Talking Drupal #554 - Hey! Scott Tolinski!

[00:00:00] John: This is Talking Drupal, a weekly chat about web design development from a group of people with one thing in common. We love Drupal. This is episode 555. Hey, Scott Tolinski. On today's show- 554. Sorry, I- 554, not five But anyway, uh, what, what are you gonna do? On today's show, we're talking about web education, LevelUp Tutorials, and life after Drupal with our guest, Scott Tolinski.

We'll also cover Views Row SDC as our module of the week. Welcome to Talking Drupal. Our guest today is Scott Tolinski. He's the creator of Level Up Tutorials and co-host and executive producer of Syntax. I gotta figure out how to get one of them fancy executive producer titles. That, that one sounds great.

Yeah. Yeah, no kidding, huh? I mean, that's awesome. Scott, welcome to the show, and thanks for joining us.

[00:01:03] Scott: Of course, yeah. It's so funny, my very first agency job in dev, which, I mean, it was a Drupal job, my, uh, title was Interactive Producer. And I always thought that was a weird title to have. I, I

[00:01:15] John: used to have one like- Uh, now I have an executive

[00:01:17] Scott: producer job.

Yeah. I used to have one. Very weird, uh-

[00:01:19] John: Yeah, it was, like, web, web, web producer maybe? I don't know. Yeah, it was like... I was like, "What is, what is a web producer?" I, yeah, I feel you on that one. For those of you that don't know, I'm John Picozzi, solutions architect at EPAM, and today my co-hosts are joining us for the fourth, and I, I won't say final time, but final time in this series, uh, Bernardo Martinez, senior front-end developer at Voltus.

Bernardo is a Chattanooga-based front-end developer who shares a passion for both higher ed and government sectors. He's been active in the Drupal community since 2018, and actively contributes through mentoring, module support, theme work, and speaking at tech conferences. Bernardo, thanks for joining us, and thanks for joining us for the last, uh, three, three-plus weeks.

[00:02:07] Bernardo: For sure. Looking forward to this one.

[00:02:10] John: And last but certainly not least, Nic Laflin, founder at nLightened Development. What's going on, Nic?

[00:02:16] Nic: Happy to be here. Quick PSA, since we're now live, we can do this. There's a highly critical security release being dropped tomorrow. There was a PSA yesterday sent out by the security team.

Uh, it usually means it's either third party or it's something that they've seen active, uh, compromised in, in the wild. So, uh, it- I think the security window is 17 to 2100 UTC, uh, so translate that to your own time zone, and just be prepared to update every site you manage, um, ASAP.

[00:02:46] John: And if you're listening to this as a podcast, you should stop listening and go update your website.

Just throwing that out there. Hey, Nic, before we move on, uh- For those watching, the, um, Lego shirt, that's pretty, pretty awesome. I do- Yeah Do you, do you have the corresponding Lego that goes with that? They have one that's got all the- I do ... colors on it, right? That, that's pretty sweet. Oh, he's gonna, he's gonna pull it out.

He has it at arm's reach. I love it. It's right here. Yeah. There it is. Yeah. Sweet. Awesome. Love it. All right. And now to talk about our module of the week, let's turn it over to Martin Anderson-Clutz, a product marketing manager for Drupal at Acquia and a maintainer of a number of Drupal modules of his own.

Martin, what do you have for us from London this week?

[00:03:34] Martin: Thanks, John. Have you ever wanted to use a single directory component to format the output of a view on your Drupal website? There's a module for that. It's called Views Row SDC, and it was created in April of 2026 by James Shields, AKA Lost Carpark, a friend of the podcast.

It has a 1.0.0 version available, which works with Drupal 11.3 and 12, is actively maintained, has, uh, security and test coverage, and has nine open issues, three of which are bugs, though two are marked as fixed in the latest release. And it is officially in use by four sites, but obviously is quite new.

Now with this module installed, when you select show in the format modal for any views display, you'll see a new option for single directory component in addition to standard options like content view mode or fields. You can then select which of the site's available SDCs you want to use to format each result, and then you can map fields defined in the view to properties and slots defined for the selected component.

You can also place a view using this format into a Drupal canvas layout by having a block display. Now, SDCs in canvas are kind of the new hotness in Drupal theming, so this module gives yous some additional ways to incorporate them into your own Drupal site. So let's talk about Views Row SDC.

[00:04:57] John: You're muted, John. I muted so you wouldn't have to hear me drinking, and then I forgot to unmute. Um, I actually just sent that to, uh, my front end dev on my project, and I was like, "Oh, this one, this one could be cool. We should, we might want to use that." Mm-hmm. So I definitely feel like there's a, uh, there's a good use case for that.

Is anybody using this module?

[00:05:19] Nic: Uh, no, but I, I'm very intrigued. I mean, typically these days when I create a view, I'm, you know, using a display mode to then pass things into a template that I can just immediately use in SDC. So this allows you to kinda skip that step. Although it puts it in configuration, so there's a trade-off there.

Um, I mean, views are great, but sometimes having everything in configuration is, uh- Not always something you want to do, but yeah, no, th- I'll definitely have to check this out.

[00:05:51] John: Hmm.

I'm wondering, so I, I'm assuming you can pull in the Views fields as kind of, like, props in your, in your SDC, right? So that's, that's kinda how that's working.

It's not like it's adding some UI for you to be able to, like, call those out.

[00:06:08] Martin: So I believe the way it works is, you know, in your Views, you know, format settings, you'll choose which one you want to use, and then it's like if you do Table as an example, you'll get that extra sort of, like, settings mode where you can sort of, you know, set the order and those kinds of things.

Yeah, yeah. I think it's the same kind of a thing where you can map the, the different, um, you know, fields that it find in the view to the different sort of properties and so on. Yeah. I'll,

[00:06:36] John: uh, I'll have to, I'll have to report back if we start using it on, on how, how we're, how, how we're progressing. Um, fun, fun fact, uh, when I was in Dublin last, James and I met up and had Irish coffee and it was delicious.

So there's that. Um, okay. Well, Martin, thanks for bringing us a, uh, fabulous module of the week, and, uh, enjoy your travels in London and, um, we'll, we'll see you once you're, you're back on, on this side of the world. Sounds great. And if folks wanted to suggest a module of the week, how could they go about doing that?

[00:07:16] Martin: Uh, we are always happy to talk about candidates for module of the week in the Talking Drupal channel of Drupal Slack, or folks can reach out to me directly as mandclu on all of the Drupal and social channels.

[00:07:28] John: Awesome. Thanks a lot, Martin. Thanks, Martin. All right.

[00:07:30] Nic: See you next week. See you next week. We have, we have two things working against us this week.

It, it's our fourth episode being live and, uh, we're recording, what? Three hours later than normal.

[00:07:41] John: Yeah, I'm usually, I'm usually much more with it. I've had much more co- ... coffee at this point, or at that, at that point. The,

[00:07:48] Nic: the two changes.

[00:07:49] John: Yeah. Um, uh, um, uh, Scott, we're gonna jump right into questions, and I've got like- Yeah

a really open-ended one here. Cool. So, um, tell us as much or as little as you like, but, um, tell, tell us a little bit about yourself.

[00:08:05] Scott: Yeah. Well, hey, I, I, uh, I'm, I'm a web developer. I got started in the industry in the agency world, which I, I would, I don't, I would have to imagine that's more common in the Drupal space than it is in some other spaces.

It's like now in the, the straight up, like, node ecosystem, it feels like everybody's gotten their start through, like, Fang and startup world and stuff where, uh, for me, in my, my, uh, general work, I, the, the first client project I ever did was in, in Drupal, and, um, before then I was mostly, like, a WordPress guy.

And then when I got my first professional gig, um- It ended up being all, all Drupal from that point forward for me at these agencies. So I got my start in the agency world, I worked for, um, small-time agencies, like 12-person agencies- Yeah ... all the way up to, like, a massive 2,000-person agency. Um, so e- everything in between there.

And, uh, it, I would say, like, within the first year of me having my first job, I started my YouTube channel, uh, Level Up Tutorials. It was 2012, so back then there wasn't a whole ton on, on, on YouTube in general, teaching web development, period, let alone, um, Drupal. There, there, a lot of it was done through, like, paid courses.

There was a, a ton of different paid plate, uh, paid platforms. I remember- Mm-hmm ... even in my, my agency world, we were buying courses all the time, um, through Envato or from wherever on, to learn the latest stuff. So this would've been still Drupal 6, I think, at that time. Um, I think Drupal 6. What, what, uh- Oh, let's go with it Well- That,

[00:09:44] John: that sounds reasonable.

You said- Yeah ... you said

[00:09:46] Nic: you started 2012, right? Yeah. So Drupal 6 was still out, but Drupal 7 ha- came out in 2011. Okay. Yeah, so- So it was looking, yeah, so it was around that time.

