All episodes

Wishlisht Demon's Mirror on Steam!

We're shaking things up a bit as we welcome a friend and indie game developer to the podcast, Frederic Tarabout (ex-Dreamworks, creator of Batbarian, pusher of pixels)!

In this episode, we're diving headfirst into the world of indie game development. Frederic will take us on a journey through his unique career path, sharing the highs, lows, and everything in between.

• What did Frederic's journey look like from young game enthusiast (with an Atari ST) to his first published game?
• Is there a typical day for an indie game dev?
• What are Fred's inpirations and what does his dev process look like?
• What are the challenges for an indie game dev? Are there things that Fred would've done differently?
• And more!

So grab your controller, settle in, and join us as we explore the fascinating world of indie game dev with Frederic Tarabout!

What's with all the rage about these "minimal" frameworks? It seems like almost every day you wake up, there's an announcement for a new framework... and it's driving us nuts!

Listen to us try and dissect the confusing situation of the framework landscape of web dev in the year 2024. Why did we even start using frameworks? Is this all just bandwagoning behaviour or is there a real benefit to using frameworks?

All this and more in this enticing and technical episode of ECC.

What the heck happened to CSS-Tricks? Chris Coyier wrote a blog post detailing some of the behind the scene happenings. What was his motivation for selling the CSS-Tricks website? Why is it not being updated anymore?

Also, is this a trend that's happening across the internet? Why are there community-driven and free resource websites dying out left and right? What to do with the news of tech companies firing people? Is it all about the Money?🤑

Let's dive into the drama!

Blog post mentioned: https://chriscoyier.net/2024/02/28/where-im-at-on-the-whole-css-tricks-thing/

In this episode we discuss how the concept of MVP (Minimum Viable Product) has changed over the course of our careers.

• Why was it so popular back in the day (for example: Airbnb)?
• When does the MVP concept work, and when does it fail?
• What are the steps for the modern way of utilizing the MVP concept?

Join us in this in-depth conversation about a simple concept that allowed startups to become giants.

Blog post: https://linear.app/blog/rethinking-the-startup-mvp-building-a-competitive-product

Missing the old style of podcast episodes where we ramble a bunch about technical stuff? Well, here's another!

We talk about some of the new CSS features that were standardized in 2023. These features can be a big help in your everyday CSS writing!

1. Container queries: what are they and how are they different than regular media queries?
2. New viewport units: s- d- l- prefixes for your vw or vh units. How do these differ from our regular vw and vh units? Also, no more jumping interfaces when scrolling on mobile!?
3. Nesting in native CSS!? What does the syntax look like? Is SCSS now obsolete? (no, no it's not)
4. Gap property for flexbox: a small change that prevents a lot of annoying side effects of having margin or padding for spacing child elements.
5. Individual transform properties! No more "transform: translateX(50%) rotate(30deg) scale(1.2);" but now each property gets its own name, like: "translate: 50% 0; rotate: 30deg; scale: 1.2;". What does this mean for transitions? Are there any gotchas?
6. The new ":has()" selector is here! What does it do and is it true you can select the parent of an element?

All this and more in this old school episode of ECC!

Referenced blog (it's incomplete tho): https://positivethinking.tech/insights/the-10-new-css-features-in-2023/

We are finding it increasingly harder to enjoy actually coding for web dev projects nowadays. What changed during the time that we were developers? Have we become bored of the web dev routine, or did the environment change?

Join us as we name the complicated issues we have with web dev anno 2024.

Here are a few of the many points we discuss:

• Dependency hell is still a big thing
• Which framework are we using this week?
• Testing, user research and data measuring is still an afterthought in agency work (Test driven development is a dream)
• Backwards development: Why are we building very basic content websites in JavaScript, Next and a headless CMS and convert (most of it) to static templates?

It's going to be an episode with a lot of introspection and reflection on the current status quo of web dev!

In the new season we start things off with a spicy topic: development caution. Tim Cain (game dev and director, known for Fallout 1 & 2, Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines and The Outer Worlds) brought this topic up in a video/vlog where he highlights some of his discoveries in the office. The developers he worked with seemed extremely cautious of their estimates and the amount of effort they want to put in the project. Why are developers so cautious? Is this a new thing that's been happening? Is Tim Cain just a boomer?

We delve into this topic with our own perspective and we give a short overview of how game development (companies) changed since the 90's.

Tim Cain's video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMVQ30c7TcA

Get ready for a wild ride as our hosts tackle the messy business of growing up and realizing people just don't give a damn!

In this hilarious episode, we spill the tea on aging, apathy, and why you should still care. But fear not – it's not all doom and gloom! Tune in for a dose of inspiration as we explore how to turn the "I don't give a crap" attitude into a collective effort to make the world a better place. It's the episode you didn't know you needed – laughter, life lessons, and a little bit of giving a sh*t!

In this episode we look back at 2023 and the things we've done and experienced.

• Gideon talks about his favourite games of the year (Alan Wake 2 anyone) and Murtada has a few recommendations of his own.
• Talking about gaming, Murtada has been streaming on Twitch almost daily for most of the year, so that's new! He talks about what it feels like to be streaming almost full time and how it impacts his life.
• The two boys have done some traveling this year as well. Gideon takes you from the vibrant streets of Japan to the breathtaking landscapes of Lanzarote. Murtada takes us on a virtual tour of Iceland, sharing breathtaking landscapes, unique experiences, and travel recommendations for this captivating destination.

Join us for a recap of our gaming, travel, and streaming experiences in 2023.

Watch this episode on YouTube: [COMING SOON]

We're back with part 2 of "Developer Horror Stories," and this time, we're diving into the personal nightmares that will send shivers down any developer's spine. Join us for tales from the coding trenches:

• Unconventional Design: Imagine receiving design materials in software like PowerPoint or a PDF. In Gideon's chilling experience, a client's refusal to invest in design software led to a nightmare scenario. He was tasked with creating a website and styling based on copied screenshots in a PowerPoint file.

• Survey Software Meltdown: A large-scale survey project with 276 thousand respondents took a horrifying turn when data saving went awry. The survey software, lovingly built in-house, started storing responses in the wrong database rows. Fortunately, daily database backups provided a glimmer of hope. But what followed was a two-day marathon of manually splitting and merging SQL dumps with hundreds of thousands of records.

• Interview from Hell: Sometimes, the scariest experiences happen outside the code. Gideon's quest for a permanent role in Amsterdam turned into a surreal journey. From unanswered doorbells to a cafeteria filled with unresponsive strangers, the odyssey took an eerie turn. Locked in a meeting room for nearly an hour past the scheduled time, this developer's patience reached its breaking point. Find out how the story ends in this unforgettable tale of a nightmarish job interview.

Today's podcast takes you on a rollercoaster of emotions through our coding career's darkest moments.