Ember vs. React, Jamstack, and Holes in the Hiring Process with Chris Manson

Whiskey Web and Whatnot: Web Development, Neat

They say if it's not broken, don't fix it. But if it is broken...keep iterating? While not everyone may agree on how to solve the technical headaches that come with one language or another, developer and Empress Creator Chris Manson has a few ideas.

As more apps emerge, more problems inevitably appear. Chris has several non-negotiable best practices for keeping it simple and helping the developers who follow in his digital footsteps.

Also a member of Ember's core team, Chris has been working with the framework since December of 2011. After beginning his startup with Angular, Chris threw in the towel and pivoted to its simpler and more intuitive counterpart. Nevertheless, Ember is far from flawless and, as with most things, could always improve for the users who need it most.

In this episode, Robbie, Chuck, and Chris discuss the fatal flaws of several old and emerging frameworks, the breakthrough shifts in the Ember community, why comparing Ember to React isn't always a fair match-up, and holes in the developer hiring process.

Key Takeaways

• [00:32] - Whiskey review and a history of Glendalough.
• [14:14] - How Chris was introduced to Ember.
• [25:10] - Chris's thoughts on Husky.
• [29:41] - What Chris is working on now.
• [32:55] - Why Chris has a vendetta against ember-cli-addon-docs.
• [37:34] - What's changing in the Ember community.
• [54:28] - The complexities of hiring developers.
• [64:50] - The future of frameworks.
• [73:04] - Chris's problem with TypeScript.
• [77:18] - Chris's hobbies outside of developing.

Quotes

[26:42] - "This is one of the things that I don't like about repos or projects where you get to make 1,000 decisions because new people who don't know the decisions you've made, don't know the structure of your app, don't know your repo, go into your repo and go, 'this is too complicated', bounce, and don't contribute, and that's not ok for me." ~ Chris Manson [https://twitter.com/real_ate]

[28:49] - "The amount of times that we get people who are actual juniors bouncing against something that you've built and then you realize, 'oh actually, I did build that in a kind of complex way, I shouldn't have,' and then you internalize that, and then the next time it comes across you go, 'I could do this fancy and save 10 lines of code, or I can be verbose and simple.' Always pick verbose and simple." ~ Chris Manson [https://twitter.com/real_ate]

Links

• Glendalough Whiskey [https://us.glendaloughdistillery.com]
• Jamstack [https://jamstack.org]
• The Essential Scratch & Sniff Guide to Becoming a Whiskey Know-It-All: Know Your Booze Before You Choose [https://www.amazon.com/Essential-Scratch-Sniff-Becoming-Whiskey/dp/0544520602]
• Angular [https://angular.io]
• Ember.js [https://emberjs.com]
• Some Deprecations seem to side-step the deprecation workflow [https://github.com/emberjs/ember.js/issues/19753]
• Alex Matchneer [https://twitter.com/amatchneer]
• Ember Conf [https://emberconf.com]
• Husky [https://www.npmjs.com/package/husky]
• Ember Learning Core Team [https://emberjs.com/teams/]
• ember-cli-addon-docs [https://github.com/ember-learn/ember-cli-addon-docs]
• simplabs [https://simplabs.com]
• Jen Weber [https://twitter.com/jwwweber]
• Melanie Sumner [https://github.com/MelSumner]
• Empress [https://www.npmjs.com/package/empress]
• Embroider [https://github.com/embroider-build/embroider]

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