[00:09:56] Scott: Yeah. It was right around that time. So I remember most the first sites I did were Drupal 6. So I, I, I was in that world for a while.

But I remember, like, uh, the reason I started the, the YouTube channel specifically was because at that point in time, like if you wanted to figure out why something wasn't working a certain way or, uh, get deep into documentation, your options, especially there were, like, hardly any video resources without paying them.

But, uh, I remember having to go into IRC and just, like, ask a lot of questions. Mm-hmm. And just be like, oh, if this isn't documented in a way where I can't get this information out of IRC, like, uh, how, how are normal people doing this? And a lot of it was, like, shared knowledge through either, uh, conferences- Yeah

or meetups or, or this or that. And I was like, you know, I'll just, I'll, I'll, instead I'll just document what I do all day at work on, on- Yeah ... on Drupal. I'll document every single thing I do and make short six-minute-long tutorials on everything from the process of installation to getting it going. And, um, yeah, that's really how my, my YouTube channel started, and that eventually branched out into other, like, CSS and Sass and WordPress tutorials.

But I probably, um, in that time I probably produced- Like, I would say like close to 400 Drupal tutorials on, on Level Up.

[00:11:17] John: Oh, wow. Whoa. That's a lot of tutorials.

[00:11:21] Scott: I was doing nine a week. I know. Uh, and it was all just stuff that I was doing all day at work. Yeah.

[00:11:25] John: And, and now our listeners are drawing the line between like, why is Scott here?

And oh, he, he's, he got started in Drupal. He was like the OG Drupal tutorial guy. Got it. Okay. Yeah.

[00:11:39] Scott: It was, a- and I, yeah, man, I, I'm like looking at this. Even my, like, Drupal 7 course was pretty, pretty serious business. And then I had courses on Omega specifically. Oh, my goodness. Any kind of like theming system.

I forgot about that. Yeah, I, I had 70 tutorials on Drupal 7 alone. And so, um- That's

[00:11:57] John: awesome ...

[00:11:58] Scott: yeah, it was really just like, here's one little thing. Here's a, um, you know, we're creating a slideshow, we're using Views. Okay, here's how you do it. Um- Yeah ... and, and I, I never expected that to turn into my career and, and it really like was a weird transition for that to happen, 'cause YouTube doesn't, like, YouTube ad revenue or whatever doesn't pay the bills.

Um, and it did a little bit better back then, but, um, I, I, I just was making a lot of tutorials for fun really- Yeah ... and to maybe cover a little bit of rent. Um, I had a lot of free time. My wife was getting her doctorate, so it's like, I'm just hanging out by myself. I got I got nothing to do and I'm gonna be productive with that time, I guess.

You're like, "You know what I'm gonna do?" Yeah. "

[00:12:38] John: I'm gonna make a tutorial." On Drupal, yeah. I will say you're, you're getting some, uh, you're getting some love in the, uh, in the chat here. Uh, Mikhail says he loves seeing Scott here. He's been a Syntax fan for years. Nice. With a real, real big heart.

[00:12:55] Bernardo: There you go.

I love that. You know, it's funny 'cause I started listening to Syntax back in like 20- or actually, Level Up Tuts, back in, uh... And it just happened that I was an undergrad in computer science, and you just pop up in YouTube, so you were all over the place. Even before I did Drupal, I knew about Level Up Tuts.

So I imagine there's- Yeah ... a whole generation that went to Syntax that actually came with you from Level Up tutorials.

[00:13:21] Scott: Yeah, that was, uh, you know, when we first started Syn- so I met, uh, my co-host Wes, um, because we'd both released a React course with the same name, and his was like a paid one, and mine was just like free on YouTube.

And he was just like, "Hey, can you not do that?" 'Cause they like came out the same week. Um, he thought I was- ... I, I was not aware of his stuff. So then we just connected and had a really good rapport. Um, we started chatting every week and, and eventually we were like, "You know what?" Like, um- He, I, I was big on YouTube and he was big on Twitter.

It's like, let's combine forces and let's do a podcast. We both really love podcasting. And so because of that, when we launched, we had like a lot of audience from, from different areas. Uh, but for, for the most part, like I, I didn't really like even like say my name very much. It was like, "I'm Scott from Level Up Tuts," or I'm, you know, "This is on Level Up Tuts."

I didn't even put myself on camera really that much. Um, and uh, so when we started the podcast, it was like, "Oh, it's Wes Bos and the Level Up Tuts guy." Like, people didn't know my actual, actual name- ... which was like really funny.

[00:14:20] John: So what's the preferred, preferred name? Is it, is it Level Up Tutorials or Level Up Tuts?

Oh, yeah. 'Cause I've, I've seen

[00:14:28] Scott: both-

[00:14:29] John: Yeah ... and I was like, "I don't know. I don't know which one to go with here."

[00:14:32] Scott: You can thank Envato for that one. Uh, my, it was Level Up Tuts for a long time, and then they sent their lawyers after me because they thought they owned the word Tuts, uh, because of NetTuts- Hmm

and web- with all that stuff. I literally- And

[00:14:46] John: I- The first time- Yeah ... I heard it was in researching you, so they can, their lawyers can, you know.

[00:14:52] Scott: So I, and instead of like trying to... 'Cause I mean, you know, a small independent creator, I didn't have any money behind it. I instead of like trying to deal with it, I was just like, "Fine, I'll change it to Tutorials.

It's not that much of a, you know."

[00:15:04] John: We'll, we'll add the extra syllables.

[00:15:07] Scott: Yeah, right. Yeah. Uh, a- and now, uh, the, so yeah, so we did, we started the podcast in 2017 and kept it more like JavaScript focused more than anything. And um, eventually, you know, it had gotten popular enough and had been, um, you know, widely listened to for like 600 episodes that we ended up getting acquired by Sentry at, uh, sentry.io, the bug, bug handling software.

And in that process they, they came to us and they were like, "If you could work on Syntax full-time, what would it look like? What would you do?" And I was like, "Well, I have Level Up Tutorials. That is like kind of my full-time business right now. That's like what I'm doing with my time." And they're like, "Well, we'll just buy Level Up Tutorials and make it free."

So, uh, leveluptuts.dev, um, or levelup.video is the best. levelup.video. Um, all the courses I've ever done are there for free, including Drupal stuff, but all the modern JavaScript stuff too. But yeah, they, they, now, now we converted the YouTube channel, so all the old Level Up Tut stuff is under Syntax and under the Syntax name, and it just kind of like- Okay

swallowed it. Yeah.

[00:16:12] Nic: So, so can you, can you talk a little bit about the Syntax transition then? So you talked about how you got into Level Up Tu- uh, tutorials and I think in how you met, uh, Wes. Yeah. When you started that podcast, did it start as Syntax? Is that how that transition happened or is it, was there later too?

[00:16:29] Scott: Yeah. Well, it started out as Syntax, and we'd actually come up with the name, the brand, and everything about it maybe even like 10 episodes, like a whole year before we did it, um, just 'cause we were both so busy and then we didn't, we didn't end up, uh, uh, you know, going through with it. And then when we did, um, we had everything all- all ready to go.

And, uh, we've recently as of... 'Cause we just hit 1,000 episodes and we were going back through the changes on our document that we had initially authored back in 2016, uh, we discovered that I came up with the name Syntax, which, uh, before then it was kind of a mystery who actually came up with it, but apparently I did.

So Uh, we, we just thought it was the, it was the right like single word. Wes came up with the whole brand, the aesthetic and everything, and, um, yeah, Syntax just became bigger than Level Up, so it was like we might as well ride with that brand, you know?

[00:17:17] Nic: Makes sense. We also have a, a listener chiming in about the old tutorials, uh, Freelox saying that he got a ton out of it and he still listens to, to Syntax.

Heck yeah.

[00:17:27] Bernardo: Thank you. I love that. Congrats on 1,000 episodes by the way. Yeah. I was listening to that one. That was a pretty cool one that you guys brought everybody from backstage and then just chit-chat and why not. And- Yeah. God, by,

[00:17:38] John: by the time we get to 1,000 episodes, I, I'm gonna have like IVs and, and heart monitors-

and stuff back here like- Uh ... just keeping me going. Like, I might even just be a head in a glass jar at that point, who knows.

[00:17:51] Bernardo: That's funny. And I was wondering, um, you know, what have you guys learned about reaching new developers in different groups and what not? 'Cause I know it started a lot with the JavaScript ecosystem and whatnot, and now you guys have branched out into everywhere.

'Cause I know Martin was telling me before you, uh, joined us about like the episodes that he listened to and, and the ones that I liked and why not. So how did that work for you guys?

