of my early blog posts were around sublime text and how you can be sort of like a power user

in sublime text but the way that it makes sense in my mind also makes sense in their mind and I

realized that I have a pretty good way of of describing how things work because I don't know

that I would have kept with it if I had 200 listeners per episode or something like that for

for a year you know it's a bit of a grind to keep going I'm sure you know yeah it's really

hard to keep up yeah that's really it's a lot of work behind the behind the camera yes oh yeah

women who did this like 30 day green smoothie challenge where you sign you go to their blog

you sign up for the 30 day green smoothie challenge you get 30 recipes and you just stick with it and

they built this amazing community and I was like I should do that with JavaScript you know is like

I look back at my entire career and like what did I do that like really helped helped people and

changed the world and it sounds silly but it a lot of people learn to code through that this

podcast platform that we're talking on right now Riverside the it was built by a guy who took my

course he's like I'm gonna build a podcast platform he took my node course what are the

the type of developer who AI will take their job for me as a developer I think you absolutely need

to lean into using AI when you're coding and I'm at a point now where I'm like there's another

vs code fork you know oh there's another AI thing there's an it's like oh this is that that

talk I did a year ago is 100% obsolete it's all different now it's it's crazy it was the images

that this thing generated like two or three years ago were hilarious and now they can make

video like if you think oh I'm gonna ignore it because it can goof up you're I'm sorry but it's

gonna get it's gonna keep getting better what do you think is the secrets formula that make this

online courses successful you mentioned one of them which is how you are teaching to other people

I think part of the reason why my courses do well is because it's just me I'm just flying by the hip

at the time everybody said I was an idiot for doing that like why don't you just make a sign up

and you can access all your courses at once you know the rails cast was big at the time where you

so listening to those people is very beneficial because you can get you can get good marketing

copy out of out of their their pain points but you can also get a good read for where people are at

and you can know what to create from there does anything change after the acquisition or it's

still the same vision for the syntax FM content strategy and stuff like that in fact like sometimes

sometimes people from century will suggest guests and I'm like now like the other day someone was

like hey can can we get this person on the podcast and I was like that is not a good fit you know

like when we were selling ads we sold out of all the ad space so we added another episode and then

we sold out all that ad space so we added a third episode because we're like well let's just keep

making money on this thing or when we were pregnant with our first child I had been fussing around

with this sublime book for like almost a year and when we realized we were we're gonna have a baby

it's just something in you just kicks you into hard drive and I put the thing out it did super

well and I made a bunch of money on it and like what do you think can make this excess of the

syntax there a large part of the web development community talks about how things suck and and

people think that you can look smart by calling stuff bad so welcome guys we had a let's go podcast

a podcast for interview software engineer to share the entrepreneurial story and here we are

on episode number three of season number two and here we have the famous west boss because of the

syntax FM we already have the other co-host Scotland skin this is the number two and here we have

the other co-host which is west boss he's also content creator co-host instructor teaching

JavaScript and I am one of his students and let's see you after this intro to share more about

west boss story thank you so much west boss for giving us time to share your story with us for

today episode and can you give the audience who is probably already know you like an introduction

about yourself yeah so my name is west boss I'm a full stack JavaScript developer from Canada

and I like to build courses and apps and stuff like that around the latest and greatest in

server side JavaScript front-end frameworks new CSS stuff all that surrounds that area and I also

have a podcast called syntax it's that syntax FM and we release a bunch of episodes every week on

on web development that's great thank you so much for giving the agency the direction of

about yourself and the first question that I usually ask the guest is how did the guest started

with web development how was the first interaction with computer so how this love of web development

starts back there yeah oh man it goes way back to when I was just a kid we were one of the first

people to have fast internet or internet at all sorry even dial up and I was just poking around

building websites I built a couple just websites for myself I built one for PlayStation 2 before it

came out and and then I always just kind of love that and then once my space came around I was in

in high school and my space was you could tweak it with adding HTML and CSS to your profile so I would

add I would like do custom MySpace layouts for people and along with like designing the whole

thing and like all through high school I was always like designing t-shirts and albums and and what not

and as things sort of started to shift away from MySpace I was like oh well maybe I'll just just

build websites now you know so I I picked up WordPress and I did like freelance consulting

for a number of years while I was in university and then once I graduated from university I was

like I'm gonna do this thing full-time and I was just kind of doing JavaScript WordPress

consulting good joining agencies that needed work or needed some some jobs done and then finally

they're like I guess not the last arc but I I started doing a lot of blogging

early on and that blogging turned into building courses and selling them and and here I am today

that's really good and what was your first blog post that you wrote back then

oh that's that's a great question um a lot I don't know exactly what the first one was

but a lot of my early blog posts were around sublime text and how you can be sort of like

a power user in sublime text and at the time I had been trying a whole bunch of blog posts about

like here is how to cache stuff in PHP and and here are some apps that I use and here's some CSS

I don't want to call them CSS tricks because that's Chris Coyer's website but yeah I they all did

like kind of well but then as soon as I did sublime text ones they just hit um and I was like oh I got

