Jason Lengstorf (00:01.666)
What's up everyone? I'm flipping the script. I'm here to interview Kent C. Dodds about his upcoming talk at Epic Webcom. So Kent, I think we can assume that anybody watching this probably knows who you are, but just in case, why don't you tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do.

Kent C. Dodds (00:17.492)
That sounds great. If you don't know who I am, I see you. know that there aren't like, everybody doesn't know who I am, but this is my conference that I'm putting together. Really, I want it to be a community conference. want to get people together. That's the entire idea. So it's not going to be just me on stage, but I do have some things that I want to talk about. So I will be on stage and yeah, my name is Kent C. Dodds. I live in Utah and as part of the reason why I'm bringing everybody to Utah, because I just love it here so much.

And I am married, I have a wife and five adorable children. Two of them, actually three of whom performed in their school talent show today. So I'm just building like really proud papa. had two of them did a karate thing together, which was way cool. I was like tearing up watching them doing that together. And then the other one, he's into gymnastics. And so he was doing some gymnastics stuff, which was very cool. So yeah, proud papa, full-time educator. I work out of.

Jason Lengstorf (00:56.974)
Jason Lengstorf (01:11.97)
Very cool.

Kent C. Dodds (01:15.914)
this office teaching people how to build excellent web experiences.

Jason Lengstorf (01:19.874)
awesome. And we've known each other now for for years, but I'm racking my brain and I'm trying to remember where was the where was the first time that we met? Do you remember? Was it it had to have been a conference?

Kent C. Dodds (01:29.584)
It... Yeah, yeah, I'm sure it was a conference. I'm pretty sure I knew you online before. Yeah, it must-

Jason Lengstorf (01:37.046)
Yeah, I think we I think we'd been following each other for a while before we ever crossed paths in person

Kent C. Dodds (01:42.006)
Yeah, yeah, and this predates your time at Netlify. can't remember. predates your time at Gatsby.

Jason Lengstorf (01:45.933)
Mm-hmm.

Jason Lengstorf (01:51.49)
Was it, yeah, did we meet at like a GraphQL comp or something?

Kent C. Dodds (01:55.254)
I didn't go to GraphQL conferences. It could have been a React conference. But yeah, it has been a long time. It's like, I'm guessing 2016, 2017 is about when we met.

Jason Lengstorf (01:56.919)
No, no.

Jason Lengstorf (02:01.73)
That's, it's been a long time.

Jason Lengstorf (02:07.148)
Yeah, almost almost 10 years of being being in the same circle. So that's that's super exciting. So I guess what what are you? So you've you've been doing this forever. You've you've been teaching everything from you know, you your time at PayPal. Then you got like deep into react and then you were you were all about remix and now you're just kind of talking about the web in general. So what can we expect from you at Epic Webcom?

Kent C. Dodds (02:10.112)
Yeah.

Kent C. Dodds (02:35.796)
Yeah, great question. My talk title is Of Things Epic. So I'm going to be speaking of epic things. right now, the thing that I'm most excited about or I want to crystallize a bit is the epic programming principles. it's just like a lot of people ask. Well, actually, when I open sourced the Epic stack, one of the things that people really liked about that was the decision documents that I have on there.

that explain why I'm making the decisions that I am. Because the thing is, when I announced the Epic Stack at Remix Conf Year 2, the whole premise was that it's really hard to make a wrong decision with the tools that we have available. As long as you're not choosing some niche thing that nobody else is using, you're probably going to choose a perfectly fine tool. And so some people can wind up in analysis paralysis.

Jason Lengstorf (03:03.981)
Hmm.

Kent C. Dodds (03:31.03)
and just have a really hard time deciding what to choose. And so if we can accept that, then why don't you just go with the decisions that somebody who's experienced in this has made and you'll probably be fine. That'll cover like 95 % of the use cases. And so that's kind of what the Epic Stack was about. It like, I made some decisions. I know what I'm talking about. These will be fine. You may have different opinions or there are different opinions out there and you could go with those and they'd be fine too.

Jason Lengstorf (03:31.31)
Mm-hmm.

