In this episode Matt and Mike discuss asking for help. Even though it sounds simple, asking for help can be an anxiety-inducing activity because you don't want to bother your fellow co-workers, or be called out for not doing enough research if you ask on an online forum. There can also be hesitation to ask because you want to solve your problem yourself, but sometimes you're just way too stuck to go it alone.
In this episode Matt and Mike discuss dealing with large projects with rapidly approaching deadlines. We all know that managing your time and tasks appropriately can really help alleviate stress and concern over large projects, however, all that management takes time - time you don't always have. Rapidly approaching deadlines can force your hand into just diving straight into a large project with minimal (if any) task/project management - which can put a lot of pressure on you and your team. The duo discuss how they deal with this stress and how they can even push that deadline back a bit without raising too much alarm from a client.
In this episode, Matt and Mike sit down with Kilian Valkhof to discuss a browser that he made for developers called Polypane. Polypane lets you, the developer, test your website in various resolutions all at the same time - perfect for making responsive websites. But that is just scratching the surface, Polypane can help your website's accessibility, and offers a unique UI that's tailored for development over browsing. In addition to it's features, Polypane is a SaaS product so there's even some interesting business-oriented goodies inside this episode, as well.
In this episode Matt and Mike discuss some of the bad habits that many web developers develop over time. Habits including procrastination, Tutorial Hell, and overengineering. These, among others, can slow down and even stop a web dev project in it's tracks - impacting your growth as a developer and "stealing" precious projects from your portfolio. Luckily, there are ways to help mitigate and correct these bad habits into good ones.
In this episode, Matt and Mike have a special guest on the show - Monarch Wadia. Monarch is an advocate for new developers running online hackathons among other events in countries all over the world. He also runs his own software development firm out of Toronto, Canada.
In this episode Matt and Mike do something a little different, Matt prepared the whole episode with Mike knowing, dividing it up into smaller parts and then getting Mike's opinion on each part. The overall topic being how to support a lot of users at once using methods like documentation, phone calls, instant messaging, and more. Supporting users can be a real pain, but it's also a necessity, so it's important that you ensure your business is ready to scale from just supporting a few users, to having to use full on productivity and efficiency hacks to ensure that several (maybe even hundreds) of users are properly supported.
In this episode Matt and Mike sit down with long-time friend of show, David Lindahl, to discuss all the things he's been up to since his last appearance on the show. From photography, Twitter, freelancing, and being hired again David has been super busy in the last year. After catching up the group discuss being more than just a developer, discussing things like work-life balance, hobbies, and side hustles.
In this episode of the Web News, Matt and Mike discuss a UX tip that you can use on virtually any project. When you're in early testing of an app, or website, if you reach for something, and it isn’t there, treat that as if it’s broken. As you test with your family, friends, and colleagues you'll notice that they will instinctually reach for things, like a button, or gesture and when they do - nothing happens. While they can easily be overlooked, you absolutely should not let it slide. Instead, treat this missing functionality like a bug, treating it like an important issue that needs to be resolved (or at least discussed with your team).
In this episode, Matt and Mike discuss all the ins-and-outs of APIs including what they are, how they work, what they're used for, and more specifically - how to build them quickly using Strapi. Making your own API can easily get out of hand, as you go down the rabbit hole of functionality and usability, luckily Strapi can help you spin up APIs quickly and easily so you can get started straight away. Built on NodeJS, Strapi has free and paid options, so you can get started for free - and then switch on over to the paid version once you start scaling.
In this episode of the Web News, Matt and Mike discuss the topic that's been taking over the news lately and that is GameStop, BlackBerry, and AMC stock. Basically a war has broken out between short sellers (hedge funds) and the people over on /r/wallstreetbets over these stocks resulting in major losses for some, and incredible wins for others.
In this episode Matt and Mike discuss the art of becoming self-taught. When you want to learn something new you basically have two options, teach yourself, or go to a traditional school/course. While self-teaching sounds like it's the easier option, it's actually oftentimes found in both. Traditional courses can't get into the weeds on every single topic they need to teach you, and furthermore self-teaching is a skill that they usually want you to learn anyway. The duo discuss the differences between self-teaching and traditional courses, as well as some of the best methods to teach yourself the skills you want to know.
In this episode of the Web News, Matt and Mike discuss the value of time versus the value of money. Many people will put in $100 of effort in to save $10, and whilst there are some situations that call for that sort of imbalance of value, in general all that extra effort just isn't worth the time. Some people treat time like it's unlimited and that money is limited, whilst in fact time is limited, and money is unlimited (you can always get another job, or start another side hustle - you can't make yourself younger).
In this episode Matt and Mike discuss the eagerly anticipated topic of web bundlers with a specific focus on Webpack and Snowpack. While making websites with vanilla code can be great, sometimes you gotta call on a bunch of plugins and frameworks to put together something really special in a reasonable amount of time. When all that stuff has to work together web bundlers can make compiling a breeze. This episode features a tonne about web bundlers including what they are from the most basic of examples, through how to use them effectively in your projects.
In this episode of the Web News, Matt and Mike discuss a potential UX problem across the board. As UX increasingly makes things easier in tech, it makes very difficult tasks easy - and furthermore makes easy tasks even easier (or even completely automated). The result of this is a generation of people that grew up with tech, that seem to be "tech savvy" but in reality they're moreso just "familiar with tech" having no idea what's actually going on in the background - even at a high level. Is this a problem?
In this episode Matt and Mike discuss how to avoid being overwhelmed when you're already busy. Almost everyone has been there before - you have a full plate, and the phone calls just keep on rolling in. During these stressful times it's easy to become overwhelmed and break down which isn't good for you, or your work. Luckily the tips, tricks, and tactics discussed in this episode will have you powering through these difficult times.
In this episode of the Web News, Matt and Mike discuss something that's been cropping up on social media, and in the tech news recently - the WhatsApp policy changes. Due to the nature of the changes and of course the affiliation with Facebook, many of you are probably being told to switch to other apps, such as Signal. While Matt doesn't care about the situation, having used WhatsApp and Facebook for a number of years - Mike has done a small amount of research and has a different (yet very similar) perspective on the situation.
In this episode Matt and Mike discuss how to start a new side project, with a heavy emphasis on how Mike takes his side projects from concept through production including discussions on free versus paid tools, side projects versus side hustles, and much more. Then in the Weekly Growth Goal, Mike failed to reach his by around 2%, but Matt finished his successfully and will be moving on to yet another section of the new HATT website.
In this Web News, Matt and Mike discuss Matt's recent email detox. After several years of having consistent access to his work email, Matt finally took a week away by turning off his work device for the entire holiday season. While there were times of anxiety and desire to turn it back on, he never did. Find out out if it helped, or hurt by tuning in!
In this episode, Matt and Mike discuss the technologies that caught their eye in 2020 including things like TailwindCSS, Vue 3.0, Snowpack, and much more. Then the duo discuss their sort of personal/professional year-in-review, focusing on some of the defining moments of 2020.