I have something here you know you know that like you're constantly searching for for what's your

thing you see it with a lot of creators and eventually you hit on something and uh the sublime

text stuff did super well and at the time it went to the top of hacker news and I kind of scrambled

I'm like like I knew like I got to harness this traffic somehow because these people are not going

to come back to my blog posts some of them subscribe on rss feeds and whatnot but you kind of lost them

after that so I quickly threw up like a little sign-up form to just funnel their emails into

mailchimp I'm like I'm writing a book on sublime text and like I think I got like 2,000 2,500 sign-ups

in a couple days from that traffic and then I was like well I better write a book now because

uh that is is what I told people I'm doing so I I did that and it worked out

that's really everything and which time were talking about the first blog post about sublime

text text yeah when was that oh that's that's a good question is probably like 2013 2014 or so

um yeah that's really good and you did like a blog post in for quite some time and after that

you start doing more like online courses and most of them were like a more JavaScript focused

and what was the first course that you did after like I would say done but after migrating from

blogging to like other online courses yeah so so what had happened was I was doing blog posts and

a local me meet up or a local um thing late called ladies learning code um asked me they said

they had like one day workshops and they were like hey would you lead a workshop and I thought

me I don't think so like I'm not I'm not a teacher but I was like ah sure I'll do it because at the

time I just went I just went to the last page of my blog post and my first like 10 or so

blog posts were on php and php caching techniques and my first sublime blog post was September 22

2011 um and previously before that I was doing a little bit of no j s uh stuff which is it shows

you how long I've been in in no j s world almost 15 years yeah um so yeah so like that I was doing

those blog posts they had noticed they said hey will you come learn lead a workshop I said sure

so I put together a one day workshop on building like a theme with WordPress and it was nuts we

had like a hundred women come out and they we spent all Saturday uh doing WordPress and and

learning it and people said to me I really like the way that you explain things it just makes

sense to me and and I thought hmm I'm just I'm a bit of an idiot but the way that it makes sense in

my mind also makes sense in their mind and I realized that I I have a pretty good way of

of describing how things work in a way that is approachable and not academic or or over the head

because I find that with there's a lot of really smart people out there that are are really smart

and uh they can't it it's hard for them to convey it to just us regular people uh so after after I

had done that I was like oh wow maybe I should be doing a little bit more and as part of writing the

sublime text book I was like well you gotta have like a uh two levels right you gotta have the book

but you gotta have the book and something else so I was like and I'll have the book and a couple

videos you know I think I had like 20 videos on on how to do things um and people just like the

videos better they're like I want more of these videos right it was kind of the like early days

of coding videos so I thought okay and then my my next course after that was one on I think it was

on react or or maybe on flexbox and I just I was like I'm going to do this whole thing videos you

know I don't I don't really like writing I love doing these videos it makes a lot of sense to me

so I just kind of started doing whole video courses and um that's that's the end of that I've done

I don't know 10 15 since then okay and you started doing video in similar time to Scott

the long ski if I maybe it's similar time yeah I'm doing like a youtube video and mostly

technical and coding video yeah yeah him and I are are hilariously similar because like we didn't

meet each other to many many years later but like when we did meet each other we're like hey we kind

of we kind of started at the same time we kind of we both got married around the same time we're

both around the same age you know like we're very similar in that way uh so yeah we both started

around same time and it's funny because I had been watching scott's videos for years before

I had ever met him in online or even reached out that's great I mean yeah I remember this story

like uh that's like maybe you wrote them an email or something about something I couldn't

remember exactly yeah you want me to tell the story yeah so I had released a a course called

react for beginners um and then maybe three or four months after that scott scott was huge on

youtube or he still is but uh he was like very early in like the coding youtube thing and

he put out a youtube series called react for beginners and I I was like hmm that's gonna be

bad for me because that's the exact same thing that I named my course so I emailed him and I was

like hey like I know I don't own the rights to react for beginners um but would you mind renaming

it and he was totally cool he's like oh totally so he renamed it react for everyone and then uh

after that I was like oh thanks for being so cool because you could have just like blown me off and

said you don't own that name which was which was valid and then I was like hey you want to like start

like what's called a mastermind um and it was just a group of four developers who kind of also create

content and we met I think once every other week and just talked about sales and strategies and

recording and all kinds of stuff like that that's amazing and this is like this conversation this

is what will lead us to the syntax fm podcast yeah you like uh having this connection this will

lead us to this project called syntax fm and I think after this mastermind uh other people left

and you will be the only one that was there like I was most and uh you like a scott scott and you

have been in the mastermind and after that you started the syntax if it corrects me if I'm wrong

yeah yeah so there was four of us and after about a year of the mastermind we sort of were like

all right this was great but we sort of got what we needed out of it um so we we sort of dispersed

and then I was just like hey like me and scott really jived well and I was like do you want to

start a podcast and uh he's like yeah totally that would be really fun and then we just like kind

of molded over and talked about it for a year after that and then finally we we put something out

