Cultivating Community Projects Through Vue with Amina Foon

EPISODE 64

[EPISODE]

[00:00:10] AC: Hey, everybody and welcome to Enjoy the Vue. I’m Ari, and today on our panel, we have Tessa.

[00:00:14] T: Hello.

[00:00:17] AC: And Alex.

[00:00:18] AR: Hello.

[00:00:19] AC: And our special guest this week is Amina Foon. Would you like to introduce yourself, Amina?

[00:00:28] AF: Yeah. Hey, my name is Amina Foon, currently a software engineer at Webflow, the no code tool. And I’m from Atlanta.

[00:00:41] AR: Yay, Atlanta people.

[00:00:43] AF: Yes. Slowly taking over.

[00:00:46] AC: I was going to say. We’re outnumbered, Tessa.

[00:00:50] T: Uh-oh!

[00:00:51] AC: Okay. How did you first get into Vue?

[00:00:55] AF: I’m actually working on a site where black patients can find black doctors because there is a statistic that if your doctor looks like you, you have better health outcomes, and I needed to build it out. I asked a coworker, “What’s the fastest way to code something and build it out?” And they’re like, “Vue.” I’m like, “Okay. I’ll do that.” I started watching the tutorials and everything just clicked. I was like, “Vue is what I’ve been looking for all these years.”

[00:01:27] AC: Nice. Let’s talk a little bit more about the project that inspired you to use Vue. Tell us about your background and then how that became something important to you.

[00:01:36] AF: Before I was in tech, I was actually in the medical field. I studied biology and ended up going to medical school for about two years before I took my talents to tech instead. One of the things that had really driven me into medicine was just the health disparities, knowing that for reasons beyond a person’s control, that they were going to have worse health outcomes. I wanted to be that person that would try to make a difference. That’s what I’m trying to do with technology, because health and technology are two very different things. I would say it’s really hard to find someone who’s well-versed in both. That’s what I’m trying to do, just kind of do the intersection between that and make a good product.

I think one thing that we might understand being in the tech field is, you can always kind of look at a product and be like, “Oh! This is good tech. They had a good person that came in and built it.” Sometimes you can see it and be like, “All right. They just Googled someone who can make this and someone made it.” And it’s like holding on with the duct tape. I guess like technical duct tape. Where would that be actually in a website?

[00:02:53] AR: jQuery.

[00:02:58] AC: Such a hater.

[00:02:59] AF: As someone who wrote more jQuery than I wanted to last year, which was more than one line, that’s it.

[00:03:07] AR: It holds the way together. It’s a beefy, powerful library. It keeps on chugging.

[00:03:14] AC: Beefy is a good word for it.

[00:03:22] AF: I’m so happy we moved on to frameworks.

[00:03:24] T: Like WordPress? Me too.

[00:03:29] AC: Yeah, that’s really what the web runs on. I know we all like to think it’s JavaScript, but —

[00:03:35] AF: For now.

[00:03:38] AC: Prior to Vue, we’ve gathered that you have some experience with jQuery, but any other frameworks or any other libraries? Sorry.

[00:03:52] AF: To kind of back it up, when I left medical school, I had about six months to find a job before they started hounding me for their loan money. I was like, “Well, I need to learn a skill, and very quickly.” Everyone always talked about how tech and coding is hot, the next new thing, learn how to code. I was like, “All right, let me find a way to learn how to code, and quickly.” I ended up going to a boot camp, Devmountain, and learnt how to code in 12 weeks. In retrospect, it takes longer than 12 weeks. But you know, I’m here. Got into the job hunt and I tweeted, “Hey! I’m looking for a job.” Then the CEO of Webflow, Vlad Magdalin, DM’d me, saying that he would help me, which was pretty cool.

[00:04:39] AC: That’s amazing.

[00:04:40] T: Nice.

[00:04:41] AF: I hopped onto a video call to get tips on how to interview, but I was actually in a job interview. I just totally went along with it and I ended up taking a job there.

