,"title":"Why TurboRepo Will Be The First Big Trend of 2022","published":true,"description":"TurboRepo is a big deal for the JS community because it addresses the monorepo problem head on, bringing 85% faster build speeds and great architecture/docs/marketing.","tags":"DevTools, Summaries, JavaScript","slug":"turborepo-why","canonical_url":"https://www.swyx.io/turborepo-why","cover_image":"https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/scfrt4xkdifplcapuuw5.png","disclosure":"I have not yet used TurboRepo in a production setting."},"title":"Why TurboRepo Will Be The First Big Trend of 2022","description":"TurboRepo is a big deal for the JS community because it addresses the monorepo problem head on, bringing 85% faster build speeds and great architecture/docs/marketing. ","category":"note","tags":["devtools","summaries","javascript"],"image":"https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/scfrt4xkdifplcapuuw5.png","canonical":"https://www.swyx.io/turborepo-why","slug":"turborepo-why","date":"2021-12-27T16:08:03.072Z","readingTime":"7 minutes","ghMetadata":{"issueUrl":"https://github.com/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/163","commentsUrl":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/163/comments","title":"Why TurboRepo Will Be The First Big Trend of 2022","created_at":"2022-01-17T22:47:39Z","updated_at":"2022-05-31T21:26:14Z","reactions":{"url":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/163/reactions","total_count":0,"+1":0,"-1":0,"laugh":0,"hooray":0,"confused":0,"heart":0,"rocket":0,"eyes":0}}},{"type":"blog","content":"\r\nTwitter publishes some analytics for you, and I check them about [once a month](https://twitter.com/swyx/status/1356247268236488709), but they are extremely limited when it comes to the important things, like exploring your follower graph.\r\n\r\nThis is where Datasette comes in. Datasette is a great EDA (exploratory data analysis) tool for any arbitrary SQLite dataset. You can use it to build your own Twitter analytics!\r\n\r\nToday, at Simon Willison's prompting, I decided to try to replicate [his 2018 work in analyzing his own Twitter network](https://simonwillison.net/2018/Jan/28/analyzing-my-twitter-followers/).\r\n\r\n## TL;DR\r\n\r\nYou can check out my own dataset here: https://swyx-twitter-datasette.glitch.me/twitter/tweets?_sort_desc=favorite_count&_facet=retweeted&_facet=favorited&_facet=user&user=33521530&retweeted=1\r\n\r\nThings to try:\r\n- check out the selected facets\r\n- sort/hide individual columns\r\n- search\r\n- build up sql filters (eg favorite_count > 100, retweet_count > 100)\r\n\r\n![Image description](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/kk3myn3mja87oc6y33tj.png)\r\n\r\nKeep in mind that all of this is automatically generated from a sqlite table (which itself was automatically generated by running [twitter-to-sqlite](https://github.com/dogsheep/twitter-to-sqlite)), greatly reducing the bar for GUI-based, SQL-based EDA.\r\n\r\nAnd because it is web based and the SQL is serialized into the URL, you can easily share whatever you find with coworkers.\r\n\r\n## The How\r\n\r\n### Optional: Get Credentials\r\n\r\nThe most time consuming piece of this is going to be getting Twitter API credentials. The process is largely unchanged since 2018 - get a developer account on https://developer.twitter.com/ (some approval time may be required... so get this out of the way ASAP), then create a new app https://apps.twitter.com/ and eventually get to the four \"Keys and Tokens\" you will need to do this:\r\n\r\n![Image description](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/t11lhzhwf15r7kzb0vnf.png)\r\n\r\n### Optional: Test Your Credentials\r\n\r\nYou can test your credentials by writing a little Python script locally (`pip install requests_oauthlib`, then run `python script.py`. I also like to use [venv](https://docs.python.org/3/tutorial/venv.html))\r\n\r\n```python\r\nfrom requests_oauthlib import OAuth1Session\r\ntwitter = OAuth1Session(\r\n client_key='FILL_ME_IN',\r\n client_secret='FILL_ME_IN',\r\n resource_owner_key='FILL_ME_IN-FILL_ME_IN',\r\n resource_owner_secret='FILL_ME_IN'\r\n)\r\nprint(twitter.get( 'https://api.twitter.com/2/users/by/username/swyx').json())\r\nprint(twitter.get( 'https://api.twitter.com/2/users/1465910794114134018/following/?user.fields=public_metrics').json())\r\n```\r\n\r\nBy default you only have access to the Twitter API v2 endpoints, though you can apply for Elevated Access if you need Twitter API v1 as many libraries and blogposts are still on API v1.\r\n\r\nFrom here you can browse [the Twitter API reference](https://developer.twitter.com/en/docs/twitter-api) for what data you'd like to extract... but you don't have to, if you agree enough with Simon's opinions in [twitter-to-sqlite](https://github.com/dogsheep/twitter-to-sqlite)!\r\n\r\n### Scraping your data with twitter-to-sqlite\r\n\r\nOne thing I love about how Simon has been building Datasette is [the rich ecosystem of data extraction tools](https://github.com/topics/datasette-tool) he has also groomed. He's got standard things for extracting data from many sources he cares about into SQLite (and, as I've already said, Datasette takes it from there all the way to a viewable explorable product). \r\n\r\nSo it is with [twitter-to-sqlite](https://github.com/dogsheep/twitter-to-sqlite):\r\n\r\n```bash\r\n$ pip install twitter-to-sqlite\r\n\r\n$ twitter-to-sqlite auth\r\nCreate an app here: https://developer.twitter.com/en/apps\r\nThen navigate to 'Keys and tokens' and paste in the following:\r\n\r\nAPI key: xxx\r\nAPI secret key: xxx\r\nAccess token: xxx\r\nAccess token secret: xxx\r\n\r\n$ twitter-to-sqlite user-timeline twitter.db\r\nImporting tweets [#####-------------------------------] 2799/17780 00:01:39\r\n```\r\n\r\nThis gives you a nice little `twitter.db` file containing every tweet you've ever made or liked or retweeted that is still on your timeline (timeline gets cut off after 3,200 tweets). You can also crawl your followers with `twitter-to-sqlite followers twitter.db`.\r\n\r\n### Deploying to Glitch\r\n\r\nSimon's old method relies on Zeit Now, which has since been deprecated. Datasette will work wherever serverful web hosting works, but its nice to host this somewhere free since it is just a personal public data tool. Render.com or Fly.io would probably work, but I felt like trying out Glitch since that is [Simon's preferred platform](https://simonwillison.net/2019/Apr/23/datasette-glitch/).\r\n\r\nUnfortunately I [ran into a bunch of problems here](https://twitter.com/swyxio/status/1475170895488774146) and took a couple of hours to fix them. TLDR; just remix my Glitch:\r\n\r\n[![Remix on Glitch](https://cdn.glitch.com/2703baf2-b643-4da7-ab91-7ee2a2d00b5b%2Fremix-button.svg)](https://glitch.com/edit/#!/remix/swyx-twitter-datasette)\r\n\r\nThe important unlock here is understanding how to upload your SQLite db to Glitch for it to run. You can't just drag and drop it into the \"assets\" folder as that is just for CDN hosting, and you need access to this file in the Glitch build process. \r\n\r\nThe way I figured out how to do it was to [clone the git repo locally](https://support.glitch.com/t/possible-to-code-locally-and-push-to-glitch-with-git/2704/3) (unlike that answer, there is no more Advanced Options menu in Glitch, you have to go Tools -> Import and Export -> copy your project's Git URL), and add the file to git (on a different branch, because of Glitch's idiosyncratic setup... read the instructions on the forum).\r\n\r\n```bash\r\ngit clone https://@api.glitch.com/git/swyx-twitter-datasette\r\ncd swyx-twitter-datasette\r\n\r\ngit checkout -b addData\r\n\r\n###\r\n# add/replace your twitter.db file to this repo and commit it\r\n###\r\n\r\ngit push --set-upstream origin addData\r\n```\r\n\r\nAnd then inside Glitch you'll need to open the Terminal and do:\r\n\r\n```bash\r\ngit merge addData\r\nrefresh\r\n```\r\n\r\nAnd the twitter.db should show up in there.\r\n\r\nIf all goes well your project should be running like mine: https://swyx-twitter-datasette.glitch.me/twitter/tweets (you can rename your Glitch to a custom vanity subdomain) and you can explore to your hearts content!\r\n\r\n## The Why\r\n\r\nSo. That's a lot of work to navel-gaze at a bunch of Tweets. Why bother?\r\n\r\nIt's not really about the tweets for me. It's about lowering the cost of EDA. I'm putting in my reps when I don't need it, so that I can be faster/more confident when I do.\r\n\r\nEveryone wants to operate on data-driven insights, but the cost of wrangling data is often too high and so data, especially your own data, doesn't get looked at.\r\n\r\nEDA tools like Datasette dramatically lower the cost of data analysis, with a surprisingly simple [ELT](https://www.guru99.com/etl-vs-elt.html) contract: You handle the Extract phase, it handles the Load, and exposes a standard UI for you to do dynamic Transforms.\r\n\r\nSince the UI is constrained but has all the basic EDA features, it reduces the amount of custom coding you have to do, while giving you just enough flexibility to make queries and derive insights for any arbitrary need.\r\n\r\nAnd since can see all your data and all fields at a glance, you can come up with questions you didn't even think to ask. ELT with Datasette is the data-driven equivalent of [dumping out your legos](https://cardsmith.co/dumping-out-the-legos/).\r\n\r\n![https://i.ytimg.com/vi/AQT6uqktdOw/maxresdefault.jpg](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/AQT6uqktdOw/maxresdefault.jpg)\r\n \r\n\r\n## Further Reading\r\n\r\n- [Read the Datasette Docs](https://datasette.io/)\r\n- [Simon's PyGotham 2020 talk on Datasette here](https://simonwillison.net/2021/Jul/22/small-data/)\r\n- [Personal Data Warehouses on Hacker News](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25090218)","frontmatter":{"source":"devto","devToUrl":"https://dev.to/swyx/using-datasette-for-an-elt-personal-twitter-data-warehouse-h6i","devToReactions":25,"devToReadingTime":5,"devToPublishedAt":"2021-12-26T20:52:14.727Z","devToViewsCount":2014,"title":"Using Datasette for an ELT Personal Twitter Data Warehouse","published":true,"description":"EDA tools like Datasette dramatically lower the cost of data analysis, with a surprisingly simple ELT contract - You handle the Extract phase, it handles the Load, and exposes a standard UI for you to do dynamic Transforms.","tags":"Datasette, Tech, Data, Python","slug":"datasette-twitter","canonical_url":"https://www.swyx.io/datasette-twitter","cover_image":"https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/3o3opgce7ihmmabsgxtq.png"},"title":"Using Datasette for an ELT Personal Twitter Data Warehouse","description":"EDA tools like Datasette dramatically lower the cost of data analysis, with a surprisingly simple ELT contract - You handle the Extract phase, it handles the Load, and exposes a standard UI for you to do dynamic Transforms. ","category":"note","tags":["datasette","tech","data","python"],"image":"https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/3o3opgce7ihmmabsgxtq.png","canonical":"https://www.swyx.io/datasette-twitter","slug":"datasette-twitter","date":"2021-12-26T20:52:14.727Z","readingTime":"5 minutes","ghMetadata":{"issueUrl":"https://github.com/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/164","commentsUrl":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/164/comments","title":"Using Datasette for an ELT Personal Twitter Data Warehouse","created_at":"2022-01-17T22:54:59Z","updated_at":"2022-06-18T17:48:53Z","reactions":{"url":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/164/reactions","total_count":0,"+1":0,"-1":0,"laugh":0,"hooray":0,"confused":0,"heart":0,"rocket":0,"eyes":0}}},{"title":"Dev Community on SourceGraph podcast","slug":"sourcegraph-pod","tags":["Community"],"venues":"SourceGraph","date":"2021-12-14T00:00:00.000Z","url":"https://about.sourcegraph.com/podcast/swyx/","description":"Why is building a technical community the most effective moat out there for startups? In this episode, swyx, who runs DevRel at Temporal and co-founded the Svelte Society, joins Beyang Liu, co-founder and CTO of Sourcegraph, to discuss the stress-induced heart palpitations that led him to transition from finance to tech, show how you can harness a willingness to look stupid to become a standout member of your community, and explain why every book should come with a Discord. Along the way, swyx shares some of the ways learning in public has changed his life, including how one blog post earned two job offers.","category":"podcast"},{"title":"Temporal TypeScript SDK Full Workshop","slug":"temporal-ts-sdk-workshop","categories":["Temporal"],"description":"Full length SDK intro workshops for TypeScript SDK","instances":[{"venue":"Temporal Youtube","date":"2021-12-14","video":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CeHSmv8oF_4"}],"category":"talk","date":"2021-12-14T00:00:00.000Z"},{"title":"LIP and Temporal on MongoDB podcast","slug":"mongodb-pod","tags":["Temporal"],"venues":"MongoDB","date":"2021-12-06T00:00:00.000Z","url":"https://mongodb.libsyn.com/ep-93-swyx-learn-in-public-and-temporal","description":"I chatted about \"The Coding Career Handbook\" and Temporal.","category":"podcast"},{"type":"blog","content":"\r\nThe default Transistor.fm website is kinda ugly. \r\n\r\n![Image description](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/yoyklslz9swh8k9e317s.png)\r\n\r\nHere's mine after a bit of work: https://swyx.transistor.fm/\r\n\r\n![Image description](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/191i3t8jm0r01nefa6ef.png)\r\n\r\nHere's how to customize your Transistor.fm website if you use Transistor. But also it's a simple guide to do clientside customizations of almost any website whose code you don't control.\r\n\r\n## How To Video (3mins)\r\n\r\n{% youtube EyV6QHk63lg %}\r\n\r\n## Code\r\n\r\nHead HTML: \r\n```html\r\n\r\n```\r\n\r\nCSS: \r\n```css\r\n.site-intro {\r\n font-size: 1.25rem;\r\n width: 60ch;\r\n margin: 0 auto;\r\n}\r\n\r\n.site-credits {\r\n position: fixed;\r\n width: 100vw;\r\n bottom: 0;\r\n}\r\n\r\n#site-footer {\r\n display: hidden\r\n}\r\n\r\n#swyxembed {\r\n padding: 2rem;\r\n}\r\n.site-featured-episodes .site-episode,\r\n.site-episode-detail .site-episode {\r\n display: block;\r\n}\r\n.site-episode {\r\n display: grid;\r\n grid-template-areas: \"date title\"\r\n \"date desc\";\r\n grid-template-rows: minmax(1rem, auto) 1fr;\r\n grid-template-columns: 10ch 1fr;\r\n grid-column-gap: 1rem;\r\n margin-bottom: 1rem;\r\n}\r\n.site-episode time { grid-area: date }\r\n.site-episode time span { text-transform: none }\r\n.site-episode h2 { grid-area: title; font-size: 1.5rem }\r\n.site-episode .site-episode-summary { grid-area: desc }\r\n.site-episode nav {\r\n display: none;\r\n}\r\n```\r\n\r\n## Other customization ideas\r\n\r\nLook at the css for https://gretchen.transistor.fm/\r\n\r\nYou can also use custom fonts: https://www.avillatheory.com/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MFQMczanAm4&feature=youtu.be\r\n\r\n","frontmatter":{"source":"devto","devToUrl":"https://dev.to/swyx/how-to-customize-your-transistorfm-website-with-js-and-css-3afc","devToReactions":5,"devToReadingTime":2,"devToPublishedAt":"2021-12-03T07:58:15.406Z","devToViewsCount":276,"title":"How to customize your Transistor.fm Website with JS and CSS","published":true,"description":"The default Transistor.fm website is kinda ugly. Here's how to customize your Transistor.fm website if you use Transistor. But also it's a simple guide to do clientside customizations of almost any website whose code you don't control.","tags":"Tips, JS, CSS","slug":"customize-transistor-website","canonical_url":"https://www.swyx.io/customize-transistor-website","cover_image":"https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/191i3t8jm0r01nefa6ef.png"},"title":"How to customize your Transistor.fm Website with JS and CSS","description":"The default Transistor.fm website is kinda ugly. Here's how to customize your Transistor.fm website if you use Transistor. But also it's a simple guide to do clientside customizations of almost any website whose code you don't control. ","category":"note","tags":["tips","js","css"],"image":"https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/191i3t8jm0r01nefa6ef.png","canonical":"https://www.swyx.io/customize-transistor-website","slug":"customize-transistor-website","date":"2021-12-03T07:58:15.406Z","readingTime":"2 minutes","ghMetadata":{"issueUrl":"https://github.com/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/165","commentsUrl":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/165/comments","title":"How to customize your Transistor.fm Website with JS and CSS","created_at":"2022-01-17T22:55:01Z","updated_at":"2022-06-18T17:48:54Z","reactions":{"url":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/165/reactions","total_count":0,"+1":0,"-1":0,"laugh":0,"hooray":0,"confused":0,"heart":0,"rocket":0,"eyes":0}}},{"type":"blog","content":"\r\nYou probably already know what the top podcasts are in each domain, so my hope is to give some spotlight to the up-and-comers. (These podcasts may not have started in 2021, but they are new to me this year).\r\n\r\nWithout further ado:\r\n\r\n![https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/6p8oue24xvuj3pczz8ms.png](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/6p8oue24xvuj3pczz8ms.png)\r\n\r\n## Best New Tech Podcasts in 2021\r\n\r\n- **[Corecursive](https://corecursive.com/) - Adam Gordon Bell**: really fascinating interviews with tech OG's. Many stories that have never been told. Regularly tops Hacker News. I still have the [Apple 2001](https://corecursive.com/063-apple-2001/) episode saved.\r\n- **[Sourcegraph](https://about.sourcegraph.com/podcast/) - Beyang Liu**: In depth founder/engineer interviews from the CTO of Sourcegraph, exploring his own personal curiosity. Personal pick: [David Cramer of Sentry](https://about.sourcegraph.com/podcast/david-cramer/).\r\n- **[Stevey's Tech Talk](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZfuUWMTtMcC1DZF6HxJhqsGrBXu8Jzi7) - Steve Yegge**: Truth bombs from our industry's best truthteller. Personal pick: [Why CEOs crash and burn](https://swyx.transistor.fm/episodes/xbox-one-and-bad-execs-steve-yegge).\r\n- **[Podrocket](https://podrocket.logrocket.com/) - LogRocket's Brian, Ben, and Kate**: Interviews of the frontend ecosystem, including [yours truly](https://podrocket.logrocket.com/swyx) and [yours truly](https://podrocket.logrocket.com/svelte)! Personal pick: [Kiwicopple of Supabase](https://podrocket.logrocket.com/9)\r\n- **[Devtools.fm](https://devtools.fm/) - Justin Bennett and Andrew Lisowski**: Interviews of the frontend ecosystem, including [yours truly](https://devtools.fm/episode/13)! Personal pick: [Jason Laster of Replay.io](https://devtools.fm/episode/9)\r\n\r\n## Best New Business/Crypto Podcasts in 2021\r\n\r\n- **[Business Breakdowns](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/business-breakdowns-colossus-MXUSbYila-6/) by Jesse Pujji**: Deeply researched breakdowns of big businesses. Personal pick: [Moderna with Jason Kelly](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/business-breakdowns/moderna-the-software-of-life-V6FBhzbfMU3/).\r\n- **[The Breakdown](https://www.coindesk.com/podcasts/the-breakdown-with-nlw/) with NLW**: daily news updates on Crypto.\r\n- **[Not Boring](https://www.notboring.co/) by Packy McCormick**: Technically a newsletter, but still counts because he reads every essay on audio. Personal Pick: [Ramp's Double Unicorn Rounds](https://twitter.com/swyx/status/1431486611296964611). [His personal journey](https://twitter.com/packyM/status/1379055262913466373) is also inspiring.\r\n- **[Bankless](http://podcast.banklesshq.com/) podcast**: entertaining updates on crypto, ETH biased but not maximalist.\r\n\r\n## Best New Creator/General Podcasts in 2021\r\n\r\n- **[Creator Lab](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3lSc9lP47q-_Wyp3LCWbYw) - Bilal Zaidi**: Generic Interview Successful People podcast, but well executed. Personal Pick: [Polina Marinova](https://twitter.com/swyx/status/1351472680415883268) and [Tim Urban](https://twitter.com/swyx/status/1350824207051997192) and [Rahul Vohra](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t0HJTD_eyR8&t=47s).\r\n- **[Masters of Community](https://pod.cmxhub.com/episodes/) - David Spinks**: Truly one of the top 3 best resources on learning to build/manage community on the planet. Personal picks: [Jon Levy](https://twitter.com/swyx/status/1389389360433307650) and [Matthew Kobach](https://pod.cmxhub.com/episodes/matthew-kobach-greatest-hits)\r\n- **[Talking Too Loud](https://wistia.com/series/talking-too-loud) - Chris Savage**: Great rapport and banter with Sylvie. Personal Pick: [Jay Acunzo's picks of them](https://jayacunzo.com/3-clips?wchannelid=mkkamqxlvs&wmediaid=im2xaeptts).\r\n- **[Brains](https://www.brainspodcast.com/) - Courtland Allen and Julian Shapiro**: Still new, but great discussions from two of the most thoughtful creators out there, in an interesting 4-player format. Personal pick: [Sam Parr and Aella](https://swyx.transistor.fm/episodes/writing-to-engage-and-writing-for-action-julian-shapiro-aella-sam-parr)\r\n- **[Not Overthinking](https://notoverthinking.com/) - Abdaal Brothers**: Ali Abdaal getting the piss taken out of him by his surprisingly attractive older brother is just amazing.\r\n\r\n## Context\r\n\r\nIn 2019 I published [the list of podcasts I listen to](https://www.swyx.io/fave-podcasts/), and [last year](https://www.swyx.io/fave-podcasts-2020/) I updated it with newer podcasts, so I'm continuing that tradition this year!\r\n\r\nThe big difference is that [I now run a daily mixtape](https://www.swyx.io/personal-podcasting) which clips from all the podcasts I listen to, so you get a live \"best of\" feed from me if you [subscribe](https://swyx.transistor.fm/). I also run my own [infrequent YouTube podcast](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLH8IAbt5kqZOlrX34L93lFzOZ1k-ry_Ll) and am a panelist on [Svelte Radio](https://www.svelteradio.com/episodes). \r\n\r\n\r\n## Good But Dead\r\n\r\nI had these podcasts lined up for my end of year lists, but they also died this year so I can't continue to recommend them. However, they have some backlogs worth digging through:\r\n\r\n- [3 Clips when it was under Jay Acunzo](https://3clipspodcast.com/) - really good, inspiration for my own mixtape of podcasts\r\n- [Josh Constine's Press Club](https://constine.substack.com/) - had some good early essays on creator economy\r\n- [Under the Hood](https://underthehoodpod.robinhood.com/) - Robinhood's CEO Vlad Tenev trying to be a podcaster was both awkward and interesting.\r\n- [Spotify: A Product Story](https://open.spotify.com/show/3L9tzrt0CthF6hNkxYIeSB) - Spotify's CRDO telling Spotify's own hagiography was still well told. [First episode on Metallica and Sean Parker is great](https://twitter.com/swyx/status/1373816614999658499).\r\n\r\n## Still Good\r\n\r\nI love good picks that last! Here are some special highlights and shoutouts from [my 2020 picks](https://www.swyx.io/fave-podcasts-2020/):\r\n\r\n- **[Clublife](https://soundcloud.com/clublifebytiesto)**: Tiesto is still banging out the hits for free, amazing\r\n- **[Conan](https://www.earwolf.com/show/conan-obrien/)**: Conan, Sona and gang are still hilarious and great company. [Their recent live show was INCREDIBLE](https://www.earwolf.com/episode/live-with-will-arnett-at-the-wiltern-theatre/).\r\n- **[Software Social](https://softwaresocial.dev/)**: Michele has now pulled off a book launch ([I liked it](https://twitter.com/mjwhansen/status/1437414398184808451)) and Colleen now has a job! It has been fun to follow along.\r\n- **[Writing Excuses](https://writingexcuses.com/)**: Brandon Sanderson hasn't swung by in forever, but the tips have continued flowing! I liked the episode on [Audiobooks](https://writingexcuses.com/2020/10/25/15-43-audiobook-narration-with-bruce-d-richardson/) and they had some good stuff on MICE and Game/Worldbuilding.\r\n\r\n","frontmatter":{"source":"devto","devToUrl":"https://dev.to/swyx/fave-new-podcasts-in-2021-40k1","devToReactions":17,"devToReadingTime":4,"devToPublishedAt":"2021-12-02T07:25:13.055Z","devToViewsCount":163,"title":"Fave New Podcasts in 2021","published":true,"description":"My picks of best podcasts I found in 2021, across tech, business, and creator categories. I also pick up on best of the best from 2020.","tags":"reflections, podcasts","slug":"fave-podcasts-2021","canonical_url":"https://www.swyx.io/fave-podcasts-2021","cover_image":"https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/6p8oue24xvuj3pczz8ms.png"},"title":"Fave New Podcasts in 2021","description":"My picks of best podcasts I found in 2021, across tech, business, and creator categories. I also pick up on best of the best from 2020. ","category":"note","tags":["reflections","podcasts"],"image":"https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/6p8oue24xvuj3pczz8ms.png","canonical":"https://www.swyx.io/fave-podcasts-2021","slug":"fave-podcasts-2021","date":"2021-12-02T07:25:13.055Z","readingTime":"3 minutes","ghMetadata":{"issueUrl":"https://github.com/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/166","commentsUrl":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/166/comments","title":"Fave New Podcasts in 2021","created_at":"2022-01-17T22:55:03Z","updated_at":"2022-06-18T17:48:54Z","reactions":{"url":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/166/reactions","total_count":0,"+1":0,"-1":0,"laugh":0,"hooray":0,"confused":0,"heart":0,"rocket":0,"eyes":0}}},{"title":"React Server Components in Next.js 12 with Shawn \"swyx\" Wang","slug":"react-server-components-2021","categories":["React"],"description":"A short live stream about React Server Components support in Next.js 12. Together with swyx, we will try to build a simple notes app using the most recent Next.js version.","instances":[{"venue":"Zaiste Programming","date":"2021-11-13","video":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qIPWzRvPSxk"}],"category":"talk","date":"2021-11-13T00:00:00.000Z"},{"type":"blog","content":"\r\nWhen Apple launches a product, it doesn't come right out and say \"we're launching our new MacBook next week\". \r\n\r\n**They make you guess.**\r\n\r\nPredict. \r\n\r\nWatch. \r\n\r\nReview.\r\n\r\nThey invite people to a \"Special Event\", and throw up a logo or video that juuuust so slightly hints at what they're releasing. Journalists know to clear their schedule, other companies defer their own releases. Fanboys and the media lap it up, giving millions of dollars worth of earned attention.\r\n\r\nApple is of course a special, secretive, historic outlier, but I think even open source companies can take a leaf from their book by understanding how to shape an event, galvanize community, and become a launching pad. This was my reflection after observing Next.js Conf for the last few years, as I covered in my chat with Lee Robinson of Vercel, the \"Apple\" of web developer platforms:\r\n\r\n{% youtube mlsTlFW7BSo %}\r\n\r\n## Community Heat\r\n\r\nCommunity building is all the rage, but all too often, it takes the form of Discourse forums, Discord channels, Slack rooms, Twitter hashtags. The sheer amount of always-on, background-persistent community is bewildering (and slightly stressful, to be honest). And the quality of interaction is very hit and miss; the older I get, the less patience I have to sit around in a chat room waiting for a typing indicator to resolve to \"haha\". Yet I stick around because sometimes it upgrades into a full-blown conversation between knowledgeable individuals you can't get anywhere else.\r\n\r\nThe difference here we are observing is \"**community heat**\", a term I've borrowed from McLuhan:\r\n\r\n- \"Cold\" community is async. \"Hot\" community is sync.\r\n- Forums and Mailing lists tend to be cold: nobody ever expects a reply the same day, if at all (exceptions exist)\r\n- Chats are a chimera; cold by default, but randomly upgrading to hot when both sides happen to have the time and mood to chat.\r\n- In-person meetups and conferences are white-hot: if someone is talking to you and there's even 1-2 second gap between responses, it would be uncomfortably awkward.\r\n- Cold communities tend to be much larger, yet far less engaged, than hot communities, for obvious reasons\r\n\r\nSome communities exist purely cold - I'm thinking Reddit forums and the [comments section of YouTube videos](https://twitter.com/swyx/status/1390863292847951876) and others are hot-only (I'm thinking the ephemeral communities that spring up around conferences, that then disappear for the rest of the year).\r\n\r\nMy assertion is that communities are better with an annealing process, alternating hot and cold ([like writing blogposts](https://www.swyx.io/blogpost-annealing/)!). The \"hot\" event spills over into the cold community and keeps it warm, and the cold community passively builds excitement for the next \"hot\" event.\r\n\r\nThis is why I'm always slightly bemused when people ask me about the \"Slack or Discord?\" for building community. Most people know how to run a Slack or Discourse or Discord or whatever. I don't much care. If you have no events strategy there's only so much community you can build.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n## Get Good at Events\r\n\r\nBelow are my thoughts in an unordered list, as I do not regard myself an expert.\r\n\r\n### Venue\r\n\r\nThe days of offline-only conferences are basically over; the secret is out that content wants to be free and accessible to all. You have to be successful with online events if you want to be successful period, particularly in tech. Yet an online-only strategy is ill-advised - people are spoiling for in person connection, and you can find out so much about the customer face to face. \r\n\r\nI think the right split of online to offline is probably 90/10, or 80/20. The overall goal should be to default to online stuff, but to identify 5-10 IRL opportunities and make each absolutely unforgettable and worthwhile; a real event rather than just an appearance.\r\n\r\nFor online confs: Hopin seems popular, but you could also roll your own with the Vercel Event Starter Kit, React Conf recently did. We run Svelte Summit purely on YouTube. I also enjoy Gather.town for the novelty element although I wonder if it will get old fast.\r\n\r\nFor online meetups <100 people, Zoom is fine; above 100, you should probably use Zoom's Webinars feature where you can more tightly control attendees and manage Q&A.\r\n\r\nIRL venues should be planned and booked at least 3-6months out, for a combination of venue timelines and personal travel plannin.\r\n\r\n### Frequency\r\n\r\nThe ideal cadence for companies running community/marketing/devrel (yes I'm intentionally being obtuse about the difference) varies. \r\n\r\n- **Yearly**: Cloudflare does one [Birthday Week](https://www.swyx.io/cloudflare-go/) a year, where the goal is to dominate the news cycle for an entire week, impressing people more than if the same news were dripped out over a year. However, large news may crowd out smaller news, and the arbitrarily chunky deadline forces premature launches. AWS has resorted to \"dumping\" smaller announcements pre-Re:invent just to keep Re:invent announcements to a few hundred truly top ones.\r\n\r\n- **Quarterly**: If you ship on a semi frequent basis, you may prefer a quarterly event with all your product updates, [as WorkOS does](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCISzRlSAjy9SnLT6N5jc7pA).\r\n\r\n- **Monthly**: At Temporal, we keep it simple - one \"community meetup\" a month ([signup](https://temporal.io/meetup), [watch](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLl9kRkvFJrlSM-s-s-8WbgjN-R3Y4L7WG)). It's a \"meetup\" because we hope it is just the first of many meetups, run by us but someday hopefully entirely run by our users. We are also seeding a mailing list of hundreds of people who have come to our meetups, so that we can get them to come to a conference when we hold one in future (I call this the GitNation strategy, because that is how they lay groundwork for conferences)\r\n\r\n- **Weekly**: I like this for regular livestreams and hangouts, like Netlify's [Learn with Jason](https://www.learnwithjason.dev/) or AWS' [Containers from the Couch](https://www.youtube.com/containersfromthecouch). I think deeper relationships can only be built by showing up at least weekly; any less frequent than that, and reaching out to someone feels like \"a whole thing\".\r\n\r\n### Naming\r\n\r\nI do think that naming matters. \r\n\r\n- We've already talked about the \"Special Event\" thing. \r\n- I would never be caught dead attending a \"webinar\", but I've shown up at many a \"workshop\" with basically the same content (although inauthentic marketer types who give any webinar vibes have me reaching for the red X as soon as they open their mouth). \r\n- We've also done \"teach-ins\" and \"office hours\" with similar effect.\r\n\r\n### Curation\r\n\r\nWhen conferences first panic-moved online during Covid, they lifted-and-shifted the schedule and curation as well - 8 hour days, CFP process, the whole lot.\r\n\r\n**Then we realized nobody sits at their computer watching a livestream for 8 hours.**\r\n\r\nThis happens with every platform shift - first the Skeuomorphism, because it's familiar, then the Nativism, taking advantage of the inherent qualities of the platform from first principles with total disregard to legacy. When Microsoft [first ported Windows to mobile](https://mobiforge.com/timeline/windows-phone-history) it moved everything, start menu, keyboard and all. Took us 10 years to find the interface native to the form factor.\r\n\r\nWith Svelte Society we did the same thing, lifting and shifting the format, for our Svelte Summit conferences in 2020. This time around we are going \"native\" - instead of going thru an agonizing CFP selection process, we accepted everyone and moved the point of curation down to the produced video rather than just going by title and abstract (together with optional speaker training for this new burden). We curate the best mix for our 4 hour main stage and use the infinite shelf space of YouTube to release the videos in mini events the rest of the year.\r\n\r\nI'm certainly not holding ourselves out as exemplary; I'm just trying to give you ideas. For example I think that \"purely meritocratic\" selection processes are also not ideal - many great speakers have gone invite-only and will never apply to your blind CFP process even though they have the perfect topic. A good curator would proactively reach out as part of their service to conference attendees. Putting out a \"request for topics\" would also help.\r\n\r\n### Marketing\r\n\r\nOnly one number matters for conference marketing:\r\n\r\n**Registrations.**\r\n\r\nI'll say it louder for the people in the back.\r\n\r\n**GO FOR REGISTRATIONS.**\r\n\r\nIt's the biggest number. Market the shit out of it. It's incredible. Nobody is incentivized to question it. Everyone knows the flaws but play along anyway in wonderful kayfabe. Speakers can brag about it. Sponsors can justify bigger budgets. You don't have a physical venue so you don't actually need to worry about pesky things like fire safety and refreshments logistics. Pump it up shamelessly and often.\r\n\r\nWhat's incredible is the [reflexivity](https://www.swyx.io/mimicry-reflexivity/) of the whole thing. Humans are semi-herd creatures — an event will be big because it says it is big. \r\n\r\nMarketing matters for async much more than it does for sync. Particularly when I hear that an event has 70,000 people signed up, I'm more likely to catch up on the video async. A shitty event will have like a 0.5:1 async to live view ratio, a well marketed event is more like 10:1. (It takes actually legendary talks to breach 1000:1 and beyond).\r\n\r\nOh and don't forget to keep them around to market the *next* event.\r\n\r\n### Post Production\r\n\r\nDumping the conference video straight to YouTube is economical, but undersells the huge amount of opportunity available to brush up the quality after the event. If your async to live ratio is 10:1 then the vast majority of people will be watching your event async, and it serves as marketing for your next event. Make it awesome and cut out all the boring. Some organizers go to the extent of shooting trailers; I don't know how yet but I'll gladly welcome recommendations I can feature here.\r\n\r\n\r\nAny other event advice?","frontmatter":{"source":"devto","devToUrl":"https://dev.to/swyx/community-annealing-or-why-you-should-get-good-at-events-adg","devToReactions":17,"devToReadingTime":7,"devToPublishedAt":"2021-11-08T01:32:56.425Z","devToViewsCount":311,"title":"Community Heat, or Why You Should Get Good at Events","published":true,"description":"A piece of advice I heard about marketing and community that I've repeated to founders ever since - Get Good at Events.","tags":"Reflections, Community, DevRel","slug":"community-heat","canonical_url":"https://www.swyx.io/community-heat","disclosure":"This post was written in a rough braindump for my newsletter - it is not yet final.","cover_image":"https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/e3tphijz07vqvmfd5pn8.png"},"title":"Community Heat, or Why You Should Get Good at Events","description":"A piece of advice I heard about marketing and community that I've repeated to founders ever since - Get Good at Events. ","category":"note","tags":["reflections","community","devrel"],"image":"https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/e3tphijz07vqvmfd5pn8.png","canonical":"https://www.swyx.io/community-heat","slug":"community-heat","date":"2021-11-08T01:32:56.425Z","readingTime":"7 minutes","ghMetadata":{"issueUrl":"https://github.com/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/167","commentsUrl":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/167/comments","title":"Community Heat, or Why You Should Get Good at Events","created_at":"2022-01-17T22:55:05Z","updated_at":"2023-01-25T04:55:42Z","reactions":{"url":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/167/reactions","total_count":1,"+1":0,"-1":0,"laugh":0,"hooray":0,"confused":0,"heart":1,"rocket":0,"eyes":0}}},{"title":"Mapping Developer Experience (ft. Silas Sao, Head of Experience Design, DataStax)","slug":"mapping-devex","categories":["Devrel"],"description":"I chatted with Silas about how I'm looking at DX these days. We met at Kubecon and realized we were doing pretty similar things at our companies (which are closely related) so this is a honest discussion/session!","instances":[{"venue":"Swyx Youtube","date":"2021-10-28","video":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ddKDPikKbNk&feature=youtu.be"}],"category":"talk","date":"2021-10-28T00:00:00.000Z"},{"type":"blog","content":"\r\n## TL;DR\r\n\r\n```css\r\nhtml {\r\n max-width: 70ch;\r\n padding: 3em 1em;\r\n margin: auto;\r\n line-height: 1.75;\r\n font-size: 1.25em;\r\n}\r\n```\r\n\r\nI previously tweeted out an old version of this and accidentally got a line by line code review from 100k people:\r\n\r\n{% tweet 1449472712720601088 %}\r\n\r\nThis article is the most up to date version with everyone's feedback.\r\n\r\n## Context\r\n\r\nDan Luu always writes fascinating posts, but [the design](https://danluu.com/) makes it very painful to read:\r\n\r\n![https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FB2PmLXVEAYu7GN?format=jpg&name=large](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FB2PmLXVEAYu7GN?format=jpg&name=large)\r\n\r\nA couple years ago, [this post on HN](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19607169) was fairly popular, and I saved it on my [spark-joy repo](https://github.com/sw-yx/spark-joy/blob/master/README.md#drop-in-css-frameworks), which is a [swipe file](https://twitter.com/swyx/status/1434206569881694210) of design tips I've collected over the past few years. \r\n\r\nHowever, I noticed that the original website link is dead. So I thought I would refresh it with what I have now implemented for Dan's site:\r\n\r\n![https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FB2Po1tVIAA-i3O?format=jpg&name=large](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FB2Po1tVIAA-i3O?format=jpg&name=large)\r\n\r\n# 100 bytes of css to look great nearly everywhere\r\n\r\nThis should be simple drop-in css to look good on most displays:\r\n\r\n```css\r\nhtml {\r\n max-width: 70ch;\r\n padding: 3em 1em;\r\n margin: auto;\r\n line-height: 1.75;\r\n font-size: 1.25em;\r\n}\r\n```\r\n\r\nLet's break this down. I've adapted the original text with my own commentary.\r\n\r\n- `max-width: 70ch`: the \"readable range\" is usually 60-80 character widths, and CSS lets you express that directly with the `ch` unit. [I blogged more on line lengths last year](https://twitter.com/swyx/status/1223025553986347009).\r\n- `padding: 3em 1em`: If the display's width goes under the `max-width` set above, then this padding prevents edge-to-edge text on mobile. We use `3em` to provide top/bottom whitespace.\r\n- `margin: auto`: This is really all that is needed to center the page - applied on `html`, because Dan's site doesnt have a semantic `

` tag and `` is more likely to exist in most sites (no judgment pls, i've heard enough semantic HTML preaching). That the top tag centers itself relative to nothing is unintuitive, but thats how browsers do.\r\n- `line-height: 1.75`: Spacing between the lines to help increase visual clarity. Always leave line height unitless because [reasons](https://twitter.com/JayGilmore/status/1449731397585879040).\r\n- `font-size: 1.5em`: I've noticed that recent design trends and screen sizes have tended toward bigger font sizes. Or maybe I'm getting old. Prefer `em` or `rem` over `px` if you want to let users scale it.\r\n\r\n[Tushar points out](https://dev.to/tusharsadhwani/comment/1j1a0) that you can use `:root` instead of `` to guarantee that there is some selector present, but its a touch too fancy for me and uses an extra character :)\r\n\r\n## Optional 100 more bytes\r\n\r\nIf you can spare a few extra bytes of CSS, I'd also recommend margins for headers, paragraphs, and lists, and softening body text:\r\n\r\n```css\r\nh1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6 {\r\n margin: 3em 0 1em;\r\n}\r\n\r\np,ul,ol {\r\n margin-bottom: 2em;\r\n color: #1d1d1d;\r\n font-family: sans-serif;\r\n}\r\n```\r\n\r\n![Image description](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/7eyghddgt0v5hu0i6f9n.png)\r\n\r\n## Applying Styles on Pages You Don't Control\r\n\r\n- You can auto apply these styles on to pages with https://github.com/ankit/stylebot. I can't vouch for their security as I only just started using it.\r\n- WaterCSS is a bookmarklet or extension or script with some nice presets: https://watercss.kognise.dev/\r\n- SakuraCSS is a bookmarklet that does the same https://oxal.org/projects/sakura/bookmark/","frontmatter":{"source":"devto","devToUrl":"https://dev.to/swyx/100-bytes-of-css-to-look-great-everywhere-19pd","devToReactions":319,"devToReadingTime":3,"devToPublishedAt":"2021-10-16T21:05:53.602Z","devToViewsCount":15609,"title":"100 Bytes of CSS to look great everywhere","published":true,"description":"Simple grab and go upgrade to the base user agent stylesheet to make for readable sites","tags":"css","cover_image":"https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/8ar002arl80e64kfoxpz.png","slug":"css-100-bytes","canonical_url":"https://www.swyx.io/css-100-bytes"},"title":"100 Bytes of CSS to look great everywhere","description":"Simple grab and go upgrade to the base user agent stylesheet to make for readable sites ","category":"note","tags":["css"],"image":"https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/8ar002arl80e64kfoxpz.png","canonical":"https://www.swyx.io/css-100-bytes","slug":"css-100-bytes","date":"2021-10-16T21:05:53.602Z","readingTime":"3 minutes","ghMetadata":{"issueUrl":"https://github.com/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/168","commentsUrl":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/168/comments","title":"100 Bytes of CSS to look great everywhere","created_at":"2022-01-17T22:55:07Z","updated_at":"2022-06-18T17:48:54Z","reactions":{"url":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/168/reactions","total_count":2,"+1":0,"-1":0,"laugh":0,"hooray":0,"confused":0,"heart":0,"rocket":2,"eyes":0}}},{"title":"Connecting the dots in public on the Changelog","slug":"changelog-pod","tags":["LIP"],"venues":"Changelog","date":"2021-10-06T00:00:00.000Z","url":"https://changelog.com/podcast/467","description":"TToday we’re joined by Shawn “swyx” Wang, also known as just “swyx” — and we’re talking about his interesting path to becoming a software developer, what it means to “learn in public” and how he’s been able to leverage that process to not only level up his skills and knowlege, but to also rapidly advance his career.","category":"podcast"},{"title":"How to Market Yourself with Shawn “Swyx” Wang","slug":"uibreakfast-pod","tags":["Marketing"],"venues":"UIBreakfast","date":"2021-10-06T00:00:00.000Z","url":"https://uibreakfast.com/223-how-to-market-yourself-with-shawn-swyx-wang/","description":"Today we talk about marketing yourself, both as a personal brand and at work. Our guest is Shawn “Swyx” Wang, an engineering thought leader and author of “The Coding Career Handbook.” You’ll learn several components of defining your brand, tips on expressing that brand in public, collateral and strategies that will help you at work, and more.","category":"podcast"},{"type":"blog","content":"\r\n> See discussions on [Hacker News](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28903982) and [InfoQ](https://www.infoq.com/news/2021/10/cloudflare-r2-egress-aws/). I also discussed this on the [AWS.FM](https://mixtape.swyx.io/episodes/weekend-drop-aws-cloudflare-and-techbro-therapy-on-aws-fm) podcast.\r\n\r\nCloudflare launched on September 27, 2010, and every year since, it has made it a point to celebrate \"[Birthday Week](https://blog.cloudflare.com/tag/birthday-week/)\" with a raft of launches. By far, the show-stopper this year was the announcement of [R2 Storage](https://blog.cloudflare.com/introducing-r2-object-storage/), an S3-compatible Object Storage service that directly takes aim at [AWS' \"Hotel California\" business model](https://blog.cloudflare.com/aws-egregious-egress/). This has been extremely well received, going by the response on [HN](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28682237) and [Twitter](https://twitter.com/QuinnyPig/status/1443028078196711426). In its past 5 birthdays, Cloudflare has gone from world-class CDN to offering:\r\n\r\n- 2017: [serverless compute](https://workers.cloudflare.com/) (Workers)\r\n- 2018: [eventually consistent datastore](https://developers.cloudflare.com/workers/learning/how-kv-works) (KV)\r\n- 2019: [website hosting](https://blog.cloudflare.com/extending-the-workers-platform/) (Workers Sites)\r\n- 2020: [strongly consistent datastore](https://blog.cloudflare.com/introducing-workers-durable-objects) (Durable Objects)\r\n- 2021: [object storage](https://www.cloudflare.com/products/r2/) (R2)\r\n\r\nThis is an [impressive pace](https://blog.cloudflare.com/the-secret-to-cloudflare-pace-of-innovation/) and they are now declaring that they will be \"[the fourth major public cloud](https://www.protocol.com/enterprise/cloudflare-r2-storage-aws)\". When your market cap is $36 billion and your next biggest competitor is worth $1.6 *trillion* (~45x larger, albeit not pure-play), this is a bold statement. Many startups are trying by offering specialized [Cloud Distros](https://www.swyx.io/cloud-distros/), but all building with AWS as the presumptive winner of the \"first layer cloud\" rather than trying to compete.\r\n\r\nWhat's Cloudflare's strategy here?\r\n\r\n**My realization: The big 3 clouds are playing Chess, but *Cloudflare is playing Go*.**\r\n\r\n![Alt Text](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/dojvxo0i0u5v7cmm1d4p.png)\r\n\r\n## Two Kinds of Disruption\r\n\r\nThe canonical thoughtleader of Disruption theory is the legendary HBS Professor Clayton Christensen, and a lot has been made of [Cloudflare's Disruption](https://stratechery.com/2021/cloudflares-disruption/) of AWS; in fact, Cloudflare cofounders Matthew Prince and Michelle Zatlyn were [students of him](https://harbus.org/2011/cloudflare/) at HBS. James Allworth, their Head of Innovation, studied and [co-authored a book](https://claytonchristensen.com/books/how-will-you-measure-your-life/) with him. Prince [namechecked the Innovator's Dilemma at Cloudflare's launch](https://youtu.be/XeKWeBw1R5A?t=646) in 2010, and in 2021 is still proudly showing off a [handwritten note from him](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28708636); in short, you can be sure his lessons are never far from Cloudflare's minds.\r\n\r\nAs Ben Thompson noted in [his now-famous takedown of Christensen on the iPhone](https://stratechery.com/2013/clayton-christensen-got-wrong/), people often miss that he had *two* theories of disruption:\r\n\r\n- **New Market Disruption**: When incumbents ignore new technologies until it is too late.\r\n - Allworth recently wrote an instant-classic application of this on [Intel (x86/CISC) vs Apple Silicon (ARM/RISC)](https://jamesallworth.medium.com/intels-disruption-is-now-complete-d4fa771f0f2c)\r\n- **Low-End Disruption**: When vertically integrated premium incumbents get disrupted by \"cheap and good enough\" modular providers.\r\n\r\n> A third model of disruption comes from Kevin Kwok's [Atomic Concepts](https://kwokchain.com/2021/02/05/atomic-concepts/), but that is a closer fit for the [Cloud Distros](https://www.swyx.io/cloud-distros/) thesis than Cloudflare.\r\n> \r\n\r\nOn the first theory: Cloudflare has some excellent technologists — [John Graham-Cumming](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Graham-Cumming), [Kenton Varda](https://www.linkedin.com/in/kenton-varda-5b96a2a4/) and [Rita Kozlov](https://ritakozlov.com/about/) come to mind — and it is doing some cool things with V8 isolates and dynamic routing, but it doesn't (in my mind) have a clear claim on the overall new technology angle, since AWS created the modern serverless paradigm, [open-sourced Firecracker](https://www.amazon.science/blog/how-awss-firecracker-virtual-machines-work), and [is using Lambda for half of all new applications](https://www.protocol.com/newsletters/protocol-enterprise/serverless-container-aws) (though Cloudflare is also [aggressively dogfooding Workers](https://blog.cloudflare.com/the-secret-to-cloudflare-pace-of-innovation/)).\r\n\r\nMost of the disruption discussion focuses on the second model of disruption, and it rings true. Cloudflare took a part of the cloud nobody valued, gave away an insanely good free offering, and quietly accumulated an [80% market share](https://w3techs.com/technologies/cross/proxy/content_delivery). Meanwhile, when people think of \"Tier 1\" AWS services, its Cloudflare equivalent, Amazon CloudFront, rarely gets any love, and the official AWS Twitter account [hasn't tweeted about it in almost a year](https://twitter.com/search?q=from%3Aawscloud%20cloudfront&src=typed_query&f=live). Cloudflare leveraged their foothold into selling premium security services, and now is expanding into other value added pieces by leaning into a fundamentally different (high fixed cost, near zero marginal cost) business model the larger incumbents structurally cannot follow.\r\n\r\nThis, at least, is how Ben Thompson framed it in [his writeup on Cloudflare's Disruption](https://stratechery.com/2021/cloudflares-disruption/):\r\n\r\n[![Alt Text](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/7258tf9irknumz5db2vg.png)](https://stratechery.com/2021/cloudflares-disruption/)\r\n\r\nBut this diagram is a little too neat. It imagines the two clouds as worlds apart. Yet R2 is explicitly designed as S3-compatible; in Prince's words, you can [set it to \"slurp\" mode](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28703464) and you magically have a S3 interface with egress that is [six orders of magnitude cheaper](https://twitter.com/QuinnyPig/status/1443076111651401731?s=20). Similarly, the original Cloudflare service could always be used together with EC2, and Cloudflare Workers have different enough usecases and limitations from AWS Lambda and Lambda@Edge that you could conceivably have a stack using all of them. \r\n\r\nThis isn't Apple vs Android; premium and vertically integrated vs cheap and modular; incompatible ecosystems, and never the twain shall meet. \r\n\r\nThis is something else.\r\n\r\n## Cloudflare and the Rules of Go\r\n\r\nIn the classic game of Go, you [capture pieces](https://www.pandanet.co.jp/English/learning_go/learning_go_6.html) by surrounding your opponents, instead of directly replacing their spot.\r\n\r\n![Basic Go Capture gif](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/7idppjskwr10z817xo42.gif)\r\n\r\n### Storage Capture\r\n\r\nYou could view Cloudflare's Bandwidth Alliance and R2 as an \"encircling\" move around AWS' previously secure market position with S3. By promising to be API compatible (including offering S3's eleven-nines durability guarantee and free infrequent access), Cloudflare has cut off nearly all of AWS' remaining \"liberties\", putting it in \"[atari](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Go_terms#Atari)\". If Cloudflare's offering matures enough to be seen as a strict superset, it places the final stone, capturing the \"cloud storage\" territory. \r\n\r\n![Alt Text](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/o4kk6ucmg8mbqd0t0yzw.gif)\r\n\r\n### Product Strategy\r\n\r\nIn Chess, pieces have different values and capabilities. Bishops are worth 3 points and move diagonally, Rooks are worth 5 and move in straight lines, and so on. Pieces are best deployed in a sequence chain where higher value pieces support lower value ones.\r\n\r\n![Alt Text](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/buwls1amzbahfv0q30d6.png)\r\n\r\nIn Go, each piece is indistinguishable from the other; it is the *network position* that counts, not any individual piece. Support doesn't matter so much as adjacent territory claimed; in the picture below, the four white pieces on the left do far less than the four black pieces on the right.\r\n\r\n![Alt Text](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/pwwiby0brxdq3d7mzt6r.png)\r\n\r\nCompare this to public statements about how Cloudflare works. [From Prince](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28703194): \r\n\r\n> **Since every server in our network runs every service**, once we’re in for one thing means everything we do in the region gets better and less expensive to operate. This means, counter intuitively, as we add more locations to our network our costs generally go down, not up.\r\n> \r\n\r\nSo while AWS has [17 ways to run containers](https://www.lastweekinaws.com/blog/the-17-ways-to-run-containers-on-aws/) and [7 ways to do async message processing](https://serverlessfirst.com/aws-async-message-services/), all overlapping and reinforcing and supporting each other, Cloudflare will tend toward introducing singular primitives, [stuff them in a box](https://blog.cloudflare.com/cloudflare-for-offices/#built-for-purpose), and try to ship those boxes to [as many places as will possibly take them](https://blog.cloudflare.com/cloudflare-for-offices/). If they could install Cloudflare on your mobile phone, they would (this gets them dangerously close to being a [real life Pied Piper](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5JM8bkJLLjM)).\r\n\r\n> Update: I have been informed that you can in fact [install Cloudflare on your mobile phone](https://blog.cloudflare.com/1111-warp-better-vpn/)...\r\n\r\n### Territory Wins\r\n\r\nIn Chess, you only win when you checkmate the King, which in effect has infinite point value, winner-take-all. \r\n\r\nIn Go, you win by amount of territory claimed, and it is near impossible for one side to end up with zero territory. Perhaps this is more true to real life.\r\n\r\n![Alt Text](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/q8ne0yo5vzoytu04qdkv.png)\r\n\r\nWhile AWS boasts an impressive [230+ points of presence](https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/global-infrastructure/), Cloudflare has [interconnects with 10,000 networks](https://www.cloudflare.com/network/) including \"every major ISP, cloud provider, and enterprise\". These aren't the same thing, but it reflects the substantially different game that Cloudflare is playing. From the point of view of users, Cloudflare can be much easier to use and is much more of a painkiller than other big cloud services in their stack, despite perhaps having a single digit % of mindshare and wallet share. This puts Cloudflare within a stone's throw of Ben Thompson's other big claim to fame in Tech Strategy, [Aggregation Theory](https://stratechery.com/aggregation-theory/) (the Intro to Tech Strategy chapter in [my book](https://www.learninpublic.org/) is free if you want my take on it).\r\n\r\nStrategically, \"Territory over Positioning\" happens to be exactly the right call. In a zero-sum market that isn't growing, you want to jockey for position and take out enemies. In a positive-sum, infinitely expanding market like Cloud, you want to encircle them.\r\n\r\n### Watch for Sente\r\n\r\nTo [quote Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Go_terms#Gote,_sente_and_tenuki), a move that overwhelmingly compels a player into a particular follow-up move is said to have \"sente\" (先手), or \"initiative\". In most games, the player who maintains \"sente\" most of the time will win.\r\n\r\nThere is a lot of speculation that AWS will have to respond somehow to Cloudflare's provocations:\r\n\r\n{% twitter 1444016487304364036 %}\r\n\r\nBut beyond a [standard PR response](https://www.infoworld.com/article/3634406/cloudflare-hopes-lack-of-outbound-data-fees-will-convert-aws-s3-users-to-its-r2-storage-service.html), I doubt AWS will respond to mere noise - S3 data egress revenues have to take a significant downturn before AWS will be compelled to act. But when it does, every future move of Cloudflare's will be taken increasingly seriously. Cloudflare acts and talks like it has \"sente\" now, but it isn't real until AWS (or the other big clouds for that matter) feel forced to specifically respond.\r\n\r\n## Conclusion: Establish, Envelop, Expand\r\n\r\nWhile the tech industry is used to come-from-below disruption, and the software industry is increasingly grasping class-for-the-masses atomic concepts, I believe Cloudflare is writing a new playbook that is the little-guy counterpart of the [embrace, extend, extinguish](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish) model used by Microsoft.\r\n\r\nBecause it involves API compatibility, this playbook is particularly relevant to developer tools, and is protected by [the Supreme Court ruling in Google v Oracle](https://twitter.com/swyx/status/1379091545102503937). If I were to summarize it in three words, looking over Cloudflare's history and [annual report](https://d18rn0p25nwr6d.cloudfront.net/CIK-0001477333/fa0c28c8-a883-45cd-aba8-0b9c3249cc14.pdf), I might call it:\r\n\r\n- **Establish**: Establish a foothold in something incumbents don't care enough about\r\n- **Envelop**: Reverse-proxy something that incumbents don't serve customers well on\r\n- **Expand**: cross-sell other premium products and services until they are more customers of you than they are customers of the incumbent.\r\n\r\nGiven Cloudflare's fundamentally less-centralized approach to growing its cloud, it is no surprise that it [announced its first Ethereum product](https://blog.cloudflare.com/announcing-web3-gateways/) this Birthday Week; although it remains to be seen if a Web2-native company can really drop enough of its assumptions to handle Web3 threats or opportunities. If we are truly in the \"early Internet\" days of Web3, only the paranoid might survive here. Fortunately, Prince seems to be a [vocal fan of Andy Grove](https://twitter.com/search?q=from%3Aeastdakota%20grove&src=typed_query&f=top) as well.","frontmatter":{"source":"devto","devToUrl":"https://dev.to/swyx/eating-the-cloud-from-outside-in-1n2d","devToReactions":30,"devToReadingTime":8,"devToPublishedAt":"2021-10-04T02:23:15.016Z","devToViewsCount":776,"title":"Eating the Cloud from Outside In","published":true,"description":"AWS is playing Chess. Cloudflare is playing Go.","tags":"Cloud, AWS, Strategy","slug":"cloudflare-go","canonical_url":"https://www.swyx.io/cloudflare-go","cover_image":"https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/4zf8a4nppo2jppogrshg.png"},"title":"Eating the Cloud from Outside In","description":"AWS is playing Chess. Cloudflare is playing Go. ","category":"note","tags":["cloud","aws","strategy"],"image":"https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/4zf8a4nppo2jppogrshg.png","canonical":"https://www.swyx.io/cloudflare-go","slug":"cloudflare-go","date":"2021-10-04T02:23:15.016Z","readingTime":"8 minutes","ghMetadata":{"issueUrl":"https://github.com/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/169","commentsUrl":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/169/comments","title":"Eating the Cloud from Outside In","created_at":"2022-01-17T23:01:05Z","updated_at":"2022-09-08T17:16:20Z","reactions":{"url":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/169/reactions","total_count":2,"+1":2,"-1":0,"laugh":0,"hooray":0,"confused":0,"heart":0,"rocket":0,"eyes":0}}},{"title":"Learning in Public with SWYX on Thunder Nerds","slug":"thundernerds-pod","tags":["LIP"],"venues":"ThunderNerds","date":"2021-10-03T00:00:00.000Z","url":"https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/thunder-nerds/287-learning-in-public-with-Y4yNEbFi8Kh/","tweet":"https://twitter.com/thundernerds/status/1444725115766415364?s=20","description":"Today, we're thrilled to have Shawn as a guest on our podcast to discuss the past, present, and future state of JavaScript as well as the world of developer ergonomics and the magical possibilities of effortless platform management.","category":"podcast"},{"title":"Scaling and Measuring Developer Relations (with Sai Senthilkumar of Redpoint)","slug":"measuring-devrel-talk","categories":["Devrel"],"description":"I was interviewed by Sai of Redpoint for about 150 founders and devrel folks based on these blogposts","instances":[{"venue":"Swyx Youtube","date":"2021-09-25","video":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=guK1XiLQbH8"}],"category":"talk","date":"2021-09-25T00:00:00.000Z"},{"title":"Third Age of JS on WorkingCode","slug":"workingcode-pod","tags":["JavaScript"],"venues":"WorkingCode","date":"2021-09-22T00:00:00.000Z","url":"https://www.bennadel.com/blog/4120-working-code-podcast-episode-041-the-third-age-of-javascript-with-shawn-swyx-wang.htm","tweet":"https://twitter.com/bennadel/status/1440657316441776135?s=21","description":"Today, we're thrilled to have Shawn as a guest on our podcast to discuss the past, present, and future state of JavaScript as well as the world of developer ergonomics and the magical possibilities of effortless platform management.","category":"podcast"},{"type":"blog","content":"\r\n> Given as a talk for Infoshare 2022 ([Slides](https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1BPiRzSkybfcajtaPv0KpUi229J0Rrsh_1KbdTRiSOUA/edit#slide=id.g35ed75ccf_022)). Translations: [Russian](https://t.me/super_oleg_dev/27)\r\n\r\n![Alt Text](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/uqbmd7yo8iwhmttuq0np.png)\r\n\r\n*[Edit this chart](https://excalidraw.com/#json=6042109563895808,4Powv_4gGx0kX9ZZmg6l7w)*\r\n\r\nWatching recent trends in client-server paradigms, from Apollo GraphQL to React Server Components to Rails Hotwire, I've had a revelation that helped me make sense of it all: They're all abstractions over REST!\r\n\r\nThere are two schools of thought:\r\n\r\n- **Smart Client**: State updates are rendered clientside first, then sent back to the server.\r\n - **You can roll your own**: Use a state management solution like **Redux** or **Svelte Stores** and handwrite every piece of the client-server coordination logic.\r\n - **You can use libraries that combine state and data fetching**: **Apollo Client**, **React Query**, [RxDB](https://github.com/pubkey/rxdb), [GunDB](https://gun.eco/), [WatermelonDB](https://nozbe.github.io/WatermelonDB/) and [Absurd-SQL](https://jlongster.com/future-sql-web) all do dual jobs of fetching data and storing related state. (you can see [parallel implementations here](https://github.com/pubkey/client-side-databases) if evaluating)\r\n - You can use frameworks that abstract it away for you: **Blitz.js** and **Next.js**\r\n - **Or you can take it off the shelf**: **Google's Firebase** and **AWS' Amplify/AppSync** are fully vendor provided and vertically integrated with backend resources like auth, database, and storage (arguably [MongoDB Realm](https://www.mongodb.com/realm) and Meteor's [minimongo](https://www.npmjs.com/package/minimongo) before it)\r\n- **Smart Server**: State updates are sent to the server first, which then sends rerenders to the client (whether in HTML chunks, serialized React components, or XML).\r\n - [Phoenix Liveview](https://fly.io/blog/how-we-got-to-liveview/)\r\n - [Rails Hotwire](https://github.com/hotwired/hotwire-rails)\r\n - [React Server Components](https://www.swyx.io/react-server-components-demo/)\r\n - [ASP.NET Web Forms](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/previous-versions/bb386448(v=vs.140)?redirectedfrom=MSDN)\r\n\r\nOf course the \"Smart Server\" paradigm isn't wholly new. It has a historical predecessor — let's call it the \"Traditional Server\" paradigm. The Wordpress, Django, Laravel type frameworks would fill out HTML templates and the browser's only job is to render them and send the next requests. We gradually left that behind for more persistent interactive experiences with client-side JS (nee AJAX). For a long time we were happy with just pinging REST endpoints from the client, ensuring a clean separation of concerns between frontend and backend. \r\n\r\nSo why are we tearing up the old client-server paradigm? And which side will win?\r\n\r\n## It's about User Experience\r\n\r\nIronically, the two sides have very different goals in UX and would probably argue that the other is less performant.\r\n\r\n- Smart clients enable offline-first apps and optimistic updates so your app can keep working without internet and *feels* instant because you are doing CRUD against a local cache of remote data (I wrote about this in [Optimistic, Offline-First Apps](https://www.swyx.io/svelte-amplify-datastore) and RxDB has a [good writeup here](https://rxdb.info/offline-first.html)).\r\n - This improves **perceived performance for apps**.\r\n - However their downside is tend to come with large JS bundles upfront: Firebase adds as much as 1mb to your bundle, Amplify got it down to 230kb after a lot of modularization effort, Realm stands at 42kb.\r\n- Smart servers directly cut JS weight by doing work serverside rather than clientside, yet seamlessly patching in updates *as though they were done clientside*. Facebook has reported as high as [29% bundle reduction](https://twitter.com/swyx/status/1341151070743982080).\r\n - This improves **first-load performance for sites** and reduces total JavaScript sent throughout the session.\r\n - However their downside is that every single user of yours is doing their rendering on *your* server, not their browser. **This is bound to be more resource intensive and inserts a full network roundtrip for every user interaction**. The problem is mitigated if you can autoscale compute AND storage at the edge (eg with serverless rendering on [Cloudflare Workers](https://twitter.com/threepointone/status/1376248810003955716) or [AWS Lambda](https://twitter.com/swyx/status/1341951585396506624)). There are also real security concerns that should get ironed out over time.\r\n\r\nThe \"winner\" here, if there is such, will depend on usecase - if you are writing a web app where any delay in response will be felt by users, then you want the smart client approach, but if you are writing an ecommerce site, then your need for speed will favor smart servers.