and uh it popped off from there yeah that's amazing and it was like a hit from the start

it was really amazing and how do you think the syntax fm project or podcast help you and your

online courses and your personal brand or yeah other side you like the personal brand help the

podcast um I think they're mutually beneficial at at the time it was very hard to start I think

it still is it's really hard to start a podcast um especially back then there was no discoverability

it was all word of mouth so if if you just put a podcast out there there was no Spotify

recommendations or youtube algorithm or whatever it was simply just people subscribing to podcasts

they like and if you didn't know about it then then you couldn't find it so we got a really early

boost from on the podcast because I had a fairly large email list and Scott had an extremely large

youtube channel um and we were able and we both had pretty big social followings as well so we're

able to very uh quickly funnel people from those into the podcast um which I think sort of helped

our success because I don't know that I would have kept with it if I had 200 listeners per episode

or something like that for for a year you know it's a bit of a grind um to keep going I'm sure

you know yeah it's really hard to keep up yeah that's really it's a lot of work behind the behind

the camera yes oh yeah and after this podcast and a lot of things happen and like it's growing both

like the the podcast and your online courses and yeah other courses and stuff and also you

post more like a content on youtube I remember the three-day uh JavaScript channels like a playlist

there's a lot of things that happen can you give us more detail about this one yeah totally and I'm

sorry I totally forgot to to tell you about the brand thing as well um they were mutually beneficial

meaning that I like our brands were able to help people listen to the podcast but by people tuning

in every single week or several times a week it really helped put us in people's minds even if

they were not buying the courses they were like oh if I want to learn something about web development

Wes is the place to go and I'll send people there but sorry the second question you had what sorry

what was the second question the youtube content that you started doing like the third oh yeah yeah

I had been doing speaking gigs and and a couple youtube videos here and there not a not a whole

lot um but I I remember I was I think I was at smashing conf in in Britain I was listening to a

podcast about these women who did this like 30-day green smoothie challenge where you sign you go to

their blog you sign up for the 30-day green smoothie challenge you get 30 recipes uh and you just stick

with it and they built this amazing community and I was like I should do that with JavaScript you know

so I I built this thing JavaScript 30.com um and at the time sorry I'm leaving all all kinds of

stuff out but at the time I was also the ladies learning code turned into a like one of these

like coding boot camps um but before it was a boot camp it was also just part-time classes and I was

teaching um part-time web development classes and I had a lot of students come to me saying I I need

more practice you know I I did all the exercises but I just want to I want to get better I want to

do more things like what can I build and I remember thinking like you don't know what to build like my

mind is just constantly thinking of things to build and and being exciting about new tech and

and whatnot and I thought like oh man not everybody just has that openness to just go and create stuff

without being prompted people need more exercises and and also I was like sort of beating the whole

drum of like there's no formation without repetition meaning you just got to build a lot of stuff people

come to me all the time how do I get better at coding you know I took a course I'm like did you

build a thousand things yet you got to build a thousand things then you'll then you'll get pretty

good at it um so I was like all right I'll give you 30 things to build just JavaScript you know

HTML file CSS file JavaScript file no bundlers no builders no framework none of that a frustrating

stuff that comes along with the JavaScript ecosystem so I built JavaScript 30 30 days

of of challenges one every single day you sign up for the thing and you get access to the whole

course right away and then I also drip that out on YouTube as well so I host the videos on my own

course platform but I also just publish them freely to to YouTube as well and that done it's

it's over half a million people have have taken the course now it's it's pretty wild

and it just got such good reception from from everybody and like we talk about that like

hitting you know like that was one of my really big hits a lot like that sublime text blog post

really hit I had a couple free courses that did did well but that that JavaScript 31 like that's

that might be something that like is like I look back at my entire career and like

what did I do that like really helped helped people and changed the world and

it sounds silly but it a lot of people learn to code through that yes and I learned so much

back then through this playlist and also the way that you are teaching JavaScript back then like

where I start it was very entertaining I didn't feel bored like yes you're like a video style

format it wasn't feeling bored it was always like entertaining there's not a lot of sign

like poses and stuff it was really I would say intense but at the same time like entertaining

so you don't feel bored when you are learning how to yeah how to how to use JavaScript yeah at the

time a lot of the a lot of the online courses where people with like slide decks and they would

they would prepare a whole PowerPoint and then they would just sit there and hit next next next

and and talk over it and for a lot of people that's a great way to learn

but I think what I hit on is that like not everybody learns well that way a lot of people

just want to see me building real world things that is semi complicated you know and and real

world enough that you can think oh I can take this I built this let me now let me now expand that

and build something else like this this podcast platform that we're we're talking on right now

