Episode 9: RxJS with Tracy Lee
John and Ward talk with core RxJS team member, Tracy Lee. Tracy shares the direction of RxJS, who is using it, and some inside tips on how to learn RxJS and common pitfalls.
Recording date: 2018-10-30
John Papa https://twitter.com/john_papa
Ward Bell https://twitter.com/wardbell
Dan Wahlin https://twitter.com/danwahlin
Tracy Lee https://twitter.com/ladyleet
Notes
(0:01:00) Ward reads the mailbag https://twitter.com/plambweb/status/1057291112807723013
(0:01:35) Tracy says often the best answer to RxJS memory leaks is to check to unsubscribe
(0:02:01) Tracy talks about RxJS in stencil https://stenciljs.com/, vue https://vuejs.org, react https://reactjs.org, angular https://angular.io, ionic https://ionicframework.com/
(0:03:12) Learn by making mistakes
(0:03:50) Tracy talks about some places you can go wrong in RxJS
(0:03:55) Introducing Tracy
(0:04:20) Tracy's company https://www.thisdot.co/
(0:05:45) Tracy says she prefers frameworks for what they offer
(0:06:10) Tracy talks about rxjs https://rxjs-dev.firebaseapp.com/
(0:06:30) Tracy mentions Ben Lesh and RxJS https://twitter.com/BenLesh
(0:07:04) Tracy talks about reactive programming https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reactive_programming as sets of events over time
(0:07:47) TC39 https://www.ecma-international.org/memento/tc39-m.htm
(0:08:00) Tracy explains how, generally, observables are stateless and lazy
(0:08:50) Tracy discusses the stages of the TC39
(0:09:03) Babel https://babeljs.io/
(0:09:33) Ward asks what questions Tracy hears at her RxJS workshops https://www.thisdot.co/rx-workshop
(0:10:03) Tracy says she hears a lot of confusion on observables and observers https://toddmotto.com/rxjs-observables-observers-operators
(0:10:11) Tracy says rxjs operators can be a source of confusion https://www.learnrxjs.io/operators/
(0:10:55) Ben Lesh is working on RxJS 7
(0:11:15) Ward asks tracy how she slides people into rxjs easily
(0:11:30) Tracy says she likes that Observables are just functions
(0:12:54) John asks Tracy which operators in rxjs to learn first
(0:13:53) Ward asks Tracy about the new RxJS docs
(0:14:04) Ward talks about one of the creators of RxJS, Matt Podwysocki https://twitter.com/mattpodwysocki
(0:14:20) Tracy talks about how RxJS was created as it is today from Netflix and Microsoft
(0:15:02) Tracy says there are over 12 million downloads of rxjs a month
(0:15:24) Ward mentions the RxJS docs https://rxjs-dev.firebaseapp.com/
(0:16:46) RxJS on npm https://www.npmjs.com/package/rxjs
(0:17:50) John asks Tracy how she advises people on upgrade strategies for RxJS
(0:18:45) Ward mentions the RxJS change from method chaining to pipe
(0:18:49) Upgrade rxjs 5 to 6 https://www.learnrxjs.io/concepts/rxjs5-6.html
(0:19:46) John asks Tracy what kind of applications she sees people creating with RxJS
(0:20:00) Tracy talks about multi-plex over a websocket with rxjs with node.js and react native
(0:20:22) Tracy mentions React Native https://facebook.github.io/react-native/
(0:20:37) Ken Wheeler https://twitter.com/ken_wheeler
(0:21:28) Ward asks if "just subscribe" is a useful bit of advice
(0:23:30) Tracy talks about reactive aspects and non reactive aspects of code
(0:24:15) John mentions how RxJS is not part of any particular front end framework
(0:24:30) Tracy says she is seeing a lot of React folks taking learning and using RxJS
(0:24:34) Tracy talks about how RxJS is framework agnostic
(0:25:17) Tracy talks about prtoecting from JavaScript fatigue
(0:25:40) Ward asks Tracy how she recommends debugging RxJS
(0:26:10) Tracy asys to "keep tapping away"
(0:26:31) Tracy says they are trying to make testing easier
(0:26:58) Tracy talks about how you can get into the RxJS slack channel
(0:27:50) Tracy talks about her use of Evernote for staying organized
(0:29:00) Tracy talks about her efforts with Women in Tech https://twitter.com/ladyleet/status/985018157994831872?lang=en
(0:29:31) Tracy talks about possibly announcing something at the ngAtlanta: https://ng-atl.org/#/ conference
(0:30:00) Tracy talks about her passion for creating companies
(0:30:26) Someone to follow: Jay Phelps https://twitter.com/_jayphelps https://medium.com/@jayphelps
(0:31:10) Someone to follow: Dmitri Shekhovtsov https://twitter.com/valorkin
(0:31:50) Someone to follow: Dam Abramov https://twitter.com/dan_abramov
Additional Resources
RxJS api https://rxjs-dev.firebaseapp.com/api
RxJS and Angular https://angular.io/guide/rx-library
Upgrade RxJS 5 to 6 https://www.learnrxjs.io/concepts/rxjs5-6.html