\r\n\r\n## It's about Developer Experience\r\n\r\n- **Platform SDKs**. For the Frontend-Platform-as-a-Service vendors like Firebase and AWS Amplify, their clients are transparently just platform SDKs — since they have total knowledge of your backend, they can offer you a better DX on the frontend with idiomatic language SDKs.\r\n- **Reducing Boilerplate**. Instead of a 2 stage process of writing a backend handler/resolver and then the corresponding frontend API call/optimistic update, you can write the backend once and codegen a custom client, or offer what feels like direct database manipulation on the frontend (with authorization and syncing rules).\r\n - The Smart Server boilerplate reduction is *extreme*, since the syncing protocol eliminates all need to coordinate client-server interactions. [Quote from a LiveView user](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28621830): \r\n\r\n > \"LiveView is absurd. It's the biggest change I've experienced in web development since Rails v1. I've been able to build rich, interactive, games without a single line of Javascript. It takes complicated server / api / front-end build projects and results in literally 1/10th the amount of code for the same result.\"\r\n- **Offline.** Both Firebase Firestore and Amplify AppSync also support offline persistence. Since they know your database schema, it's easy to offer a local replica and conflict resolution. There are vendor agnostic alternatives like [RxDB](https://github.com/pubkey/rxdb) or [Redux Offline](https://github.com/redux-offline/redux-offline) that take more glue work.\r\n - Being Offline-first requires you to have a local replica of your data, which means that doing CRUD against your local replica can be much simpler (see below).\r\n- **Reducing Boilerplate for Optimistic Updates**.\r\n - When you do normal optimistic updates, you have to do 4 things:\r\n 1. send update to server, \r\n 2. optimistically update local state, \r\n 3. complete the optimistic update on server success,\r\n 4. undo the optimistic update on server fail\r\n - With a local database replica, you do 1 thing: write your update to the local DB and wait for it to sync up. The local DB should expose the status of the update (which you can reflect in UI) as well as let you centrally handle failures.\r\n- **People**. This is an organizational, rather than a technological, argument. How many times have your frontend developers been \"blocked by backend\" on something and now have to wait 2-3 sprints for someone else to deliver something they need? It is hugely disruptive to workflow. Give the developer full stack access to whatever they need to ship features, whether it is serverless functions, database access or something else. Smart Clients/Servers can solve *people* problems as much as UX problems.\r\n - This is why I am a big champion of shifting the industry divide from \"frontend vs backend\" to \"[product vs platform](https://twitter.com/swyx/status/1097334440169107456?s=20)\". Chris Coyier's term for this is [The All-Powerful Frontend Developer](https://css-tricks.com/the-all-powerful-front-end-developer/).\r\n - GraphQL is also secretly a \"people technology\" because it decouples frontend data requirements from a finite set of backend endpoints.\r\n\r\nBoth smart clients and smart servers greatly improve the DX on all these fronts.\r\n\r\n## It's about Protocols\r\n\r\nBetter protocols lead to improved UX (eliminating user-facing errors and offering faster updates) and DX (shifting errors left) and they're so relevant to the \"why are you avoiding REST\" debate that I split them out to their own category. Technically of course, whatever protocol you use may be a layer atop of REST - if you have a separate layer (like [CRDTs](https://github.com/jlongster/crdt-example-app)) that handles syncing/conflict resolution, then that is the protocol you are really using.\r\n\r\nA lot of these comments will feature GraphQL, because it is the non-REST protocol I have the most familiarity with; but please feel free to tell me where other protocols may fit in or differ.\r\n\r\n- **Type Safety**: GraphQL validates every request at runtime. [trpc](https://trpc.io/docs/rpc) does it at compile time.\r\n - Increased type annotation offers better codegen of client SDKs that you would otherwise have to hand-write. This is a much more established norm in gRPC than GraphQL and I'm not sure why.\r\n- **Bandwidth**: Sending less data (or data in a format that improves UX) over the wire\r\n - GraphQL helps solve the [overfetching](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/44564905/what-is-over-fetching-or-under-fetching) problem. In practice, I think the importance of this is overhyped unless you are Facebook or Airbnb. However the usefulness of [persisted queries](https://www.swyx.io/why-graphql-variables/) for solving *upload* bandwidth problems is underrated.\r\n - Hotwire sends [literal HTML Over The wire](https://hotwired.dev/)\r\n - React Server Components sends [serialized component data](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VA3TFymZlW4) over the wire; more compact because it can assume React, and smoothly coordinated with on-screen loading states\r\n- **Real-time**: offering \"live\" and \"collaborative\" experiences on the web\r\n - This is doable with periodic polling and long-polling, but more native protocols like UDP, WebRTC and WebSockets are probably a better solution\r\n - [Replicache](https://replicache.dev/) (used for [Next.js Live](https://nextjs.org/live)) and [Croquet](https://www.croquet.io/) look interesting here\r\n - UDP itself seems like a foundation that is ripe for much more protocol innovation; even [HTTP/3](https://www.stackscale.com/blog/http3/) will be built atop it\r\n\r\nThere remain some areas for growth that I don't think are adequately answered yet:\r\n\r\n- **Performance**: One nightmare of every backend developer is unwittingly letting a given user kick off an expensive query that could choke up system resources. Complexity budgets are not a solved problem in GraphQL. It's a touchy subject, but new protocols can at least open up a more interesting dance between performance and flexibility.\r\n- **Security**: allowing frontend developers direct database access requires much more guard rails around security. Vendors with integrated auth solutions can help somewhat, but the evangelists for a new protocol need to be as loud about their security requirements as they are the developer experience upsides.\r\n\r\n## Not Everyone is Anti-REST\r\n\r\nYes of course my title is a little clickbaity; REST is perfectly fine for the vast majority of webdevs. There are even people pushing boundaries within the REST paradigm. \r\n\r\n- [Remix](https://remix.run/), the soon-to-be-launched React metaframework from the creators of React Router, embraces native browser standards so you get progressive enhancement \"for free\", for example requiring that you [POST from a HTML form](https://remix.run/features) (they have clarified that [anything but GET is fine](https://twitter.com/remix_run/status/1439976471796203520?s=20), and they are pro-HTTP, and neutral REST)\r\n- [Supabase](https://supabase.io/) (where I am an investor) is a \"smart client\" solution that works equally well on the server, which invests heavily in the [open source PostgREST project](https://postgrest.org/en/v8.0/).\r\n\r\n---\r\n\r\n## Followups\r\n\r\n### Transitional Apps\r\n\r\nRich Harris recently gave a keynote at Jamstack conf that framed his take on this issue ([TLDR here](https://twitter.com/Rich_Harris/status/1446601175197880325)):\r\n\r\n{% youtube 860d8usGC0o %}\r\n\r\n### Reader Feedback\r\n\r\n- Jonathan W: \"The framing of the issue got my brain percolating a bit. The entire situation feels very similar to the first time a developer recognizes object-relational impedance mismatch—all the subtle differences that start to crop up as you layer an Application Framework on top of an ORM on top of an RDBMS on top of your business domain (you know, that kind of important topic). Each layer of abstraction is acceptable by itself, but the effects compound at each level and over time.\"\r\n- [@thxdr](https://twitter.com/thdxr): Other format efforts worth exploring: [JSONAPI](https://jsonapi.org/) is a JSON REST spec, and the [Relay spec](https://relay.dev/docs/guides/graphql-server-specification/) is essentially a GraphQL superset spec","frontmatter":{"source":"devto","devToUrl":"https://dev.to/swyx/why-do-webdevs-keep-trying-to-kill-rest-j2j","devToReactions":274,"devToReadingTime":8,"devToPublishedAt":"2021-09-20T14:46:38.648Z","devToViewsCount":13999,"title":"Why do Webdevs keep trying to kill REST?","subtitle":"The epic client-server battle of our time","published":true,"description":"How I broke out of the tiresome REST vs GraphQL debate - by realizing that the real battle is between Smart Clients and Smart Servers!","tags":"React, GraphQL, REST, Supabase","slug":"client-server-battle","canonical_url":"https://www.swyx.io/client-server-battle","cover_image":"https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/uqbmd7yo8iwhmttuq0np.png","disclaimer":"This post requires passing familiarity with all the technologies mentioned - there are too many to introduce individually, so please google them or ask me for a primer separately (I'm serious, if you can't find a good \"What is X?\" blogpost for something please ask)."},"title":"Why do Webdevs keep trying to kill REST?","subtitle":"The epic client-server battle of our time","description":"How I broke out of the tiresome REST vs GraphQL debate - by realizing that the real battle is between Smart Clients and Smart Servers! ","category":"note","tags":["react","graphql","rest","supabase"],"image":"https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/uqbmd7yo8iwhmttuq0np.png","canonical":"https://www.swyx.io/client-server-battle","slug":"client-server-battle","date":"2021-09-20T14:46:38.648Z","readingTime":"9 minutes","ghMetadata":{"issueUrl":"https://github.com/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/170","commentsUrl":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/170/comments","title":"Why do Webdevs keep trying to kill REST? ","created_at":"2022-01-17T23:01:07Z","updated_at":"2022-10-07T12:43:31Z","reactions":{"url":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/170/reactions","total_count":0,"+1":0,"-1":0,"laugh":0,"hooray":0,"confused":0,"heart":0,"rocket":0,"eyes":0}}},{"title":"React and the Meta of the Web with Sunil Pai","slug":"sunil-pai-pod","categories":["React"],"description":"A wideranging podcast with Sunil covering the future of React, the Third Age of JavaScript, and the Meta of online discourse.","instances":[{"venue":"Swyx Youtube","date":"2021-09-20","video":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3h1WICelqs"}],"category":"talk","date":"2021-09-20T00:00:00.000Z"},{"type":"blog","content":"\nI was on the other side of the world when it happened.\n\nMy memory is curiously spotty about this major event I lived through. I remember exactly what I was doing at the time; yet I remember almost nothing else after.\n\nSingapore is ~12 hours ahead of New York, so I was just finishing up my night class at home, walking out to our living room TV telegraphing that the world had forever changed. I remember thinking how it was a horrific accident, and then seeing footage of the second plane and realizing it was no accident. I remember the third plane crashing into Pentagon. Then the fourth. Drip-fed to us minute by minute through our local TV news, by scared reporters who barely knew any more than we did.\n\nI don't know how I went to sleep that night. I remember looking at my baby sister, playing in her pen. Totally oblivious that the world she was born into had changed forever. (I would get that feeling again 2 years later, as [SARS](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2002%E2%80%932004_SARS_outbreak) threatened to lock down Singapore in the first coronavirus outbreak of our lifetimes.)\n\nI didn't have any American friends at the time so it never got personal. But we watched with horror and confusion as the stories trickled out; [the Falling Man](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Falling_Man), [the Flight 93 phone calls](https://www.nps.gov/flni/learn/historyculture/phone-calls-from-flight-93.htm), [the firefighters](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raising_the_Flag_at_Ground_Zero). I have no memory of how my parents or teachers dealt with it or moved on from it. I was myself unaware of how the military response moved from Afghanistan to Iraq and the intense debate prior and the quagmire after.\n\nAs a country with a 22% Muslim population, surrounded by other majority Muslim countries, tensions definitely were tight. First, copycat terrorists had to be preempted. Second, relationships needed to be rebuilt between faiths. [We would spend the next 1-7 years doing this.](https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/politics/timeline-20-years-of-securing-singapore-following-911-attacks)\n\nTravel didn't happen for me until about 4 years later when I went on my first international trip for a choir competition. By then almost all the security measures you have today were in place, including the [shoe requirement](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001_shoe_bomb_attempt) (which now seems to have faded), although they had yet to [ban water](https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/565368/tsa-airport-liquids-rule-water-bottles-explained), and the X Ray machines weren't as fancy. For sure the days of [Rachel casually walking up to a flight](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1q4w4wq8Cw) 30 minutes before departure were gone.\n\nLater when I learned more about geopolitics we would debate [The End of History](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_End_of_History_and_the_Last_Man) vs [The Clash of Civilizations](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clash_of_Civilizations) at school and I recall my classmates having very strong opinions without having really read either book. It's still not clear to me that any of that was at all useful or relevant. I remember reading dire essays about the disruptive threat of nonstate actors, yet, [as Noah Smith notes](https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/the-911-era-is-over-good), state power won, once citizens gave up their privacy.\n\nI wish I had journaled more back then. I wish I had told myself how it felt living through what I knew to be a special time. I wish I had close Muslim friends to process it with. And I wish I appreciated the difference between sudden tragedy and chronic, endemic disasters.","frontmatter":{"source":"devto","devToUrl":"https://dev.to/swyx/september-11th-from-singapore-1a6l","devToReactions":7,"devToReadingTime":3,"devToPublishedAt":"2021-09-11T22:26:53.242Z","devToViewsCount":177,"title":"September 11th from Singapore","published":true,"description":"just some memories 20 years after 9/11.","tags":"Reflections","slug":"sept-11-from-singapore","canonical_url":"https://www.swyx.io/sept-11-from-singapore"},"title":"September 11th from Singapore","description":"just some memories 20 years after 9/11. ","category":"note","tags":["reflections"],"canonical":"https://www.swyx.io/sept-11-from-singapore","slug":"sept-11-from-singapore","date":"2021-09-11T22:26:53.242Z","readingTime":"3 minutes","ghMetadata":{"issueUrl":"https://github.com/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/171","commentsUrl":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/171/comments","title":"September 11th from Singapore","created_at":"2022-01-17T23:01:09Z","updated_at":"2022-06-18T17:48:55Z","reactions":{"url":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/171/reactions","total_count":0,"+1":0,"-1":0,"laugh":0,"hooray":0,"confused":0,"heart":0,"rocket":0,"eyes":0}}},{"title":"Temporal on DevtoolsFM","slug":"devtoolsfm-pod","tags":["Temporal"],"venues":"DevTools","date":"2021-09-10T00:00:00.000Z","url":"https://devtools.fm/episode/13","description":"Join us as we chat with Shawn Wang who's Head of Developer Experience at Temporal and a staunch advocate of learning in public.","category":"podcast"},{"title":"Temporal - React for the Backend","slug":"temporal-react","categories":["Temporal"],"description":"swyx doing the podcast tour talking about everything Temporal!","instances":[{"venue":"DevtoolsFM","date":"2021-09-10","url":"https://devtools.fm/episode/13","video":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yNOkWFGejUs"},{"venue":"ReactDayNY","date":"2021-10-07","video":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cxaf8E00GMM"},{"venue":"Temporal","date":"2021-10-07","video":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=umsYzbDtj18"},{"venue":"CascadiaJS","date":"2021-10-16","video":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WRYozSljSpw"}],"category":"talk","date":"2021-09-10T00:00:00.000Z"},{"type":"blog","content":"\nWhat if I told you there was a simple strategy that can help you slow-cook a $300,000 a year side project and kickstart your indie hacker career, on a few hours a week?\n\n![Alt Text](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/eoqzqrmmx3riez0ly7gi.png)\n\nIf you didn't care about money, how about >100k Twitter follows over 2 years?\n\n![Alt Text](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/tlsvvck7t6wl74v3dq50.png)\n\nOr email subscribers?\n\n![Alt Text](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/nenqwuk4glkok456gc3f.png)\n\n## Build a swipe file\n\nA \"swipe file\" is a collection of examples to copy for inspiration. The above screenshots are all real life examples from [ReallyGoodEmails](https://really-good-emails.notion.site/Really-Good-Emails-CEO-Hunt-60b87550816149719e166e15d22b9094) and [MarketingExamples](https://www.indieldn.com/post/how-harry-dry-grew-marketing-examples-to-40k-newsletter-subscribers), both (extraordinarily well executed) swipe files.\n\nI think it is one of the most underrated ways for [Part Time Creators](https://www.swyx.io/part-time-creator-manifesto/) to build a newsletter, build a brand, and get good at their craft, without reputation, expertise, or large upfront expenditure in time or money.\n\nHere is a Swipe File Swipe File for creators getting started.\n\n## The Strategy\n\n1. Start a Swipe File\n2. Collect examples\n3. Offer newsletter signup\n4. Offer login + faving\n5. Build a Community\n6. Hit the Media Circuit\n7. Make Generators\n8. Monetize\n 1. Sell Sponsor ads\n 2. Do a live workshop\n 3. Write a book\n 4. Build a course\n\nI add some more details below but that's the essence of the progression.\n\nI recorded everything below as a 14 minute video if that's your thing.\n\n{% youtube 2r7fSeMCcK8 %}\n\n## A Simple Directory\n\nGood swipe files focus in on a niche but important problem, that nobody specializes in. Here is [a site that only features og:image inspiration](https://www.ogimage.gallery/):\n\n![Alt Text](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/v6299vhagfkz9k1fq2vd.png)\n\nIt is pretty simple; the design comes from others, but the categorization comes from you. Clicking on each just sends you to the site it came from; no commentary or analysis needed. \n\n## In-App Flows\n\nSwipe files are usually static snapshots of public marketing design and copywriting, but there's no reason why you can't document the logged-in experience as well. Here's [DesignVault](https://designvault.io/app/clubhouse/):\n\n![Alt Text](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/hzbrowvearqmspetpz8k.png)\n\n## Add Commentary\n\nSwipe files lend themselves to marketing and design, because by their very nature they are visual and public. Here is [swipefile.com](https://swipefile.com/), with just a couple paragraphs of commentary on each example:\n\n![Alt Text](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/2nmnfl3k05grws3x7szn.png)\n\n## **Use a Tool**\n\nThe work gets a lot simpler and faster when you use a tool that is designed for capturing swipe files. Here's [Klart](https://klart.io/): \n\n![Alt Text](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/44tsvlvhkgbcw3g1t1wt.png)\n\n## Build up Teardowns\n\nCorey Haines' [SwipeFiles.com](http://swipefiles.com) (note the plural, different from SwipeFile.com) adds step by step commentary with generalizable lessons ([scroll through this to understand](https://www.swipefiles.com/teardowns/baremetrics-recover-landing-page)):\n\n![Alt Text](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/zy6okzdsn5ygbae3b154.png)\n\n## Compelling How Tos\n\nSwitch the focus from a random assortment of \"What I like about X\" to a more directed \"How X does IMPORTANT_THING_EVERYONE_WANTS\". Title game is everything. Can you generate the \"instant click impulse?\"\n\n![Alt Text](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/6jjooukovhklowhannwd.png)\n\n## Offer a Newsletter\n\nYes, people hate popups. Yes, they work. Yes, you can blanket it with social proof, like Harry Dry does on [MarketingExamples.com](https://marketingexamples.com/).\n\n![Alt Text](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/iooeq2s17haf3c8k93af.png)\n\n## Build an Auth & Storage layer\n\nSince you have people's emails, you might as well give them a way to log in. As your examples pile up, people are going to want to save them to their collections, and you will want to use their faves to indicate popularity. See **[ReallyGoodEmails](https://reallygoodemails.com/)**.\n\n![Alt Text](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/e1ijsjsplr2ssofeo78f.png)\n\n## Build a Community\n\nSince people log in and heart stuff, it'd be nice if they could chat. [Circle is the best platform for that](https://jayclouse.com/how-to-build-an-online-community/). Here's the one I maintain for Learning in Public: [https://codingcareer.circle.so/c/learn-in-public](https://codingcareer.circle.so/c/learn-in-public)\n\n![Alt Text](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/4kk7hsqbjb95z5tz7a1d.png)\n\n## Borrow a Platform\n\nWow, look at you! Email newsletter, Auth, Storage, Community... you're starting to need some serious software now around your swipe file, and you STILL need to figure out your social media distribution. You don't HAVE to have a separate platform — I often use my own Twitter as a flexible social Swipe File, and [Little Big Details](https://littlebigdetails.com/) is a Swipe File hosted on Tumblr with distribution, storage, and social features built in.\n\n![Alt Text](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/z90evhfpic26cnh5v860.png)\n\nJust keep in mind that you're *borrowing* that platform; if you didn't build it, it's not yours, and can be taken away at any time.\n\n## Make Generators and Prompts\n\nIf you CAN code though, you can level up your swipe file by letting people play mad libs with it (aka templatize your swipe file). Here's [What To Tweet](https://whattotweet.com/#) from [Josh Spector](https://joshspector.com/what-to-tweet/):\n\n![Alt Text](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/0p0qfrkstnh32h3sddo0.png)\n\nOr [the Blog Post Idea Generator](https://copywritingcourse.com/blog-post-idea-generator/):\n\n![Alt Text](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/3waei0hyg9pxvuw0ci49.png)\n\nAnd if you get really, really lucky, you can turn these [templates into a 7 figure business](https://headlime.com/blog/headlime-and-conversionai-join-forces-in-artificial-copywriting).\n\n## Hit the Media Circuit\n\nWith some initial success, it's time to hit the media circuit to get the attention up for the work you've already done. [Conferences](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAE1Ssc56Nc), [Podcasts](https://www.listennotes.com/search/?q=marketing%20examples%20harry%20dry&sort_by_date=0&scope=episode&offset=0&language=Any%20language&len_min=0), Contributed articles.\n\n![Alt Text](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/4oxrtexujye3f8p2646d.png)\n\n## Time to Monetize\n\nSponsored Ads:\n\n![Alt Text](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/mcp701x0bzwy6saebxfs.png)\n\nRob Hope [turned One Page Love into a book](https://www.swyx.io/rob_hope_hot_tips/):\n\n![Alt Text](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/lxr7k0g7ijbyj60qtif8.png)\n\nAnd a [workshop](https://onepagelove.com/workshop):\n\n![Alt Text](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/ccrjgui1slyce6nbnocq.png)\n\nOr a recurring membership or SaaS, as [ReallyGoodEmail](https://really-good-emails.notion.site/Really-Good-Emails-CEO-Hunt-60b87550816149719e166e15d22b9094) have done:\n\n![Alt Text](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/5fvu1efknm63zc0se96q.png)\n\n## But I Don't Do Marketing Or Design\n\nDon't be so literal about what a swipe file is — pay attention to the *spirit* of the thing. [Mental Models](https://hn.algolia.com/?q=mental+models) are swipe files of perspectives to analyze given situations. A [tweet thread of frameworks](https://twitter.com/shreyas/status/1399042778613485578) is a swipe file of playbooks. [My Cheatsheets](https://github.com/typescript-cheatsheets/react) are swipe files of code, as is [useHooks](https://usehooks.com/):\n\n![Alt Text](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/tz98f00820zl1cno34ke.png)\n\nAll enormously useful, passively compounding sources of personal leverage for your creator journey.","frontmatter":{"source":"devto","devToUrl":"https://dev.to/swyx/the-swipe-files-strategy-for-part-time-creators-45bd","devToReactions":16,"devToReadingTime":5,"devToPublishedAt":"2021-09-03T20:59:46.090Z","devToViewsCount":277,"title":"The Swipe Files Strategy for Part Time Creators","published":true,"description":"Swipe Files are underrated, passively compounding sources of personal leverage for your creator journey.","tags":"creators","slug":"swipe-files-strategy","canonical_url":"https://www.swyx.io/swipe-files-strategy","cover_image":"https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/eoqzqrmmx3riez0ly7gi.png"},"title":"The Swipe Files Strategy for Part Time Creators","description":"Swipe Files are underrated, passively compounding sources of personal leverage for your creator journey. ","category":"note","tags":["creators"],"image":"https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/eoqzqrmmx3riez0ly7gi.png","canonical":"https://www.swyx.io/swipe-files-strategy","slug":"swipe-files-strategy","date":"2021-09-03T20:59:46.090Z","readingTime":"4 minutes","ghMetadata":{"issueUrl":"https://github.com/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/172","commentsUrl":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/172/comments","title":"The Swipe Files Strategy for Part Time Creators","created_at":"2022-01-17T23:01:11Z","updated_at":"2023-01-04T17:59:04Z","reactions":{"url":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/172/reactions","total_count":0,"+1":0,"-1":0,"laugh":0,"hooray":0,"confused":0,"heart":0,"rocket":0,"eyes":0}}},{"type":"blog","content":"\nGit moves at a surprisingly fast pace - as of Aug 2021, the current version of Git (`git --version`) is 2.33.\n\nI don't normally know or care what my Git version is, but over the past year this changed. The Git team must be doing something right, because I've noticed a few things trickle down to my relatively light usage:\n\n\n## `init.defaultBranch`\n\nThe default branch in Git is named `master`. As of Git 2.28, you can now configure it to anything else. Of course, [this is merely symbolic](https://mooseyanon.medium.com/github-f-ck-your-name-change-de599033bbbe) but is an appreciated signal.\n\n```bash\ngit config --global init.defaultBranch main\n```\n\nThis setting will work for new repos. For existing repos, and git aliases that work nicely with BOTH `master` and `main`, you can see my [Cheatsheet for moving from Master to Main](https://dev.to/swyx/move-primary-git-branch-from-master-to-main-m7c).\n\n## `git sparse-checkout`\n\nYou probably know about `git clone -–depth 1 [remote-url]` for repos where you don't want to download the full history. Git 2.25 introduced an additional command for giant repos, where even the current version is too big. So sparse checkout is like `git clone --depth 1` but for files:\n\n```bash\ngit clone --no-checkout https://github.com/my/big-repo\ncd big-repo/\n# only files at the root\ngit sparse-checkout init --cone \n# only files in specific directories (recursive)\ngit sparse-checkout set ...\n\n# do it\ngit checkout main\n```\n\n[More on the GitHub blog](https://github.blog/2020-01-17-bring-your-monorepo-down-to-size-with-sparse-checkout/).\n\n## `git restore`\n\nI needed this one today. Basically if you screw up a file and need to bring it back from Git, you can use the new `git restore` command in v2.23:\n\n```bash\ngit restore path/to/file # discard current changes\ngit restore --staged path/to/file # unstage staged file\ngit restore --source [hash] path/to/file ## restore from specific commit hash\n```\n\n> ⚠️ Be careful - once you run this command you cannot get back the changes you discard.\n\nYes, there are confusingly similar commands between `checkout`, `restore`, `reset`, and even `switch`. [This StackOverflow answer](https://stackoverflow.com/a/58003889/1106414) clarifies pretty authoritatively:\n\n- `git-revert` is about making a new commit that reverts the changes made by other commits.\n- `git-restore` is about restoring files in the working tree from either the index or another commit.\nThis command does not update your branch.\nThe command can also be used to restore files in the index from another commit.\n- `git-reset` is about updating your branch, moving the tip in order to add or remove commits from the branch. This operation changes the commit history.\ngit reset can also be used to restore the index, overlapping with git restore.\n","frontmatter":{"source":"devto","devToUrl":"https://dev.to/swyx/3-reasons-to-upgrade-git-2bj3","devToReactions":127,"devToReadingTime":2,"devToPublishedAt":"2021-08-30T22:29:07.922Z","devToViewsCount":7073,"title":"3 Reasons to Upgrade Git For The First Time Ever","published":true,"description":"Relatively new Git features that actually have me excited","tags":"Git, Tips","slug":"upgrade-git","canonical_url":"https://www.swyx.io/upgrade-git"},"title":"3 Reasons to Upgrade Git For The First Time Ever","description":"Relatively new Git features that actually have me excited ","category":"note","tags":["git","tips"],"canonical":"https://www.swyx.io/upgrade-git","slug":"upgrade-git","date":"2021-08-30T22:29:07.922Z","readingTime":"2 minutes","ghMetadata":{"issueUrl":"https://github.com/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/173","commentsUrl":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/173/comments","title":"3 Reasons to Upgrade Git For The First Time Ever","created_at":"2022-01-17T23:01:13Z","updated_at":"2022-06-18T17:48:56Z","reactions":{"url":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/173/reactions","total_count":0,"+1":0,"-1":0,"laugh":0,"hooray":0,"confused":0,"heart":0,"rocket":0,"eyes":0}}},{"type":"blog","content":"\r\n> *See also the excellent discussions from [Chris Coyier](https://css-tricks.com/the-self-provisioning-runtime/), and Jeremy Daly's Serverless Chats on [Serverless Cloud](https://www.serverlesschats.com/117) (towards the end) and [then with me as a guest](https://www.serverlesschats.com/124/) and again on [the Best Of roundup](https://www.serverlesschats.com/138/)! It is also briefly mentioned in Jeremy’s [State of Serverless keynote](https://youtu.be/8E09kzyKk2g)\r\n>\r\n> I also relate this to [Temporal](https://www.swyx.io/why-temporal/) about 30mins into [the Purrfect.dev podcast](https://codingcat.dev/podcast/2-21-linking-your-microservices-with-workflows)*\r\n\r\n**If the Platonic ideal of Developer Experience is a world where you \"[Just Write Business Logic](https://twitter.com/swyx/status/1428740355994767369)\", the logical endgame is a language+infrastructure combination that figures out everything else.**\r\n\r\n![Alt Text](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/waips441uk8o9stb91ok.png)\r\n\r\nTwo paraphrases as assertions:\r\n\r\n- People who are really serious about developer experience should make their own language or runtime. ([quote](https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/alan_kay_375550))\r\n- Developer Experience advances by extending the number of important problems our code handles without thinking of them. ([quote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Alfred_North_Whitehead#:~:text=Civilization%20advances%20by%20extending%20the,be%20made%20at%20decisive%20moments.))\r\n\r\nI feel a strong intuition of what the future of programming languages holds for practical (non-academic) developers, but lack the formal background to fully specify it. I'll write down the parts of the elephant I feel, and hope that the rest is so obvious that you, dear reader, shout and scream at me to fill in the blanks of my ignorance. *Please get in touch!!! My ignorance could fill a (blank) book and I need to know who to follow and what to read.*\r\n\r\n**My central assertion**: Advancements in two fields — programming languages and cloud infrastructure — will converge in a single paradigm: where all resources required by a program will be **automatically** provisioned, and optimized, *by the environment that runs it*.\r\n\r\n## Developer Experience in Languages\r\n\r\n*I am going to grossly oversimplify in order to make a point, which will infuriate some of you. I apologize in advance. It bothers me too but I did it anyway to strip out noise. If you have better examples to offer, please get in touch!*\r\n\r\nOne of Java's key advantages over C++ was its automatic garbage collection, whereas one of Go's key advantages over Java is its native CSP model. At a 50,000 ft view you can see languages as advancing by the number of hard problems that are elegantly solved by convention or language feature.\r\n\r\n![Alt Text](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/tuhhzfjn1fshlbuyyhxa.png)\r\n\r\nI've drawn the above chart as though Go is the perfect end state of things, but I want you to know that that is more due to my own lack of knowledge about what else could be abstracted. [Please improve it if you can](https://excalidraw.com/#json=5072020500905984,BgzMaD3_h6g46pLzHpPBcg) and I'll update and credit you. Adrian Colyer also has [this work of art](https://blog.acolyer.org/2019/01/25/programming-paradigms-for-dummies-what-every-programmer-should-know/) which should satisfy the more rigorously inclined:\r\n\r\n![Alt Text](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/qo0cn6cme96kmgyn7q5p.png)\r\n\r\nIn my oversimplistic interpretation, programming language advancement (and improvement in developer experience) could be viewed as the identification of programming chores that can be cleanly extracted into some shared codebase/convention with almost no loss in power.\r\n\r\n**If we can clearly define a new chore, we can make it a language feature.**\r\n\r\nA \"language paradigm\" doesn't have to be a standalone, full fledged new-parser-lexer-required programming language to do this job. Every framework, from React to Rails, parasitically imposes its own grammar and rules atop a host language, and good API design is indistinguishable from language design. *(I gave a talk on [React-as-Language](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dz4q_bNDqfo) last year if you are interested in more on this.)*\r\n\r\nHowever, language development to date has mostly proceeded agnostic to infrastructure concerns, at the exact same time when infrastructure engineers are embracing languages to solve their problems.\r\n\r\n## Developer Experience in Infrastructure\r\n\r\nWhat we lost when we [broke up the monolith](https://www.notion.so/ff8a4f6757286444fa20b43f6b98b205) to move to the cloud was the assumption that everything our program needed would be in the box our program ran in. Suddenly we needed to provision storage, databases, VMs, containers, clusters, message queues, identity providers, gateways, and more and more and more vendor logos.\r\n\r\n[![https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E7-aTZlVgAMWjo5?format=jpg&name=4096x4096](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E7-aTZlVgAMWjo5?format=jpg&name=4096x4096)](https://twitter.com/swyx/status/1423025792783568899)\r\n\r\nManaging all this by hand was impossible, so we moved toward declarative infrastructure, variously called Programmable Infrastructure or Infrastructure as Code:\r\n\r\n![Alt Text](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/pr1vy6bl5wdvonqgxqpg.png)\r\n\r\nThis works until you are knee deep in 30 minute debug loops pushing thousands of lines of YAML to see if *this* time it'll work, and start wishing for mature software engineering tooling like testing, code reuse, and linting/completions. At least that's how I see AWS CDK:\r\n\r\n![Alt Text](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/ist7stz9u9k9kdaslkzr.png)\r\n\r\nThe serverless movement started off with simple stateless functions like AWS Lambda, but with the advent of container based solutions like [AWS Fargate](https://aws.amazon.com/fargate/) and [Google Cloud Run](https://cloud.google.com/run), \"serverless\" has now come to mean autoscaling. This was another \"chore\" that is now increasingly part of every DevOps toolkit:\r\n\r\n![Alt Text](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/rs7tvd6o5kp9wx05maaz.png)\r\n\r\n([Edit this chart](https://excalidraw.com/#json=5169064850751488,0NoC4TlNlKx1UWvwlH9ZaA))\r\n\r\nBut, just like with languages, **there are new chores to be found**. The original intent of the DevOps movement was getting Devs to do their own Ops, but it feels like the outcome was mostly Ops people doing more Dev to keep up with the Joneses. If DevOps was successful enough, or if platforms were good enough at their jobs, Ops work should disappear.\r\n\r\n## Eliminating the DevOps divide\r\n\r\nWith a cutting edge stack today, you can fully describe your AWS Infrastructure in TypeScript, and write your application code in TypeScript... but yet these are separately executed and run things, with gobs of glue code between them (both explicit, in the form of connection strings, resource identifiers and client secrets, and implicit, in the form of SDKs).\r\n\r\n[Check out this example](https://github.com/dabit3/next.js-cdk-amplify-workshop) (from my former team at AWS! no diss intended at all). Here's just a glimpse of the Infra setup code: \r\n\r\n```tsx\r\n// // Infra code\r\n// lib/next-backend-stack.ts\r\nimport * as cdk from '@aws-cdk/core'\r\nimport * as cognito from '@aws-cdk/aws-cognito'\r\nimport * as appsync from '@aws-cdk/aws-appsync'\r\nimport * as ddb from '@aws-cdk/aws-dynamodb'\r\nimport * as lambda from '@aws-cdk/aws-lambda'\r\n\r\n// lib/next-backend-stack.ts\r\nconst api = new appsync.GraphqlApi(this, 'cdk-blog-app', {\r\n name: \"cdk-blog-app\",\r\n logConfig: {\r\n fieldLogLevel: appsync.FieldLogLevel.ALL,\r\n },\r\n schema: appsync.Schema.fromAsset('./graphql/schema.graphql'),\r\n authorizationConfig: {\r\n defaultAuthorization: {\r\n authorizationType: appsync.AuthorizationType.API_KEY,\r\n apiKeyConfig: {\r\n expires: cdk.Expiration.after(cdk.Duration.days(365))\r\n }\r\n },\r\n additionalAuthorizationModes: [{\r\n authorizationType: appsync.AuthorizationType.USER_POOL,\r\n userPoolConfig: {\r\n userPool,\r\n }\r\n }]\r\n },\r\n})\r\n// Create the function\r\nconst postLambda = new lambda.Function(this, 'AppSyncPostHandler', {\r\n runtime: lambda.Runtime.NODEJS_14_X,\r\n handler: 'main.handler',\r\n code: lambda.Code.fromAsset('lambda-fns'),\r\n memorySize: 1024\r\n})\r\n\r\n// Set the new Lambda function as a data source for the AppSync API\r\nconst lambdaDs = api.addLambdaDataSource('lambdaDatasource', postLambda)\r\n```\r\n\r\nAnd a glimpse at the app code:\r\n\r\n```tsx\r\n\r\nconst AWS = require('aws-sdk')\r\nconst docClient = new AWS.DynamoDB.DocumentClient()\r\n\r\nasync function getPostById(postId: string) {\r\n const params = {\r\n TableName: process.env.POST_TABLE,\r\n Key: { id: postId }\r\n }\r\n try {\r\n const { Item } = await docClient.get(params).promise()\r\n return Item\r\n } catch (err) {\r\n console.log('DynamoDB error: ', err)\r\n }\r\n}\r\n\r\nexport default getPostById\r\n```\r\n\r\nThat's still an awful lot of code between your app and its platform.\r\n\r\nWhat will it take to \"just write business logic\" and have the platform figure out the rest?\r\n\r\n![Alt Text](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/waips441uk8o9stb91ok.png)\r\n\r\n([Edit this chart](https://excalidraw.com/#json=6410328472551424,HnpqZm5ZufRY-hepDwr6Jg))\r\n\r\nOn a very trivial basis, we already have this. Where Heroku used to require buildpacks, most PaaS platforms now have heuristics that determine the project type for build and environment setup, automatically adapting for when you have a `Gemfile`, `requirements.txt`, `.nvmrc`, or `docker-compose.yml`. Platforms like Netlify and Vercel are going deeper than language runtimes, [detecting frameworks](https://www.netlify.com/blog/2019/04/24/zero-config-yet-technology-agnostic-how-netlify-dev-detectors-work/) and static site generators, but they are still mostly focused on build dependencies.\r\n\r\nSelf-provisioning can go further than just smarter build automation:\r\n\r\n- Imagine if you could provision a DynamoDB table by just requiring `@begin/data` in your app code (similar but not exactly like [Begin Data](https://docs.begin.com/en/data/begin-data)!)\r\n- Vercel and [Netlify](https://docs.netlify.com/configure-builds/common-configurations/next-js/) set up serverless functions based on Next.js routes and specially designated folders.\r\n- [Netlify Forms](https://docs.netlify.com/forms/setup/) scan your generated HTML and provisions any form endpoints and storage needed (see my [old Gatsby demo here](https://github.com/sw-yx/gatsby-netlify-form-example-v2) to see it in action or [my recent one with Svelte](https://www.swyx.io/sveltekit-netlify-forms/))\r\n- [Pulumi](https://www.pulumi.com/blog/building-your-first-serverless-app-using-only-javascript/) isn't automatic but combines app and provisioning logic in a very neatly concise way that would basically function as though the provisioning and app logic were actually one.\r\n- [Serverless Cloud](https://www.serverless.com/cloud) is working on **\"Infrastructure from Code\"** - Contact [Jeremy Daly](https://twitter.com/jeremy_daly) and [Doug Moscrop](https://twitter.com/dougmoscrop).\r\n {% youtube 1TKedWps7nU %}\r\n- [Aldo Bucchi is working on Lambdragon](https://dev.to/aldonline/comment/1hln8): \"Standing on the shoulders of giants (Pulumi’s closure serialization approach, Temporal/Cadence’s long running processes, Graal's multi-runtime JIT engine) and borrowing from academia when necessary for things like async transactional boundaries and type checking of heterogeneous codebases, we've spent he last two years solving all of these problems from the ground up so we can deliver a true \"universal, automatically inferred runtime\".\"\r\n- (Stealth startup) is building endpoints from statically analyzing JavaScript.\r\n- [Wasp-lang](https://github.com/wasp-lang/wasp) is a (very) new startup trying to combine React routing and the Prisma schema together in a DSL.\r\n- [Encore.dev](https://encore.dev/) by [Andre Eriksson](https://twitter.com/_eandre) - \"Call APIs as functions\" and \"Automatically managed PostgreSQL databases\"\r\n- [Cloud Compiler](https://cloudcompiler.run/) maybe... still super early\r\n- https://functionless.org/ \"Integrates with the AWS CDK, translates TypeScript application code to cloud resources and domain specific languages, and infers optimal IAM policies from business logic.\"\r\n- Chiselstrike: https://blog.chiselstrike.com/chiseling-in-the-open-7490d71e637c and https://www.nvp.com/blog/chiselstrike-simplifies-backend-builds-for-web-developers/\r\n\r\nAll this only scratches the surface of what is possible when you merge language and infrastructure. If you go down [the list of Jobs to Be Done of a Cloud](https://gist.github.com/sw-yx/ff8a4f6757286444fa20b43f6b98b205#reconstituting-the-monolith) you can see all of these can be automatically provisioned as part of the language.\r\n\r\n## Temporal.io\r\n\r\nPart of [my original Temporal pitch](https://www.swyx.io/why-temporal/) made reference to the fact that you could dynamically create retries, timeouts, task queues and timers in your application code, and Temporal would take care of it for you.\r\n\r\nFor the first time ever: **self provisioning asynchrony**.\r\n\r\n```tsx\r\n// retries and timeouts handled declaratively\r\nexport async function main(): Promise {\r\n const child = Context.child('wf name', {\r\n taskQueue: 'test',\r\n workflowExecutionTimeout: '10ms',\r\n retryPolicy: { maximumAttempts: 1 },\r\n });\r\n await child.execute();\r\n}\r\n\r\n// task queue dynamically provisioned\r\nconst workflow = workflowClient.stub('my-workflow', {\r\n taskQueue: 'my-task-queue',\r\n});\r\nconst result = await workflow.execute();\r\n\r\n// durable timer used inline with code\r\nlet hasUserResponded = false\r\nawait Promise.race([\r\n\tasync () => waitForUser().then(() => hasUserResponded = true),\r\n\tsleep(7 * DAYS) // durably set timer for 1 week!\r\n]);\r\nif (!hasUserResponded) // ... remind user or something\r\n```\r\n\r\nWhen you can freely and reliably move code into async blocks without the hassle of extra provisioning, the cost of building out new business logic features becomes dramatically cheaper. This is a subtle point, so I'm going to give you an example ([told by Joel Spolsky, featured on my mixtape](https://swyx.transistor.fm/episodes/elegant-software-joel-spolsky)) (3 min watch):\r\n\r\n{% youtube -QqIyICyXbU %}\r\n\r\nTL;DR - When Jeff Bezos wanted to turn the Amazon buying experience into a one click purchase, the engineers struggled to make it one click - their minds were set around the synchronous request-response, shopping-cart and order-confirmation model. The big unlock to One Click Purchases was accepting purchases right away, and **setting a timer** for them to change their mind. A lot of user experiences are improved by turning synchronous things asynchronous, and racing human interaction against timers, but previously the barrier to do this would be very high because of extra infrastructure involved. \r\n\r\n**Self-provisioning is key to lowering the barriers to experimentation and feature development**.\r\n\r\nBecause Temporal Server already contains the infrastructure to handle tasks and timers, Temporal *users* can essentially offload that problem to a central \"Platform\" or \"Infrastructure\" team. Still, as of today this cannot be considered fully self-provisioning, because Temporal still relies on manual monitoring and scaling (this is the central problem that Temporal Cloud solves).\r\n\r\nBesides, reliable async primitives are great, but far from the totality of infrastructure that a modern app requires. **I want ONE paradigm that auto-provisions ALL of it** based on the code I write**.**\r\n\r\n## Runtime, not Language?\r\n\r\nDoes it *have* to be a new language? This is what Paul Biggar is working on with [Darklang](https://docs.darklang.com/datastores/), where Datastores are colocated with HTTP routing and Cron and Functions:\r\n\r\n![Alt Text](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/7dmpkra9yjktktoyye98.png)\r\n\r\nYou not only *can't* code against a database that doesn't exist, you can't even code against *traffic* that doesn't exist, ensuring your code is always valid (within Dark's universe).\r\n\r\nEven if Dark is too strict for you (as it is for most), you could imagine taking advantage of a strongly typed, purposefully designed language that can be statically analyzed for all its infrastructural dependencies, which then translates to the necessary resource languages of the big clouds.\r\n\r\n> [Jolie Lang](https://www.jolie-lang.org/) is another effort I've come across here, though not so much self-provisioning as it is *infrastructure agnostic*, which I'm not really convinced solves anyone's problems but check it out and tell me if you think otherwise.\r\n\r\nMy sense is it doesn't *have* to be a new language. Imposing special rules on execution and syntax, and taking over the compiler or runtime — we even call our engineers [Language Runtime Engineers](https://startup.jobs/language-runtime-engineer-python-temporal-technologies-inc-3236482) — may be enough. \r\n\r\nRuntime optimizations are also a *huge* opportunity for dynamic (not static + upfront) self-provisioning: after all, what is serverless but a self-provisioning runtime based on traffic?\r\n\r\n## Conclusion\r\n\r\nPeople are wondering [if there is still anything left to innovate in programming languages](http://tagide.com/blog/academia/research-in-programming-languages/), but I write because I am almost certain that there is. But before we get there, the right move is probably a self provisioning *runtime* where we can prototype all these ideas - at the intersection of language and infrastructure.\r\n\r\n## Further Reading\r\n\r\n- https://erikbern.com/2021/04/19/software-infrastructure-2.0-a-wishlist.html\r\n- Nitric has been directly inspired by this post: https://nitric.io/blog/self-provisioning-runtime\r\n- Also check in with [Jeremy Daly](https://twitter.com/jeremy_daly) formerly of the Serverless Cloud team to see what he is cooking up","frontmatter":{"source":"devto","devToUrl":"https://dev.to/swyx/the-self-provisioning-runtime-3g6d","devToReactions":21,"devToReadingTime":10,"devToPublishedAt":"2021-08-30T01:02:48.949Z","devToViewsCount":1187,"title":"The Self Provisioning Runtime","published":true,"description":"Improvements in DX in both programming languages and cloud infrastructure will eventually converge in a single paradigm, where you truly \"just write business logic\" and the platform mostly figures out the rest.","tags":"DX, ideas","slug":"self-provisioning-runtime","cover_image":"https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/y3pfp9ohds23tfhehm6p.png","canonical_url":"https://www.swyx.io/self-provisioning-runtime"},"title":"The Self Provisioning Runtime","description":"Improvements in DX in both programming languages and cloud infrastructure will eventually converge in a single paradigm, where you truly \"just write business logic\" and the platform mostly figures out the rest. ","category":"note","tags":["dx","ideas"],"image":"https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/y3pfp9ohds23tfhehm6p.png","canonical":"https://www.swyx.io/self-provisioning-runtime","slug":"self-provisioning-runtime","date":"2021-08-30T01:02:48.949Z","readingTime":"10 minutes","ghMetadata":{"issueUrl":"https://github.com/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/174","commentsUrl":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/174/comments","title":"The Self Provisioning Runtime","created_at":"2022-01-17T23:01:15Z","updated_at":"2022-10-30T06:32:33Z","reactions":{"url":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/174/reactions","total_count":3,"+1":0,"-1":0,"laugh":0,"hooray":2,"confused":0,"heart":0,"rocket":0,"eyes":1}}},{"title":"7 Lessons to Outlive React","slug":"outlive-react","categories":["React"],"description":"There was a time before React, and there will be life after. If you tie yourself too closely to any technology, you might trap yourself and miss the next wave. Let's zoom out from the state management library du jour — what timeless lessons can we learn from React? In the talk I'll discuss lessons I've learned from studying React that I will take with me for the rest of my career.","instances":[{"venue":"React Summit","date":"2021-08-28","video":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yLgq-Foc1EE"},{"venue":"ItalianCoders","date":"2021-12-10","video":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1FXpOExLQw"}],"category":"talk","date":"2021-08-28T00:00:00.000Z"},{"type":"blog","content":"\r\n*A [recent episode of SEDaily](https://softwareengineeringdaily.com/2021/08/17/octane-io-pay-as-you-go-pricing-with-akash-khanolkar/) discussed Usage Based Billing but remained fairly superficial. I went down this rabbit hole a few months ago and came out uninspired — here are my thoughts on it.*\r\n\r\n## Oct 2022 Update\r\n\r\n[Anhtho](https://twitter.com/byAnhtho) from Lago sent along her thoughts on why Stripe Billing isn't enough for usage-based billing: https://www.getlago.com/blog/is-stripe-using-stripe and also shared this piece on [separating entitlements from billing plans](https://arnon.dk/why-you-should-separate-your-billing-from-entitlement/).\r\n\r\n## Feb 2022 Update\r\n\r\n[Metronome has now emerged from stealth](https://blog.metronome.com/posts/2022/02/launch-iterate-and-scale/) with a healthy Series A:\r\n\r\n{% tweet 1488587468135813120 %}\r\n\r\nhttps://www.getlago.com/ is another new player.\r\n\r\n## Sept 2021 Update\r\n\r\nI had a great chat with Puneet and Lior from Amberflo who are actual experts in this area:\r\n\r\n{% youtube zelDLiG4SLE %}\r\n\r\nAkash from Octane was also [on PodRocket](https://podrocket.logrocket.com/octane).\r\n\r\n## My Story\r\n\r\nI remember the time when Netlify went from subscription-based billing to usage-based. We [used to have 4 tiers](https://web.archive.org/web/20181029150905/https://www.netlify.com/pricing/): Free (1 user), $45/mo (5 users + Password protection), $290/mo (10 users + RBAC), \"Call us\" (SLAs, special CDN, etc). We moved to the seat+usage based model [you see today](https://web.archive.org/web/20210823072328/https://www.netlify.com/pricing): $0/19/99 per user plans + clear limits for 8 features from Functions to Build Minutes.\r\n\r\nIt was possibly the most painful, yet high-revenue-impact work that an engineer could do. Over the course of >12 months we painstakingly instrumented every single part of the platform to not just work, but charge real money for the work we were doing. First [we started metering bandwidth](https://www.netlify.com/blog/2019/02/26/netlify-and-bandwidth/), the most obvious usage to charge for a web hosting company. Then, [new charges for build minutes](https://www.reddit.com/r/webdev/comments/dc7lx0/netlify_starts_charging_for_build_minutes/), quietly rolled out via email. Then over a year later, the journey ended with [usage charges for everything else](https://www.netlify.com/blog/2020/07/21/netlify-expands-pricing-options-more-value-for-developers-and-enterprise-teams/). (This happens to exactly match the main components of cloud businesses: [Networking, Compute, and Storage](https://twitter.com/swyx/status/1417136897894326277))\r\n\r\nTo be clear, as a DX Engineer I wasn't personally involved, so you are reading an observer's account of the problem, but I remember thinking at the time that this was a huge pain point. It took one of our most senior/capable engineers leading this project and we desperately wanted a \"Billing Engineer\" to lead this but it didn't seem a particularly attractive job to engineers. It wasn't particularly rocket sciency code, there were a lot of fiddly details to get right, and if we screwed up something we'd have particularly embarrassing consequences:\r\n\r\n{% tweet 1418567795021950982 %}\r\n\r\nBut it was also clear to me that this was important work — you can't get any \"closer to the money\" (a concept I discuss in [my Career Strategy chapter](https://www.learninpublic.org/toc)) than literally *working with money* on billing. Everyone says the single biggest lever on your business is pricing. If your billing code directly helped change the pricing model which resulted in 2x'ing revenue overnight and 100x it long term, isn't that a big deal??\r\n\r\n## Pros and Cons\r\n\r\nThe move to usage based billing proved a good move for Netlify and was surely a factor in raising our Series C.\r\n\r\n- There are a [litany](https://www.getoctane.io/blog/fair-saas-billing) of [blogposts](https://a16z.com/2021/03/11/bottom-up-pricing-packaging-let-the-user-journey-be-your-guide/#section--25) and [lists](https://openviewpartners.com/blog/usage-based-pricing-resources/) and [VC quotes](https://www.bvp.com/atlas/state-of-the-cloud-2021#Usage-based-pricing) on the benefits of usage based billing that I won't repeat here: aligning your pricing to the value you deliver, automatic \"upsells\" (accounts increase their value to you with no renegotiation), better attribution. The serverless movement is surprisingly aligned with the move to usage based pricing - instead of renting out a $5 a month box, you are now paying per function invocation.\r\n- There are downsides that aren't talked about as much — users now run build-vs-buy decisions every time they code, users fear \"denial of wallet\" attacks (since most platforms conveniently forget any spend limit features), and I now have to spend an hour in Excel just to figure out what moving any given site to Netlify will cost.\r\n\r\n## The Usage Based Billing Landscape\r\n\r\nSo when I heard [David Ulevitch mention that all SaaS companies were facing the same usage based pricing problems](https://twitter.com/swyx/status/1373430435074609153) we had faced, I got very excited. Whenever you have a boring-but-important feature you potentially have a great horizontal business on your hands. I asked for a list of who was working in this space and got a dozen DMs from people working in this space:\r\n\r\n- [Twisp](https://www.twisp.com/) (not public)\r\n- [Octane](https://www.getoctane.io/)\r\n- [Plangraph](https://www.plangraph.io/) (not public)\r\n- [MonetizeNow](https://www.monetizenow.io/) (semi-private)\r\n- [Metronome](https://getmetronome.com/) (not public)\r\n- [Chargify](https://www.chargify.com/)\r\n- [ChargeBee](https://www.chargebee.com/)\r\n- [Amberflo](https://amberflo.io/)\r\n- [RevOps](https://www.revops.io/) (historically for sales agreements, but just expanded to [usage](https://www.revops.io/usage/))\r\n- Unnamed Stripe alum\r\n- Oct 2022 update: Paigo https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33333584\r\n\r\nThere's loads more getting into the game — Just a simple search of \"Usage Based Billing\" yields more names like Recurly, Cheddar, Paddle, SubscriptionFlow, and Zoho. \r\n\r\n## It's more than just Billing\r\n\r\nStripe itself of course does [Metered Billing](https://stripe.com/docs/billing/subscriptions/metered-billing), and I got a confused DM from a couple of Stripe folks asking why that wasn't enough. \r\n\r\n- I don't have enough experience to REALLY know here but I would guess that most complex enough usecases require a whole data pipeline before actually making the Stripe call - aggregating the usage data, throttling extremely high frequency data, making it auditable, and applying discounts and discontinuities to the pricing or consumption function.\r\n- In order to give product/sales maximum control over pricing, you should be able to decouple pricing decisions from code as much as possible, allowing things like A/B testing of pricing and retroactive/hypothetical simulations of pricing results, all done without developer help as much as possible\r\n- Open question: if we were to implement hard limits or a credit system, should the billing system tie in to authorization? Would it slow authz down unacceptably or post unacceptable risks to uptime?\r\n- Open question: should the billing system tie in to the observability/metrics stack? it seems like there is a huge amount of overlap, but also having all your eggs in one source of truth seems like a very big risk to take if something happens to it.\r\n\r\n## Why I was scared off\r\n\r\nI was debating incubating, angel investing, or even personally working on this space myself, just based on how painful and how beneficial this journey was at Netlify. Ultimately I was scared off by the competition, and my inability to articulate some deep insight that Stripe or someone else might not eventually just build. I also was tempered in my TAM expectations when I saw that Zuora is still only at a $2b valuation.\r\n\r\nUltimately I think Usage Based Billing is a feature, not a product.","frontmatter":{"source":"devto","devToUrl":"https://dev.to/swyx/why-isn-t-usage-based-billing-a-bigger-category-m8b","devToReactions":7,"devToReadingTime":5,"devToPublishedAt":"2021-08-23T08:28:32.312Z","devToViewsCount":562,"title":"Why Isn't Usage Based Billing A Bigger Category?","published":true,"description":"Usage billing is the new hotness for SaaS, and I have personally seen the pain it caused, but I was ultimately scared off from investing in it.","tags":"Reflections, Pricing","slug":"why-usage-billing","cover_image":"https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/kcy7senuwbb42gd7yjhw.png","canonical_url":"https://www.swyx.io/why-usage-billing"},"title":"Why Isn't Usage Based Billing A Bigger Category?","description":"Usage billing is the new hotness for SaaS, and I have personally seen the pain it caused, but I was ultimately scared off from investing in it. ","category":"note","tags":["reflections","pricing"],"image":"https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/kcy7senuwbb42gd7yjhw.png","canonical":"https://www.swyx.io/why-usage-billing","slug":"why-usage-billing","date":"2021-08-23T08:28:32.312Z","readingTime":"5 minutes","ghMetadata":{"issueUrl":"https://github.com/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/175","commentsUrl":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/175/comments","title":"Why Isn't Usage Based Billing A Bigger Category?","created_at":"2022-01-17T23:01:17Z","updated_at":"2022-12-30T10:22:54Z","reactions":{"url":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/175/reactions","total_count":1,"+1":0,"-1":0,"laugh":0,"hooray":0,"confused":0,"heart":1,"rocket":0,"eyes":0}}},{"type":"blog","content":"\r\n> \"Games are won by players who focus on the playing field –- not by those whose eyes are glued to the scoreboard.\" - Warren Buffett\r\n\r\n*Special thanks to [Matt Asay](https://www.techrepublic.com/article/tips-for-getting-developer-relations-right-at-your-company/), [Chris Aniszczyk](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/caniszczyk_measuring-developer-relations-activity-6903770012482375680-6lbc?utm_source=linkedin_share&utm_medium=member_desktop_web), [Gwen Shapira](https://twitter.com/gwenshap/status/1474316991645245441?s=20&t=SIdaZc_pY52gghJ8Mci1ew), the [Software Defined Talk crew](https://twitter.com/SoftwareDefTalk/status/1499755896456548353?s=20&t=SIdaZc_pY52gghJ8Mci1ew), and [many others](https://twitter.com/search?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.swyx.io%2Fmeasuring-devrel&src=typed_query) for their discussion of this post!*\r\n\r\n![Image description](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/t6b2x3y2oe6v1o7eu053.png)\r\n\r\nA few years ago the key theme of one of the DevRelCons was \"metrics\". People breathlessly tweeted about how this was **the most important topic in DevRel**, to general agreement. The 2 day schedule was packed with 48 speakers with impressive titles stack ranked by follower count. Hundreds of DevRels flew in to hear DevRels thoughtlead DevRel. Drinks were drunk, hands were shook, empty promises made. Then they went home.\r\n\r\n**Nothing changed.** Today in 2021 people continue to talk about how hard it is to measure DevRel. The full videos of talks to this highly anticipated paid event worth hundreds of dollars per ticket were released on YouTube, with a total view count of 601 (not a typo). The organizers did an incredible job garnering 18 sponsors, all duly ignored. My company was one of them, spending thousands on a Gold slot for which we got 4 tickets, presumably to learn DevRel best practices and hire great talent. ***We sent none.***\r\n\r\nI did cherry pick an egregious anecdote, but it helps illustrate the typical state of DevRel accountability today. Lots of sizzle, questionable steak. **Loudly performing \"DevRel\", yet indistinguishable from \"[Con](https://dev.to/swyx/my-life-as-a-con-man-6b8)\"**. Yet despite lack of visibility, companies continue to invest! Because we *do* know that through all the noise and gladhanding, *some* value does get created and it *is* unique to all the other user acquisition channels available.\r\n\r\nI of course don't have the perfect answer. But I've lived it for a while and wanted to write down my evolving thoughts for others who are going down this same path. Instead of solutions, I'll offer structure. Instead of answering your questions, I hope to offer you better ones. \r\n\r\n*Note: I write for new DevRels as well as people running DevRel programs. This is a \"201\" blogpost rather than a \"101\" — I'm aiming to cover what introductory blogposts don't say. I will also have inconsistent capitalization and voice because I am condensing a massive amount of thoughts and trust you are smart enough to figure it out. Sometimes \"DevRel\" is one person (who actually holds the title \"Developer Advocate\" or \"DX Engineer\"), sometimes \"Devrel\" is an industry. If this upsets you, please read something else.*\r\n\r\n## Bottom Line Up Front\r\n\r\n\r\n![Alt Text](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/yrvcdbq2vg48z492aber.png)\r\n\r\nStop looking: **Your North Star metric is \"monthly active developers\"**. If growth is accelerating, good. If growth is constant, fine. If growth is 0% or worse then whatever you are doing isn't working.\r\n\r\n- Every other company measuring devrel eventually settles on this, so just cut right to the chase. You could try \"monthly active clusters\" but you'll want each cluster's usage to grow as well so you end up indexing on \"developers\" anyway.\r\n- However MAD *is* multi-causal and a lagging indicator so you need leading indicators which you have more direct control over.\r\n\r\n## What kind of DevRel are you?\r\n\r\n![Image description](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/ijj8os3spy3q2zggzlg2.png)\r\n\r\n**Unhappiness arises when there is an expectations mismatch between what the company wants out of DevRel and what each DevRel is naturally good at.** People have natural affinities — you are more likely to do well with community if you already organize meetups, you are more likely to be great at content if you are a regular on the speaker circuit, you are more likely to understand how to plug user gaps with product feedback if you already built one, etc. Don't judge a fish by its ability to climb trees.\r\n\r\nThere are three emerging sub-specialities of developer relations: **community**-focused, **content**-focused, and **product**-focused. How you are measured depends on what your strengths are and what your company *actually* thinks devrel is. We'll explore each in turn, but first some context:\r\n\r\n- A lot of companies will proclaim that their approach to developer *relations* is different from developer *evangelism* because it is a \"two way street\", meaning **you put product in front of people but also bring people's opinions back into product**.\r\n - The reality is often the ratio of this two way street traffic is 99% outbound and 1% inbound, because the product/engineering orgs haven't set aside any bandwidth for \"shadow PM-ing\" from devrel and all of devrel's metrics are outbound focused. Totally understandable, but could be better.\r\n- If you are in \"devrel\" but you walk like marketing, talk like marketing, and are measured like marketing, you are in marketing. **In fact, you are very expensive affiliate marketing**.\r\n - If you measure devrel by views, the established industry metric is \"cost per mille\" aka cost per thousand people reached. Indicative numbers: a typical developer content creator's CPM is $5, a normal devrel's CPM is $50-$100. In other words **you are paying 10-20x more to make content \"in-house\"** than just paying a \"professional\" to make something about you (often of higher quality, to a bigger audience).\r\n - Dev content agencies like [Draft](https://draft.dev/about) and [Ironhorse](https://ironhorse.io/developer-marketing/) exist but are an awkward half solution where they don't bring audience and don't have a deep relationship with your product.\r\n- So for a company devrel investment to make sense, **you have to provide some other form of value than raw anonymous reach**. This can be: depth, breadth, consistency, access, insight, community, email list building, etc.\r\n - Devrel specifically coexists as a separate discipline from marketing because developers hate marketing fluff and bottom-up + open source sales is so important for devtool adoption.