Riverside the it was built by a guy who took my course he's like I'm going to build a podcast

platform he took my node course he built he basically took the stack that we learned in the

course and then built it obviously it's it's much more it's an amazing product now and it's

as much further ahead than that was but it was like a like an initial building block for people

who had dreams and ideas of things that they want to build yeah exactly this is the was the thing

that I I really like about the course that you can just for example you think this is really good

can I just like add this feature or like this stuff so it's like you will have the initiative

yourself to like and make it better and like it's more complex and those those wins of like I made

something that feels good I did something I did something the next day those small wins

are crucial for momentum in coding because coding coding is hard and it's a slog and things don't

work and you get frustrated you know and if you get too much of that you you can just

throw your hands up and be like this is not for me you know and and I like I had that myself

with coding so it's it's nice to have those small wins you feel good about yourself you know yeah

that's really I mean and you mentioned some really good number for you mentioned like

over a half million of like a student that attend and purchase your online courses can

can we have like a other number that you would like to share with us if you don't mind

um not a half a million so that's that the JavaScript 30 was a free course um and and

that's what they call a lead magnet in the biz um which is like you see a lot of people try

to put crappy stuff out there to try to capture you and then force you down some funnel um and

I've always been like a fairly savvy marketer guy but I'm also like I also have a high bar for BS

so I just was like all right well I'm just gonna make some of my courses free and some of them paid

and that's the only differentiator between the two so I don't know what other stats I can I can give

you um that's like yeah well like so I'll give you I'll give you another one I have um beginner

javascript.com so that is my paid javascript from scratch um or if you're intermediate you can get

to know the language really really well um and like the javascript 30 is just practice it assumes

you know some javascript right um and the beginner javascript.com is absolutely um exercise heavy

approach to learning modern javascript um and that that's a paid course and that has over

20 000 people have bought it uh over the years which is is is quite a bit yes so you currently

only like do online courses and speaking gigs and one of the the conference that you went to is

that I watched a video about it is GS nation and the the last year version it was you have a talk

about AI and the developer and one of the questions that I would like to ask about what do you think

are the developer that AI will take their job yeah there is kind of developer I wouldn't say

developer will take our job but like I frame it a bit so what are the the type of developer who AI

will take their job I think the thing about being a web developer is that it's it's always changing

there's always new stuff to learn there's always new best practices there's always new frameworks

you're always upgrading things and for a lot of people that's really frustrating because it moves

so fast and they they don't like that right um and to me I I like it because it's there's always

it's always always entertaining always new things to to sort of learn um but now like that we have

this like fast moving javascript and now we also have this like looming AI um come out it's it's

it's kind of scary for a lot of people because they don't necessarily know like is it going to take

our jobs you see a lot of hucksters out there saying it's going to totally replace x y and z

and then you see a lot of people saying no I I like to hand write every line of code

that I want and you don't you can't trust the the AI um and I think both of those people are

they are either scared or have something to sell you um and and I don't think you should

listen to either of them um so like for me as a developer I think you absolutely need to

lean into using AI when you're coding I think that if you don't you're going to sort of get left

behind um and and we've seen that that over the years with like the people who made 2000 3000

dollar small business websites um that that industry is is not doing well um they're all

on wix or squarespace or whatever because quite honestly it's a better experience you pay 30 bucks

a month and you can just change the website yourself versus have to do this whole design

and development and you don't you get your own business to run right so like that whole small

business space has been sort of taken over by that and like social media um and I think that the

people that are in in that like 2000 3000 dollar website space are are finding themselves having

to skill up now because oh I can't just do that now now I have to learn how to like do some serious

coding so I can build custom functionality and whatnot so I think that's going to happen with

AI as well where the stuff that was hard before like building a small business website I I did

it for many years is kind of table stakes um and just the the the table stakes are sort of moving up

and it's no longer enough to to be able to write clean code and and whatnot because the AI can

can do that right and and who's going to survive this is the people that can can use those to

build even better things like like it's not just like oh we're not just going to stop technology

now that AI is here like oh well let's keep building these like these websites no we're gonna

we're gonna use it to build the freaking craziest stuff ever that that are even so much more next

level you know so um I think we're all just kind of shifting forward a whole bunch um and everybody

should like not embrace it I got a lot of people saying like a doom a doomsday guy and all of my

videos about AI I still I don't I don't build entire apps with AI but I certainly use it as

co-pilot and and helpers and whatnot so I think that as long as you are just kind of open to the

idea of of using it as a tool you know it's it's a booster pack uh for for your skill set and I

don't know if that answers your question I don't I don't know if anybody's going to get out of it

