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AiA 146: 10 Ways to Lose a Developer with Bonnie Brennan and Keith Stewart

On today's episode of Adventures in Angular, we have panelists Ward Bell, Alyssa Nicoll, Joe Eames, and Charles Max Wood. We have special guests, Bonnie Brennan of ngHouston and Keith Stewart of CollabNet. The discussion ranges from the Most Common Reason for People to Leave to Mandatory Happy Hour that companies have! Stay tuned!

[00:01:05] Introduction to Bonnie Brennan and Keith Stewart

Bonnie is an Angular architect at Houston, Texas. She is the founder of ngHouston. She also runs Code Bridge Texas with her daughter. They do free programming workshops for girls. She’s going to be at a couple of conferences coming up. They’re going to AngularMix and FrontEnd Connect with Alyssa.

Keith, on the other hand, works for a company called CollabNet as a UI Tech Lead. He is working mostly on UI’s for DevOps-related products. He is also a frequent panelist on the ngHouston Meet up broadcast that Bonnie runs and a curator on ngDoc.io with Alyssa and Joe.

[00:03:20] – Most common reason for people to leave

If Bonnie has to narrow down, she thinks it’s the tech stack. Some companies have a lot of legacy code that needs to be maintained but at the same time, when you are a developer who spends a lot of time on emerging technologies, you want to be working on this new stuff that you’re learning.

While working on this course on how to find a better dev job, Charles surveyed people on Skype or the phone. They feel stuck and not moving ahead.

[00:10:50] – In the culture, if you’re not a performer, then, you’re not trying hard enough?

Joe thinks that we have this problem in this industry that if you are not going to be blogging and speaking at conferences, then, you just don’t belong. Ward also thinks that you don’t have to be a performer to contribute to a great development environment. But for Bonnie, being a performer is not exactly about getting up on stage. It really is about caring enough.

Alyssa tells about the gradient of the type of person. There’s a person like, “Okay, this is just a job for me but I still take pride in my work.” But if you’re in the mindset of “Hey, I have kids or I have a wife outside of this. But I’m still giving it my all while I’m here.” Then, it’s perfectly reasonable. Keith also tells about the two different types of people. The generalists, the folks who are on the bleeding-edge, they don’t necessarily master one of those, and the other folks who get really good at one particular thing that they’re working on.

Ward cites an instance where you’re in an enterprise and you have a lot of very important legacy systems that need a person who cares about the legacy stuff. You can’t have a company that has all people who have to be on the bleeding-edge all the time.

[00:18:55] – Type of developers that companies want and how to keep them

Ward mentions how professional growth is important. The opportunities for people to work on the leading technologies is not always something that every company can offer but they can sprinkle these opportunities here and there. It can be done but if it’s not, there are things that you can do with some of the legacy applications to make them more palatable to work on.

Charles suggests to companies to show the developers that you care, you are listening. It’s on the roadmap and you’re going to get there.

[00:22:55] – Is boss on your list of Ways to Lose a Developer?

Bonnie can’t think of the time that she has left because of her boss. But the company culture is an important thing because however, the upper management feels about culture, that’s going to trickle down.

One issue about Charles’ boss is that he is very controlling. Another issue is he was specifying the requirements for the application and he wasn’t very good at staying consistent with it. They wind up building one thing but gets angry with them because they hadn’t built what he wanted, even though it was exactly what he specified.

Bonnie also had a situation similar to Charles where the project requirements kept changing while she was writing the code. If you feel like you’re going to work to be frustrated again, it doesn’t matter what technology you’re using, it doesn’t matter how you like the rest of your co-workers, eventually, you’re going to burn out.

[00:27:00] – Not being paid enough

When you’re not making a whole lot of money, Bonnie thinks it can be a big deal but it’s not the biggest issue. For Keith, if he would be weighing two companies, he’ll also choose the company with the good tech stack instead of the company which pays a little higher. But Ward thinks that it is a privilege to be in an industry where even in the low-end of the salary rank, you tend to be pretty comfortable.

[00:29:55] – Effective ways to show your appreciation to a developer

Bonnie refers to an instance when the boss gives credit for a developer in a meeting on how he did a great job on a feature. And on the flipside, the worst kind of boss is the boss that says, “Look what I did.”

But Keith finds it a difficult question because it might be different for other people. Some people like to be called out in a meeting and say, “You did a good job.” But some folks would like that to be a little more behind the scenes. Or some folks might be looking for a bonus instead. So you might be able to read your people.