\r\n - Career marketers have trouble relating to developers because so much of the conventional wisdom is inverted - you have to [sell features, not benefits](https://twitter.com/swyx/status/1361279902889086980), and be ready to dive into just-enough-technical-detail over using vague superlatives. However, marketers can still be very useful selling to other parts of the org.\r\n\r\n## Bad Metrics\r\n\r\nI've been asked to measure all these in my work: GitHub stars on my demos (yuck), traffic attributed to my Google Analytics UTM tag (yuck yuck), number of badges I could scan at a conference (yuck yuck yuck). All well intentioned but ultimately not meaningful, because they value quantity over quality, breadth over depth, free-and-superficial over paid-and-indicating-serious-interest. \r\n\r\n- Sometimes these are justified as \"something is better than nothing\", but once in place, metrics have a strange hold on the imagination: I've seriously had a CTO carelessly reject my genuine idea out of hand because \"it doesn't help OKRs\", the same OKRs we previously agreed should not describe all that we do.\r\n\r\nI agree with Amir Shevat that we should \"[do the right things over the easy to measure things](https://www.swyx.io/a16z_devrel_amir_shevat/#qa-with-amir-and-mikeal-rogers)\":\r\n\r\n- People are too flippant about using NPS. NPS is easily gamed and rating product on a 1-10 scale is meaningless to developers who know how this works. Try [the Sean Ellis question](https://review.firstround.com/how-superhuman-built-an-engine-to-find-product-market-fit#anchoring-around-a-metric-a-leading-indicator-for-productmarket-fit) instead: “How would you feel if you could no longer [use the product/be part of the community/read this content]?” and use it as a way to **segment/understand your audience** rather than being satisfied just keeping the NPS number forever high.\r\n- You are hereby banned from suggesting to A/B test anything if you do not have the traffic or the infrastructure to easily implement an A/B test like 90% of devtools startups. **A tight user feedback loop beats anonymous data.** You find out much more just showing a preview to users 1:1 or in small groups than keeping them at arms length.\r\n- [Will Klein suggests](https://twitter.com/willklein_/status/1420139597112037379?s=20) \"How quickly new releases are adopted\" for OSS devrel. This sounds good until you realize that **upgrade adoption is just a proxy for active usage** and the curves pretty much all look like this and **no matter what you do**, you can only budge them a few %:\r\n\r\n ![Alt Text](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/dhfgj2fs5t3kua9pjjcp.png)\r\n\r\n## Community-focused Developer Advocacy\r\n\r\nPeople are waking up to the lasting power of community and now [Technical Community Builder is the Hottest New Job in Tech](https://dev.to/dx/technical-community-builder-is-the-hottest-new-job-in-tech-8cl).\r\n\r\nCommunity metrics that I like (pick 1-3): \r\n\r\n- Number of active members in Slack/Discord\r\n- Number of weekly new topics in Discourse/StackOverflow/GitHub Discussions\r\n- Number of user contributions (whether it is PRs, questions, answers, blogposts, meetup talks, etc)\r\n- Number of [Orbit level 1](https://github.com/orbit-love/orbit-model) users\r\n- Number of events and number of attendees\r\n- Number of engaged \"superusers\"\r\n\r\nThings to look out for:\r\n\r\n- Beware the optics of regularly **asking your users to do free work for you**, and measuring yourself by metrics that are at best only loosely correlated with your community building work.\r\n - For example, most company \"communities\" are really just support forums, and increased support load is not always good nor does it have anything to do with your stewardship of it. Also beware of using devrel in place of a proper support team.\r\n - You need to give people a cause to rally around other than getting help. Having **great content is often the \"minimal viable community\"**.\r\n - A \"big tent\" serves your community over the company — invite your competitors to your event or conference, present together or let them do friendly trash talk, whatever makes your community an actual place where people get together to learn about your topic is good for you. This is especially effective when attempting [Category Creation](https://codingcareer.circle.so/c/devtools/category-creation-netlify-slack-datastax#comment_wrapper_2653625).\r\n- \"True\" community metrics are extremely hard to measure. For example, one definition of a good community is that people expect their association with your project/product to outlast their current employment. **The natural frequency for measuring this spans years** but no metrics system is this patient.\r\n- **Events** are underrated for fostering company community. To [paraphrase Marshall McLuhan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Understanding_Media), forums and chats are \"cold\", events are \"hot\" (EDIT: I wrote more on this idea in [Community Heat](https://www.swyx.io/community-heat)). From company office hours, to social hours, to full-on conferences and hackathons, to user-organized meetups. Measure attendance and frequency of these events. I am dead serious about this — we had a Principal DevRel whose primary job was to help organize our 3 conferences (together with Marketing) and their associated community. If he did nothing else but that, he would already have been worth his weight in gold to us.\r\n - Live hackathons are appropriate if you have good docs, short time to value, fast iteration times (<1min to change and redeploy) and people can get to a tangible wow moment *that wins them the hackathon* (particularly in a multi-vendor hackathon). So you should develop a sense of what kinds of things win hackathons — anything realtime (because a live demo can include the audience), anything phone based (everyone has a phone), anything AI based (people like seeing machines act like people), anything visual design. Remote/async hackathons may be a better option if your product has a longer time to value. Work with [Major League Hacking](https://mlh.io/), [DevTo](https://dev.to/t/hackathon), or [FreeCodeCamp](https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/tag/hackathons/), or collab/sponsor with YouTubers in your niche.\r\n- Having an engaged and growing superuser community, e.g. AWS Heroes, Java Champions, GitHub Stars and Stripe Community Experts, can help reward your most ardent advocates with access and status. **A small group of highly engaged fans can make a community feel more alive than a large group of passive users.**\r\n- If your core product is open source, how much community involvement do you really want? [Runa Capital has a definition of Active Contributors](https://medium.com/runacapital/open-source-analysis-and-os-databases-1eb1fe840719), and the big dogs go up to 200 regular contributors a year. This is a *lot* of external community to manage - is this something your engineering/product team is equipped/prepared/willing to handle?\r\n- Bonus Community questions:\r\n - Does devrel or marketing handle the swag program? Do you [tie it to open source like Gatsby](https://store.gatsbyjs.org/)? Do you build your swag/CRM with your product as a demo or is that Not-Invented-Here syndrome?\r\n - How can you measure community-generated content and community-organized meetups? Devrel scales by how it *enables users* to tell (even brag to) each other about their usage. You can borrow ideas from non-devtool \"user community\" efforts like [Notion](https://gettogether.fm/episodes/notion).\r\n - How do you bring your community closer in touch with your engineers? Kelsey Hightower ran [empathy sessions](https://www.businessinsider.com/google-cloud-kelsey-hightower-customer-empathy-sessions-2021-8) where the Kubernetes team were just expected to use Kubernetes and failed. Obviously these interactions are valuable but how do you measure?\r\n - How can you help your users **hire each other**? At Temporal we set up a [careers page for our users](https://temporal.io/careers#external-jobs). Unfortunately most of these attempts will be too sporadic to seriously measure.\r\n\r\n## Content-focused Developer Advocacy\r\n\r\nContent is the bread and butter of DevRel. If you have no idea where to start I recommend producing at least 1 piece of content on your company a week and just experimenting until you find your groove. Rewriting your blog once a year is fun, but not everyone has put in the reps to learn to regularly produce interesting content.\r\n\r\nContent metrics that I like (in rough order): \r\n\r\n- Number of Newsletter subscribers\r\n- Number of YouTube subscribers\r\n- Number of Twitter follows\r\n- Number of Workshop completions\r\n- Number of Conference/meetup appearances\r\n- [SEO Domain Authority](https://moz.com/learn/seo/domain-authority)\r\n\r\nNuances to consider:\r\n\r\n- As a content creator you have the choice between [TOFU, MOFU, and BOFU content](https://swyx.transistor.fm/episodes/tofu-mofu-and-bofu-content):\r\n - Top of Funnel - never heard of you (Awareness)\r\n - Middle of Funnel - comparing you to others and learning basic features/concepts (Evaluation)\r\n - Bottom of Funnel - deciding to buy and put you into production (Conversion)\r\n - If you only measure website traffic then you naturally incentivize DevRel to create clickbait TOFU that doesn't have to convert at all and alienate your biggest fans.\r\n- Most companies create and measure the blogposts as their main metric and the newsletter is the afterthought. If you are building a company you should see this is ass backwards. Newsletter signup (incentivized by great company blogposts and updates) keeps you honest. Most marketers and professional creators view **1 email subscriber to be worth between 100-1000 social media followers**. Even though many developers don't like giving their email and you'll need other ways to reach them, you are not exempt from universal rules of media.\r\n- In fact, the more seriously you view yourself as \"**building a media-company-within-a-company**\" rather than \"doing some content marketing\", the better you will do.\r\n - This is how seriously a16z treats its media effort: its third GP was [Margit Wennmachers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margit_Wennmachers), a PR/Comms exec, and just started [Future.com](http://future.com) with Sonal Chokshi to create its own alternative to tech journalists.\r\n - You also don't have to build this on your own — [HubSpot bought The Hustle](https://techcrunch.com/2021/02/04/hubspot-acquires-media-startup-the-hustle/?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAGOLdJAZwMKTEwvtahBFLftY0UHRa4em-NlWREigwDiYW3cpNo-lqtWCsANBwgHpSc21kuUaKzib5xOBc8wvwwQf4byzrmU-sZDzDuPOglJPCoiJQda8j6I4HIwS4zVBNstuyd7xQ4EbvpRyWdOgjYYFwvfINtXQefmyrPOgn3Dx) for exactly this reason.\r\n - When you mash Alex Rampell's \"[The battle between every startup and incumbent comes down to whether the startup gets distribution before the incumbent gets innovation](https://a16z.com/2015/11/05/distribution-v-innovation/)\" with Justin Kan's \"[second time founders are obsessed with distribution](https://twitter.com/justinkan/status/1059989657218248704?lang=en)\", it just makes business sense to take distribution as seriously as product.\r\n- Keep in mind **the [half life of your content](https://epipheo.com/learn/what-is-the-lifespan-of-social-media-posts/)** — how long until a piece of content gets half of the views it will ever get in its lifetime. Twitter's half-life is hours, YouTube's half-life is months, blog is years. Create accordingly.\r\n - You can test things on more ephemeral media before developing them further on more permanent media.\r\n - Most managers think they are helping by establishing content calendars. I have never seen a DevRel operation stick to these beyond month 1. Turns out it is much easier to say you will do things than to actually do things. Ultimately you will create content because you are inspired to, not because some calendar said so. Keep a list of topics that you want to cover and reguarly pick them off based on subjective interest vs user need. Exception for YouTube - the recommendation algorithm does reward weekly output. See [Dan Luu on best practices for engineering blogs](https://danluu.com/corp-eng-blogs/).\r\n- **Community sizing**: There are between 5-10 million developers on YouTube (my estimate). There are between 1-2 million developers on Twitter (my estimate). There are about [6 million developers on Hacker News](https://twitter.com/swyx/status/1422043347011600386?s=20). Each have their own pet topics and sub communities. Consider/gauge/prioritize accordingly.\r\n- **Default to Consistency**: If you are new to professional content creator life, best way to get started is just [**default to consistency**](https://www.swyx.io/quality-vs-consistency/). That said, [10x content](https://sparktoro.com/blog/resources/10x-content-by-rand-fishkin/) has incredible half-life when you have the right idea.\r\n- **Workshops** are extremely underrated forms of content for achieving depth. Instead of 5,000 people watching your 5 minute video and then disappearing forever, you could have 50 people go through your 3-5 hour workshop and put it in production at work. \r\n - Record it and put it online - you're not going to get huge views on a 3-5 hour video that is so company specific, but for the people who prefer fastforwarding thru video or desperately need to solve some problem, it is hugely appreciated.\r\n - Most workshops can also be converted into self guided text based versions: see AWS Workshops like [Amplify](https://amplify-photo-sharing.workshop.aws/), [ECS](https://ecsworkshop.com/), and [EKS](https://www.eksworkshop.com/), Google [Colabs](https://colab.research.google.com/github/firebase/quickstart-python/blob/master/machine-learning/Firebase_ML_API_Tutorial.ipynb), GitHub [Learning Labs](https://lab.github.com/githubtraining/github-actions:-hello-world).\r\n- **Conference** appearances are probably overrated by most companies, by the simple fact that most developers don't go to conferences. Companies have historically overspent on devrel travel budgets if you just take into account attendee reach. However, millions of developers do watch good conference videos after the fact. You can abstractly view conference expenses as production costs for social proof and a really good YouTube video (on a channel you don't own). It's well worth producing 1-2 great conference talks a year at high profile events, and sometimes to get there, you need to practice and iterate at 5-10 smaller venues, but anything beyond that probably has diminished returns compared to anything else you could be doing.\r\n- **Meetups** are a different matter: high touch, low intensity. Being able to give the same elevator pitch over and over again at different meetups can be great for capturing the attention of a small set of developers. Use their questions and feedback to improve your elevator pitch ([2 word](https://www.swyx.io/two-words/), 1 sentence, 2 minute, 7 minute, 25 minute, 55 minute versions) as an infinite game. Raw # of meetup appearances is probably a good enough metric here.\r\n- [I agree with Steph Smith](https://twitter.com/swyx/status/1408896221456986114) that **most companies focus too much on social channels**, with the twist that most developers discover solutions more by hearing about them from friends and thoughtleaders than by searching for them. Auth0 and Digital Ocean famously prioritized an SEO based approach, however your devtool/brand should be general enough for this to work.\r\n- Bonus \"Content\" things to consider:\r\n - who owns example repos and code samples and keeps them up to date?\r\n - are you creating content because your docs aren't clear enough? are you creating docs because your product isn't intuitive? All content ultimately has a half-life — sometimes you have to go downstream to fix root cause instead of measuring someone on how well they apply bandaids.\r\n - how can you encourage real-engineer-content and user-generated content? Devrel scales by how it *enables others* to create content, not just by having a sole monopoly on content.\r\n\r\n## Product-focused Developer Advocacy\r\n\r\nProduct metrics that I like: \r\n\r\n- Number of launch day users, and positive launch day mentions\r\n- Number of prioritized user issues from DevRel\r\n- Number of monthly users of integrations/tooling\r\n- [the Sean Ellis question](https://review.firstround.com/how-superhuman-built-an-engine-to-find-product-market-fit#anchoring-around-a-metric-a-leading-indicator-for-productmarket-fit) (over NPS) for integrations/tooling managed by devrel\r\n- [Gustaf Alstromer's PMF measure](https://youtu.be/T9ikpoF2GH0?t=958): Value metric, and % retention at ideal recurring frequency\r\n- Something that measures [Developer Exceptions](https://www.swyx.io/developer-exception/), I haven't worked it out yet\r\n\r\nDevrels can provide tremendous value in the lead up to any product launch by beta testing (either personally or with users), or creating eyecatching/inspiring demos, blogposts, and videos for launch day/annual conference. \r\n\r\n- Sometimes the best product feedback can be negative: \"Hey, you need to postpone this launch, you aren't ready.\" Negative feedback is better coming from within than without, but the company culture needs to be receptive to criticism.\r\n- If you habitually shoot the messenger, however mistaken they are, don't be surprised that you stop receiving bad news.\r\n- Yes, people really do hire DevRels, tell them to give product feedback, and then ignore that feedback. This is the *norm*.\r\n\r\nDevrel are also often responsible for maintaining non-core integrations and helper tooling.\r\n\r\n- Examples: Netlify has an entire [Integrations Engineering](https://www.netlify.com/blog/2021/01/06/developer-experience-at-netlify/) team. Currently it just works on Next.js integrations, but it could also own, for example, the VS Code extension. In the past I helped build out [Netlify Dev](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19615546) and [react-netlify-identity](https://github.com/netlify-labs/react-netlify-identity) as part of this function. [Sourcegraph's Integrations](https://docs.sourcegraph.com/integration) are not core product, but help adoption under their [7 stage SDLC framework](https://beyang.org/time-to-build-dev-tools.html). Popular quick start tooling like [Docker Compose](https://github.com/temporalio/docker-compose) and [Helm Charts](https://github.com/temporalio/helm-charts) also fall under this function.\r\n- A more involved version of this bleeds into \"Solutions Engineering\" where you help out with customer-specific custom demos and integration work. For large enough customers and small enough startups this is fine, but the bulk of the DevRel effort should focus on work that scales.\r\n\r\nMost devrels spend most of their time advocating TO developers than FOR them. The user-to-product feedback loop is the most underdeveloped element of developer advocacy right now basically because it is unclear who owns this function between Devrel and PM. \r\n\r\n- It can be like grooming a \"top 3 user asks\" list like [Amir Shevat did at Slack and Twitch](https://www.swyx.io/a16z_devrel_amir_shevat/#tldr)\r\n- or it can be building prototypes and \"hacky MVPs\" to validate ideas that you then hand off to engineering\r\n- or it can be collecting data on what messaging resonates with developers based on how they explain it to others\r\n- all of which is really hard to measure\r\n\r\n## Conclusion\r\n\r\nUltimately I hope for more intellectual honesty within the industry that acknowledges the complex tradeoffs:\r\n\r\n- between the need for communicating value and quantifying progress vs the dehumanizing effect of metrics on what is ultimately an extremely human endeavor\r\n- between lagging metrics that are more meaningful but where you have less control, and leading metrics where you have more control but little accountability, and the primary link between leading and lagging is \"merely\" anecdotal and qualitative but ultimately your job\r\n- where content is a personal, creative process which needs a culture that accepts risk taking and failure, hot streaks and lulls, where consistency, quality, and scope are valued differently by different segments of your audience, and too many backseat drivers guarantees death of personality and ownership.\r\n\r\nI'll leave you with one anecdote: When I first hear about a technology I keep it on a mental backburner simply to see if it sticks around and makes progress. I typically end up only trying out a technology at least one year after first hearing about it and seeing consistent progress. It's not just me; many CTOs and VP Engs recommend a **multiyear adoption path** especially for core tech. Traditional marketing advice says people have to hear about you at least 7 times before they decide to buy; for developer tools, Matt Biilmann from Netlify says it's more like 14.\r\n\r\nTry fitting *that* into your quarterly OKR review cycles.\r\n\r\n> If you are interested in more DevRel thoughts, podcasts, and books, check [the DX Circle guide](https://codingcareer.circle.so/c/dev-communities/developer-relations-wip-guide?) for more!\r\n\r\n## Addendum\r\n\r\n- https://bitergia.com/ Software Development Analytics for understanding, reporting, and decision making process regarding community health, project sustainability, development efficiency, talent retention & acquisition, content creation, developer audience analysis, and more.\r\n- https://dots.community/ Scale your community while keeping it personal. Automate routine tasks, and understand member behaviors on Slack, Discord, and more!\r\n- https://www.commonroom.io/ Common Room gives you a unified view of what’s happening across platforms — Twitter, Slack, GitHub, Discourse, Discord, Intercom, Meetup, and more.\r\n- https://orbit.love/ Grow and measure your community across any platform with Orbit, mission control for your community.\r\n- Tessa Mero has more KPIs to choose from based on her devrel group at Cloudinary and in Seattle: https://dev.to/tessamero/measuring-success-and-kpis-in-developer-relations-community-contributed-outline-1383","frontmatter":{"source":"devto","devToUrl":"https://dev.to/dx/measuring-developer-relations-ie8","devToReactions":70,"devToReadingTime":16,"devToPublishedAt":"2021-08-16T01:06:41.751Z","devToViewsCount":1449,"title":"Measuring Developer Relations","published":true,"description":"DevRel is hot but nobody knows how to measure it. That's because we don't agree on what effective DevRel *is*, and we don't agree on the tradeoffs of lagging vs leading metrics for a creative, unattributable, intimately human endeavor.","category":"essay","tags":"DX, devrel, content","slug":"measuring-devrel","cover_image":"https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/t6b2x3y2oe6v1o7eu053.png"},"title":"Measuring Developer Relations","description":"DevRel is hot but nobody knows how to measure it. That's because we don't agree on what effective DevRel *is*, and we don't agree on the tradeoffs of lagging vs leading metrics for a creative, unattributable, intimately human endeavor. ","category":"essay","tags":["dx","devrel","content"],"image":"https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/t6b2x3y2oe6v1o7eu053.png","slug":"measuring-devrel","date":"2021-08-16T01:06:41.751Z","readingTime":"18 minutes","ghMetadata":{"issueUrl":"https://github.com/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/176","commentsUrl":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/176/comments","title":"Measuring Developer Relations","created_at":"2022-01-17T23:01:19Z","updated_at":"2022-03-15T05:50:24Z","reactions":{"url":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/176/reactions","total_count":0,"+1":0,"-1":0,"laugh":0,"hooray":0,"confused":0,"heart":0,"rocket":0,"eyes":0}}},{"type":"blog","content":"\nImagine a job where you make $600k a year investing other people's money (no downside) into amazing founders, try to be helpful, and make as much as $20 million over 10 years. Pretty sweet right? \n\nThose numbers aren't hypothetical; that's exactly [what Brianne Kimmel does with her WorkLife Fund](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/206-with-brianne-kimmel-how-venture-capitalists-make-money/id1469759170?i=1000530964156) (to be fair she has top tier results, with >200x returns in 2 years on Hopin and Pipe alone). It's a pretty sweet life and is governed by the Matthew effect inherent in the *capital* part of *venture capital*: initial success leads to better dealflow leads to more funds and more success.\n\nI accidentally have a decent profile for a VC career. I have an economics degree from Wharton and spent my first 6 years working in every part of finance from central banking to investment banking to hedge funds ([long story here](https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/shawn-wang-podcast-interview/)). I also code and am well recognized in (mostly JS) devtools circles. I was [with Netlify](https://www.swyx.io/farewell-netlify/) (a16z backed) from Series B to C and am now at Temporal (Sequoia backed). I have a better-than-average network across my blog, newsletter, Twitter, podcast, including many founders, a dozen GPs, and I think I've shook hands with at least 3 billionaires. As an indie creator I've watched with green-tinged eyes as [Ryan Hoover](https://www.weekend.fund/), [Li Jin](https://www.atelierventures.co/), [Tyler Tringas](https://tylertringas.com/a-new-default-funding-for-tech-companies/), [Sahil Lavingia](https://techcrunch.com/2020/08/05/gumroad-founder-sahil-lavingia-launches-new-seed-fund-in-collaboration-with-angellist/), [Paige Doherty](https://twitter.com/paigefinnn/status/1350955353291317250), [Packy McCormick](https://www.notboring.co/p/introducing-not-boring-capital) and others launched funds that tie in perfectly with their brands. (Evan Armstrong came up with a witty term for writer-VC's: [Content Capitalists](https://every.to/napkin-math/the-rise-of-the-content-capitalist))\n\nI'm nowhere near as accomplished as any of them but pursuing their *path* was at least available to me given my network and trajectory. Instead I've turned away and chosen the more traditional path of salaried startup employee, with less freedom and more discomfort. I get asked why every now and then so I figure I better jot down my post-hoc rationalizations:\n\n- **I don't want to be a meta-creator**: [Meta-Creators have a ceiling](https://www.swyx.io/meta-creator-ceiling/) to substance - they burn bright but are overwhelmingly talkers rather than doers.\n- **There is too much money chasing too few operators**: This is a time of ridiculously easy money, with GameStop still worth $11b and Dogecoin worth $26b, Devtools startups raising unicorn rounds at 260x ARR, and Roam raising a $200m seed. Interest in private company funding is at generational highs, while new company formation is just coming off generational lows. Investors say getting great dealflow is their biggest problem, but post-PMF founders themselves report that hiring experienced senior executives is *their* biggest problem.\n- **This will be much easier after I have \"made it\"**: \"I'll be ready someday\" is a terrible reason to not do things — a college friend of mine is already a GP at Greylock without ever having been a founder or early stage exec. But I also see *heaps* of bright eyed bushy tailed \"partners\" who haven't done a notable thing in their lives and I know that nobody gives them the time of day. Just being at a good firm is no longer enough — your shortform bio (founded X, led X at Y, coined X) has to get to the level where people get you on the cap table just to have your name on the funding announcement. [Power is moving to the person](https://www.notboring.co/p/power-to-the-person). As [Ashley Mayer put it](https://twitter.com/ashleymayer/status/1378090154078957571?s=20), the influencers are trying to become VCs at the exact same time as the VCs are trying to become influencers.\n\nBut the biggest reason of all: **I'm on the hunt for bigger problems**. When you are [a frog in a well](https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Chinese_Stories/The_frog_of_the_well), all you see when you look up is a tiny circle of sky. My imagination is constrained by my experience, and despite my already diverse background across countries, industries, and cultures, I feel like I haven't pushed myself into hard enough problems.\n\n- When you are a regular employee at a stable company working on defined career paths, everything looks \"solved\" and your main job is to learn how things are \"done\". But founding and investing in startups is not just the art of identifying what big things are broken (everyone can complain about how everything is broken), but also whether the technology and market are ready for the right people to lead everyone to the promised land.\n- When you take the \"solve your own problems\" approach you most like come up with B2C ideas, which are pretty universally regarded to be much harder than B2B (B2C has lower ARPU, higher churn, higher support cost, higher UX/design bar, but do have high growth potential). On my own, the best idea I've had is \"[Superhuman for Twitter](https://twitter.com/search?q=from%3Aswyx%20twitter%20client&src=typed_query)\". At Temporal, I've had two theses — [X University as a Service](https://twitter.com/swyx/status/1319028647349555200), [the Enterprise House of Brands](https://twitter.com/swyx/status/1338956681695227904) — that off the bat have much better revenue potential and lower product/platform risk.\n\nAs an \"operator\" I'm focusing on specializing in Developer Experience, which economically speaking is helping Developer Tools companies \"cross the chasm\". I also practice this on a light burn basis with [Svelte Society](https://twitter.com/SvelteSociety), which in its second year alone memed Svelte to the [top of the StackOverflow frameworks survey](https://twitter.com/SvelteSociety/status/1422372693827985409?s=20).\n\nI'm not resting on my laurels though. I started angel investing last year and have made 6 investments so far, 2 of which already have markups. I'll share more detailed investment theses for each soon, but I think my goal is to deploy ~$50k/yr as an angel as a way to dip my toe into startup investing, mindful that valuations are sky high right now. If I get an early hit, then that's an accelerant to an eventual VC career. \n\nI could also start a syndicate or rolling fund. Even now the maximum I've allowed myself to go is starting a devtools-angels [list](https://github.com/sw-yx/devtools-angels/) and [Discord](https://discord.gg/7xkkV6CF) (where we are currently at 400 members!!) but the principle is the same — I'm not ready to be a fulltime investor, so I refuse to take formal steps, but I'm happy to lay the groundwork and have the option someday.","frontmatter":{"source":"devto","devToUrl":"https://dev.to/swyx/why-i-m-not-a-vc-yet-2md8","devToReactions":34,"devToReadingTime":5,"devToPublishedAt":"2021-08-08T06:26:46.379Z","devToViewsCount":2115,"title":"Why I'm not a VC (yet)","published":true,"description":"There is too much money chasing too few operators.","tags":"Reflections, Money, VC","slug":"not-vc-yet","canonical_url":"https://www.swyx.io/not-vc-yet"},"title":"Why I'm not a VC (yet)","description":"There is too much money chasing too few operators. ","category":"note","tags":["reflections","money","vc"],"canonical":"https://www.swyx.io/not-vc-yet","slug":"not-vc-yet","date":"2021-08-08T06:26:46.379Z","readingTime":"5 minutes","ghMetadata":{"issueUrl":"https://github.com/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/177","commentsUrl":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/177/comments","title":"Why I'm not a VC (yet)","created_at":"2022-01-17T23:01:21Z","updated_at":"2022-06-18T17:48:56Z","reactions":{"url":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/177/reactions","total_count":0,"+1":0,"-1":0,"laugh":0,"hooray":0,"confused":0,"heart":0,"rocket":0,"eyes":0}}},{"type":"blog","content":"\r\n> You can hear me read this [on my mixtape here](https://swyx.transistor.fm/episodes/the-genius-of-apples-name-brent-schlender).\r\n\r\nI recently started [the audiobook version of Brent Schlender's Becoming Steve Jobs](https://amzn.to/3BsnXH3) and this passage on Apple's name made me stop in my tracks:\r\n\r\n> There are different tales about the origin of the name, but it was a brilliant decision. Years later, Lee Clow, Steve’s longtime collaborator on Apple’s distinctive brand of advertising, told me, “I honestly believe that his intuition was that they were going to **change people’s lives by giving them technology they didn’t know they needed, that would be different from anything they knew.** So they needed something friendly and approachable and likable. He took a page out of Sony’s book, because Sony was originally called Tokyo Telecommunications Engineering Corporation, and [cofounder] Akio Morita said they needed something much more approachable.”\r\n>\r\n>Indeed, adopting the name Apple foreshadows the expansiveness and originality Steve would bring to the creation of these new machines. It’s suggestive of so much: the Garden of Eden, and the humanity — both good and bad — resulting from Eve’s bite of the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge; Johnny Appleseed, the great sower of plentitude from American myth; the Beatles and their own record label, a connection that would lead to litigation years later; Isaac Newton, the plummeting apple, and the spark of an idea; American as apple pie; the legend of William Tell, who saved his own life and that of his son by using his crossbow to pierce an apple perched on the son’s head; wholesomeness, fecundity, and, of course, the natural world. \r\n>\r\n> **Apple is not a word for geeks**, unlike Asus, Compaq, Control Data, Data General, DEC, IBM, Sperry Rand, Texas Instruments, or Wipro, to mention some less felicitously named computer companies. It hints at a company that would bring, as it eventually did, humanism and creativity to the science and engineering of computers. As Clow suggests, settling on Apple was a great, intuitive decision. Steve was innately comfortable trusting his gut; it’s a characteristic of the best entrepreneurs, a necessity for anyone who wants to make a living developing things no one has ever quite imagined before.\r\n\r\nI don't know how many times I've looked at names like Asus, IBM, Wipro, and Texas Instruments and never reflected on how they are clearly less friendly than \"Apple\". It's obvious in retrospect — the best kind of obvious.\r\n\r\nLongtime readers here will know I have opinions on [How to Name Things](https://www.swyx.io/how-to-name-things/) - mostly in code. It's easy to have strong opinions about stuff only developers see since user validation is just asking people like yourself. It's much harder to name something consumer facing. Here are some useful rules I gleaned from Apple:\r\n\r\n- Two syllables max\r\n- Familiar English word - literal 5 year olds can spell and pronounce it right\r\n- Starts with A - useful for alphabetical sort. [Amazon did this too](http://blog.idonethis.com/startup-name/)\r\n- Name leads to easy logo/swag/branding ideas\r\n- Evoke aspirational qualities - knowledge, health, nature\r\n\r\nI've vacillated somewhat on whether or not to use an English word for a name. My current company, [Temporal](http://temporal.io/), is an English word, and by sheer misfortune it exactly coincided with [the Temporal JavaScript proposal](https://github.com/tc39/proposal-temporal). Given that we aim to [release a JS SDK soon](https://github.com/temporalio/sdk-node), this is regrettable potential confusion in every customer conversation. Whereas if you just make up a word, like \"Netlify\", or \"Serverless\", you not only ensure that you never clash with anyone, you also shoot right to the top in SEO results. Then again, people can just append \"Apple Computer\" or \"Apple Macintosh\" and do fine.\r\n\r\nWhatever you do, the worst outcome of naming something an English word is [if it leads people to assume it does something different than you intend](https://twitter.com/zachleat/status/1387103114604470272?s=20). It can help to do a sanity check by asking people to guess what your thing does without context.\r\n\r\n## Related Reads\r\n\r\n- [How to Name Things](https://www.swyx.io/how-to-name-things/)","frontmatter":{"source":"devto","devToUrl":"https://dev.to/swyx/the-genius-of-apple-s-name-2643","devToReactions":13,"devToReadingTime":3,"devToPublishedAt":"2021-07-22T02:11:17.479Z","devToViewsCount":761,"title":"The Genius of Apple's Name","published":true,"description":"An excerpt from Becoming Steve Jobs that made me stop in my tracks.","tags":"apple, naming, tech","slug":"apples-name","canonical_url":"https://www.swyx.io/apples-name","cover_image":"https://data1.ibtimes.co.in/en/full/567663/becoming-steve-jobs.jpg?h=450&l=50&t=40"},"title":"The Genius of Apple's Name","description":"An excerpt from Becoming Steve Jobs that made me stop in my tracks. ","category":"note","tags":["apple","naming","tech"],"image":"https://data1.ibtimes.co.in/en/full/567663/becoming-steve-jobs.jpg?h=450&l=50&t=40","canonical":"https://www.swyx.io/apples-name","slug":"apples-name","date":"2021-07-22T02:11:17.479Z","readingTime":"3 minutes","ghMetadata":{"issueUrl":"https://github.com/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/178","commentsUrl":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/178/comments","title":"The Genius of Apple's Name","created_at":"2022-01-17T23:01:23Z","updated_at":"2022-02-03T10:44:10Z","reactions":{"url":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/178/reactions","total_count":0,"+1":0,"-1":0,"laugh":0,"hooray":0,"confused":0,"heart":0,"rocket":0,"eyes":0}}},{"type":"blog","content":"\r\n> - You can [listen to the audio narrated version here](https://swyx.transistor.fm/episodes/weekend-drop-temporal-the-iphone-of-system-design).\r\n> - I elaborated on these in:\r\n> - [CascadiaJS](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WRYozSljSpw) (9 min lightning talk)\r\n> - [React NYC](https://youtu.be/Cxaf8E00GMM) (30min talk)\r\n> - [The MongoDB Podcast](https://mongodb.libsyn.com/ep-93-swyx-learn-in-public-and-temporal) (33min podcast)\r\n> - [The SourceGraph Podcast](https://about.sourcegraph.com/podcast/swyx/) (1h15min podcast)\r\n> - [Complete Intro to Temporal](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CeHSmv8oF_4&feature=emb_title) (2h workshop - first 10mins has the \"Why Temporal\")\r\n> - [The Purrfect.Dev Podcast](https://codingcat.dev/podcast/2-21-linking-your-microservices-with-workflows)\r\n\r\nI'm excited to finally share why I've joined [Temporal.io](http://temporal.io) as Head of Developer Experience. It's taken me months to precisely pin down why I have been obsessed with Workflows in general and Temporal in particular. \r\n\r\nIt boils down to 3 core opinions: Orchestration, Event Sourcing, and Workflows-as-Code.\r\n\r\n*Target audience: product-focused developers who have some understanding of system design, but limited distributed systems experience and no familiarity with workflow engines. My only goal is to outline Temporal's core design goals and to imply that, if you share these goals, then you will eventually build something like Temporal, as [Mitchell Hashimoto put it](https://temporal.io/#final-quote). I will not explain how it works, how to get started, or even really what Temporal is — that comes later.*\r\n\r\n## 30 Second Pitch\r\n\r\nThe most valuable, mission-critical workloads in any software company are long-running and tie together multiple services. \r\n\r\n- **Because this work relies on unreliable networks and systems**:\r\n - You want to standardize timeouts and retries.\r\n - You want offer \"reliability on rails\" to every team.\r\n- **Because this work is so important**:\r\n - You must never drop any work.\r\n - You must log all progress.\r\n- **Because this work is complex**:\r\n - You want to easily model dynamic asynchronous logic...\r\n - ...and reuse, test, version and migrate it.\r\n\r\n**Finally, you want all this to scale**. The same programming model going from small usecases to millions of users without re-platforming. Temporal is the best way to do all this — by writing idiomatic code known as **\"workflows\"**.\r\n\r\n## Requirement 1: Orchestration\r\n\r\nSuppose you are executing some business logic that needs to go through System A, then System B, and then System C. Easy enough right?\r\n\r\n![Alt Text](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/vbkxrbfs1qroe2xdxr6u.png)\r\n\r\nBut:\r\n\r\n- System B has rate limiting, so sometimes it fails right away and you're just expected to try again some time later.\r\n- System C goes down a lot — and when it does, it doesn't actively report a failure. Your program is perfectly happy to wait an infinite amount of time and never retry C.\r\n\r\nYou could deal with B by just looping until you get a successful response, but that ties up compute. Probably the better way is to persist the incomplete task in a database and set a cron job to periodically retry the call.\r\n\r\nDealing with C is similar, but with a twist. You still need B's code to retry the API call, but you also need another (shorter lived, independent) scheduler to place a reasonable timeout on C's execution time since it doesn't report failures when it goes down.\r\n\r\n![Alt Text](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/rckh4r82ipdl4pgbnt7d.png)\r\n\r\nWiring together queues, timers, databases, and serverless functions just to do retries (just retries!) is a real architecture [recommended by AWS](https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/compute/using-amazon-sqs-dead-letter-queues-to-replay-messages/):\r\n\r\n[![Alt Text](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/sudt9rwhnz96y9lizpbm.png)](https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/compute/using-amazon-sqs-dead-letter-queues-to-replay-messages/)\r\n\r\nBut imagine doing this *per system*. Pretty soon your architecture looks [like this](https://theburningmonk.com/2017/04/aws-lambda-3-pro-tips-for-working-with-kinesis-streams/):\r\n\r\n[![Alt Text](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/yg4aawm4h6bo0t1wg8mk.png)](https://theburningmonk.com/2017/04/aws-lambda-3-pro-tips-for-working-with-kinesis-streams/)\r\n\r\nDo this often enough and you soon realize that [writing timeouts and retries are really standard production-grade requirements](https://aws.amazon.com/builders-library/timeouts-retries-and-backoff-with-jitter/) when crossing any system boundary, whether you are calling an external API or just a different service owned by your own team. \r\n\r\nInstead of writing custom code for timeout and retries for every single service every time, is there a better way? Sure, we could centralize it!\r\n\r\n![Alt Text](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/4k8vcafyzeiusfwj6m5d.png)\r\n\r\nWe have just rediscovered the need for **orchestration over choreography**. There are various names for the combined A-B-C system orchestration we are doing — depending who you ask, this is either called a Job Runner, Pipeline, or Workflow.\r\n\r\nHonestly, what interests me (more than the deduplication of code) is **the deduplication of infrastructure**. The maintainer of each system **no longer has to provision** the additional infrastructure needed for this stateful, potentially long-running work. This drastically simplifies maintenance — you can shrink your systems down to as small as a single serverless function — and makes it easier to spin up new ones, with the retry and timeout standards you now expect from every production-grade service. Workflow orchestrators are \"reliability on rails\".\r\n\r\nBut there's a risk of course — you've just added a centralized dependency to every part of your distributed system. *What if it ALSO goes down?*\r\n\r\n## Requirement 2: Event Sourcing\r\n\r\nThe work that your code does is mission critical. What does that really mean?\r\n\r\n- **We cannot drop anything.** All requests to start work must either result in error or success - no \"it was supposed to be running but got lost somewhere\" mismatch in expectations.\r\n- **During execution, we must be able to resume from any downtime**. If any part of the system goes down, we must be able to pick up where we left off.\r\n- **We need the entire history** of *what* happened *when*, for legal compliance, in case something went wrong, or if we want to analyze metadata across runs.\r\n\r\nThere are two ways to track all this state. The usual way starts with a simple task queue, and then adds logging:\r\n\r\n```jsx\r\n(async function workLoop() {\r\n\tconst nextTask = taskQueue.pop()\r\n\tawait logEvent('starting task:', nextTask.ID)\r\n\ttry {\r\n\t\tawait doWork(nextTask) // this could fail!\r\n\tcatch (err) {\r\n\t\tawait logEvent('reverting task:', nextTask.ID, err)\r\n\t\ttaskQueue.push(nextTask)\r\n\t}\r\n\tawait logEvent('completed task:', nextTask.ID)\r\n\tsetTimeout(workLoop, 0)\r\n})()\r\n```\r\n\r\nBut logs-as-afterthought has a bunch of problems.\r\n\r\n- The logging is not tightly paired with the queue updates. If it is possible for one to succeed but the other to fail, you either have unreliable logs or dropped work — unacceptable for mission critical work. This could also happen if the central work loop itself goes down while tasks are executing.\r\n- At the local level, you can fix this with batch transactions. Between systems, you can create two-phase commits. But this is a messy business and further bloats your business code with a ton of boilerplate — IF (a big if) you have the discipline to instrument every single state change in your code.\r\n\r\nThe alternative to logs-as-afterthought is logs-as-truth: If it wasn't logged, it didn't happen. This is also known as **Event Sourcing**. We can always reconstruct current state from an ever-growing list of `eventHistory`:\r\n\r\n```jsx\r\n(function workLoop() {\r\n\tconst nextTask = reconcile(eventHistory, workStateMachine)\r\n\tdoWorkAndLogHistory(nextTask, eventHistory) // transactional\r\n\tsetTimeout(workLoop, 0)\r\n})()\r\n```\r\n\r\nThe next task is strictly determined by comparing the event history to a state machine (provided by the application developer). Work is either done and committed to history, or not at all.\r\n\r\nI've handwaved away a lot of heavy lifting done by `reconcile` and `doWorkAndLogHistory`. But this solves a lot of problems: \r\n\r\n- Our logs are **always reliable**, since that is the *only* way we determine what to do next.\r\n- We use **transactional guarantees** to ensure that work is either done and tracked, or not at all. There is no \"limbo\" state — at the worst case, we'd rather retry already-done work with idempotency keys than drop work.\r\n- Since there is no implicit state in the work loop, it can be **restarted easily** on any downtime (or scaled horizontally for high load).\r\n- Finally, with standardized logs in our event history, we can share **observability and debugging tooling** between users.\r\n\r\n*You can also make an analogy to the difference between \"filename version control\" and git — Using event histories as your source of truth is comparable to a git repo that reflects all git commits to date.*\r\n\r\nBut there's one last problem to deal with - how exactly should the developer specify the full state machine?\r\n\r\n## Requirement 3: Workflows-as-Code\r\n\r\nThe prototypical workflow state machine is a JSON or YAML file listing a sequence of steps. But this abuses configuration formats for expressing code. it doesn't take long before you start adding features like conditional branching, loops, and variables, until you have an underspecified Turing complete \"domain specific language\" hiding out in your JSON/YAML schema. \r\n\r\n```jsx\r\n[\r\n {\r\n \"first_step\": {\r\n \"call\": \"http.get\",\r\n \"args\": {\r\n \"url\": \"https://www.example.com/callA\"\r\n },\r\n \"result\": \"first_result\"\r\n }\r\n },\r\n {\r\n \"where_to_jump\": {\r\n \"switch\": [\r\n {\r\n \"condition\": \"${first_result.body.SomeField < 10}\",\r\n \"next\": \"small\"\r\n },\r\n {\r\n \"condition\": \"${first_result.body.SomeField < 100}\",\r\n \"next\": \"medium\"\r\n }\r\n ],\r\n \"next\": \"large\"\r\n }\r\n },\r\n {\r\n \"small\": {\r\n \"call\": \"http.get\",\r\n \"args\": {\r\n \"url\": \"https://www.example.com/SmallFunc\"\r\n },\r\n \"next\": \"end\"\r\n }\r\n },\r\n {\r\n \"medium\": {\r\n \"call\": \"http.get\",\r\n \"args\": {\r\n \"url\": \"https://www.example.com/MediumFunc\"\r\n },\r\n \"next\": \"end\"\r\n }\r\n },\r\n {\r\n \"large\": {\r\n \"call\": \"http.get\",\r\n \"args\": {\r\n \"url\": \"https://www.example.com/LargeFunc\"\r\n },\r\n \"next\": \"end\"\r\n }\r\n }\r\n]\r\n```\r\n\r\nThis example happens to be from [Google](https://github.com/GoogleCloudPlatform/workflows-samples/blob/main/src/step_conditional_jump.workflows.json), but you can compare similar config-driven syntaxes from [Argo](https://github.com/serverlessworkflow/specification/blob/57ed379acdf066c7dd87644b1ec2254f1f350ba6/comparisons/comparison-argo.md), [Amazon](https://states-language.net/spec.html), and [Airflow](https://airflow.apache.org/docs/apache-airflow/stable/tutorial.html#example-pipeline-definition). The bottom line is you ultimately find yourself hand-writing the Abstract Syntax Tree of something you can read much better in code anyway:\r\n\r\n```jsx\r\nasync function dataPipeline() {\r\n\tconst { body: SomeField } = await httpGet(\"https://www.example.com/callA\")\r\n\tif (SomeField < 10) {\r\n\t\tawait httpGet(\"https://www.example.com/SmallFunc\")\r\n\t} else if (SomeField < 100) {\r\n\t\tawait httpGet(\"https://www.example.com/MediumFunc\")\r\n\t} else {\r\n\t\tawait httpGet(\"https://www.example.com/BigFunc\")\r\n\t}\r\n}\r\n```\r\n\r\nThe benefit of using general purpose programming languages to define workflows — Workflows-as-Code — is that you get to **the full set of tooling** that is already available to you as a developer: from IDE autocomplete to linting to syntax highlighting to version control to ecosystem libraries and test frameworks. But perhaps the biggest benefit of all is the reduced need for context switching from your application language to the workflow language. (So much so that you could copy over code and get reliability guarantees with only minor modifications.)\r\n\r\nThis config-vs-code debate arises in multiple domains: You may have encountered this problem in AWS provisioning (CloudFormation vs CDK/Pulumi) or CI/CD (debugging giant YAML files for your builds). Since you can always write code to interpret any declarative JSON/YAML DSL, the code layer offers a superset of capabilities.\r\n\r\n## The Challenge of DIY Solutions\r\n\r\nSo for our mission critical, long-running work, we've identified three requirements:\r\n\r\n1. We want an **orchestration** engine between services.\r\n2. We want to use **event sourcing** to track and resume system state.\r\n3. We want to write all this **with code** rather than config languages.\r\n\r\nRespectively, these solve the pain points of reliability boilerplate, implementing observability/recovery, and modeling arbitrary business logic.\r\n\r\nIf you were to build this on your own: \r\n\r\n- You can find an orchestration engine off the shelf, though few have a strong open source backing.\r\n- You'd likely start with a logs-as-afterthought system, and accumulating inconsistencies over time until they are critical enough to warrant a rewrite to a homegrown event sourcing framework with stronger guarantees.\r\n- As you generalize your system for more use cases, you might start off using a JSON/YAML config language, because that is easy to parse. If it were entrenched and large enough, you might create an \"as Code\" layer just as AWS did with AWS CDK, causing an impedance mismatch until you rip out the underlying declarative layer.\r\n\r\nFinally, you'd have to make your system scale for many users (horizontal scaling + load balancing + queueing + routing) and many developers (workload isolation + authentication + authorization + testing + code reuse).\r\n\r\n## Temporal as the \"iPhone solution\"\r\n\r\nWhen [Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MnrJzXM7a6o) in 2007, he introduced it as \"a widescreen iPod with touch controls, a revolutionary mobile phone, and a breakthrough internet communications device\", before stunning the audience: \"These are *not* three separate devices. This is **ONE** device.\"\r\n\r\n{% youtube MnrJzXM7a6o %}\r\n\r\nThis is the potential of Temporal. Temporal has opinions on how to make each piece best-in-class, but the tight integration creates a programming paradigm that is ultimately greater than the sum of its parts:\r\n\r\n- You can build a UI that natively understands workflows as potentially infinitely long running business logic, exposing retry status, event history, and code input/outputs.\r\n- You can build workflow migration tooling that verifies that old-but-still-running workflows have been fully accounted for when migrating to new code.\r\n- You can add pluggable persistence so that you are agnostic to what databases or even what cloud you use, helping you be cloud-agnostic.\r\n- You can run polyglot teams — each team can work in their ideal language, and only care about serializable inputs/outputs when calling each other, since event history is language-agnostic.\r\n- There are more possibilities I can't talk about yet.\r\n\r\n## The Business Case for Temporal\r\n\r\nA fun anecdote about how I got the job: through blogging.\r\n\r\nWhile exploring the serverless ecosystem at Netlify and AWS, I always had the nagging feeling that it was incomplete and that the most valuable work was always \"left as an exercise to the reader\". The feeling crystallized when I rewatched DHH's 2005 Ruby on Rails demo and realized that there was no way the serverless ecosystem could match up to it. We broke up the monolith to scale it, but there were just too many pieces missing.\r\n\r\nI started analyzing cloud computing from a \"Jobs to Be Done\" framework and wrote two throwaway blogposts called [Cloud Operating Systems and Reconstituting the Monolith](https://gist.github.com/sw-yx/ff8a4f6757286444fa20b43f6b98b205). My ignorant posting led to [an extended comment from a total internet stranger](https://twitter.com/swyx/status/1226747097208295424) telling me all the ways I was wrong. [Lenny Pruss](https://twitter.com/lennypruss?lang=en), who was ALSO reading my blogpost, saw this comment, and got Ryland to join Temporal as Head of Product, and he then turned around and pitched (literally pitched) me to join.\r\n\r\nOne blogpost, two jobs. [Learn in Public](https://www.swyx.io/LIP) continues to amaze me by the [luck it creates](https://www.swyx.io/create-luck).\r\n\r\nStill, why would I quit a comfy, well-paying job at Amazon to work harder for less money at a startup like this?\r\n\r\n- **Extraordinary people**. At its core, betting on any startup is betting on the people. The two cofounders of Temporal have been working on variants of this problem for over a decade each at AWS, Microsoft, and Uber. They have attracted an extremely high caliber team around them, with centuries of distributed systems experience. I report to the Head of Product, who is one of the fastest scaling executives Sequoia has ever seen.\r\n- **Extraordinary adoption**. Because it reinvents service orchestration, Temporal (and its predecessor Cadence) is very horizontal by nature. [Descript uses it](https://docs.temporal.io/blog/descript-case-study) for audio transcription, [Snap uses it](https://eng.snap.com/build_a_reliable_system_in_a_microservices_world_at_snap) for ads reporting, [Hashicorp uses it](https://temporal.io/#final-quote) for infrastructure provisioning, [Stripe uses it](https://stripe.com/jobs/listing/infrastructure-engineer-developer-productivity-workflow-engine/2964407) for the workflow engine behind Stripe Capital and Billing, [Coinbase uses it](https://docs.temporal.io/blog/reliable-crypto-transactions-at-coinbase/) for cryptocurrency transactions, [Box uses it](https://docs.temporal.io/blog/Temporal-a-central-brain-for-Box) for file transfer, [Datadog uses it](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eWFpl-nzGsY) for CI/CD, [DoorDash uses it](https://doordash.engineering/2020/08/14/workflows-cadence-event-driven-processing/) for delivery creation, [Checkr uses it](https://docs.temporal.io/blog/how-temporal-simplified-checkr-workflows/) for background checks. Within each company, growth is viral; once one team sees successful adoption, dozens more follow suit within a year, all through word of mouth.\r\n ![Alt Text](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/p51uo0krl90sx03s83sp.png)\r\n- **Extraordinary results**. After migrating, Temporal users report production issues falling from once-a-week to near-zero. Accidental double-spends have been discovered and fixed, saving millions in cold hard cash. Teams report being able to move faster, thanks to testing, code reuse, and standardized reliability. While the value of this is hard to quantify, it is big enough that users organically tell their friends and [list Temporal in their job openings](https://temporal.io/careers#external-jobs).\r\n- **Huge potential market growth**. The main thing you bet on when it comes to Temporal is that its primary competition really is homegrown workflow systems, not other engines like Airflow, AWS Step Functions, and Camunda BPMN. In other words, even though Temporal should gain market share, **the real story is market growth**, driven by the growing microservices movement and developer education around best-in-class orchestration. At AWS and Netlify, I always felt like there was a missing capability in building serverless-first apps — duct-taping functions and cronjobs and databases to do async work — and it all fell into place the moment I saw Temporal. I'm betting that there are many, many people like me, and that I can help Temporal reach them.\r\n- **High potential value capture**. Apart from market share and market growth, any open source project has the additional challenge of value capture, since users can self-host at any time. I mostly subscribe to David Ulevitch's take that [open source SaaS is basically outsourcing ops](https://mobile.twitter.com/swyx/status/1373425786351284228). I haven't talked about [Temporal's underlying architecture](https://docs.temporal.io/blog/workflow-engine-principles) but it has quite a few moving parts and takes a lot of skill and system understanding to operate. For reasons I won't get into, Temporal scales best on Cassandra and that alone is enough to make most want to pay someone else to handle it.\r\n- **Great expansion opportunities**. Temporal is by nature the most direct source of truth on the most valuable, mission critical workflows of any company that adopts it. It can therefore develop the most mission critical dashboard and control panel. Any source of truth also becomes a natural aggregation point for integrations, leaving open the possibility of an internal or third party service marketplace. With the Signals and Queries features, Temporal easily gets data in and out of running workflows, making it an ideal foundation for the sort of human-in-the-loop work for [the API Economy](https://www.swyx.io/api-economy/). Imagine toggling just one line of code to A/B test vendors and APIs, or have Temporal learn while a domain expert manually executes decision processes and take over when it has seen enough. As a \"high-code\" specialist in reliable workflows, it could be a neutral arms dealer in the \"low-code\" gold rush, or choose to get into that game itself. If you want to get really wild, the secure distributed execution model of Workflow workers could be facilitated by an [ERC-20 token](https://www.investopedia.com/news/what-erc20-and-what-does-it-mean-ethereum/). (*to be clear... everything listed here is personal speculation and not the company roadmap)*\r\n\r\nThere is much work to do, though. Temporal Cloud needs a lot of automation and scaling before it becomes generally available. Temporal's UI is in the process of a full rewrite. Temporal's docs need a lot more work to fully explain such a complex system with many use cases. Temporal still doesn't have a production-ready Node.js or Python SDK. And much, much, more to do before Temporal's developer experience becomes accessible to the majority of developers.\r\n\r\n## Conclusion: Temporal's Strategy Turn\r\n\r\nI've probably exhausted your patience at this point but at least I hope you see that I genuinely think the potential is humongous. *And yet* I'm still understating it.\r\n\r\nTemporal today is pitched as \"reliability on rails\" or as a \"workflow-as-code microservices orchestration engine\" in the same way that the initial pitch of iPhone led with \"a widescreen iPod with touch controls\". We do that because it's familiar to things you already know — queues, databases, cronjobs, job runners, data and provisioning pipelines. \r\n\r\nBut now all my iPhone audio comes from Spotify and Overcast, I barely use the phone functionality, and I'm using the mobile Internet the rest of the time. The equivalent decade-long potential of Temporal is as ambitious as defining an \"8th layer\" to the [OSI 7 Layer](https://www.swyx.io/osi-layers-coding-careers/) model and reinventing asynchronous programming the way iPhone reinvented smartphones.\r\n\r\nLong time readers will recognize this as a \"[Strategy Turn](https://www.swyx.io/strategy-turns/)\" — the fact that it will happen is a matter of when, not if.\r\n\r\nIf what I've laid out excites you, take a look at [our open positions](https://temporal.io/careers) (or write in your own!), and [join the mailing list](https://docs.temporal.io/docs/concepts/introduction#mc_embed_signup_scroll)!\r\n\r\n## Further Reading\r\n\r\n{% youtube WRYozSljSpw %}\r\n\r\n- Orchestration\r\n - [Yan Cui's guide to Orchestration vs Choreography](https://theburningmonk.com/2020/08/choreography-vs-orchestration-in-the-land-of-serverless/)\r\n - [InfoQ: Coupling Microservices](https://www.infoq.com/podcasts/design-time-coupling-microservices/) - a non-Temporal focused discussion of Orchestration\r\n - [A Netflix Guide to Microservices](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZ3wIuvmHeM)\r\n- Event Sourcing\r\n - Martin Fowler on [Event Sourcing](https://martinfowler.com/eaaDev/EventSourcing.html)\r\n - Kickstarter's guide to [Event Sourcing](https://kickstarter.engineering/event-sourcing-made-simple-4a2625113224?gi=e356daabcb81)\r\n- Code over Config\r\n - [ACloudGuru's guide to Terraform, CloudFormation, and AWS CDK](https://acloudguru.com/blog/engineering/cloudformation-terraform-or-cdk-guide-to-iac-on-aws)\r\n - [Serverless Workflow's comparison of Workflow specification formats](https://github.com/serverlessworkflow/specification/tree/main/comparisons)\r\n- Temporal\r\n - [Dealing with failure](https://docs.temporal.io/blog/dealing-with-failure/) - when to use Workflows\r\n - [The macro problem with microservices](https://stackoverflow.blog/2020/11/23/the-macro-problem-with-microservices/) - Temporal in context of microservices\r\n - [Designing A Workflow Engine from First Principles](https://docs.temporal.io/blog/workflow-engine-principles/) - Temporal Architecture Principles\r\n - [Writing your first workflow](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=taKrIWt6KMY&feature=youtu.be) - 20min code video\r\n - [Case studies](https://docs.temporal.io/blog/tags/case-study) and [External Resources](https://docs.temporal.io/docs/external-resources/) from our users","frontmatter":{"source":"devto","devToUrl":"https://dev.to/swyx/temporal-the-iphone-of-system-design-4a78","devToReactions":19,"devToReadingTime":15,"devToPublishedAt":"2021-07-19T07:46:12.503Z","devToViewsCount":295,"title":"Temporal - the iPhone of System Design","published":true,"description":"Temporal ties Orchestration, Event Sourcing, and Workflows-as-Code in one distributed system and it is eating the world.","tags":"Temporal, Work, Reflections","slug":"why-temporal","canonical_url":"https://www.swyx.io/why-temporal","cover_image":"https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/f4gjemgd6pr1494mmu9g.png"},"title":"Temporal - the iPhone of System Design","description":"Temporal ties Orchestration, Event Sourcing, and Workflows-as-Code in one distributed system and it is eating the world. ","category":"note","tags":["temporal","work","reflections"],"image":"https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/f4gjemgd6pr1494mmu9g.png","canonical":"https://www.swyx.io/why-temporal","slug":"why-temporal","date":"2021-07-19T07:46:12.503Z","readingTime":"16 minutes","ghMetadata":{"issueUrl":"https://github.com/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/179","commentsUrl":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/179/comments","title":"Temporal - the iPhone of System Design","created_at":"2022-01-17T23:01:25Z","updated_at":"2022-06-25T20:48:33Z","reactions":{"url":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/179/reactions","total_count":0,"+1":0,"-1":0,"laugh":0,"hooray":0,"confused":0,"heart":0,"rocket":0,"eyes":0}}},{"title":"Svelte on PodRocket","slug":"podrocket-2","tags":["Svelte"],"venues":"Podrocket","date":"2021-07-16T00:00:00.000Z","url":"https://podrocket.logrocket.com/svelte","description":"Curious about all of the hype around Svelte? Swyx joins us on this episode of PodRocket to talk about Svelte and all of the work he has been doing at Svelte Society.","category":"podcast"},{"type":"blog","content":"\r\nI set up a new Mac for work today. Here's everything I use on a Mac for fullstack web development.\r\n\r\nUnlike [Mina Markham](https://github.com/minamarkham/formation), I choose not to automate my setup because I only do it about once a year and I want the ability to make conscious changes each time.\r\n\r\n> I previously tracked my new mac setup in [an old version of this page from 2018-2020](https://dev.to/swyx/my-new-mac-setup-4ibi).\r\n\r\n\r\n## 1hr Video Walkthrough\r\n\r\n{% youtube qwflfsgU0eg %}\r\n\r\n---\r\n## OS/Browser Settings\r\n\r\n- **Browser**: Download Chrome, set to default.