I think the people that will leave web development are the people that are just like like there's a

lot of just I I can't do this anymore this is too it's just changing so fast it's exhausting

even me I'm full time my job is keeping up with what's going on in web development and I'm at a

point now where I'm like there's another vs code fork you know oh there's another AI thing there's

an it's like oh this is that that talk I did a year ago is 100% obsolete it's all different now

it's it's crazy yeah that's that's true it's like a fast pacing and there's a lot of work it would be

an extra work for you to keep updates with all the stuff and every week every day there is something

new to to like I do there's like a new AI model there is no cloud AI model that you would have to

use but the the point that you mentioned is really good is to use the AI as a tool in your

like a toolkit instead of like I just like to not embrace but to like help you with development

instead of not using it because it's kind of like a speed up your development and it may

it might like also improve your speed of shipping and stuff like this yeah yeah it's it's an awesome

tool and of course there's caveats like of course you should review the code that you got I got bit

yes on I did a video on it I didn't even realize that I had a bug and I like published a video

and I was like I got bit you know like I didn't even that's that's what can happen but people that

think that it's not going to get better like it go back two years and people were laughing at the

like the images that this thing generated like two or three years ago were hilarious and now they can

make a video like if you think oh I'm going to ignore it because it can goof up your I'm sorry

but it's gonna get it's gonna keep getting better uh to a certain point we'll probably hit like a

diminishing returns but these guys are firing up nuclear reactors right now so they can have more

power to run more computers like they're trying hard and I have no control over it so I'm coming

along for the ride you should keep up with it that's the only thing that you have to do yeah

and this will lead me to a question that like how did you keep up with all of this trend and

this new AI and new technology it's always changing and I would say it's hard to keep up with all of

them but how did you pick which one to like to learn because there's a lot of things to learn

what is like a your matrix for technology that is trending to learn or to like I make

a video or a course about yeah I always tell people when you hear about it nine times it's

time to start picking it up so people like me like it's hard to keep up with the stuff right

and I'm it's my job to keep up with it and and that's why people listen to the podcast that's why

people follow and social media you know and I'm constantly checking stuff out you know and at a

certain point you're gonna you're gonna hear me talk about it for the seventh time like man let's

talk about CSS nesting I should really check that out you know now maybe it's time for me to check

that thing out so don't don't go wild checking absolutely everything out you're gonna burn

yourself out but at a certain point you're gonna realize oh this tool has a bit of a bit of momentum

and and how you do that is is you sort of keep your ear to the ground for people that are in the

industry so personally what I do is I I follow a whole bunch of people on social media I have lists

of release notes what is it browser intent to ship specs things like that and constantly looking

at it and then like once those sort of are finalized once those are mainstream once it's in all the

browsers then it's sort of time to to take a look at it and with a lot of this stuff it's not like

oh I have to learn this brand new thing because if a new AI model comes out you're not like really

learning anything new you just switch the drop down to to a new model you know and uh every now

and then there's new techniques and new interfaces but it's the same with JavaScript as long as you

know fundamentals um then you can switch from framework to framework right like I can switch

from react I picked up svelte in like a day um and because I I know JavaScript pretty well

yes yeah that's the most important thing usually to recommend to someone that is just getting started

in development is take your time to pick the fundamental right like a JavaScript fundamental

and after that you can like easily pick any like a Node.js any like a backend or front end

framework it will be easy you just need to learn like the folder structure the syntax of the framework

and that's it but always like a go into the basic that is the most important thing because it will be

easily to transform learning to transform learning from a framework to another one which

will be like easy for you and I have a question that's talking about this stuff and your online

courses and you are doing really great with this online courses what do you think is the

secrets formula that make these online courses successful you mentioned one of them which is

how you are teaching to other people and like to begin a friendly perspective of thing I think

there's a there's a couple things I think like one is is like personality um the people who take my

courses like me they like the way that I explain things they like the way that I code and not

everybody does you know some people will ask for a refund because they're like you're obnoxious or

or whatever and that's totally fine because it's not not for everybody if you if you try to please

absolutely everybody you're not going to come out with a good product um I oh my thing I always

talk to the syntax team about is like let's not round the corners off of this thing meaning that

like don't distill this down so that you're making everybody happy especially when you have like a

larger group of people that have opinions on something I think part of the reason why my

courses do well is because it's just me I'm just flying by the hip I'm just making I'm making all

the decisions myself and it's 100 my personality in all of that stuff um and then as things start to

get bigger you start to round the corners off you don't do things as as crazy as you want because

it's and then it just doesn't become as good so I think that's that's one of them um and then I

think the other one is just is just like trust in that you know what you're talking about you know

like I've spent 20 years in this industry sharing what I know showing people that I know what I'm

talking about for the most part uh and and people trust me you know people know that I usually know

what I'm talking about um and if I don't I'm able to to ask people who who do know so like that's

been been a big one and then also like another big thing I have is is called make it a thing

meaning that uh when I released my first courses a lot of people asked why are you putting them

on their own domain name um why aren't you just putting them on westfoss.com forward slash

jobscript you know and like like why make a whole new website your your your seo is going to be

garbage and I thought no like or the free courses why not just put it out on youtube why are you

making a whole landing page and you can sign up for and all that it seems like a lot of work um

and my answer to that is that the perceived value I know the courses that have have high value so