For Alyssa, she likes the boss who regularly checks in even if it’s not a pat on the back because it just shows that they care about the process. Ward speaks of the boss who asks your opinion on an important decision, technical or otherwise.

[00:37:40] – Recruitment

Keith never likes the recruitment process of companies which bring a lot of people in and give them coding exercises on a whiteboard. So they built a small application that’s similar to the application that the folks will actually be doing.

[00:41:05] – Remote vs. working in an office

Alyssa loves being remote. She mentions she has ADHD so she was distracted in an office setting. It’s important for her to set up her environment to be more productive. Bonnie also has been working remote for 3 years now. It used to be difficult to communicate but now, we can just use video call.

But Keith finds people more engaged in a meeting when it’s in person. An office space can add a lot of value to a team. Ward points out that you can also be distracted as well by working remote. In Google, they all work in the office. Even though they have open office plans, sitting right next to each other, they trust the people that they can do well in that environment. People put on headphones when they’re really focusing on something.

[00:53:20] – Mandatory happy hour

Companies which have a snack room, ping pong table, foosball can contribute to company culture and make it a much more attractive place for developers. But Alyssa gets scared a little bit when programmers go overboard and sometimes you’re not into it as much as they are.

Picks

Ward Bell

• Progressive Web Apps (PWA)
• Jake Archibald on PWA

Joe Eames

• Shimmer Lake
• Keith Stewart

Charles

• Angular Dev Summit
• Camelbak Eddy water bottle
• JAM XT Bluetooth speaker

Bonnie Brennan

• Pluralsight course on Angular Reactive Forms by Deborah Kurata
• Todd Motto’s Ultimate Angular JS
• Twitter @bonnster75
• Youtube ngHouston Angular Meetup

Keith Stewart

• Adam Laycock’s blog post: Building maintainable Angular 2 applications
• Rogue One
• Twitter @TheKeithStewart

MAS 016 Chris Anderson

In this episode we have a My Angular Story and our guest is Chris Anderson. Chris works at Microsoft, specifically on Azure Functions and WebJobs SDK. Hear how he got his start, how he has contributed to the community, as well as a bit about what it’s like being a Program Manager for Microsoft. Stay tuned!

How did you get into programming?

In College Chris was an aerospace engineer. His first taste of working with code was at an internship at Lockheed Martin. Most of his daily work was with spread sheets so he learned Visual Basic to help handle that. He found himself interested in writing code more so he took an intro in C summer course and then things snowballed. When he finished that semester, he talked to advisor about switching to Computer Science. Immediately landed into JavaScript. Chris talks about having a ‘clicking moment’ while in a topics class. A classmate was talking about NodeJS and so he tried it out and hasn’t stopped using it since.

What about programing appealed to you?

Chris says that programming made him have a sense of having superpowers. In aerospace he learned how planes worked and that was fun, but programming had an immediately feedback on what he was working on. He adds that it made sense in the way that programming is a universal toolset for no matter what field you’re in. Charles adds that dug into coding after working in tech support and needing it, then seeing how relevant and useful it was.

Have you worked with JavaScript before learning about Node?

Chris’ first real coding experience was with his internship. He taught himself JavaScript on the job and after a few months found himself really liking it. He felt like JavaScript felt more natural and expressive. Javascript empowered him to work on the client side and the server side and he felt empowered to do full stack.

What about Microsoft?

Microsoft’s hiring process for college graduates you apply the year you graduate and go through a handful of interviews. He got hired into a team working on databases, working in SQL server. He wanted to work in developer tools and learned how to use power shell and SQL works and how powerful it was. He started moving back and pushing NodeJS onto SQL. There was a driver for SQL purely in JavaScript called TDS and he would make pull requests and contributed to that. He talks about searching internally looking for other work and finding a mobile services team that needed a NodeJS person so he started there. Later he started WebJobs and then later Functions, as an effort to make NodeJS technology work with a .Net technology called Webjobs SDK. Functions exists because he wanted to add a NodeJS to a .Net product.

Did you find pushing NodeJS into a well developed language ecosystem risky?

Chris talks about helping push adoption of .Net and creating prototype ideas, and it sparking from that. His goal was to make customers more productive.

It sounds like you guys just have fun at work?

Chris talks about the team culture being fun at times. Sometimes as a developer you get buffered by Project Managers, but in the case developers spend a lot of time talking to customers. They are excited so they have loads of interactions, helping develop diverse ideas. Charles adds that the preconception to how the environment feels in Microsoft tends to be negative but from talking to people who work there, things seem to be more open than expected. Chris points to open source concepts that really makes working with Microsoft great.

What does a Program Manager do on a team?