\r\n- **Log in to**: (this helps with logins for the other services below)\r\n - Twitter\r\n - Github (more setup instructions below)\r\n - Gmail\r\n- **System Settings**:\r\n - Disable Spotlight search for all miscellaneous crap except apps and system preferences\r\n - including [stupid Developer option](https://www.howtogeek.com/231829/how-to-disable-developer-search-results-in-spotlight-on-a-mac/) (make sure to add [Xcode.app](http://xcode.app) to /Applications not /user/swyx/Applications)\r\n - Disable Ask Siri\r\n - Set to [Big cursor](https://www.lifewire.com/make-mac-mouse-pointer-bigger-2260808) for accessibility during presentation\r\n - [some reports of memory leaks](https://www.techrepublic.com/article/macos-monterey-has-a-serious-memory-leak-problem-and-the-cause-has-been-found/) when doing this\r\n - Fix trackpad direction: Trackpad -> Scroll & Zoom - Natural off\r\n - Disable dictionary lookup: Trackpad -> Point & Click -> Look up & data detectors off\r\n - (if using windows keyboard) [remap alt and cmd keys](https://superuser.com/questions/158561/how-can-i-remap-windows-and-alt-keys-in-os-x) for ergonomics\r\n- **Finder settings**:\r\n - Preferences → show filename extensions\r\n - Enable showing dotfiles (just hold Cmd + Shift + . (dot) in a Finder window)\r\n - [Show path bar](https://www.tekrevue.com/tip/show-path-finder-title-bar/) in footer for easier navigation\r\n - Prune the excessive sidebar bookmarks\r\n - create \"Work\" folder and pin it\r\n- **Keyboard**:\r\n - [remap command+Q to literally anything else](https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/78948/how-to-disable-command-q-for-quit) - to prevent accidental close-all\r\n - Shortcuts: copy picture of selected area to clipboard -> Cmd+E\r\n- **MacOS Dock:**\r\n - Remove everything from the Dock except: Finder, System Preferences and Trash\r\n - Turn Dock Auto Hiding on\r\n - turn this on for MacOS Menu bar as well\r\n- **Chrome extensions**: (tied to Chrome account)\r\n - Paywall blocker [https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-chrome/](https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-chrome/)\r\n - See Tweets about any page [https://github.com/sw-yx/Twitter-Links-beta](https://github.com/sw-yx/Twitter-Links-beta?organization=sw-yx&organization=sw-yx) ([my blogpost here](https://www.swyx.io/twitter-metacommentary/))\r\n - [Morpheon Dark theme](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/morpheon-dark/mafbdhjdkjnoafhfelkjpchpaepjknad?hl=en)\r\n - [Lastpass](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/lastpass-free-password-ma/hdokiejnpimakedhajhdlcegeplioahd?hl=en-US)\r\n - [Display Anchors](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/display-anchors/poahndpaaanbpbeafbkploiobpiiieko/related?hl=en)\r\n - [React Devtools](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/react-developer-tools/fmkadmapgofadopljbjfkapdkoienihi?hl=en)\r\n - [Refined Github](https://github.com/sindresorhus/refined-github)\r\n - [Code Copy](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/codecopy/fkbfebkcoelajmhanocgppanfoojcdmg?hl=en)\r\n - [Video Speed Controller](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/video-speed-controller/nffaoalbilbmmfgbnbgppjihopabppdk?hl=en) ← VERY HIGHLY RECOMMENDED\r\n - [Palettab](https://palettab.com/)\r\n - [Privacy Badger](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/privacy-badger/pkehgijcmpdhfbdbbnkijodmdjhbjlgp?hl=en-US)\r\n - [RescueTime](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/rescuetime-for-chrome-and/bdakmnplckeopfghnlpocafcepegjeap?hl=en-US)\r\n - [uBlock Origin](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ublock-origin/cjpalhdlnbpafiamejdnhcphjbkeiagm?hl=en)\r\n - [Octolinker](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/octolinker/jlmafbaeoofdegohdhinkhilhclaklkp?hl=en)\r\n - [async render toolbox](https://github.com/sw-yx/async-render-toolbox) (i made this)\r\n\r\n## Setup Terminal\r\n\r\n- Copy my dotfiles (vimrc, zshrc, .gitignore_global): [https://gist.github.com/sw-yx/7fa1009e460ecb818d5e6d9ca4616a05](https://gist.github.com/sw-yx/7fa1009e460ecb818d5e6d9ca4616a05)\r\n- Install [ZSH](https://ohmyz.sh/) (first usage of `git` will prompt you to install git - takes 15 minutes)\r\n - `git config --global init.defaultBranch main`\r\n - `git config --global user.name \"swyx\"`\r\n - `git config --global user.email shawnthe1@gmail.com`\r\n - Font - [Inconsolata for Powerline](https://github.com/powerline/fonts/blob/master/Inconsolata/Inconsolata%20for%20Powerline.otf)\r\n - [autosuggestions](https://github.com/zsh-users/zsh-autosuggestions)\r\n - [syntax highlighting](https://github.com/zsh-users/zsh-syntax-highlighting)\r\n - may need to [chmod stuff](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/13762280/zsh-compinit-insecure-directories) or warnings show at start of every session\r\n\r\n ```\r\n $ sudo chmod -R 755 /usr/local/share/zsh\r\n $ sudo chown -R root:staff /usr/local/share/zsh\r\n\r\n ```\r\n\r\n- [Hyper Terminal](https://hyper.is/)\r\n - settings: [shell: '/bin/zsh'](https://gist.github.com/robertcoopercode/276d7cf66e9b0eea48c117fff1762a17#file-hyper-js-L60)\r\n - settings: `fontFamily: '\"Inconsolata for Powerline\", Menlo, \"DejaVu Sans Mono\", Consolas, \"Lucida Console\", monospace',`\r\n - [Fig](https://fig.io/) - context-aware autocomplete for terminal. Waitlisted now, but you can skip the waitlist [here](https://fig.io/invite?code=swyx) (i get nothing from this)\r\n - More CLI tools recommended by Brendan Faik (founder of Fig) - `bat`, `exa`, `ripgrep`, and other [Rust CLI alternatives](https://zaiste.net/posts/shell-commands-rust/). Also [zsh abbreviations](https://github.com/momo-lab/zsh-abbrev-alias)\r\n - [More CLI tools from Earthly](https://earthly.dev/blog/command-line-tools/) - [HN here](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27992073)\r\n - `broot` - a better `tree` \r\n - `funky` - simple shell functions\r\n - `fzf` - fuzzy finder\r\n - `mcfly` - guesses commands based on your history\r\n - `zoxide` - a better `cd`\r\n - `gitupdate` - use file names to create a more meaningful commit message\r\n\r\n## Set up apps/environments\r\n\r\n- Install [Homebrew](https://brew.sh/) - `/bin/bash -c \"$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/HEAD/install.sh)\"`\r\n\r\n i have a bunch more stuff in `brew list` but i'm not sure what i use actively. You can mass install these: `brew install $(cat packages.txt)`\r\n\r\n ```\r\n bat gdbm libuv python@3.9\r\n brotli gh libyaml readline\r\n c-ares go mpdecimal ruby\r\n deno gradle notunes sqlite\r\n diff-so-fancy icu4c node xz\r\n fnm jemalloc openjdk yarn\r\n fzf libev openssl@1.1 z\r\n ```\r\n- new: added brew install `--cask notunes`, replaced `nghttp2` above\r\n- `brew update` on m1's have turned out to be super annoying. [this](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/64963370/error-cannot-install-in-homebrew-on-arm-processor-in-intel-default-prefix-usr) helped me: `arch -x86_64 brew install YOUR_PACKAGE`\r\n- `brew install bat`\r\n- [Github CLI](https://github.com/cli/cli): `brew install github/gh/gh`\r\n - you need to login to git - if you have 2fa enabled, you cant use your normal github password. try pushing to a repo and enter in a [Personal Access Token](https://stackoverflow.com/a/34919582) for password.\r\n - then run `gh auth login`\r\n - [add GitHub SSH key](https://docs.github.com/en/github/authenticating-to-github/generating-a-new-ssh-key-and-adding-it-to-the-ssh-agent) (not optional)\r\n- `brew install fzf` - fuzzy finder - usage example is [here](https://twitter.com/swyx/status/1048009961723318272)\r\n- `brew install node`\r\n - [Node.js/NPM](https://nodejs.org/en/download/)\r\n - `npm login`\r\n - `npm config set loglevel`\r\n - `sudo npm install netlify-cli -g`\r\n - `npm i -g sign-bunny fortune-node parrotsay`\r\n - `npm install -g undollar` for removing $\r\n - `sudo npm install -g trash-cli`\r\n- `brew install yarn --ignore-dependencies` - [yarn](https://yarnpkg.com/en/docs/install#mac-stable) note\r\n- you may need to [work around Mac OS Sierra](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/43780207/installing-node-with-brew-fails-on-mac-os-sierra)\r\n- `brew install z` - [REALLY GOOD TRY IT](https://brewinstall.org/install-z-on-mac-with-brew/)\r\n- Misc\r\n - `pip3 install --user powerline-status`\r\n - go to a neutral folder and `git clone && cd fonts && ./install.sh`\r\n - [fnm](https://github.com/Schniz/fnm) faster alternative to [nvm](https://github.com/creationix/nvm): `curl -fsSL | bash` or `brew install fnm`\r\n - **[Anaconda](https://www.anaconda.com/download/#macos) Python distro** - be careful they tend to [modify your bash prompt without asking](https://askubuntu.com/questions/1026383/why-does-base-appear-in-front-of-my-terminal-prompt\\)\r\n - [Docker Desktop](https://hub.docker.com/editions/community/docker-ce-desktop-mac/)\r\n - `brew install` [ffmpeg](https://ffmpeg.org/download.html) and then\r\n - https://github.com/tombonez/noTunes\r\n - download [Audacity](https://www.audacityteam.org/download/mac/) - and [install ffmpeg](https://manual.audacityteam.org/man/installing_ffmpeg_for_mac.html)\r\n - `brew install java` - you could download [Java Development Kit](https://www.oracle.com/java/technologies/javase/javase-jdk8-downloads.html) from Oracle but fuck them for putting it behind signup wall\r\n - `brew install go` you may need to `export PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/go/bin`\r\n - `brew install diff-so-fancy` - then set `git config --global core.pager \"diff-so-fancy | less --tabs=4 -RFX\"` - makes for much nicer git diff\r\n - You can also diff with this bash function `dif() { git diff --color --no-index \"$1\" \"$2\" | diff-so-fancy; }` or with VSCode `code --diff file1.js file2.js`.\r\n - You can also try [https://github.com/dandavison/delta](https://github.com/dandavison/delta)\r\n\r\n## Setup Apps\r\n\r\n- Emojis: [https://matthewpalmer.net/rocket/](https://matthewpalmer.net/rocket/)\r\n- Password Manager: I use 1password for company and lastpass for personal\r\n- Window Manager: [https://www.spectacleapp.com/](https://www.spectacleapp.com/) launch at login\r\n- Clipboard Manager: [https://clipy-app.com/](https://clipy-app.com/) or https://yippy.mattdavo.com/ (untested)\r\n- Loom: [https://www.loom.com/desktop](https://www.loom.com/desktop)\r\n- Zoom: [https://zoom.us/download](https://zoom.us/download)\r\n- Screenshots: [https://cleanshot.com/](https://cleanshot.com/) (previously used [https://zapier.com/zappy](https://zapier.com/zappy)). [Browser extension - Lightshot](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/lightshot-screenshot-tool/mbniclmhobmnbdlbpiphghaielnnpgdp)\r\n- Caffeine (Keep Mac awake for talks): [https://intelliscapesolutions.com/apps/caffeine](https://intelliscapesolutions.com/apps/caffeine)\r\n - used to be [http://lightheadsw.com/caffeine/](http://lightheadsw.com/caffeine/)\r\n - maintained version: [Amphetamine](https://roaringapps.com/app/amphetamine) (thanks Matt Mischuk!)\r\n- [NoTunes](https://github.com/tombonez/noTunes) - disable itunes/apple music\r\n- Video capture: [https://getkap.co/](https://getkap.co/)\r\n- Dual Screen: [https://www.duetdisplay.com/](https://www.duetdisplay.com/)\r\n- Gifs: [Licecap](https://www.cockos.com/licecap/)\r\n- [Slack](https://slack.com/downloads/osx) or [Discord](https://discord.com/)\r\n- OBS: [https://obsproject.com/](https://obsproject.com/)\r\n- Transcribing: [https://www.descript.com/download/mac](https://www.descript.com/download/mac)\r\n- SkyFonts: [https://www.fonts.com/web-fonts/google](https://www.fonts.com/web-fonts/google)\r\n- Microsoft Todo: [https://apps.apple.com/app/apple-store/id1274495053?mt=8](https://apps.apple.com/app/apple-store/id1274495053?mt=8)\r\n- Stretchly: [https://hovancik.net/stretchly/](https://hovancik.net/stretchly/)\r\n- Disk Space: [Disk Inventory X](http://www.derlien.com/) - you can clean node modules with [this bash command](https://twitter.com/swyx/status/1064672618450579457?s=20) or as a [cronjob](https://gist.github.com/zephraph/9169b9de4568b858f4b0e45fc41218b7)\r\n- Replay: [download](https://replay.io/welcome) - https://www.notion.so/Replay-Docs-56758667f53a4d51b7c6fc7a641adb02\r\n- SimpleNote: [https://apps.apple.com/us/app/simplenote/id692867256?ls=1&mt=12](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/simplenote/id692867256?ls=1&mt=12)\r\n- [Superhuman for Mac](http://superhuman.com/mac) and [https://mail.superhuman.com](https://mail.superhuman.com/) \r\n- Notion: [https://www.notion.so/desktop](https://www.notion.so/desktop)\r\n - [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/notion-web-clipper/knheggckgoiihginacbkhaalnibhilkk?hl=en](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/notion-web-clipper/knheggckgoiihginacbkhaalnibhilkk?hl=en)\r\n- App Search/Utils: [https://www.alfredapp.com/](https://www.alfredapp.com/)\r\n - set to Alfred Dark\r\n - [airdrop to iphone/ipad](https://github.com/swmoon203/CrossShare/blob/master/Alfred%20Workflow/Cross%20Share%20Airdrop.alfredworkflow)\r\n - [Cupcake Ipsum](http://www.packal.org/workflow/cupcake-ipsum)\r\n- Editor: Download [VS Code](https://code.visualstudio.com/download) (I used to use Insiders but the popups are super annoying). use Settings Sync to sync across machines\r\n - have to set up powerline fonts \"Meslo LG M for Powerline\" ([download](https://github.com/powerline/fonts/blob/master/Meslo%20Slashed/Meslo%20LG%20M%20Regular%20for%20Powerline.ttf))\r\n - auto-close-tag v0.5.6\r\n - auto-rename-tag v0.0.15\r\n - Bookmarks v9.1.0\r\n - code-settings-sync v3.1.2\r\n - debugger-for-chrome v4.10.2\r\n - es7-react-js-snippets v1.8.7\r\n - graphql-for-vscode v1.12.1\r\n - mdx v0.1.0\r\n - prettier-vscode v1.6.1\r\n - python v2018.9.2\r\n - python v0.2.3\r\n - rainbow-brackets v0.0.6 - this is now deprecated, use the native [`\"editor.bracketPairColorization.enabled\": true`](https://code.visualstudio.com/blogs/2021/09/29/bracket-pair-colorization)\r\n - shades-of-purple v3.17.0\r\n - vscode-graphql v0.1.5\r\n - vscode-import-cost v2.9.0\r\n - vscode-styled-components v0.0.23\r\n - vscode-wakatime v1.2.3\r\n - [TabNine](https://www.tabnine.com/) AI completions\r\n - [GitHub Copilot](https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=GitHub.copilot)\r\n - to try: [File Utils](https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=sleistner.vscode-fileutils) - recommended by [Stolinski](https://twitter.com/stolinski/status/1417247358430109697)\r\n - Here's the full list you can run from command line\r\n\r\n ```jsx\r\n code --install-extension 2gua.rainbow-brackets\r\n code --install-extension ahmadawais.shades-of-purple\r\n code --install-extension austenc.tailwind-docs\r\n code --install-extension bradlc.vscode-tailwindcss\r\n code --install-extension cpylua.language-postcss\r\n code --install-extension dbaeumer.vscode-eslint\r\n code --install-extension dsznajder.es7-react-js-snippets\r\n code --install-extension esbenp.prettier-vscode\r\n code --install-extension formulahendry.auto-close-tag\r\n code --install-extension formulahendry.auto-rename-tag\r\n code --install-extension GabrielNordeborn.vscode-graphiql-explorer\r\n code --install-extension GitHub.copilot\r\n code --install-extension golang.go\r\n code --install-extension heybourn.headwind\r\n code --install-extension jpoissonnier.vscode-styled-components\r\n code --install-extension kgscott.retreon\r\n code --install-extension kumar-harsh.graphql-for-vscode\r\n code --install-extension luyizhi.vscode-graphql\r\n code --install-extension ms-python.python\r\n code --install-extension ms-python.vscode-pylance\r\n code --install-extension ms-toolsai.jupyter\r\n code --install-extension msjsdiag.debugger-for-chrome\r\n code --install-extension NickScialli.svelte-dark\r\n code --install-extension octref.vetur\r\n code --install-extension oderwat.indent-rainbow\r\n code --install-extension sdras.night-owl\r\n code --install-extension silvenon.mdx\r\n code --install-extension svelte.svelte-vscode\r\n code --install-extension TabNine.tabnine-vscode\r\n code --install-extension ThreadHeap.serverless-ide-vscode\r\n code --install-extension tht13.python\r\n code --install-extension WakaTime.vscode-wakatime\r\n code --install-extension Wattenberger.footsteps\r\n code --install-extension wix.vscode-import-cost\r\n ```\r\n\r\n---\r\n\r\n## Other good \"new laptop setup\" lists:\r\n\r\n- [Tania Rascia's setup](https://www.taniarascia.com/setting-up-a-brand-new-mac-for-development/?ck_subscriber_id=591519942)\r\n- [Nick Nisi's dotfiles](https://github.com/nicknisi/dotfiles)\r\n- [Mathias Bynens macos defaults](https://github.com/mathiasbynens/dotfiles/blob/master/.macos)\r\n- [Jamon's MacOS maintenance tips](https://twitter.com/jamonholmgren/status/1175077165848653824)\r\n- [James Martinez](https://twitter.com/jamescmartinez/status/1528506724835008514?s=21&t=fLywP84bqTwwVbJG8Lr-BA)\r\n- Vendasta: https://github.com/vendasta/setup-new-computer-script\r\n- You can [automate dotfiles/homebrew setup with Sheldon Hull's tool](https://www.sheldonhull.com/docs/shell/#installing-brew-packages)\r\n- Physical equipment setups from prominent people: https://setups.co/\r\n- please send me yours!","frontmatter":{"source":"devto","devToUrl":"https://dev.to/swyx/my-2021-new-mac-setup-1b1","devToReactions":129,"devToReadingTime":9,"devToPublishedAt":"2021-07-05T21:57:11.469Z","devToViewsCount":4117,"title":"My 2021 New Mac Setup","published":true,"description":"I set up a new Mac for work today. Here's everything I use on a Mac for fullstack web development.","tags":"mac, tech","cover_image":"https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/86ug0c6q3akqvp5c9e1b.png","slug":"new-mac-setup-2021","canonical_url":"https://www.swyx.io/new-mac-setup-2021/"},"title":"My 2021 New Mac Setup","description":"I set up a new Mac for work today. Here's everything I use on a Mac for fullstack web development. ","category":"note","tags":["mac","tech"],"image":"https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/86ug0c6q3akqvp5c9e1b.png","canonical":"https://www.swyx.io/new-mac-setup-2021/","slug":"new-mac-setup-2021","date":"2021-07-05T21:57:11.469Z","readingTime":"10 minutes","ghMetadata":{"issueUrl":"https://github.com/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/180","commentsUrl":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/180/comments","title":"My 2021 New Mac Setup","created_at":"2022-01-17T23:01:28Z","updated_at":"2022-05-22T23:08:12Z","reactions":{"url":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/180/reactions","total_count":0,"+1":0,"-1":0,"laugh":0,"hooray":0,"confused":0,"heart":0,"rocket":0,"eyes":0}}},{"type":"blog","content":"\r\nAnyone who's created or consumed content long enough will eventually find a fork in the road, both equally well traveled by: Should we post continuous updates or do a big launch? Blog Updates or [Digital Garden](https://maggieappleton.com/garden-history)? \"[Today I Learned](https://github.com/jbranchaud/til)\" or [10x Evergreen Skyscrapers](https://sparktoro.com/blog/resources/10x-content-by-rand-fishkin/)? Do people want the journey or the destination?\r\n\r\nI think we should do both. I've come to regard learning — the accumulation of knowledge — as *simultaneously* a discrete *and* a continuous process. \r\n\r\nIf the tools we use don't respect this duality, information is lost — either writing involves too much effort, or reading requires too much context. This has implications both for people who want to learn better, as well as content creators who want to transfer knowledge better.\r\n\r\n## Discrete vs Continuous Learning\r\n\r\n**Books, courses, and wikis** are prime examples of **discrete** learning. \r\n\r\n- The ideal wiki article is a complete introduction, history, and overview of a particular topic. Its value comes from being a reliable aggregate source of truth. The structure and sequencing of knowledge presented is often as valuable as the content itself. As **evergreen** content, effort spent on both creating and consuming it has a high return, because it is designed from the outset to have lasting relevance.\r\n- However, long books, courses, and wikis are a lot of content to consume all at once and may never be finished. The scope may be so large that it is hard to keep up to date, particularly when the *structure* itself needs to change with the times.\r\n\r\n**Twitter, Discord, and Email Newsletters** offer modes of **continuous** learning.\r\n\r\n- The focus is on new content, and lack of structure allows maximum flexibility. Information is also bitesize and thus very consumable. Because of the realtime/live nature and randomness of quality, there is inbuilt variable reward which keeps us as addicted as BF Skinner's pigeons.\r\n- However, the lack of historical context can leave beginners out of the loop, and even experts can fall prey to [base rate neglect](https://thedecisionlab.com/biases/base-rate-fallacy/). News also has limited long term expected value due to the Lindy Effect, and therefore have a much lower signal to noise ratio. Finally, since major developments tend to spread out over time, there is often no one canonical link that you can send people to get up to speed — you \"just had to be there\".\r\n\r\nI've only mentioned examples familiar to individual learners, but this duality also exists at a company level. Do you put all your company knowledge in Notion/Sharepoint (discrete) or Slack (continuous)? Do your docs offer a complete learning path (discrete) or do people also have to read your blog and support forums (continuous)?\r\n\r\n## Particle/Wave Duality\r\n\r\nI've already given away the analogy in the title, but this situation reminds me of the dual-slit experiment of quantum mechanics. Here's a quick one minute explainer:\r\n\r\n{% youtube Q_h4IoPJXZw %}\r\n\r\nPerhaps you're most familiar with this in the double split experiment:\r\n\r\n![Alt Text](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/2jncajmthzjihsfmmst3.png)\r\n\r\nI'm no expert myself but the version that works best for the analogy I'm going for sums it up like this:\r\n\r\n- As the light/electron beam is in transit, it acts like a wave.\r\n- As the light/electron beam is \"observed\"/hits the screen, it acts like a particle.\r\n\r\nThis all has very nice parallels to the process of learning. Sometimes we are picking up knowledge in a continuous stream, sometimes we just want a big quantum of knowledge all at once. The best forms of learning combine the two modes:\r\n\r\n- If you learn in a continuous stream, it is useful to recap everything you learned in a post-mortem or retrospective. If you've gained a few years of experience, it's helpful to write down [Things You Believe](https://www.notion.so/5bb2d99e50fdbbd15dd9622837d14e2b) or write up the guide you wish you'd had.\r\n- If you learned in a discrete block, it is useful to continue that education with continuous [spaced repetition](https://ncase.me/remember/) or involvement in an alumni community (many professions from finance to airline pilots even require this as \"Continuing Education\"!)\r\n\r\n## The Particle/Wave Duality Theory of Knowledge\r\n\r\nThe Particle/Wave Duality Theory of Knowledge defines learning — the accumulation of knowledge — as *simultaneously* a discrete *and* a continuous process. There's no point picking a side. We learn best with both, so if you are a content creator or knowledge worker, you need a way to record both. \r\n\r\nIf knowledge tools don't respect this duality, users will be forced to do the work of duplicating knowledge, or lose it forever.\r\n\r\n## Paying the Duality Cost\r\n\r\nI'll motivate this with a personal example. I run [the Coding Career Community](https://www.learninpublic.org/) in *two* places - [Circle.so](http://circle.so) for my async knowledge base (discrete), and Discord for my live chat (continuous). Of course, both are more continuous places of engagement compared to the book they are focused on, which is the most discrete item of all in my hierarchy (discrete-ness is a spectrum!)\r\n\r\nPeople might think me crazy for splitting my efforts in running *two* communities, instead of one. But I get active users in both and they rarely overlap: \r\n\r\n- My Circle members are nominally bigger, but far less active and conversations can drag out over days. The primary means of engagement is by the weekly Thursday recap newsletter that gets automatically sent out.\r\n- My Discord members are fewer, but more active and respond quickly to new posts. The primary means of engagement is in-app notifications, banking on the network effect of my members already being active in other Discords.\r\n\r\nYou can analyze this split in every dimension and still come up 50-50. Think about the new user experience, a critical moment for every community. \r\n\r\n- A Discord user can say hi and immediately get the dopamine hit of a hi back. But they're not going to scroll up and read through the best hits of the community (pinning isn't very effective), so what they see is just completely randomly whatever is the topic of conversation that day.\r\n- A Circle user doesn't even have to say hi, but can get immense value from the top/pinned post and become a fan right then. So I can pour in all my effort to make that top notch.\r\n\r\nThere's no clear cut right answer. Some users will prefer one extreme, some the other, and yet more will just want both. Yet I need to keep both up to date. What I do right now is peak do-things-that-don't-scale: I post continuous updates to Discord, and then once a week I sum up the best of what I find and [manually cross-post it to Circle](https://codingcareer.circle.so/c/learn-in-public). Sometimes I find the occasional quality post on Circle, so I send it back to Discord (for sharing with the Discord natives), and to Twitter (for marketing).\r\n\r\nSo I'm paying the expensive cost of Particle/Wave Duality, because my tools currently don't recognize it. I could make a bot to do the two way sync between Discord and Circle, but what I'd really like is for this to just be built in in some way. \r\n\r\n## Database Solutions\r\n\r\nIf you are developer-literate, I also think there are a couple alternative analogies you can use to solve this dual need:\r\n\r\n- [**Change Data Capture**](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Change_data_capture) (discrete → continuous): When you update a row in a database, there can be inbuilt functionality to send a notification of what changed (eg [DynamoDB with Kinesis Data Streams](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/amazondynamodb/latest/developerguide/kds.html)). So people can read up a discrete state of information, then subscribe to the diffs. This is exactly how I use Notion at work, where I rely on email updates of diffs since it is impossible for me to stay on top of all the changes my coworkers are making by checking through each document individually.\r\n- **[Materialized Views](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Materialized_view) (**continuous → discrete**)**: As you add, modify, or delete data, a separate \"materialized view\" auto updates and can always be referenced as the source of truth on all the changes that have happened to date. This is how Kanban boards and issue trackers work, by presenting a top down view of the status of work items moving through the engineering process.\r\n\r\nWhat would Change Data Capture and Materialized Views look like for knowledge management tools, say a Second Brain, or a Blog?\r\n\r\n## Applying Theory to Creation\r\n\r\nUltimately I think a lot about this in terms of the context of writing and other forms of content creation. As much as I've been talking about the preferred content consumption angle, the stakes are even higher for content creation:\r\n\r\n- Discrete knowledge items like books and courses are most useful to learners because they present a comprehensive overview. However if it is such a big lift, it may never get done and you may be doing your learners a disservice by not contributing your voice.\r\n - By the way, many people also treat blogposts like discrete items, taking months to draft it and to have it peer-reviewed like an academic journal. This is usually unsustainable and the blogging grinds to a halt, killed by its own process.\r\n- Continuous knowledge items like tweets and chat conversations are far more digestible and easier to create. However, small low effort items out of context aren't all that valuable in themselves, and struggle to stand out and get traction compared to [10x Content](https://sparktoro.com/blog/resources/10x-content-by-rand-fishkin/) that sells itself.\r\n\r\nUltimately I think you should try to do both. Prototype by making continuous knowledge items, but be aware that most people will never see your work there. So periodically you need to do \"treasure collection\" - go back through your continuous streams, and pick out the most promising threads to turn into bigger, discrete pieces. I wrote about one such journey of mine in [Bottom Up Idea Exploration](https://www.swyx.io/bottom-up-ideas/).\r\n\r\n## Just in Time vs Just in Case\r\n\r\nThose of you familiar with the literature of learning may find a parallel to JIT vs JIC modes of learning. You can loosely map JIT learning to discrete knowledge (have a book or wiki to look it up when you need it, but not before) and JIC learning to continuous knowledge (plug yourself in to a stream of knowledge and let serendipity guide you). \r\n\r\nBut the mapping isn't 1:1. You can use a book as JIC learning if you resolve to read it cover to cover, or JIT as a reference. You can use a Discord chat as JIT access to a knowledgeable community, or JIC as a passive observer.\r\n\r\nIt is very popular to deride JIC because that is something we are trained to do in school and it can prevent us from actually doing anything productive with that knowledge. That is definitely true and most people should try to be more JIT purely because they naturally skew JIC. However that isn't to say that JIC has no place in learning - having a good mental map of everything is actually important to knowing what you don't know.\r\n\r\n## Question from a Reader\r\n\r\n\"*Our team currently has years of docs in a Google docs like system. Main problem with new hires is that they haven't yet accepted that the docs are poorly maintained, or there are 6 docs for the same process written by different people and not deleted or updated. It's madness. How would you go about this process?*\"\r\n\r\nAh, the outdated knowledge base problem. We continually swing back and forth between wanting a discrete source of truth, but then time passes and continuous updates do not get registered. Technology hasn't (yet) solved this — although graph database tooling like [Roam Research](https://roamresearch.com/) or [Obsidian](https://obsidian.md/) can automatically propagate continuous updates to discrete materialized views, it is still a poor susbstitute for properly curated and updated structure. \r\n\r\nUltimately I view the knowledge base problem as a human problem - you have to commit to maintaining your sources of truth, but don't make it so huge as to be unmaintainable and unreadable. Don't be so rigid about your process that you treat people talking to each other to figure out problems as a bug. Identify what you care about and make it a priority to enforce that, but recognize that enforcement isn't free and pick your battles.\r\n\r\n*Major thanks to [David Golden](https://xdg.me/), [MJ Meyer](https://twitter.com/_mjmeyer?lang=en), and [Calvin Torra](https://calvintorra.com/) for providing feedback on drafts!*\r\n\r\n## Further reading\r\n\r\n- **Sonal Chokshi**, editor in chief at a16z, talked about the idea of stock and flow concept in media at the end of [her Indie Hackers podcast episode](her Indie Hackers podcast episode).\r\n- Oct 2022 Edit: a B2B version of this exists, with an extension for \"systems of intelligence\"\r\n\r\n{% twitter https://twitter.com/swyx/status/1586576013231722496 %}","frontmatter":{"source":"devto","devToUrl":"https://dev.to/swyx/the-particle-wave-duality-theory-of-knowledge-41g6","devToReactions":15,"devToReadingTime":8,"devToPublishedAt":"2021-06-25T20:29:35.045Z","devToViewsCount":151,"title":"The Particle/Wave Duality Theory of Knowledge","published":true,"description":"Learning is *BOTH* a discrete and a continuous process. If the tools we use don't respect this duality, information is lost — either writing involves too much effort, or reading requires too much context.","tags":"Learning, Epistemology, Reflections","slug":"particle-wave-duality","canonical_url":"https://www.swyx.io/particle-wave-duality","cover_image":"https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/eyde1r0bt3isr7kj6te2.png"},"title":"The Particle/Wave Duality Theory of Knowledge","description":"Learning is *BOTH* a discrete and a continuous process. If the tools we use don't respect this duality, information is lost — either writing involves too much effort, or reading requires too much context. ","category":"note","tags":["learning","epistemology","reflections"],"image":"https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/eyde1r0bt3isr7kj6te2.png","canonical":"https://www.swyx.io/particle-wave-duality","slug":"particle-wave-duality","date":"2021-06-25T20:29:35.045Z","readingTime":"10 minutes","ghMetadata":{"issueUrl":"https://github.com/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/181","commentsUrl":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/181/comments","title":"The Particle/Wave Duality Theory of Knowledge","created_at":"2022-01-17T23:01:30Z","updated_at":"2022-10-30T04:33:42Z","reactions":{"url":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/181/reactions","total_count":0,"+1":0,"-1":0,"laugh":0,"hooray":0,"confused":0,"heart":0,"rocket":0,"eyes":0}}},{"type":"blog","content":"\nOne benefit of moving business logic to Temporal is how Temporal implements retries and timeouts for Activities in a standardized way. This has the effect of adding a reliability layer atop unreliable Activities and Workers, in a durable and scalable fashion. However, understanding the terminology can be a bit intimidating at first glance. \n\nThis post (together with the embedded talk) aims to give you a solid mental model on what each Activity timeout does and when to use it.\n\n> Note: You can also set [Workflow timeouts](https://docs.temporal.io/docs/concepts/workflows#timeout-settings) and [retry policies](https://docs.temporal.io/docs/concepts/activities#retries) you can set. This post deals only with *Activity* timeouts.\n\n## Talk version: whiteboard session\n\nYou can watch this 18 minute talk where our CEO Maxim Fateev explains the 4 Types of Activity timeouts you see in Temporal.\n\n{% youtube JK7WLK3ZSu8 %}\n\nThe rest of this post summarizes the main points covered in this whiteboard session, for those who prefer a written version.\n\n## Written version: TL;DR\n\n![image](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/122424123-0ab1e300-cfc1-11eb-82c5-cf8856a87242.png)\n\nTemporal has four timeouts — two that are commonly used, and two that are useful only in specific cases:\n\n- Schedule-To-Close: Limits the maximum execution time including retries.\n- Start-To-Close: Limits the maximum execution time of a single execution. **We recommend ALWAYS setting this!**\n- Heartbeat: Limits the maximum time between Heartbeats. *For long running Activities*, enables a quicker response when s Heartbeat fails to be recorded.\n- Schedule-To-Start: Limits the maximum time that an Activity Task can sit in a Task Queue. Mainly to identify whether a Worker is down or for Task routing. **This is rarely needed!**\n\nYou can find the precise APIs in the reference documentation for each SDK: [Java](https://www.javadoc.io/doc/io.temporal/temporal-sdk/latest/io/temporal/activity/ActivityOptions.Builder.html) and [Go](https://pkg.go.dev/go.temporal.io/sdk@v1.7.0/internal#ActivityOptions).\n\n## Lifecycle of an Activity\n\nTo really understand how timeouts work, we should understand the typical lifecycle of an Activity as it journeys through the various parts of the system.\n\n### Step 1 - Workflow Worker\n\nAn activity `SimpleActivity` is first invoked inside a Workflow Worker on Task Queue `sampleTaskQueue`. The precise method of invocation differs by SDK, and timeouts are also specified up front as part of Activity options:\n\n\n```go\nao := workflow.ActivityOptions{\n TaskQueue: \"sampleTaskQueue\",\n ScheduleToCloseTimeout: time.Second * 500,\n // ScheduleToStartTimeout: time.Second * 60, // usually not needed! see below\n StartToCloseTimeout: time.Second * 60,\n HeartbeatTimeout: time.Second * 10,\n WaitForCancellation: false,\n}\nctx = workflow.WithActivityOptions(ctx, ao)\n\nvar result string\nerr := workflow.ExecuteActivity(ctx, SimpleActivity, value).Get(ctx, &result)\nif err != nil {\n return err\n}\n```\n\nBehind the scenes, the SDK transforms this into a `ScheduleActivity` Command, which is sent to the Temporal Server. \nThis Command includes various metadata, including the activity type (`SimpleActivity`), activity task queue (`sampleTaskQueue`), and activity ID. A `RetryPolicy` was not specified, so Temporal uses [the default Retry Policy](https://docs.temporal.io/docs/concepts/workflows#retry-policy).\n\n### Step 2 - Temporal Server\n\nReceiving the Command, Temporal Server adds an Activity Task to the `Bar` Activity Task Queue.\nThere is an atomic guarantee that these both happen together, to prevent race conditions. \nWe explained why this is important and how Temporal accomplishes this in [Designing A Workflow Engine](https://docs.temporal.io/blog/workflow-engine-principles/).\n\n> The Activity Execution is now in a `SCHEDULED` state.\n\n### Step 3 - Activity Worker \n\nAn Activity Worker that has been polling the `Bar` Activity Task Queue picks up the Activity Task and begins execution.\n\n> The Activity Execution is now in a `STARTED` state.\n\n### Step 4 - Temporal Server\n\nOnce the Activity Execution finishes successfully, the Activity Worker sends a `CompleteActivityTask` message (together with the result of the Activity Execution) to Temporal Server, which now gives control back to the Workflow Worker to continue to the next line of code and repeat the process.\n\n> The Activity Execution is now in a `CLOSED` state.\n\nWe have just described the \"Happy Path\" of an Activity Execution.\nHowever, what happens when an Activity Worker crashes midway through an execution?\n\n## Start-To-Close Timeout\n\nWe use the Start-To-Close timeout to control the maximum amount of time **a single Activity Execution** can take. We recommend **always** setting this timeout.\n\n![image](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/122290108-fff64000-cf25-11eb-92b3-0533e41c3fee.png)\n\nThe classic example for why the Start-To-Close timeout is relevant, is when an Activity Task has been picked up from the Activity Task Queue (`STARTED` state) but the Worker crashes after that (so the Activity Execution never reaches `CLOSED` state). \n\n- Without a timeout configured, Temporal would never proactively timeout this Activity Execution to initiate a retry. The Activity Execution becomes \"stuck\" and the end user would experience an indefinite delay of their Workflow Execution with no feedback.\n- With the timeout configured, Temporal registers an `ActivityTaskTimedOut` event internally which triggers the Server to attempt a retry based on the Activity Execution's `RetryPolicy:`\n - The Server adds the Activity Task to the Activity Task Queue again.\n - The Server increments the attempt count in the Workflow Execution's mutable state.\n - The Activity Task is picked up again by an Activity Worker.\n - In the Temporal Server, the Start-To-Close timer is reset and will fire again if this second attempt fails.\n\nThe tricky part of setting Start-To-Close is that it needs to be set longer than the maximum *possible* Activity Execution, since you want to avoid premature timeouts for Activity Executions that genuinely take that long. \nPractically, if an Activity Execution can take anywhere from 5 minutes to 5 hours, you need to set Start-To-Close to be longer than 5 hours.\nIf you have a long running Activity Execution like that, then we suggest using Heartbeat timeouts.\n\n## Schedule-To-Close Timeout\n\nThe Schedule-To-Close Timeout is used to control the overall maximum amount of time allowed for an Activity Execution, including all retries.\nThis timeout only makes sense if the Activity Execution has a `RetryPolicy` with `MaximumAttempts > 1`.\n\n![image](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/122290183-0dabc580-cf26-11eb-913d-3dc74d5eb55f.png)\n\nIf you let it, Temporal will retry a failing Activity Execution for up to 10 years! (with exponential backoff up to a defined maximum interval)\nMost Temporal developers will want to fine-tune retries to balance the user experience against the unreliability of the Activity Execution.\n\nWhile you can control intervals between retries and maximum number of retries in the `RetryPolicy`, the Schedule-To-Close Timeout is the best way to control retries based on the overall *time that has elapsed*.\nWe recommend using the Schedule-To-Close Timeout to limit retries rather than tweaking the number of Maximum Attempts, because that more closely matches the desired user experience in the majority of cases.\n\n## Heartbeat Timeout\n\nFor long running Activity Executions, we recommend recording Heartbeats to create more frequent ping-backs from the Activity Worker to the Temporal Server. \nThen, set a Heartbeat Timeout to fail the Activity Execution when the Temporal doesn't receive a Heartbeat from your Activity Execution at the expected frequency.\n\n![image](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/122424268-287f4800-cfc1-11eb-8417-f52743347afc.png)\n\nHeartbeats must be recorded from Activity Definitions (Activity code) using SDK APIs:\n\n\n```go\nprogress := 0\nfor hasWork {\n // Send heartbeat message to the server.\n activity.RecordHeartbeat(ctx, progress)\n // Do some work.\n ...\n progress++\n}\n```\n\nSetting a Heartbeat Timeout enables you to retry Activity Executions more quickly (e.g. the next minute after a Heartbeat is missed) than the Start-To-Close Timeout, which must be set to as long as the longest possible Activity Execution (e.g. five hours later when we are sure the Activity Execution should have been completed).\n\nThere are some minor nuances to Heartbeats that may be of interest:\n\n- You can freely record Heartbeats as often as you want (e.g. once a minute, or every time a loop iterates).\nThe SDKs throttle the Heartbeats that get sent back to the Server anyway.\n- If a Heartbeat Timeout isn't set and the Activity Execution tries to record a Heartbeat, nothing will be recorded since that information will never be used.\n\n## Schedule-To-Start Timeout\n\nThe Schedule-To-Start Timeout sets a limit on the amount of time that an Activity Task can sit in a Task Queue.\nWe recommend that most users monitor the `temporal_activity_schedule_to_start_latency` metric and set alerts for that as a [production scaling](https://docs.temporal.io/docs/server/production-deployment/#faq-autoscaling-workers-based-on-task-queue-load) metric, rather than setting an explicit timeout for it.\n\n![image](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/122290279-287e3a00-cf26-11eb-8dd6-3133016a0bd9.png)\n\nAs a queue timeout, `ScheduleToStart` is unique in that it **doesn't result in a retry** — all a retry would do is pop the activity right back on to the same queue!\n\nThe Schedule-To-Start Timeout is most useful when you have a concrete plan to reroute an Activity Task to a different Task Queue, if a given Task Queue is not draining at an expected rate.\nYou can also reschedule a whole set of other Activity Executions or do other compensation logic based on this timeout.\nThis is a powerful feature for building ultra-reliable systems, however most users will not need this since you can horizontally scale the number of Workers easily.\n\nGenerally, issues with Schedule-To-Start are better addressed by scaling Activity Workers accordingly, rather than by adding timeouts.\n\n## Putting it all together - a recruiting example\n\nWe've recently found the terminology of timeouts useful even internally for our recruiting and realized that this could be a relatable analogy for most people.\n\nAs [we are hiring heavily at Temporal](https://temporal.io/careers), there is a lot of interview scheduling going on intermixed with our regular day jobs. You could model the end-to-end hiring process for a candidate as a single \"Workflow\" with multiple \"Activities\": sourcing, interviewing, making a decision, and then the offer process. \n\nSpecifically for the \"Activity\" of interviewing we've encountered some pain points:\n\n- Some interviews were scheduled for 90 minutes, which we found to be way too long\n- Some interviews had no-shows for any number of reasons ranging from miscommunication to Life™ getting in the way, and we were unclear on when to call an end to the interview and try to reschedule\n- Sometimes a process would just drag out for weeks and weeks, leaving other candidates waiting.\n\nTo resolve this, we could think about setting some timeout policies (for clarity, none of these are real numbers):\n\n- A Start-To-Close Timeout of 45 minutes so we don't spend too much time per interview.\n- A Heartbeat Timeout of 10 minutes to see if we should cancel on no-shows.\n- A Schedule-To-Close Timeout of 4 weeks to limit the length of time we spend accommodating other people's schedules vs our own.\n\n![image](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/122290324-359b2900-cf26-11eb-93a6-5027fc98593b.png)\n\nShould we set a Schedule-To-Start timeout? You could imagine candidates sitting a queue waiting to be interviewed, with not enough interviewer \"Workers\" to process them. A timeout here wouldn't help much, because there's no other queue to put them on. Better to set up monitoring and alerting on Schedule-To-Start latency, and scale up workers accordingly as needed (autoscaling is [currently not possible](https://docs.temporal.io/docs/server/production-deployment/#faq-autoscaling-workers-based-on-task-queue-load)).\n","frontmatter":{"source":"devto","devToUrl":"https://dev.to/temporalio/the-4-types-of-activity-timeouts-in-temporal-1p69","devToReactions":14,"devToReadingTime":7,"devToPublishedAt":"2021-06-22T20:57:31.229Z","devToViewsCount":245,"title":"The 4 Types of Activity timeouts in Temporal","published":true,"description":"This post (together with the embedded talk) aims to give you a solid mental model on what each Activity timeout in Temporal does and when to use it.","tags":"Temporal, Architecture, Golang","slug":"temporal-activity-timeouts","canonical_url":"https://docs.temporal.io/blog/activity-timeouts","cover_image":"https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/122424123-0ab1e300-cfc1-11eb-82c5-cf8856a87242.png"},"title":"The 4 Types of Activity timeouts in Temporal","description":"This post (together with the embedded talk) aims to give you a solid mental model on what each Activity timeout in Temporal does and when to use it. ","category":"note","tags":["temporal","architecture","golang"],"image":"https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/122424123-0ab1e300-cfc1-11eb-82c5-cf8856a87242.png","canonical":"https://docs.temporal.io/blog/activity-timeouts","slug":"temporal-activity-timeouts","date":"2021-06-22T20:57:31.229Z","readingTime":"8 minutes","ghMetadata":{"issueUrl":"https://github.com/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/182","commentsUrl":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/182/comments","title":"The 4 Types of Activity timeouts in Temporal","created_at":"2022-01-17T23:01:32Z","updated_at":"2022-06-18T17:48:57Z","reactions":{"url":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/182/reactions","total_count":0,"+1":0,"-1":0,"laugh":0,"hooray":0,"confused":0,"heart":0,"rocket":0,"eyes":0}}},{"type":"blog","content":"\n{% youtube kYfNvmF0Bqw %}\n\n> “When you grow up you tend to get told that the world is the way it is and your life is just to live your life inside the world. Try not to bash into the walls too much. Try to have a nice family life, have fun, save a little money. That's a very limited life. Life can be much broader once you discover one simple fact: **Everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you.** And you can change it, you can influence it… Once you learn that, you'll never be the same again.”\n>\n> — Steve Jobs\n\nThe common reminder, \"*Memento mori*\", is often interpreted as a call to withdraw our ambitions and not take pride in our achievements.\n\nI worry that this makes us too fatalistic, nihilistic, and self centered. \"Nothing I do matters, so why should I bother?\"\n\n*Memento mori* is no guide to life. Fortunately, I've found it has an opposite: \n\n**Memento vivere**. *Remember that you must LIVE*.\n\nThe way things are is often how we think the way things will always be. But nothing could be further from the truth:\n\n- The iPhone was introduced in 2007, 14 years ago.\n- The World Wide Web was invented in 1990, 31 years ago.\n- The Personal Computer revolution started in 1977, 44 years ago.\n- Richard Nixon took the US off the gold standard in 1971, meaning the current international financial system is only 50 years old.\n- Color TV first aired in 1951, 70 years ago.\n- Nuclear bombs were developed in 1945, 76 years ago.\n- Automatic washing machines rolled out in the 1930s.\n- Home radios and refrigerators were first introduced in the 1920's.\n- Henry Ford first sold the Model T automobile in 1908.\n- Thomas Edison started the Edison Electric Illuminating Company in 1882.\n- Alexander Graham Bell made the first telephone call in 1876.\n\nWhat are we doing today that will find its place on a list like this, 100 years from now?\n\n{% tweet 1394098022523490305 %}","frontmatter":{"source":"devto","devToUrl":"https://dev.to/swyx/memento-vivere-5eak","devToReactions":13,"devToReadingTime":2,"devToPublishedAt":"2021-06-19T21:47:04.595Z","devToViewsCount":238,"title":"Memento Vivere","published":true,"description":"Remember what life can do.","tags":"Reflections","slug":"memento-vitae","cover_image":"https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/bws2vd0uoev528u8kkyi.png","canonical_url":"https://www.swyx.io/memento-vitae"},"title":"Memento Vivere","description":"Remember what life can do. ","category":"note","tags":["reflections"],"image":"https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/bws2vd0uoev528u8kkyi.png","canonical":"https://www.swyx.io/memento-vitae","slug":"memento-vitae","date":"2021-06-19T21:47:04.595Z","readingTime":"2 minutes","ghMetadata":{"issueUrl":"https://github.com/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/183","commentsUrl":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/183/comments","title":"Memento Vivere","created_at":"2022-01-17T23:01:34Z","updated_at":"2022-06-18T17:48:57Z","reactions":{"url":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/183/reactions","total_count":0,"+1":0,"-1":0,"laugh":0,"hooray":0,"confused":0,"heart":0,"rocket":0,"eyes":0}}},{"title":"The Coding Career Handbook with Educative","slug":"coding-career-educative","categories":["Careers"],"description":"Shawn talks about his work with the LearnInPublic movement and his own contributions to the Educative platform.","instances":[{"venue":"Educative","date":"2021-06-14","tweet":"https://twitter.com/leepngo/status/1404408306215628801?s=21","video":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9maORXuCBHk"}],"category":"talk","date":"2021-06-14T00:00:00.000Z"},{"type":"blog","content":"\nMost people who come across the IaaS vs PaaS debate conclude that the early PaaSes were \"just too early\". That was my own premise in [Cloud Distros](https://www.swyx.io/cloud-distros/) (*start there if you are new to IaaS vs PaaS, then head to [my take on AWS](https://www.swyx.io/hello-aws/#muck)*) — and it was a little too convenient. \n\nTechnology progresses in a series of [back-and-forth switchbacks](https://twitter.com/swyx/status/1260022224351723521), not a monotonic straight line. In the year since I wrote that essay I've learned that the real story is a lot more nuanced than simple \"timing\".\n\n![Alt Text](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/kly0pr01qek5sc175e2p.png)\n\n## Learning 1: PaaS was the \"Old\" way\n\nHere is Amazon CTO Werner Vogels, on [choosing to offer \"tools instead of platforms\"](https://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2021/3/250706-a-second-conversation-with-werner-vogels/fulltext):\n\n> It was slightly controversial, because most technology companies at the time were delivering everything and the kitchen sink, and it would come with a very thick book and 10 different partners that would tell you how to use the technology. We went down a path, one that Jeff [Bezos] described years before, as **building tools instead of platforms**. A platform was **the old-style way** that large software platform companies would use in serving their technology.\n> \n> If you would go from Win32 to .NET, it was clear that the vendor would tell you exactly how to do it, and it would come with everything and the kitchen sink — not small building blocks but rather, \"This is how you should build software.\"\n>\n> A little before we started S3, we began to realize that what we were doing might radically change the way that software was being built and services were being used. But we had no idea how that would evolve, so it was more important to build small, nimble tools that customers could build on (or we could build on ourselves) instead of having everything and the kitchen sink ready at that particular moment. **It was not necessarily a timing issue**; it was much more that we were convinced that whatever we would be adding to the interfaces of S3, to the functionality of S3, should be driven by our customers—and how the next generation of customers would start building their systems.\n\nIaaS was a conscious choice by AWS - it wasn't simply that we hadn't developed the underlying technology to build good PaaSes. AWS had the core insight that whatever would be successful in the cloud era would be materially different than with desktops (where Microsoft's platform approach with Windows ruled).\n\nEven this insight wasn't immediately obviously correct. AWS' first launch, SQS, was [in 2006](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Web_Services#Founding_(2000%E2%80%932005)). [Balaji Srinivasan notes](https://twitter.com/balajis/status/1368230680367300612): \"It wasn’t until Instagram in 2012 that everyone took AWS seriously as a way to build a billion dollar company.\" \n\n## Learning 2: We have failed at building IaaS before\n\nBalaji [also noted](https://twitter.com/balajis/status/1368228398229680134): \n\n> \"Many people had scar tissue from trying to do IAAS a few years too early, before the Xen hypervisor. It’s an extremely capital intensive business and Bezos nailed the timing.\" \n\nHe includes this passage from Ben Horowitz's recap of [the Loudcloud/Opsware years](https://a16z.com/2010/03/17/the-case-for-the-fat-startup/):\n\n> During this period, Loudcloud/Opsware had **over 20 direct competitors**. Almost all the competitors from the Loudcloud era went bankrupt, including MFN/SiteSmith, Exodus, LogicTier, Williams Communication, Global Crossing, WorldCom/Digex and Storage Networks. Those that survived got bought with **valuations of less than $100 million** (e.g., Totality) or still have very low valuations (e.g., Navisite).\n\nSo if the late 2000's were \"too early\" for PaaS, you could also have made the case that the early 2000's were \"too early\" for IaaS. Betting on IaaS the way AWS did, at the time that it did, was not at all obvious.\n\n## Learning 3: Single Layer PaaS was too restrictive\n\nHeroku was by no means a failure, but it certainly disappointed relative to its IaaS contemporaries, which today take in tens of billions a year.\n\nJason Warner, GitHub CTO and Heroku's former VP of Engineering, [observed this about Heroku](https://www.infoworld.com/article/3614210/the-decline-of-heroku.html):\n\n> It should never have been a PaaS; it should have been a **multilayered cake of PaaS** with various escape hatches to build out with Kubernetes or go multicloud, but that wasn’t what was to be.\n\nToday, most IaaSes have \"worked backward\" and innovated forward - much as AWS originally offered S3 and EC2 and CloudFront and VPC, it now offers DynamoDB and Aurora and Elasticsearch and Lightsail and Elastic Beanstalk and Lambda and a couple hundred more ways to consume the underlying storage, compute, and networking services. Same for GCP and Azure.\n\nThe IaaSes, being lower level by nature, were in a better place to build up the multilayered cake, than the PaaSes were able to break themselves up.","frontmatter":{"source":"devto","devToUrl":"https://dev.to/swyx/why-iaas-beat-paas-4np7","devToReactions":9,"devToReadingTime":4,"devToPublishedAt":"2021-06-13T18:34:19.181Z","devToViewsCount":370,"title":"Why IaaS beat PaaS","subtitle":"From the people who were *there*","published":true,"description":"The conclusions are far more nuanced when you ask the people involved at the time.","tags":"Cloud, AWS, Azure","slug":"why-iaas-beat-paas","canonical_url":"https://www.swyx.io/why-iaas-beat-paas","cover_image":"https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/kly0pr01qek5sc175e2p.png"},"title":"Why IaaS beat PaaS","subtitle":"From the people who were *there*","description":"The conclusions are far more nuanced when you ask the people involved at the time. ","category":"note","tags":["cloud","aws","azure"],"image":"https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/kly0pr01qek5sc175e2p.png","canonical":"https://www.swyx.io/why-iaas-beat-paas","slug":"why-iaas-beat-paas","date":"2021-06-13T18:34:19.181Z","readingTime":"4 minutes","ghMetadata":{"issueUrl":"https://github.com/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/184","commentsUrl":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/184/comments","title":"Why IaaS beat PaaS","created_at":"2022-01-17T23:01:36Z","updated_at":"2022-06-18T17:48:57Z","reactions":{"url":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/184/reactions","total_count":0,"+1":0,"-1":0,"laugh":0,"hooray":0,"confused":0,"heart":0,"rocket":0,"eyes":0}}},{"type":"blog","content":"\n*Listen to [audio narrated version!](https://swyx.transistor.fm/episodes/second-brain-4-intermediate-packets-bottom-up-idea-exploration)*\n\nOver 18 months from 2019-2020, I explored one single idea that spawned one of my biggest blogposts, got me invited to speak at top conferences across 3 countries, and helped me get a job at AWS. And it all started with a tweet.\n\n- [Step 1: Respond to Others!](#stage-1-respond-to-others)\n- [Step 2: Yes, And!](#step-2-yes-and)\n- [Step 3: Livestream!](#step-3-livestream)\n- [Step 4: Blogpost!](#step-4-blogpost)\n- [Step 5: Conference Lightning Talk!](#step-5-conference-lightning-talk)\n- [Step 6: Conference Livecode Talk!](#step-6-conference-livecode-talk)\n- [Step 7: Advanced Conference Talk!](#step-7-advanced-conference-talk)\n- [Step 8: Job Interview!](#step-8-job-interview)\n\n> **Side note:** I know I'm still a small fry in the grand scheme of things, so please don't worry that I'm getting a big ego from this. I encourage you to follow the careers of folks like [Bret Victor](http://worrydream.com/#!/Bio), [Sarah Drasner](https://sarahdrasnerdesign.com/speaking), [Dan Abramov](https://overreacted.io/my-decade-in-review/) and [Anjana Vakil](https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=anjana+vakil) if you truly want to know what it takes to be an industry legend. Still, my story often encourages others to start from humble beginnings. If a simple guy like me can do so well, surely they can do better!\n\n![Alt Text](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/ooajl9yok4rffbgc2hvb.png)\n\n## Step 1: Respond to Others!\n\nI get a lot of my ideas from simply observing what excites people. This is key for unlocking a crucial source of content — **things I take for granted, that excites others**. It often surfaces areas of [*unconscious competence*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_stages_of_competence).\n\nThis was the context with which I read Jack Cross' [tweet](https://twitter.com/crosscompile/status/1100127023106805767?s=20) on Feb 26 2019: \"*Was reading through [React's source code]. and I think `useState` is implemented with `useReducer`!*\" \n\nAt the time, React Hooks were all of 4 months old, and were a hotly discussed topic in webdev circles. I had known about Jack's observation for a while, but never really thought it worth comment until Jack did. I also knew that many folks were [tripping over the importance of JavaScript closures](https://twitter.com/markdalgleish/status/1095025468367990784) with the Hooks API design. I wanted to find a way to properly explain all this once and for all.\n\nIt got my gears going: I'm a believer that you only truly [Know Your Tools](https://www.swyx.io/know-your-tools/) when you can read through its source code, and can build it from scratch. I'd done the former, so I did the latter:\n\n{% twitter 1100809424963219456 %}\n\nYou will see that the code sample here relies on an imperative `React.render` API, which is nothing like the real `ReactDom.render`. At the time I was only focused on the mental model, so I didn't think about a more faithful clone.\n\n## Step 2: \"Yes, And\"!\n\n(*90 minutes after the original tweet)*\n\nI got quite a bit of instant feedback on that tweet, namely [this suggestion](https://twitter.com/dan_abramov/status/1100813228525916161) from Dan on the React Core team: *\"You want to have a list of Hooks. Otherwise it’s boring because custom ones don’t work. Should be no more than extra 10 lines.\"*\n\nThat was exactly the push I needed — not just confirming that I was going down the right path, but also a suggestion for what to do next, that jibed with my own instincts. So I followed up 90 minutes later with this extension:\n\n{% twitter 1100833207451185152 %}\n\nThis was finally simple enough to understand, yet complex enough to be useful, which [finally made it take off](https://twitter.com/swyx/status/1100833207451185152/retweets/with_comments) with a bunch of feedback.\n\nI think Twitter is best as an [Ensemble rather than Committee](https://www.swyx.io/ensembles-vs-committees/), particularly with the \"[Yes, And](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yes,_and...)\" spirit of starting from where the other person leaves off. This is what Dan did with me, and I followed through.\n\nIt's important to note that I wasn't the first to observe the simplicity of Hooks. There was prior art and [very popular blogposts](https://medium.com/@ryardley/react-hooks-not-magic-just-arrays-cd4f1857236e) all making the same observation. But I was the first to *demonstrate* it in 28 lines of code, which made it a lot more approachable because it fit in a single screenshot.\n\n> Side note: I often also get asked what to do if someone is just starting out on Twitter and doesn't have the following to get feedback like I did. I think they don't appreciate that I'd only been tweeting about webdev/React for 1 year at that point. I believe that the best way to solve the relationship cold start problem is to [Pick Up What They Put Down](https://www.swyx.io/puwtpd/).\n\n## Step 3: Livestream!\n\n(*Friday after the original tweet)*\n\nJoel Hooks of Egghead.io DM'ed me to do [a livestream of this process](https://twitter.com/swyx/status/1100839318518521856) that same Friday. I think I was [in LA at the time](https://mobile.twitter.com/swyx/status/1101555809140453376) and had to do it in on shitty courtyard wifi but it went well. Unfortunately I can't find a recording of the talk, but I recall that [Eve Porcello](https://mobile.twitter.com/eveporcello) was there, together with a few dozen other React folks!\n\nThis was the first time I had *ever* livecoded anything online, and it set the stage for what was to come...\n\n## Step 4: Blogpost!\n\n(*2 weeks after the original tweet*)\n\n[The blogpost version](https://www.netlify.com/blog/2019/03/11/deep-dive-how-do-react-hooks-really-work/) went live on the Netlify blog, with title and grammatical edits from my coworkers. [The response](https://mobile.twitter.com/search?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.netlify.com%2Fblog%2F2019%2F03%2F11%2Fdeep-dive-how-do-react-hooks-really-work%2F&src=typed_query) was great:\n\n{% twitter 1116607569055715328 %}\n\nFun fact: I was in Mexico on a [dive trip](https://mobile.twitter.com/swyx/status/1103385015159648256) with no access to internet at the time! So I never even got round to tweeting it out, but it didn't matter. By this point, the content had been 3x validated, so I was pretty confident the blogpost would do well regardless.\n\n## Step 5: Conference Lightning Talk!\n\n*(1 month after the original tweet)*\n\n[Ben Dunphy](https://mobile.twitter.com/benghamine) of [Reactathon](https://www.reactathon.com/) invited me to present my blogpost as a lightning talk in April. Reactathon is the premier React conference in San Francisco - it would've been my 4th or 5th conference appearance ever at the time, so I was already starting to get used to the speaking \"circuit\". But this was my first time *getting invited* rather than applying through [the regular competitive CFP process](https://www.swyx.io/cfp-advice/) — so I was pretty stoked about that!\n\n{% youtube VugRXf8Gg4o %}\n\nI only had ~10 minutes so I just threw some code up on slides. The reception was [decent](https://twitter.com/httpJunkie/status/1112711415507222528?s=20) for the minimal work I put into it. The talk got me [shouted out](https://twitter.com/swyx/status/1117824535548579840) on the wildly popular [Syntax.fm](http://syntax.fm) podcast from Wes Bos and Scott Tolinski, from whom I learned React, as well as one from [Lee Byron](https://twitter.com/leeb/status/1112183983129784321?s=20), who [designed the original React class API](https://reactjs.org/blog/2016/09/28/our-first-50000-stars.html#api-churn).\n\n## Step 6: Conference Livecode Talk!\n\n*(4 months after the original tweet)*\n\nI remember paying the ~$300 out of pocket for JSConf Asia tickets in [Jan 2018](https://twitter.com/swyx/status/956340811603390465), when I was just starting out. I had no idea that I would be *paid* to fly back to Singapore and [speak there](https://twitter.com/swyx/status/1090886781828968448) just a year later.\n\nI proposed this talk without knowing if I could do it. I just knew from studying [Kelsey Hightower's demos](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6SfRPwTKqo) and [André Staltz's advice](https://staltz.com/your-ide-as-a-presentation-tool.html) that livecoding was a great way to further demystify this concept. I had been unable to do it at Reactathon. A livecoded talk was my \"white whale\".\n\nI not only [pulled it off](https://www.swyx.io/hooks/), but also managed to add some dramatic flair rendering code to screen:\n\n{% youtube KJP1E-Y-xyo %}\n\n*Fun fact*: I only worked out key parts of this code the night before I was due to give the talk. After breaking through on the render loop and figuring out some kinks with CodeSandbox, I stayed up all night reworking and practicing my presentation, building in failsafes in case I screwed up, and added in the [René Magritte](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ren%C3%A9_Magritte) flourish right at the end. I presented that talk on ~2 hours of sleep.\n\n[The reception](https://twitter.com/search?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DKJP1E-Y-xyo&src=typed_query) *exploded*. Not only was the content 4x validated at this point, but I had worked out a compelling presentation style and left the viewer with a thought provoking question at the end.\n\n## Step 7: Advanced Conference Talk!\n\n(*8 months after the original tweet)*\n\nWhen you have a hit like that you naturally want to follow it up, and you naturally start getting more conference invites as well. So when the GitNation folks reached out for the [React Advanced](https://reactadvanced.com/) conference in London there was only one topic I wanted to do: **explain Concurrent React** the same way I had React Hooks.\n\n{% youtube fKlt5GFQnVc %}\n\n*(This is the revised version for ByteConf; [the React Advanced one is here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFO4m7Y-yhs) and I did a paid version for [Egghead.io subscribers as well](https://egghead.io/lessons/react-concurrent-react-from-scratch))*\n\nWhile React Hooks were a relatively simple mental model (I started this journey reducing it down to 26 lines of code), Concurrent React not only involved building in a proper time slicing scheduler and Fiber reconciler, but it also *wasn't live yet* (and still isn't fully shipped as of the time of writing 2 years later, although [React Server Components](https://dev.to/swyx/an-annotated-guide-to-the-react-server-components-demo-2a83/) is a huge step forward) so people weren't familiar with it.\n\nPutting together this massive effort involved pulling in notes from [18 months of covering Concurrent React](https://github.com/sw-yx/concurrent-react-notes) by myself, in particular studying [prior art from Rodrigo Pombo](https://github.com/pomber/didact) in cloning the API from scratch. You can [check out his talk here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Kc2REHdwnQ) to contrast what he did vs me.\n\n[The reception](https://twitter.com/search?q=-from%3Aswyx%20%40swyx%20reactadvanced%20until%3A2019-11-01%20since%3A2019-10-24&src=typed_query) was great but I neglected to tweak my talk for the venue. I had a livecoding talk, but it was a very long conference hall, which guaranteed that half the audience (about 1500 people) couldn't see a thing I wrote 🤦‍♂️. However I did [meet up with Nader Dabit](https://twitter.com/swyx/status/1187740301831659522) at that conference, which set things in motion...\n\n## Step 8: Job Interview!\n\n*(11 months after the original tweet)*\n\nWithin 3 months of that conference I was at Amazon's offices in Seattle on my final interview day for an open spot on Nader's team. The developer advocate interview at Amazon requires you to prepare a talk on something you know well, and field questions on it by non-domain-expert engineers.