I don't I'm not worried about that but the perceived value of putting something on its own

domain name with its own its own design you know there's stickers for the course um the perceived

value is is so much higher when you make it a thing um and it's also it's fun for me to to be

able to do that so at the time everybody said I was an idiot for doing that like why don't you

just make a sign up and you can access all your courses at once you know the rails cast was big

at the time where you sign up and get all the all the courses at once or why don't you do one a month

you know and I was like that's that's not really what I want to do I just want to be

able to put out a course when it's ready I want to put it on its own domain name I want to make

it a thing and uh and now everybody does that that's what every single person that releases a course

now is doing exactly what I've done and a lot of them copy paste all the marketing content

from it as well because they oh it actually did work out for him that's the reality

like talking about like other people copying your like a marketing technique and stuff do you

think is the market still open for new content or it's such races especially for web development

and JavaScript stuff because there's a lot of things to choose or do you think it's it's enough

currently for for what it is I think there's always room uh for someone who knows what they're

talking about and is passionate about it when I put my first sublime text book out there was

three other books already published on sublime text you know like if you if you take that metric

you'd be like no there's how many books on sublime text do we possibly need but people like the way

that I explain things and and whatnot and it it worked out it worked out for me so I think there's

always room for that type of thing you're always seeing new creators pop off because people go

ah this this guy's awesome you know um so you have to like I think it's it's a much more

busy space right now everybody wants to put a course out it's much easier to put a course

out there's lots of platforms according video is really easy um so it's certainly a little bit more

crowded but I think if that's what you want to do try it go for it I don't I don't think you can

you can sit around and and think about it for for too much longer because then you're you start

getting in your head and and coming up with excuses you know yeah makes sense and for someone that's

would like to start online courses as a developer what think or may say that you would like to avoid

if you're starting out the online courses that you will not make with the current stage of

the trend and the equipment that we have access to and the technology that we have access to

what are the listen or the music that you would like to avoid if you're just starting out like

today you will have a new course and your address is starting out with no like I would say with no

like a big audience yeah just would like to start like an online course I I think you really have to

get the audience first um you're not gonna you're not gonna build a course and have it pop off

maybe on some of these bigger platforms like if you were to publish it on a marketplace maybe

they have a built-in audience um but in reality if you're just like I want to make a course you

probably have you might not have an audience and you might not know what you want to talk about and

if that's the case I highly recommend in my case I was writing blog posts until I figured out what

hit um in your case it's probably going to be pushing youtube videos tiktoks tweets blue sky

skeets things like that until just talk about what you love share what you know and eventually

something's gonna pop off and you're gonna know okay this is this is the thing that I want to

talk about because you don't know what's gonna work well until you try it and if you build an

entire course that's a lot of work to try something whereas you can very easily test things with a

10-minute youtube video yeah makes us because building a course it's a huge commitment and

there's a lot of things that you would like to consider because yeah I am putting yourself in

in the fire yeah and talking about listening that you learn and mistakes to avoid what did

listen that you learn from from from making the online courses from building syntax which is a

successful project and your online course which is a successful product also what are the listen

that you learn the hard listen mostly and mistake that you would like that you wish that you avoid

back there oh man I don't know that like I've had like a whole bunch of like oh that was a major

mistake um I did at one point I was started working on like a javascript tooling course

and it was like at the time of like gulp and grunt and and and babble and things like that and

then I realized like this is this stuff changes absolutely so quickly and it's also not something

that people are dying to learn um so I ended up scrapping that I think my my biggest lesson is

is just listen to people I often will just send email out to my email list and be like hey

what are you struggling with what are you what do you want to learn what what's going on and

just just hit reply and tell me and you can get really good insights into how people feel like

I'm I'm always that's why I love social media you're always talking to people always replying to

people and you get really good insights as to what tech are people using what are people struggling

with um are people actually using this tech or is it just like a hype circle and listening to those

people is very beneficial because you can get you can get good marketing copy out of out of the

their their pain points but you can also get a good read for where people are at and you can

know what to create from there yeah makes sense got your point this is a really good point to

mention I really like I would like the currently the syntax fm gets acquired by sentry and currently

sentry on the syntax fm does anything change after the acquisition or it's still the same

vision for the syntax fm content strategy and stuff like this it got better oh that's that's

what happened no sentry is a really cool company meaning that they've been a supporter they they

sponsored one of my courses way way like probably eight years ago something like that um and they're

just like hey you want to do anything that's the approach they came to me hey if you ever want to

do anything cool let us know and I was like hey you want to sponsor one of the videos in my free

course and they're like sure and and like it turned out to be the best or ROI they ever did and then

they sponsored the podcast for many many years they basically were just like hey here's here's the

money for the podcast talk about sentry they never gave us ad reads or specific points or anything

to hit on they're just like they're just they understand that again developers have a low bar

high bar they don't like bs you know so when it came time that they were like hey if you ever

want to do anything cool with with syntax that's that's outside of just sponsoring the podcast

let us know then they're like hey how about you just join us because like I think we can make

this thing a lot bigger you know I think we can do video we got a producer we have uh marketing

and social media we have new creators um the resources that we have are are amazing and it

allows us to create much better stuff um which is really cool and uh yeah it's it's been great because

like a lot of people were scared they're like please don't let sentry like screw this up you know

that always happens when when when something gets bought but they were we're very cognizant of that

as well and and they are like pretty I don't want to say hands off but they never tell us

