VoV 078: Waxing Philosophical with Christoffer Noring

Sep 10, 2019

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Episode Summary In this episode of Views on Vue, the panel waxes philosophical while talking with Microsoft advocate Chris Noring. Chris is also the senior cloud developer at Microsoft and has experience in a variety of frameworks including, .NET, Angular, React and Vue. The first topic the panel discusses is Chris’s work with VuePress. Chris shares why he chose VuePress and what his experience has been with using it. Chris describes the absolute simplicity of using VuePress. Chris goes on to explain that though VuePress may not come with all the bells and whistles, it is easy to add the features he wants with his opensource GitHub repo. The panel takes a minute to discuss the VuePress blog plugin. Remembering a talk that Chris gave, the panel discusses imposter syndrome. The panel all shares the feelings of inadequacy they have all felt at some time or another. Chris explains how he overcame imposter syndrome and share tips for others to overcome it as well. The panel then discusses the interesting story of how Chris became a developer advocate. Chris shares the unfortunate stereotype that is often associated with developer advocates, that developer advocates aren’t real engineers, and why this stereotype is false. Ben Hong explains where this stereotype comes from. This leads the panel to discuss what developer advocates do. Chris shares some of his roles and responsibilities. Chris explains how developer advocates feel about their users and products. Chris explains what it's like to be an advocate for Microsoft, they are more desirous to solve problems than sell products. Chris shares some of the other positive changes Microsoft has made in the last few years, including its support of opensource. The panel wonders about Chris's journey with Vuex. Chris explains how he had used similar products in past frameworks to solve similar problems with state. The benefits of using Vuex in larger applications is explained by Chirs along with creating sub storage to organize his state. Chris creates amazing amounts of free content including blog articles, books, and talks, the panel asks him about his painting. Chris explains that a lot of the advocates he associates with are also artistic. The panel speculates as to why there are so many creative types in developer advocacy. Chris shares his philosophy about people and how they can become anything they set their minds too. The possibility of growth and improvement are discussed by the panel. Ben explains the importance of building habits. Chris shares a story from his university days, how he kept going and pushing himself which led to an eventual breakthrough. The panel discusses how grit will allow you to do things you never thought possible. Ari Clark shares an experience she had with the power of perseverance, explaining that you can’t skate by on pure talent forever. Chris relates this with his art, how someday he hopes to be as good as Bob Ross and how he will never give up. Chris explains his philosophy for writing, explaining things like you are the dumbest person in the room. He equates it to teaching a five-year-old who only knows Spanish while you are speaking English. Chris explains that he is also teaching his future self who more than likely will have forgotten all the details of this experience. The panel ends this episode of Views on Vue by asking Chris about his statement “The war is over if you want it to be”. Chris explains that he is referencing the need people feel to bash other frameworks on social media. Chris shares his view of framework agnostics; there are a lot of great frameworks, and that frameworks are tools. He shares his way of changing the tone of the conversation when he is being confronted about his work by asking questions. Panelists

Ben Hong
Elizabeth Fine
Ari Clark

Guest

Christoffer Noring