\n\nSo I just presented my talk again, building \"Concurrent React from Scratch\" in front of 3 people who only barely knew React and weren't aware of my prior experience with this topic. \n\nI got the offer the next day.\n\n## Why I Wrote This\n\nI've recently been guiding a group of ~50 students as a mentor for [Tiago Forte's Building A Second Brain](https://www.swyx.io/tiago-forte-second-brain/) course, and it's been remarkably helpful for solidifying my own takeaways and for helping others go down the same path I have (\"When one teaches, two learn\"). \n\nWeek 4 was the lesson on Intermediate Packets, which Tiago has [written about](https://medium.com/praxis-blog/bending-the-curves-of-productivity-25edb268672f) and [covered on his podcast](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/the-building-a/intermediate-packets-TO04J8Q5XZI/) if you want to catch up on it. Intermediate Packets are often presented as a way to take a big goal and break it down into pieces. That's a great way to plan out a big project in a **top-down** fashion — however I think **bottoms up** is greatly underappreciated as a content strategy.\n\nAs you can tell from my story, things escalated pretty quickly from just a random tweet, to me being flown across the world to speak at conferences and helping me get a job at a FAANG company. But at no point did I ***plan*** to do any of that. I just focused on an interesting problem, made the next possible move available to me, and responded to feedback.\n\n**For each one of these hits I have, there are a thousand that go absolutely nowhere.** Some tweets develop into blogposts, some blogposts develop into talks, and then they just fall flat. I only really have a true hit once a year, but it takes all the dead ends and exploration for me to find the real gems that resonate with others. \n\nIf I'd developed each idea with a top-down big project goal in mind, I'd fail to reach them 99.9% of the time. I think **bottom-up content creation with exploration over expectations** is a far more sustainable approach.\n\nAgain, I write not to brag, because I'm plenty aware that there are much better developers and speakers than I. But every time I tell this story, it inspires people to start on their own journey [learning in public](https://swyx.io/LIP). I'm sure people with more talent and determination will be able to take this process far further than I have. I hope this post has shown you a little of the behind the scenes.\n\n## Reactions\n\n- Matias Woloski, cofounder of Auth0, [notes that](https://twitter.com/woloski/status/1404105211543801864?s=20) this is a form of \"Content Market Fit\", similar to \"Product Market Fit\". Auth0's advocacy of JWT's started with a blogpost, then into conference speaking, and finally developing http://jwt.io/ as the industry reference.\n- Netlify's Mathias Biilmann also went through a similar journey with the [Why Static Site Generators Are The Next Big Thing](https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2015/11/modern-static-website-generators-next-big-thing/) blogpost developing into [The New Front-end Stack. Javascript, APIs and Markup](https://vimeo.com/163522126) at SmashingConf and then https://jamstack.org/\n- See also David Perell's [Content Triangle](https://perell.com/essay/the-ultimate-guide-to-writing-online/)","frontmatter":{"source":"devto","devToUrl":"https://dev.to/swyx/bottom-up-idea-exploration-375f","devToReactions":33,"devToReadingTime":10,"devToPublishedAt":"2021-06-06T16:42:16.265Z","devToViewsCount":538,"title":"Bottom-Up Idea Exploration","published":true,"description":"My own content creation philosophy, explored through my own personal story with React","tags":"Reflections, LearnInPublic, React","slug":"bottom-up-ideas","canonical_url":"https://www.swyx.io/bottom-up-ideas","cover_image":"https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/ooajl9yok4rffbgc2hvb.png"},"title":"Bottom-Up Idea Exploration","description":"My own content creation philosophy, explored through my own personal story with React ","category":"note","tags":["reflections","learninpublic","react"],"image":"https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/ooajl9yok4rffbgc2hvb.png","canonical":"https://www.swyx.io/bottom-up-ideas","slug":"bottom-up-ideas","date":"2021-06-06T16:42:16.265Z","readingTime":"9 minutes","ghMetadata":{"issueUrl":"https://github.com/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/185","commentsUrl":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/185/comments","title":"Bottom-Up Idea Exploration","created_at":"2022-01-17T23:01:38Z","updated_at":"2022-06-18T17:48:58Z","reactions":{"url":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/185/reactions","total_count":0,"+1":0,"-1":0,"laugh":0,"hooray":0,"confused":0,"heart":0,"rocket":0,"eyes":0}}},{"type":"blog","content":"\n\n> Listen to [the audio version of this essay here](https://swyx.transistor.fm/episodes/the-power-of-personal-podcasting-swyx)!\n\nWhat kind of egotistical asshole runs a solo podcast?!\n\nLoads. Naval Ravikant [has one](https://nav.al/). Peter Thiel [has one](https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmNob3IuZm0vcy8zMGVhZDM1Yy9wb2RjYXN0L3Jzcw==). James Beshara [has one](https://belowthelinepod.com/). Scott Hanselman's has been [running for 15 years](https://www.hanselminutes.com/archives). Lex Fridman and Joe Rogan became global celebrities just broadcasting 3 hour long conversations with anyone they wish. (Yeah it seems to be all dudes... let me know if you have other examples)\n\nAnd, as of this year.... me.\n\n![Alt Text](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/t873icsvyz33o5bm73sv.png)\n\n## The Personal Podcast\n\nThe defining characteristic of a Personal Podcast to me is that it is primarily driven by the interests of one person exploring their intellectual curiosity under their own name. \n\nThat's it. No co-host banter. No company sponsor, or singular theme, trying to establish thought leadership (ruling out [Tiago's](https://fortelabs.co/blog/basbpodcast/) or [Corey's](https://www.swipefiles.com/everything-is-marketing)) to try to sell you something. Purely [learning in public](https://www.swyx.io/learn-in-public/).\n\nI've increasingly come to like the idea, so on January 15th I started what I've come to call my own \"[mixtape](http://swyx.transistor.fm/)\". \n\nMy format is simple: Short audio clips from others on weekdays, long form content from me on weekends. Inspired by [Ryan Holiday](https://dailystoic.com/), [NFX](https://podcast.nfx.com/episodes), [The Daily](https://www.nytimes.com/column/the-daily) and [Techmeme](https://art19.com/shows/techmeme-ridehome). It's been slowly growing to a small listenership, mostly because I have no idea how the hell to market a podcast. This will be my 100th episode, and I think I have fuel in the tank for 100 more. \n\n![Alt Text](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/9zqbpdbxaxff794lx2g8.png)\n\nI thought I should offer some reflections on the occasion of my first 100 episodes. As [@visakanv is fond of saying](http://www.visakanv.com/blog/100-2/), \"do 100 thing\" is a key bar towards experimenting and building competence in something. \n\nI'm not *great* at this yet. But I'm better than I was before. And at the end of the day, isn't that all we can ask for ourselves?\n\n## Personal Podcast Superpowers\n\n1. **Infinite Game**: the benefit of a personal podcast not being tied to a company or professional topic is that your name is the one thing that is going to last with you for the rest of your life. \n - I'll grant that it's possible, ideal even, to have your name tied to one topic for the rest of your life, like [Rob Walling](https://www.startupsfortherestofus.com/), but it is very rare.\n - The personal focus limits your reach, but ensures longevity. Having a personal podcast trains you to play Infinite Games by **playing a game you cannot win**, since the only goal is to keep going.\n - Personal podcasting is a great low stakes way to practice being a [Part Time Creator](https://www.swyx.io/part-time-creator-manifesto/), as a means to lock down the time management and productivity tactics to run your own media operation.\n2. **Hot Medium**: Audio is a much \"hotter\" medium than text, as [Alex Danco has pointed out](https://alexdanco.com/2019/10/17/the-audio-revolution/). \n 1. It affords a lot more room for expression: in the same time it takes for someone to read your work, you can convey and evoke vocal emotion, include audio snippets, and even play music to your listeners (Music is the [highest TAM](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_addressable_market) market, period). Voice creates a visceral connection straight into your eardrums, and the rise of truly wireless earbuds like Airpods have only increased this power.\n 2. Even it's constraints are nice: most of us spend all day staring at computer screens, so an audio-only format can be welcome respite during exercise and commutes.\n 3. The power of audio is why, despite being extremely widely read already, both [Ben Thompson](https://stratechery.com/2020/the-daily-update-podcast/) and [Packy McCormick](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/not-boring-packy-mccormick-trq3Lf8VpJe/) invest time to read out audio versions of their essays every week.\n3. **Independence**: Podcasting is one of the few truly decentralized mediums (although Spotify is doing its best to ruin it). If you can host MP3 files:\n 1. You cannot be deplatformed whether by [errant algorithm](https://www.swyx.io/proving-our-humanity/) or arbitrary decision.\n 2. You can run a podcast that will likely outlast any podcasting platform.\n4. **Completionism**: For a huge % of the population, podcasts are the only RSS feed where they regularly have 100% completion rate. \n 1. Not everyone will subscribe to your personal podcast, but those who do are *far* more likely to consume your content than even newsletter subscribers (where a 50% open rate is considered excellent)\n5. **Superfans**: You give an extra opportunity for people who want \"more where that came from\" to do just that.\n 1. This includes stripping out audio of the video interviews and talks you do, which can be helpful even just for discovery (in other words, even if the visual component is important, it can help your fans learn about content they want to watch)\n 2. You can guard against bitrot and increase discovery by rehosting your own appearances on other podcasts (like [my YouTube interviews](https://swyx.transistor.fm/episodes/weekend-drop-grifters-and-content-creation-traps) or my [Second Brain Workshops](https://swyx.transistor.fm/episodes/basb-week-1-the-capture-habit)) on your own feed (instead of requiring your superfans to go find your appearances through an index on your site or just following you closely on social)\n6. **Scheduling and Creative Control**: You don't rely on anyone else and don't need anyone's permission to change formats, take a break, or decide on content mix\n 1. I started my own podcast because of 3 consecutive weeks of scheduling difficulties with [my podcast cohost Randall](http://careerchats.transistor.fm/). To be clear, they were all my fault, but just the inflexibility of having to work with someone else's schedule (for a non-work project) proved very difficult to sustain.\n 2. I can throw in [music](https://swyx.transistor.fm/episodes/talkbox-byron-chambers-lorenz-rhode-scary-pockets) or [personal essays](https://swyx.transistor.fm/episodes/35-principles-for-35-years) or [angel investment chats](https://swyx.transistor.fm/episodes/weekend-drop-e2e-keyserver-startup-with-ashoat-tevosyan) or anything else I feel like anytime I want, as long as I think it'd make for something I myself would want to listen to in future.\n\nAs a side benefit, podcasting counts as excellent speaking practice - If you know you have a problem with your ums and ah's, there's nothing better to feel the pain than [spending hours editing them out](https://twitter.com/swyx/status/1378422268838076416) to motivate you to fix that.\n\n## Bring Back Mixtapes\n\nI think of my mixtape as a new format that I don't see anywhere else. Of course, mixtapes themselves are [as old as recorded audio](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mixtape), but they died off in the age of professional podcasting. \n\n- **Giving Value.** My formula of short weekday + long weekend is a blend of [Corey Quinn's AWS podcast](https://www.lastweekinaws.com/podcast/) and Peter Thiel's \"[recycled talks](https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmNob3IuZm0vcy8zMGVhZDM1Yy9wb2RjYXN0L3Jzcw==)\". I think this is the right blend of \"[jab jab jab, right hook](https://www.garyvaynerchuk.com/the-one-thing-i-didnt-clarify-enough-in-jab-jab-jab-right-hook/)\": Giving value on a regular basis, and only infrequently asking for something self serving (my listener's time to listen to my voice drone on).\n- **Curation.** The weekday episodes clip extensively from other podcasts I listen to. I often get asked about IP rights of doing this, since it is so rarely done — I am mostly relying on [fair use](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use) law and asking for forgiveness rather than permission. For what it's worth, every time I've publicly tweeted about an episode clip [like with Lynn Jurich](https://twitter.com/swyx/status/1382836263011581955) or [Shaan Puri](https://twitter.com/swyx/status/1372968161620811782), it's received retweets and even thanks from the people involved in the podcast. As for my listeners, I hope it helps them discover podcasts they haven't heard before, and zoom in to the specific timestamp that I deem most valuable.\n- **Brevity.** The shortcast format is another innovation - most weekday episodes are edited to under 10 minutes as much as possible. This is part creative constraint, part keen calculation: Everyone else puts out 30, 60, 120, and 180 minute episodes, so I stand out when I drop something that ends in 3 minutes and delivers that single hit you think about for months. It feels like a much smaller ask for hopefully great value.\n\n## Downsides\n\nI've had my own struggles with the high frequency format as well.\n\n- **Audio Editing**: I've gotten a lot better at putting episodes together with Audacity and Descript, but it is still a massive time sink and often takes 2-5x longer to produce than the final output.\n- **Discoverability:** Audio just doesn't show up for SEO. This can be mediated by smart titling and including transcripts, but it will just never rank as highly as a standalone blogpost. But perhaps more concerning for ROI on my time, my efforts will never scale through algorithmic recommendations. I have to put in extra effort mentioning it on Twitter or email, and it mostly doesn't do very well due to the platform incongruity.\n- **Analytics:** While I can track downloads, I don't *actually* know if anyone is even listening on the other side. So I do rely on people giving me positive encouragement via email, Discord, or Twitter like [this](https://twitter.com/nickytonline/status/1392844338925871109?s=20) or [this](https://twitter.com/ronvoluted/status/1395540202412597251?s=20) or [this](https://twitter.com/APKoponen/status/1359508767625392131?s=20).\n- **Depth**: Depressingly, most people don't read the descriptions of podcasts. I love giving further details for people to go down the same path I did, but people can't click on a link in my spoken word.\n- **Commentary**: People respond to podcasts even less than they read the descriptions, because the medium itself doesn't have an inbuilt feedback layer. I could include my email or a feedback form in every episode, but even then the response rate is super low. And it is many-to-one, rather than many-to-many, where feedback is encouraged because people can see that *other people* are giving feedback, and that I am responsive to it.\n\nFor these reasons, I am thinking about branching out or tweaking the format yet again, to involve YouTube. YouTube has a lot of these downsides mitigated, and the audio can still be stripped out and republished as an audio podcast. However, one downside is amplified: the need to edit **video** over audio, with correspondingly higher wait times and longer publish cycle.\n\n## Shameless Plug\n\n[Subscribe to my mixtape](http://swyx.transistor.fm/) already to experience it yourself, and let me know if you're inspired to start your own!\n","frontmatter":{"source":"devto","devToUrl":"https://dev.to/swyx/the-power-of-personal-podcasting-kkm","devToReactions":27,"devToReadingTime":7,"devToPublishedAt":"2021-05-28T02:09:23.639Z","devToViewsCount":587,"title":"The Power of Personal Podcasting","published":true,"description":"Celebrating following 100 episodes of my mixtape, and reflecting on why this works","tags":"Creators, Podcasts, Reflections","slug":"personal-podcasting","canonical_url":"https://www.swyx.io/personal-podcasting","cover_image":"https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/t873icsvyz33o5bm73sv.png"},"title":"The Power of Personal Podcasting","description":"Celebrating following 100 episodes of my mixtape, and reflecting on why this works ","category":"note","tags":["creators","podcasts","reflections"],"image":"https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/t873icsvyz33o5bm73sv.png","canonical":"https://www.swyx.io/personal-podcasting","slug":"personal-podcasting","date":"2021-05-28T02:09:23.639Z","readingTime":"8 minutes","ghMetadata":{"issueUrl":"https://github.com/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/186","commentsUrl":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/186/comments","title":"The Power of Personal Podcasting","created_at":"2022-01-17T23:01:40Z","updated_at":"2022-06-18T17:48:58Z","reactions":{"url":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/186/reactions","total_count":0,"+1":0,"-1":0,"laugh":0,"hooray":0,"confused":0,"heart":0,"rocket":0,"eyes":0}}},{"type":"blog","content":"\nIt's official: With the new [Payment Links](https://stripe.com/en-sg/payments/payment-links) feature, Stripe has entered the No Code market.\n\n{% youtube bLNFJNoL9e8 %}\n\n## Why It's a Big Deal\n\nYou can think of the process of getting money from your customers to yourself in 3 stages:\n\n- Running a Server for backend logic and secrets\n- Building a Frontend UI for customers to enter in their payment details and complete their purchase\n- Creating a [`PaymentIntent`](https://stripe.com/docs/payments/payment-intents#:~:text=Each%20PaymentIntent%20typically%20correlates%20with,collect%2C%20and%20the%20desired%20currency.) to track a single customer session from end to end. These must be created uniquely for each transaction.\n\nEach of these stages are immensely technical. \nStripe's recent product releases have progressively eliminated each one of these stages, opening Stripe up to the 99.6% of humanity that doesn't code!\n\n## Towards Stripe Checkout\n\nStripe's roots are famously developer centric. The default approach was to only offer a serverside SDK, and let you [wire everything else up yourself](https://stripe.com/docs/payments/integration-builder).\n\nThis gives you maximum control, but it can mean a lot of code to write and maintain. You not only have to code up an attractive, reassuring UI for people to enter their credit card details (though [Stripe Elements](https://stripe.com/en-sg/payments/elements) makes that easier), you also have to continually run a server just to take even a small one-off payment. If your server goes down , or you screw up some JavaScript, there goes your money!\n\nSo along comes [Stripe Checkout](https://stripe.com/en-sg/payments/elements), where Stripe hosts your UI:\n\n![https://res.cloudinary.com/practicaldev/image/fetch/s--EMzAeaWh--/c_limit%2Cf_auto%2Cfl_progressive%2Cq_66%2Cw_880/https://b.stripecdn.com/docs/assets/overview.6a4ea4b380bea93a5be8a820f3eb7c35.gif](https://res.cloudinary.com/practicaldev/image/fetch/s--EMzAeaWh--/c_limit%2Cf_auto%2Cfl_progressive%2Cq_66%2Cw_880/https://b.stripecdn.com/docs/assets/overview.6a4ea4b380bea93a5be8a820f3eb7c35.gif)\n\nWonderful! You not only don't have to code the UI or host it, Stripe is continually improving the checkout page on your behalf. It is even hosting it **on their domain**, and most people will trust a Stripe domain over your own when entering in their credit card details.\n\nBut.\n\nLook upon [the Stripe Checkout docs](https://stripe.com/docs/payments/accept-a-payment?platform=web&ui=checkout#create-a-checkout-session) and realize that the `PaymentIntent` section is not handled at all - you STILL have to write some code and run at least a serverless function to get this thing working!\n\nI know this all too well because I spent a day learning and debugging this when I was [launching my self published book](https://dev.to/swyx/lessons-and-regrets-from-my-25000-launch-3aaa).\n\n## Stripe Payment Links\n\nSince everyone was writing little serverless functions to coordinate all the `PaymentIntent` creation and offer a nice URL for all this, the natural next step is for Stripe to do it for you instead!\n\nYou can think of [Stripe Payment Links](https://stripe.com/en-sg/payments/payment-links) as a thin layer atop of Stripe Checkout:\n\n![Alt Text](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/ald99mra5o9qjjt1xui5.png)\n\nNow the interface between your user and your business is just a simple URL - the web's firstborn API. \n\nGetting started with it could not be easier.\n\nAssuming you have some [products and prices already set up](https://stripe.com/docs/billing/prices-guide) in Stripe, head to your Stripe Dashboard and look for \"Payment links\" under the Products section. [Here is a direct link](https://dashboard.stripe.com/payment-links).\n\nFrom here you can create a New link for each product, in seconds.\n\n![Alt Text](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/j91nd0eohyyrpika39dw.png)\n\nThe final Payment link will just look like this: https://buy.stripe.com/4gwcQB0I9dVpeIw5km (yes, that's a real Payment link URL!). You can now use it inside of low and no code setups like HTML, Wordpress, or WebFlow.\n\nBut perhaps the biggest 🤯 of all is that **you don't even need a website to take the money over the Internet anymore**. You can now drop that link over a Discord or Slack app, or even place it as your \"link in bio\". \n\nThat's the beauty of the URL - it's accepted everywhere. As all the best payment solutions should be.\n\n## Comparisons\n\nNow that Stripe is handling all three stages of the ecommerce process for the first time, it is inevitable to start comparing it to other vendors that have done the same since forever. Before Stripe, you could easily have spun up a Shopify or Gumroad site and taken payments that way. Is Stripe now going for their lunch?\n\nI don't have any inside info on this, but my intuition is: No. People hire Gumroad and Shopify to do very different jobs. \n\nFor example, Gumroad: \n\n- acts as a [Merchant of Record](https://www.digitalocean.com/blog/starter-apps-for-any-indie-business/#:~:text=Gumroad%20had%20the%20features%20Adam,him%20of%20those%20burdens%20too.) (to drastically simplify tax collection and compliance)\n- provides social proof (in the form of customer reviews)\n- platform traffic and revenue via [its Discover marketplace](https://gumroad.com/discover)\n- fulfilment (aka if you are selling digital content, it hosts your files for your customers to download)\n\nIn exchange for all that, it takes [6.5% of your sales](https://sacra.com/research/gumroad-android-creator-economy/). Stripe Payment Links are available for no extra charge on Stripe's standard [integrated pricing](https://stripe.com/en-sg/pricing).","frontmatter":{"source":"devto","devToUrl":"https://dev.to/swyx/stripe-goes-no-code-stripe-payment-links-explained-4im","devToReactions":23,"devToReadingTime":4,"devToPublishedAt":"2021-05-26T02:17:37.126Z","devToViewsCount":615,"title":"Stripe Goes No-Code — Stripe Payment Links Explained","published":true,"description":"Stripe has entered the No Code market in a big way! I take a crack at explaining what it's doing and why.","tags":"Tech, Stripe, Creators","slug":"stripe-payment-links","canonical_url":"https://www.swyx.io/stripe-payment-links","cover_image":"https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/yp9fv1grnc9upw94yu9e.png","disclosure":"I was given a preview of this feature, as a Stripe Community Expert. No financial sponsorship took place."},"title":"Stripe Goes No-Code — Stripe Payment Links Explained","description":"Stripe has entered the No Code market in a big way! I take a crack at explaining what it's doing and why. ","category":"note","tags":["tech","stripe","creators"],"image":"https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/yp9fv1grnc9upw94yu9e.png","canonical":"https://www.swyx.io/stripe-payment-links","slug":"stripe-payment-links","date":"2021-05-26T02:17:37.126Z","readingTime":"4 minutes","ghMetadata":{"issueUrl":"https://github.com/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/187","commentsUrl":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/187/comments","title":"Stripe Goes No-Code — Stripe Payment Links Explained","created_at":"2022-01-17T23:01:42Z","updated_at":"2022-06-18T17:48:58Z","reactions":{"url":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/187/reactions","total_count":0,"+1":0,"-1":0,"laugh":0,"hooray":0,"confused":0,"heart":0,"rocket":0,"eyes":0}}},{"type":"blog","content":"\n> \"Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them.\" — Alfred North Whitehead\n\nI've just implemented Prettier + ESLint on my React codebase [at work](https://github.com/temporalio/documentation/pull/451/commits/cae25e5ee08ef6ba840596679b7d37e79585ce4b) and figured I'd better share my notes in case others need to figure this out.\n\nMy setup includes:\n\n- See lint violations inline in VSCode\n- Prettify after PR merge with GitHub actions\n- Prettify before git commit (some folks dislike this)\n- Ability to manually run checks locally\n\nEven if you use TypeScript, you'll want BOTH Prettier and ESLint in your codebase. Prettier [doesn't always do what you mean](https://twitter.com/swyx/status/1191452690930376705) and ESLint checks things that Prettier doesn't. For historical reasons, this codebase doesn't use TypeScript, don't @ me, my love for [TypeScript is well documented](https://react-typescript-cheatsheet.netlify.app/).\n\n## Step 1: Dependencies\n\n```bash\nyarn add -D eslint eslint-plugin-react husky lint-staged prettier\n\n# or npm i -D eslint eslint-plugin-react husky lint-staged prettier\n```\n\nas of time of writing these are the versions I am working with:\n\n```json\n{\n \"devDependencies\": {\n \"eslint\": \"^7.27.0\",\n \"eslint-plugin-react\": \"^7.23.2\",\n \"husky\": \"^6.0.0\",\n \"lint-staged\": \"^11.0.0\",\n \"prettier\": \"^2.3.0\"\n }\n}\n```\n\nNote that this setup requires more work if you [using Husky v6 with Yarn 2](https://typicode.github.io/husky/#/?id=manual).\n\n\n## Step 2: Scripts\n\nadd stuff to package.json...\n\n```json\n{\n \"scripts\": { \n \"format\": \"prettier --write .\",\n \"prepare\": \"husky install\"\n },\n \"lint-staged\": {\n \"**/*\": \"prettier --write --ignore-unknown\"\n },\n}\n```\n\nYou can now run `npm run format` to prettify your existing codebase as a oneoff.\n\nIn case you were wondering:\n\n- [Husky](https://typicode.github.io/husky/#/) adds a git commit hook so that...\n- [`Lint-staged`](https://github.com/okonet/lint-staged) only runs Prettier on new stuff that you stage in git\n\n## Step 3: Prettier Settings\n\nCommence bikeshedding! Use the [Prettier Playground](https://prettier.io/playground/#N4Igxg9gdgLgprEAuEAzArlMMCW0AEAEnADYkQDqEATiQCYAUwA5tXHLlM-gLz4A6IABalyggDT5W7eHV74A5IKq06ghZIDOOEghjzUAQxKa4k6AFkI6UwHkAbnGriAvgEp8wflG-58OVAYAQmkOHC43YDYYdGoofCh0MhcAbm9fPz8Aeiz8ABVbABFbJHxC6AV9Gzh8akMoOggAW394tganDN19RJa+C0MYIQA6VHIafAYBoeG6huaGDwAqfABGAFEAagB2N2GYCABlGGpw5kXZuAAHEkMwOAYs-n5h57pNrJxmSUFBN3T4rUOLF4gAeOg4ez4MC3TSaAByhiacB4CmIZEoNHoCnwuBguh4wAABgBNaz4QxsfD2HDaA7UBLoJoAIyc+AAJMBGS0XESXPhLNY7I5qITBdUHE4XAA+AGZfCgzQnaDMaVc0KcZjDTQkHD3Bj4AAMklW+D2BwAqlcrk4AMKGUyLfCbKRsMJcbW6-Wrc0QAAyEAA7naHQ8PC5QVkldQVbLAX4WG7NcMEHRNBQcEMGBI-vgAPwCECF-ClRVXer4JUATwJwGAkHI1FKSn40irChcMokhcjmnLUGl+BcGT8oLgTTj-Bg6qTcDkw58MEj47j8q5DG0ulg-3jmQLgleIBHmVKgiCggXx8jEPs0rSPigLhA4hAECuuGgmmQoEpMcDAAVKQQL8UGMQNDCrL8X2ZOowAAaw4Q5yzAM5kCMEwzBAcdWToOg5z9epmHQQxmDgAAxGgmkGTVkBAQx0AOZ9hBgJoSAoIRMzgPs7jgQ5gMzSFMyrWiwDhJjwlMagYH-OpmCotDjFMF8ACtNAADwAIVghCYEOJE4D9cI4AUjCVPUw4zl0ABFdAIHgEylJActqEk2jmUMVkSCYq5TlgDM6CGZAAA5jScmNTAoOorlonyuKcRwmIAR1s+AZLfEC6M0ABaKB2DwugmLYZKcDYGSSPkpB0Mc0wmhwBzMO0LhrJS4ykBOdBMJgDz-MCpAACYXxOQwdDOW1mgqrDNAAViY6o8g8kCqsw+wOoASQ6WBDjAU53wAQQaY4a1apbOyAA) to decide on what settings your team wants.\n\nPut this in `.prettierrc.json`\n\n```json\n{\n \"arrowParens\": \"always\",\n \"bracketSpacing\": false,\n \"embeddedLanguageFormatting\": \"auto\",\n \"htmlWhitespaceSensitivity\": \"css\",\n \"insertPragma\": false,\n \"jsxBracketSameLine\": false,\n \"jsxSingleQuote\": false,\n \"printWidth\": 80,\n \"proseWrap\": \"preserve\",\n \"quoteProps\": \"as-needed\",\n \"requirePragma\": false,\n \"semi\": true,\n \"singleQuote\": false,\n \"tabWidth\": 2,\n \"trailingComma\": \"es5\",\n \"useTabs\": false,\n } \n```\n\nStep 4: ESLint\n\nYou know you gotta...\n\n```js\nmodule.exports = {\n \"env\": {\n \"browser\": true,\n \"es2021\": true,\n \"node\": true\n },\n \"extends\": [\n \"eslint:recommended\",\n \"plugin:react/recommended\"\n ],\n \"parserOptions\": {\n \"ecmaFeatures\": {\n \"jsx\": true\n },\n \"ecmaVersion\": 12,\n \"sourceType\": \"module\"\n },\n \"plugins\": [\n \"react\"\n ],\n \"rules\": {\n \"react/prop-types\": [0, {}], // this is dumb, why is this still recommended\n \"react/no-unescaped-entities\": [0, {}],\n \"no-unused-vars\": [1, {}],\n }\n};\n```\n\n> Recommended: also enable the [ESLint VSCode plugin](https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=dbaeumer.vscode-eslint) to see the eslint feedback in your editor!!!\n\nStep 5: Automate\n\nWe'll just add a nifty little GitHub Action in `.github/workflows/autoformat.yml`:\n\n```yaml\nname: Continuous Integration\n\n# This action works with pull requests and pushes\non:\n pull_request:\n push:\n branches:\n - master\n\njobs:\n prettier:\n runs-on: ubuntu-latest\n\n steps:\n - name: Checkout\n uses: actions/checkout@v2\n with:\n # Make sure the actual branch is checked out when running on pull requests\n ref: ${{ github.head_ref }}\n\n - name: Prettify code\n uses: creyD/prettier_action@v3.3\n with:\n # This part is also where you can pass other options, for example:\n prettier_options: --write **/*.{js,md}\n env:\n GITHUB_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}\n```\n\nThat's it!","frontmatter":{"source":"devto","devToUrl":"https://dev.to/swyx/how-to-add-prettier-and-eslint-automation-to-a-react-codebase-2gk1","devToReactions":261,"devToReadingTime":3,"devToPublishedAt":"2021-05-25T22:32:58.247Z","devToViewsCount":4930,"title":"How To Add Prettier and ESLint Automation to a React Codebase","published":true,"description":"Automated code quality with GitHub Actions, Husky, Lint-staged, Prettier, and ESLint","tags":"React, JavaScript, Webdev","slug":"prettier-eslint-react","canonical_url":"https://www.swyx.io/prettier-eslint-react","cover_image":"https://miro.medium.com/max/1400/1*N9n5F63ne3HimpJ10d1HEw.jpeg","disclosure":"I just did this as of May 2021 so your mileage may vary"},"title":"How To Add Prettier and ESLint Automation to a React Codebase","description":"Automated code quality with GitHub Actions, Husky, Lint-staged, Prettier, and ESLint ","category":"note","tags":["react","javascript","webdev"],"image":"https://miro.medium.com/max/1400/1*N9n5F63ne3HimpJ10d1HEw.jpeg","canonical":"https://www.swyx.io/prettier-eslint-react","slug":"prettier-eslint-react","date":"2021-05-25T22:32:58.247Z","readingTime":"4 minutes","ghMetadata":{"issueUrl":"https://github.com/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/188","commentsUrl":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/188/comments","title":"How To Add Prettier and ESLint Automation to a React Codebase","created_at":"2022-01-17T23:01:44Z","updated_at":"2022-06-18T17:48:59Z","reactions":{"url":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/188/reactions","total_count":0,"+1":0,"-1":0,"laugh":0,"hooray":0,"confused":0,"heart":0,"rocket":0,"eyes":0}}},{"title":"Swyx on DevJourney with Tim Bourgignon","slug":"devjourney-pod","tags":["LIP"],"venues":"DevJourney","date":"2021-05-25T00:00:00.000Z","url":"https://devjourney.info/Guests/152-ShawnWang.html","description":"Shawn took us along on his transition from his very well-paid trading job to his career as a developer. We talked about re-using your skills, boot camps, the power of networks, LearnInPublic, motivation, and much more.","category":"podcast"},{"type":"blog","content":"\r\n*This post originated as [an AMA on IndieHackers](https://www.indiehackers.com/post/made-121-326-since-launching-my-book-last-july-63-of-it-after-launch-month-ama-about-long-tail-infoproducts-41b55f5670)*\r\n\r\nI [launched the Coding Career Handbook almost a year ago](https://www.indiehackers.com/product/cracking-the-coding-career) and since then have been focusing on long tail revenue, while keeping my day job as a [Part Time Creator](https://www.swyx.io/part-time-creator-manifesto/).\r\n\r\n![Alt Text](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/ophhz5kfehva2xubp6mw.png)\r\n\r\nSince launch ([day](https://dev.to/swyx/lessons-and-regrets-from-my-25000-launch-3aaa), [month](https://dev.to/swyx/5-q-a-s-on-writing-and-selling-my-first-book-18d1), [cheatsheet](https://github.com/sw-yx/launch-cheatsheet)) I've been consistently hitting around $1-2k a week in infoproduct revenue, with a high price point ($59 for just the book, $249 for book+community+behind the scenes), and no sales apart from Black Friday.\r\n\r\n\r\n![image](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/119191126-d4ac3c80-bab0-11eb-815d-1481c8616aec.png)\r\n\r\n## 5 Tips for Long Tails\r\n\r\nOff the top of my head these things helped extend the tail:\r\n\r\n- **Run a Twitter**. This is definitely extra work and I'm not sure how much sales it helps to drive, but having a [dedicated book twitter](https://twitter.com/Coding_Career) helps me stay current in people's minds without making my main account too spammy. Being tagged on feedback is great for social proof.\r\n- **Run a podcast**. Randall and I [ran a podcast](https://careerchats.transistor.fm/) that helped extend the reach of content we already worked on.\r\n- **Run a paid community**. My [middle tier](https://www.learninpublic.org/#community) is a high signal/low noise Discord + Circle community focused on tech careers and part time creation. Monthly calls and meetups and daily chats helps drive word of mouth.\r\n- **Blog**. 1/4 of my book was [prior blogposts that did well](https://swyx.io/LIP), so appending a shoutout to the top of the post helps drive traffic for people who want to read more.\r\n- **Do podcasts and talks**. I do at least a talk a month and it turns out podcasters like [inviting book authors to chat](https://shoptalkshow.com/432/) - the caveat here is that I've had zero luck cold pitching, [the talks/podcasts I did](https://www.learninpublic.org/) were all already warm/inbound.\r\n\r\nI spent about 600 hours writing the book. \r\n\r\nI think creators should spend equal time marketing as they do creating. \r\n\r\nSo I probably still have a ways to go, not inclusive of a planned v2 of the book this year.\r\n\r\nLet me know what other questions you have!\r\n\r\n## Reader Q&A\r\n\r\n**Emma**: How do you identify your niche and gauge their interest?\r\n\r\n> blog a lot and see what works 🤷‍♂️\r\n>\r\n> a set of good posts = the mvp of a book\r\n\r\n**Akcium**: Do you have a newsletter?\r\n\r\n> I have [a personal newsletter](https://www.swyx.io/subscribe), but decided not to do a separate book newsletter. \r\n>\r\n> I probably lost a lot of potential sales that way (bc its a way to extend the relationship if people are noncommittal), but it felt like extra work that I wouldn't enjoy. I'm more of a twitter native.\r\n\r\n**Akcium**: Would it be reasonable to make a separate twitter for a ...book?\r\n\r\n> I don't actually think *most* people should make a separate twitter. \r\n>\r\n> I only do it so as to shard my content because it is important that my main twitter not become too self promotional. \r\n>\r\n> If you are just starting out building an audience, just build one, not two.\r\n\r\n**unemployability**: How did you finally settle on those price points?\r\n\r\n> hey! yeah so pricing is a weird one - I approached it as a shock therapy exercise since I didn't need the money. You know how @patio11 and @csallen are always telling people to raise prices? i took that as far as I thought I could for a book:\r\n> \r\n> - Started with presale of $19 and then randomly promised that my presale price was 50% off launch...\r\n> - That means my launch price was $39... and i wanted to make the launch look like a good deal so I said it was 30% off the final price... \r\n> - That made the final book $59 and I had to put in the work to make sure it was worth that...\r\n> - Then I followed @jhooks' advice to do 1x 2x 5x three tier pricing.\r\n> - Wanted to make the middle tier a nobrainer so I put the community at $40 which is super cheap compared to the book\r\n> - then threw all the value add I could think of into the 5x. goal here was to try to sell a 3-figure thing to internet strangers for the first time... job accomplished.\r\n> \r\n> Higher prices can always be discounted in future... much harder to raise them. I also have something worth more to offer, when for example, i do a talk at a conference and they want to raffle off something.\r\n\r\n**Rob Fitzpatrick** (author of the Mom Test): Happy to see you mention spending a significant amount of time on the creation. So many people in this space seem obsessed with churning stuff out more quickly, whereas I always feel that it's more important to spend whatever time is required to make the end result most valuable.\r\n\r\n> Yes! That's what rubs me the wrong way about Daniel's \"pump it out in 2 weeks\" thing. It's of course great to make your first dollar on the internet, but no customer wants to hear how *little* you worked for their dollar.\r\n\r\n**Bhumi**: What is your main distribution channel for the long-tails post \"launch\" month growth? Is it mainly Twitter? Does your community help with the ongoing growth?\r\n\r\n> I listed a few channels above, and word of mouth from community (special shoutout to Tre Tuna from Amazon/Hack Reactor!!) has definitely helped. But I don't check my stats so I don't know what the main contributor was. \r\n>\r\n> I generally subscribe to the idea that people have to hear about you at least 3-4 times before they decide to buy your stuff so thats why I don't really bother.\r\n>\r\n> Just put out as much as I can given the time limits that i have, and let the cards fall where they may.\r\n\r\n**TypeofGraphic**: What advice would you give around starting and growing a community?\r\n\r\n> 1. show up every day\r\n> 2. propose relevant topics\r\n> 3. respond promptly when someone engages\r\n> 4. do it for a year\r\n\r\n**TypeofGraphic**: If you did it again - another book, another topic maybe. What would you do differently?\r\n\r\n> If i did it again, i'd make a short book - like, 100 pages, price it at $9, art design the heck out of it because everyone judges a book by its cover and illustrations. I made the mistake of aiming for the high end when I did my pricing and product and perhaps could have done better just going for reach first.\r\n>\r\n> When you do a book, you can either go for money or go for reach. I naively went for money. Better play is to make first book for reach, so that everyone is HUGELY IMPRESSED, then second book for money.\r\n\r\n**manast**: Just one question, how did you grow your Coding_Career twitter? did you have a large audience already in your regular twitter that you managed to engage in your new twitter account, or how did you do it?\r\n\r\n> i think i had about 15 or 16k followers when i launched that twitter, its middle sized? idk.\r\n>\r\n> for Coding_Career i think just tweeting focused threads like [this one](https://twitter.com/Coding_Career/status/1395415855303852033 ). I have more dev twitter advice in the book. :)\r\n\r\n","frontmatter":{"source":"devto","devToUrl":"https://dev.to/swyx/5-tips-for-long-tail-infoproduct-sales-40ad","devToReactions":11,"devToReadingTime":5,"devToPublishedAt":"2021-05-22T21:56:06.252Z","devToViewsCount":287,"title":"$120k in Infoproduct Sales - How to Extend the Long Tail","published":true,"tags":"Creators, Reflections","slug":"long-tail-infoproduct","canonical_url":"https://www.swyx.io/long-tail-infoproduct","cover_image":"https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/ophhz5kfehva2xubp6mw.png"},"title":"$120k in Infoproduct Sales - How to Extend the Long Tail","description":"*This post originated as an AMA on IndieHackers (https://www.indiehackers.com/post/made-121-326-since-launching-my-book-last-july-63-of-it-after-launch-month-ama-about-long-tail-infoproducts-41b55f5670)* ","category":"note","tags":["creators","reflections"],"image":"https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/ophhz5kfehva2xubp6mw.png","canonical":"https://www.swyx.io/long-tail-infoproduct","slug":"long-tail-infoproduct","date":"2021-05-22T21:56:06.252Z","readingTime":"6 minutes","ghMetadata":{"issueUrl":"https://github.com/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/281","commentsUrl":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/281/comments","title":"$120k in Infoproduct Sales - How to Extend the Long Tail","created_at":"2022-01-18T00:09:38Z","updated_at":"2022-06-18T17:45:00Z","reactions":{"url":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/281/reactions","total_count":0,"+1":0,"-1":0,"laugh":0,"hooray":0,"confused":0,"heart":0,"rocket":0,"eyes":0}}},{"type":"blog","content":"\n*This post was originally published on [FreeCodeCamp](https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/how-to-optimize-for-change-software-development/).*\n\nImagine you worked at Magic Money Corp, which runs on just three lines of JavaScript:\n\n```jsx\nlet input = { step1: 'collect underpants' }\ndoStuff(input) \nprofit(input) // $$$!!!\n```\n\nNow imagine something's wrong with the left phalange and we need to take `doStuff` down for maintenance. What happens if you temporarily comment out the second line?\n\nOh no! `profit()` is erroring all over the place. You've broken our magic money machine! To solve this, you would now have to read through the entire source code of `doStuff` to understand what it does and replace critical code for `profit` to function. \n\nMaybe it's better to just leave `doStuff` there... we don't *need* a functioning phalange right?\n\n**When we are afraid of making changes to our code, it starts to ossify and bloat.**\n\nNow let's imagine if we had built Magic Money Corp on immutable data structures instead (or used a functional language):\n\n```jsx\nlet input = ImmutableMap({ step1: 'collect underpants' })\ndoStuff(input)\nprofit(input) // $$$!!!\n```\n\nIt *looks* the same, but now I can remove `doStuff`, and have no fear of breaking Magic Money Corp! \n\nI've been obsessed with Dan Abramov's concept of [Optimizing for Change](https://overreacted.io/optimized-for-change/) since he wrote about it two years ago. It clearly articulates a core design principle of React (the rest are [here](https://reactjs.org/docs/design-principles.html) and [here](https://github.com/reactjs/react-basic)). For me, it is one of [the 7 lessons that will outlive React](https://twitter.com/swyx/status/1383516418205835264) that I now try to apply everywhere else.\n\nThe main question it doesn't answer: *how* exactly do you optimize for change?\n\n## TL;DR\n\n- Plan for Common Changes\n- Use Simple Values\n- Minimize Edit Distance\n- Catch Errors Early\n\n## Why Optimize for Change\n\nFirst, an obligatory explanation of this idea:\n\n- **Hard-to-delete code drives out easy-to-delete code over time**\n- Many layers of bandaids over hard-to-delete code causes technical mummification\n- Therefore we must try to optimize for change from the earliest design\n\nThe inspiration for this came from \"Easy-to-replace systems tend to get replaced with hard-to-replace systems\" ([*Malte Ubl*](https://twitter.com/cramforce/status/1139925981051801600)) and \"Write code that is easy to delete, not easy to extend\" ([*tef*](https://programmingisterrible.com/post/139222674273/how-to-write-disposable-code-in-large-systems))**.** Economics fans will recognize this as [an application](https://twitter.com/swyx/status/1286624921532080129) of [Gresham's Law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gresham%27s_law). The idea is the same — a form of anti-entropy where *inflexibility* increases, instead of disorder.\n\nIt's not that we don't *know* when our systems are hard-to-replace. It is that the most expedient response is usually to slap on a workaround and keep going. After one too many bandaids, our codebase mummifies. This is the consequence of not allowing room for *change* in our original designs, a related (but distinct) idea to \"technical debt\" (which has its [own](https://redmonk.com/rstephens/2017/08/08/technical-debt/) [problems](https://twitter.com/jessitron/status/1123310331957145601)).\n\nThe reason we must allow for changes is that [requirements volatility is a core problem of software engineering](https://stackoverflow.blog/2020/02/20/requirements-volatility-is-the-core-problem-of-software-engineering/). We devs often fantasize that our lives would be a lot easier if product specs were, well, fully *specified* upfront. But that's the [spherical frictionless cow](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spherical_cow) of programming. In reality, the only constant is change. We should carefully design our abstractions and APIs acknowledging this fact.\n\n![Alt Text](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/n1078j8opalnrzuu8p4u.png)\n\n## Plan for Common Changes\n\nOnce you're bought in to the need to optimize for change, it is easy to go overboard and be overcome by analysis paralysis. *How* do you design for *anything* when EVERYTHING could change?!\n\nWe could overdo it by, for example, putting abstract facades on every interface or turning every function asynchronous. It’s clear that doubling the size of your codebase in exchange for no difference in feature set is not desirable either.\n\nA reasonable way to draw the line is to design for small, common tweaks, and not worry about big, infrequent migrations. Hillel Wayne calls these [requirement perturbations](https://twitter.com/hillelogram/status/1189024161127190528) — small, typical feature requests should not throw your whole design out of whack. \n\nFor the probabilistically inclined, the best we can do is make sure our design adapts well to 1-3 \"standard deviation\" changes. Bigger changes than that are rare (by definition), and justify a more invasive rewrite when they happen.\n\nThis way, we also avoid optimizing for change that may never come, which can be a significant source of software bloat and complexity.\n\n*Common changes can be accumulated with experience - the humorous example of this is [Zawinski's Law](http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/Z/Zawinskis-Law.html), but there are many far less extreme changes that are entirely routine and can be anticipated, whether by [Preemptive Pluralization](https://www.swyx.io/preemptive-pluralization/) or [Business Strategy](https://www.swyx.io/dev-guide-to-tech-strategy/).*\n\n## Use Simple Values\n\nOnce we have constrained the scope of our ambitions, I like to dive straight into thinking about API design. The end goal is clear. In order to make code easy to change: \n\n- it has to first be easy to ***delete...***\n- which then makes it easier to ***cut and paste***...\n- which makes it easier to create and break apart ***abstractions***...\n- and so on, until you cover all routine maintenance tasks, including logging, debugging, testing and performance optimization.\n\nRich Hickey is well known for preaching the [Value of Values](https://www.infoq.com/presentations/Value-Values/) and [Simplicity](https://www.infoq.com/presentations/Simple-Made-Easy/). It is worth deeply understanding the implications of this approach for API design. Where you might pass class instances or objects with dynamic references, you could instead pass simple, immutable values. This eliminates a whole class of potential bugs (and unlocks logging, serialization and other goodies). \n\n![Alt Text](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/olrtcg8p9ress0j3klob.png)\n\nOut of these requirements for simple uncomplected values, you can derive from first principles a surprising number of \"best\" practices — [immutable programming](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bFuRvcAEiHg), constraining state with a [functional core, imperative shell](https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/screencasts/catalog/functional-core-imperative-shell), [parse don't validate](https://lexi-lambda.github.io/blog/2019/11/05/parse-don-t-validate/), and [managing function color](https://journal.stuffwithstuff.com/2015/02/01/what-color-is-your-function/). The pursuit of simplicity isn't a cost-free proposition, but a variety of techniques from [structural sharing](https://twitter.com/jordwalke/status/959018527091904512) to static analysis can help.\n\nInstead of memorizing a table of good/bad examples, the better approach is to understand that these are all instances of the same general rule: **Complexity arises from coupling.** \n\n## Minimize Edit Distance\n\nI mentally picture the braids from *Simple Made Easy* now, whenever I think about complexity.\n\n![Alt Text](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/gj20hvtks9erpk2y4wzp.png)\n\nWhen you have multiple strings next to each other, you can braid them and knot them up. This is complexity — complexity is difficult to unwind. It is only when you have just one string that it becomes impossible to braid. \n\nMore to the point, we should try to reduce our reliance on *order* as much as possible:\n\n- Execution order — If I delete something on line 2, how easily can the developer tell if something in line 3 will blow up? How many changes do I need to make to fix it?\n- Resolution order — If concurrent processes resolve out of order, how easily can I correct for or guarantee against race conditions?\n- Filesystem order — If I move some code from one place to another, how many other files need to be edited to reflect this?\n- Argument order — If I swap the position of some arguments, whether in a function call or a class constructor or a YAML config file, does the program implode?\n- *this is an ad hoc list; there are probably some big ones I'm missing here, please let me know*\n\nYou can even quantify this complexity with a notion of \"[edit distance](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edit_distance)\":\n\n- If I use multi-arity functions, then I cannot easily add or remove or rearrange parameters without then updating *all* the callsites, or adding default params I don't actually want. Single arity functions/languages with named params require only essential updates and no more. (This isn't without tradeoffs of course — more discussion [here](https://twitter.com/swyx/status/1198632709834326021))\n- Turning a stateless component stateful with React (pre-Hooks) used to require edits/additions of 7 lines of code. With React Hooks, it just takes 1.\n- Asynchrony and Data Dependency tend to propagate in a codebase. If one requirement changed and something at the bottom needed to be async (e.g. it needs one data fetch), I used to have to switch between at least 3 files and folders, and add reducers and actions and selectors with Redux to coordinate this. Better to decomplect parent-child relationships — a design goal prominent in [React Suspense](https://twitter.com/acdlite/status/969747179731533824), [Relay Compiler](https://twitter.com/swyx/status/1193112002413117440) and [GraphQL's dataloader](https://sophiebits.com/2020/01/01/fast-maintainable-db-patterns.html).\n\nYou could even imagine a complexity measure similar to the CSS specificity formula - a complexity of `C(1,0,0,0)` would be harder to change than `C(0,2,3,4)`. So optimizing for change would mean reducing the \"edit distance\" complexity profile of common operations.\n\nI haven't exactly worked out what the formula is yet, but we can *feel* it when a codebase is hard to change. Development progresses slower as a result. But that's just the visible effect — because it isn't *fun* to experiment in the codebase, **novel ideas are never found**. The invisible cost of missed innovation is directly related to how easy it is to try stuff out or change your mind.\n\n**To make code easy to change, make it impossible to \"braid\" your code.**\n\n## Catch Errors Early\n\nAs much as we can try to contain the [accidental](https://medium.com/background-thread/accidental-and-essential-complexity-programming-word-of-the-day-b4db4d2600d4) complexity of our code by API design and code style, we can never completely eliminate it except for the most trivial programs. For the remaining essential complexity, we have to keep our feedback loops as short as possible.\n\n![Alt Text](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/ft6xbdkm4mpzitumho5i.png)\n\nIBM coined the term \"[Shift Left](https://devops.com/shift-left-can-you-be-left-out/)\" after finding that [the earlier you catch errors, the cheaper they are to fix](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/255965523_Integrating_Software_Assurance_into_the_Software_Development_Life_Cycle_SDLC). If you arrange the software development lifecycle from left (design) to right (production), the idea is that if you shift your errors \"left\" then you'd save actual money by catching errors earlier (For more on this, see my discussion and sources in [Language Servers are the New Frameworks](https://dev.to/dx/language-servers-are-the-new-frameworks-1lbm)).\n\nIn concrete terms this might translate to:\n\n- unit tests that pinpoint what broke in your code when you refactor\n- types that [codify the contracts](https://css-tricks.com/types-or-tests-why-not-both/) between data and functions\n- continuous deploys that take [less than 15 minutes](https://stackoverflow.blog/2021/01/19/fulfilling-the-promise-of-ci-cd/) (you probably have easy wins to make in [frontend](https://twitter.com/housecor/status/1213093680501993472?s=20) or [backend](https://charity.wtf/2020/12/31/why-are-my-tests-so-slow-a-list-of-likely-suspects-anti-patterns-and-unresolved-personal-trauma/))\n- [local development servers](https://twitter.com/swyx/status/1115632067885375491) that emulate your cloud environment\n- \"live\" values either provided by [language servers](https://dev.to/dx/language-servers-are-the-new-frameworks-1lbm) or [editor plugins](https://quokkajs.com/) or [replay recording](https://replay.io/)\n\nThe causality may be ***bidirectional***. If you make it easier to change things, you will be able to make changes more frequently. It could work the other way too — because you expect to make frequent changes, you are more incentivized to make things easy to change. An extreme example of this involves not just code, but community - the longer a library (or language) stays on version 1, the harder the difficulty of switching to version 2, whereas ecosystems that regularly publish breaking versions (in exchange for clear improvements) seem to avoid stasis by sheer exposure.\n\n## A caution against *too much* change\n\nAny good idea turns bad when taken to the extreme. If you change things *too much* you might be favoring *velocity over stability* — and stability is very much a feature that your users and code consumers rely on. [Hyrum's law](https://www.hyrumslaw.com/) guarantees that with sufficient users and time, even your *bugs* will be relied on, and people will get upset if you fix them.\n\nThat said, overall, I find Optimizing for Change a net win in my programming, product, and system design decisions and am happy that I've boiled it down to four principles: Plan for Common Changes, Use Simple Values, Minimize Edit Distance, and Catch Errors Early!\n\n## Related reads\n\n- [Pre-emptive Pluralization is Probably Not Evil](https://www.swyx.io/preemptive-pluralization/)\n- [7 Lessons to Outlive React](https://twyx.ck.page/posts/swyx-io-7-lessons-to-outlive-react)","frontmatter":{"source":"devto","devToUrl":"https://dev.to/swyx/how-to-optimize-for-change-a2n","devToReactions":42,"devToReadingTime":9,"devToPublishedAt":"2021-05-20T00:16:31.290Z","devToViewsCount":2230,"title":"How To Optimize for Change","published":true,"description":"Lessons from React, GraphQL, and Rich Hickey on how to design software that doesn't implode the first time requirements change.","tags":"Learnings, APIDesign, Tech","slug":"optimize-for-change","canonical_url":"https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/how-to-optimize-for-change-software-development/","cover_image":"https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/n1078j8opalnrzuu8p4u.png"},"title":"How To Optimize for Change","description":"Lessons from React, GraphQL, and Rich Hickey on how to design software that doesn't implode the first time requirements change. ","category":"note","tags":["learnings","apidesign","tech"],"image":"https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/n1078j8opalnrzuu8p4u.png","canonical":"https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/how-to-optimize-for-change-software-development/","slug":"optimize-for-change","date":"2021-05-20T00:16:31.290Z","readingTime":"9 minutes","ghMetadata":{"issueUrl":"https://github.com/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/282","commentsUrl":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/282/comments","title":"How To Optimize for Change","created_at":"2022-01-18T00:09:40Z","updated_at":"2022-06-18T17:47:43Z","reactions":{"url":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/282/reactions","total_count":0,"+1":0,"-1":0,"laugh":0,"hooray":0,"confused":0,"heart":0,"rocket":0,"eyes":0}}},{"type":"blog","content":"\n*Listen to [audio version](https://swyx.transistor.fm/episodes/why-creator-clones-fail)*\n\n## TL;DR\n\nIncumbents fail to clone creator startups because:\n\n- You need big creators to adopt them... \n- ...but your **algorithm punishes change**\n- You can't support it on all clients...\n- ...and you can't make a new client for it\n- Clones need original content...\n- ...but clones are expendable\n\n## Context\n\nThere's a lot of cloning going on in the creator economy. Twitter cloning Clubhouse, Facebook cloning Clubhouse, YouTube cloning Patreon, YouTube cloning TikTok, Instagram cloning SnapChat, on and on. Every time a new clone is announced, naysayers love proclaiming the imminent doom of the challenger.\n\nThey are sometimes right. But usually wrong. \n\nI'd love to explore why.\n\nI love collecting examples of **the Innovator's Dilemma**, which was [coined by Clayton Christensen](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Innovator%27s_Dilemma). The Innovator's Dilemma demonstrates how successful, outstanding companies can **do everything right**, and *still* lose their market leadership, or even fail as new unexpected competitors rise and take over the market. \n\nPart of this thesis is when the incumbent company despite better distribution, resources, people, whatever... is **constitutionally unable** to clone the small startup. \n\nThis is known as **counter positioning**, as popularized by Hamilton Helmer in [the 7 Powers](https://www.sachinrekhi.com/7-powers-hamilton-helmer). And you can hear it 30 minutes into this MKBHD podcast talking about the failure of YouTube Shorts:\n\n{% youtube Jl2ciIU4Qm4 %}\n\n## You need big creators to adopt them... but your algorithm punishes change\n\n> Marques: \"The TikTok algorithm is something special. It just surfaces things you want to see. It's really good. So they have that to compete again.\"\n> \n> Andrew: \"People might wonder why we made a podcast video channel and a podcast clips channel... the theory behind it is that if you have long form content and you have shorter clips, the watched overall watch time on the channel is going to be all over the place.\n>\n> Because if you have. 30 minutes of watch time on the long one and six minutes of watch time on the short one, it gets confused and has a hard time serving those videos. Yeah. So that's why we separate them.\n>\n> Now bring it back to YouTube Shorts. Imagine being a channel like us, that creates generally 10 to 15 minute videos. Now putting a bunch of 60 second clips on where the watch time is 60 seconds. How is that going to affect our 15 minute video?\"\n\nThe MKBHD channel still doesn't use the YouTube Premiere feature (despite it requiring no change in format). \n\nWhy? Because when they tested it, their premiered video \"literally had the worst rating out of our last 10 videos, with like half the views of number 9. It was pretty bad.\"\n\nIt turns out that Premiere views don't count towards overall video ranking. **YouTube screwed up** and creators found that out to their cost. \n\nYou only need to be algo-burned a couple times before you just decide to *never* deviate from the success formula.\n\nSo what if you make a separate channel?\n\n> Andrew: \"I would consider that a fail for YouTube's marketing in the sense that they're hoping big creators bring this to their main audience, but the minute you switch it to another audience, you're going to lose a giant portion of your subscribers\"\n\n## You need big creators to adopt them... but they have different formats\n\n\nAndrew: \"Not to mention that they're vertical, which we would never, ever, ever put on the channel.... [Most people] use YouTube on desktop, because it was originally built on desktop.\n\nIt became mobile. And even when you're using mobile, you're almost almost turning to landscape, whereas. Tick-tock works well because it's only supposed to be on a phone... YouTube is not quite that. It's becoming good at it, but it's still always has its heart and soul in the desktop version of it. And that's why this feature just feels a little. Off.\"\n\n## You can't support it on all clients... and you can't make a new client for it\n\nEstablished apps have a number of clients across web, mobile, and tablet, whereas startups can often just focus on one thing. Twitter Spaces, Twitter's Clubhouse clone, is still not available on iPad or web, despite being on iPhone and Android.\n\n> Andrew: \"I tried to look at Shorts on my desktop and I literally couldn't.\"\n>\n> Marques: \"Oh, you won't find that on the desktop, but you will find that on your phone, which is where they're competing with TikTok\"\n\nSo what if we just made a different standalone clone to tackle it head on?\n\n> Marques: \"I think if they wanted to feel less 'off', they would have made it a separate app, like a YouTube shorts app. So then you go vertical with just that work bad. Cause nobody's opening that app.\"\n\n## Clones need original content... but clones are expendable\n\nThis is particularly true when dealing with any significant format change - going from async to live, long from to short form, or landscape to portrait. And it's likely that startups break through *because* they figured out how to make a new format work.\n\n> MKBHD: \"YouTube knows that it needs YouTube shorts creators instead of just people uploading to Tik Tok, and then copying that file and also putting it on shorts.\"\n>\n> Andrew: \"That's literally all Reels is. All of Reels has the TikTok watermark and the name on it. People are just using Reels to find more people to go follow on TikTok.\"\n\nSo you want to encourage creators to invest in your clone in order to make it successful... but what if you yourself don't have unlimited patience or budget to invest in it?\n\nThis may be a [particuarly Google](https://killedbygoogle.com/) problem, but the truth is that no clone at any incumbent is strategically important. People aren't going to fight tooth and nail for survival because their \"survival\" is *never* really at risk.\n\nWhatever the reason — once you have a perception that you *could* shut down the clone, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.\n\nMKBHD: \n\n> \"The hesitation by a lot of YouTubers to dive into Shorts is really interesting. I think a lot of the longer-term creators like me have a bit of an aversion to YouTube releasing new untested unproven features because... they could possibly get killed in six months and you will have just poured a bunch of resources and pivoted your channel down a path that ends up being a dead end.\"","frontmatter":{"source":"devto","devToUrl":"https://dev.to/swyx/why-creator-clones-fail-5c90","devToReactions":11,"devToReadingTime":5,"devToPublishedAt":"2021-05-18T02:39:42.867Z","devToViewsCount":316,"title":"Why Creator Clones Fail","published":true,"description":"The Innovator's Dilemma according to MKBHD, applied to YouTube's attempt to clone TikTok","tags":"Strategy, Creators, YouTube","slug":"clones-fail","canonical_url":"https://www.swyx.io/clones-fail"},"title":"Why Creator Clones Fail","description":"The Innovator's Dilemma according to MKBHD, applied to YouTube's attempt to clone TikTok ","category":"note","tags":["strategy","creators","youtube"],"canonical":"https://www.swyx.io/clones-fail","slug":"clones-fail","date":"2021-05-18T02:39:42.867Z","readingTime":"5 minutes","ghMetadata":{"issueUrl":"https://github.com/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/283","commentsUrl":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/283/comments","title":"Why Creator Clones Fail","created_at":"2022-01-18T00:09:42Z","updated_at":"2022-06-18T17:47:43Z","reactions":{"url":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/283/reactions","total_count":0,"+1":0,"-1":0,"laugh":0,"hooray":0,"confused":0,"heart":0,"rocket":0,"eyes":0}}},{"type":"blog","content":"\n[Link to PDF version](https://www.temporal.io/case-studies/Revolutionizing_Audio_with_Descript_and_Temporal.pdf)\n\n_This case study is based on an interview with Nicolas Gere-lamaysouette, engineer on Descript's audio transcription service. And - yes - we used Descript to transcribe the Descript interview!_\n\n## Problem\n\nDescript offers a revolutionary editing experience enabling users to modify spoken language in audio and video as if it’s written in a Google Doc. The foundation of Descript is transcription, which is achieved using a blend of proprietary AI algorithms. Synthetically generating a speaker's voice, deleting filler words and producing shareable assets are all made possible by Descript's proprietary transcription process.\n\nNo transcription, no Descript. Therefore, this service needs to be fast and reliable. Regardless of whether you are transcribing a 5 minute clip or a 3 hour Clubhouse conversation.\n\nWhen a user hits “transcribe”, Descript fires off an asynchronous, multistage and parallelized process that involves re-encoding audio, chunk-splitting, external API calls, merging results that may potentially arrive out of order, and verifying their alignment.\n\nUntil recently, this complex multistage task was handled via a patchwork of handwritten scripts and queues built with Node.js, RabbitMQ, and PostgreSQL. Since application state was distributed across various queues and databases, it was hard to test end to end logic. This quickly resulted in Descript encountering production issues that were nearly impossible to debug. There were lots of production incidents, and when they happened it was extremely hard to understand which part of the pipeline was stuck.\n\n> \"We had one incident every week just on the transcription workflow because it was too complicated to maintain... You can test each worker separately, but it was impossible to test the logic for every new feature end to end, so **we were afraid of doing any changes in that code path**.\"\n\n\n## To code or not to code\n\nThis homegrown system was sufficient to get going, but as Descript scaled up, they quickly realized that they wanted an orchestration engine built for this job. The most important features they needed were **testing, debugging, monitoring, and scalability**.