what to do or anything like that in fact like sometimes sometimes people from sentry will

suggest guests and I'm like no like the other day someone was like hey can can we get this

person on the podcast and I was like that is not a good fit you know like it's I'm not we're not

doing anybody favors here because at the end of the day this is the community's podcast

and we want to make sure that we maintain that whole vibe um it's really important to me so it's

it's been awesome so far yeah it's really it's it's one of the my favorite podcast like in web

development and currently the speedup like uh I subscribe to the other podcast and every week

there is new podcast episode yeah yeah there's we're actually we're actually going down so we do

we do three week right now and the only reason we do three week right now is because we when we

were selling ads we sold out of all the ad space so we added another episode and then we sold out

all that ad space so we added a third episode because we're like well let's just keep making money on

this thing and now what we're doing is we're going down to two a week and we're just going to free

up a bit more time to do some more video content because like YouTube is is a big focus of ours

with syntax right now and we want to spend a bit more time on creating videos especially because

like some of the podcast content is better fit for a visual medium so now it's nice to say hey we

want to talk about something what's the best medium should we talk about it for 15 minutes on audio

an hour on audio do we need to bring a guest on or do we do we want to make a an actual video that

goes along with this yeah and recently like i saw that in the youtube channel syntax there's like a

short format like a 20 minute video that is currently starts up and one of the video that's

got my eyes is you mentioned like how about having kids help you with career and i would like to get

more detail about this one and like a more insight about how having kids help you with your career

yeah well that so when i had my first or when we were pregnant with our first child

i had been fussing around with this sublime book for like almost a year and when we realized we were

we're gonna have a baby is there's something in you just kicks you into hard drive and i put the

thing out it did super well and i made a bunch of money on it and like having kids is the best

like productivity kick in the pants to sort of get you going there's just something internal

in you to provide for them which sounds silly but it's it's true i some the best entrepreneurs

out there not all of them there's there's of course many cases but many of the best entrepreneurs

i know our parents and it's just there's something in it where when you have kids you learn to manage

your time better and to provide for them and like yeah you just get a little bit more tenacious

yeah and more responsibility because you have to provide for your kids so yes exactly a lot of

pressure on youtube it's either this one or not yeah exactly that's really great point to mention

and talking currently we are like almost on the last month of the year and here we'll be over

and do you have any production for what technology what does will be trending in the next year

um a couple things first of all css has undergone crazy transformation in the last year year and

a half a lot of the features most people don't even know about just yet you know there's nesting

and scoping in animations and starting style and like we have many podcasts on the topic and it's

just the amount of new css that has hit is unbelievable and between that and html we're

going to be able to build much more flexible interfaces with just hml and css you're not

going to need as much javascript which is is kind of nice just from a complexity point of view

it's easier to code and of course you're you're loading less javascript on the page

so that that's one is that like i think like css is gonna css is having a moment right now

very much how javascript had a moment when es6 came out and the other one is i'm really excited

about tan stack start um this is a new meta framework full stack framework kind of like

next jas or remix and it allows you to do server side client side in the same file which is kind

of cool like rpc calling server code from the client and that's not that we've had that for a

long time but just the approach to this i think is very refreshing um because we've seen react

server components for i don't know they've been out for a year now and i haven't seen a whole

lot of uptake i've seen i'm a big fan and i like a lot of things especially the like keep things at

a component level you know you can do your data fetching in the component you can suspend in the

component you can do everything you want rather than a page level um but i think tan stack start

is gonna be um it takes away a lot it gives you all those benefits but it takes away a lot of the

like hard parts that people are hitting in like next jas specifically right now so i think it's

gonna do it's gonna pop up it's just in beta right now he only announced it like a couple months ago

but i think given his track record and given me playing with it i think that it's gonna

a lot of people are gonna enjoy it awesome that we i i i never play with the tan stack but i already

like uh know the founder or the developer behind this over twitter and yeah never play with this

but yeah it will be yeah the the tan stack even if if you've used react query or it's called

tan stack query now it's one of those things where you use it and you go ah this is nice this is

simple i get this you know and i think i always think about my courses in the same way where

there's very smart people building these things but tanner just has like an approach ability

to him where he understands the like regular developer and they just they want extreme power

without it being extremely complicated and everything he does it's just like damn that's so

simple yeah makes sense got your point i have a question about the syntax fm that i forgot to

mention yeah is what do you think can make the success of the syntax if maybe i have one of the

thing from my perspective is the chemistry between you and scott it's really amazing and it does show

off in the podcast but i would like either to have your opinion about the formula or what do you

think make the syntax fm a success project from the start yeah we pull our audience every year

and we ask them why do you listen or and also importantly why do you turn it off

because that's that's really interesting to me as well as like when people stop listening

why is that right um and a lot of the reasons we get from people is is probably the biggest one

is they just they like the personality right they like scott they like me um they like the

way that we explain things they like the positivity that's a big one as well if they're a large part

of the web development community talks about how things suck and and people think that you

can look smart by calling stuff bad and that is not good i don't think it's good to be critical