Chris talks about how his job is to explore the issues and talk to customers and then prioritize how to make things better. He talks about doing whatever he can to make the product successful with the customers, including building a prototype of an idea, taking a sort of position similar to an entrepreneur. Charles adds that it’s refreshing to find that someone in the Program Manager also being technical sufficient and hands on. Chris talks about how teams are built naturally and pulled together with a group of people who love what they are doing.

Does the Azure Functions team use Azure Functions to make Azure Functions work?

Chris talks about not using Azure functions under the covers, for the most part it’s built on top of the app service technology stack like web apps and mobile apps. Things that power that is what powers the Azure functions, like Angular. A lot of the engineering pieces are on top of that. They do use Azure for various Microsoft internal things. All of the tests they build are functions to test functions.

How did you and your team come to use Angular?

Chris was working on the prototype for Azure Functions. Amed had experience with working on front end applications and he wanted to try out Angular 2 even though it was still in beta. He found that had the right amount of stuff out of the box. Additionally it had typescript which meshed well. They tend to pick things that people on the team know well and not as much as trying to stay tied into Microsoft supported systems. Chris talks about doing one or two major refactoring.

How much Angular have you worked on yourself?

Amed works the most on Angular, Chris’ job as Program Manager puts in him a place where his commits don’t go into production, but he will often write prototypes. He played around a lot with the Monaco editor and adding features for that. As far as outside of that, he has written a few tutorials for using Functions plus Angular as well as written his wedding website with Angular.

What other extracurricular projects have you worked on?

Chris talks about doing a lot of side projects for a while. One working with ExpressSocket.io. He also built a middleware project where you can write middleware into Functions. Plenty of little projects he puts on GitHub and never finish. Chris talks about wishing he could switch hats between being the Program Manager and a developer.

Is there anything in particular you feel like you’ve contributed to Angular?

Chris talks about improving by putting in loads of pull requests for tons of JavaScript libraries and a few NodeJS libraries. He would like to be more involved in the start of those processes. Chris says he hopes to maybe be involved in the next Node version update. He really likes the Node community.

Picks Chris

Mountain Dew Pitch Black
The Expanse Series on SciFi
Application Insights

Charles

Wheel of Time
Coolage
Dog Company
Data Dog

Links

Twitter
GitHub

AiA 145 Why I’m Still Betting on Angular with Shai Reznik

On today’s episode of Adventure in Angular, we have panelists Alyssa Nicoll, Joe Eames, along with Charles Max Wood. We have a special guest Shai Reznik from Hirez.io, a website and video web development course series that mixes information with a few laughs. Today we are figuring out why Shai is still betting on Angular. It’s a fun show, we hope you check it out!

Why are you still betting on Angular?

Shai has been getting this question a lot. He tells us about working on Angular courses for his website hires.io He has two courses out so far, first being a course on Angular basics, a second course on Why Angular? Shai suggests that picking a framework is essentially gambling. He also gave a talk “Why I’m betting my future on Angular 2,” focused on the non technical reasons that he is sticking with Angular. If you teach someone without experience about web development and ask them to pick a framework without guidance it’s a disservice. Once that person has gained experience, then they can choose on their own.

Shai’s Decision Method

At HiRez.io he had to pick a specific framework. Shai has been working on comparing different frameworks for years, including React and ViewJS. He adds that when you see talks or documentation on framework, you’re seeing a showcase of the best parts. It isn’t until you work with it that you find the quirks and issues. Part of what he did to learn the frameworks were to simulate real life scenarios. He also came up with a set of requirements to help him. The main question being “Does it handle scaling?” He found that React leans more towards libraries while Angular is more of a framework. It comes down to integration. Building your own framework from a library can be a good practice if you want to become a more professional JavaScript developer. Shai suggests that its like building your own computer instead of buying a brand new one. The issue is with JavaScript, the updates come weekly and so building your own framework from a library comes with a cost. Developed frameworks tend to handle that level of integration for you.

Less Mental Overhead with Angular

Charles adds that Angular allows him to make things without worrying about when to use things like Redux or Mobix and it just works. There is less mental overhead along with available expertise because everyone is generally using the same stack. React can have a shorter learning curve, and both communities have about the same number of proficient users as a resource. Both seem to be equal in those ways. Having choices keep things on the innovative edge. Shai talks about the Angular team and how innovative they tend to be. Aimee adds that their attitude about Angular is also genuine, giving an example of when they are approached with issues, they are open to discussing them.