[00:18:15] Scott: Yeah. You know what? I think, like I, I would still say we are primarily JavaScript focused still, but at, at the end of the day, like my specialty has always been CSS and HTML, those, those, uh, before JavaScript.

Um, and then getting into the, the interactivity bits, like my specialty has always been UI, um, or full stack work primarily. So for me it's easy to talk about anything related to the web platform as a whole. But, uh, as, as we've kinda seen, I mean, stuff is, is one, gotten easier to learn. Um, there's more out there.

There's an endless amount of new things now, and the amount of things that you kinda have to know to be a, a true like full stack developer in this age is kind of outrageous. So, uh, for me, a- and, and I, I, I wanna speak for Wes too, but we've talked about this before. We're like, we don't want the podcast to just be talking about something that we have no interest in because we have to talk about it.

This has been, like, established. Okay, so we have to talk about this, whatever. It always has to be what we're interested in all the time. And 'cause, like, even as far as, like, with the tutorials, it was like I wasn't gonna make a tutorial on something in the Drupal ecosystem that I wasn't that familiar with or didn't like.

So what I'm gonna do is I'm going to focus on things that I'm excited about, things that I find to be useful, and we've really just let it evolve with what we, we find useful. And I think part of that comes from the fact that we're both kind of hyperactive builders, where we like to build a lot of stuff.

And the agency world was great for that. I was getting, like, a new client every month, you know? New, new... Start over from scratch. Ooh, I get to try out this starter theme instead of this one. Yeah. Or I get to start, try, throw in Sass in here. I get to throw in this grid system or whatever, was always, like, the coolest thing about working in the agency world.

And now it's just, like, my whole job is getting to explore, uh, platforms, explore new libraries, explore now AI stuff, and just, like, really, uh, try things and, and, and get my hands dirty.

[00:20:25] Nic: So I, so I have a question then. Uh, I- I am somebody who's somewhat of a big proponent of using native JavaScript, uh, web components.

Cool. And I- I'm curious how much the, how much that is kind of in the wider ecosystem. 'Cause usually when I see JavaScript frameworks, it's all, like, React components or something similar. Do you... I- is there a lot of, uh, room for, like, just native JavaScript web components with no framework dependencies?

[00:20:51] Scott: I, I, I...

It's, it's complicated for, for the fact that, like, there are so many people who have come to coding recently that, like, web dev for them is React, right? And it, like, bugs me where, uh... 'Cause I don't use React personally. So for me, it, it bugs me that, like- It, it, it bugs me that, like, when the library's released, it's, like, im- im- like, not explicitly React.

D- like, I remember there was, like, something recent. I was like, "This is so cool." And this, by all means, did not have to be a React. It could've been a web component very easily. And then you're scrolling through it, you're scrolling through it, and then, like, eventually you see one tiny mention of React, and you're like, "Oh, this is a React thing."

And they didn't even mention it on the first page, on the second page, on the third page- Yeah ... of the docs. And it's like, oh, come on. Uh, so I, I don't know. I, I think the web component stuff gets a little bit better all the time. Um, I've used, like, Web Awesome. Authoring web components still to me is no fun to author them.

So, like, if I'm writing web components, I'm mostly doing so through AI these days just because- Hmm ... I don't like to hand-author them, where like something like Svelte, which is, like, what I like to use for my front end framework, like, I really like writing Svelte components.

[00:22:00] John: Um- Chris- Yeah ... Chris Wells is, is...

his ears are ringing right now. He's like, "I told you guys. I told you."

[00:22:07] Scott: Big Svelte guy over here, yeah. Yeah. Uh, but you know what? I, I do use web components. I, I like to consume them more than I like to, to write them. We did actually just do a recent video where we were, like, seeing who could write the best date picker, and all three of us reached for web components just because it was like- Yeah

we wanted to work with the most amount of stuff. Yeah.

[00:22:25] Nic: Yeah, so we... So the first time I used them heavily was about two years ago, and we built a framework so you could split each piece out, right? So you have the JavaScript file, you have the HTML, and it gets imported into the template, and the CSS gets compiled into it.

Because yeah, building it, like, where it's just one mono file of everything and everything is in line is, is painful, but we were able to do, like, container queries two years ago, before, before they were cool, right? Yeah. Um- Yeah. And, and just make something... 'Cause, uh, the requirement was it has to work everywhere: Google Sites, WordPress, Drupal, SilverStripe, everywhere.

And I'm like, "Well-" Mm-hmm. "... that sounds

[00:23:03] John: like fun." Just, just wondering who thought container queries were cool, but hey, whatever. We'll, we'll move on. Uh, they're so cool. No. Wait,

[00:23:11] Scott: what do you

[00:23:11] John: mean?

[00:23:11] Scott: Hey. They're amazing. They're amazing. And actually, I will say just dropped, I think even today or earlier this week, Firefox now supports container style queries.

So you- Oh ... can, instead of, like, a, a container, you can, uh, s- use a, essentially a container query on a CSS variable value, which is basically like an if statement, if you think about it, even though we are getting if statements too. Uh, so if Firefox has got it, that's, like, a, a good sign right there, 'cause Firefox is always the last.

But yeah, I, I, I feel you on that with, uh, being able to use stuff everywhere. I actually have a talk next... This is actually crazy. It's next week, 'cause it's an... Or not next week, next month in Amsterdam- And it's on, it's, it's called the talk was This Component Could Have Been a Class, about like how people just write React comp- components for everything.

But the modern web, even beyond web components- So good ... has so many built-in components that like, that nobody's using, between popover- Yeah ... and even the, you know, uh, summary and, and things- Yeah ... like that, that it's just like we gotta use this stuff. You can build slide shows with the s- CSS swipers and stuff.

So I mean, it, it's, it's- Yeah ... the whole ecosystem I think has gotten so much better beyond the React world. And, and people just, I think they're just- And- And then coding is React

[00:24:30] Nic: at this point, you know? And you don't need the like 14 megabytes of the React framework for it to work. Totally,

[00:24:37] Scott: right? Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. So.

[00:24:39] John: Which

[00:24:39] Scott: conference is that? CSS Days? No, it's at, um, uh, JS Na- it's actually, it's at React Summit, believe it or not. Um, uh- ... I don't know why they've invited me to speak at React Summit, 'cause I usually speak at JS Nation if I'm gonna speak at one of their conf- But I'm happy to s- speak at React Summit about, uh, not using React for things, uh, which I'll, I'll- That-

it'll be fun. It sounds like- I'm not gonna be too grumpy ...

[00:25:01] John: it sounds like solving the problem from

[00:25:03] Scott: the inside. I like it. Yeah, yeah.

[00:25:05] John: Um, so Scott, you said you started, you know, you started in Drupal, you're working at agencies, you're working on Drupal sites. You started with Drupal tu- tutorials. I'm wondering like when did you start kind of shifting away from Drupal, and was the prompt for that really just that, you know, you were doing more content for like, you know, the front end- Mm-hmm

dev, the JavaScript dev, and it, you just kind of like naturally moved away from that?

[00:25:30] Scott: Yeah. So the, the, the prompt for that was actually Meteor. So back in the pre- Oh ... kind of, uh, pre-node modules days- Mm ... Meteor really solved a lot of really interesting issues. And for me, the issues that it solved was like building more interactive real-time stuff.

Mm. Where I was suddenly seeing like, oh man, so if I define my data in the code like this, I, I can now have these crazy real-time chat bots or anything that I couldn't, like I w- I, I, I just couldn't do with Drupal. And then, uh, these weren't like- Um, customer facing things. These were more like, yeah, oh wow, I can do this.

Let me explore this. Uh, and at the time I was working for Ford and I was building... It was, it was a weird job. I w- I was building experimental interfaces for Ford using Angular. Um, so I- Okay ... I had like kind of gotten out professionally of the world where I was building a lot of individual sites. So I was like primarily focused on pure UI patterns.

[00:26:34] John: Hmm.

[00:26:35] Scott: So my day-to-day was focused really heavily on Angular one, and then my explorations, my personal stuff was getting into Meteor, and then React came out. And I will say I did use React for a long time, but I was never a fan, you know? So at that time I, I was getting into React within Meteor and then just like the Level Up tutorial site was on Drupal, and then I moved that to Meteor and then I m- moved it eventually to my own custom backend where it lives today.

Um, but it really came out of like what I was doing professionally day-to-day was no longer building customer facing sites and, and that really, that really was the big shift for me.

[00:27:17] Nic: And so, so I think the more important question for, for this podcast is what does it take to get you back to Drupal?

[00:27:24] Martin: Ah.

[00:27:24] Nic: And- Oh, geez.

