Programming languages are dynamically typed or statically typed. In a dynamically typed language, the programmer does not need to declare if a variable is an integer, string, or other type. In a statically typed language, the developer must declare the type of the variable upfront, so that the compiler can take advantage of that information. Dynamically typed languages give a programmer flexibility and fast iteration speed. But they also introduce the possibility of errors that can be avoided by performing type checking. This is one of the reasons why TypeScript has risen in popularity, giving developers the option to add types to their JavaScript variables. Sorbet is a typechecker for Ruby. Sorbet allows for gradual typing of Ruby programs, which helps engineers avoid errors that might otherwise be caused by the dynamic type system. Dmitry Petrashko is an engineer at Stripe who helped build Sorbet. He has significant experience in compilers, having worked on Scala before his time at Stripe. Dmitry joins the show to discuss his work on Sorbet, and the motivation for adding type checking to Ruby. We’re looking for new show ideas, so if you have any interesting topics, please feel free to reach out via twitter or email us at  jeff@softwareengineeringdaily.com We realize right now humanity is going through a hard time with the Caronovirus pandemic, but we all have skills useful to fight this battle. Head over to codevid19.com to join the world’s largest pandemic hackathon! Sponsorship inquiries: sponsor@softwareengineeringdaily.com The post Sorbet: Typed Ruby with Dmitry Petrashko appeared first on Software Engineering Daily.

ReactJS developers have lots of options for building their applications, and those options are not easy to work through. State management, concurrency, networking, and testing all have elements of complexity and a wide range of available tools. Take a look at any specific area of JavaScript application development, and you can find highly varied opinions. Kent Dodds is a JavaScript teacher who focuses on React, JavaScript, and testing. In today’s episode, Kent provides best practices for building JavaScript applications, specifically React. He provides a great deal of advice on testing, which is unsurprising considering he owns TestingJavaScript.com. Kent is an excellent speaker who has taught thousands of people about JavaScript, so it was a pleasure to have him on the show. Kent is also speaking at Reactathon, a San Francisco JavaScript conference taking place March 30th and 31st in San Francisco. This week we will be interviewing speakers from Reactathon, and if you are interested in JavaScript and the React ecosystem then stay tuned, and if you hear something you like, you can check out the Reactathon conference in person. Sponsorship inquiries: sponsor@softwareengineeringdaily.com The post React Best Practices with Kent Dodds appeared first on Software Engineering Daily.

JavaScript fatigue. This phrase has been used to describe the confusion and exhaustion around the volume of different tools required to be productive as a JavaScript developer. Frameworks, package managers, typing systems, state management, GraphQL, and deployment systems–there are so many decisions to make. In addition to the present-day tooling choices, a JavaScript developer needs to watch the emerging developments in the ecosystem. ReactJS is evolving at a rapid clip, and newer primitives such as React Hooks and React Suspense allow developers to handle concurrency and networking more robustly. Tejas Kumar works with G2i, a company that connects React developers with organizations that are looking for high-quality engineers. His role at G2i is head of vetting, which requires him to assess engineers for their competency in JavaScript-related technologies. Tejas joins the show to discuss the modern stack of technologies that a React developer uses to build an application. Full disclosure: G2i, where Tejas works, is a sponsor of Software Engineering Daily. Tejas is also speaking at Reactathon, a San Francisco JavaScript conference taking place March 30th and 31st in San Francisco. This week we will be interviewing speakers from Reactathon, and if you are interested in JavaScript and the React ecosystem then stay tuned, and if you hear something you like, you can check out the Reactathon conference in person. Sponsorship inquiries: sponsor@softwareengineeringdaily.com The post React Stack with Tejas Kumar appeared first on Software Engineering Daily.