Dependency Injecting

ViewJS is also a framework. The one thing that is missing is dependency injection ,which in Shia’s opinion is one of the biggest selling features of Angular. It allows for easier code testing and in Angular 2 it has been improved even more. He adds that some developers can be lazy and not write tests and for them it wouldn’t matter. Angular also prides itself as a JavaScript framework, and so no typescript. When working on a big team, being able to see immediately where things are broken is very helpful and is a plug for Angular.

Evolving communities

Joe says that Angular has a great community and he like Angular because of his familiarity. Shai adds that all three are great solutions. Angular just happens to fit well with his current situation. He had to switch from old technologies or communities because they got stuck in the past. ViewJS is picking up popularity and in a couple years will have a strong community. He adds that while the community and support system is great, it’s not the main reason he stays.

Will the market for Angular courses be sustainable?

Shai mentions that it seems to come in waves, a certain technology will have hype come in every six months or so. That hype leading to adoption and then months later the adoption rate drops down. This is something he witnessed with Angular 1 in 2012 with 1.0. It took 6 months to a year for people to learn about it and adopt it. It wasn’t until 2013 or 2014 when React came out, early adopters jump on React and started creating hype for it. Some of React solved the pain points for Angular. We are getting to the end of the adoption wave of React. It’s hard to tell how long React and ViewJS will be popular. The new Angular will bring a new wave and peak in demand in a year or so. Shai adds that this is his bet and he may be wrong. He sees that it handles small apps or big apps, having the ability to scale and that is important. Charles adds that Ruby on Rails had a similar cycle. Ruby has stop being in the media as much because it’s becoming stable, but the community is strong there either way. Shai mentions that he doesn’t see these frameworks like React going away soon because they solve real issues. If you zoom out from the discussion, these frameworks are all part of a big JavaScript family. Listens can comment on this episode on what frameworks they’ve choose and why.

Picks Joe

NGDoc.io
Persistence

Alyssa

HiRez.io

Charles

Rush Revere and the American Revolution
Palto Alto Firefighter’s Hot Sauce

Shia

Futur Youtube
Decorators
HiRez.io

Links

HiRez Twitter
Shai Twitter

My Angular Story 015 Danny Blue

On today’s episode we have a My Angular Story with Danny Blue. Danny is a Google Developer Expert for web technologies. In this episode we hear the story about how Danny first started coding, a method suggestion for picking a frameworks, and how vocabulary is vital for a new programmer to learn. It’s a good one, stay tuned.

How did you get into programming?

Didn’t get started until college. In school he was under the impression that you had to be a math genius to be a programmer. Didn’t even try until college. He wish he would have taken more in College. His first dive into code was ActionScript 2. He was offered a class that taught how to make Flash games and he took the class and made a few games, which he mentions were most likely awful. His game was an infinite runner with a robot. It taught him the basics like loops and storing variables.In his class he realized that as long as he understood some of the key concepts, he would be able to handle it.Soon he went out and just bought a book and after experiencing the code in action he got hooked.

Managing memory in C

Danny’s friend tried to teach him how to build a checkers game in C. He remembers the pains of manually managing memory. His feedback on malloc is that it’s one of his favorite words because it rolls off the tongue. Charles talks about how in college he had to design systems in VSDL with transistors and silicon.

How do you get from that to JavaScript Development

First job was at a swimming pool manufacturing company’s marketing department in West Virginia. He worked a lot in Dreamweaver until a man that started after him decided they were going to write all the markup and CSS by hand. From that Danny learned how websites were put together. He talks about a contact form that they wanted to animate. He knew that he could figure it out. He would use code snippets to figure out and build the animation. He started to do more and more JavaScript and teaching himself as much as he could. He did the CodeSchool JavaScript Road Trip. The first few episodes ease you into JavaScript and helps you learn where things lives. From that point he became obsessed with building things with JavaScript. Charles talks about how CodeSchool wasn’t around when he started. Modern code seem to be more complicated but it can be learned best by breaking it down into smaller bites. CodeSchool is good for that. Getting your start or foothold is the hardest part.

It’s easy to skip over fundamentals.

Charles talks about how that things like CLI came second nature for him and sometimes instructors dismiss that new students may get hung up on those sort of fundamental concepts and tools. Danny adds that there had been times where he would read articles on sites like StackOverflow that would be explaining something but even the baseline instructions has information in it that can something someone has skipped. Little pieces of information can really help pull things together. He talks about the dissociation that can happen for someone who only learned JavaScript and doesn’t know what CLI is and how hard it would be to explain the difference between JavaScript running in the browser and Node, or explaining what a package manager is, then a package , etc. Many people come into it not understanding any of it. He can remember copying commands into a terminal but not understanding what was going on.