[00:27:27] Scott: Yeah. You know, I, I, I'm so far out of the PHP world that like, uh, I was never good at PHP, which was like an- another part of it for me. Yeah. So like, uh, the, the fact that like I was doing so much through, um, through UI in Drupal, which I really like, and I still think that Drupal does it the best. I, I just, I, I never got good enough at PHP to really be, um, writing my own things in a, in a way that felt like I had control.

So when I moved everything to JavaScript, a language that I was actually much better at, I felt like I had more control over what I was making. Yeah. And I think the answer could have been just to get better, get good at, at PHP, but I just- ... uh, instead, you know, optimized for my flow

[00:28:10] Nic: there. Well, well, if we're being honest, you know, there was a shift in Drupal 8 and up to like start moving away from that UI based approach.

Yeah. Uh, more, you know, more enterprise stability and, and in recent years there's been a big shift to kind of move some of that stuff back, right? And so I think Drupal CMS and a lot of the site templates and things coming down in ECA, we're moving a lot of that stuff back so that kind of more traditional front end developers can also do the data structure and the rules and that kind of stuff and get it, get a fully functional site.

'Cause yeah, right now Drupal does require both a front end developer and a back end developer- Hmm ... to, to truly build an application.

[00:28:51] Scott: Yeah. You know what, uh, uh, the things that I, I still think about when I think about Drupal, um, is that like Man, I hate having to do so much by hand that I used to just get for free in Drupal.

And, uh, I, I know so many people in the, the JavaScript ecosystem reach for Laravel, uh, if they're going PHP frameworks. But like I... There's so much about Drupal that I do miss on a regular basis that like I, I, I take so many ideas from it all the time. And in fact, uh, C- CJ, one of our, our, uh, content creators at Syntax, CJ and I have a little challenge going on behind the scenes to make a new web framework, and we're just- Oh

making one for fun. It's like purely for fun. N- no expectations of anyone using this. And it's so funny to see the both- the ideas that both are landing on, uh, both of us are landing on, and you would not believe just how many things I like, uh, from like the permission system- Yeah. Yeah ... or various, or even like template overrides I'm like pulling from Drupal.

It's like- Yeah ... you know what? I really miss this- Nice ... from, from Drupal. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:29:51] Nic: Dru- Drupal does, uh, like the permissions from rule system, second to none, the template overrides, I don't think people realize how hard it is to get that right and it just works. Yeah. Like the caching system and cache tags in Drupal.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Just- Oh, man ... think, these are things that- Nic, Nic's

[00:30:08] John: not a fanboy at all. It's not like he's a- No ... Drupal, Drupal podcast or anything.

[00:30:13] Nic: So, uh, so you talked about your, your prior life being agency in Drupal, right? Can you talk a little bit about what types of projects you did when you were working in Drupal?

Like, it sounds more- Yeah ... front end, but what, what specifically were you working on?

[00:30:29] Scott: Yeah. It was a lot of, um, like client sites that you would, you would pass off and, and occasionally maintain and update. But for the most part, it's like here's a complete site. You would do a training, here's how to use it, and you're moving on.

Um, so we did sites for... There's a, a graphics conference, uh, SIGGRAPH, so we did the graphic, we did the SIGGRAPH website. That's agency, I believe, is still doing the SIGGRAPH website. But, uh, we did the SIGGRAPH conference website every year, which was like one of the kind of like the marquee, uh, projects that you'd want to work at at this agency.

I was one of two devs there, and the other guy was my boss, and he eventually left and I took over that like lead dev role there. But like, um, that, that site was great because you have this conference scheduling system, like a multi-day conference scheduling system that has, you know, a mobile experience where they can sign up, um, to attend different...

I think my headphone might have died. Hold on one second. Let me try this one. My, uh... Let's see. Test, test, test. Um- Can you hear us? Yeah, I can, but it's coming out of my computer. Let me, let me see. I got a back- Yeah. Whoop ...

[00:31:35] Nic: back earbuds. No, no, that's, that's fine. We can, we can- Uh ... John can sing the, uh- No, no

Corey and Jefferies

[00:31:42] Scott: song. So it was like, that was like a big one where it was like you have the mobile experience, you have signups, you have a detailed... It has to work in a way, like heavy caching so that people weren't, like, destroying the server at the conference- Yeah ... when there's a lot of people. Um, and, and beyond that it's just building e-commerce stuff, building, uh...

Yeah. A lot of, a lot of stuff, which is funny because I was a Magento guy. I wrote a book on Magento. Oh, really? And then I did one e-commerce site in Drupal and I went back to Magento. Magento sucks, but I knew it really well, so, um, yeah, it was a, a little bit of a, a thing there. You know, I, I, I think the...

Was it Drupal Commerce at that point? At like Drupal 7, Drupal Commerce. There was... It was kind of shoehorned a little bit in comparatively to some- There were,

[00:32:27] Nic: there were some rough edges. Com- commerce 3- ... we're on 3.0 now, and it's, it's a lot more- Once they got to 2 ... a lot ...

[00:32:33] John: they kinda hit their stride. There was a lot of good- Mm.

Yeah ... there was a l- lot of good improvements in Commerce in, in, uh, the 2x version.

[00:32:41] Scott: Yeah. I, I liked the Drupal part of it a- at the time. Um, but yeah, so, so for, it was a lot of just, it was a lot of quick little, uh, you might call them brochure sites more than, like, major interactivity things or really heavy stuff.

But I, I think one of the things that I was specializing in, because I was such a UI guy, was being able to do really complex, um, UIs wrapped up in a nice little user experience. I think, like, one of the things that I really focused on in the Drupal experience was the admin of things, where some people, they just wanna, like, toss things and give clients the kitchen sink in a content form.

Yeah. Where I was really focused on not surfacing the things that don't need to be surfaced. How can we make this- feel the best in the admin experience as well as have it end result something complex- Yeah ... on the UI.

[00:33:35] John: Yeah.

[00:33:37] Bernardo: So Scott, I was wondering how hard is it for you guys to get a new guest for the podcast nowadays?

[00:33:43] John: Mm.

[00:33:43] Bernardo: I saw that, um, you guys had Jen Simmons a few episodes back, and, uh, she actually has a history with Drupal. So I'm trying to see if- Does she? ... I can get in touch with her 'cause she did Bartik. I don't know if you were familiar with that.

[00:33:56] John: Ah, yeah.

[00:33:57] Bernardo: And then she didn't really mention it, I, I noticed on the podcast when she was talking to you guys, but then I thought, "Well, I know Apple is known to be tricky," but since you guys are a large podcast, I don't know if that makes a difference, or if you guys contact her or she contact you.

How did that work?

[00:34:13] Scott: Yeah, that was... She, she reached out to us, and, uh, we had known Jen for a little while. She was tough to get on this show. She's the only guest that we've had on this show that had to have our questions submitted to legal ahead of time. So she, she was, she was one of the tougher guests that we've had.

Typically, um, we have too many people knocking down our door to get on. Um, and oftentimes it's mostly junk, where it's like somebody's just trying to sell their thing, which is one of the reasons why we used to do a weekly interview and we stopped doing that. Now we do interviews whenever we feel like it.

Um- Okay ... so we had an interview with Ben Vinegar today that we recorded. We had, um, an interview with the, um, folks over at Pierre, uh, Computer, which is like they- they're doing like a Git, GitHub alternative kind of deal. Um, but like these are things that we're interested in and we wanna talk to these people about.

So we'll usually we'll just reach- Sure ... out, uh, personally. But like, yeah, we get pitched so much garbage. Um, so i- it's, it's, yeah. Uh, we've, we decided- ... it's like we don't wanna be your book tour, you know. We don't wanna be there- Yeah ... just 'cause you're selling something.

[00:35:20] Nic: Yeah. We, we, we occasionally have people on to talk about their books, but it's, it's almost always like Drupal community books, right?

It's a specific... And, and they've been on the show before. And like we had, um, we have a, a sister show, I guess you'd call, or a brother show, I don't know, uh, TD Cafe, where it's really raw. Like, it's just two people talk. Like, it's kind of like water cooler talk or like in the hallway track talk. Mm. Like you can have, you can have a guest- We like to consider it

[00:35:44] John: a coffee shop, like- Coffee shop

we're sophisticated.

[00:35:47] Nic: Yeah, so, so we had, uh, we had Matt Glaman on, uh, last week or the week before. He had just written a book about caching, and so he and I talked about caching, but we also obviously talked about his book. But it's, i- it, it's tricky. Yeah, we, we, we also get some of those emails like, "Hey, I just published a book on XYZ," and it's like, well, that has nothing to do with Drupal- Totally

or the web or anything else. Like, and-

[00:36:08] Scott: Yeah ... so. It always bugs us when we have, we, we have somebody on the show that we really wanna talk to, and then, like other shows have that same person on either like the day before, the same day, or the same week, and we're like, "Ah, this person just clearly is- is, is put- doing a, a book tour trying to, to get their sh- and that, that's fine, like promote your stuff, but like we want interesting conversations with people, uh- Yeah

about things that we're interested in rather than just trying to fill space, you know? Yep.