Full-stack JavaScript applications have been possible since the creation of NodeJS in 2009. Since then, the best practices for building and deploying these applications have steadily evolved with the technology.  ReactJS created consolidation around the view layer. The emergence of AWS Lambda created a new paradigm for backend execution. Serverless tools such as DynamoDB offer autoscaling abstractions. CDNs such as Cloudflare and Fastly can now do processing on the edge. Brian LeRoux is the founder of Begin.com, a hosting and deployment company built on serverless tools. He’s also the primary committer to Architect, a framework for defining applications to be deployed to serverless infrastructure. Brian joins the show to talk about his work in the JavaScript ecosystem and his vision for Begin.com. Brian is also speaking at Reactathon, a San Francisco JavaScript conference taking place March 30th and 31st in San Francisco. This week we will be interviewing speakers from Reactathon, and if you are interested in JavaScript and the React ecosystem then stay tuned, and if you hear something you like, you can check out the Reactathon conference in person. Sponsorship inquiries: sponsor@softwareengineeringdaily.com The post JavaScript Deployments with Brian LeRoux appeared first on Software Engineering Daily.

ReactJS began to standardize frontend web development around 2015. The core ideas around one-way data binding, JSX, and components caused many developers to embrace React with open arms. There has been a large number of educators that have emerged to help train developers wanting to learn React. A new developer learning React has numerous questions around frameworks, state management, rendering, and other best practices. In today’s episode, those questions are answered by Ryan Florence, a co-founder of React Training. React Training is a company devoted to helping developers learn React that trains large companies like Google and Netflix how to use React. Ryan has a strong understanding of how to be productive with React, and in today’s episode, he explains some of the fundamentals that commonly confuse new students of React. Ryan is also speaking at Reactathon, a San Francisco JavaScript conference taking place March 30th and 31st in San Francisco. This week we will be interviewing speakers from Reactathon, and if you are interested in JavaScript and the React ecosystem then stay tuned, and if you hear something you like, you can check out the Reactathon conference in person. Sponsorship inquiries: sponsor@softwareengineeringdaily.com The post React Fundamentals with Ryan Florence appeared first on Software Engineering Daily.

When ReactJS became popular, frontend web development became easier. But React is just a view layer. Developers who came to React expecting a full web development framework like Ruby on Rails or Django were required to put together a set of tools to satisfy that purpose. A full-stack JavaScript framework has numerous requirements. How does it scale? How does it handle server-side rendering versus client-side rendering? Should GraphQL be included by default? How should package management work? Guillermo Rauch is the creator of NextJS, a popular framework for building React applications. He is also the CEO of ZEIT, a cloud hosting company. Guillermo joins the show to discuss NextJS, and his vision for how the React ecosystem will evolve in the near future, as features such as React Suspense and Concurrent Mode impact the developer experience. Guillermo is also speaking at Reactathon, a San Francisco JavaScript conference taking place March 30th and 31st in San Francisco. This week we will be interviewing speakers from Reactathon, and if you are interested in JavaScript and the React ecosystem then stay tuned, and if you hear something you like, you can check out the Reactathon conference in person. Sponsorship inquiries: sponsor@softwareengineeringdaily.com The post NextJS with Guillermo Rauch appeared first on Software Engineering Daily.

Slack is a messaging application with millions of users. The desktop application is an Electron app, which is effectively a web browser dedicated to running Slack. This frontend is built with ReactJS and other JavaScript code, and the application is incredibly smooth and reliable, despite its complexity. When a user boots up Slack, the application needs to figure out what data to fetch and where to fetch it from. Companies that use Slack heavily have thousands of messages in their history, and Slack needs to determine which of those should be pulled into the client. There are profile images, and logos, and custom emojis, all of which are used to define the user’s custom workspace experience. Anuj Nair joined Slack in late 2017. In the years since he has been with the company, Anuj helped rewrite the Slack frontend client, including work on the bootup experience, the caching infrastructure, and the role of service workers. Anuj joins the show to discuss his work on the Slack frontend architecture and the canonical view layer problems that Slack faces. Sponsorship inquiries: sponsor@softwareengineeringdaily.com The post Slack Frontend Architecture with Anuj Nair appeared first on Software Engineering Daily.

