Chats with Kent C. Dodds

Landing your first developer job isn't easy. Companies don't want to take the risk of hiring a junior, they have no idea how competent you are. A traditional resume doesn't adequately prove your abilities.Why would they just take your word for it? In order to standout you need to show those hard-earned skills off! You need to publicly showcase your work. That doesn't just mean spinning up a fancy blog or linking your Github full of tutorial projects you followed along with. Tutorials are excellent for personal growth but they don't prove that you're capable of applying that knowledge elsewhere. It's all about proving your skills are valuable to a business. This doesn't mean that your site has to be boring though! Showcasing your practical skills might be the most important thing but you should still make your site your own. You are more than the sum of your skills and you are also communicating your interests and personality through your website and portfolioHomeworkSpend 30 minutes to assess your own portfolio. Figure out what it's communicating about you and ask yourself if aligns with what you want to communicate. Try to see if there is anything missing from it.ResourcesJosh Comeau: Building an Effective Dev Portfolio eBookMax Stoiber's Siteegghead.io's showcase of great portfoliosGuest: Joel HooksTwitter: @jhooksGitHub: @joelhooksWebsite: joelhooks.comHost: Kent C. DoddsWebsite: kentcdodds.comTwitter: @kentcdoddsGitHub: @kentcdoddsYouTube: Kent C. DoddsEpic React: epicreact.dev

Almost everything we experience in the world we experience through metaphor. Even when we talk about abstract things that don't have physical form, we talk about them in terms of directionality and bodies. Stock markets go up, our moods are low, and past years are behind us. So what makes this useful to us on the internet? Strong visual metaphor is really key for people understanding things. Capturing someone's attention is critical, and you want people to immediately understand what you're trying to tell them before you lose their attention.If communicating to your users more effectively is something you're interested in, in this episode, you'll also learn about Maggie's process for creating, illustrating, and effectively using visual metaphors on the web! HomeworkSpend 10 minutes brainstorming metaphors for a website that you want to build or something else that you're building right now.Guest: Maggie AppletonTwitter: @mappletonsWebsite: maggieappleton.comHost: Kent C. DoddsWebsite: kentcdodds.comTwitter: @kentcdoddsGitHub: @kentcdoddsYouTube: Kent C. DoddsEpic React: epicreact.dev

Kent's spent the last several months completely focused on rewriting his website, recording new episodes for Chats with Kent, and creating an all new podcast called the Call Kent Podcast.Michael Chan joins Kent to ask him about the motivation to rewrite kentcdodds.com with Remix. Kent explains what technology he used to create the unique experience on the site and why Gatsby falls short of the needs of most apps. Michael also asks about the new teams feature of kentcdodds.com and how it helps you get more out of the content.Kent also introduces the new Call Kent Podcast where people like you "call" in right in your browser and record a ~2 minute question or discussion topic. Then your recording and Kent's response is turned into a podcast episode. It's a fun new way to engage and participate in the greater KCD community.Lots of exciting stuff to unpack in this first episode of Season 4 of Chats with Kent!HomeworkStay CuriousCheckout remixGuest: Michael ChanTwitter: @chantasticWebsite: chan.devHost: Kent C. DoddsWebsite: kentcdodds.comTwitter: @kentcdoddsGitHub: @kentcdoddsYouTube: Kent C. DoddsEpic React: epicreact.dev

Tanner Linsley is the creator of react-table, react-charts, and react-query. Tanner also has a startup called nozzle.io where they track rankings in Google and do cool things around technical SEO.A lot of Tanner's libraries were born out of necessity at nozzle. We often reach for abstractions that were built to solve problems that we don't have and that ends up creating awkward problems for us. We wind up with poor performance or a bigger bundle size than we need, so having a custom made solution can be a good thing.Your UI state is not the same as your server state and they should be separate things. By keeping these types of state separated from each other you can simplify your app. Server state is different enough in structure, persistence strategy, consumption, and lifecycle to be managed in smarter systems that are configurable to an apps needs of data freshness.HomeworkTake inventory of your state. What is UI state and what is Server state?Resourcesreact-queryGuest: Tanner LinsleyTwitter: @tannerlinsleyGithub: @tannerlinsleyHost: Kent C. DoddsWebsite: kentcdodds.comTwitter: @kentcdoddsGitHub: @kentcdoddsYouTube: Kent C. DoddsEpic React: epicreact.dev

Serene Yew runs Pixeltree, a software consultancy that focuses on sourcing junior talent and providing them with the mentorship that they need so they can bridge the experience gap and get a job.What better way to incite change than to be that change? You can have a huge influence on someone by taking on a mentorship role. And, not only does mentorship benefit who you're mentoring, but it also benefits you. Serene finds that every single person that she's mentored has changed her in some way for the better. They all taught her something that she didn't even know she needed to learn.A good mentor is going to listen to you, understand who you are as a person. They're going to guide but, more importantly, they're going to listen. A mentor is compassionate, empathetic, and personally invested in their mentee's success. They're humble and they recognize that they also have more to learn in this ever-changing world. Mentors are to be the cheerleader in the mentee's corner to support them and maybe provide a network connection or even just a good book recommendation.HomeworkReach out to a local college and ask about mentorship programs or attend a meetup and find a mentee.Guest: Serene YewTwitter: @s0sereneGithub: @sereneHost: Kent C. DoddsWebsite: kentcdodds.comTwitter: @kentcdoddsGitHub: @kentcdoddsYouTube: Kent C. DoddsEpic React: epicreact.dev