For learning JavaScript from a basic level, what do you suggest?

Finding the beginner tutorials for stuff. CodeSchool is good, Code Academy as well. Do those first. Don’t skip it assuming you know too much to do them. After that just make something. From there you will figure out stuff that works and stuff that doesn’t. Twitter is a great resource for finding helpful people. Being in the environment helps to get exposed to the information. Mainly just write code. Charles mentions that people have grown to understand the concepts and lingo of web development by just listening. Danny also advises that if you learn the vocabulary before learning the concepts, you’ll be able to do things like Google your issues affectively as well as reading articles or talking with others. Complicated concepts end up be boiled down to single words. Ultimately you will need to be able to communicate with everyone on projects anyway.

How did you get into Angular?

While working at DualLink Digital, they started looking at a few different things, he started looking at Ember and found that he really enjoyed the concepts. One of his friends started messing around with angular and they started workshopping with it to make it work. Afterwards he started to like it, really the plain JavaScript objects. The more he worked with he, the more he started enjoying it compared to Ember. It’s interesting to see how people have moved from Backbone or React or Ember to things like Angular. One of Embers pluses is how large their community is. Charles talks about how the history of Ember is great and the people behind Ember are great. Also, the JavaScript community used to seem to have animosity against the different communities but now it’s more collaborative.

Picking the right framework.

Danny suggests that when trying to figure out what framework to go with, be able to describe in your own words why the framework you’ve picked is better. Making sure that you do understand the decisions that you are making is important. He uses the example of within the React community and the use of virtual DOM. There was a common misconception that the virtual DOM was faster than the regular DOM, which is just not true. Later the details had to be expressed to clear the misunderstanding. If you don’t talk about the specifics, you may believe something without knowing the facts behind it. Charles adds that its sort of like politics in that way.

Tell us the work you’ve done with Web Standards.

Danny talks about getting interested in web components through his friend Eric and actually interviewed at the company Eric worked at. He didn’t get the job but they stayed in touch and Eric introduced him into Polymer. He started to learn about Polymer, specifically custom elements. He remembers very early on wanting to make a custom HTML tag. He suggests that being able to do things without the framework has been a piece that has been missing. Having lower level building blocks to build off of is really exciting to Danny. He talks about using custom elements to build a familiar API surface to interact with. He talks about an example where he wrapped a bunch of HTML APIs, like the notification API and the fullscreen API, wrapping another element within it. He was trying to build things that the younger version of himself could use. He things that could be something we are heading towards more often. Danny adds that Web Components come with 4 major parts: Custom elements, HTML Imports (kind of), ShadowDOM, and templates. Custom elements allow you to create a unique piece of HTML and is the most widely accepted and supported.

What are you working on now?

Danny talks about how the Angular’s component model is very similar to Custom Element component model. Where you pass information in through properties and you listen for changes through events. You can use Custom Elements with very little setup. There is a specific Custom Elements Scheme that will let you use custom elements without any properties being thrown. You use the custom event in the exact same way and syntax as for any other component. The one issue with the source code where it parses the metadata, losing the friendly compiler messages out of the box. He is playing around with trying to find a way to whitelist different element names and properties. He wants to learn how the Framework is parsing potential data and make it easy to whitelist a set of custom elements.

Picks Dannys

Daemon by Daniel Suarez
Bob’s Burgers
CodeSchool

Charles

VR & Augmented Reality
IoT
Artificial Intelligence
Veritone.com
Coursera on Artificial Intelligence
Artificial Intelligence with Python
Machine Learning for Absolute Beginners

Links

Twitter
Blog on Medium

On today’s episode of Adventures of Angular we’ve got panelists Ward Bell, Joe Eames, Alicia Michael, John Papa, Charles Max Wood, and our special guest Shayne Boyer. Shayne is a Senior Developer Advocate at Microsoft and on the Azure team. The last time he was on the show was Episode 082 of Adventures in Angular and we talked about getting started with Angular 2. Today we are going to talk a bit about Angular and Azure. Stay tuned.

[3:12] Talk about offerings with Azure.

• There is a connotation that if you want to use Azure you have to use .NET
• That is not the case.
• Large part of Azure runs linux.
• There are over 170 type products that Azure offers.
• noSQL databases, postgres, mongolDB, Azure Cosmos, Azure functions
• It’s more than .NET and VMs.
• Things you can do this type application are things like - Deployment to web front end, putting apps in Docker container and pushing to container service, scaling those apps etc etc.