\n\nThe team evaluated a number of workflow orchestration tools, including [Argo Workflows](https://argoproj.github.io/projects/argo/). However they soon realized that they strongly preferred the \"Workflow-as-Code\" approach of Temporal. Descript wanted to write, test, deploy and version control workflows with the exact same languages and tools used in the rest of their stack. This ability to model complex dependencies and error handling as idiomatic Go code was a better fit than simple JSON/YAML DSL's, particularly for local debugging and production monitoring. They also had scalability and latency concerns with Argo, because it was designed for CI/CD workloads so that each activity requires starting up a Kubernetes pod. Descript's data pipeline needs would involve spinning up thousands of pods, making that a nonstarter.\n\n> \"It was a game changing revelation - **Temporal gave us the ability to test our workflows with unit tests**, basically just writing code instead of writing JSON or YAML, which are completely untestable.\"\n\n## Migrating to Temporal\n\nThe migration process was relatively simple. Transcription is a self contained service that doesn't rely on Descript's core databases. So the process was to create a new workflow and begin progressively migrating workloads over using feature flags. The end results of the pipeline were checked via a single table, making it easy to effectively port over by effectively switching from handwritten queues to Temporal task queues.\n\nEven though the migration was prototyped with a self hosted cluster of Temporal (using our [Kubernetes helm chart](https://github.com/temporalio/helm-charts)), they decided to sign up for Temporal Cloud as an early design partner. As a small startup, they didn't want to manage Temporal themselves.\n\"We migrated progressively using feature flags, and verified performance as we went, but we had confidence in the Temporal team so we didn't stress about load testing.\"\n\n## Looking Back\n\nTemporal has helped Descript solve fundamental reliability issues with its core transcription loop. The frequency of production incidents has declined from once-a-week to virtually zero. Nicolas attributes this success to the ability to test everything with unit tests as well as normal end-to-end testing on a staging environment.\n\nTesting is important, but Temporal opened up more opportunities since migration:\n\n- **Orchestration of multiple Workflows**: you can flexibly **reuse a workflow** once it is written, allowing the transcription workflow to be easily composed with other APIs. This helped Descript develop a major transcription correction feature much more quickly than with the previous architecture.\n- **Specialized Compute for Machine Learning**: Some parts of the transcription process use Python components that generate CUDA instructions - these must be run on workers with GPUs, and then reliably merged back into a general data processing workflow. Temporal's ability to route activities to multiple [Task Queues](https://docs.temporal.io/docs/concepts/task-queues/) made this straightforward.\n- **Session Routing for Stateful Execution**: You can finetune the execution of sequential activities on the same worker, using [Go SDK Sessions](https://docs.temporal.io/docs/go/sessions/), which Descript will need (but doesn't yet use).\n\nAn unexpected advantage that Descript is enjoying is better observability of workflows, which **helps improve customer service** even when Descript is not at fault.\n\n> \"When a customer reports an issue, it's very easy for us to just put the Workflow ID into the Temporal Web UI to see what is going on... I can see a summary of workflow status and access the full event history for audit needs. \"\n\n\n## What's Next?\n\nNow that Descript has had production experience running with Temporal Cloud, more opportunities are presenting themselves in a diverse array of use cases, including:\n\n- billing and subscription management\n- other CPU intensive backend workloads\n- the ([fan favorite](https://twitter.com/swyx/status/1370415731372826628)) Identify Speaker feature\n\nOther teams at Descript are waiting for our NodeJS client to explore migrating other forms of workloads.\n\n> \"Everyone in the company can see more and more use cases where Temporal would be useful.\"\n\n\n## Working with Temporal\n\n\nDescript has found Temporal’s Slack very helpful. It can be difficult to adopt a core infrastructure technology like Temporal without help from the community and Temporal's core developers. It has also helped make the case internally to see other well regarded engineering teams ask similar questions and adopt alongside Descript.\n\n> \"The Temporal Community is great, the company is so helpful! Temporal is a complex piece of software and there are a lot of corner cases, so it is nice that the people who create Temporal are easy to reach to help us with our issues.\"\n","frontmatter":{"source":"devto","devToUrl":"https://dev.to/temporalio/revolutionizing-audio-with-descript-and-temporal-3dkp","devToReactions":5,"devToReadingTime":5,"devToPublishedAt":"2021-05-17T18:36:38.545Z","devToViewsCount":94,"title":"Revolutionizing Audio with Descript and Temporal","published":true,"description":"A case study I published for my work at Temporal","tags":"Temporal, golang, podcasts, machinelearning","slug":"temporal-descript-case-study","canonical_url":"https://docs.temporal.io/blog/descript-case-study","cover_image":"https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/116481376-a1adc900-a8b5-11eb-8ae6-326a0fe90b1c.png","disclosure":"This is a piece I published at Temporal - https://docs.temporal.io/blog/descript-case-study"},"title":"Revolutionizing Audio with Descript and Temporal","description":"A case study I published for my work at Temporal ","category":"note","tags":["temporal","golang","podcasts","machinelearning"],"image":"https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/116481376-a1adc900-a8b5-11eb-8ae6-326a0fe90b1c.png","canonical":"https://docs.temporal.io/blog/descript-case-study","slug":"temporal-descript-case-study","date":"2021-05-17T18:36:38.545Z","readingTime":"5 minutes","ghMetadata":{"issueUrl":"https://github.com/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/284","commentsUrl":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/284/comments","title":"Revolutionizing Audio with Descript and Temporal","created_at":"2022-01-18T00:09:44Z","updated_at":"2022-06-18T17:47:43Z","reactions":{"url":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/284/reactions","total_count":0,"+1":0,"-1":0,"laugh":0,"hooray":0,"confused":0,"heart":0,"rocket":0,"eyes":0}}},{"type":"blog","content":"\nToday I want to talk about a meme. This meme takes many forms, but it's latest iteration is the Midwit meme:\n\n![Alt Text](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/q52ca85320lzxly8xli0.png)\n\nYou could abstractly view this as a clever blend of the [Haha Go Brrr](https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/money-printer-go-brrr) meme with [Horseshoe theory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horseshoe_theory), but that'd be an incredibly \"100 IQ\" way to overanalyze a meme. At the end of the day, it is just an incredibly flexible meme that has somehow outgrown its edgy, racist roots to be applied everywhere from finance to linguistics to biology.\n\nIt can be distilled to the simple observation that total beginners and total experts can often share a love of simplicity, in a way that absolutely *infuriates* the [book smart](https://twitter.com/swyx/status/1388584008494239750) intermediates.\n\nYou feel it when a self described \"15 IQ\" electrician [makes $3.4 million](https://twitter.com/AK_Bull_Worm/status/1391957751933267969) on knockoff dog themed cryptocurrency, in perfect sympatico with the [150 IQ Elon Musk](https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1391523807148527620).\n\nI felt it when Jan Hatzius, the longtime Chief Economist at Goldman Sachs, talks up his \"[above-consensus GDP growth projections](https://www.goldmansachs.com/insights/podcasts/episodes/01-08-2021-jan-hatzius.html)\" like it means a damn, whereas degenerate gamblers and PhD quants alike just remind each other to \"buy low, sell high\".\n\nI get the same feeling when senior software engineers stop at \"[it depends](https://twitter.com/swyx/status/1202202923385536513?s=20)\" and pat themselves on the back for a job well done. A generation earlier you could find the same middle-of-the-curve engineers worshipping \"Uncle Bob\" (the jury is out on the \"IQ\" of the median remnant Clean Coder). Now the same midwit engineers (of which I am one) wage toxic tribal wars over frameworks, while Pieter Levels [makes >$1m a year with a single PHP file](https://twitter.com/levelsio/status/1381709793769979906) and [just learned git](https://twitter.com/levelsio/status/1327451757975375874).\n\nYou could keep going:\n\n- Piet Mondrian's journey from learning to draw in primary school to imitating [the impressionist masters at age 27](https://www.piet-mondrian.org/view-of-winterswijk-1899.jsp) to the famous [Mondrian squares at age 58](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Piet_Mondriaan,_1930_-_Mondrian_Composition_II_in_Red,_Blue,_and_Yellow.jpg) he could have drawn as a primary schooler\n- The Silicon Valley nerds drinking Soylent and wearing $400 health rings, compared to total meatheads and ultrafit athletes who simply \"Eat Less Move More\"\n- The Fortune Cookie Twitter accounts that can tweet shit like \"[Pain is a fact. Suffering is a choice](https://twitter.com/naval/status/1389064024378122241).\" and get 100x the engagement of tryhard social media managers who spend hours strategizing over the biweekly tweetstorm with coerced retweets from coworkers.\n\n![Alt Text](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/qxsvr40em2vy284f9kuq.jpg)\n\nAfter you see enough of these, you have to wonder:\n\nCan we just skip the complexity? From simple on this side of the curve, straight to simple on the other side? Bypass the complex phase like an [Einstein-Rosen bridge](https://phys.org/news/2015-12-wormholes.html)? Aren't they just the same thing?\n\nMy answer, after a lot of admittedly 100 IQ introspection, is: No. \n\nYou don’t get to [80/20 hack](https://www.swyx.io/8020/) your way to enlightenment by imitating it.\n\nYou've probably heard this story before: \n\n> - A businessman finds a fisherman, who is living an idyllic, peaceful life by the sea. \n> - He laughs and tells the fisherman how to get rich instead. \n> - The fisherman asks him what he will do after he gets rich. \n> - He replies that he would retire to an idyllic, peaceful life by the sea.\n\nThere's supposed to be a deep life lesson in there, but it's always felt insincere to me. \n\nTo me it is better to have reached the heights of a career, or suffered an epic defeat, even if I do end up in the same place as everyone else in the end.\n\nTo me simplicity is made more beautiful when understood through a long personal struggle with complexity. When I can dance with it, having turned a mighty nemesis into an old friend, and teach others to do the same.\n\nBetter to have loved *and* lost, than never to have loved at all.\n\nAfter all, we share the same destination. The ultimate horseshoe is biblical in nature: dust shall inevitably return to dust. What is life, then, but our unique, 100 IQ, wandering journey through vicissitudes? \n\n> *“I would not give a fig for the simplicity this side of complexity, but I would give my life for the simplicity on the other side of complexity.” - Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.*\n\n> Thanks to [David Golden](http://xdg.me/) for reviewing an early draft of this — his take: \n>\n> - \"My (possibly mid-curve) view is that left-curve people love simplicity, but their success with simplicity is luck driven, which is infuriating, driving mid-curve people to try to systematize away from luck.\n> - Whereas right curve have either learned to succeed with simplicity without luck, or have learned that luck is what matters so don't overcomplicate. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯\n> - And thus your point about the journey is that you can't get to systematic success with simplicity without the mid-curve experience.\"","frontmatter":{"source":"devto","devToUrl":"https://dev.to/swyx/don-t-rush-to-simplicity-on-the-other-side-of-complexity-105n","devToReactions":31,"devToReadingTime":4,"devToPublishedAt":"2021-05-15T13:23:31.682Z","devToViewsCount":874,"title":"Don't Rush to Simplicity","published":true,"description":"Expertise in a subject often goes in a bell curve of simple → complex → simple. Can we skip the complexity?","tags":"Reflections, Complexity, Memes","slug":"simplicity-rush","canonical_url":"https://www.swyx.io/simplicity-rush","cover_image":"https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/q52ca85320lzxly8xli0.png"},"title":"Don't Rush to Simplicity","description":"Expertise in a subject often goes in a bell curve of simple → complex → simple. Can we skip the complexity? ","category":"note","tags":["reflections","complexity","memes"],"image":"https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/q52ca85320lzxly8xli0.png","canonical":"https://www.swyx.io/simplicity-rush","slug":"simplicity-rush","date":"2021-05-15T13:23:31.682Z","readingTime":"4 minutes","ghMetadata":{"issueUrl":"https://github.com/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/285","commentsUrl":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/285/comments","title":"Don't Rush to Simplicity","created_at":"2022-01-18T00:09:46Z","updated_at":"2022-05-28T13:54:55Z","reactions":{"url":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/285/reactions","total_count":0,"+1":0,"-1":0,"laugh":0,"hooray":0,"confused":0,"heart":0,"rocket":0,"eyes":0}}},{"type":"blog","content":"\nA while ago, Paul Graham [made](https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1314948607662010374) a big call:\n\n> \"I'm going to risk calling it. The feeling of deja vu is too strong. Stripe is the next Google.\"\n\nAt the time, Stripe had last raised at a [$36 billion valuation](https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/16/stripe-raises-600-million-funding-round-at-36-billion-valuation.html) - a year later, it's now valued at [$95 billion](https://www.cnbc.com/2021/03/14/stripe-valued-at-95-billion-in-600-million-funding-round.html). \n\nThis would be a lifetime peak valuation for most exited startups (Uber changed transportation and Airbnb changed hotels, and both are currently worth $80b), so what Paul was really doing here is making an active prediction that the ceiling for Stripe is *much higher*. Google is valued at $1500 billion at time of writing — and Paul thinks they will \"probably\" be bigger (\"[There is more money in money than search](https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1314951673203359756?s=20)\").\n\nIt isn't a given by any means (though Paul has had a [decent streak in calls](https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1391865950769659907) lately). Stripe does face competition in established payment processors, as well as Adyen, though momentum [appears weak](https://twitter.com/GergelyOrosz/status/1352188920025522177). You could handicap its odds of being \"the next Google\" at, say, a fairly conservative 50%.\n\nThat means **the expected return of betting on Stripe for the next decade is ~10x** (it's more like 8x, but who's counting). You don't get this fat a pitch in this league.\n\nSo given that you have a [definite optimist](https://www.anthonyjcampbell.com/blog/optimism) approach to the future, what do you do with this information?\n\nI think about this question a lot. The simple first order answer, of course, is to join Stripe. Most engineers will be millionaires 10x-ing on option grants.\n\nBut that may not even be the best use of time for you. Stripe aims to be a [platform of platforms](https://stratechery.com/2020/stripe-platform-of-platforms/). The [Mullenweg-Gates Line](https://twitter.com/swyx/status/1360729115372920832) notes that effective platforms capture only about 5% of the total value they create. There's approximately $14 trillion ((EV of 800b - Current Valuation 100b)/5%) in value of platform to be built atop Stripe.\n\nStripe currently lists 10 products on its home page, from the classic Payments and Billing to the newer Atlas and Climate. The vast majority of developers have only a narrow view of Stripe's world. I would explore ways to explore and exploit the capabilities opened up by Stripe's newer products — in particular the recently launched [Capital](https://stripe.com/capital) and [Treasury](https://stripe.com/treasury) services.\n\nYou could also become a domain expert in *optimizing for Stripe*. Platforms tend to reward this behavior greatly. There is no Stripe podcast. No Stripe newsletter. No \"Stripe Enterprise Optimization\" cottage industry. The room for the \"[Danny Sullivan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danny_Sullivan_(technologist)) of Stripe\" exists.\n\nThere's also the challenger status - figure out what Stripe is philosophically prevented from doing, and [counter-position](https://jppandith.substack.com/p/33-counter-positioning-3rd-of-the) in that exact thing. [DuckDuckGo is growing >50% a year](https://duckduckgo.com/traffic) being the credible anti-Google. The obvious angle here is that Stripe is very traditional-economy oriented (with [attendant frustrations](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24291790)): what is the decentralized, permissionless, equivalent of Stripe? The reason I don't love this as much is it feels like too much of a \"bank shot\", but surely there's a few billion of value in here for the patient and ideologically committed.\n\nWhat else?","frontmatter":{"source":"devto","devToUrl":"https://dev.to/swyx/what-if-stripe-was-the-next-google-g9d","devToReactions":20,"devToReadingTime":3,"devToPublishedAt":"2021-05-14T14:54:25.087Z","devToViewsCount":781,"title":"What if Stripe is the next Google?","published":true,"description":"Working out a thought exercise by Paul Graham.","tags":"Reflections","slug":"stripe-next-google","canonical_url":"https://www.swyx.io/stripe-next-google","disclosure":"These are just off the cuff thoughts; I may return to flesh these out over a period of years."},"title":"What if Stripe is the next Google?","description":"Working out a thought exercise by Paul Graham. ","category":"note","tags":["reflections"],"canonical":"https://www.swyx.io/stripe-next-google","slug":"stripe-next-google","date":"2021-05-14T14:54:25.087Z","readingTime":"3 minutes","ghMetadata":{"issueUrl":"https://github.com/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/286","commentsUrl":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/286/comments","title":"What if Stripe is the next Google?","created_at":"2022-01-18T00:09:48Z","updated_at":"2022-06-18T17:47:44Z","reactions":{"url":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/286/reactions","total_count":0,"+1":0,"-1":0,"laugh":0,"hooray":0,"confused":0,"heart":0,"rocket":0,"eyes":0}}},{"title":"How to Market Yourself (without Being a Celebrity)","slug":"market-yourself-pod","tags":["LIP"],"venues":"DataTalksClub","date":"2021-05-14T00:00:00.000Z","url":"https://datatalks.club/podcast/s03e07-market-yourself.html","description":"Discussing personal branding and developer marketing with LearnInPublic.","category":"podcast"},{"title":"How to Market Yourself (without Being a Celebrity)","slug":"market-yourself","categories":["Marketing"],"description":"Discussing personal branding and developer marketing with LearnInPublic.","instances":[{"venue":"DataTalksClub","date":"2021-05-14","tweet":"https://twitter.com/Al_Grigor/status/1393219745088946178?s=20","url":"https://datatalks.club/podcast/s03e07-market-yourself.html","video":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkBCPqWKCL8"},{"venue":"ReactEurope","date":"2020-04-20","url":"https://portal.gitnation.org/contents/shawn-swyx-wangs-career-tips-knowing-how-to-market-yourself-authentically-is-not-scammy","video":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bcca0VCJe9Q&list=PLCC436JpVnK31LZG2cNINhlEQ1KTm39BR&index=15"}],"category":"talk","date":"2021-05-14T00:00:00.000Z"},{"title":"E2E Encryption Keyservers with Ashoat Tevosyan","slug":"comm-with-ashoat","categories":["Tech"],"description":"A recording of one of the most interesting angel investing conversations I've had this year.","instances":[{"venue":"Swyx YouTube","date":"2021-05-09","video":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lWCOruAWpW4"}],"category":"talk","date":"2021-05-09T00:00:00.000Z"},{"type":"blog","content":"\nThe [Pareto Principle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_principle) is making you lazy.\n\nLet me be more precise: The [Pareto distribution](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_distribution) is a useful model of power law effects in real life. But people are using it poorly, primarily as an *excuse* to be lazy.\n\nThis thought was triggered by [Shaan Puri's newsletter](https://www.shaanpuri.com/) featuring [Steph Smith](https://stephsmith.io/) this week (both of whom I greatly respect, this is a jumping off point, not a dunk):\n\n{% twitter 1386071726279127041 %}\n\nYou hear 80/20 rules [a lot](https://twitter.com/search?q=80%2F20%20filter%3Afollows&src=typed_query) in [premium mediocre](https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2017/08/17/the-premium-mediocre-life-of-maya-millennial/) circles. If you want to signal that you are smarter than the average 80/20 bear, you might refer to the \"[high order bit](https://twitter.com/search?q=%22high%20order%20bit%22&src=typed_query)\" instead. Same shit, different status signal.\n\nThe spirit of the idea is sound. It's great for 280 character tweets and 5 minute soundbites. But idk if it's good for people who finish things. At best, I don't think it's sufficient for execution. At worst, it's just intellectually dishonest.\n\nLook at reactions like [this](https://twitter.com/jasonleowsg/status/1386209784626434050?s=20): \n\n> \"Love this [80/20] framing! Great way to remove the fluff and get to the core\".\n\nI'm sorry but the remaining 80% is not \"the fluff\":\n\n- People forget that *the devil is in the details*. The first 20% everyone knows to say on Twitter. The remaining 80% is the ugly, nasty, hacky, unglamorous shit nobody talks about unless you've got time to sweat the details (*unless you've already moved on to the next 80/20?*). \n - The more popular the 80/20 meme becomes, the less competition you will have as someone who knows how to take things to the finish line.\n- People forget that causal attribution is subject to [narrative fallacy](https://fs.blog/2016/04/narrative-fallacy/). Ask a successful person what their 80/20 was and they'll confidently tell you in hindsight. The truth is at the time they had 4 other bets also going on that just didn't work out. \n - The popular saying in medical school is that \"[50% of what you learn will be wrong — we just don't know which 50%](https://blogs.bmj.com/pmj/2014/05/30/50-of-what-you-are-taught-is-wrong/)\". And that is in goddamn *medical science* with double blind randomized clinical trials. We don't have 1% of that rigor in popular anecdata which you base your 80/20 inferences on.\n- People forget that distributions aren't always Pareto. When you assert that \"an 80/20\" exists, you are asserting useful [dimensionality reduction](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dimensionality_reduction). Sometimes complex, or even linear, things just do not have an \"80/20\". \n - The [FAA's Parachute Rigger Handbook](https://www.faa.gov/regulations_policies/handbooks_manuals/aviation/media/prh_change1.pdf) has 350 pages of densely packed advice. Please **do not try to 80/20 your parachute packing**.\n\nI'm reminded of that classic movie Click, where Adam Sandler finds a magic remote that lets him \"80/20 his life\":\n\n{% youtube 5fjha1FnlBU %}\n\nDon't spend your life spraying 20% effort all over the place, hoping for 80% results, only to look back and wonder why you never hit 100% on anything.\n\n> Edit: The always excellent David Golden wrote a [wonderful response to this piece](https://xdg.me/80-20/) highlighting the cases where 80/20 is actually very justified, and I agree!\n\n> This topic is loosely related to Epistemology, which I've [written about briefly](https://www.swyx.io/first-principles-approach/#epistemology).","frontmatter":{"source":"devto","devToUrl":"https://dev.to/swyx/80-20-is-the-new-half-ass-3kg","devToReactions":20,"devToReadingTime":3,"devToPublishedAt":"2021-04-28T19:00:42.842Z","devToViewsCount":643,"title":"80/20 is the new Half-Ass","published":true,"description":"Don't spend your life spraying 20% effort all over the place, hoping for 80% results, only to look back and wonder why you never hit 100% on anything.","tags":"Reflections, Advice","slug":8020,"canonical_url":"https://www.swyx.io/8020","cover_image":"https://media.tenor.com/images/57667e0083dca419064604482f597126/tenor.png","disclosure":"This is just a quick rant. I'm mainly trying to remind people of the value of execution and the small details, not dunking on anyone in particular."},"title":"80/20 is the new Half-Ass","description":"Don't spend your life spraying 20% effort all over the place, hoping for 80% results, only to look back and wonder why you never hit 100% on anything. ","category":"note","tags":["reflections","advice"],"image":"https://media.tenor.com/images/57667e0083dca419064604482f597126/tenor.png","canonical":"https://www.swyx.io/8020","slug":"8020","date":"2021-04-28T19:00:42.842Z","readingTime":"3 minutes","ghMetadata":{"issueUrl":"https://github.com/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/287","commentsUrl":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/287/comments","title":"80/20 is the new Half-Ass","created_at":"2022-01-18T00:09:50Z","updated_at":"2022-06-18T17:47:44Z","reactions":{"url":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/287/reactions","total_count":0,"+1":0,"-1":0,"laugh":0,"hooray":0,"confused":0,"heart":0,"rocket":0,"eyes":0}}},{"type":"blog","content":"\r\nThis is a direct answer to [this SvelteKit issue](https://github.com/sveltejs/kit/issues/942). I see a lot of JS developers struggle with using Netlify Forms, so I want to help.\r\n\r\n## 9 Min Video Walkthru\r\n\r\nThis is the video version of the instructions below.\r\n\r\n{% youtube cj3f2Xth5Mk %}\r\n\r\n## Context\r\n\r\nNetlify Forms were designed primarily for traditional static site generators like Hugo and Jekyll, using HTML crawling to initialize forms. The idea is like this:\r\n\r\n- Your static site is a folder of `.html` files\r\n- Netlify crawls all of them looking for `

` tags (or ``, because some projects like Create React App or Gatsby helpfully delete unrecognized attributes for you, what fun)\r\n- For each detected tag, it sets up a dedicated \"form\" which is pretty much an append-only schemaless document store of all submissions.\r\n- These are received via a special endpoint set up at the domain root (`/`) looking for `POST` requests with `\"Content-Type\": \"application/x-www-form-urlencoded\"` (or with `multipart` for file uploads)\r\n- **Crucially: If no forms are detected, this feature doesn't work**.\r\n\r\nMany JS framework users struggle to use them because:\r\n\r\n- the form needs to exist in HTML at build time but JS frameworks render them at runtime. \r\n- SvelteKit introduces another wrinkle in that you have to decide whether to prerender the form. \r\n- JS framework users also often want to use AJAX to offer a better UX. So again you have to do things slightly differently than with pure HTML forms. \r\n\r\n### Optional Features You May Want\r\n\r\nWhat I cover here is just the simplest solution to help people solve the immediate pain point. You can also:\r\n\r\n- leave your \"helper form\" hidden at build time and render the real form clientside\r\n- upload files with Netlify Forms (underrated)\r\n- do progressive enhancement of behavior from HTML to JS. \r\n- For spam prevention, there is support for [honeypot and recaptcha](https://docs.netlify.com/forms/spam-filters/). See [demo apps](https://github.com/sw-yx/gatsby-netlify-form-example-v2) for setup instructions.\r\n- You can also [trigger Netlify functions](https://docs.netlify.com/functions/trigger-on-events/) on successful submissions to do arbitrary logic (like notify you on Slack or create an account)\r\n\r\nI'll come back and add that to this blogpost if I ever get the time. Pls [yell at me](https://twitter.com/swyx/status/1386447885936390147) to indicate interest or i wont do it.\r\n\r\n## SvelteKit Setup Instructions\r\n\r\n### Project Init\r\n\r\nGo through the standard SvelteKit setup:\r\n\r\n```bash\r\nnpm init svelte@next myapp \r\ncd myapp\r\nnpm i\r\n```\r\n\r\nYou can set up GitHub/Netlify either thru CLI or UI - I found some [bugs](https://github.com/netlify/cli/issues/2229) with Netlify CLI when I tried this but it might be fixed by the time you read this:\r\n\r\n```bash\r\n# optional: set up git/github/netlify deploy via CLI\r\ngit init && git add . && git commit -m \"hi\"\r\ngh repo create # have the github cli installed\r\nntl init # netlify cli\r\n```\r\n\r\nor you can just use the UIs for each service\r\n\r\n### Add SvelteKit Netlify Adapter\r\n\r\n```bash\r\nnpm i -D @sveltejs/adapter-netlify@next \r\n```\r\n\r\nthen add it to `svelte.config.cjs`:\r\n\r\n```js\r\nconst adapter = require('@sveltejs/adapter-netlify');\r\nmodule.exports = {\r\n\tkit: {\r\n\t\tadapter: adapter(), // currently the adapter does not take any options\r\n\t\ttarget: '#svelte',\r\n\t\tprerender: {\r\n\t\t\tcrawl: true,\r\n\t\t\tenabled: true,\r\n\t\t\tforce: true,\r\n\t\t\tpages: ['*'],\r\n\t\t},\r\n\t}\r\n};\r\n```\r\n\r\nthen add a `netlify.toml` file at project root:\r\n\r\n```\r\n[build]\r\n command = \"npm run build\"\r\n publish = \"build/\"\r\n functions = \"functions/\"\r\n```\r\n\r\nYou can see these instructions in [my netlify adapter docs](https://github.com/sveltejs/kit/pull/1217).\r\n\r\n### Add the Prerendered Form\r\n\r\nHead to `/src/routes/index.svelte` and add the form accordingly.\r\n\r\n```html\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Welcome to SvelteKit

\r\n

Visit kit.svelte.dev to read the documentation

\r\n\r\n\r\n \r\n \r\n

\r\n Your Name: \r\n

\r\n

\r\n Your Email: \r\n

\r\n

\r\n Message: </label>\r\n </p>\r\n <p>\r\n <button type=\"submit\">Send</button>\r\n </p>\r\n</form>\r\n```\r\n\r\n### Deploy\r\n\r\nNow you should be able to push to GitHub and have it build and render the form successfully.\r\n\r\nExamples:\r\n\r\n- https://github.com/sw-yx/sveltekitnetlifyforms\r\n- https://sveltekitnetlifyforms.netlify.app/\r\n\r\n## Screenshots\r\n\r\n![image](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/116011598-83975d00-a658-11eb-8f1e-9140698fd22c.png)\r\n\r\n\r\n![image](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/116011546-27343d80-a658-11eb-9a3e-862cbe61ea08.png)\r\n\r\n\r\n![image](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/116011560-3dda9480-a658-11eb-8954-fd8cf7160ae2.png)\r\n\r\n\r\n![image](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/116011573-564aaf00-a658-11eb-8f94-56c5ec824014.png)\r\n\r\n\r\n## Graveyard: AJAX Example\r\n\r\n> Warning: this is untested code - I ran out of time but dumping it here anyway in case it helps someone\r\n\r\nIf you want an AJAX experience for your form here is some untested code I was working on that may help you get going:\r\n\r\n```html\r\n<script context=\"module\">\r\n export const prerender = true;\r\n</script>\r\n\r\n<script>\r\n let isSubmitting = false;\r\n\r\n const handleSubmit = (e) => {\r\n let myForm = document.getElementById(\"test\");\r\n let formData = new FormData(myForm);\r\n isSubmitting = true;\r\n return fetch(\"/\", {\r\n method: \"POST\",\r\n headers: { \"Content-Type\": \"application/x-www-form-urlencoded\" },\r\n body: new URLSearchParams(formData).toString(),\r\n })\r\n .then(() => {\r\n console.log(\"Form successfully submitted\");\r\n isSubmitting = false;\r\n myForm.reset();\r\n })\r\n .catch((error) => {\r\n alert(error);\r\n isSubmitting = false;\r\n });\r\n };\r\n</script>\r\n\r\n<h1>Welcome to SvelteKit</h1>\r\n<p>\r\n Visit <a href=\"https://kit.svelte.dev\">kit.svelte.dev</a> to read the documentation\r\n</p>\r\n\r\n<form\r\n id=\"test\"\r\n name=\"test\"\r\n on:submit|preventDefault={handleSubmit}\r\n netlify\r\n netlify-honeypot=\"bot-field\"\r\n>\r\n <input type=\"hidden\" name=\"form-name\" value=\"test\" />\r\n <input type=\"text\" name=\"bot-field\" style=\"opacity: 0\" />\r\n <p>\r\n <label>Your Name: <input type=\"text\" name=\"name\" /></label>\r\n </p>\r\n <p>\r\n <label>Your Email: <input type=\"email\" name=\"email\" /></label>\r\n </p>\r\n <p>\r\n <label>Message: <textarea name=\"message\" /></label>\r\n </p>\r\n <p>\r\n {#if isSubmitting}\r\n <div>Submitting</div>\r\n {:else}\r\n <button type=\"submit\">Send</button>\r\n {/if}\r\n </p>\r\n</form>\r\n```\r\n","frontmatter":{"source":"devto","devToUrl":"https://dev.to/swyx/how-to-use-sveltekit-with-netlify-forms-5gmj","devToReactions":35,"devToReadingTime":4,"devToPublishedAt":"2021-04-25T22:28:24.272Z","devToViewsCount":1362,"title":"How to use SvelteKit with Netlify Forms","published":true,"description":"a simple tutorial","category":"tutorial","tags":"Svelte, Netlify","slug":"sveltekit-netlify-forms","cover_image":"https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/116011560-3dda9480-a658-11eb-8954-fd8cf7160ae2.png","canonical_url":"https://www.swyx.io/sveltekit-netlify-forms"},"title":"How to use SvelteKit with Netlify Forms","description":"a simple tutorial ","category":"tutorial","tags":["svelte","netlify"],"image":"https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/116011560-3dda9480-a658-11eb-8954-fd8cf7160ae2.png","canonical":"https://www.swyx.io/sveltekit-netlify-forms","slug":"sveltekit-netlify-forms","date":"2021-04-25T22:28:24.272Z","readingTime":"5 minutes","ghMetadata":{"issueUrl":"https://github.com/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/288","commentsUrl":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/288/comments","title":"How to use SvelteKit with Netlify Forms","created_at":"2022-01-18T00:09:51Z","updated_at":"2022-09-27T23:04:56Z","reactions":{"url":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/288/reactions","total_count":6,"+1":1,"-1":0,"laugh":0,"hooray":2,"confused":0,"heart":3,"rocket":0,"eyes":0}}},{"type":"blog","content":"\r\n\r\nI turn 35 today. Here are 35 principles I have accumulated and try to live by (you can [listen to the narrated version here](https://swyx.transistor.fm/episodes/35-principles-for-35-years)):\r\n\r\n1. **Life is too Short for Short Term Games**. We only have so many years for long term games to compound. \r\n \r\n{% twitter 1281424520100737025 %}\r\n\r\n2. **Writing is Stupendously High Leverage.** \r\n - It helps to organize my thoughts and learning (aka [Building My Second Brain](https://twitter.com/swyx/status/1245281982797373441?lang=en)). I win even if nobody reads me.\r\n - It enables me to share great ideas even while I sleep (as a [Friendcatcher](https://twitter.com/swyx/status/1224538408132993026?lang=en)). I am constantly shocked at the caliber of people that read my work and DM me their thoughts. There is absolutely no other way I would be on their radar.\r\n - Blogging helped me [sell $4k worth of an empty PDF](https://www.swyx.io/coding-career-launch/) on the day I decided to write my book because people trusted me. \r\n - It's led to multiple job opportunities from great companies (e.g. [Netlify](https://www.swyx.io/farewell-netlify/), [AWS](https://www.swyx.io/hello-aws/), [Temporal](https://gist.github.com/sw-yx/ff8a4f6757286444fa20b43f6b98b205#reconstituting-the-monolith)) that I would have otherwise struggled to be hired at.\r\n3. **Learn in Public**. Most of you know me for this one... ([read up if you're new round here, welcome!](https://www.swyx.io/learn-in-public/))\r\n4. **Good Enough is Better than Best**. In a world of infinite abundance, you can lose yourself constantly chasing the hottest new thing. [Satisfice rather than Maximize.](https://twitter.com/swyx/status/1221129594146840577) \r\n5. **Less is More**. Minimalism wins: [Subtracting is harder than Adding](https://twitter.com/patrickc/status/1380556517208825856). Quantity reduces perceived quality. Depth and whitespace stand out. (yes I realize the irony of this principle in a list of 35)\r\n6. **Create Clarity.** Simple Explanations of What, Why, and How are extremely underrated and extremely useful. This is also a core skill of all leaders. \r\n \r\n {% twitter 1382726094214758400 %}\r\n7. **Optimize for Change**. Optimizing for anything else tends to make systems **MORE** fragile, not less. If you learn only one [lesson from React and GraphQL](https://twitter.com/swyx/status/1383516418205835264), learn [How to Optimize for Change](https://www.swyx.io/optimize-for-change)\r\n8. **Seek First To Understand, Then To Be Understood.** Don't get defensive about your point of view or perception of reality - understand theirs first. Either you will learn something new or you'll understand how to better get your point across. [Hold multiple perspectives in your head](https://www.swyx.io/learn-in-private/#go-meta) and be able to summarize the best arguments of all major parties in a way that *THEY* agree with.\r\n9. **Praise in Public, Criticize in Private**. \r\n - As satisfying as it might be to dump on someone publicly, I need to remember how it makes them feel. \r\n - Everything is *not* awesome, and I despise fake positivity. But I can either help or make them feel bad about it and the former is more effective than the latter.\r\n - Exception for companies and people that are actively harming or misleading the vulnerable.\r\n10. **Build an Empathy Check Habit**. I can't take back an impulsive response that hurts someone. When I can't check with trusted friends, [I need to think before I tweet.](https://mobile.twitter.com/swyx/status/1344687793851699200)\r\n11. **People remember how you made them feel, before what you said**. [A good story has more power than a good argument.](https://twitter.com/swyx/status/1385352144195252224)\r\n12. **Treat Others How They Want To Be Treated**. The Golden Rule is -sadly- not good enough when your privilege is higher or expectations are lower than others'. Time for [The Platinum Rule](https://www.swyx.io/platinum-rule/).\r\n13. **Complete Truths are Not Welcome.** \r\n - Most people are more interested in...\r\n - being entertained\r\n - sharing outrage\r\n - feeling good about themselves\r\n - defending their reputation\r\n - ...than debating truth or improving themselves. \r\n - Trying to change them is ineffectual.\r\n - Let them be, and seek out like minds.\r\n14. **Organize IRL Events**. You can do a lot to create excitement and connection in a community simply by organizing dinners and meetups and conferences. [Svelte Society](https://twitter.com/svelteSociety/) started on a whim [exactly like this](https://twitter.com/swyx/status/1179261731304022017). Now there are thousands of members drawn to the Svelte community that wouldn't have before.\r\n15. **Don't offer unsolicited help.** Make Sure Help Is Wanted Before Offering It. Men - be especially wary about this when women are talking about their problems. Sometimes they just need support, not solutions. (But sometimes it really IS [about The Nail](https://twitter.com/swyx/status/1385353980021075968)...)\r\n16. **Ask For Help More**. People are happy to help and like you more when they have helped you. Don't worry about showing weakness; you are getting something far more valuable in return. [Use a Help Timeout](https://twitter.com/swyx/status/1378020519774019587).\r\n17. **Log Your Wins**. e.g. when you ship something big or small, or when someone says nice things about you. They can help when you are feeling emotionally down, or when writing a [brag document](https://jvns.ca/blog/brag-documents/). Help others celebrate their wins too. P.S. a **brag slack channel** can serve as an OLTP store of personal wins.\r\n18. **Don't End The Week With Nothing.** The reason you don't see any of my work prior to 2017 is because I thought it was sufficient to just work hard at my finance job. Now all of my intellectual output from my 20's - some of the best research and writing I have ever done - is locked up in some mailbox somewhere. Never again.\r\n \r\n {% twitter 1371227946136993792 %}\r\n19. **Pick Up What They Put Down.** Guarantee feedback by giving feedback. [https://www.swyx.io/puwtpd](https://www.swyx.io/puwtpd)\r\n20. **Speak Succinctly**. Stop speaking in trailing sentences and double-barreled questions. Set the general direction and shut up. If they're off-track, interject. This is preferable to preempting all conversation paths to show how smart you are.\r\n21. **Optimize for Retention, not Consumption**. We are the sum total of still-relevant knowledge we still remember, not the total of the volume of content we consume.\r\n22. **Illustrate Your Point**. Adding code samples or drawing 2x2's and system diagrams makes your idea much more effective. A picture *IS* worth a thousand words! [Even this shitty example](https://twitter.com/swyx/status/1249793388037025797) works, you can do better than me.\r\n23. **Separate Your Identity from Your Work.** You can learn a lot on the Internet for [the low, low price of $YOUR_EGO](https://kentcdodds.com/chats-with-kent-podcast/seasons/01/episodes/you-can-learn-a-lot-for-the-low-price-of-your-ego-with-shawn-wang).\r\n24. **Build Tools For Yourself**. This is a superpower and a sandbox all rolled in one that is guaranteed to make you happy.\r\n \r\n {% twitter 1342896023350304768 %}\r\n25. **Collect Questions**\r\n - Obsess on collecting good answers and you might be precise but irrelevant.\r\n - Obsess on collecting good questions and you will be approximately right.\r\n - My Work-in-Progress list of questions [here](https://github.com/sw-yx/brain/tree/master/R%20-%20Better%20Questions), but see also the [Reverse Interview repo](https://github.com/viraptor/reverse-interview) and Feynman's [12 Problems](https://medium.com/@SparksRemarks/my-12-favorite-problems-3088f90acea).\r\n26. **Systems > Goals**. \"You don't rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.\" — [James Clear](https://twitter.com/swyx/status/1385356659032137728)\r\n27. **Play Games You Cannot Win.** Our world is full of \"winnable\" games - likes, retweets, #1 of the day, employee of the month. External motivators destroy our intrinsic drive. You don't play infinite games to win. Only way to keep [childlike creativity]( https://twitter.com/swyx/status/968688836468453376) is to play games that you cannot win. \r\n28. **Use Your Calendar as a Todo List.** Normal todo lists don't force you to make tradeoffs. Sequence your work, set limits, and know when to decline or delegate tasks. When time block planning, eat your frog: Put First Things First. \r\n \r\n {% twitter 1364107473724919809 %}\r\n29. **Practice Stoicism**. It'll never stay as great as you want, it's never really as bad as you feel. This, too, shall pass.\r\n30. **Have a Productivity Keystone.** If you start a day unproductive, you are extremely likely to be unproductive the rest of the day. Instead, start off with something productive that you do every morning, you reinforce the idea that today is going to be a productive day.\r\n31. **Incorporate.** Companies pay expenses before taxes, People pay taxes before expenses. (Singapore is [pretty great](https://twitter.com/swyx/status/1355099275252785153) if you have this choice).\r\n32. **Stay in the Game**. Berkshire Hathaway originally had a third partner, Rick Guerin. He got caught out with margin loans and had to sell out. Warren and Charlie survived 14 recessions. [https://www.swyx.io/psychology-of-money/](https://www.swyx.io/psychology-of-money/)\r\n33. **Don't Skimp On Your Equipment.** Spending a few hundred dollars on your keyboard and monitor setup will save [tens of thousands of physiotherapy and pain in future](https://twitter.com/swyx/status/1274054230911803392?lang=en).\r\n34. **Earn White Collar, Spend Blue Collar**. Don't let your expenses rise as fast as your income - you probably don't need what you're thinking of buying. Spend part of your white collar income making up for white collar downsides - gym, group classes, [personal trainer](https://twitter.com/swyx/status/1323550900816764928).\r\n35. **Always Turn Lessons To Principles**. When we make mistakes or have great success, we should form them into principles so we can write them down and learn from or repeat them. [It is the only way for past versions of you to communicate lessons to future you.](https://twitter.com/swyx/status/952232991455174656)\r\n\r\nThe full thread and discussions are here:\r\n\r\n{% twitter 1385349095074656259 %}\r\n\r\nIf you're keen on my career-focused principles, I run a book community for [the Coding Career Handbook](https://www.learninpublic.org/). Join us!","frontmatter":{"source":"devto","devToUrl":"https://dev.to/swyx/35-principles-for-35-years-1n2h","devToReactions":74,"devToReadingTime":7,"devToPublishedAt":"2021-04-22T20:45:31.218Z","devToViewsCount":804,"title":"35 Principles for 35 Years","published":true,"description":"I turn 35 today. Here are 35 principles I have accumulated and try to live by.","tags":"Reflections, Advice","slug":"35-principles","canonical_url":"https://www.swyx.io/35-principles","disclosure":"Some of these ideas I've lived with for a very long time, as sourced - some are aspirational goals I have not fully internalized yet, but want to."},"title":"35 Principles for 35 Years","description":"I turn 35 today. Here are 35 principles I have accumulated and try to live by. ","category":"note","tags":["reflections","advice"],"canonical":"https://www.swyx.io/35-principles","slug":"35-principles","date":"2021-04-22T20:45:31.218Z","readingTime":"7 minutes","ghMetadata":{"issueUrl":"https://github.com/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/289","commentsUrl":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/289/comments","title":"35 Principles for 35 Years","created_at":"2022-01-18T00:09:54Z","updated_at":"2022-06-15T16:32:08Z","reactions":{"url":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/289/reactions","total_count":0,"+1":0,"-1":0,"laugh":0,"hooray":0,"confused":0,"heart":0,"rocket":0,"eyes":0}}},{"title":"Side Projects on the Modern Web Podcast","slug":"side-projects-modern-web","categories":["Creator"],"description":"In this episode, Lindsay Wardell and Hunter Miller talk side projects with Shawn Wang. We discuss the projects they do on the side, and what kind of side projects they enjoy working on. Shawn also talks about his book, \"The Coding Career Handbook\", and how it started as a side project as well. We also talk about the importance of writing your own blog posts, and sharing your experience and learning in public to help both yourself and others, rather than blogging for numbers. We wrap up with a discussion on being a part-time creator, and finding a company that supports their employees and match what you're looking to do.","instances":[{"venue":"ModernWeb Podcast","date":"2021-04-22","video":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3DjrhpxuDOk"}],"category":"talk","date":"2021-04-22T00:00:00.000Z"},{"title":"Side Projects on the Modern Web Podcast","slug":"side-projects-modern-web-pod","tags":["LIP"],"venues":"ModernWeb","date":"2021-04-21T00:00:00.000Z","url":"https://modernweb.podbean.com/e/s08e09-modern-web-podcast-sides-projects-with-shawn-wang/","description":"In this episode, Lindsay Wardell and Hunter Miller talk side projects with Shawn Wang. We discuss the projects they do on the side, and what kind of side projects they enjoy working on. Shawn also talks about his book, \"The Coding Career Handbook\", and how it started as a side project as well. We also talk about the importance of writing your own blog posts, and sharing your experience and learning in public to help both yourself and others, rather than blogging for numbers. We wrap up with a discussion on being a part-time creator, and finding a company that supports their employees and match what you're looking to do.","category":"podcast"},{"title":"Grifters and Content Creation Traps","slug":"content-grifter","categories":["Creator"],"description":"We'll discuss how to grow and build your reputation online. Ethical ways to build your audience on Twitter. Things to avoid as a content creator. How to write things that matter.","instances":[{"venue":"Maksim Ivanov","date":"2021-04-21","tweet":"https://twitter.com/ivanov_dev/status/1384553300914180097?s=20","video":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sL_uefhT51g"}],"category":"talk","date":"2021-04-21T00:00:00.000Z"},{"title":"Technical Community Builders","slug":"tech-community","categories":["Community"],"description":"Who builds developer communities, why are companies investing in them, and why now? I joined Idan Gazit and Brian Douglas to talk about my post on Technical Community Builders.","instances":[{"venue":"GitHub OCTO","date":"2021-04-13","tweet":"https://twitter.com/githubOCTO/status/1372568532190306304","video":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lN9FphNMJbY"},{"venue":"Jamstack Boston","date":"2021-04-21","video":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecSq1Sl6h7M"},{"venue":"Sourcegraph","date":"2021-12-14","video":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L1ATAYQFMn4"}],"category":"talk","date":"2021-04-13T00:00:00.000Z"},{"title":"swyx on GraphQL","slug":"graphql-guide","categories":["GraphQL"],"description":"I chatted with Loren as part of the bonus features for the GraphQL Guide book.","instances":[{"venue":"GraphQL Guide","date":"2021-04-12","video":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K4jzDASCPFM"}],"category":"talk","date":"2021-04-12T00:00:00.000Z"},{"type":"blog","content":"\nThis post is my attempt at a \"red pill\" for those who haven't had McLuhanite ideas applied to the world they live in.\n\nI think people don't appreciate enough how much we are a product of our environment — and how much of our environment is socially constructed. Not only that, it is constructed by a small group of builders who never really thought they'd ever get this far (such is the nature of leverage).\n\nTo paraphrase Churchill: [First we shape X, then X shapes us](https://quoteinvestigator.com/2016/06/26/shape/). If a defining characteristic of humanity is making and using tools, then a defining characteristic of society is being shaped by those same tools.\n\n## Social Everything Optimization\n\nWe are well past debating [linguistic relativity and Sapir-Whorf](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity). \"Language shapes thought\"? That's cute. Try *everything around us* shaping *everything we do*.\n\n**[The Tough Tomato Principle](https://florentcrivello.com/index.php/2019/04/29/software-the-tough-tomato-principle-and-the-great-weirdening-of-the-world/)** by Florent Crivello, among many things, spotted the impact of Google Maps on names of hotels (\"Good Hotel San Francisco\"). How long until someone is *born* named \"Best Lawyer NYC\"? \n\nOnce you see it, you see it everywhere. Game developers optimizing for Twitch spectator experience, Museums optimizing for Instagram, [Musicians optimizing for TikTok](https://switchedonpop.com/episodes/whosafraidoftiktok) and their [labels too](https://www.rollingstone.com/pro/features/tik-tok-hits-changing-titles-983383/). We're even [renaming human genes because Excel](https://www.theverge.com/2020/8/6/21355674/human-genes-rename-microsoft-excel-misreading-dates).\n\nInstagram is God's gift to colorful and niche products. Living in New York, I've personally seen the explosion of color [even in ice cream shops](https://edition.cnn.com/travel/article/best-ice-cream-new-york/index.html) - I used to work in SoHo, where the Black Tap put out increasingly obnoxiously unrealistic sundaes that work great on Instagram but would be a nightmare to actually eat.\n\n![Alt Text](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/108opfwrujxck57njih3.jpg)\n\nHow about clothes? [Listen to Jenn Hyman](https://mastersofscale.com/jenn-hyman-the-secret-business-behind-the-business/) directly credit Instagram for women's increased desire for more variety in clothing, which helped her business, Rent the Runway.\n\nA lot of people will deny the influence of media on their own preferences. The illusion of free will and desire for self-determination is strong. \n\nBut you can't deny the impact of media changing the real world/economy. And people who's job it is to reach people (marketers and politicians) are depressingly attuned to how much media shapes us. Alex Danco [made a strong case](https://alexdanco.com/2019/10/17/the-audio-revolution/) that TV helped elect JFK, Radio helped Trump. AOC isn't on Tiktok, but you can bet [she is reaching her voters](https://twitter.com/aoc/status/1279438522102013952?lang=en) in that format.\n\n## Design is King\n\nI used to call this \"Modern McLuhanism\", because it was McLuhan that asserted [the non-neutrality of media](https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803100145151). \n\nHe observed that in the 1960s. Fast forward half a century, and we now live in a world where [every company is a media company](https://twitter.com/balajis/status/1313587476015935488?lang=en) and [every person is a media company](https://www.garyvaynerchuk.com/every-single-one-of-you-is-a-media-company/). The modern affliction is not simply that the choice of medium affects us, but also that we are complicit in creating the medium in the first place. \n\nModern McLuhanism is *reflexive*.\n\n**In such a world, design is king**. Thoughtful product design genuinely nudges society forward. Carelessness can tear it apart. Wilson Miner called out the implications of this for software in his classic talk, [When We Build](https://vimeo.com/34017777). \n\nI'd go so far as to make it required viewing, and this idea required digestion, for all builders. We who have this awesome power, correspondingly have an awesome responsibility.\n\n> Side note: I have previously written about the duality of [Mimicry and Reflexivity](https://www.swyx.io/mimicry-reflexivity/) exploring more applications of reflexivity on its own.","frontmatter":{"source":"devto","devToUrl":"https://dev.to/swyx/reflexive-mcluhanism-kmn","devToReactions":18,"devToReadingTime":3,"devToPublishedAt":"2021-04-08T16:51:38.028Z","devToViewsCount":170,"title":"Reflexive McLuhanism","published":true,"description":"First we shape X, then X shapes us.","tags":"Reflections, Reflexivity, McLuhanism","slug":"reflexive-mcluhanism","canonical_url":"https://www.swyx.io/reflexive-mcluhanism","cover_image":"https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/108opfwrujxck57njih3.jpg","disclosure":"These are patterns I have been observing for years, but don't really have an insightful or punchy perspective on it apart from noting this is a thing."},"title":"Reflexive McLuhanism","description":"First we shape X, then X shapes us. ","category":"note","tags":["reflections","reflexivity","mcluhanism"],"image":"https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/108opfwrujxck57njih3.jpg","canonical":"https://www.swyx.io/reflexive-mcluhanism","slug":"reflexive-mcluhanism","date":"2021-04-08T16:51:38.028Z","readingTime":"3 minutes","ghMetadata":{"issueUrl":"https://github.com/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/290","commentsUrl":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/290/comments","title":"Reflexive McLuhanism","created_at":"2022-01-18T00:09:56Z","updated_at":"2022-06-18T17:47:44Z","reactions":{"url":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/290/reactions","total_count":0,"+1":0,"-1":0,"laugh":0,"hooray":0,"confused":0,"heart":0,"rocket":0,"eyes":0}}},{"title":"State of Svelte","slug":"state-of-svelte","categories":["JavaScript"],"description":"I joined the CodingCat stream with Alex and Brittney to talk Svelte!","instances":[{"venue":"CodingCat","date":"2021-04-08","video":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JfZm0tPUxjE"}],"category":"talk","date":"2021-04-08T00:00:00.000Z"},{"type":"blog","content":"\n*[Listen to narrated version here!](https://swyx.transistor.fm/episodes/set-explicit-help-timeouts)*\n\nThis is the backstory of how a 1-2 hour task stretched into 2 weeks because I kept it to myself:\n\n{% twitter 1378020519774019587 %}\n\nA few weeks ago a customer conversation resulted in a simple documentation request. Take something undocumented, and document it. I've done this a gazillion times. I happily took it on.\n\nBut when I actually looked into it, this task was different. I knew in theory how it worked, but I had never personally used this functionality before. So to document it, I had to learn it. And there was no source material, no YouTube tutorial, no Stackoverflow answer. \n\nI felt that little \"uh oh\" pit of despair. Our CTO had given some pointers, so I fired up my sample code, and tried them out. Didn't work. Several variations also didn't work. By then my time was up and I had to go to the next meeting.\n\nThe next attempt, I realized that I didn't have an optional dependency (Elasticsearch) configured for this feature to work. Stupid me! Of course nothing I tried worked! That was on us for not having helpful errors to warn about such things, but that's a task for another day. I enabled it, and went on to try out the exact same pointers given.\n\nStill didn't work. Several variations also still didn't work. Then my time was up.\n\nIf you had asked me, at the outset, how long this task would take, I would have said 1-2 hours at most. I ended up intermittently banging my head on it for **2 weeks** before admitting defeat.\n\nOnly when I asked for help after 2 weeks - literally typing \"I need help\" into Slack - did I find out that the pointers given were incorrect and we needed a deeper inspection of the source code.\n\nThere were multiple failures here - my failure to go back to my CTO to pin down what exactly he meant, my lack of familiarity with something I only conceptually understood, my failure to open up source code when surface level attempts didn't work ([something I preach](https://twitter.com/swyx/status/1010705321772318720)!).\n\nBut I think my biggest failure of all was letting it drag on for 2 weeks. I should have just asked for help after the first day. Or first week. Anything would've been better than 2 weeks.\n\nThe real reason was this: I was new at the company and wanted to appear like I knew what I was doing, so I didn't ask for help. Keep in mind I'm someone who tells people to [embrace the power of ignorance](https://twitter.com/swyx/status/1202315814071717888). And yet, that's what I did. I was in a supportive environment and it still felt embarrassing to type the words \"I need help\".\n\nFrom now on I'll make it a point to simply call out where I'm stuck when I'm stuck. \n\n## Personal Help Timeout Policy\n\nThe trick is setting the \"help timeout\" — how long before you ask for help? Clearly zero timeout is too noisy, and 2 weeks is too quiet. I put it to a poll:\n\n{% twitter 1378029651012984834 %}\n\nIf you have a daily standup, this is the kind of \"blocker\" that is ideally brought up there, limiting your help timeout to 1 day. However, in practice, there are many long-running async tasks, \"important but not urgent\", that don't get brought up as blockers in daily standups.\n\nIt's obviously context dependent, but I'm personally fine with a 1-4 hour timeout for most things I do. Struggle is useful and you can learn a lot through it, but you should never have to struggle for more than 4 hours alone on a problem, when you have a team.\n\n## Shared Help Timeout Policy\n\nAs much as this policy might be helpful individually, I think it might be even better when set as a team. I am not in any real danger when I ask for help. But others might feel like they are. \n\nWithout having a real conversation about help timeouts, it is easy to end up in a situation where implicit help timeouts vary from 1 hour to infinity, and team progress is slowed by having to overcome this barrier every time. Make it explicit, and shared, and you enable [lampshading of lack of progress](https://www.swyx.io/lampshading/) and normalize asking for help. Team leaders should role model this too, instead of merely saying it's ok for everyone *else* to ask for help.","frontmatter":{"source":"devto","devToUrl":"https://dev.to/swyx/set-explicit-help-timeouts-1dlg","devToReactions":3,"devToReadingTime":3,"devToPublishedAt":"2021-04-05T14:29:47.172Z","devToViewsCount":115,"title":"Set Explicit Help Timeouts","published":true,"description":"A simple way to normalize asking for help.","tags":"Reflections, Advice, Lampshading","slug":"help-timeouts","canonical_url":"https://www.swyx.io/help-timeouts","disclosure":"This is a new policy I have made for myself, but have not applied at a team level yet."},"title":"Set Explicit Help Timeouts","description":"A simple way to normalize asking for help. ","category":"note","tags":["reflections","advice","lampshading"],"canonical":"https://www.swyx.io/help-timeouts","slug":"help-timeouts","date":"2021-04-05T14:29:47.172Z","readingTime":"4 minutes","ghMetadata":{"issueUrl":"https://github.com/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/291","commentsUrl":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/291/comments","title":"Set Explicit Help Timeouts","created_at":"2022-01-18T00:11:11Z","updated_at":"2022-06-18T17:47:44Z","reactions":{"url":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/291/reactions","total_count":0,"+1":0,"-1":0,"laugh":0,"hooray":0,"confused":0,"heart":0,"rocket":0,"eyes":0}}},{"type":"blog","content":"\n\nRegular readers will notice that my posts often change rapidly soon after publication. This means they get *better over time*, as a result of self editing and feedback from readers. I've come to call this **Blogpost Annealing**.\n\n[![Alt Text](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/6c04prajhklrwwlu1wwz.png)](https://excalidraw.com/#json=4569679704096768,NWOVidbYqnVz9erY36Pf3g)\n\nAnnealing is a borrowed term from [metallurgy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annealing_(metallurgy)) where heating up metal makes it softer and easier to shape to its ideal end state, and also irons out any internal inconsistencies. I obviously don't know anything about metallurgy — I came by it via machine learning, where [simulated annealing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulated_annealing) serves as a powerful metaheuristic for optimization.\n\nBut the analogy holds — **if you want to make something better, apply heat to get it out of its normal state, and shape it while it cools**. This makes for a higher quality end result than trying to launch something in its final form from a standing start.\n\n## Example\n\nFor example, you can take my post on Preemptive Pluralization and peek at the difference between [the initial publish](https://604bf32dcfdb601163498323--scout-videos-51664.netlify.app/preemptive-pluralization/) and [the latest](https://604bfc8099765a1bd20fce77--scout-videos-51664.netlify.app/preemptive-pluralization/) (this is easy because Netlify uses [Immutable deploys](https://www.netlify.com/blog/2018/10/05/netlify-and-the-functional-immutable-reactive-deploy/)). Some changes that happened in the 48 hours after publishing:\n\n- Added the Twitter and Reddit discussions to the post so future readers can find them\n- Added extra concerns from readers I didn't think of, again for future readers\n- **Bolded the single most quoted sentence** ([the one about cardinality](https://twitter.com/search?q=cardinality%20of%202%20to%203%20than%20it%20is%20to%20refactor%20from%20a%20cardinality%20of%201%20to%202&src=typed_query)) to give it some visual distinction for skimmers. Before publishing, I had no idea this would resonate that much.\n- Added an extra relevant example on Pagination, from an [authoritative source](https://twitter.com/simonw/status/1370542711288209411?s=20)\n- Reworded my intro from \"ask if you are likely\" to \"ask if you could *ever* possibly\" to strengthen the claim\n- In future, I may also return to add a visualization of the idea once I figure out something I like\n\n## Benefits\n\nI find this work extremely rewarding and valuable, because it represents the delta between what I thought of before publication and what I now know after. Some resource posts, like [How to Name Things](https://www.swyx.io/how-to-name-things/) and [My New Mac Setup](https://dev.to/swyx/my-new-mac-setup-4ibi/) and [Eponymous Laws](https://www.swyx.io/eponymous-laws/), get updated *months* after publication*.* \n\nWhere the median blogpost is usually static/immutable after publish, a blog with an annealing policy will usually **improve** in quality *after* publication. **More exposure = More \"heat\" = More quality.**\n\nIronically, most of my readership will miss out on these changes, because blogpost publication is usually a singular event (a tweet, or HN, or Reddit posting). Sometimes I will [post diffs](https://twitter.com/swyx/status/1313900029824823301), but often it just goes completely unannounced. (*RSS subscribers can [theoretically receive updates](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1984381/find-out-if-something-has-changed-in-a-website-using-an-rss-feed), but I'm honestly not sure how well this works in practice. Let me know if there's ways I should improve [my RSS feed](https://swyx.io/rss.xml).)*\n\nThere's a small benefit that happens after running an Annealing policy for a while — readers become incentivized to engage on new posts, because they know that if they add value early, their perspectives will be highlighted for others to see. This is a virtuous cycle that you should want to encourage (especially if a reader can disagree ***well***).\n\n## Responsibility\n\nOne of the fundamental tensions with Blogpost Annealing comes when you are fundamentally playing a different game than your readers expect. People get *very* mad at me when I publish something wrong, and don't see my subsequent retractions or modifications. \n\nNote that I take my responsibility as a writer seriously, and articulated my process: \n\n- After idea validation with my [Three Strikes Rule](https://twitter.com/swyx/status/1351197649727352836)\n- I do a lot of research via [Mise en Place Writing](https://www.swyx.io/writing/writing-mise-en-place)\n- I put big theses through a [Workshopping](https://www.swyx.io/workshopping) process\n\nIt is still not enough for some people, who only care about the end result and silencing opinions they disagree with on behalf of the masses, who are too ignorant to be exposed to bad takes.\n\n**I do not encourage irresponsible Learning in Public** and people who do that give the rest of us a bad name. But I *also* do not wait until I know everything before publishing, because that is impossible, and sometimes I learn the most *after* publishing (Godwin's Law to the rescue!).