Saron Yitbarek started a company called Code Newbie, which started as a Twitter community and grew into a couple of podcasts and a conference.Saron first became interested in technology after she read the Steve Jobs book, it was the first time she got introduced to technology in a way that she could relate to, where tech was talked about through the eyes of design, art, and storytelling. So, she started calling CEOs of startups until she got an internship, which led to a job. Saron wanted to get into development, though, so she quit her job, started to learn to code, and joined a code boot camp.Saron's path wasn't always financially secure. She realized that she needed to save and create a safety net. These days to help her budget, she uses a tool called You Need A Budget. The tool enables you to be more critical about where your money is going. Think of it as a digital envelope system.What if you wanted to get into tech but don't know where to start? Saron's one piece of advice for you is go look up your dream job. What is the dream job you have, the dream company you want to work for? Write down five options for yourself. If you could have any job right now at the best company you could think of, what are those jobs? Find those job postings. Put them in a spreadsheet. Figure out the keywords and what the required skills are for each job. See what each job has in common, and then that's your list, that's your curriculum. That's the stuff that you need to learn. Out of that list, pick one technology, one tool, one language that you recognize that has been repeated across these job postings and start learning that one thing.HomeworkStart a gratitude journal (write 5 things you're grateful for every day).Search for 5 dream jobs and figure out what they have in common and learn one of those things.ResourcesCodeNewbieSaron Yitbarek, Founder & CEO of CodeNewbie & Host of Command Line Heroes Podcast; Building A Supportive Community for People Learning to Code: Women In Tech New YorkYNABPunch Your Feelings In The Face (slides)An Antidote to DissatisfactionGuest: Saron YitbarekTwitter: @saronyitbarekWebsite: saron.ioLinkedIn: @saronyitbarekGitHub: @saronyHost: Kent C. DoddsWebsite: kentcdodds.comTwitter: @kentcdoddsGitHub: @kentcdoddsYoutube: Kent C. Dodds

Software development isn't limited to "nerds." During her time at Andreessen Horowitz, Preethi met thousands of entrepreneurs. What she realized was that software engineering is what these entrepreneurs use to change the world. They're able to code the future they believe in using software engineering.A lot of people were surprised that Preethi gave up a promising career in venture capital to become a developer. But, Preethi says that the greatest artists reinvented themselves often. There's something unique and special about the periods in our lives where we are working on improving ourselves. We kind of lose that after going through everyday life. And so we must continue to find new hobbies and interests that we enjoy and grow with.The world is driven by logic and what is objectively measurable is what ends up being valued. The hedge fund manager making millions a year is doing something objectively measurable while the artist isn't. But, beyond a certain point, money doesn't make you happier. You have to look out for your happiness. Your happiness is your incentive for choosing to pursue your passion over choosing the option that makes you more money.HomeworkGo back and think about dreams you had as a child and re-evaluate those dreams now.Guest: Preethi KasireddyTwitter: @iam_preethiGithub: @iam-peekayHost: Kent C. DoddsWebsite: kentcdodds.comTwitter: @kentcdoddsGitHub: @kentcdoddsYouTube: Kent C. DoddsEpic React: epicreact.dev

One of the things Michael loves about React is that it's a lot easier to make a black box of abstraction with iron-clad React components that don't leak.Something that concerns Michael deeply about any technology is when we put too much inside of it. We saw this pretty early on in React, where everyone was taking all manner of state and putting it into Redux. We have to think about the principle of co-location and the fact that the closer you put related things together, the easier it will be to maintain in the longterm.In React, we've got this excellent encapsulation model that allows us to do this thing for the first time. But, you have to be very strict about what you let in there. The encapsulation model is only as good as you are at encapsulating a single piece of information.HomeworkTake one of your small css-in-js components and use regular css to back it up.Guest: Michael ChanTwitter: @chantasticGithub: @chantasticHost: Kent C. DoddsWebsite: kentcdodds.comTwitter: @kentcdoddsGitHub: @kentcdoddsYouTube: Kent C. DoddsEpic React: epicreact.dev

It was around 2008-2010 when Michael's family's business went under due to the recession. From that point, Michael spent every spare second he had reading whatever he could. He'd be reading Ruby and JavaScript documentation while he pushed his son on the swing.In this episode, Michael talks about what it takes to break into the tech industry. He explains how interviews are a hackable skill and the importance of building relationships in the industry.HomeworkSit down for 5 minutes and think about what you really want to do with your life and figure out how you can sell that. Get one customer.ResourcesHow to get experience as a software engineerGuest: Michael ChanTwitter: @chantasticGithub: @chantasticHost: Kent C. DoddsWebsite: kentcdodds.comTwitter: @kentcdoddsGitHub: @kentcdoddsYouTube: Kent C. DoddsEpic React: epicreact.dev

Most applications on the backend and the front end get built as a monolith, but you could improve your developer experience and performance if you broke your applications out into microservices.The pros and cons are the same for monorepos and microservices. Microservices is a different paradigm. And so, there's a lot of training that goes involved for different people to understand the various deployment processes. The microservices system is slightly more complex in some ways, but on the pro side, you gain some performance benefits where you can scale up services by themselves.A part of the improved developer experience is you get a better context of what you're working on. So say you need to fix a bug in the e-mail service. You don't have to dig through a mountain of code to find it. It's in the e-mail service.HomeworkWatch this single-spa intro videoResourcessingle-spa intro videosingle-spaBuilding Microservices: Designing Fine-Grained SystemsGuest: Justin McMurdieTwitter: @justinmcmurdieGithub: @TheMcMurderHost: Kent C. DoddsWebsite: kentcdodds.comTwitter: @kentcdoddsGitHub: @kentcdoddsYouTube: Kent C. DoddsEpic React: epicreact.dev