[00:04:54] AC: That’s incredible. Now I sort of feel like maybe I should be using Webflow, because it kind of sounds like they actually put their money where their mouth is. Imagine that, a tech company doing that.

[00:05:10] AF: What I learned in my boot camp was, JavaScript, AngularJS, which is going to sleep at the end of this year, and React. Those are like the three big things. I think we had a jQuery unit, but then everyone was like, “You're never going to use this.” So I just kind of like glanced over it, thinking that I would never use it, which is not the truth. Those are the main things. Funnily enough, when I left the boot camp, I was not a big fan of React. I was like all in on Angular. Like I loved the two-way data binding. I was like, “This is so intuitive,” and then like you put me like six months into a React job and I’m like, “I cannot believe I ever said those words. I take it back.”

But kind of bringing that back as I’m in Vue, and we’re bringing back the data binding, I was like, “Wait! I remember I loved this thing.” It was great to kind of come back to some of the things I liked about Angular and things I liked about React all in one library, framework.

[00:06:19] AC: Around here we call it a framework, but — I also used to call React a framework and then get corrected on that very quickly.

[00:06:30] AF: I know that one is a library. I’ve seen the arguments.

[00:06:34] T: We just learned in the last episode that apparently, there is still a strong framework contingent within the React community.

[00:06:43] AF: Isn’t it going to be tipping towards a framework with the serverless, the React server components? I don’t know.

[00:06:51] T: Don’t know.

[00:06:52] AC: We all just shrugged. Apparently we are out of touch.

[00:06:57] AR: I’m aware of the React serverless or like server-side serverless component stuff, but I don’t know how — what their definition of it being a framework versus a library and what tips it into that.

[00:07:10] AF: I’m really good at picking up the keywords of conversations and seeming like I’m like the expert on it. I can hold a very good like solid conversation on basketball and I probably haven’t watched it live in like three years.

[00:07:27] AC: That’s a really useful skill to have. I just smile, and nod a lot and then hope that people don’t realize that I’m doing that because I have no idea what’s going on.

[00:07:40] T: I’ll just stand in the corner by myself and a bunch of people come over and tell me why I need to get into crypto and won’t go away.

[00:07:49] AF: Yeah, doge to the moon.

[00:07:57] AC: Oh my goodness! So I also went to a bootcamp and we also learned AngularJS. Though it was AngularJS 1.5+, so it did have components, but I was really into the two-way binding as well. Because I don’t know, like the mental models just made sense, like you change the thing and it updates, yay! But then what I found was that, you can get into a lot of trouble in two-way binding, because you don’t always necessarily know where the change occurred, which I think is why I like Vue. Because while it mimics two-way binding, it is still in most cases, unless you do the .sync, whatever, it really is one way. But because it’s event and then propped down, you can always track where it came from because you can track the events. But I have actually had to resort to doing true two-way binding in Vue and it scared me. Anyone else have thoughts about that?

[00:09:00] AR: I’ve done some really questionable things in Vue regarding two-way binding that I advise no one else ever do. I have many examples with provide and inject, where you can do things, you shouldn’t do them that way, though.

[00:09:18] AR: Tell us more. No.

[00:09:21] T: I mean, my only goal in life is never to do the things you shouldn’t do in Vue.

[00:09:27] AC: That is very on brand, Tessa. Yep.

[00:09:32] AF: I find myself, when I’m building in Vue, I still kind of do it with the React way of, “Oh, you got to kind of —” I used the — is it Vuex? That’s the store, right?

[00:09:44] AC: Yeah.

[00:09:44] AF: Yeah. I’m like, “Vuex for everything, when you don’t really need it for everything.” I have a growth mindset. You just never know when you’re going to have a huge production gap.

[00:09:56] AC: Yes. I’m the same way.

[00:10:00] T: I love that way of saying it.