\n\nIf you Learn in Public persistently, you will naturally build an audience over time. [**With great audience, comes great responsibility**](https://swyx.transistor.fm/episodes/career-jam-session-with-jeff-escalante-of-hashicorp). You are right to fear being wrong, and it should make you take more care. But it must not prevent you from shipping altogether. \n\nI think the resolution to this conundrum is to establish clear terms of service (FYI, this site/blog/whatever you call it has a [Digital Garden Terms of Service](https://www.swyx.io/digital-garden-tos/)) and make responsible disclosures ([like this](https://twitter.com/swyx/status/1369361340243079171)) on whether something is \"just an idea\" or \"truth from experience\". A Garden run according to these terms will naturally result in an Annealing policy.","frontmatter":{"source":"devto","devToUrl":"https://dev.to/swyx/blogpost-annealing-pod","devToReactions":11,"devToReadingTime":4,"devToPublishedAt":"2021-03-28T19:07:06.863Z","devToViewsCount":114,"title":"Blogpost Annealing","published":true,"description":"Letting my writing improve under the heat of feedback","tags":"Reflections, Writing, LearnInPublic","slug":"blogpost-annealing","canonical_url":"https://www.swyx.io/blogpost-annealing","cover_image":"https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/6c04prajhklrwwlu1wwz.png"},"title":"Blogpost Annealing","description":"Letting my writing improve under the heat of feedback ","category":"note","tags":["reflections","writing","learninpublic"],"image":"https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/6c04prajhklrwwlu1wwz.png","canonical":"https://www.swyx.io/blogpost-annealing","slug":"blogpost-annealing","date":"2021-03-28T19:07:06.863Z","readingTime":"4 minutes","ghMetadata":{"issueUrl":"https://github.com/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/292","commentsUrl":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/292/comments","title":"Blogpost Annealing","created_at":"2022-01-18T00:11:13Z","updated_at":"2022-06-18T17:47:45Z","reactions":{"url":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/292/reactions","total_count":0,"+1":0,"-1":0,"laugh":0,"hooray":0,"confused":0,"heart":0,"rocket":0,"eyes":0}}},{"type":"blog","content":"\nThere are two prevalent solutions for injecting dynamic content into markdown: Shortcodes and MDX. I think most people should use shortcodes, but there are also valid cases for picking MDX. Here's my breakdown.\n\nThere's some confusion between these content formats ([Gatsby's docs for shortcodes](https://www.gatsbyjs.com/plugins/gatsby-plugin-mdx/#shortcodes) literally just make them synonyms for MDX) so I figure it is worth setting some definitons upfront.\n\n## Defining Shortcodes\n\nThe earliest instance I can find of Shortcodes is in [WordPress](https://codex.wordpress.org/Shortcode). The whole goal is that you can continue writing in standard plain text, but insert special components just by using a special syntax that wouldn't show up in normal writing:\n\n- Wordpress: `[gallery id=\"123\" size=\"medium\"]`\n- Dev.to: `{ % twitter 834439977220112384 % }` (remove spaces)\n- Elder.js: `{{shortcode foo=\"\"}} optional inner content {{/shortcode}}`\n\nThese are mostly used for inserting anything from Tweet embeds to YouTube videos to GitHub gists to image galleries. But there's really no limit to what you can define for your shortcodes, to cover anything from simple Tip and Alert displays to interactive Quiz components!\n\nShortcodes are the plaintext analog of Web Components - where a `<custom-element>` might extend HTML, shortcodes extend plaintext (typically Markdown). You could write your shortcodes in React or Vue or Web Components - it doesn't matter, because they are inserted after the fact. \n\n## Defining MDX\n\nMDX, [introduced in 2018](https://twitter.com/rauchg/status/962021643227865088), inverts this model of content vs code. It renders your markdown as a React component (or Svelte component, with [MDsveX](https://mdsvex.pngwn.io/)), so it is very natural to add more React components inline:\n\n```jsx\nimport Video from '../components/video'\n\n# My blog post\n\nHere's a video:\n<Video width={300} src=\"video.mp4\" />\n```\n\nMDsveX goes [a little further](https://twitter.com/swyx/status/1375498831828197378), offering layouts, frontmatter, syntax highlighting, styling, and state. But MDX is by far more popular because of React. In [my 2020 survey of the React ecosystem](https://twitter.com/swyx/status/1326271632751558656?lang=en), all blogging documentation tools now offer MDX support by default.\n\n## Comparing the Two\n\nSuperficially, both Shortcodes and MDX do the same job, which is why it feels a little silly to write up a blogpost like this. But they do have important differences, that I myself did not appreciate until [Nick Reese](https://twitter.com/nickreese?lang=en) converted me when I was arguing for MDsveX in [Elder.js](https://elderguide.com/tech/elderjs/#shortcodes).\n\n- **Portability and Future-proofing**\n - MDX requires you to use React and a bundler plugin, tying you in to that ecosystem. Great if you stay within the lines of what they imagine, problematic if you want something slightly different or need to move off React (you now have to go through and convert all your content)\n - Shortcodes are framework and platform agnostic. This is how I can [blog on Dev.to and render on my own site](https://www.swyx.io/devto-cms/) (the inverted [POSSE pattern](https://indieweb.org/POSSE)), and have both render correctly in their native environments.\n - Though shortcodes still require a build chain to process them (including injecting scripts if needed), the minimal viable shortcode processor is no more complex than `String.replace`. Ultimately, shortcodes are more likely to show graceful degradation: I have seen 20 year old blogs with shortcodes that are no longer active, but are still readable because they just fall back to plain text.\n- **Scope**\n - Shortcodes are limited to their immediate responsibility area - starting and ending with the brackets that designate them.\n - MDX has a broader scope than Shortcodes in that it transforms the entire file - meaning that you can (and often should) supply [your own versions of markdown components](https://mdxjs.com/advanced/components). This is handy for, for example, adding classes and preload handling to `<a>` tags, or adding hash links and id's to `<h2>` headers like I do on my blog.\n- **Customizability**\n - Shortcodes require you to predefine all the components you are going to use up front. If you'd like to add a new type of component, you'll have to jump out of your writing mode, go add some code to your components folder, and then jump back in to keep writing.\n - With MDX, you can compose components as freely as you do JSX:\n \n ```jsx\n import GroupThing from '../components/GroupThing'\n import ItemThing from '../components/ItemThing'\n\n # My blog post\n\n Here's a thingy:\n <GroupThing foo=\"bar\">\n \t<ItemThing baz={1} />\n \t<ItemThing baz={2} />\n \t<ItemThing baz={3} />\n </GroupThing>\n\n ## You can even define stateful components inline!\n\n export const MyCounter = () => {\n const [counter, setCounter] = React.useState(0);\n return (\n <button onClick={() => setCounter((c) => c + 1)}>\n Increment {counter}\n </button>\n );\n };\n\n <MyCounter />\n\n Yes this is still MDX even though it looks like a React/JSX file!\n ```\n \n Since you are already using a JS build tool to compile MDX, it is easy to inject further JS as needed and have the bundler properly resolve and code split things for you.\n\n- **WYSIWYG**\n - This is a minor point, but the fact that everything in markdown corresponds to a visible rendered element is a nice correspondence. MDX breaks this by having `import` and `export` statements that compile away to nothing. In practice this is no big deal but it slightly rankles me.\n\n## Conclusion\n\nI think most developer bloggers spring for MDX because they enjoy using JSX, but they end up using the same 3-4 components on every single post or document they write. In those scenarios, they are accepting the downsides of MDX, without really benefiting from the customizability. \n\nIn fact, I think you can go pretty far with shortcodes. Does it really matter if you have 30 components that you pull in via shortcodes? Not really, amount of components isn't really a motivating factor. I think this covers most bloggers. **Most bloggers should use shortcodes.**\n\nHowever, there are still valid usecases of MDX.\n\nFor a design system or frontend component library, one might argue that MDX allows you to display the exact components that you are documenting:\n\n```jsx\nimport Button from './components/Button'\n\n# Button\n\nThis is our default Button!\n\n<Button />\n\nThis is our secondary Button!\n\n<Button type=\"ghost\" />\n```\n\nHowever for backend code, or for complex-enough frontend code that you'd like to run integration tests on, you may wish to [transclude](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:Transclusion) from a source file, and that may use shortcodes. Storybook's [Component Story Format](https://storybook.js.org/docs/react/api/csf) also provides a nice convention that keeps your documentation agnostic of MDX.\n\nBecause MDX compiles to a React component, you could build tooling that can typecheck MDX (as far as I know this doesn't yet exist, hence this point is all the way down here). The same is doable for shortcodes, but since there is very little restriction on how shortcodes are processed, it is far less likely that successful shared tooling will arise.\n\nFinally, there's the question of customization. If you need to compose components inline as you write, then MDX is unquestionably the right choice. This is why Hashicorp went with MDX, and you can listen in on [my conversation with Jeff Escalante](https://swyx.transistor.fm/episodes/career-jam-session-with-jeff-escalante-of-hashicorp) for more on this.\n\nMy final \"quote\" on this, if you will, is this: \n\n- **MDX works best as a more concise way to write React *pages***. MDX optimizes for flexibility - great for complex docs!\n- **Shortcodes are best for including custom components in a future-proof way.** Shortcodes optimize for longevity - great for blogs!\n\n## Appendix: Structured Content\n\nPerhaps a third \"alternative\" to Shortcodes vs MDX is structured content - discrete \"blocks\" of content rendered inside of a CMS, like you see in Notion, [Sanity.io](https://www.sanity.io/structured-content) or in WordPress Gutenberg. I don't have a lot of personal experience with this, but my sense is that it locks you in to these systems, in exchange for WYSIWYG and no-code editing. In a way, structured content is what would happen if your writing is *entirely* made up of data inside shortcodes.","frontmatter":{"source":"devto","devToUrl":"https://dev.to/swyx/shortcodes-vs-mdx-3d4e","devToReactions":15,"devToReadingTime":5,"devToPublishedAt":"2021-03-26T21:40:42.355Z","devToViewsCount":934,"title":"Shortcodes vs MDX","published":true,"description":"Comparing the two popular custom dynamic content solutions!","tags":"writing, shortcodes, react","canonical_url":"https://www.swyx.io/shortcodes-vs-mdx-3d4e"},"title":"Shortcodes vs MDX","description":"Comparing the two popular custom dynamic content solutions! ","category":"note","tags":["writing","shortcodes","react"],"canonical":"https://www.swyx.io/shortcodes-vs-mdx-3d4e","slug":"shortcodes-vs-mdx-3d4e","date":"2021-03-26T21:40:42.355Z","readingTime":"6 minutes","ghMetadata":{"issueUrl":"https://github.com/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/293","commentsUrl":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/293/comments","title":"Shortcodes vs MDX","created_at":"2022-01-18T00:11:15Z","updated_at":"2022-06-18T17:47:45Z","reactions":{"url":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/293/reactions","total_count":0,"+1":0,"-1":0,"laugh":0,"hooray":0,"confused":0,"heart":0,"rocket":0,"eyes":0}}},{"type":"blog","content":"\r\n> 2021 updates: Featured on the [Compressed.fm](https://www.compressed.fm/episode/64) podcast! I also wrote a followup about [the Swipe Files Strategy](https://www.swyx.io/swipe-files-strategy).\r\n>\r\n> 2022 updates: I expanded on this with [Jess Sachs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-UxzCtpB74) (on getting started) and [Stripe DevChats](https://youtu.be/S-UxzCtpB74?t=182) (on making money)\r\n\r\nSomething unexpected happened when [my side project](https://www.learninpublic.org/) crossed $100k in sales: \r\n\r\n**I didn't want to quit my job.**\r\n\r\nNo urge to blog about leaving the \"rat race\". No tweet about how becoming a creator \"changed my life (and yours can too! Buy my course!)\". No Jerry Maguire letter.\r\n\r\nI wondered if something was wrong with me. Being on social media exposed me to a lot of hustle porn constantly telling me to quit my job. That freedom is an all-or-nothing nirvana, and once you taste it, you don't go back. Isn't that how this movie script is supposed to go?\r\n\r\nI want a new script for Part Time Creators. We need to define what it is, why it's worth doing, make it work, then make it *cool*.\r\n\r\n## More Than Just Money\r\n\r\nMaking $100k a year has always been my bar for successful \"independent income\". It's more than my parents ever made at their peak earning, and in most cities it's enough to support yourself and even raise a family on. Even better if totally passive — I harbored dreams of traveling the world and making money in my sleep.\r\n\r\nBut after 4 years of [Learning in Public](https://www.swyx.io/learn-in-public), I got there — and realized my desires had shifted. Part of this is surely due to the [hedonistic treadmill](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedonic_treadmill) — I had reached Senior level at a [FAANG](https://medium.com/@teamblind/seven-reasons-why-engineers-want-to-join-faang-ec4f93374384) by then. But I realized it was mainly because I enjoy applying myself to hard problems and working with smart people, that I would never have encountered on my own. \r\n\r\nYet, while employment is great, I enjoy the **growth** that successful side projects afford. It isn't just about the money — side projects do NOT need to make money right away to be successful. \r\n\r\n- It's about self-sufficiency: [what you learn](https://twitter.com/swyx/status/1330092717649645571?s=20) shipping something from end to end.\r\n- It's about self-actualization: having creative control and autonomy and [not ending the week with nothing](https://training.kalzumeus.com/newsletters/archive/do-not-end-the-week-with-nothing).\r\n- It's about [long term games](https://twitter.com/swyx/status/1281424520100737025): building a personal network and reputation that will outlast any employer.\r\n- It's about optionality: having a backup plan if something goes wrong, and incubating dozens of business ideas that *could* be big, [creating luck](https://swyx.io/create_luck) for yourself.\r\n\r\n**It's about having a job while not *being* your job.** \r\n\r\n## #PartTimeCreator\r\n\r\nI like the term **Part Time Creator** for what I'm doing. The creator economy has many one-percenters — full-time Indie Hackers [making well over $1m a year](https://www.indiehackers.com/podcast/034-mike-carson-of-park-io) all by their lonesome. These are remarkable accomplishments and should be celebrated. \r\n\r\n*But the majority of us will **never** get there.* 90% of creators on Gumroad [make less than $20k a year](https://twitter.com/swyx/status/1368353739799588866?s=20). It's not a full-time income, but they should not feel like failures. They built something valuable on their own and that is *awesome*. \r\n\r\nBecause I don't derive all my self worth from my employer, I stand a little taller. Dream a little bigger. Negotiate a little harder.\r\n\r\nI want to clearly acknowledge that **this path requires privilege and is not for everyone**. The cards are stacked against you from the beginning: \r\n\r\n- Existing creator platforms mainly reinforce [the Economics of Superstars](https://www.uvm.edu/pdodds/files/papers/others/1981/rosen1981a.pdf).\r\n- Parents are already achieving superhuman feats balancing family and work.\r\n- Many IP assignment agreements are actively hostile to Part Time Creators — Employers want to pay you for 40 hours a week but own your output for all 168.\r\n- Independent creation has far less health, safety, diversity, accessibility, or other forms of protection offered by traditional employment.\r\n\r\nPart Time Creation *must* get easier for the less privileged, and its rewards must be more equitable, which is why all creator platforms should explore the ideas Li Jin published in [her seminal article on the Creator Middle Class](https://li.substack.com/p/building-the-middle-class-of-the), and eventually legal and banking reforms made to democratize access.\r\n\r\nStill, being a Part Time Creator *is* a viable path for many thousands of people, who can feel this possibility and desperately want to figure this out. I think there will be many more Part Time Creators in future, and courses and platforms will evolve accordingly. There's already signs of extreme demand: Ali Abdaal's [Part-Time YouTuber Academy](https://academy.aliabdaal.com/) sells out in *seconds*, Ryan Hoover's [Weekend Fund](https://medium.com/@rrhoover/weekend-fund-%EF%B8%8F-72dfdc830f00) specifically invests in side projects, and Andrew Gazdecki's [Microacquire](https://microacquire.com/) makes it easy to sell them.\r\n\r\n## Making Part Time Work\r\n\r\nThere are a lot of objections to working outside of work, even if that work is for yourself. Many of them are valid. I only write for people like me, who have the energy and desire to make this work but have been lacking a guide.\r\n\r\n- The first thing that needs to happen is to get an employment situation that doesn't completely drain you of after hours productivity. I am no stranger to this kind of job — before 2017 I worked in finance, which completely consumed my life and intellectual output. I didn't know this was a red flag because I didn't know better.\r\n \r\n If part time creation is something you want, just know that there are companies, like [ConvertKit](https://twitter.com/nathanbarry/status/1247890780456288257?s=20), where side projects are not only tolerated, but encouraged. Your current company may be actively hostile to side projects, but there are plenty of companies that will see it as a plus (though it should **NOT** be a hiring requirement). If you are open to not working full time, there are plenty of [startups that are only looking for part time help](https://parttime.careers/).\r\n- The second is to **get your proverbial shit together and make time**. Talk is cheap. Your actions are the real vote for what you want to be. If you say you want to be a Part Time Creator but [spend almost 40 hours a week watching Youtube/Netflix](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_consumption), then you're really a Full Time Consumer. Make the time. I have some pointers below, but here are a few thematic inspirations for you:\r\n - **Five for Them, One for Me**: aka the \"Weekend Warrior\" approach. Pick Saturday or Sunday, but do take one day to rest. This is a long game; do not burn out.\r\n - **Personal 20% Time**: Google is famous for allowing employees to work on side projects 20% of the time, but employees joke that it's really \"120% Time\" because they still have to do their full day jobs anyway. That works out to an extra 1.5-2 hours before work.\r\n - **Batched Time**: Ben Orenstein is known for taking [Codecations](https://thoughtbot.com/blog/you-should-take-a-codecation) - holidays where you work on shipping a side project. Take a week off work (and family) obligations and just go ham. This is a great option for those who simply cannot make a weekly commitment, or if you must accumulate context rather than context switching every day or week.\r\n\r\nFor those extremely worried: **You don't have to make money right away**. There are plenty of ways to create valuable personal assets without monetizing right away, from writing a newsletter to building a YouTube channel. The point is to learn to create, and build your network. Have a chat with your manager if in doubt — you may be surprised how okay they are with this. Some may even offer you an intrapreneur opportunity, like [Jenn Hyman before Rent the Runway](https://mastersofscale.com/jenn-hyman-the-secret-business-behind-the-business/) or [Ben Orenstein before Tuple](https://mixergy.com/interviews/tuple-with-ben-orenstein/). As the Part Time Creator movement grows, this will be increasingly accepted.\r\n\r\nThis post is already longer than I intended and borders on generic productivity advice you can find elsewhere, so I'll just drop six principles and resources on you:\r\n\r\n- **Before Work**: [Alex West](https://www.alexwest.co/) (my Creators interview [here](https://codingcareer.circle.so/c/workshops/guest-chat-alex-west-on-side-hustling-to-2k-mrr)) and [Swizec Teller](https://twitter.com/Swizec/status/1368740304560345088?s=20) both note that working on personal projects **before** the day job begins is the best way to ensure you actually work on it (this is what I do). Of course the opposite - [2 hrs after the family goes to bed](https://twitter.com/bagder/status/1372572657317711876?s=20) - works for some folks as well.\r\n- **Start Now:** It's easy to desire something long term, but have barriers short term. I have news for you: **There's never going to be a perfect time to start.**\r\n \r\n {% twitter 1148338745600598016 %}\r\n \r\n Pretend you've already been a Part Time Creator for 5 years straight and run into whatever your situation is today. Would you stop? If no: then why put off starting? Figure out how to make it work even when things aren't ideal, because things are **never** ideal.\r\n- **Keep Shipping:** It's natural to want to sink a lot of time into creating something great, and many people find success doing so. However I find that **most** people get stuck in a perfectionist loop, and never ship. I explored [the Quality vs Consistency tradeoff](https://www.swyx.io/quality-vs-consistency/) in a separate post, but TL;DR, when in doubt, choose Consistency, and work your way up to Quality rather than expect to jump there from a cold start. Ship at least every month. If you can't, **scope down until you have no excuse not to ship**. Part Time Creator is an identity, and you are what you do repeatedly. If you repeatedly find ways to not ship, that's what you are.\r\n- [**Productize Yourself**](https://nav.al/productize-yourself): Part Time Creation is distinct from taking on a Part Time *Job* where you sell time for money like you do in the day job. Focus on formats that deliver value disconnected from your time. [Friendcatchers](https://www.swyx.io/friendcatchers/), Writing, podcasting, drawing, and some categories of software. If you are a developer, apply to teach for [Egghead.io](http://egghead.io) - they take extremely good care of their part time creators. I [still get $100-300 a month](https://twitter.com/swyx/status/1368744251203284993) from courses I made 3 years ago. Note: Most beginners aren't able to productize right away — they need to [stair-step](https://robwalling.com/2015/03/26/the-stairstep-approach-to-bootstrapping/) up to it with some sweat equity. That's normal.\r\n- **Shameless Plug**: [My book](https://www.learninpublic.org/) has an entire chapter dedicated to Side Project ideas and productivity methods!\r\n\r\n## Making Part Time *Cool*\r\n\r\nPart Timers will *never* get their due as long as they are perceived to be the minor league shadow of Full-Timers. Customers instinctively equate \"part time\" with \"not committed\". Of course, you can dispel that notion by doing your thing for 10 years. But that'd take 10 years.\r\n\r\nTo *really* make a strong case for Part-Time Creators, it's interesting to consider what Part-Timers can do *better* than Full-Timers. The best way I know how to phrase this: **The work informs the side hustle, the side hustle informs the work**. \r\n\r\nEveryone draws the line on what is acceptable. You should definitely NOT compete with your employer or share trade secrets. But there are a *zillion* other ways to create without conflict of interest, in a way that also adds value to your employer:\r\n\r\n- [**Oren Ellenbogen**](https://twitter.com/orenellenbogen) runs [Software Lead Weekly](https://softwareleadweekly.com/), one of the most popular newsletters on engineering leadership. This surely helps in his day job as a VP of Engineering. Likewise with [Rosie Sherry](https://twitter.com/rosiesherry)'s work on [the Rosieland community](https://rosie.land/) informing her work as [Community Manager at Indie Hackers](https://growthtoday.fm/rosie-sherry-indiehackers/).\r\n- [**Julia Evans**](http://twitter.com/b0rk) built a massive following writing [programming comics based on surprising facts](https://jvns.ca/blog/2020/12/05/how-i-write-useful-programming-comics/) based on generalizable lessons from her work at Stripe. She's since left, but her work surely helped Stripe burnish its reputation as an attractive employer.\r\n- [**Kent C. Dodds**](http://twitter.com/kentcdodds) bootstrapped his [Consume-Build-Teach](https://epicreact.dev/podcast/learn-by-consuming-building-and-teaching/) cycle at Paypal for [4.5 years](https://twitter.com/kentcdodds/status/1368754733054234625?s=20), where he generalized lessons from solving Paypal problems into popular open source, and a successful teaching career. Both these \"extracurricular\" efforts improved the engineering culture at Paypal, which was only too happy to let him do his thing.\r\n- [**Janel Loi**](https://twitter.com/janelsgm)'s authority putting [NewsletterOS](https://newsletteros.com/) and [PodcastOS](https://gumroad.com/l/podcastoperatingsystem) together with No-Code tools informs her new job at On Deck, where she will meet more creators to serve, and also serve them better because she has her ongoing side projects.\r\n- **Jack Conte**'s bands [Scary Pockets](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XYeuvbhKy4I) and [Pomplamoose](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCSiPjfAJBgbFlIUsxOWpK0w) give him the deep empathy, credibility, and outlet he needs in his day job as CEO of Patreon.\r\n- **Troy Hunt** [blogged and wrote online](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-MUhcgXBj_A) for years before finally finding his ultimate niche as \"the Security Guy\" with his side project [HaveIBeenPwned.com](https://haveibeenpwned.com/). It isn't a straight line to success - you have to allow for months and years of wandering in the wilderness before you find your thing. Stay employed.\r\n\r\nFor Part-Time Creators, the ultimate source of synergy with the day job is *expertise*. Expertise is [specific](https://www.navalmanack.com/almanack-of-naval-ravikant/find-and-build-specific-knowledge) and [tacit](https://commoncog.com/blog/tacit-knowledge-is-a-real-thing/) knowledge. Everything that cannot be taught: all the judgment you hone by doing, all the untold stories and relevant data recalled at your fingertips. Your work history will also give you credibility, although you must not over-represent what you can speak to.\r\n\r\n- If you can deliver your expertise concisely, you are now a viable **consultant**.\r\n- If you can package it into a repeatable process, you have a **productized service**.\r\n- If you can create something valuable disconnected from your time, you now have a **product**.\r\n- You don't have to choose; you *could* offer all three as three different tiers (1x, 2x, 5x) to suit different customer needs, also known as [Do It Yourself, Done With You, Done For You](https://github.com/sw-yx/launch-cheatsheet/blob/master/README.md#pricing) pricing. Higher revenue, but more complexity.\r\n\r\nThe other side of the feedback loop works too. Venture Capitalists often hire \"Entrepreneurs in Residence\" — former or future CEOs who simply sit in on meetings, give counsel, and look for ideas. I'd like to see a democratization of this to all sorts of employers and expertise fields. The power dynamic completely shifts if a Part Time Creator is hired as an \"Expert in Residence\" rather than being \"given\" a job.\r\n\r\n![the part time creator flywheel](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/6ynmrjt1qtsfvhmydd36.png)\r\n\r\nLastly, Part-Time Creators with \"real\" jobs are infinitely more relatable than Full-Timers. This lets them stay grounded and avoid the [Meta Creator Ceiling](https://www.swyx.io/meta-creator-ceiling/). This is a trap that many premature Full-Timers run into, because they run out of interesting problems and unique expertise.\r\n\r\n## A Creator Middle Path for the Creator Middle Class\r\n\r\nI think there's [a LOT of folks that want a middle way](https://twitter.com/swyx/status/1368732639557918725) between being a \"My Company is My Life\" salaryman and \"Stick it to The Man\" ronin. We indulge the social media escapism, but we kind of like our normie careers. \r\n\r\nYet, the days of spending 45 years with one company and retiring on a pension, like our parents' parents were promised, are long gone. We need to establish independent value because our employers simply do not have our long term interests at heart.\r\n\r\nI'm hopeful for growing acceptance of Part Time Creators from employers, but ultimately, I think more people *can already* be Part Time Creators in their existing situations. This is not only viable today, but sorely needed. We are all fed up with over-SEO-ed content and generic lowest-common-denominator products. Part Time Creators can offer far more diversity, creativity, and unique expertise to fulfil every niche need of humanity. And they can make money, share valuable knowledge, and have more dignity doing so.\r\n\r\nThis is my utopian dream for a thriving Creator Middle Class. There's already dozens of us doing it. Join us!\r\n\r\n**Further reading:**\r\n\r\n- Steph Smith's [You Don't Need to Quit Your Job to Make](https://blog.stephsmith.io/you-dont-need-to-quit-your-job-to-make/) has some important mindset shifts to undergo this process.\r\n- The usefulness of [Purposeful Side Projects](https://devbizops.substack.com/p/purposeful-side-projects) by Mark Birch\r\n- Zeno Rocha's journey to [100k in a year with Dracula Pro](https://draculatheme.com/pro/journey)\r\n- [Weekend Club](https://weekendclub.co/) is a paid community of weekend warriors - I have not personally tried it.\r\n- [Ask HN: How do I find energy to work on hobbies after the work day ends?](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26500021)\r\n- Working on random side projects may have helped Claude Shannon invent information theory https://timharford.com/2021/05/cautionary-tales-fritterin-away-genius/\r\n- [My AMA on long tail infoproducts](https://www.indiehackers.com/post/made-121-326-since-launching-my-book-last-july-63-of-it-after-launch-month-ama-about-long-tail-infoproducts-41b55f5670) as a Part Time Creator\r\n- (2022) [Brian Lovin’s design crits](https://brianlovin.com/writing/design-critique-for-fun-and-profit#consulting-is-a-slow-wealth-building-strategy) are a perfect part time project for designers!","frontmatter":{"source":"devto","devToUrl":"https://dev.to/swyx/the-part-time-creator-manifesto-46i1","devToReactions":132,"devToReadingTime":12,"devToPublishedAt":"2021-03-14T21:56:04.965Z","devToViewsCount":2584,"title":"The Part Time Creator Manifesto","published":true,"description":"Why we need more people creating Part Time and how you can do it too.","category":"essay","tags":"Creators, Reflections","slug":"part-time-creator-manifesto","canonical_url":"https://swyx.io/part-time-creator-manifesto","cover_image":"https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/hkvir806a2jsyqtsqsoh.png"},"title":"The Part Time Creator Manifesto","description":"Why we need more people creating Part Time and how you can do it too. ","category":"essay","tags":["creators","reflections"],"image":"https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/hkvir806a2jsyqtsqsoh.png","canonical":"https://swyx.io/part-time-creator-manifesto","slug":"part-time-creator-manifesto","date":"2021-03-14T21:56:04.965Z","readingTime":"12 minutes","ghMetadata":{"issueUrl":"https://github.com/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/294","commentsUrl":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/294/comments","title":"The Part Time Creator Manifesto","created_at":"2022-01-18T00:11:17Z","updated_at":"2022-12-23T20:55:56Z","reactions":{"url":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/294/reactions","total_count":0,"+1":0,"-1":0,"laugh":0,"hooray":0,"confused":0,"heart":0,"rocket":0,"eyes":0}}},{"type":"blog","content":"\r\n*See discussions on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/swyx/status/1370513317379280897), [Reddit](https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/m3wovo/preemptive_pluralization_is_probably_not_evil/), [Lobste.rs](https://lobste.rs/s/wddhi8/preemptive_pluralization_is_probably), and [my mixtape](https://swyx.transistor.fm/episodes/preemptive-pluralization-is-probably-not-evil)*\r\n\r\n**Before you write any code — ask if you could ever possibly want multiple kinds of the thing you are coding.** If yes, just do it. Now, not later.\r\n\r\nA few common examples to illustrate:\r\n\r\n- You assume that one team has many users, and correspondingly, one user belongs to one team.\r\n - Eventually, you find that a user may need multiple teams.\r\n - This is actually fantastic for your business!\r\n - But you are depressed because you now have to **spend 2 months refactoring every line of code and database schema** that assumed the one-to-one mapping 😱 More examples [here](https://twitter.com/andrewingram/status/1370540227954102274?s=20).\r\n- You assume that loading state only has two states — true / false — so you make a boolean `isLoading` variable\r\n - Then you realize you need to track error state, so you do, with `isError`. You do some work to make sure the 4 combinations of states behave intuitively. You write tests for each of them like the good developer you are. Of course. \r\n - Then you realize you need an `isCanceled` state. 8 and counting...\r\n - Eventually you realize every addition or modification takes **exponentially longer** to account for each edge case. It's hard to even tell if you've covered them all. Most don't.\r\n - The solution is [explicit state machines](https://dev.to/davidkpiano/no-disabling-a-button-is-not-app-logic-598i) - but at this point you're too far in to justify a rewrite. \r\n- **Internationalization**. If you winced at that, you know the pain.\r\n- **Pagination**. To quote [Simon Willison](https://twitter.com/simonw/status/1370542711288209411?s=20), co-creator of Django, \"Refactoring an existing non-paginated API to support pagination will break everything. Better to fake pagination but only ever return a single page, just in case\".\r\n\r\nYou can listen to [Ben Orenstein of Tuple discuss this on my mixtape](https://swyx.transistor.fm/episodes/preemptive-pluralization-is-probably-not-evil):\r\n\r\n> **I've done this refactoring a million times**. I'll be like, I thought there would only ever be one subscription team, user plan, name, address , and it always ends up being like, \"Oh, actually there's more.\" I almost never go the other way. What if you just paid the upfront cost of thinking \"This is just always a collection\"?\r\n\r\nDonald Knuth is famous for noting that [Premature Optimization is the Root of All Evil](https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/1691:_Optimization#Explanation) (there's [some nuance to that](https://twitter.com/hillelogram/status/1370514421936689154?s=20), btw). I am very sympathetic to the appeal to simplicity — if \"You Ain't Gonna Need It\", then don't use it. But I think **Preemptive Pluralization** — projecting forward into hypothetical situations when you need N types of a thing — is exempt, even though you are literally optimizing for a future you don't currently live in.\r\n\r\n**It is a LOT easier to scale code from a cardinality of 2 to 3 than it is to refactor from a cardinality of 1 to 2.** This is a fundamentally under-appreciated nonlinearity. In other words, Preemptive Pluralization can make the difference between \"sure, I'll add that today\" and \"this is going to take us 2 months and we'll introduce merge conflicts with every other in-progress feature.\"\r\n\r\n## Write Robust Code\r\n\r\n[Requirements volatility is a core problem of software engineering](https://stackoverflow.blog/2020/02/20/requirements-volatility-is-the-core-problem-of-software-engineering/). As a software engineer, writing code that does what you ask of it today is the bare minimum. Your real skill comes in what happens next — what you do when requirements inevitably change, whether by new feature request or scaling issues arising from I/O or compute bounds.\r\n\r\nIt may not be enough to write code for what you foresee in the near term — those are just more requirements. Software design and architecture is all about making it *easy* to respond to *unforeseen* changes.\r\n\r\nHillel Wayne has proposed calling these [requirement perturbations](https://twitter.com/hillelogram/status/1189024161127190528?s=20). If a small, typical feature request can throw your whole design out of whack, then you have **fragile code**. Clearly you want the opposite of fragile — I am tempted to call it \"Antifragile\" because that gets clicks — but really the best you can hope for is code that mostly doesn't fall apart due to 1-2 standard deviation changes in requirements. In other words: **robust code**. Robust code is [optimized for change](https://twitter.com/swyx/status/1081190319343906816) (more in a future blogpost).\r\n\r\nThe nonlinearity in how expensive it is to make a change comes from the \"[emergent sclerosis](https://twitter.com/david_perell/status/1369534971535298560?s=20)\" of code. Code that is robust to future changes is far cheaper to write today, than when written later, as delayed technical debt that you must pay up before you can proceed to a feature request. Fragile code is like the payday loan lender of technical debt.\r\n\r\n**Preemptive Pluralization creates Robust Code**.\r\n\r\n## Is it Even Premature?\r\n\r\nI'm so committed to not prematurely optimizing that I want to make a final pitch for why Preemptive Pluralization is _not_ premature.\r\n\r\nLet's address obvious criticisms of Preemptive Pluralization:\r\n\r\n- **Increased code complexity**: Functional languages and other abstractions can help make array or matrix operations almost as easy to work with as regular operations.\r\n- **Slow performance from doing extra loops**: Loops only cost significantly when you have lots of N. By definition, if you are pluralizing prematurely, N = 1.\r\n- [Perf bottlenecks from excessive joins](https://twitter.com/mikesherov/status/1370577582614323201?s=20)\r\n- [Misleading code](https://twitter.com/mikesherov/status/1370578158194454528?s=20): your code communicates current state of things. \"Premature\" plurality can lead to communicating wrong thing to new observers of the system.\r\n\r\nUltimately I think what makes something premature or not is your definition of what you need to write:\r\n\r\n- If you view \"code that works today\" as your job, preemptive pluralization is premature. \r\n- If you view \"code that doesn't blow up in my face a year from now\" as your job, then it is not.\r\n\r\n**Just make Robust Code a design requirement from the start** and then figure out what that means :)\r\n\r\n## Related Preemptive Moves\r\n\r\n- Timestamps! [you might as well turn your boolean into a timestamp](https://changelog.com/posts/you-might-as-well-timestamp-it). `created_at`, `updated_at`, `deleted_at` (2022 edit: soft deletions were of some [recent debate](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32156009)). But also `modified_by`, `created_by`, [and more](https://twitter.com/webology/status/1384588570594140160)\r\n- [UUID, Timestamps, and Versions](https://twitter.com/MichaelDrogalis/status/1391454881068720131) - don't use the UUID as a PK.\r\n- [Simon Willison has called](https://twitter.com/simonw/status/1410678459756552198) them [PAGNIs: Probably Are Gonna Need Its](https://simonwillison.net/2021/Jul/1/pagnis/)\r\n\r\n## More Pluralization Points\r\n\r\nMore awkward things to pluralize:\r\n \r\n- Single tenant open source -> Multi tenant hosted service\r\n- Versions -> from no version to v1/v2, or going from \"legacy\"/\"new\" to \"new new\" (hence Stripe [just uses dates](https://stripe.com/blog/api-versioning))\r\n- Number of independently shipping frontends in your company (hence [module federation](https://blog.bitsrc.io/revolutionizing-micro-frontends-with-webpack-5-module-federation-and-bit-99ff81ceb0))\r\n- Number of clouds in your company (you think you will avoid this... until you can't, per [the Hashimoto lemma](https://www.reddit.com/r/devops/comments/91afzz/why_multicloud/))\r\n\r\nMore from [@nivertech on Twitter](https://twitter.com/nivertech/status/1397069627814027264):\r\n\r\n- in-memory→persistent\r\n- single node→cluster\r\n- single language→i18n\r\n- no pagination→pagination\r\n- single user→multi-user\r\n- single tenant→multi-tenant\r\n- single branding→white-labeled\r\n- free→paid\r\n- hard-coded configs→separate config from code\r\n- hard-coded features→feature flags\r\n- online-first→offline-first\r\n- web-first→mobile-first\r\n- no 3rd party API→API-first\r\n- DB-specific→ORM\r\n- local desktop SW→Client/Server\r\n- Client/Server→P2P\r\n- Centralized→Decentralized\r\n- Static→Dynamic\r\n- SSG→SPA\r\n\r\n## Acknowledgements and Further Reading\r\n\r\n- *Thanks to [Jon Wong](https://twitter.com/jnwng/status/1370524452480454665?s=20) for reviewing a draft of this post and contributing the boolean and internationalization examples*\r\n- *Endorsements & Horror stories from [Simon Willison](https://twitter.com/simonw/status/1370541425465520130?s=20), [Ben Orenstein](https://twitter.com/r00k/status/1370520023995985922?s=20), [Andrew Culver](https://twitter.com/andrewculver/status/1370527597885599746?s=20), [Andrew Ingram](https://twitter.com/andrewingram/status/1370540227954102274), [Tanner Linsley](https://twitter.com/tannerlinsley/status/1370567716935888897?s=20), [Ryan Murphy](https://twitter.com/rdmurphy/status/1370544608896192513?s=20), [David Welch](https://twitter.com/david_welch/status/1370916290584403971) and [Khrome](https://twitter.com/KhromeDotDev/status/1370544511408033794?s=20)!*\r\n- Daniel Buckmaster compares this idea to [Sandi Metz's POODR](https://dev.to/crabmusket/comment/1cc36).\r\n- [Martin Gronlund](https://dev.to/martingronlund/comment/1ccce) compares this to [data oriented design](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rX0ItVEVjHc).\r\n- [Jared Palmer](https://twitter.com/jaredpalmer/status/1370529091804364801?s=20) and [Daniel Yokomizo](https://twitter.com/dyokomizo/status/1370598973036199936?s=20) mention the [Zero, One, Infinity rule](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero_one_infinity_rule) - though this article argues FOR preemptively favoring \"infinity\" over \"one\"","frontmatter":{"source":"devto","devToUrl":"https://dev.to/swyx/preemptive-pluralization-is-probably-not-evil-1mp3","devToReactions":11,"devToReadingTime":6,"devToPublishedAt":"2021-03-12T23:02:49.409Z","devToViewsCount":197,"title":"Preemptive Pluralization is (Probably) Not Evil","published":true,"description":"What if we just assumed we might have two of everything?","tags":"Reflections, Programming, Advice","slug":"preemptive-pluralization","canonical_url":"https://www.swyx.io/preemptive-pluralization","cover_image":"https://i.ytimg.com/vi/INzAc4iI5Zo/maxresdefault.jpg","disclosure":"This is an idea I have been mulling for a while, but have not practiced at scale. Written in a couple hours after a prompt from a podcast."},"title":"Preemptive Pluralization is (Probably) Not Evil","description":"What if we just assumed we might have two of everything? ","category":"note","tags":["reflections","programming","advice"],"image":"https://i.ytimg.com/vi/INzAc4iI5Zo/maxresdefault.jpg","canonical":"https://www.swyx.io/preemptive-pluralization","slug":"preemptive-pluralization","date":"2021-03-12T23:02:49.409Z","readingTime":"6 minutes","ghMetadata":{"issueUrl":"https://github.com/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/295","commentsUrl":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/295/comments","title":"Preemptive Pluralization is (Probably) Not Evil","created_at":"2022-01-18T00:11:19Z","updated_at":"2022-08-21T07:34:34Z","reactions":{"url":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/295/reactions","total_count":0,"+1":0,"-1":0,"laugh":0,"hooray":0,"confused":0,"heart":0,"rocket":0,"eyes":0}}},{"title":"Learning in Public on Developer Love","slug":"dev-love-podcast","tags":["LIP"],"venues":"DeveloperLove","date":"2021-03-11T00:00:00.000Z","url":"https://www.heavybit.com/library/podcasts/developer-love/ep-15-learning-in-public-with-shawn-swyx-wang/","description":"In episode 15 of Developer Love, Patrick speaks with Shawn “Swyx” Wang of Temporal. They discuss divorcing your identity from your work, transparency in developer marketing, and the merits of learning in public.","category":"podcast"},{"title":"Devrel and Dev Community on PodRocket","slug":"podrocket-1","tags":["Devrel"],"venues":"Podrocket","date":"2021-03-09T00:00:00.000Z","url":"https://podrocket.logrocket.com/swyx","description":"Ben and Brian talk to Shawn Wang, better known as Swyx, about infinite building, his experience as a Reddit moderator, blogging platforms, scaling developer relations, and more.","category":"podcast"},{"type":"blog","content":"\nIn 2018, I applied to [React Rally](https://2018.reactrally.com/) with the most interesting React problem I could think of: **Why do [the React docs](https://reactjs.org/docs/design-principles.html#scheduling) say that React is not fully Reactive?**\n\nHere's the talk that resulted:\n\n{% youtube nyFHR0dDZo0 %}\n\nYou can also read the accepted [React Rally CFP here](https://twitter.com/swyx/status/1112513571315830784?s=20) with long form details.\n\nIt's a 30 min talk but with a lot squeezed in there, because it was my first conference talk and I wanted to look smart in front of people I admired.\n\n## TL;DR\n\nRecently there has been some talk about [the \"reactivity\" of React](https://twitter.com/wycats/status/1368046172594565123?s=20) on Twitter recently, so I figured I would put up a quick TL;DR:\n\n1. React *could* be fully push-reactive - i even wrote a PoC ([reactive-react](https://github.com/sw-yx/reactive-react)) to explore this. \n \n I later realized this is basically the default state of things if you write any JS user interface with no scheduler.\n\n2. But then you run into problems with [backpressure](https://medium.com/@jayphelps/backpressure-explained-the-flow-of-data-through-software-2350b3e77ce7), where you need batching, and expensive renders (eventually causing the need for [time slicing and other async rendering techniques](https://www.swyx.io/react-outside/#why-look-outside-react)).\n\n3. The solution is to **push updates** (reacting to external events) into a queue, but only **pull views on demand**. \n\n ![https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Ev0gpXpVoAIzGHa?format=png&name=small](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Ev0gpXpVoAIzGHa?format=png&name=small)\n \n This is also known as [scheduling](https://reactjs.org/docs/design-principles.html#scheduling). It's possible to implement this inside of an Rxjs-like paradigm, but it would be so finnicky that you'd basically be rebuilding push-pull reactivity inside of the scheduler anyway.\n\nThat's as short as I can make it. Let me know if this makes sense or you have better ways to put this!\n\n*P.S. I was invited back for React Rally 2020, where I presented on [Growing a Meta-Language](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=18F5v1diO_A), briefly sketching out some ideas for [React Single File Components](https://www.swyx.io/react-sfcs-here/).*","frontmatter":{"source":"devto","devToUrl":"https://dev.to/swyx/tl-dr-of-why-react-is-not-reactive-p7p","devToReactions":15,"devToReadingTime":2,"devToPublishedAt":"2021-03-06T20:48:22.718Z","devToViewsCount":565,"title":"TL;DR of Why React is Not Reactive","published":true,"description":"A recap of my first ever conference talk","tags":"React, Speaking, Summary","slug":"ReactRally","canonical_url":"https://www.swyx.io/ReactRally","cover_image":"https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/110220121-9f0aa500-7efe-11eb-8e7f-f2baddde1bbb.png"},"title":"TL;DR of Why React is Not Reactive","description":"A recap of my first ever conference talk ","category":"note","tags":["react","speaking","summary"],"image":"https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/110220121-9f0aa500-7efe-11eb-8e7f-f2baddde1bbb.png","canonical":"https://www.swyx.io/ReactRally","slug":"reactrally","date":"2021-03-06T20:48:22.718Z","readingTime":"2 minutes","ghMetadata":{"issueUrl":"https://github.com/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/296","commentsUrl":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/296/comments","title":"TL;DR of Why React is Not Reactive","created_at":"2022-01-18T00:11:21Z","updated_at":"2022-06-18T17:47:45Z","reactions":{"url":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/296/reactions","total_count":0,"+1":0,"-1":0,"laugh":0,"hooray":0,"confused":0,"heart":0,"rocket":0,"eyes":0}}},{"type":"blog","content":"\n*This post has been discussed at further length in podcasts with [GitHub's Office of the CTO](https://swyx.transistor.fm/episodes/weekend-drop-why-invest-in-developer-community-github-octo-speaker-series) and [Orbit.Love](https://swyx.transistor.fm/episodes/weekend-drop-marketing-to-developers-learnin-in-public-and-communities-as-marketplaces-with-patrick-woods-on-the-developer-love-podcast).*\n\nThere's a big shift going on in how developer tools companies approach their userbase. In the past week alone, I've had 3 chats with startups that all concluded with some version of:\n\n> \"By the way, we're really looking to ramp up our community effort right now. If you can think of anyone who can help us build a developer community, can you send them my way?\"\n\nOne week, three pings. If this isn't a big trend already, it's at least worth writing about (per [my Three Strikes rule](https://www.swyx.io/three-strikes/)). **Who builds developer communities, why are companies investing in them, and *why now*?**\n\n![Developer Journey](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/109877182-a71fd600-7cad-11eb-9c9e-48a8c79668ad.png)\n\n## Who's Job Is It Anyway?\n\n \n\nDevelopers have had a long history of spontaneous community formation dating back to the IRC and BBSes of yore. (*Misery loves company?*) There is still a strong ethos of self organized community in modern dev culture, but the vast majority of this lies on the shoulders of a small group of under-funded volunteers.\n\nBut in the last couple decades, company-centric communities, where [**the community is almost the entire competitive moat**](https://hbr.org/2020/01/when-community-becomes-your-competitive-advantage) of the company, have become a central part of developer life: \n\n- **StackOverflow** serves [11m visits a day](https://stackexchange.com/sites?view=list#traffic) with community contributed Q&A's and sells ads and knowledge base software on the side.\n- **GitHub** builds developer collaboration software, but at its core is a [56m-developer](https://octoverse.github.com/) social network atop Git.\n- **Hacker News** (serving at least [4m a day](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16076041)) is a big part of Y Combinator's unfair advantage in getting both founder mindshare and hiring talent.\n\nYou would expect that this realization would spawn a dedicated discipline to prioritize it, in the same way that [Startups = Growth](http://www.paulgraham.com/growth.html) justifies the need for a [Growth Hacker](https://andrewchen.co/how-to-be-a-growth-hacker-an-airbnbcraigslist-case-study/) at every company serious about growth.\n\nBut as far as I can tell, it hasn't happened.\n\nSure, companies do hire community managers to groom their forums and post inoffensive memes (*j/k of course, good community managers do much more than this*). Some developer advocates may focus on community, but most developer evangelists create content and do outreach to other communities, to \"meet developers where they are\". Marketing folks might run the company mailing list, host webinars, or organize conferences, all mini-communities in their own right. Everyone intuitively gets the importance of community, and does their best within given boundaries. \n\nBut who's job is it to define the overall community strategy, and has the resources to develop it as aggressively as engineering? If this describes someone in your management team, great. But often the community builders are at the bottom of the totem pole.\n\nThe Venn diagram of people who can scale code and people who can scale community is going to be [exceedingly valuable](https://www.heavybit.com/library/podcasts/jamstack-radio/ep-51-community-over-code-with-shawn-wang-of-netlify/). You don't strictly **need** to be technical to run community — Ben Popper, StackOverflow's Director of Content, is [still new to code](https://stackoverflow.blog/2019/10/22/ben-popper-is-the-worst-coder-in-the-world/) — but developers can tell when they aren't talking to a technical person and that limits the depth of conversation. A technical community builder will have instincts informed by direct personal experience, and be able to empathize with member needs and make targeted recommendations.\n\nThe job title probably won't stay \"community builder\", by the way. [Patrick McKenzie once observed](https://twitter.com/patio11/status/1299217439671025665?s=20) that the DevOps movement led to \"a once-in-a-lifetime upgrade in status, impact, authority, and career prospect\" for sysadmins. I think a similar rebrand is due. As community goes from a side activity to a core driver of product, support, and marketing ([great thoughts from Lisa Xu on this](https://blog.usejournal.com/the-rise-of-the-community-department-232d427de65f)), the status and pay change will need a new name for people to rally behind. \n\nWhat shall we call it? \"Community [Tummler](https://dangerouslyawesome.com/2014/04/community-management-tummling-a-tale-of-two-mindsets/)\"? \"Community Developer\"? Let me know if you have a better name. I've settled on \"Technical Community Builder\" for now, in the same way that Microsoft and Amazon have Technical Product Managers.\n\n## Why Invest in Community?\n\nTL;DR: **Traditional marketing and support isn't cutting it**.\n\nDevtools companies get that \"build it and they will come\" usually doesn't work. The sub-industries of technical marketing and developer relations are well developed enough now that there are [books](https://learn.samjulien.com/getting-started-in-developer-relations) and [conferences](https://www.devrelcon.net/) about it. We get that marketing can be just as important as product. (*Let's leave the topic of \"how much devrel and marketing overlap\" for a future post...*)\n\nBut a buyer's journey can start long before — and continue long after — their first contact and passage through the marketing funnel:\n\n- Marketing attribution in developer tools is kayfabe — we play at tracking Twitter clickthroughs and podcast direct response, but everyone in marketing knows you need at least [7-13 touches](https://www.socialmediatoday.com/content/seven-touches-basic-marketing-principle-action) before someone really considers you. As a developer I often wait out *an entire year* after hearing about something before even trying it out, just to see if it has staying power.\n- After buying into a solution, I still need help to be successful with the tool. Developer tools are ultimately creative tools, and sometimes the imagination needs a little inspiration. Setup hurdles need to be overcome. If I buy something and end up not using it, it's going into the do-not-use pile for a very, very long time before I ever give it another shot.\n\nThis adoption process needs to turn from a mostly-transactional, finite game, to a relationship-based infinite game. You might envision Community as carefully designing the broader environment around the traditional sales and marketing funnel:\n\n![Developer Journey](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/109989150-31fee000-7d43-11eb-9818-59daf4797147.png)\n\nOr you could **reject the funnel** altogether. To quote [Patrick Woods](https://twitter.com/patrickjwoods/):\n\n> \"Characterizing the developer journey as a linear funnel doesn’t really tell the whole story, as it’s essentially scoped to awareness and conversation — the journey is much more complex. I think onboarding to the community itself, retaining over time, and advocating for others to join, is a huge part of the journey... In this world, you want to understand how folks are engaging with the community *as well as* with the company/product, with product metrics (activation, adoption, etc) existing as second-order effects of the community. [The Orbit Model](https://github.com/orbit-love/orbit-model), versus the funnel, tries to tell this nonlinear and comprehensive story.\"\n\nWhen most developers make technical choices, you are just as likely to hear them praise the strength of the \"ecosystem\" (aka a community, with thriving third parties) as they do the core technical merits. In terms of [the Rogers curve](https://twitter.com/swyx/status/1360882870638665731), this is the kind of argument made by \"mainstream\" developers:\n\n![Community crossing the chasm](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/109990452-5e672c00-7d44-11eb-8a0b-159491db2d6b.png)\n\n**Community is how developer tools cross the chasm** from early adopters to the majority. Every devtools company looking to scale eventually has to figure this out, whether consciously or otherwise. \n\nOther arguments in bullet point form, but feel free to request elaborations:\n\n- **Retention**: Build product and they may not come, but **build community and they will stay.**\n- **Hiring**: Community can just as easily net you employees as it does users and customers.\n- **Marketing**: Community is highest-signal social proof/word of mouth you **cannot** buy.\n- **Moat**: Community is a \"feature\" that cannot be copied. By Hamilton Helmer's 7 Powers Framework (*[the strategy framework du jour](https://www.sachinrekhi.com/7-powers-hamilton-helmer)*), Community helps you gain Network Economies, increase Switching Costs and Corner one of the most precious resources on Earth: Developers!.\n- **Scaling**: Community is many-to-many, where Marketing/Devrel is one-to-many. The value of a community-focused user base scales by Metcalfe's law instead of Sarnoff's law. A thriving third-party *ecosystem* scales by Reed's law — even better!\n\n ![Reed's law](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/109877251-bd2d9680-7cad-11eb-8a18-4b4330745d6c.png)\n\n- **Risks**: But you also do not \"own\" your community - the best you can do is lead by example, encourage helpful behavior, and enforce clear codes of conduct. Community is \"user-generated content\", and that bears with it great responsibility. Poor handling can [backfire horrifically](https://www.fastcompany.com/90401254/ea-gets-a-guinness-world-record-for-the-most-downvoted-comment-in-reddit-history).\n- **Free Work?** Community members can answer questions to each other and develop integrations to help you grow beyond your limited resources. To avoid expecting members to \"do free work\", this effort must be reciprocated by careful stewardship.\n- **Lifespan**: One of the best measures of community success is when your users' relationship with you outlasts their current employment. **[Come for the software, stay for the community](https://hunterwalk.medium.com/coming-for-the-content-staying-for-the-community-started-with-video-games-or-maybe-religion-5083f3773a2)**. Help your users get jobs, help your customers hire your users, and you will have fans for life.\n- **Open Source**: Commercial Open Source companies must foster a viable community to be successful open source, rather than being de-facto \"source available\". In [Nadia Eghbal's terms](https://www.thepullrequest.com/p/nadia-eghbal), more Federations than Stadiums, but both are definitely preferable over Clubs and Toys.\n- **Product Insights**: Speaking to users helps you build things people want, but often these conversations are done by outreach (user survey or feedback session) rather than observation (*in situ,* natural environment). Community is where your deepest and most authentic user insights will originate.\n\nAll in all — **a devtools company that prioritizes an engaged and inclusive developer community will run circles around one that doesn't.**\n\nThere are multiple ways to do this well, but I am particularly fond of community that \"serves a bigger purpose\". A community that is strictly centered around a company (eg Dreamforce → Salesforce) is less appealing than one with room for multiple players (eg No Code → Webflow, Jamstack → Netlify), at least while you aren't yet a decacorn. Every great community is a great marketplace (*tbc in a future post...*), and every marketplace is a kind of platform, and every platform must respect [the Bill Gates Line](https://twitter.com/swyx/status/1360729115372920832) with its participants.\n\n## Why Now?\n\nDev Community has felt fringe for as long as I've been involved. I always felt like a bit of a middle schooler talking about [my /r/reactjs work](https://www.swyx.io/moderating-rreactjs/) to companies, like \"that's nice dear, but let's talk about more serious work now\". I have friends running other popular Discords and forums that feel the same way.\n\nThat's why this shift is meaningful. This thing we used to do for fun, in service to our community, is suddenly a legitimate and highly in-demand skillset.\n\nI don't know why community building is trendy again (there have been [several](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/village-globals/hacking-communities-with-KoTc4_tQfZw/) [waves](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/village-globals/greg-isenberg-on-the-world-UPO9NJc25qz/)), but D'Arcy Coolican at a16z nailed the current wave with his thesis on [the Power of Social+](https://a16z.com/2020/12/07/social-strikes-back-social-plus/). Greylock is promoting the virtues of [Community-Led Growth](https://corinneriley.medium.com/community-led-growth-the-product-led-growth-expansion-pack-b474ab9a7940) and investing aggressively. [Patrick Woods also observes](https://softwareengineeringdaily.com/2021/03/25/developer-community-management-with-patrick-woods-and-josh-dzielak/) that VCs are pressuring founders to “have a community strategy” from the outset, and noticing that devrel hires are moving earlier from employee #20 to employee #5.\n\nClearly the pandemic forcing everyone online was a forcing function: \n\n- People were displaced from their existing IRL communities and needed a replacement\n- Geography doesn't matter for online community (*modulo timezones*)\n- Online communities are far more discoverable (searchable, join with a URL) and scalable (no room limits on community!)\n\nCommunity-building software has also gotten a lot better:\n\n- Realtime: Twitch and [Discord](https://www.swyx.io/slack-fumble/) and [Clubhouse](https://www.swyx.io/clubhouse-hate/)\n- Conferences: [Hopin](https://techcrunch.com/2020/11/10/hopin-raises-125m-for-its-online-events-platform-on-the-back-of-surging-growth/) and [Bevy](https://techcrunch.com/2020/05/19/bevy-series-b/)\n- Async: Circle ([where I am an investor](https://techcrunch.com/2021/02/16/the-creator-movement-is-entering-primetime-and-so-is-circle-with-a-fresh-4m/)), Forem (the creators of Dev.to), and Hashnode\n- Metrics: [Orbit.love](http://orbit.love) ([Martin Casado writeup here](https://a16z.com/2020/12/02/investing-in-orbit/)) helps quantify developer engagement ([Commsor](https://techcrunch.com/2021/02/20/chief-community-officer-is-the-new-cmo/) is less dev centric but noteworthy) and [Weavr](https://weavr.ai/) offers a \"Front for dev community\".\n- Aggregators: [Common Room](https://greylock.com/portfolio-news/networkedusers/)\n\nI also think the developer relations field has reached a level of maturity where companies are feeling the limits of one-to-many content creation and hiring [developer influencers](https://softwareengineeringdaily.com/2019/12/19/no-code-with-shawn-wang/), so they are exploring other ways to scale their community engagement as [an enablement role](https://www.swyx.io/enablement-vs-ownership).\n\n## Become a Technical Community Builder\n\nOne of the telltale signs that this field is rife with opportunity is how much cruft it lacks. There's no book or course or conference teaching you how to do this job. There's no set career path, and \"[Chief Community Officer](https://techcrunch.com/2021/02/20/chief-community-officer-is-the-new-cmo/)\" isn't really a thing. We don't even have a commonly-accepted name for this role! And we certainly lack role models and thought leaders and the rest of the paraphernalia that comes with a mature industry.\n\n- If that excites you, rather than intimidates you, [get in touch with me](https://twitter.com/swyx) and I'll send you to the exciting startups hiring for this role: [WorkOS](http://workos.com/), [Render](http://render.com/), [Begin](https://begin.com/), [Sourcegraph](https://about.sourcegraph.com/company/careers#marketing) and more. (If you're hiring: you can add yourself to [the technical-community-builders repo](https://github.com/sw-yx/technical-community-builders) here!)\n- If you're starting a company to help Technical Community Builders (or whatever we end up calling this), [you can browse my angel network here](https://github.com/sw-yx/devtools-angels/) for investment and advice.\n- If you're building a community, check Patrick's [tactical guide to kickstarting your community\n](https://orbit.love/blog/a-tactical-guide-to-kickstarting-your-community/)\n- If you just want to keep up on this space, you can come subscribe to [the DX Circle blog](https://codingcareer.circle.so/c/dx-blog/technical-community-builder-is-the-hottest-new-job-in-tech) where we will discuss Developer Communities, Developer Tools, Documentation, and everything else Developer Experience!\n\n*deep thanks to [Patrick Woods](https://twitter.com/patrickjwoods), [Uma Chingude](https://twitter.com/umanagineer?lang=en), [Gareth Dwyer](https://twitter.com/sixhobbits?lang=en), [Rob Ocel](https://twitter.com/robocell/status/1367222048754401280?s=20) and others for reviewing drafts of this post.* ","frontmatter":{"source":"devto","devToUrl":"https://dev.to/dx/technical-community-builder-is-the-hottest-new-job-in-tech-8cl","devToReactions":61,"devToReadingTime":10,"devToPublishedAt":"2021-03-04T16:03:47.938Z","devToViewsCount":733,"title":"Technical Community Builder is the Hottest New Job in Tech","published":true,"description":"What if the real product was the friends we made along the way?","tags":"DX, Community","slug":"community-builder","canonical_url":"https://codingcareer.circle.so/c/dx-blog/technical-community-builder-is-the-hottest-new-job-in-tech","cover_image":"https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/109992808-996a5f00-7d46-11eb-9078-fc10e97b4d87.png"},"title":"Technical Community Builder is the Hottest New Job in Tech","description":"What if the real product was the friends we made along the way? ","category":"note","tags":["dx","community"],"image":"https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/109992808-996a5f00-7d46-11eb-9078-fc10e97b4d87.png","canonical":"https://codingcareer.circle.so/c/dx-blog/technical-community-builder-is-the-hottest-new-job-in-tech","slug":"community-builder","date":"2021-03-04T16:03:47.938Z","readingTime":"10 minutes","ghMetadata":{"issueUrl":"https://github.com/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/297","commentsUrl":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/297/comments","title":"Technical Community Builder is the Hottest New Job in Tech","created_at":"2022-01-18T00:11:23Z","updated_at":"2022-06-18T17:47:46Z","reactions":{"url":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/297/reactions","total_count":1,"+1":0,"-1":0,"laugh":0,"hooray":0,"confused":0,"heart":0,"rocket":1,"eyes":0}}},{"type":"blog","content":"\nMuch is made of [the tradeoff between Quality and Consistency](https://www.swyx.io/quality-vs-consistency/). But have you ever wondered how Broadway musicals achieve their world renowned quality on launch day so consistently? They [workshop it](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workshop_production) first! \n\n{% youtube uPEVkOjtldE %}\n\nThe practice of workshopping on Broadway began with [A Chorus Line](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Chorus_Line#Production_history) in the 1970s and is now a staple part of the creative process. \n\nHamilton, the hit musical, spent [two years](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamilton_(musical)#Background) in workshop mode before graduating to Off-Broadway. \n\n[![the Hamilton cast in workshop mode at Vassar College](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DRVA1RQWsAAa6-U?format=jpg&name=large)](https://twitter.com/Lin_Manuel/status/942730985669644288/photo/1)\n\nExtensive changes to cast, book, and stage continued to be made over *another 6 months*, leading up to the full Broadway debut of the musical you know and love today.