of things but when your entire personality hinges on saying what is not good or trying to make

yourself look smart because something is not as good as you would like it um that really

frustrates me when when people do that um and i a lot of people don't like listening to that as

well because it's exhausting to listen to people talk about how much stuff sucks all the time not

not good for your your mental health so the positivity between the two of us is is probably

the biggest one the chemistry the back and forth the banter um we talk a lot about our lives that

one is split of whether people like it or not a lot of people say i wish you would do more

episodes about your lives um like we just did an episode on electric cars or i've done one

we've done ones on health and fitness and soft skills um but a lot of people say i don't like

those episodes and and to me that's fine because it comes back to the don't round the corners off

you know if if we're gonna just stay strictly tech and not talk about anything else then you lose

some of the the flavor of of the podcast and then you you round the corners off and it becomes just

another two white dudes talking about tech you know there's plenty of those out there um so that

that's one and and people just like it's because it's a good way to keep up to date with what's

going on like we said it's it's a crazy industry and if you simply just need to listen to us for

a couple hours a week and you can stay up with what's going on with web development that's a

pretty easy way to to keep up to date i have a question that this will be the last question

is couldn't you what do you think is for example we see a lot of hype not hype but like hyper growth

during the covet situation and after that this was also a lot of layoffs and during like a

the covet time there's a lot of bootcamp and people can get like a job in a big tech company

like a three months which is no longer the case right now it's much harder it's much tougher

for new grad or someone even like a someone senior to get a job right now what do you think is the

take from this experience or from the current market and do you think is the market will

recover soon or it will be the same situation harder so what is your take about this stuff

about the the job market as a developer um i i don't know um is my answer so we had uh

taylor dessen he is a recruiter in tech and he's got his he's kind of got his finger on the pulse

of like like who's actually hiring and whatnot because you hear these stories all the time if

you go to syntax.fm4-845 you can listen to his kind of thoughts on it and he said yeah like

it's it was a gravy train for a couple years you know you saw a lot of people coming from other

industries uh coming from finance and being like i'm gonna work in tech now you know and i

that gravy train is i think a little bit over um but it's not to say you still can't get into tech

we're still looking for good people who are smart and know their stuff but i do think it's

going to take a little bit more than taking a bootcamp like i i used to teach at a bootcamp

and uh i stopped i don't know six or seven years ago but they had they shut down about a year

year or so ago just because they they can't get people placed in these jobs so those easy entry

level jobs i think are gone um it might and may come back at a certain point but i don't i don't

even know i don't even know what to answer to you it's it's people always ask me like what's the

future of ai what's the future of jobs and the answer is nobody really knows you know everybody

who's who's telling you that is is probably just guessing yeah makes us so it's about the economy

so he don't yeah yeah the economy has a lot to do with it yeah makes us yeah at your point thank you

for pointing the episode and there will be shared in the show notes so for people thank you interested

about it so they can listen to the full episode and the last section will be about resources

the stuff that you would like to share with the audience about searching and online courses

specifically because you are one of the best online online instructor in web development what

it's the resource that you will need to follow or like the framework that they need to follow

yeah um so westboss.com forward slash courses has a list of of all the courses i have um you

can there's a bunch of free ones you can take um also there's a bunch of paid ones on there and so

like take a free one see what you see what you like um follow me on social media so i post what

are called like hot tips which is i have a sign behind me i've been doing that for probably 12

years now uh so find me on your favorite platform you know i post the videos everywhere tiktok

linkedin instagram twitter blue sky threads everywhere you can imagine youtube and just

don't watch a couple of those if you like the way that i explain things if you like my personality

maybe consider taking one of the courses beginner javascript javascript 30 etc awesome and what

are the resources that you would like to recommend for someone starting the online course a book

it's gonna be anything um i don't know i the thing is like i i didn't take any any courses or

anything to to learn how this stuff works um it was just simply like figure out who's who's doing

well in the industry and follow them and see what they're doing you know see uh what techniques

they're doing talk to them uh watch youtube videos i think i'm big on like just trying to when i'm

trying to learn something i'm big on just like hoovering up all the information you know and and

for me that's try read websites read blog posts go on social media try to watch as many conference

talks youtube videos about that topic as as you possibly can um and then that way you have a

good idea of like the surface area of it so i don't know i don't have like a definitive one

resource that i would point people to okay it makes sense so you just need to get your hand

dirty and start paying around yeah yeah exactly and that's the thing with a lot of this stuff is

as soon as somebody distills it down into a single resource um it's probably not it and and i say

that as somebody who builds courses for coding distilled down into a single resource is yes the

course will give you lots of really good information but at the end of the day you really just need to

build stuff and you really need to try stuff and that's how you're going to figure this stuff out

yeah makes sense thank you so much for pointing this this is the last part of this day episode

thank you so much west boss for taking the time and squeezing the time and having this conversation

with me absolutely the topic that we mentioned and it was a pleasure having you for today episode

awesome thanks so much for having me appreciate it this is fun