[00:36:38] John: So I'm wondering, like what is your, what is your work week, like what's the breakdown there? Mm-hmm. Is, um, would you say podcasting is your full-time job, or is it a part of your, you know, your work week and then you're doing side projects?

Are you still doing client work? Like what does that look like?

[00:36:55] Scott: Yeah. Yeah, so no client work anymore. Um, and, uh, my, my job is very interesting because I, as the executive producer of Syntax, I, uh, I've taken on this role where they would basically, when they acquired Syntax, Sentry, they, it was like, "What do you wanna do?

Do you wanna just record the podcast? Do you wanna manage? Do you wanna do this or that?" And I, I took it as an opportunity to, to say, "You know what? I would love to, to get some management experience and work underneath somebody to, to gain that experience," 'cause I had, at that point I'd only ever managed like one person, uh, directly below me.

And, um, I, I, uh, as the, uh, in that role I, I manage a team now. So we have, uh, six people including myself on the Syntax team. A lot. A lot. Uh, two, two producers. We have another, uh, content creator, CJ. We have a marketing manager, and then Wes, who's, uh, contract with Sentry. And so, uh, I, I manage that team is really what it comes down to.

But I, I do m- I do the management part of things. I record a lot for both the podcast, but also for YouTube still. Um, and the production or what we're doing for YouTube is like quite a bit more involved than what I was doing before, just like turning on my laptop and coding and talking about it. Um, so there's a lot of production.

I, I still edit quite a bit of video myself even though we have two editors on the team. We just produce a lot of stuff. And, um, uh, building a ton of projects both for Syntax, but also for my own learning for the podcast, um, to, to, to explore those types of ways. Like right now I'm building a tool using, uh, this new API that's behind a flag in Chrome called HTML and Canvas, which-

[00:38:32] John: Hmm

[00:38:33] Scott: allows HTML as a child of a canvas element. Hmm. And then you can, you draw that HTML with Canvas, meaning that you can have accessible, interactive, actual HTML, but it's drawn by Canvas, so you can apply shaders to it. You could do all sorts of crazy stuff to it. Ooh. Um, it's a crazy API. And so I was like, "Ooh, I'm exploring that.

Let me build, uh, like an app that will do video interstitials, but with shaders and with animation- Yeah ... and with GSAB." But 'cause now you have all of Canvas, so it's not just gonna look like static HTML popping up. Yeah. I can do like chromatic aberration or all kinds of like weird stuff to it. That- that's really cool.

So, like building stuff like that, you know? I mean- Yeah ...

[00:39:17] Nic: it sounds, the performance sounds like it's gonna be fun. Oh, yeah. But, but, yeah, I- I'd love to see that one, that if that ever gets to a state where you- you push something out, that'd be very, that'd be fascinating to look at.

[00:39:30] Scott: Yeah. And then, and- and, uh, I'm building, we're doing, we're starting livestreams now.

We just started our first one last week, like a weekly livestream. Next one's gonna be on Thursday. But I built a whole interactive tool that's all real time for audience submitting, uh, things for us to look at, and it pops up on screens, and we have tickers of information going by, but it's all like real time stuff.

So, I'm building just like a lot of tools both for Syntax and then also building a lot of stuff for fun. Like I'd mentioned, we d- we did like a- a challenge for a YouTube video. It's like, who could build, uh, the best date picker? And the- the- the- the prompt was so open-ended. Yeah. It's like, who can build a date picker, and then we're gonna put it in front of, uh, five non-devs and get their feedback on it.

Oh. So, that was just like a little challenge. So, I spent a whole week working on a date picker that I'm never gonna touch again. And, uh, stuff like that, right? It's like, just get really deep on something for a little bit. Um, and that's really what my- my week looks like. We- we record on Tuesdays. I already recorded two episodes of Syntax, uh, this morning, so- Oh, wow

doing a lot of talking today. Um, I just talk a lot into a, uh, into a microphone is what it, what it comes down to, and then I spend the next few days coding really, coding. So, I wanna- Coding ... I wanna figure out

[00:40:40] John: how we get a staff of six people. That sounds, that sounds- Yeah ... that sounds useful. Yeah.

[00:40:46] Scott: Yeah, I know.

You gotta have a, a wealthy benefactor. Um, a- and the- Oh ... the, the Sentry connection was really, really great for us because, um, it allowed us to drop sponsors because we were hunting for sponsors every week to keep the show going, and it was, it was my full-time job doing the podcast and Level Up. Yeah. Oh.

Um, it was stressful, stressful work, for sure. Yeah. And so now it's like, oh, I can just show up. I have a budget, and I know what I, you know, what I can do with that budget and just push it as hard as I can, so. That's awesome.

[00:41:15] John: Hey, uh, not to, not to go, not to go backwards, 'cause we always wanna be- Yeah, do it

going forwards, but, uh, Freelock, uh, is shouting uber c- uber cart in the chat, and, um, you just unlocked like memories. And I'm like, oh, uber cart. Oh, man, that was- Yeah ... that was before commerce. And-

[00:41:31] Nic: Yes ... there was- I remember uber cart.

[00:41:34] John: Whoo. All right. Well.

[00:41:35] Nic: So, I, I, I wanted to kinda circle back to one of the things you were saying though, which is y- um, uh, building tools to kind of keep up to date or test things out.

I, I'm curious how you come up with ideas for these little projects because watching it as a consumer of tutorials rather than a creator of tutorials I find that building something real... Like, if I just read the tutorial or watch it, I'm not learning something. Mm-hmm. I'm not actually understanding it.

I'm not, like, building that skill. I have to build something with it, and sometimes I just build whatever the tutorial's building. Sometimes I come up with something. How do you come up with those ideas? 'Cause I think that part is something a lot of people struggle with. If you, if you're thinking about next, you know, next month you need to have something new to talk about and test- Mm-hmm

how, what's your ideation process like?

[00:42:23] Scott: Yeah, for me it's always, um, coming down to what, like, my needs. Like, what are my personal needs at any given moment? I, I have a, a talk on this. It was, uh, how I learn things quickly. I think it was called, like, Too Fast, Too Furious. But I did a, a newer one- ... um, this year, and a lot of it was, like, talking about how I use the inspiration of needing to get an actual output done to learn something.

So for instance, this need of, um, this need of needing this real-time app for our video overlays. That need, you know... Wes would be like, "Well, why don't you just build it in this established tech?" And I'm like, "Well, I wanna learn this other thing, so I'm gonna build this thing that I need to learn this new tech."

Um, I'm gonna learn... It's a, like, a local first and a syncing library. I'm gonna use this tech because I need, I have this need. And if I run into issues while I'm building that, the fact that I have to get it done, uh, or I have to have this, this need fulfilled, um, will push me through those, like, harder parts of learning where you get, like, really stuck on things or you're feeling grumpy about it.

Yeah. Um, but I, th- as far as, like, coming up with project needs, it's almost always like, "What is something that I would like to have in my life?" Whether that is for work, for our team, for myself personally. Okay. Yeah, and- I have a, I have a new,

[00:43:51] Nic: I have a new question. Sorry. No, yeah. How many, how many one-off projects does your podcast depend on- Oh

building tools that you only used for that purpose?

[00:44:02] Scott: Uh, en- enough to really piss off some of my coworkers, that's for sure. Uh, it's... Well, we were doing something, and I think CJ was like, "Can we just build this in something normal, please?" I'm like, "Yeah, okay, I'll build this in something normal." Uh, uh, but yeah, no, I, I, I think that's it.

Like, for instance, this, this, like, video interstitials thing that I'm building in the HK, and like I said, I mean, it's, like, behind a flag, and it's not something that we're, we're going to use, actually use. But it's a good- Yeah ... exploration as, like, a thing, and what it taught us was that ooh, actually, the, the thing that we actually want is to use OGraph in DaVinci Resolve instead of, uh, exporting as video at all.

Like, everything kinda serves a purpose in, like, teaching, uh, even right or wrong, but at the end of the day, you learn something from it, which I think can be... In my position, you know, having- tools that you can just toss out and, you know, throw away when you don't need them anymore is, is almost advantageous because it's...

It's, like, my job is to explore this stuff. It's, it's not to build stable software necessarily. Yeah. I have s- I have stable software projects, and I make better choices on those ones.

[00:45:09] John: So it's interesting, 'cause that's, like, um, s- how I treat my personal site a lot of times. Mm-hmm. Like, a lot of times I'll be like, you know, m- my last thing was, um, HTML, HTML emails, and I'm like, "Ugh."