[00:10:04] AC: When I had to write like a simple app for an interview, like, not using Vuex just felt so uncomfortable, even though it was like a single Vue. I didn’t really need it. I was just so used to it being there, and like structuring everything around it, that I ended up getting really lost when I decided to pass down my axios config, and that just — it didn’t end up working out very nicely. But I somehow got the job anyway. I know. Surprise!

[00:10:43] T: I want to hear more about the true two-way binding. Because maybe it’s because for me, I learned Angular 1.x, which for those who don’t know — or AngularJS 1.x — is pre-1.5, so there were no components. To me, two-way binding kind of feels more like the bind, where it’s like, both you and the user can modify the data.

[00:11:06] AF: That’s the way I think I’ve had it as well.

[00:11:09] T: Yeah. But especially for our listeners who are not familiar with the .sync modifier and like the different ways that the binding works, because I thought maybe, it was going to be about, Vbind is technically Von plus the other one, whichever one in it. I don’t remember. I’d be curious to hear more about that.

[00:11:28] AC: Wow! I’ve never had to actually break this down mentally. I’m just like, I know that it’s technically one-way binding, but like — if it’s true two-way binding, yeah, there’s no listener, there’s no events being omitted. It just will directly change that piece of data without any trace, so you can commit crimes without getting caught, is how I like to think of it.

[00:11:58] T: I mean, that sounds fantastic. We all want that.

[00:12:01] AC: I mean, yes. If you really want to — okay, like let’s you’re quitting a job and you really hate the developer who’s going to be taking over for you, .sync modify everything. Just saying. But yeah, with two-way binding, you don’t really have any breadcrumbs to follow for where the change was made. But by using events and event handlers to then modify the data, you have a trail.

[00:12:33] T: The trail would be in the Vue dev tools, is that right?

[00:12:36] AC: Yep, or consul logs on the handler, I’m just saying.

[00:12:43] T: [Inaudible 00:12:43] go that way. You could add consul logs whenever you take straight two-way bound data as well, right? I mean, I want all my [inaudible 00:12:50].

[00:12:53] AF: I’m going to advocate for a debugger.

[00:12:55] AC: Yeah, me too. It works out really well.

[00:12:56] AF: I’m a consul log person, but you just gotta put out a little fight for the underdog.

[00:13:06] T: My personal thing about debugger is that my propensity to get thrown into the source code is like 99.9%.

[00:13:16] AC: That’s why like every time I try to use a breakpoint, like I end up in like this five-minute loop of the source code, and like trying to figure out what I’m actually looking at and if it matters before just hitting the arrow again.

[00:13:35] AF: For me, it’s like you get in the middle of Grammarly code and you’re just like, “All right.”

[00:13:39] T: Oh no!

[00:13:40] AF: You should know that I do not care about this.

[00:13:43] AC: Why is there this giant list of words, I don’t understand.

[00:13:47] T: I remember on my first time, which was a jQuery team, we had this really big bug that we couldn’t figure out and it turned out that Grammarly was injecting code into our app and messing it up. We had to tell our clients I think to uninstall Grammarly or something like that.

[00:14:00] AC: Oh my God!

[00:14:01] AF: Wow! Well, actually, I had to deal with the Grammarly bug before, and I got deep into their GitHub issues. They were having a back and forth with Draft.js, because it’s usually an issue with the rich text editor. Basically, Grammarly created a one-line code thing to disable it on your side, so that your users don’t have to do it — because they always call you and they’re like, “Everything is broken.” Then you say, “Actually, I think you have Grammarly.” They’re like, “How do you know?”

[00:14:33] T: Yeah. Our issue was that it was overwriting, or creating some kind of global variable, and it was overwriting something in our library or something.

[00:14:42] AC: Oh no!

[00:14:43] AF: Yeah. There was a one-liner that they — they have a backdoor that they created just to disable it.

