Friends on the frontend (Friends)

The Changelog: Software Development, Open Source

Adam’s friend on the frontend, John Long joins the show to explore his usage of AI, design tools and the stack he prefers. We talk Next.js vs Rails, maintaining open source, building websites with Framer, their mutual love for Figma, and more.

Join the discussion

Changelog++ members save 9 minutes on this episode because they made the ads disappear. Join today!

Sponsors:

• Retool – The low-code platform for developers to build internal tools — Some of the best teams out there trust Retool…Brex, Coinbase, Plaid, Doordash, LegalGenius, Amazon, Allbirds, Peloton, and so many more – the developers at these teams trust Retool as the platform to build their internal tools. Try it free at retool.com/changelog
• Augment Code – Developer AI that uses deep understanding of your large codebase and how you build software to deliver personalized code suggestions and insights. Augment provides relevant, contextualized code right in your IDE or Slack. It transforms scattered knowledge into code or answers, eliminating time spent searching docs or interrupting teammates.
• Temporal – Build invincible applications. Manage failures, network outages, flaky endpoints, long-running processes and more, ensuring your workflows never fail. Register for Replay in London, March 3-5 to break free from the status quo.
• Fly.io – The home of Changelog.com — Deploy your apps close to your users — global Anycast load-balancing, zero-configuration private networking, hardware isolation, and instant WireGuard VPN connections. Push-button deployments that scale to thousands of instances. Check out the speedrun to get started in minutes.

Featuring:

• John Long – Website, GitHub, X
• Adam Stacoviak – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, X

Show Notes:

• Radiant GitHub
• Framer
• Opine
• Opine Docs - Getting Started Guide
• Lovable
• Gierd
• Generated Photos
• Zest Icons
• Iconic
• Heroicons

Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!

Bab

1. Let's talk! (00:00:00)

2. Sponsor: Retool (00:00:38)

https://retool.com/changelog

3. Start the show! (00:03:39)

4. Consuming generated content (00:05:40)

5. Ai is similar in quality and mistakes (00:09:24)

6. What does John do? (00:10:58)

7. Rails has changed so much (00:12:45)

8. Next.js lover? (00:14:10)

9. Rails 3 release date (00:16:25)

10. Let's talk Zest (00:19:52)

11. Tools of a designer/frontender (00:23:55)

12. Sponsor: Augment Code (00:29:54)

https://www.augmentcode.com

13. Coming off a Framer high (00:33:03)

14. Having a Frontend background (00:38:43)

15. Using AI in design processes (00:48:57)

16. What tools are in your stack? (00:57:31)

17. Sponsor: Temporal (01:09:14)

https://temporal.io

18. Figma is awesome (01:11:36)

19. Generated.photos (01:17:47)

20. Createing logos with ChatGPT (01:19:55)

21. Iconic.app from Orman Clark (01:23:59)

22. The state of Zest Icons (01:27:05)

23. Heroicons! (01:34:03)

24. 1.5 vs 2 pixel lines (01:36:18)

25. Devs working with Design (01:38:58)

26. Figma School (01:40:54)

27. Wrapping up (01:43:44)

28. That's all friends! (01:45:47)