Like, I want prettier looking emails when I get my, you know, website update notifications or whatever. And I'm like- Mm-hmm ... "What's the easiest way to do this?" And I'm like, "Oh, Easy Email Module." And I'm like, "Ugh, then I gotta configure it," and, like, just totally, like, lazy. And then I'm like, "Wait, there's a recipe for that.

What does this recipe do? Let me try it out." And I'm like, "Oh, this is super easy." Like, great. Emails done. So. Yeah. So, so switching-

[00:45:47] Nic: Yeah, fulfill your own needs, for sure. Sw- switching topics a little bit, you mentioned JS Nation earlier as a, a place that you sometimes talk. How, how did you get involved with them?

[00:45:58] Scott: Yeah. Well, uh, I, I, you know, speaking in general, I didn't do any public speaking for a long time, even after we started the podcast. Um, whether it freaked me out or I wasn't getting invited, for some reason, as a YouTuber, you didn't get invited to speak anywhere. But as a Twitter personality or a course maker, all of that, you got invi- invited to speak everywhere.

Um, and I don't know if it's just an, a, about, like, getting involved in the community or something like that, but Wes would have just, um, opportunities to speak at, like, hundreds of conferences, and he, he had, like, a lot of experience. So for him, like, he was a, a really, like, uh, somebody they wanted to speak at everything.

And so i- it started off with me just, like, taking Wes' runoff. He would be like, "Here's 10 things I was invited to that I can't do. Do you wanna do any of these?" And I, like, signed up, uh, for Zeit Day, which was Vercel's conference before they were Vercel. And- Oh, okay ... this was, they were announcing that, like, Next.js was not going to be like...

It was gonna be, like, uh, serverless based rather than, like, a Node.js based kind of thing. And this, I said yes to this conference because it's like, "Oh, I know them. Okay, I'll, I'll speak at this." And I didn't even, like, think much about it because I had no pro- public, uh, speaking. I was freaking out a little bit.

And then, like, maybe, like, a month before the conference, I, like, looked up the venue, and it was this massive theater. And I was like, "Oh, man. I'm, I'm in big, big trouble. I've no public speaking experience." I was, like, shaky giving a speak at my, uh, my brother's wedding. Like, even just, like, I, I, I don't know what I'm gonna do.

So I just started practicing at meetups around Denver and, um- I was nervous and all this stuff, and I just started speaking here and there. And it's really just like once I did it one or two or three or four, y- y- you just start getting invited to a couple every year. And then the JS Nation folks, um, th- they're, uh, they had Wes speak at least a couple of times, so a lot of it's through Wes is really what it is, 'cause he had all these connections.

Okay. And then once I spoke there, I started emceeing their conferences, which was another thing that freaked me out massively, 'cause I never emceed anything in my entire life. And I, I did a good job, so they keep inviting me back to emceeing. So this year in Amsterdam, it's, it's, um, I think it's June. June, I should probably know this 'cause it's coming up.

I'm gonna be there. Um, it's, uh, uh, why don't you say on the website? Oh, June 11th. Um- June 11th. Okay. But I'm, I'm gonna be emceeing JS Nation, and I'm gonna be speaking at React Summit, and then we're gonna do a SyntaxLive meet up there and stuff like that. So, uh, yeah, just little by little doing these things and, and getting into speaking, it's, it's been a wild world.

But it's a, it's, it's good to push yourself. I always had We- I was told Wes when I was, like, getting invited to do this stuff, like, "Oh, this really freaks me out," and he's like, "Does it, does... If it freaks you out, like, 40%, like, you should probably just do it. Like, that's a good amount to have it freak you out."

You know? Uh, push you a little bit. That's great. Yeah. That's

[00:48:57] Bernardo: cool. Did you ever do a Drupal camp or a DrupalCon or one

[00:49:01] Scott: of those? No. No, I had never gotten into speaking until after I was out of the, the Drupal world is really it. I think that would've freaked me out too much. Oh, no way. Yeah.

[00:49:10] Bernardo: I think I would've been- And then among those-

I was too scared Along those lines, what will it take to get you for like a Drupal camp or a DrupalCon? 'Cause I know some speakers, depending on where they are in their career, we know have some requirements. Hmm. And I talked to a couple of people where they are just travel and sometimes they have a speaker's fee.

And sometimes the Drupal camps are smaller, so they might only be able to do so much. The DrupalCon is like the US global one, so that one has a little more of a budget. But I was wondering for somebody like you, what will it take? Like, do, do you need a bowl of

[00:49:40] John: green M&Ms? Is that like- Yeah ... is that like one of your requirements?

[00:49:44] Scott: No, I don't, I don't really have that. I don't really have strict requirements. A lot of it for me is like timing, where like I don't wanna do too much in one year. Or like, uh, uh, like I got invited to some really cool stuff this year and I had to say no. Like a local first conf in Berlin. It's like, I've never been to Germany, that sounds cool.

Um, but just could not make it work, and I have two, uh, two young kids at home, so it's like I don't wanna spend too much time traveling. So a lot of it just comes down to is it like, is it the right timing for me more than, more than literally anything else. Um, right timing or even like location. I'll do anything in Denver, that's for sure.

If it's Denver, uh, 'cause I live there, I'll just bop over to whatever. Um, but- How about Orlando? I mean, Orlando. I, I think I could convince my wife, uh, to go to Orlando, so yeah.

[00:50:30] John: So. Be probably a qui- an easy sell for the kids, too.

[00:50:33] Scott: That's, that's a good part of it, too, yes, is, is can I sell my wife on it? Uh- Yeah

'cause she doesn't have to go to everything. But if it's something that, uh, I can sell her on, like, um, I'm going to Zurich this year to J- uh, ZurichJS. Uh, like that was an easy sell. Oh, you go to Switzerland? Okay, cool. Let's, let's do that. Yeah.

[00:50:51] John: Chocolate and skiing, sounds great. Yeah, right.

[00:50:53] Scott: Um,

[00:50:55] John: I'm wondering like when you're delivering these talks or when you're creating content for your podcast, like where's your focus right now?

Is it, is it strictly in the JS stuff, or is there s- is there other, other things that you like to kinda talk about, you kinda like to create content around?

[00:51:12] Scott: It's, it's really just the web platform in general. Yeah. Um, yeah. A- and it's cool stuff that you can do on, on the web. Like, like I said, like right now I'm getting into this HTML canvas stuff, so I'm having to dive deep into shaders and WebGPU stuff that is way over my head or difficult for me to learn, but still like very exciting.

I've always been kind of like a, a motion-y kind of guy. I have a, a background- Hmm ... in, uh, motion graphics. I used to be an After Effects, um, editor motion graphics guy professionally before I got into the web world. So, um, anything that involves motion is always something that I'm very interested in. But it, it is, it's just like what, what is new?

What is grasping my attention? What, what am I, uh, focused on? So yeah, I, I get into even like the AI stuff is such a whole world right, right now at this point, where it's like, um, you, you have to, to get effective results, you have to really have a good understanding about all the pieces here. So just, uh, making sure that I, I am staying up to date with- Uh, what I find to be interesting.

For some re- I've always had a good intuition about what will hit and what won't hit with other people, ba- based on, like, what makes me excited, just because I, I think I'm kind of like an everyman developer, um, in terms of, like, if I look at an API and I'm like, "Ah, this is too obtuse and obnoxious," I don't think this is gonna be interesting to other people.

And likewise, it's, it's not interesting to me or whatever.

[00:52:35] Nic: So, well, I mean, if we're being honest, it's, it's hard to be excited about something that's not exciting to you personally. So e- so even those APIs- Yeah ... they might be exciting to somebody, but if you're- Always ... if you're doing a talk about it, that episode isn't gonna be very interesting because you're y- you know, people, people can tell when you're forcing something, right?

So hav- having something that you're excited about to talk about is in itself exciting, right? Pe- people's passion comes through, so.

[00:53:01] Scott: Yeah. I think that's something I've always, um, kind of done inherently, because it's hard for me to, to do stuff that I, I do feel like no attachment to. Um, and so for me, that's always been kind of a good barometer.

We, you, you would not believe how many companies wanna pay us to talk about a thing. And, and that, nothing will turn me off faster than you sending me a message saying, "Please talk about this. We will pay you," you know? And then when you see other creators line up to, uh, collect that check, uh, it, like, always is, is very striking, where you're like, "Okay, I know, I know what's going on here."

Um, but in the same regard, it's just like, it couldn't be me, couldn't be me doing

[00:53:37] Nic: that, you know? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, makes sense. I mean, we, we schedule based on what we think the community will be interested in. And, you know, as you... Bernardo's here. We have guest hosts every month. They stick around for about a month, and we always, we usually have guests.