[5:23] Put your app in Docker container?

• Talking about just front end. Just the web application.
• Putting it into a container and deploying the container into a linux instance or web app on Azure.

[6:13] Why is it a good thing to use Docker for this kind of thing?

• Example. NGX for front end services, you can’t NGbuild using ClI do an NGBuild get the disc folder and throw that to a web application service like IAS or Node and have that application just service. Deep linking wouldn’t work.
• Instead you would want to package something like an express server that requires NodeJS. Then something to handle deep linking. You can easily package that in a container and push it to the cloud and be able to control it without worrying about infrastructure.
• Essentially it’s the app that has been written as well as the server that serves that app.
• You can choose the base it runs on. I.e. Node 6 instead of 8. Etc etc.
• Control those in the container so any time you pull it down it has those same settings.
• Often developers assume versions of services are the same between the developer and the services used like a cloud service and when it’s not, things break.
• The concept of “works on my machine” is actually true now. How it works for you, will be exactly how it works where ever you push it.
• You can set up the version of Node you want, the settings how you’d like, test it on your own machine and when you push it to providers like Azure, Heroku, AWS, etc, it will run the same on all those providers.
• Takes away complexities when testing.

[9:39] Outside of Docker, what other things does cloud bring to the table?

• Serverless offerings.
• Takes away issues with - worry about building a node server to serve my app. Building API to serve the data. Building Infrastructure behind the server and deploying it.
• Building and deploying pains reduced as well.

[10:57] “Wait wait, serverless?”

• It’s the new buzzword.
• There are servers underneath.
• Don’t have to worry about infrastructures or the servers themselves.
• Just write the function.
• Function will return the data to controller service built in Angular. Just have to build the Javascript (or python, and C#, java is coming) in the portal or in Github, and it’s just the code to run the function.
• No need to worry about the types of servers, VMs, operating systems, patching or scaling.
• It will scale based on what the capacity demand it needs.
• Event driven - event queues, message queues, etc.

[13:20] Simple endpoints

• Scalability at endpoint level.
• Previously when writing APIs on the backend, typically you’re concerned with scaling that API application.
• Endpoints typically scale at the same level.
• Serverless functions scale at that typical API level.
• Paying only for usage.

[15:30] How do you orchestrate between the services?

• Just because you spread things around doesn’t mean it’s better.
• It’s important to realize that breaking assembly or dll files down into smaller dll files don’t change things much.
• Minimizing what it takes to think about when it comes to handle and configure a server running the services.
• It’s easy as “Here it is, go run it for me Azure!”

[20:12] How does this relate to angular developers?

• Be careful about over complicating the ‘concept count’ Having too many systems, front end, back end, VMs, Docker, etc. To many things to learn or to know to get it done.
• Easier to write API and serverless. So then it’s just Javascript on the front end. Much easier.

[21:58] Someone brand new to Azure, what should they try out?

• Azure functions is a great place for Javascript or Angular.
• Typescript is coming as well.
• Understanding it’s just a backend.
• Learning to connect to a database, or have a static file.
• Routing, proxies, etc are all built in Azure.

[23:13] What JavaScript engine does it support?

• Chakra Engine.
• ES 5
• ES 6
• Support for TypeScript recently announced. Coming up.
• Node 8 is now available on Azure service platform.

[25:04] More on the portal.

• The portal is one of the largest typescript platforms available right now.
• The portal is not the only option.
• Strong CLI experience.
• Making VMs and web applications and all products can be done with CLI.
• If you like CLI then start there.

[26:54] Creating a quick web app

• If you want to create a new web application.
• Simple as AZ web create
• Pass the name of application
• pass the location
• in a few commands you can create an app
• Set it up to deploy from the GitHub Repo
• From there it’s just checking in code and it’s getting the deployment from the CLI pipeline.
• Write it, check it in, deploy.

[27:32] Do you have articles or videos that people can jump to?

• Did a course in deploying an angular app using GitHub git Azure
• Talks about how to hook up Azure web app instance to a GitHub repo.
• It’s easy as checking in code, no worries about the concept count and complicated setup.

[28:45] Integrates with Docker and Visual Studio Code

• There is an Azure extension for VS Code that allows you to push all of your code.
• Demos available to learn
• Has great extensions for Angular too.

[29:28] Simplifies or eliminates complications on the back end, does it also help on the front end.

• Don’t have to worry about scaling my static site. Data is what makes it scalable.
• Serverless experience - hitting databases, doing computations, working on triggers or WebHook from other parts of your business.
• Azure function can listen to WebHooks
• Azure can aggregate backend in serverless functions.
• Has database offerings to store data.
• Infrastructure for hosting Node applications and Node APIs
• Azure does not = .NET

[31:19] How does someone get involved and try it out?