Kent C. Dodds (04:00.362)
But the fact is that you'd be fine with any of them. So why bother taking all the time making these decisions about which to choose? And I think in large part, this is why Laravel has been so successful is they just said, you know what, we're just gonna decide for you and it's going to work out, I promise. And it has in large part. So anyway, a lot of people were really excited about the decision documents because it kind of frames those decisions or those opinions that I've made.

Jason Lengstorf (04:15.371)
Mm-hmm.

Kent C. Dodds (04:27.534)
Because people do want to understand why we're choosing different tools. And so in thinking about that some more, I realized that having a framework for making those kinds of decisions can be really helpful for people because I'm not writing decision documents on every possible thing that you could decide on. And so the thing that I'm really interested in this year is giving people that framework, giving the principles that I base my decisions off of so they can go off and make their own decisions on their own.

Jason Lengstorf (04:43.979)
Right.

Jason Lengstorf (04:58.03)
Nice, very cool. So this...

Jason Lengstorf (05:06.958)
Sorry, I lost my train of thought here. One second.

Kent C. Dodds (05:08.224)
That's okay, I'm gonna hit a marker on here and the editor will get that out.

Jason Lengstorf (05:11.608)
Gotcha. Okay. so I'm super excited to hear about that. So let's, let's talk about what's going to happen when you're not on stage, right? Like one of the best parts about a conference. And I know that you've put extra emphasis on this at Epic WebConf with like extended breaks is the hallway track. Who do you meet? What do you talk about? What are the things you learn about that aren't happening on stage? So what are you most excited to talk about or learn about in the hallway track at Epic WebConf?

Kent C. Dodds (05:40.692)
Yeah, you're absolutely right. This is something that I care a lot about. The purpose of the conference is to get people together. And if they're all just in the same room together, that doesn't really serve the purpose. Like you need to have that time. so, yeah, the breaks are a half hour long each and the lunch is two hours long. so you get just, and then of course we have the pre-party and that post-party and all like all of that. And the ski day too for the folks who want to stick around for the extra day. And so, yeah, I want to give people a lot of.

Jason Lengstorf (06:05.783)
haha

Kent C. Dodds (06:09.62)
opportunity to meet and hopefully start or deepen relationships that can be beneficial on a personal level as well as a professional one. So yeah, the sorts of things that I'm into talking about is I really like hearing from people who have followed my advice in their company and it worked out. I love hearing that, it makes me feel very validated in everything.

quite a while since I've actually been at a big company and on team, a big team and everything. And so hearing that validation is nice. But where it gets really interesting is where people tried to apply my advice and it didn't quite work out. getting a more holistic view or a broader perspective of how things work for other people is really useful to me as well. So I'm interested in hearing about that.

Jason Lengstorf (06:52.494)
Mmm.

Kent C. Dodds (07:06.302)
I love hearing about the wacky things people do with the web, things that are beyond the boxes that we put on the screen. really, whether that be like, did something with 3D or with some fancy APIs that people don't typically use on the web, or I'm at a massive scale and this is how we deal with this many engineers or this many users concurrently or this spike of traffic or whatever. And then I'm also really into

Jason Lengstorf (07:09.929)
the

Kent C. Dodds (07:35.968)
how like starting with something that's very, simple and adding complexity, like the necessary complexity on top of that as the use cases emerge and making sure that the simple start you have gives you a pathway to do that. So you don't have to just throw everything away and start from scratch every time some new complex thing comes up. So I love to hear, a lot of people say that they've been doing that with the Epic Stack and that's really great. I'd love to hear the rough edges that you run into with that.

Jason Lengstorf (07:52.366)
Mm-hmm.

Kent C. Dodds (08:05.78)
And then outside of all the development stuff, I'm really into riding my one wheel and snowboarding and talking about family. In fact, I inevitably will end up talking about family, kids, all of that stuff too. That topic always seems to come up naturally for me. So I would love to talk with people about their families too.

Jason Lengstorf (08:29.248)
Awesome. I assume at some point during this conference we're going to see the one-wheel posse rolling around.