Not always, but usually have guests.

[00:53:52] John: But if, I mean, if anybody's listening, and, uh, depending on how many zeros are on the check, we may consider- Yeah ... your product. Sure.

[00:53:59] Scott: I mean. Yeah. How many zeros? Yeah, sure. Yeah.

[00:54:01] John: Kid's gotta go to college, you know what I mean? Yeah.

[00:54:05] Nic: Um, so you, you mentioned that your prior Drupal experience shaped the framework that you're kind of building out right now.

Um, are, are there other times where you're just like, "Man, I remember Drupal did it this way. Maybe I should do it, do it that way, too"? Or, or maybe the inverse. Like, are there things that you're like, "Man, I wish Drupal just did it this way. That would'a, that would've made my life easier back then"? Mm. Um.

[00:54:27] Scott: Yeah.

Yeah, as far as the, the first part goes- I'm working on a, a new version of the Syntax site, and I've been working on it for way too long because I just keep getting sidetracked on, uh, all these other little things. And just, uh, earlier this week, I guess it's Monday, 'cause today's Tuesday, I was designing the whole admin nav and the admin experience and the admin layout and the, uh, content listings, and you would not believe how Drupal-y it is.

It is, uh, or at least my m- uh, Drupal E-Eight world, it's so firmly entrenched in that same sort of idea of content types, and these are the content types, and this is, um, you know, uh, how they present in the admin. So it's, it's very much still that way, where I, I think about in that, in those kinds of ways, where it's just kind of inherent because that was, like, the entire basis of the way that I like to work in a CMS in general.

And, and I never ... I, I built enough sites in WordPress to know that it was not for me, which was, um, uh, funny, 'cause I, I did. I worked in WordPress so much, and sometimes you'd work out of, in WordPress out of convenience or because that's what a client wanted. But it's still even today, it's like the admin interface does not speak to me in the same way that the, the Drupal system does, for sure.

[00:55:41] John: So question there. Like, if it's, if it's, if it's very similar Why not, why not maybe use Drupal for the backend and then just like, you know, g- you know, go headless and use it, use your own front end for the, for the, you know- It's a fantastic question ... to scratch

[00:55:59] Scott: the itch. Yeah. No, it's a- If you want ... it's a very fantastic question of one I have no answer to, I'll tell you that.

Um- Oh, okay. Well- Yeah. I- ... that's totally ac- that is

[00:56:05] John: an answer. There you go.

[00:56:06] Scott: Yeah. I, I think a lot of it, like I said, is just really like, uh, the PHP stuff, where it's like- Yeah ... once I, once I like, uh, you know, once I got into JavaScript for everything, it's like, "Oh, okay, this is like really where I'm most comfortable."

Yeah. Um.

[00:56:19] Bernardo: Yeah. Makes sense. So Scott, I was wondering, I saw the Mad CSS showdown that you guys had. Yeah. How hard was it to, um, get all those developers in the same page and kind of measure personalities? 'Cause I know some developers don't like to, you know, potentially battle each other out. You wanna make sure that they are able to lose gracefully, and I don't know how much personally you two knew them, but that could probably be a little bit of a challenge.

[00:56:48] Scott: Yeah. E- every single person we invited on, on to the Mad CSS, which was a big CSS, uh, speed coding tournament. It was who can get- Mm ... this done the fastest. Um, by the way, we built that platform in Scratch, which was another one of my little side projects using some of your tech. Uh, but, um, th- every single person we, we at least had a personal relationship with to some regard, or at least one person.

Between CJ, Wes, and I, we all have a different little network of who we know, so we each had like people to reach out to. And we had actually, um, we'd put feelers out for a lot of folks who either couldn't do it or weren't, um, available at that time. And so there were, there were more people that we would have loved to have on it, but at the end of the day, we had like a really great roster of, of developers, all the way from like, uh, Chris Coyer to Adam Wathan- Mm

of Tailwind, and, um, Adam Argyle, and just like, uh- Mm ... uh, just some really heavy hitters, like people that I look up to. And so in the second round of the competition, I had to go against Chris Coyer, and it was such a wild moment for me because- ... like I, I got my start on CSS Tricks, and, uh, I, I remember that was like my most visited site in the world when I was, um, back before I even had my first dev job.

So like I knew Chris personally. I, I've met him at conferences. I've met him online. Um, we've had him- Yeah ... on the show. But like having to face him down in a CSS battle was, was a very wild professional moment for me. Um, but just- Yeah ... a r- really cool experience all around. Yeah.

[00:58:22] John: I, I just had, I just had a flashback.

I don't know if any of you guys have, um, remember it. I mean, I'm sure maybe you do remember it, but like, um, what was it? Was it the, the like Photoshop tennis? No, that wasn't what it was called. Where, where like two designers would like take a Photoshop- Oh ... file and they'd like send it back and forth to each other, and it was kind of like a- Oh

like a battle.

[00:58:46] Nic: Yeah.

[00:58:47] John: Does anybody remember what- And they each

[00:58:48] Nic: had to like add, add to it and see where it ended up Yeah. And- Like, they had like a

[00:58:52] John: s- a st- amount of time or something they could do it in. I c- I cannot remember what it was called. Yeah. We'll, we'll see

[00:58:58] Nic: if we can find that.

[00:58:59] Scott: We're always coming up with goofy ideas like that, and that is like the CSS battles that we were doing on the YouTube channel were, were getting a lot of, uh, views.

People really like them. We like doing them. I'm a hyper-competitive person, so for me it's like, "Oh, I'm ready for this and I wa- I would like to, I would like to win." Um- ... people were like, "Don't you think it's gonna be weird if somebody from the Syntax team wins your own tournament?" I was like, "I don't care.

I wanna win. I'm coming to win-" "... this tournament." Uh, uh- I mean, you're doing it all

[00:59:26] John: live on YouTube, like you- Yeah ... you be the judge. If we didn't really win, like you can leave a comment and tell us that we, we didn't, right? Yeah. I thought it was

[00:59:34] Bernardo: pretty cool. You nearly won it, though. You were in the final. Uh- Yeah.

What exactly-

[00:59:39] Scott: And no, 2% or 3% of the people who... We did a whole bracket picking system. It was like every... We did a whole bracket app to pick your bracket, and it's like 3% of the people picked me to win. I was like, I was so personally offended by that, I had to step up. I was like, "Come on, I got my whole start teaching, uh, to my...

teaching CSS on YouTube back in 2012. Like, I've been doing this." Um, which was very funny. I had a whole like even like wrestling style promo, uh, cut before the final episode where I was like, "I'm here to remind you," and, and our editor- ... didn't even put it in the episode. I was like, "Oh, come on, that was really good."

Uh, that- that's funny. I feel like the next

[01:00:15] John: episode had like a five-minute reading of you just reading like, "Listen-" Yeah "... 3%'s really demoralizing." It was, it was

[01:00:23] Scott: brutal on my, uh... Yeah. No, every- everybody picking me to lose every single round, but hey, uh- I'm pretty- ... it doesn't ...

[01:00:29] Bernardo: I'm pretty sure most people don't expect an educator to take you down, and be like- Yeah

"That's the person who's gonna take you down."

[01:00:36] Nic: Yeah. So c- Yeah. Are there, are there plans to do a Mad JS tournament or other spinoff tournaments? I, I imagine it's a lot of work. It,

[01:00:43] Scott: oh, it was crazy amount of work. Um, but it was really good. Our whole team came together. We- we've talked about a lot of different tournaments, and we've been, we've been, uh, kind of exploring w- w- different ways that could work even in, like, our own content.

So for instance, we have been doing various JavaScript kind of racing and stuff, which I'm so bad at. I... Like, you put me under the gun in, in a JavaScript thing to, um, run some complex reduces and stuff, and I just, like, my brain just shuts off entirely. Um, so we've been doing some of that, but as far as a tournament goes, we have a few irons in the fire.

But I don't think anything that we've landed on as being like, "This needs to work." Right. The, the beauty of the CSS ones is that, like, you, it's visual, where, like- Yeah ... JavaScript is not as visual. So it's exciting to see the thing come together. Two, you can have it be objective because we were doing it all based on programic diffing.

Um, so, like, the percentage that you got done is a clear objective winner. So making it non-subjective, there's no voting or judges. So, like- Okay ... uh, uh, like, h- having to, like... Yes, the JavaScript racing one would be good, but how do you make it visually interesting? Okay, and we have to solve those problems.

Yeah. So it's, it's on our brain for sure.

[01:01:57] Nic: Yeah, those are hard problems. Those are harder problems to solve, and I think some people listening might realize making sure that the whole process is interesting, not just the end result, right? Yeah. And, uh, it's tricky. Yeah. N-

[01:02:08] Scott: shout out to our editors, um, um, Randy and Nikki, like, really did a- an amazing job making...