• Go to Azure.com and try it free.
• Try the Azure functions portal free as well.
• Plenty of free experiences from the platform.
• The tuts and walk-throughs for almost any of the platforms or languages for Azure.

Picks Joe

John Papa’s course on Angular CLI course.
NG Doc.

Ward

Troy Hunt used Azure functions to fight DDOS attacks article.
Alexa

Charles

Serverless framework. NPM serverless.
Angular Dev Summit (Now free)

Shayne

Keyvo Smartlock
Angular 2 app to Azure using Git play by play course.
Docs.microsoft.com

Links

Azure

Aaron Frost

On today’s episode of My Angular Story we have special guest Aaron Frost. This episode might as well be both, a My Angular Story as well as a My Javascript story. Aaron has worked with us on JS Jabber and was a panelist for Adventures in Angular. You also may know him from NG Conf, the original Angular Conference. Stay tune to hear his story!

Getting Started

Before Aaron got involved with Javascript or Angular, he worked as a loan officer, and he wasn’t the best at it. Luckily his job exposed him to small bits of SQL. Aaron goes to say that SQL “was like speaking English”. In 2010 he shifted into development. At the time, most web developers hated Javascript, so anytime they could pin Javascript work on him they would. Aaron loved it.

College Dropout

Aaron decided to go to college to learn programing, mainly as a means to an end. His goal was primarily to get a job. After finding the job, he dropped out of classes. Aaron says that he was confused by why he was still in school considering he had the job and at any rate, Aaron had learned how to teach himself. Between Stack Overflow and podcasts and Youtube, Aaron has all the resources he needed.

Getting Into Work.

Aaron talks about his time working with Kynetx, writing a language called Kynetx Rule Language. Kynetx was a platform where developers could create web browser plugins and it would work across the platforms. Aaron talks about the lack of frameworks then, leaving mainly only jQuery.

And Then, Angular…

In one of the corporations Aaron worked for, they used a framework called Backbone. Five Hundred programmers all prescribed Backbone for their work, but Aaron nudged someone in the stack team to look into Angular. It was a no brainer, Angular allowed to get the job done in much less code. They adopted it and got proficient.

Conferences “Oyee! We should make one!”

Aaron and Kipp Laurence decided that after they were unable to find an Angular conference to goto online that “Oyee! We should make one!” Reluctantly Aaron agreed and afterwards had someone from Google on board to send a whole team to the conference.

Google Developers Experts

Aaron is a GDE. He talks a bit about what that process what like and how it’s changed. He talks about what Google looks for in a GDE and clears any misconception that a GDE is about people who contribute to the community and are natural evangelists.

Aaron vs Captchas

Aaron talks about how one of his first projects will always be his favorite. His brother worked in real estate and used a particular website for work. The website had an annoying Captcha that had to be filled out pretty frequently. His brother asked Aaron to attempt to create a way to bypass the Captchas. Aaron talks about how at first he thought it was impossible, but after contemplating using a canvas and some basic calculations, he was able to put together a web browser extension to handle the task. They marketed the tool to others that used the website.

What He Has Learned

Aaron says that there is a theme that is reoccurring for him. Aaron talks about how often programmers and developers spend their efforts “chasing the pendulum” instead of focusing on solving the issues that the company needs them to solve. Programmers should worry less with how cool their patterns are or if they are using the latest Frameworks, and more about getting the job done.

Keeping Up

Aaron’s Twitter
Aaron’s Medium
Aaron’s GitHub
Aaron’s AMA

Picks Aaron

Superpowereds
Yarn
Samsung SmartThings

Charles

Nimble
BlueTick
Zapier
Visual Studio Code
Microsoft Build

AiA 143 Kendo UI with Burke Holland

Charles Max Wood and Burke Holland discuss Kendo UI. Burke Holland is on the Developer Tools Division at Progress. The discussion ranges from the introduction of Kendo UI to tests used for Angular apps. Stay tuned to discover what Kendo UI can do for you!

[00:01:50] Shutout for Angular Remote Conf

Charles will be picking speakers really soon so get your ticket at the early bird price.

[00:02:15] – Introduction to Burke Holland

Burke Holland is working for Progress in the Developer Tools Division on the Developer Relations Team. They work on products like NativeScript, KendoUI and all the developer tools that Progress makes, which is mostly UI components and mobile frameworks

Questions for Burke Holland

[00:03:00] – What is Kendo UI?