\n\nThe key element of the workshop is that you are only performing your work-in-progress material for a small audience. Everyone in the room is sworn to secrecy, and understands that everything is subject to change. They get to see something before everyone else, and in exchange, you get their feedback.\n\nYou see this pattern in a lot of other creative, high stakes pursuits. [Avengers Endgame made notable cuts](https://screenrant.com/avengers-endgame-katherine-langford-deleted-scene-response/) based on screen tests. [Dave Chapelle tests material](https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/tv/la-xpm-2013-mar-13-la-et-st-chappelle-returns-20130313-story.html) at the Comedy Cellar before doing new specials.\n\nYou can tier workshops for yourself. For example: \n\n- You write consistently every day, but don't publish everything.\n- You can return to your drafts a day later to see if it still makes sense or sparks joy.\n- The ones that make it through your self filter can be shared with a peer review group or mastermind ([join mine here](https://www.learninpublic.org/#buy)), before final publication.\n\nThis is how you build a system for quality, atop a baseline of consistency.\n\nEphemerality, privacy, and concision can be useful workshop boundaries. My most successful talk started life as a [tweet](https://twitter.com/swyx/status/1100809424963219456), then a [blogpost](https://www.netlify.com/blog/2019/03/11/deep-dive-how-do-react-hooks-really-work/), then a [workshop](https://twitter.com/danieljcafonso/status/1266099074421456902?s=20), before arriving at [the final performance](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJP1E-Y-xyo). In the same way, you can use group chats, meetups and Clubhouses to workshop ideas because **the whole point is that they are smaller**, semi-private venues — where you can still get feedback before anything is \"final\".\n\nA workshop creates a low-risk buffer for failure. **Consistency consistently goes in, Quality occasionally comes out**. \n\nBy definition, most of what the public sees is just the quality that makes it out. \n\nBut only you — and a small group of friends — will know the work that went on behind the scenes.","frontmatter":{"source":"devto","devToUrl":"https://dev.to/swyx/workshopping-1ec0","devToReactions":10,"devToReadingTime":2,"devToPublishedAt":"2021-03-04T02:32:13.052Z","devToViewsCount":168,"title":"Workshopping","published":true,"description":"Produce Consistency, Publish Quality by buffering.","tags":"Reflections, Blogging, Creation","slug":"workshopping","canonical_url":"https://www.swyx.io/workshopping","cover_image":"https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DRVA1RQWsAAa6-U?format=jpg&name=large"},"title":"Workshopping","description":"Produce Consistency, Publish Quality by buffering. ","category":"note","tags":["reflections","blogging","creation"],"image":"https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DRVA1RQWsAAa6-U?format=jpg&name=large","canonical":"https://www.swyx.io/workshopping","slug":"workshopping","date":"2021-03-04T02:32:13.052Z","readingTime":"2 minutes","ghMetadata":{"issueUrl":"https://github.com/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/298","commentsUrl":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/298/comments","title":"Workshopping","created_at":"2022-01-18T00:11:25Z","updated_at":"2022-06-18T17:47:46Z","reactions":{"url":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/298/reactions","total_count":0,"+1":0,"-1":0,"laugh":0,"hooray":0,"confused":0,"heart":0,"rocket":0,"eyes":0}}},{"title":"Talking Svelte on Purrfect.Dev","slug":"svelte-purrfect","tags":["Temporal"],"venues":"Purrfect","date":"2021-03-04T00:00:00.000Z","url":"https://codingcat.dev/podcast/1-15-whats-up-with-svelte","description":"I joined Brittney and Alex to talk Svelte and SvelteKit","category":"podcast"},{"type":"blog","content":"\nI grew up in Singapore and moved to the US for college and work, so I have a good sense of what the average American thinks about Singapore. I think there is something they seriously under-appreciate: **Singapore Mixed Rice**. \n\nIts [Wikipedia entry](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_rice) is wholly unappetizing. Let's fix that.\n\n![Alt Text](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/198zbwawk6xizv37de74.jpg)\n\nThis dish costs 2.45 USD (GDP per capita is the same in both countries), isn't actively bad for you and is enjoyed by rich and poor alike. \n\nBy contrast, you cannot get a decent meal in US (coastal) cities for under $10 without resorting to fast food. This has knock-on effects on healthcare.\n\n**Mixed Rice is the great leveler of Singaporean society and nobody talks about it.**\n\nWhen Americans talk about Singapore, they often talk about three things: the [public housing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_housing_in_Singapore) system, [Michael Fay](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_P._Fay#Theft_and_vandalism_in_Singapore), and most of [the locations in *Crazy Rich Asians*](https://www.vogue.com/article/crazy-rich-asians-movie-singapore-travel-guide). If you're particularly wonky, you might think about [the civil service](https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2018/06/take-singapore-works-well.html), [healthcare](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/02/upshot/what-makes-singapores-health-care-so-cheap.html), and [education system](https://www.economist.com/leaders/2018/08/30/what-other-countries-can-learn-from-singapores-schools). \n\nAll great points, but if you've spent most of your adult life straddling both countries like I have, they can often feel like putting the idea of the country on a pedestal. Normal people don't think in terms of healthcare or housing policy. \n\nBut food? Everyone can get behind food. It's the one thing that unites literally every overseas Singaporean.\n\n## Mixed Rice as Choice Factory\n\nThe reason mixed rice is \"mixed\" is that all the food in a mixed rice store is **modular**. You start with rice (optional), and then pick whatever ingredients you want.\n\n![Alt Text](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/3kytw559k7x0t3se4wps.jpg)\n\nA standard meal might take 3-4 ingredients (e.g. 2 veg, 1-2 meats). So the 38 dishes in this picture generate **between 8,436 to 73,815 unique meals** to serve every possible preference. Try putting that on a menu?\n\nTrick question: **there is no menu**. You point at the thing you want and they put it on your plate. Think about this every time you sit down at a restaurant and stare at a long inscrutable list of names.\n\nMixed Rice is primarily served in [hawker centres](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawker_centre) and [food courts](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_court), which themselves are choice factories - a dining group can eat together but pick their meal according to individual preference. \n\n## Mixed Rice as Business Model\n\nThe low price of mixed rice surely owes a lot to the shared-real-estate economics of food courts, sometimes with explicit subsidy from the government, sometimes implicit with migrant workers. \n\nBut I think it is also due to the **high-volume** nature of the business model. Mixed rice stalls, in direct opposition to restaurants and even their neighboring hawker stalls, adopt a factory-line-and-warehousing model of production. All food is precooked, so there is zero wait time for prep. Customers line up with one worker, who then packs what they pick, and the pair move down the line right to the cashier. The worker then cycles back to start processing the next customer.\n\nOnce you start, your meal can be in your hands in 2-3 minutes. Usually 2-3 workers do this in parallel so there is a constant flow of customers down the line. \n\nThink about this the next time you sit down at a restaurant, order something, wait 15 minutes for to be served, and when you're done, waiting 15 minutes for the bill to come to you.\n\nWhile a normal hawker stall might handle 10-20 customers per meal time, a mixed rice stall can process 100-200. Amortizing the cost of workers over this higher volume, as well as not directly paying for seating, leads to lower unit prices. (*Though its worth noting that [rent is higher](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PHrKFm5b3pQ) and the number of mixed rice stalls is typically limited to 1 per food court*)\n\n## Mixed Rice as Inflation Hedge\n\nHaving the \"floor\" of your cost of living be so cheap has a lot of knock-on effects for your economy:\n\n- Lower-income earners can save more, or even pass on their low cost of living to other essential businesses (the median cost of a men's haircut in Singapore has plummeted from $10 to $2 in the last decade — THAT's a story I'd love to learn more about)\n- The poor don't make themselves so unhealthy that their healthcare costs explode\n- It costs about the same to eat out as it does to cook - if health permits, the average person can **eat out for every single meal** and save hours of life per day to do something more productive\n- That they can live so cheap and yet have *choice* and some agency in their lives has immeasurable quality of life benefit\n\nIn my memory, the inflation of mixed rice itself is negligible - I'd guesstimate 20% over the last 20 years. I have no proof and a limited understanding of how all the contributing factors came together to produce this result, but I have a strong suspicion that managing Cost of Food is the baseline to managing Cost of Living which is the baseline to keeping \"real\" inflation in check (Food is traditionally excluded from [Core Inflation](https://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/coreinflation.asp) measures, but of course it is inescapable for the average citizen).\n \n## Conclusion\n\nI hope to have expanded your notion of a key part of Singaporean living today. Americans who know Singapore food tend to gravitate to the delicacies - [Chilli crab](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chilli_crab), [Laksa](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laksa), [Chicken rice](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hainanese_chicken_rice). But you can't have those every day, especially if you want any meaningful amount of vegetables in your diet. \n\nI often look at American food courts and wonder how something that works so well for Singapore (cheap and not-horribly-unhealthy) can work so badly there. The closest analog America has are the Panda Express stores, which offers far less choice, fries everything beyond recognition, and charges you $10-15. I do hope someone figures out how to replicate this model someday.\n\n\n![Alt Text](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/ex3nbborg17ke40v6vjj.jpg)\n\n","frontmatter":{"source":"devto","devToUrl":"https://dev.to/swyx/love-letter-to-singapore-mixed-rice-1fep","devToReactions":11,"devToReadingTime":5,"devToPublishedAt":"2021-02-28T21:29:33.825Z","devToViewsCount":179,"title":"Love Letter to Singapore Mixed Rice","published":true,"description":"The most underrated part of Singapore that foreigners don't appreciate","tags":"Reflections, Singapore","slug":"mixed-rice","canonical_url":"https://www.swyx.io/mixed-rice","cover_image":"https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/198zbwawk6xizv37de74.jpg"},"title":"Love Letter to Singapore Mixed Rice","description":"The most underrated part of Singapore that foreigners don't appreciate ","category":"note","tags":["reflections","singapore"],"image":"https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/198zbwawk6xizv37de74.jpg","canonical":"https://www.swyx.io/mixed-rice","slug":"mixed-rice","date":"2021-02-28T21:29:33.825Z","readingTime":"5 minutes","ghMetadata":{"issueUrl":"https://github.com/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/299","commentsUrl":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/299/comments","title":"Love Letter to Singapore Mixed Rice","created_at":"2022-01-18T00:11:27Z","updated_at":"2022-06-18T17:47:46Z","reactions":{"url":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/299/reactions","total_count":0,"+1":0,"-1":0,"laugh":0,"hooray":0,"confused":0,"heart":0,"rocket":0,"eyes":0}}},{"title":"Third Age of Javascript","slug":"third-age-of-js","categories":["JavaScript"],"description":"In this stream, we chat to Shawn Swyx Wang, developer, author of the Coding Career Handbook, and learn-in-public advocate. Come along and ask him your questions!","instances":[{"venue":"JSWorld","date":"2021-02-25","tweet":"https://twitter.com/swyx/status/1364977488657412101","video":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8cQ7ukBbrbA"},{"venue":"JSNation Preview","date":"2021-05-20","url":"https://portal.gitnation.org/contents/the-third-age-of-javascript","video":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nan1hqQ90_4"},{"venue":"JSNation Live","date":"2021-06-09","description":"My first time as opening keynote speaker","video":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7sowEZQa3Tc&t=5740s"},{"venue":"Swyx YouTube","date":"2021-04-04","video":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UKDjW0uRZGo"},{"venue":"CityJS Conf","date":"2021-07-31","video":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oRnli8zrEBM"},{"venue":"Web Directions Global Scope","date":"2021-06-11","url":"https://webdirections.org/blog/web-directions-hover-21-session-spotlight-temporal-modern-dates-and-times-in-javascriptthe-third-age-of-javascript/"},{"venue":"Infobip Shift","date":"2021-10-13","tweets":["https://twitter.com/tlakomy/status/1435256423315877889?s=20","https://twitter.com/m4d_z/status/1435253892523171843?s=20","https://twitter.com/giltayar/status/1435258266729205762?s=20","https://twitter.com/CompuIves/status/1435258964242059268?s=20","https://twitter.com/kenny_io/status/1435313957099745282?s=20","https://twitter.com/jen_ayy_/status/1435568073700958210?s=21","https://twitter.com/kenny_io/status/1435639380991954946?s=21","https://twitter.com/giltayar/status/1435876021681758208?s=21","https://twitter.com/dabit3/status/1436932234263597058?s=21"],"video":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lU-zEoGqjc8"}],"category":"talk","date":"2021-02-25T00:00:00.000Z"},{"title":"Scrimba Livestream - Q&A","slug":"scrimba-livestream","categories":["Careers"],"description":"In this stream, we chat to Shawn Swyx Wang, developer, author of the Coding Career Handbook, and learn-in-public advocate. Come along and ask him your questions!","instances":[{"venue":"Scrimba","date":"2021-02-25","tweet":"https://twitter.com/scrimba/status/1364579629634363396?s=21","video":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t6A0jVDRymw"}],"category":"talk","date":"2021-02-25T00:00:00.000Z"},{"title":"Prerecording Conference Talks - 15 Tips to Make It Bigger and Better","slug":"prerecording-conf-talks-gdcfp-day","categories":["Careers"],"description":"MI prepared this talk for Global Diversity CFP Day 2021 and here is the high quality backup for posterity!","instances":[{"venue":"GDCFP Day","date":"2021-02-20","video":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tz1Fotm-hnk"}],"category":"talk","date":"2021-02-20T00:00:00.000Z"},{"type":"blog","content":"\nI have just received my copy of Stefan Baumgartner's [TypeScript in 50 Lessons](https://typescript-book.com/) in the mail. It is the first book for which I have served as technical reviewer!\n\n{% twitter 1361712610593316866 %}\n\nI was enormously tickled not just to see my name in the Acknowledgements, but also to learn that apparently technical reviewing is important enough to make it on to the official book credits!\n\n![Alt Text](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/wdbkd8oc4ck9se3qiwgf.jpg)\n\n\n*(For what its worth - I got a small stipend for reviewing, and zero dollars whether or not you buy the book - but I'm writing it up anyway because I thoroughly enjoyed both the book and the process of reviewing it!)*\n\n\n## Another TypeScript Book?\n\nIn general, one might wonder why the need for another TypeScript book. [Orta](http://twitter.com/orta) has led a total revamp of the docs since he joined the team, and now the official docs are much more readable and well organized than when I first started with them. \n\nSome folks might also recall that I did a well received [review of Boris Cherny's Programming TypeScript](https://twitter.com/swyx/status/1135525665971695617) in 2019. I even did a book report on it at a TS NYC meetup! (unrecorded, sadly)\n\nThis is something Stefan struggled with for months. When he originally pitched me on working with him, the brief was no more complicated than \"write a TS book for Smashing Magazine\". Fortunately, [Markus Seyfferth](https://twitter.com/indysigner)'s intuition shone through here and advised Stefan to move toward a \"quick lesson approach\" in the style of the enormously influential [CSS Secrets](https://twitter.com/csssecretsbook) (which [I have also reviewed](https://twitter.com/swyx/status/996094173081194498/photo/1)).\n\n**The truth is that there is no one right way to approach a topic, much less teach it.** You can read through a dry list of rules and documentation, but it is quite another proposition to read realistic examples and explore ways to problem solve through the eyes of an expert. This is what *50 Lessons* does for TypeScript, going from introductory (what is TypeScript really about?) to expert (generics, variadic tuples, `infer`, and more).\n\n[Stefan's blog](https://fettblog.eu/) speaks to his expertise and absolute mastery of the subject matter. His blogpost on [Low Maintenance Types](https://fettblog.eu/low-maintenance-types-typescript/), though new, is already an instant classic, and his post on [Why I don't use React.FC](https://fettblog.eu/typescript-react-why-i-dont-use-react-fc/) is often quoted in the React + TS commmunity. I can't do justice to the rest - just [check out his archive](https://fettblog.eu/articles/)!\n\nWhat you get with the book, over the blog, is worked examples well organized for both a gentle introduction (when read from end to end) and revisiting on demand (when need arises). Check the full list of 50 lessons on [the book's site](https://typescript-book.com/). Even if you think you already know TypeScript, here's likely *something* here that could probably know better.\n\n## Learning TypeScript in Public\n\nOne of the most unexpected outcomes of [learning in public](https://www.swyx.io/learn-in-public/) for a few years is that opportunities come **inbound** to you. The reason I stress the importance of **inbound** opportunities is two-fold: people find you based on your interests, and you get opportunities that you would never have considered yourself suitable for.\n\nThis is how I felt when Stefan first approached me in 2019:\n\n![Alt Text](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/vnbybdj8kn8jp0lf1l39.png)\n\nAt that point I had only been curating [the React TypeScript Cheatsheet](https://react-typescript-cheatsheet.netlify.app/) for less than a year. I had [never](https://twitter.com/swyx/status/1107814140792524801?s=20) served as a technical reviewer and almost turned it down because I didn't feel qualified. But I took up the challenge anyway. It turned out that I didn't have much to worry about - Stefan was the perfect collaborator, and came back with a full manuscript about a year later that was already very well fleshed out.\n\nNot having ever written a book before, I focused on double-checking the technical accuracy of the code samples and whether or not I could see the recommendations working in my former (React + TS Design System) team. I think it's also helpful not to know *too* much - having a beginner's mind is something valuable since that is the target audience of the book. If a sentence requires too much context to parse, it is probably worth breaking out or restating. In terms of the [3 Types of Editing](http://www.keypersonofinfluence.com/3-types-of-editing-and-which-is-right-for-you/), I counted myself lower down (copyediting and proofreading) rather than making more sweeping changes (structural editing).\n\nI think the way that Stefan has built out his TypeScript expertise over the years is also exemplary of the #LearnInPublic ethos. He put his hometown, Linz (Austria) on the map with the quality events he runs, from [ScriptConf](https://scriptconf.org/) to [TSConf EU](https://tsconf.eu/). His [blog](https://fettblog.eu/articles/) and [guides](https://fettblog.eu/guides/) map out years of public learning with an incredible amount of polish and thoughtfulness. I'm incredibly inspired by him and honored to work with him in some small capacity.\n\n\n> P.S.: if you do check out the book, look for a little cameo by yours truly on page 182!","frontmatter":{"source":"devto","devToUrl":"https://dev.to/swyx/reviewing-typescript-in-50-lessons-10m4","devToReactions":127,"devToReadingTime":4,"devToPublishedAt":"2021-02-18T15:48:57.560Z","devToViewsCount":8959,"title":"Reviewing \"TypeScript in 50 Lessons\"","published":true,"description":"My first time being a technical reviewer for a published book!","tags":"Reflections, TypeScript","slug":"ts-50-lessons","canonical_url":"https://www.swyx.io/ts-50-lessons","cover_image":"https://cloud.netlifyusercontent.com/assets/344dbf88-fdf9-42bb-adb4-46f01eedd629/6c3fd0d1-e97a-42a7-ab31-f9c3224c9869/20-typescript-book.jpg"},"title":"Reviewing \"TypeScript in 50 Lessons\"","description":"My first time being a technical reviewer for a published book! ","category":"note","tags":["reflections","typescript"],"image":"https://cloud.netlifyusercontent.com/assets/344dbf88-fdf9-42bb-adb4-46f01eedd629/6c3fd0d1-e97a-42a7-ab31-f9c3224c9869/20-typescript-book.jpg","canonical":"https://www.swyx.io/ts-50-lessons","slug":"ts-50-lessons","date":"2021-02-18T15:48:57.560Z","readingTime":"4 minutes","ghMetadata":{"issueUrl":"https://github.com/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/300","commentsUrl":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/300/comments","title":"Reviewing \"TypeScript in 50 Lessons\"","created_at":"2022-01-18T00:11:29Z","updated_at":"2022-06-18T17:47:46Z","reactions":{"url":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/300/reactions","total_count":0,"+1":0,"-1":0,"laugh":0,"hooray":0,"confused":0,"heart":0,"rocket":0,"eyes":0}}},{"title":"Clubhouse chat - Growing Digital Gardens w/ Maggie Appleton","slug":"digital-gardens-maggie","tags":["DigitalGardens"],"venues":"Swyx YouTube","date":"2021-02-13T00:00:00.000Z","url":"https://share.transistor.fm/s/41a6f89a","description":"Maggie and I hosted a Clubhouse chat on Digital Gardens and here is the recording! Later joined by Nikita Voloboev and other listeners.","category":"podcast"},{"type":"blog","content":"\nIf you go to `https://swyx.io`, you get my blog.\n\nIf you go to `https://is-this.netlify.app/https://swyx.io`, you get this:\n\n![Alt Text](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/i/7sds0o2n6ctdhctjfs15.jpeg)\n\nThis is a [little utility](https://twitter.com/swyx/status/1144365946804588545?s=20) I made that solved the very specific pain point of figuring out whether or not a potential customer was a Netlify user or not (or had configured another CDN atop Netlify).\n\nI originally did this as a browser extension, but the benefit of doing this as a microsite is I can now access it on my phone.\n\n## Prefixed URLs\n\nThis is a little behavior that I call **Prefixed URLs**, after [GitPod's name for it](https://www.gitpod.io/docs/getting-started/#prefixed-url). \n\nIt's a really nice way to **enhance the open web** - by creating a route that specifically accepts either any URL or some specific set of URLs, and then does something with that info to give you even more. To use this microsite, you just prepend the URL to whatever you're interested in.\n\nI was recently reminded of this when [the **Github1s** project](https://github.com/conwnet/github1s) went viral [on HN recently](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26083919). It lets you swap out any `github.com` repo for `github1s.com` and it opens up a VS Code file explorer for easier navigation (GitHub's default file navigation is slow and clunky).\n\n![github1s demo](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/conwnet/github1s/master/resources/images/demo.png)\n\n## Other Instances\n\nI've also seen this behavior in website ranking tools: https://www.similarweb.com/website/dev.to/ shows you the traffic of Dev.to:\n\n![Alt Text](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/i/dlh3972klyfbcmkwsot2.png)\n\nIn the \"we deploy your code\" industry it is also pretty common to use Prefixed URLs as \"Deploy Buttons\" like [Netlify](https://docs.netlify.com/site-deploys/create-deploys/#deploy-to-netlify-button) and [Codesandbox](https://codesandbox.io/docs/importing#import-from-github).\n\nPomber has a little Github history suffix for codesurfing: \n\n{% twitter 1092827841509707778 %}\n\nI think this is a wonderful little user experience and encourage more people to think of creative ways to consume URLs and extend the Open Web.\n","frontmatter":{"source":"devto","devToUrl":"https://dev.to/swyx/the-simple-magic-of-prefixed-urls-46l1","devToReactions":37,"devToReadingTime":2,"devToPublishedAt":"2021-02-12T19:51:57.000Z","devToViewsCount":1388,"title":"The Simple Magic of Prefixed URLs","published":true,"description":"You can enhance the web by making wrappers around it.","tags":"ideas","slug":"prefixed-urls","canonical_url":"https://www.swyx.io/prefixed-urls","cover_image":"https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/i/7sds0o2n6ctdhctjfs15.jpeg"},"title":"The Simple Magic of Prefixed URLs","description":"You can enhance the web by making wrappers around it. ","category":"note","tags":["ideas"],"image":"https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/i/7sds0o2n6ctdhctjfs15.jpeg","canonical":"https://www.swyx.io/prefixed-urls","slug":"prefixed-urls","date":"2021-02-12T19:51:57.000Z","readingTime":"2 minutes","ghMetadata":{"issueUrl":"https://github.com/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/301","commentsUrl":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/301/comments","title":"The Simple Magic of Prefixed URLs","created_at":"2022-01-18T00:12:03Z","updated_at":"2022-06-18T17:47:47Z","reactions":{"url":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/301/reactions","total_count":0,"+1":0,"-1":0,"laugh":0,"hooray":0,"confused":0,"heart":0,"rocket":0,"eyes":0}}},{"title":"How to Launch Your Product and Sustain Revenue - with Ryan Chenkie's Entrepreneurial Coders Podcast","slug":"ecoder-book","tags":["Creators"],"venues":"EntrepreneurialCoder","date":"2021-02-11T00:00:00.000Z","url":"https://share.transistor.fm/s/1cfa55cb","description":"Shawn Wang (aka swyx) chats about his experience writing and publishing his book, The Coding Career Handbook. He goes into detail about the challenges he encountered, how he learned from other people's launches, and how he was able to successfully launch the book and make it into something that provides meaningful revenue. He also talks about how to sustain revenue for your product after you launch.","category":"podcast"},{"type":"blog","content":"\nI've noticed that companies invest very differently in their respective job functions:\n\n- Stripe had no Product Manager for its first five years of existence ([source](https://twitter.com/shreyas/status/1301910476570329088?s=20))\n- GitHub serves 50 million developers, has 1,677 employees, and only 2 developer advocates (last I heard), whereas Netlify, serving [1.3 million](https://www.netlify.com/blog/2020/12/21/top-10-from-2020-netlify-features-announcements/) developers and <200 employees, has [six](https://www.netlify.com/blog/2021/01/06/developer-experience-at-netlify/).\n- Netflix famously has a [minimal expense and leave policy](https://hbr.org/2014/01/how-netflix-reinvented-hr), with each line manager presumably loosely responsible, whereas other companies may have entire departments dedicated to tracking and enforcing these things.\n\n*I wish I had more examples of surprising allocations for you but I don't right now - please [let me know](https://twitter.com/swyx) if you think of any!*\n\nThe implication here is that you don't have to have people holding the job title, in order to perform the function. \n\n- At the extreme, you have [Companies of One](https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/37570605), where one person (or a small group) literally does everything from beginning to end. Some people do very well at this because the reduced overhead makes for faster/better decisionmaking. The developer equivalent of this is the fabled \"full stack\" engineer.\n- However, specialists can often do better than generalists can, at least through [comparative advantage](https://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/comparativeadvantage.asp), if not due to outright expertise and network.\n- Yet, there are drawbacks to specialization, too. At the extreme, a simple project might need signoff from 10 different stakeholders just to get started (I have been in this exact meeting). This always starts with good intent - why not get expert input? - but down that path lies TPS reports in octuplicate.\n\nI think the problem lies when we conflate **specialization** with **ownership**. \n\n## Ownership\n\nGiving experts ownership is a good idea - skin in the game is important for getting the best out of your people, and you want the most qualified people in on your team to take point on the things they are good at.\n\nBut, perhaps more often than commonly realized, this can have drawbacks. When one specialist person or team owns a domain, it can be very tempting for the rest of the company to defer completely to them. There are two primary downsides to **ownership roles**: \n\n- They have a natural chilling effect on ideas and opinions from people who might have valuable input.\n- They add an extra stakeholder in the decision chain, with their own priorities and political incentives.\n\nI'll confess that this comes out of some bitter personal experience; I've sometimes had good ideas slowed down or lost steam completely because I had to wait for the already overloaded domain owner to get to it, when I could have just done the thing myself, perhaps 50% as good, but 500% faster. Of course there are very good reasons to stick to the process anyway — expertise matters, mistakes can be catastrophic (particularly where security, public relations and the law are concerned), and my judgment can just outright be wrong.\n\n## Enablement\n\nI think the alternative is to **separate specialization *from* ownership**: hire a dedicated team of experts who are not directly responsible for producing results, but whose job is to remove all barriers for the rest of the company to do what they do. At larger companies this might be called a [Center of Excellence](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Center_of_excellence), at modern startups this could be viewed as \"Internal tooling and Infrastructure\".\n\nConsider that HR departments don't actually do the hiring for individual teams. Instead, most companies have individual line managers become hiring managers, who basically have the final say. Instead of **owning** hiring, HR departments **enable** hiring managers to do hiring *as part of their jobs*, by building infrastructure for as much of the job as possible - buying ATS software, determining benefits, sourcing candidates, organizing onboarding, and so on.\n\n## Ownership to Enablement\n\nWonderful things can happen when you **turn ownership roles into enablement roles**.\n\n**Documentation**. Many developer tools companies have technical writers. The tendency is to have them write all docs and make all decisions on structure, language, voice and tone, pedagogy, and so on. However, they may not have full empathy with the target audience, because they do very different jobs and move in very different circles. New product development can also be very fluid, which is extremely frustrating to overloaded technical writers who desire more structure. Some companies are therefore shifting the job to have every engineering team be responsible for the docs of the features they work on. The role of the docs team shifts towards **enabling** the rest of the company to create docs independently, with the docs team being responsible for documentation infrastructure and overall cross-cutting concerns.\n\n**Developer Relations**. People like hearing from Dev Advocates, but what works even better is hearing directly from engineers who worked on the features that they use. Instead of delivering talks and writing blogposts themselves, Dev Advocates can make it *easy* for the rest of the company to produce at their level, by offering office hours, sourcing and proposing speakers, and ghostwriting blogposts for those without the time or experience at doing the public facing parts. This also helps scale DevRel sublinearly as a function of the company's total number of users, which is necessary for the company bottom line.\n\n**Infrastructure teams**. Every dev can be pushing features, but there's always going to be someone on the team more than averagely interested in the dev tooling that everyone uses. Anecdotally, the ratio of Infra devs to other devs is between 1:30 and 1:50 in a company. This makes sense - if a dedicated resource can raise developer productivity by at least 2% (as measurable by any of [the Accelerate metrics](https://twitter.com/swyx/status/1341491268593991681?s=20)), someone should be in charge of it once you get big enough. [Jon Wong at Coursera](https://twitter.com/jnwng) and [Ryan Burgess at Netflix](https://twitter.com/burgessdryan/status/1346841514534707200?s=20) are notable examples that come to mind. An older more enterprise-y term for this would be establishing [Centers of Excellence](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Center_of_excellence) in a company.\n\nThis is further outside of my wheelhouse, but I believe that Data Science turning from an Ownership Role (\"pls run all the reports for me by Monday morning\") to an Enablement Role (\"help me run my own reports\") is a key enabler of trends towards data warehouses on the backend, and democratized visualization/interaction tools like Looker, Tableau, and Retool on the frontend.\n\n## Problems with Enablement Roles\n\nEven though I've spent the majority of this blogpost talking about the benefits of Enablement Roles, the takeaway isn't that I think *everything* should be an enablement role. There are some clear \"the buck stops here\" Ownership roles in a company. Legal should handle legal. Engineering should be the only group committing production code. And so on.\n\nI also think there are two interrelated problems with enablement roles that I haven't figured out yet: measurement and motivation. Because enablement is about helping *other people do the thing*, rather than doing it yourself, your results are naturally not entirely within your control. The extremes are clear: if a team is knocking it out of the park in the area you helped with, that's a Good Job. If nobody on the team thinks you've been helpful at all, that's probably (not necessarily) bad. But the humdrum in-betweens, where we realistically spend most of our time, are entirely unclear. People in enablement roles must be able to live with this ambiguity, and genuinely take pride in the messy business of helping people succeed in things which, by definition, are not their main responsibility and therefore care less about.\n\n## Related Reads\n\n\n- From me: [The difference between Ensemble and Committee Teams](https://www.swyx.io/ensembles-vs-committees/)\n- Ben Thompson: [the difference between functional and divisional companies](https://stratechery.com/2013/why-microsofts-reorganization-is-a-bad-idea/) with [part 2 here](https://stratechery.com/2013/the-uncanny-valley-of-a-functional-organization/)\n- [Team Topologies: Enabling Teams](https://teamtopologies.com/key-concepts)\n- [Adam Ahmed pointed out](https://twitter.com/typesthings/status/1359228307728789505?s=20) Haier, \"a Chinese company that is organized as 1000s of internal teams that can hire each other. Your assessment is done by your customer teams. Definitely cons to it, but interesting way to measure enablement.\" [HBR article](https://hbr.org/2018/11/the-end-of-bureaucracy source) [[Wayback machine archive](https://web.archive.org/web/20210209042727/https://hbr.org/2018/11/the-end-of-bureaucracy)]","frontmatter":{"source":"devto","devToUrl":"https://dev.to/swyx/enablement-vs-ownership-roles-3eok","devToReactions":21,"devToReadingTime":6,"devToPublishedAt":"2021-02-08T22:29:47.226Z","devToViewsCount":111,"title":"Enablement vs Ownership Roles","published":true,"description":"Two ways to approach responsibility in a company.","tags":"Reflections, Management, Ownership","slug":"enablement-vs-ownership","canonical_url":"https://www.swyx.io/enablement-vs-ownership"},"title":"Enablement vs Ownership Roles","description":"Two ways to approach responsibility in a company. ","category":"note","tags":["reflections","management","ownership"],"canonical":"https://www.swyx.io/enablement-vs-ownership","slug":"enablement-vs-ownership","date":"2021-02-08T22:29:47.226Z","readingTime":"6 minutes","ghMetadata":{"issueUrl":"https://github.com/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/302","commentsUrl":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/302/comments","title":"Enablement vs Ownership Roles","created_at":"2022-01-18T00:12:05Z","updated_at":"2022-06-18T17:47:47Z","reactions":{"url":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/302/reactions","total_count":0,"+1":0,"-1":0,"laugh":0,"hooray":0,"confused":0,"heart":0,"rocket":0,"eyes":0}}},{"title":"Build and deploy dynamic Jamstack apps with AWS Amplify","slug":"aws-amplify-2021","categories":["AWS"],"description":"Jamstack is a modern web development architecture built with JavaScript, APIs, and Markup. This new way of building websites and applications delivers performance, higher security, lower cost of scaling, and a better developer experience. In this session, you learn how to bring your Jamstack applications to life in record time when you develop and deploy with AWS Amplify. You also learn how to easily and quickly develop cloud-enabled applications with your choice of REST or GraphQL APIs, rapidly release new features, avoid downtime during application deployment, and handle the complexity of simultaneously updating the front end and backend of your applications.","instances":[{"venue":"AWS Reinvent","date":"2021-02-06","video":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nlifa0c-PFU"}],"category":"talk","date":"2021-02-06T00:00:00.000Z"},{"type":"blog","content":"\n*You can listen to [an audio version of this essay](https://share.transistor.fm/s/6719542d) and read [reactions on Twitter](https://twitter.com/search?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.swyx.io%2Fclubhouse-hate%2F&src=typed_query).*\n\nTrust me, I *tried* to make the Clubhouse bear case.\n\nThe original title of this post was \"Everything Clubhouse Did Right — and Why It Will Fail Anyway\". The exercise forced me to list the reasons why it wasn't worth $1 billion - why live conference calls are inferior to existing formats like podcasts and Discord. \n\nWhen I was done, I went for a walk to think about it. By the time I came back, I had done a complete 180. (Note - *this was even before I heard about the Elon event*)\n\nI *still* dislike the Clubhouse experience. I wouldn't recommend it to you. But all the reasons I dislike it are the same reasons it will work:\n\n- **Clubhouse is exclusive**. You have hoops to jump and gates to open every step of the way. It's iOS only. Invite only. Requires your phone number for no goddamn reason. And once you're through *all of that* you gain the privilege of being in the voiceless audience hoping senpai will notice your raised hand and puffed up bio.\n- **Clubhouse is ephemeral**. Conversations aren't recorded. Your work doesn't compound and isn't searchable. This is *horrible* for ROI on your time as a content creator.\n- **Clubhouse is live-only**. If all the convos are happening in Pacific Time and you live in Europe, tough luck. If you came in halfway and have no idea what was said, tough luck. The only way to be fully involved is to turn on mobile notifications and track scheduled chats. Causing more — not less — distraction and work for you.\n- **Clubhouse enhances existing privilege**. Because automated recommendations aren't possible, Clubhouse mostly relies on a Twitter-like follow graph. To gain a following you mostly already have to be famous off-platform or well-connected to people who will bring you up on stage (\"second-degree famous\"). Choosing a [Status as a Service](https://www.eugenewei.com/blog/2019/2/19/status-as-a-service) model (Twitter) over a [Sorting Hat](https://www.eugenewei.com/blog/2020/8/3/tiktok-and-the-sorting-hat) model (TikTok) sacrifices discovery for establishment.\n- **Clubhouse is a terrible listening experience**. There's no audience chat or polling. Obnoxious speakers can dominate the conversation. [Trolls](https://twitter.com/wongmjane/status/1355817942093496320?s=20) and [harassment](https://www.dailydot.com/unclick/tiffany-haddish-bullies-doctor-on-clubhouse-covid/) abound. You can't play at 2x or rewind an important part. Podcasts were trending towards better audio and editing, Clubhouse regresses to shitty phone mics with feedback and connection issues. Signal is scarce, noise is rampant.\n\nIn my original write up I listed the many better offerings in every dimension. Want to listen to interviews with great audio and show notes? Podcasts. Want ultrascalable livestreaming? Twitch. Want livestreamed audio with recording and submitted questions? [Capiche](https://twitter.com/N8Elliott/status/1355203379392176131?s=20). Want to do an audio webinar? Use Zoom with the camera off. Want voice with text chat? Discord. Just want a Clubhouse clone with less friction? [Twitter Spaces](https://twitter.com/TwitterSpaces).\n\nWhen I was done listing the alternatives, I knew I had made a mistake. They checked more boxes on a feature comparison basis. But social media doesn't work like that. I was trying to be logical in a *socio*-logical domain.\n\nI had conclusively *PROVED*, with my big brain and fancy words, how profoundly inferior Clubhouse was. No compounding creator should prefer it, and no self respecting listener should enjoy it, compared to alternatives.\n\nBut the majority of people don't work like that:\n\n- Some people are turned off by exclusivity and friction. But *most people* take it as social proof of something cool.\n- Some creators are turned off by ephemerality. But *more people* will start trying precisely because it's easy and doesn't matter. The Elon Musks and Vlad Tenevs of the world will be less guarded, despite clearly knowing anything they say will be recorded (EDIT: [a16z is even publishing these now](https://a16z-live.simplecast.com)), because *[the medium is the message](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_medium_is_the_message)*.\n- Some people are turned off by demands on their time. But *most people* leave mobile notifications on and the live nature of chats creates some of the most urgent notifications you'll get on your phone, second only to a call from your mother. The synchronicity creates an *event* — a clear Before and After where you can excitedly gossip and feel superior to people out of the loop. This is a rarity in an everything-async world.\n- Some people are turned off by stacked decks. But *most people* just want to follow celebrities and experts and aren't interested in the challenging, messy work of finding people on the way up.\n- Some people are turned off by the listening experience. But Clubhouse is [Good Enough](https://www.swyx.io/good-enough/), especially if content is created sooner and in bigger quantity than available anywhere else.\n\nClubhouse should've died [in July when the VC and Media abuse cases erupted](https://www.theverge.com/interface/2020/7/8/21316172/clubhouse-content-moderation-taylor-lorenz-harassment-abuse). Instead it came back stronger than ever, standing at [2 million weekly active users](https://web.archive.org/web/20210131175202/https://www.businessinsider.com/why-the-hype-about-1-billion-clubhouse-not-so-crazy-2021-1). **If any of these negatives mattered**, the app should have seen extreme churn. Instead, [Andrew Chen](https://a16z.com/2021/01/24/investing-in-clubhouse/), [Ryan Hoover](https://twitter.com/rrhoover/status/1353393250552270850), and [Sahil Lavingia](https://www.indiehackers.com/post/gumroad-is-switching-from-zoom-to-clubhouse-34e4b4e5e1) — who do this for a living and have insider knowledge of metrics — value it above $1 billion dollars, six months after it was [valued at $100 million](https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexkonrad/2020/05/15/andreessen-horowitz-wins-vc-sweepstakes-to-back-clubhouse-voice-app/?sh=5b8466d56f2a). \n\n**People. Aren't. Churning.** No matter how much you may hate the app — usage is going *up*. This is scary and worth taking note. Clubhouse is already showing signs of successful expansion in Asia (read: non-English Clubhouses). \n\nInstagram had 30 million MAUs when Facebook bought it for $1 billion. Whatsapp had 450m for $19 billion. By Whatsapp metrics, Clubhouse is wildly overvalued (lets say it has 10m MAU right now). But audio isn't text. [Alex Danco says](https://alexdanco.com/2019/10/17/the-audio-revolution/) that texting is a cold medium, while audio is the hottest medium of all. He was mildly wrong — podcasting is still kinda lukewarm — but ***live, ephemeral*** audio is so hot you will literally drop everything and stay up late and ignore your partner to go listen to Elon.\n\nWorse is better. The exact reasons you hate Clubhouse — the kind of thing that drives you to read an article like this to the end — are the exact same reasons it is going to win.\n\n---\n\n*if you're interested - here was [my initial negative conclusion](https://gist.github.com/sw-yx/d3e27a36eba965fcd4183d0575d34640).*\n\nOther takes:\n\n- https://latecheckout.substack.com/p/welcome-to-the-spontaneous-internet\n- ryan dawidjan https://paper.dropbox.com/doc/BBbGZjzVnRxzQx1yXXfAq","frontmatter":{"source":"devto","devToUrl":"https://dev.to/swyx/everything-you-hate-about-clubhouse-is-why-it-will-win-3lc2","devToReactions":27,"devToReadingTime":5,"devToPublishedAt":"2021-02-01T17:59:18.122Z","devToViewsCount":490,"title":"Everything You Hate About Clubhouse Is Why It Will Win","published":true,"description":"Understanding new social media is a *sociological* exercise, not a logical one.","tags":"Reflections, Product, Startups","slug":"clubhouse-hate","canonical_url":"https://www.swyx.io/clubhouse-hate"},"title":"Everything You Hate About Clubhouse Is Why It Will Win","description":"Understanding new social media is a *sociological* exercise, not a logical one. ","category":"note","tags":["reflections","product","startups"],"canonical":"https://www.swyx.io/clubhouse-hate","slug":"clubhouse-hate","date":"2021-02-01T17:59:18.122Z","readingTime":"5 minutes","ghMetadata":{"issueUrl":"https://github.com/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/303","commentsUrl":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/303/comments","title":"Everything You Hate About Clubhouse Is Why It Will Win","created_at":"2022-01-18T00:12:07Z","updated_at":"2022-06-18T17:47:47Z","reactions":{"url":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/303/reactions","total_count":0,"+1":0,"-1":0,"laugh":0,"hooray":0,"confused":0,"heart":0,"rocket":0,"eyes":0}}},{"type":"blog","content":"\n*[listen to me explain this in a podcast](https://share.transistor.fm/s/c10e417a)*\n\n## TL;DR\n\n- Errors are unrecoverable, Exceptions are routine. \n- Most languages (Java, PHP) build the distinction into the language. Yet others (Go) name them the other way round. Some languages (JavaScript, Python) treat them as synonyms. \n- No matter what way you name things, you should handle Errors and Exceptions separately in your code or bad things happen.\n\nBecause I started out in JS/Python and then went to Go, without touching Java, getting this distinction right took me a few hours of thinking and research. It's not self-evident!\n\n## Context\n\nIf you've ever `throw`n an error in a function *expecting* its invoker to `catch` it, **you're doing it wrong**.\n\n> Ok, I'll admit I'm just hamming up a mere opinion for a more eye-catching opening. But I do feel strongly about this so...\n\nI was recently reminded of this while going through the Go FAQ and being reminded that [Go does not have exceptions](https://golang.org/doc/faq#exceptions).\n\n*What?* If you've always coded in a language that has exceptions, this ought to jump out at you.\n\n**Go does not have `try` or `catch`.** Despite those language constructs existing for decades, Go chose to have [Defer, Panic, and Recover](https://blog.golang.org/defer-panic-and-recover) instead. By convention and design, Go encodes an extremely strong opinion that **errors should be returned, not thrown**.\n\n## But Why\n\nRelying on *exception* handling to handle *errors* either leads to convoluted code or unhandled errors.\n\nThis kind of code is common in JavaScript:\n\n```jsx\nfunction trySomethingRisky(str) {\n\t\tif (!isValid(str)) throw new Error('invalid string!')\n\t\treturn \"success!\"\n}\n\nfunction main() {\n\ttry {\n\t\treturn trySomethingRisky(prompt('enter valid name'))\n\t} catch (err) {\n\t\tif (err instanceof Error) {\n\t\t\t// handle exceptions\n\t\t} else {\n\t\t\t// handle errors\n\t\t}\n\t}\n}\n```\n\nIf you're thinking that you don't write this sort of code very often, you're probably not thinking through your failure modes enough. \n\n- JavaScript doesn't have a native way to indicate whether a function can throw, if you invoke it. So **you cannot lint against it** — you must either pay this cost earlier in manual code review or later in bug reports.\n- An innocent `fs.readFileSync` call can bring down a whole server ([or memory-leak descriptors](https://github.com/mcollina/make-promises-safe)) given the wrong string.\n- Promise calls without a `catch` in the browser will simply log silent errors (a terrible user experience).\n\nThe more function and module boundaries you cross, the more you need to think about defensively adding `try`/ `catch` and handling the gamut of errors that can happen, and the harder it is to trace where errors begin and where they are handled. \n\n> Aside - some authors like [this Redditor](https://www.reddit.com/r/golang/comments/9t7con/why_no_trycatch_in_golang_whats_the_theory_behind/e8ust3m/) and [Matt Warren](https://mattwarren.org/2016/12/20/Why-Exceptions-should-be-Exceptional/) make a performance driven argument for encouraging developers to not overuse exceptions. Exceptions involve a memory and compute intensive stack search. This matters at scale, but most of us will never run into this so I choose not to make a big deal out of it.\n\n## Errors vs Exceptions\n\nLet's attempt a definition:\n\n- **Exceptions are expected failures**, which we should recover from.\n- **Errors are unexpected failures**. By definition, we cannot recover elegantly from *unexpected* failures.\n\nYou might notice the ironic inversion - it is *errors* that are \"exceptional\", while *exceptions* are routine. This was very confusing to your humble author.\n\nThis is no doubt due to the fact that [JavaScript](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Guide/Control_flow_and_error_handling#exception_handling_statements), [Python](https://docs.python.org/3/tutorial/errors.html), and other languages treat errors and exceptions as synonyms. So we throw `Error`s when we really mean to throw exceptions.\n\n[PHP](https://www.guru99.com/error-handling-and-exceptions.html) and [Java](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/5813614/what-is-difference-between-errors-and-exceptions) seem to have this difference baked into the language. \n\nTo make things extra confusing, Go uses `error` where other languages would call exceptions, and relies on `panic` to \"throw\" what other languages would call errors. \n\n> Notes: Chris Krycho observes that you can use Rust, F#, and Elm's `Result` in a similar way, and Haskell's `Either`.\n\n## Exception Handling vs Error Checking\n\nThe realization that we need different paradigms for handling errors and exceptions is of course not new. [Wikipedia's entry on Exception Handling](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exception_handling#Criticism) quotes Tony Hoare ([creator of QuickSort, CSP and the null reference](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Hoare)) saying that exception handling is \"**dangerous. Do not allow this language in its present state to be used in applications where reliability is critical.**\"\n\nThat was said in 1980, yet here we are 40 years later.\n\nThe alternative to exception handling is error checking. \n\n### Error Checking in Go\n\n> Note: Go seems to have a strong opinion that \"Errors\" are routine and Exceptions (not formally named, but used in `panic`) are Exceptional - in direct opposition to other languages. I have opted to use Go-native terminology - minimizing confusion locally at the cost of increasing global confusion.\n\n[Errors are values](https://blog.golang.org/errors-are-values) in Go — made to be passed, not thrown. Go's FAQ is worth quoting here:\n\n*We believe that coupling exceptions to a control structure, as in the try-catch-finally idiom, results in convoluted code. It also tends to encourage programmers to label too many ordinary errors, such as failing to open a file, as exceptional.*\n\nWhen something goes wrong, your default choice should be using multi-value returns to report errors:\n\n```go\ni, err := strconv.Atoi(\"42\")\nif err != nil {\n fmt.Printf(\"couldn't convert number: %v\\n\", err)\n return\n}\nfmt.Println(\"Converted integer:\", i)\n```\n\nThis pattern would be subject to the same weaknesses I outlined above, except for the fact that Go will refuse to compile if you 1) don't assign all returned values at the callsite or 2) don't use values that you assign. These two rules combined guide you to handle all errors explicitly near their origin.\n\nExceptions still have a place — but the language reminds you how rarely you should use it, by calling it `panic()`. You can still `recover()` and treat it like a backdoor `try`/ `catch` in Go, but you will get judgy looks from all Gophers.\n\n### Error Checking in Node\n\nJavaScript lacks the 2 features I mention above to force you to handle errors.\n\nTo work around this and gently nudge you, Node uses [error-first callbacks](https://nodejs.org/api/errors.html#errors_error_first_callbacks):\n\n```jsx\nconst fs = require('fs');\n\nfunction errorFirstCallback(err, data) {\n if (err) {\n console.error('There was an error', err);\n return;\n }\n console.log(data);\n}\n\nfs.readFile('/some/file/that/does-not-exist', errorFirstCallback);\nfs.readFile('/some/file/that/does-exist', errorFirstCallback);\n```\n\nThis pattern is idiomatic in most Node libraries, but the further we get away from Node, the more we tend to forget that there is an alternative to throwing errors, when writing libraries and app code.\n\nLastly, it is tempting to `promisify` those callbacks:\n\n```jsx\nconst util = require('util');\nconst fs = require('fs');\n\nconst stat = util.promisify(fs.stat); // i am using fs.stat here, but could be any error-first-callback userland function\n\n// assuming top-level await\ntry {\n\tconst stats = await stat('.')\n\t// do something with stats\n} catch (err) {\n\t// handle errors\n}\n```\n\nAnd we are right back where we started - being able to fling errors and exceptions arbitrarily high up and having to handle both in the same place.\n\n## Other Reads\n\n- [Dave Cheney on Go Errors and Exceptions](https://dave.cheney.net/2015/01/26/errors-and-exceptions-redux)\n- Haskell Wiki on [Errors vs Exceptions](https://wiki.haskell.org/Error_vs._Exception)\n- You can implement a `Result` or `Maybe` in JS: https://true-myth.js.org/\n\n*Thanks to [Charlie You](https://twitter.com/charlieyouai) and [Robin Cussol](https://twitter.com/robincsl?lang=en) for reviewing drafts of this post.*","frontmatter":{"source":"devto","devToUrl":"https://dev.to/swyx/errors-are-not-exceptional-1g0b","devToReactions":97,"devToReadingTime":5,"devToPublishedAt":"2021-01-29T15:18:16.000Z","devToViewsCount":2502,"title":"Errors Are Not Exceptions","published":true,"description":"Many language ecosystems use try/catch paradigms to represent both errors and exceptions. This is wrong.","tags":"languages, golang, javascript","slug":"errors-not-exceptions","canonical_url":"https://www.swyx.io/errors-not-exceptions"},"title":"Errors Are Not Exceptions","description":"Many language ecosystems use try/catch paradigms to represent both errors and exceptions. This is wrong. ","category":"note","tags":["languages","golang","javascript"],"canonical":"https://www.swyx.io/errors-not-exceptions","slug":"errors-not-exceptions","date":"2021-01-29T15:18:16.000Z","readingTime":"5 minutes","ghMetadata":{"issueUrl":"https://github.com/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/304","commentsUrl":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/304/comments","title":"Errors Are Not Exceptions","created_at":"2022-01-18T00:12:09Z","updated_at":"2022-06-18T17:47:47Z","reactions":{"url":"https://api.github.com/repos/sw-yx/swyxdotio/issues/304/reactions","total_count":3,"+1":0,"-1":0,"laugh":0,"hooray":0,"confused":0,"heart":3,"rocket":0,"eyes":0}}},{"type":"blog","content":"\r\n*You can [listen to the associated podcast with audio clips here](https://share.transistor.fm/s/bad711bd).*\r\n\r\nEvery creator wrestles with the tradeoff between quality and consistency. I think I've found the answer: Default to consistency, and cut scope. Once you have a fanbase, do a [strategy turn](https://www.swyx.io/strategy-turns) to quality.\r\n\r\n## Consistency\r\n\r\n> \"You just need three things to change your life. Number one, create useful content. Number two, post it once a week. And number three, do that for two years. And if you do that I can 100% guarantee that your life will change in ways that you can't imagine.\" - [Ali Abdaal](https://jayclouse.com/podcast/ali-abdaal/)\r\n\r\nThe benefit of pursuing **consistency** is that it forces output. Good or bad, when your deadline comes you have to ship the thing. Again, and again. And again.\r\n\r\n- A lot of people fail to cross the **[Ira Glass Taste Gap](https://jamesclear.com/ira-glass-failure)** and stop while they still suck.\r\n- **[But sucking at something is the first step towards being sorta good at it](https://medium.com/lets-dave-this/sucking-at-something-is-the-first-step-towards-being-sort-of-good-at-something-991361349e03)**.\r\n- Consistency means you keep going when no one - not even you - believes in you yet.\r\n- People will become your supporters and mentors just because you keep earnestly showing up.\r\n\r\nThe cost of pursuing **consistency** is psychology and lack of direction. It's hard to keep trying your best when your best goes straight into a black hole. Committing to an arbitrary schedule guarantees you *will* publish work you aren't proud of, and some people will be turned off by the hit-and-miss (mostly miss) of your work.\r\n\r\n## Quality\r\n\r\n> \"Doing a pretty good article every week, is far less likely to build a big career, than writing a great article sporadically, because the great article will stand out and people will forget [the rest].\" - [Tim Urban](https://jayclouse.com/podcast/tim-urban/)\r\n\r\nThe benefit of pursuing **quality** is that quality always stands out. \r\n\r\n- The competition for producing commodities in quantity is a fierce race to the bottom. But there is never enough quality in the world.\r\n- Quality is also non-linear: **[30% of people click the first Google result](https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-first-page-clicks/374516/#close),** yet only half that click the second. Winner takes most.\r\n- The Internet is a max() function — by definition, most people will only encounter your best work. Spiky greatness over consistent \"meh\".\r\n- Quality builds your brand: A single great achievement is an instant-credibility calling card you can keep using for years.\r\n\r\nThe cost of pursuing quality is **perfectionism**. The last mile is the most valuable, but it also sees diminishing returns. Nobody tells you when you've gone too far tweaking and adding, ruining a good thing long after you should have shipped it. Many end up not even shipping.\r\n\r\n## The Debate\r\n\r\nWe can put both together and observe \"**A Law of Conservation of Inconsistency**\".\r\n\r\n![Alt Text](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/i/q2oozgw72oyl4otfw2ai.png)\r\n\r\nEither consistent output and inconsistent quality, or consistent quality and inconsistent output. It's near impossible to have both.\r\n\r\n*Near* impossible.\r\n\r\n## Solution 1: Cut Scope\r\n\r\n> \"I have this internal quality bar that I just like cannot get myself to release anything that is not good... So the compromise that I've come to with myself is something has to get out but I don't care how--what I will compromise on is not the schedule and not the quality, but I will compromise on the scope.\" - [James Clear](https://jayclouse.com/podcast/james-clear/)\r\n\r\nWhat people forget when considering the quality-consistency dilemma is that there is a third axis - the scope of work. \r\n\r\nMaybe you can't produce a great essay every week. But perhaps you could scale it down and make one great tweet or newsletter. \r\n\r\nMake up for lack of skill by spending disproportionately more hours on a thing than people normally do for that format. Relative effort stands out and the constraint breeds creativity.\r\n\r\nSmaller scope encourages brevity. Society increasingly rewards those who can deliver a message in [2 minute pitches](https://news.crunchbase.com/news/a-quick-snapshot-of-y-combinators-demo-day-ii/), 30 second soundbites, [15 second videos](https://boosted.lightricks.com/tiktok-video-length-video-formatting-guide/), 280 characters, and [Two Words](https://www.swyx.io/two-words/).\r\n\r\n> I think the future of \"big content\"/\"10X content\" is, paradoxically, bite-sized content. - [Rand Fishkin](https://twitter.com/randfish/status/607674960123826176)\r\n\r\n![Alt Text](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/i/qnrxrczlxu1cpfyjg6bo.png)\r\n\r\n## Solution 2: Default to Consistency\r\n\r\nAs I conclude in [my podcast recap](https://share.transistor.fm/s/bad711bd), both Tim Urban (Mr. A+ Quality) and James Clear (Mr. Cut Scope) agree with Ali Abdaal (Mr. Consistency) that **you should start out with consistency**. Get your [10 bad talks](https://www.lastweekinaws.com/podcast/screaming-in-the-cloud/episode-39-give-10-bad-talks-all-in-a-row-and-then-get-fired/) out of the way. Master your tools. Figure out what \"good\" even means, to you.\r\n\r\n100 seems like a magic number for the \"consistency starter pack\". @visakanv says to \"[Make 100 Thing](https://twitter.com/visakanv/status/1344327942055161856)\" (sic). Ali Abdaal's \"one video a week for 2 years\" works out to 100 videos.\r\n\r\nBut even *after* you have achieved greatness, I think there is *still* an argument to continue being consistent: **We are LOUSY judges of our own work.**\r\n\r\nThis is known as [the Equal Odds rule](https://sarneckalab.blogspot.com/2017/12/simontons-equal-odds-rule.html) in academia — the unintuitive finding that the prior reputation of the author has no bearing on a paper's success. This is replicated in many other settings. Famous comedians bomb all the time. Writers of highly successful books and movies flop afterward. Einstein [changed our understanding of space, time, mass, and energy in a single year](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annus_Mirabilis_papers) and then spent the rest of his life [being wrong about quantum mechanics, gravitational lensing, and universe expansion](https://astronomy.com/news/2018/09/5-times-einstein-was-wrong).\r\n\r\nThe `max()` rule applies to all great thinkers of our time. Euler published 1500 articles. Picasso made 50,000 works of art. Beethoven made 722 compositions we know of. Van Gogh produced one painting every day for the last two years of his life. They're each only really known for a dozen things at best.\r\n\r\n![Alt Text](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/i/0w3yy9fmg2fa5ooho6ag.png)\r\n\r\n## Other Notes\r\n\r\n> Edit from the future: [**Workshop it**](https://www.swyx.io/workshopping)!\r\n\r\n**Use Competition**. Friendly competitive spirit brings out the best in people. We have no problem asking athletes to consistently be great at tournaments and sports leagues. The intellectual equivalent is conferences, hackathons, and mastermind groups.\r\n\r\n**Automate and Build Infrastructure**. After a period of consistent output, observe repetitive work and build systems to eliminate it. Make greatness easier.\r\n\r\n[**Strategy Turns**](https://www.swyx.io/strategy-turns). After you get off the ground, it can be useful to throttle back the consistency of your output (but not your input) and go for more quality. Use [Workshopping](https://www.swyx.io/workshopping/) as a buffer.\r\n\r\n**Enjoyment**. This may sound simplistic but make sure you pick something you enjoy. You approach creative work as an artist, not as a profit maximizing machine. You are more likely to stay in the game (Consistency) and have great taste (Quality) if you have a great love for the thing you do.\r\n\r\n## Related Reads\r\n\r\n- Julian Shapiro - [The Creativity Faucet](https://twitter.com/Julian/status/1327765347936522240/photo/1)\r\n- James Clear - [Creativity](https://jamesclear.com/creativity) - Create on a schedule, finish something, stop judging your own work, hold your self accountable\r\n- Steph Smith - [How to be Great? Just be Good, Repeatably](https://blog.stephsmith.io/how-to-be-great/)\r\n- Jason Lengstorf - [How to Build a Consistent Content Creation Habit](https://lengstorf.com/build-consistent-content-creation-habit/)\r\n- [Everything is a funnel](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5EuWCFCgy58), a classic video by Jack Conte. Main quote: \"Let your audience decide what's good\", just publish to fill the funnel.\r\n- Quality\r\n - Rand Fishkin - [How to Create 10x Content](https://moz.com/blog/how-to-create-10x-content)\r\n - Michael Simmons - [The Blockbuster Model](https://medium.com/accelerated-intelligence/the-1-mental-model-for-writers-who-want-to-write-high-quality-viral-content-43ecf0d4ec05)\r\n- Bilal Zaidi - [Thread](https://twitter.com/bzaidi/status/1365457931454529540?s=20) on what happens AFTER consistency/quality\r\n- I have more thoughts on using consistency to get good at writing [in Chapter 18 of my Coding Careers book](https://www.learninpublic.org/).\r\n","frontmatter":{"source":"devto","devToUrl":"https://dev.to/swyx/how-to-solve-the-quality-vs-consistency-debate-31he","devToReactions":25,"devToReadingTime":6,"devToPublishedAt":"2021-01-25T18:29:24.448Z","devToViewsCount":171,"title":"Solving the Quality vs Consistency Tradeoff","published":true,"description":"Every creator wrestles with the tradeoff between quality and consistency. The answer - Default to consistency, and cut scope.","tags":"Reflections","slug":"quality-vs-consistency","canonical_url":"https://www.swyx.io/quality-vs-consistency","cover_image":"https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/i/q2oozgw72oyl4otfw2ai.png"},"title":"Solving the Quality vs Consistency Tradeoff","description":"Every creator wrestles with the tradeoff between quality and consistency. The answer - Default to consistency, and cut scope. ","category":"note","tags":["reflections"],"image":"https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/i/q2oozgw72oyl4otfw2ai.png","canonical":"https://www.swyx.io/quality-vs-consistency","s</article></body></html>

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