'Cause it, it could have very easily become way less interesting to watch, um, had they not edited the way they, they had. So, uh, I think it was really well done on their part.

[01:02:25] Bernardo: So with AI coming in the page, I wonder, um, what are you using? What's your setup when you are, like, hardcore, uh, getting into a prototype and then deciding which tool will let you get some time back?

[01:02:39] Scott: Yeah. And it changes every week. Um, we just recorded an episode today on the, uh, state of AI survey that came out, and, like, I was telling Wes, it's like you, you're gonna have to poll me every single week on, on what I'm using or, or changing it up, because the tools I use are different all the time. And right now I, I'm, like, pretty into using Claude Code.

Um, I use the... I like the Anthropic models specifically because they write better UI code. Um, and, like, you get into the, the OpenAI models are writing, like, a function that hot potatoes data from one function to another function to another function. And I'm not to the point where I don't read the code or anything, so when I'm looking at the code it's outputting, it's driving me nuts.

Um, so, uh, I, I stick with the, the latest from Anthropic is really kind of where I'm at right now. I'm giving Hermes a test run today. I use open code a lot, but have used it less since they don't let me use my Claude Code subscriber since Anthropic pulled the Claude Code. But my, my system is, like, changing all the time.

Um, I've been diving into a lot more skills. I tend to, like, really, like, review all the code that it writes even though I know there's- Yeah ... there's maximalists who don't do that, and I, I am very, like, I don't know, old school in that regard, where it's like I... Even if this works, I still have to know that it's, it's not terrible code.

Are you doing the

[01:04:01] Bernardo: $200 max account or-

[01:04:04] Scott: Yeah, I have- ... 250? I have the two... I have the $200 max account. That's the one that I, I... The only thing I pay for. I also have an OpenRouter, um, thing that I, I... It's not, like, a monthly subscription. Okay. An OpenRouter gives you access to, like, all the different models i- and it's all token based, so I use that for, like, lesser models that are way cheaper if I wanna have individual small tasks run and that stuff.

But that's way less, like, organized and structured. If I'm coding these days, right now it's, it's pretty much just Claude Code even though I don't really love Claude Code. I just like- I- ... the models. Yeah. I,

[01:04:36] Nic: I think, I think the interesting thing about AI right now is that i- in this ca- context is that it's very close to the JavaScript ecosystem.

Like, one thing I've always struggled with JavaScript is literally every day there's a brand-new framework. Yeah. Or a brand-new model or a brand-new, like, "Oh, that's last week's news. Don't use that." Totally. "Use this." Mm-hmm. And, and I think the community arou- in JavaScript has settled a bit around, like, you know, there's Svelte, there's React, there's- There's still Angular, I guess.

Um, th- but there's still, like, these little individual pieces that are like, okay, everything is always new. It's always moving forward so fast that- Wow ... it's almost a full-time job just to keep track

[01:05:16] Scott: of what these things do. It, it quite literally is my, my full-time job. Yeah. It's- Yeah ... it's quite literally that, and it's still exhausting and tough, yeah.

I, I don't

[01:05:23] Nic: know how you keep up with it.

[01:05:26] Scott: Well, it is... Yeah, I, I, I, I get paid to keep up with it. That's how I do it, because otherwise- Fair enough ... yeah, I think I would be just completely overwhelmed by trying to explore all these things. Like, even this Hermes agent thing. Uh, Hermes, um, is not something I even...

I, I knew about it or whatever. "Okay, let me explore it. I'll see what it's about." But up until m- you know, a few hours ago, I had, um, no energy to pick up another agent system or harness or whatever. Uh, yeah. You ever run out

[01:05:57] Bernardo: of tokens?

[01:05:59] Scott: Um, I don't really. I try to, to, to... Just 'cause you feel like you have to use that, that max plan, 'cause you're paying for it, but my, my, uh...

Like, my small business is paying for it, and then, like, okay. Uh, I don't, I don't really end up killing all the tokens. 'Cause what I don't do is I don't do those, like, kind of autonomous loops where it's just working on- Yeah ... something for so long, and if you don't, then it's kind of hard to use it at all.

Yeah. Maybe I'm, I'm, I'm still, uh, a Luddite in that regard, yeah.

[01:06:29] Nic: Or you just have to add more context, right? Like, if you give it- Yes ... the full app instead of just a couple files or something.

[01:06:35] Scott: Yeah. I know. Now I gotta be a context engineer. Now I gotta learn about all this stuff. Exactly.

[01:06:41] John: Yeah. So Scott, as we wrap up here, um, I'm wondering, like, what, what excites you about tech nowadays?

What makes you think like, "Ooh, I gotta play with that"? What, like, gets you out of bed in the morning?

[01:06:55] Scott: Yeah. My favorite things that I, I'm, I'm feeling excited about in general is, like, local data and syncing engines. So, um, one thing I really like right now is called Jazz, Jazz.tools. It's a s- database that syncs.

It has a really nice developer experience as far as, like, writing what essentially looks like, uh, ORM kind of calls, but then having- Mm ... um, local first data, which can work- Mm-hmm ... entirely locally without having to ever sync to a third-party server, or it can sync to a third-party server, or you can control, uh, what data you're relying on, global or local or edge data.

And, like, that stuff is the most exciting for me, just because it's- It's, you don't have to worry about, um, laggy UIs ever. You don't have to worry about optimistic UI and faking data transport. Uh, what you get is instant data reads and writes 100% of the time, and that, that type of thing is, like, really interesting to me.

Another one I really like is ZeroSync, and ZeroSync is neat because it sits in front of any Postgres database. Mm-hmm. So, um, like, you can throw it into apps that already exist and just kind of replace your data- Hmm ... fetching with ZeroSync as a cache layer, and I really love that stuff. So, uh, Jazz and Zero are, like, the, the two things I'm most excited about beyond, uh, Svelte in general- Yeah

which I, I tend to write most of my stuff in. And then I really still... I love CSS. I wrote a CSS framework, which is, like, very much my thing, um, called Graffiti. Um, Graffiti, I believe the URL is graffiti-ui.com, and this is, like, it's not for everybody, and it might not even be for most people. But it is, like, the idea behind it is, like, look at how much you can do with just CSS instead of bringing in JavaScript.

So it's a Node.js, a, a ZeroJS, not a Node.js, a ZeroJS CSS framework that has things like swipers and tabs and, uh, reels and popups and using modern APIs and, um, it's just the way I like the CSS. So that, that's, like, really what makes me the most excited these days. Very cool.

[01:09:11] John: Well, Scott, thank you for joining us.

It's, uh, it's been great chatting with you.

[01:09:15] Scott: Yeah, likewise. Thank you so much for having me on, and honestly, guys, I, I think about Drupal all the time, so I, uh, I appreciate you all for inviting

[01:09:22] Nic: me on. W- we'll always welcome you back. Do you have questions or feedback? You can reach out to Talking Drupal on socials with the handle talkingdrupal or by email with [email protected].

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[01:10:11] John: Wonderful. Scott, if folks wanted to get ahold of you, how best could they do that?

[01:10:15] Scott: Yeah, I'm, I'm @stolinski, S-T-O-L-I-N-S-K-I, on just about every single thing on the planet. Uh, except for YouTube. I'm at Syntax FM. Um, you can just check out Syntax Podcast, syntax.fm, anything like that. You can find all of my links or whatever from there.

Um, and if you, you wanna, uh, hear me talk about web dev, yeah, Syntax FM on YouTube

[01:10:36] John: Mm,

[01:10:37] Scott: there

[01:10:37] John: you

[01:10:37] Scott: go.

[01:10:38] John: Bernardo, uh, thank you for joining us again for the last four weeks. It's been, it's been a pleasure. You'll be, uh, be making a few more, uh, few more, uh, guest, guest spots in the next couple of weeks, I think.

But, uh, if folks wanted to get ahold of you, how best could they do that?

[01:10:52] Bernardo: So they can reach me on Drupal Slack, um, as BernardM28, and then on LinkedIn as Bernardo Martinez.

[01:11:01] John: And Nic, what about you?

[01:11:02] Nic: You can find me pretty much everywhere at nicxvan, N-I-C-X-V-A-N. And

[01:11:07] John: I'm John Picozzi. You can find me personally at picozzi.com or on the socials in drupal.org@johnpicozzi.

And if you're interested about EPAM, you can look us up at epam.com.

[01:11:20] Bernardo: If you have enjoyed listening, we have enjoyed talking.

[01:11:24] John: All right. Have a good one,

[01:11:25] Nic: everyone. Yeah, thank you. Thank

you.