Kendo UI is a Javascript UI library. It has open source components (Kendo UI Core), but it’s primarily commercial. It’s more on heavy lifting text scenarios like grid that has sorting and filtering, drag and drop, grouping, scheduler, robust calendar interface, pivot grids, Gantt charts, data visualizations. We’ve rebuilt Kendo UI from the ground up using Angular components. It’s the Kendo UI Core Angular that was released last January.

[00:08:00] – How are Kendo UI elements pulled for use into an app?

There’s a private npm repo that you would just pull in and bundle some of the widgets together. Inputs can be a drop down list, a combo box, autocomplete, etc. Using npm and install -@progress/kendo-angular-input, you get all of those inside your npm modules folder. We and the team are pushing to move to the public npm repo so that people don’t have to register for an account.

[00:13:00] What about mobile development? Does this work with NativeScript?

Kendo UI widgets do not work inside of NativeScript for mobile apps. However, we are looking for a possibility of merging their NativeScript UI library with Kendo UI so that you can build a website, a progressive web app, a NativeScript app, etc.

[00:16:00] Do you also have to pull in some CSS?

Kendo UI has their own CSS that is based on Sass. It has a theme builder to customize themes that you can pre-select from. Integration for Bootstrap 4 was also built because Kendo UI does not have a layout system so it doesn’t provide you with any grid system for layouts or for responsive design.

[00:19:00] Do you just import it into my app and then use the components, is it that simple?

It is recommended to use Angular CLI to use Kendo UI’s components and import it into an app. First step is to create a new project with the Angular CLI because Kendo UI is designed to work with it. You can work with SystemJS, instead, but it requires some tweaking. Next, you would need to add the private npm repo which registers the end point on the terminal. And then, npm-install to install the components. After that, you can include them in your app module file. Import Kendo grid from @progress/kendo-angular-grid. Then, you can import them into your module so you use it in your templates.

[00:23:00] – Can I tie a chart to a grid, update the chart and have the grid change?

Everything that Angular updates, Kendo UI just updates too. If you buy two components to the same array and you update that array, both of those components are going to update because they’re using Angular’s binding.

[00:24:00] – Does Kendo UI work with the older versions of Angular?

Kendo UI works with Angular 1.x. By the way, AngularJS means Angular 1.x. Meanwhile, Angular means Angular 2 and up. Directives for Angular 1.x wrap Kendo UI components.

[00:28:00] – When moving my component in AngularJS to Modern Angular, do I have to include both of those in the product?

I can’t provide any guidance here, other than I wouldn’t do that. If you migrate, you’re going to be firing up a new project but you should be able to move your application logic over pretty well. However, we still have this idea of services and injection and those things are transferable. And then, when you use Kendo UI components, the only thing that’s really transferable there is the configuration settings.

[00:29:00] – How do you write tests if you’re testing Angular app? Are there other things that you should be testing?

That would mean there’s some sort of functional testing and unit testing. If we’re talking about unit testing, you should just test the way that you would normally test Angular. For functional test, you need a functional testing tool like Selenium or Test Studio.

[00:30:00] – Is there anything else that people need to know about Kendo UI?

We’ve got a lot of other components coming so stay tuned on that. We’re also working on some React stuff. We always love to get feedback. We have a github repo.

Picks

Burke Holland:

• Server list
• Azure Functions Challenge
• Medium article on Samsung’s weird emoji
• Twitter at @burkeholland
• Twitter of Tara Z. Manicsic

Charles Max Wood:

• Serverless library in npm
• AWS Lambda
• Slack room for the podcast (adventuresinangular.com/slack)
• Angular Remote Conf
• Get A Coder Job
• Stack for Slack automation
• MemberPress on WordPress

On today's My Angular Story, Charles Max Wood interviews Will Buck. Will appeared as guest on episode 57, and talked about Starting a Local Angular Meetup. It comes from the idea of organizing an even if you're not very much an expert on programming. Tune in and learn about Will's unique journey in programming!

On today's episode, Adventures in Angular features Angular and Electron with Ryan Chenkie. Ryan is a product owner, blogger, and JavaScript trainer. His interests in working on Angular with other technologies led him to using it on desktop apps with Electron. Tune in!

How long do you wait to load regular Angular? Today's episode features Migrating a Large Angular 1.x App to Angular 2+ with Ciro Nunes. Ciro is a frontend engineer at CrossEngage. He appeared on episode 89, where he talked about Angular CLI. Now, he shares how they migrated an app and the challenges they faced. Tune in!