The JavaScript ecosystem stretches across frontend, backend, and middleware. There are newer tools such as GraphQL, Gatsby, and WebAssembly. There are frameworks like React, Vue, and Angular. There is complex data handling with streams, caches, and TensorFlow.js. JavaScript is unlike any other ecosystem, because a single language can be used to construct every part of an application. Because JavaScript is used for such a broad spectrum of use cases, the amount of tooling available can be intimidating to someone new to the ecosystem. Kevin Ball is a host of JS Party, a podcast on The Changelog network. Kevin joins the show to give his perspective on the JavaScript ecosystem. We discussed ES Modules, the JAM Stack, and the growing number of tools, libraries, and workflows used by JavaScript developers. Sponsorship inquiries: sponsor@softwareengineeringdaily.com Announcements We are hiring a software engineer who can work across both mobile and web. This role will work on SoftwareDaily.com, our iOS app, and our Android application. We are looking for someone who learns very quickly and can produce high quality code at a fast pace. If you are interested in working with us, send an email to jeff@softwareengineeringdaily.com. If you are planning a hackathon, check out FindCollabs Hackathons. Whether you are running an internal hackathon for your company, or you are running an open hackathon so that users can try out your product, FindCollabs Hackathons are a tool for people to build projects and collaborate with each other. FindCollabs is a company I started to allow people to find collaborators for their software projects, and our new hackathon product allows you to organize your hackathon participants to make your hackathon as productive as possible. Check it out at FindCollabs.com. The post JS Party with Kevin Ball appeared first on Software Engineering Daily.

Java has been popular since the 90s, when it started to be used as a programming language for enterprises.  Today, Java is still widely deployed, but the infrastructure environment is dramatically different. Java is often deployed to containers in the cloud. If those containers can share resources, then those containers can share the same underlying Java infrastructure.  Java 13 is the most recent public release of Java. The new features in Java 13 reflect the changing demands of modern application developers. Georges Saab is an engineer with Oracle who has been working on Java for more than a decade. He joins the show to discuss how Java development patterns are changing, and how the language is evolving to accommodate those changes, including discussion of garbage collection and dynamic application class data sharing. Announcements We are hiring a content writer and also an operations lead. Both of these are part-time positions working closely with Jeff and Erika. If you are interested in working with us, send an email to jeff@softwareengineeringdaily.com. We will be at KubeCon San Diego 2019, and AWS re:Invent Las Vegas. We are planning a meetup at re:Invent on Wednesday December 4. The post Java 13 with Georges Saab appeared first on Software Engineering Daily.

Web applications are used on a wide variety of platforms.  On each of these platforms the web app needs to load properly and allow the user to navigate the website and interact with all of the user flows, such as sign-up, login, and the various read and write operations that make up the functionality of any website. It is difficult to ensure web application functionality across all platforms, because there are so many platforms. Different operating systems, different underlying hardware, different browsers, and different device form factors all create potential sources of suboptimal website functionality and performance. Testing web applications often involves the work of a manual quality assurance (QA) employee. The QA can simulate the procedures that a normal user would go through. This QA process ensures that the website is operating as expected. But the manual workflow can slow down software development. Gabriel-James Safar is a software engineer and the founder of Madumbo, which was acquired by Datadog. Madumbo was founded with the goal of making web application testing simpler by identifying errors in pages and enabling users to create test suites from recordings of user activity. This process simplifies and accelerates the testing process.  Gabriel-James joins the show to talk about his experience building Madumbo, and his perspective on the modern application testing process. Full disclosure: Datadog is a sponsor of Software Engineering Daily. Sponsorship inquiries: sponsor@softwareengineeringdaily.com Announcements We are hiring a content writer and also an operations lead. Both of these are part-time positions working closely with Jeff and Erika. If you are interested in working with us, send an email to jeff@softwareengineeringdaily.com. We will be at KubeCon San Diego 2019, and AWS re:Invent Las Vegas. We are planning a meetup at re:Invent on Wednesday December 4. The post Web Application Testing with Gabriel-James Safar appeared first on Software Engineering Daily.