Potluck - Next vs Gatsby × Headless CMS × Vue.js × Is Ruby on Rails still good? × More!

It’s another potluck! In this episode, Scott and Wes answer your questions about Gastby vs everything, Next, Vue, Rails, working with agencies, CSS, and more!

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Kyle Prinsloo teaches you everything you need to know about freelancing, including how to quit your job, earn a side-income and start taking control of your life. Check it out at studywebdevelopment.com/freelaning. Use the coupon “SYNTAX” and get 25%.

1:39 - This may be a crazy question but I need to build a similar system to Level Up Tutorials where people can access content based on a monthly subscription. Any recommendations where to start with either Next.js or Gastby.js? How do I check to see if a person is up-to-date with payment?

4:14 - What's your favorite new tab page?

6:19: CSS vs SCSS vs Styled Components? When you are developing a React or Next.js application which styling method do you guys use and why? Which one is “best practice”, or a more efficient way of going about it?

11:14 - What do you think of lit-html?

15:25 - I’m relatively new to React, and primarily learning the create-react-app way. When do you go for the create-react-app approach when building an application, and when do you customize the config? I’m uncertain when it’s time to escape the ‘create-react-app’ approach. Also, when escaping it, which main configurations are you grabbing?

18:19 - Is there a reason hasty treat intros are 2.5x the length of normal episodes? Now that Overcast has intro skipping it’d be nice if the intros were uniform in length.

21:23 - I see Kyle Matthews coming out with a lot of input on how Gatsby can be used for web applications as well. After listening to several of your podcasts, where you talk about Gatsby, it doesn’t seem like you agree, and would go for Next.js instead. In your opinion is the development at Gatsby really heading in the direction of SSG and web application?

27:17 - I’ve hopped on the Vue train from jQuery land, and am loving both Nuxt and Gridsome. However, I keep hearing all these good things about Gatsby. Would you guys say that it is worth it to learn Gatsby (and the whole react ecosystem for that matter) over Gridsome? This is mostly for small-medium-ish side-project web sites that connect to a headless CMS.

30:04 - What are your thoughts on CSS pre-processors nowadays? With all the advance and new features from CSS, do you guys really think that it is still worthy to use it those?

32:11 - Scott, can you talk a bit about why you decided to switch back to Meteor after putting in all the effort to convert LUT to Next.js? I am about to start a new fullstack project and was considering Next until I heard you switched back. Maybe I should consider Meteor instead?

40:21 - I’ve recently started an internship at one of my favorite tech companies where I’m using EmberJS and Ruby on Rails. I love the team I’m on (the people are so nice) but I’m not super passionate about the tech stack. I’d much rather be using something like React and NodeJS/Express in my day-to-day coding. Do you think it’s worth staying in a position (if I were to try and get a full-time gig in this role) if you don’t like the tech stack, but really like the people?

40:51 - I’m thinking of doing a bootcamp that teaches Ruby on Rails for backend. I hear a lot that Ruby is a dying language, but at the same time, I know it’s used for a lot of big-timers, such as Airbnb and Shopify. Could you please explain the relevance that Ruby/Ruby on Rails will have in 2020 forward, as well as if it’s worth learning for newer web developers at this point?

45:15 - What is the deal with CMSs/headless CMSs? I hear you guys talk about them all the time (Sanity, Keystone, Prisma?) but I’m not sure what they are good for. To me, they just seem like a UI to my database, but isn’t that what my application is? It just seems like it would be easier to have my frontend talk to my backend talk to my database instead of learning how each CMS wants things to be done and programming for that? Am I missing the point?

48:11 - What does Svelte needs for each of you to use it instead of React in personal and future developments?

50:38 - I freelance on the side as well as have a 9-5. The other dev I work with mentioned he’d help if I ever needed/wanted help on a client project. What are your thoughts on doing freelance work with someone who you also work with at your job?

52:01 - My team is currently in the design phase for a rewrite of our biggest product. We are switching from perl backend (y i k e s) to node (yay) but for some reason, our tech lead decided on hapi for the node framework. I have spent a little time with hapi and it seems cool but I am not sure about its longevity when compared to more established frameworks like express. How do you feel about hapi and should I push for a different framework?

54:29 - I’m a lead dev that recently joined an agency for the first time. What 🔥tips do you have for livin’ and devin’ in that agency life? Especially around time management, time estimation and dealing with clients.

• Stripe
• Braintree
• Recurly
• Firefox
• lit-html
• Overcast
• @kylemathews
• Gatsby Build
• Vue.js
• Nuxt.js
• Gridsome
• postcss-preset-env
• Meteor
• Ember
• Ruby on Rails
• Personal Capital
• Airbnb
• Shopify
• Missive
• Sanity
• Keystone
• Prisma
• Svelte
• hapi
• koa
• Express
• Matt Stauffer's Blog

• Scott: Caffeine by Michael Pollan
• Wes: Matt Stauffer - Setting Up Your Webcam, Lights, and Audio for Remote Work, Podcasting, Videos, and Streaming

• Scott: New course on Framer Motion - Sign up for the year and save 25%!
• Wes: Beginner Javascript - Use the coupon code ‘Syntax’ for $10 off!

• Scott’s Instagram
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• Wes’ Instagram
• Wes’ Twitter
• Wes’ Facebook
• Scott’s Twitter
• Make sure to include @SyntaxFM in your tweets