Kent C. Dodds (08:36.23)
Yeah, yeah, we I have well, so in addition to this one that I've got on my wall, I have three others that I'm not sure I want to bring this one because it's hard to get up and off of the wall. But but I will bring my my three one wheels if you've got a one wheel and you don't mind traveling with it, then bring yours to the weather will probably be comfortable enough for a one wheel ride if you've got a coat or a jacket. And yeah, that will definitely I'll I'll

I typically give lessons as well. Hopefully nobody gets hurt. Nobody's gotten hurt yet. But yeah, we'll definitely be riding around on one wheels at the conference too.

Jason Lengstorf (09:16.418)
Very fun. So I guess one of the big things that I'm always curious about is in the post pandemic world, it seems like everything went online. There's a live stream for everything. You can find everything recorded after the fact. So why do you still go in person? Like, why is it worth making the effort to go show up in the same place as other people?

Kent C. Dodds (09:41.578)
Yeah, you know, it is a lot. Like as a father of five children, when I go to, I'm going to Paris next month, just the week before Epic Webcom, so hopefully I get back okay. But yeah, so I'll be gone. My wife is taking care of five kids by herself while I'm gone, and they're in school and activities and stuff. It's not like a small lift. so, yeah, why do I go? Early on in my career,

Jason Lengstorf (09:48.59)
Hmm.

Kent C. Dodds (10:09.854)
I found out pretty quick that it was just fun to be there. And then a little later into my career, I realized that it was very career impactful because I'm meeting people who get me jobs. My job at PayPal was because of people I met at a conference. The job that I had before that one was I got that because of a meetup. And so meeting people in person,

Jason Lengstorf (10:12.578)
Mm-hmm.

Kent C. Dodds (10:36.19)
really valuable, especially now that your resume that you're just throwing to job applications is competing against 10,000 AI-generated resumes. So you really need to kind of stand out by being in person. And now I'm at a point where I could just post on X or blue sky. I'm looking for a job. And I could probably find a lot of really great opportunities. So that's not why I go to conferences anymore.

But the reason I run them is because I know there are a lot of people who really need to have those chances to meet people in person. And the reason that I go myself is, of course, yeah, there's a marketing part of it. Like I sell courses to the people who are there. So it's very important that people see me as an expert in the industry, all of that. There's like, you can be jaded and think that it's all about the money and that's fine. But it really is just a very fulfilling part of this industry.

is the humans that I work with. I now have the ability to chat with any type of person I could possibly want with just by opening chat GPT and saying, you are Jason Langsdorf. I'm sure that it would, because especially since you've put so much out there, I'm sure that it would do a pretty good impersonation of you. And I could just chat with it all day and like, okay, great.

Jason Lengstorf (11:46.766)
Ha ha ha.

Kent C. Dodds (12:01.216)
doesn't that just sound awful? Like it sounds so empty. And so I need to make those human connections because it's so much more fulfilling than the alternative.

Jason Lengstorf (12:04.469)
Yeah.

Jason Lengstorf (12:12.226)
Yeah, I think that's been my experience as well is that the access that we have to everybody is unprecedented, but there's nothing that kind of fills my gas tank for wanting to do more and go further and try new things than just spending a couple hours in a room with really smart people. a Zoom call doesn't do it. Watching them on video doesn't do it. It's that in-person energy really brings something special.

Kent C. Dodds (12:39.19)
Yeah, yeah, a hundred percent. like the, uh, I remember during the lockdown, we had conferences that were remote and, and we're doing the best we can. So like no shade over there. But the thing that I noticed about that, aside from like feeling exhausted toward the end of the year, I was like, I've done so many of these. I'm so tired of this. But, uh, the thing I noticed is that the, the kinds of conversations that happen at those events feel a lot more transactional.

Jason Lengstorf (12:46.798)
Mm-hmm

Kent C. Dodds (13:05.468)
than the kinds of conversations that happen just naturally because you happen to be in the same space. And so that's the kind of space that I'm hoping to create with Epic Web.

Jason Lengstorf (13:10.552)
right.

Jason Lengstorf (13:15.744)
I love it. Well, I'm excited to be there. I'm hoping, you know, maybe you and I get a little extra time to hang out. Looking forward to meeting everybody else who shows up. Ken, thank you so much for taking some time to talk to us about what we can expect.

Kent C. Dodds (13:27.868)
I'm so thrilled. Thank you so much, Jason. Looking forward to seeing you there too.