VoV 079: Why Vue.js is the Best Framework Ever with Gwendolyn Faraday

Sep 17, 2019

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Episode Summary In this week’s episode of Views one Vue, the panel interviews Vue’s biggest fan, Gwendolyn Faraday. Gwen shares her story of getting into vue. How she was a little reluctant at first but ended up being so impressed with everything Vue has to offer. Gwen is a Vue educator and loves how easy it is to teach Vue, with its great docs and human-focused design. Gwen explains why she is such a big fan of Vue. It is easy to use. It is intuitive to use. The documentation is wonderfully written. She loves that Vuex and Vue Router are actual Vue products that work seamlessly with the framework, making a cohesive ecosystem. She declares that Vue is not just for beginners, it is a production-ready, battle-tested language with a human-driven design. The panel asks Gwen what makes learning and teaching Vue easier. Gwen explains that Redux is complex and hard to understand while Vuex is much simpler to understand. She tells the panel that Vue is much easier to learn because it has fewer complex concepts and fewer layers of abstraction. This makes it easier for new developers to get started coding sooner. Gwen considers some of the common problems she experiences while teaching programming languages, not just Vue. For Gwen it can be hard to go slow and hit each step, not skipping any small step or concept. Explaining, Gwen tells the panel it is hard to remember what it was like not to know anything or remembering what was hard to grasp at first. Vocabulary and programming jargon is another thing Gwen share that can be hard to teach. This inspires the panel to consider how often developers get drawn into their own world and language, not remembering that others might not understand what they are talking about. Chris Fritz, who has a background in education, wonders how Gwen got started teaching. Gwen explains that teaching is just a natural way for her to learn. When she wants to learn something she started meetups. Her meetups help her learn and grow. The panel considers that concept and thinks of their experiences learning through teaching. The panel brings up Gwen’s self-taught coding education. Ari Clark wonders how being self-taught affected her teaching abilities. Gwen considers this, then gives some of her thoughts on the different ways someone can learn to code. She gives a few recommendations for learning code and encourages everyone to figure out if they can or want to actually do the job before putting in too much time and resources into learning. Gwen, shy by nature, explains how she goes about getting to know people at meetups or in the community. She explains how she likes to give a talk as a way of introducing herself to everyone at once. The panel thinks this is a genius plan for shy people. They explain that people are often shy and awkward because their role is undefined. By speaking or running a meetup they are in control, they know what they are supposed to be doing and have a defined role. The next topic the panel discusses is Gwen’s meetups. She runs two meetups, the first is a group for beginners and intermediate. It has grown to over 1100 members. Also, she recently started a blockchain meet up. Gwen admits that she is no blockchain expert and loves that hosting this meetup she is pushed to learn. The panel is impressed that she admits that she is not an expert and consider how fearful people can be of admitting that they don’t know everything. The panel asks Gwen questions about running her meetups. She explains how it can be a struggle to find speakers. Though it is easier to find speakers for her beginners' group because people are always willing to help beginners. Blockchain being more niche has more of a study group feel, as the number of members is lower and they are all sort of learning together. The panel asks Gwen about her talk in Australia about why Vue is growing so fast. In her talk she describes Vue as the gold standard of the JavaScript world and that all other frameworks need to catch up. In her talk she points out her frustrations when using other frameworks and how Vue takes all the good elements from other frameworks. She admits she wanted to call her talk “Why Vue.js is the Best Framework Ever”. Confident Growth, the title of a podcast episode about Gwen is discussed. Gwen explains that that podcast episode was about her journey and the producers came up with the name Confident Growth after the interview. The panel then asks Gwen about imposter syndrome and the advice she would give for those who are struggling with it. Gwen explains that we all experience the same struggles and we need to support and encourage each other. Gwen has a great approach to things that make her uncomfortable and an addiction to learning. She explains she hates not knowing how to do something. The panel considers how Gwen’s homeschool background inspired this love of learning. Chris’s activist side comes out as he touches on his frustrations with how education works in this country. Gwen has a few things to say to those programmers who feel that Vue too simple and only for beginners. She gives many examples of how Vue can be used to build simple yet advanced apps. The panel considers the mindset that something that is simple or easy to use and understand can’t be a powerful tool. The episode ends with Gwen telling listeners to look for her at a few upcoming conferences around the world. She also has a book coming out about teaching yourself how to code. Panelists

Ben Hong
Chris Fritz
Ari Clark

Guest

Gwendolyn Faraday