[00:14:48] AC: I have had a Chrome extension break my code before. It was really sad because it was an extension I was really excited about, because I thought it was going to make my life better. It was One Tab or something, you know, the thing that encourages you to actually close your tabs, because I never do.

[00:15:06] T: One Tab has lost my tabs so many times.

[00:15:09] AC: Okay. This is probably a good thing I didn’t start using it. But yeah, I was all excited, and then it updated and like, for some reason, it was breaking my Vue code so I had to uninstall it. Then I forgot it existed for a long time. I was like, “Oh, yeah!” But it broke my stuff, so screw you.

[00:15:31] T: Then the great suspender became a security risk. I think the true lesson here is to just never close a tab ever.

[00:15:39] AC: Yes.

[00:15:42] T: Now you know where we lie on the tabs versus spaces [inaudible 00:15:44].

[00:15:46] AR: See, I am a firm proponent of, you must — I close tabs as quickly as I can.

[00:15:56] AC: How are you and how did you get in this show? [00:15:58] AR: Because there’s the thing: If I found it once, I can find it again if I need to.

[00:16:03] AC: Yeah, but I don’t want to.

[00:16:06] T: This is reminding me of the conversation we had with Anthony about like, if you really want to do something, you’ll remember it. We all know that’s not necessarily true.

[00:16:18] AF: I’m also, like Alex, I close my tabs, and then I – what is it? Command Shift T until I find it again, in case it was a mistake.

[00:16:29] T: Oh man! Mine is always like one or two Command Shift Ts away from where I need it to be. I’ll never get it back.

[00:16:38] AF: I also search my history.

[00:16:41] AR: Yeah. If I really need something and I really can’t find it, it’s in my history somewhere. I’ll be able to pull it back out.

[00:16:48] T: The history search is like notion search for me. It never gives me the results. But anyway —

[00:16:54] AC: Like I know where my tabs are and I know what’s on them, despite the fact that there’s 50 of them and all I can see is an icon. Like my ADHD brain can keep track of that kind of chaos for some reason, but like nothing else. I know which tab is the Vue docs, so I don’t have to type it in, it’s just, I click the tab, there it is. Or I usually have like five MDN tabs open. One is always open to the JavaScript page, one is always open to CSS. One is HTML, one is dom APIs. This just saves me so much time.

[00:17:30] T: One is the Flexbox CSS tricks reference page.

[00:17:34] AR: Yes.

[00:17:35] AC: Shut up. Are you looking at my tabs right now?

[00:17:40] AF: How do you know which? They have different icons or —?

[00:17:43] AC: No, I keep them in a particular order.

[00:17:48] AF: Okay.

[00:17:48] T: Yeah.

[00:17:49] AC: Like the first MDN tab is always the JavaScript one. I know. Sometimes it does take me a couple tries on the others, though.

[00:17:57] T: I don’t know if you have this too, but for me, it’s like, I can remember where things are when they look like they’re in a mess. But then if somebody moves something, I can’t remember. For a while, one of my browsers had that setting where, when you try to navigate to URL, if you already have it open at a different tab, it will take you there instead. I would just lose everything, like I would forget what was going on. I found it very disorienting.

[00:18:21] AC: I love how this like ended up being just a discussion about our browser habits.

[00:18:26] AR: Yeah. This has gone in a very interesting direction.

[00:18:30] AC: Okay. Technically, this is developer productivity. This is relevant. But one thing I did start recently doing is, Google has tab groups now so I’ve started utilizing those. My five Trello boards are now just under one Trello group, and I can collapse them, so I have a little more space. But yeah. Then Vue, obviously that has like, looks like six tabs right now. Because you know, I need one for like just the original Vue docs, one for the Vue API docs as opposed to the guide. Then one for Vuex, one for Vue Router, one for Vue test tools. I wish I was exaggerating, but literally, that is what — [00:19:13] T: We need like a link tree for all the Vue references.

[00:19:18] AF: When I’m working on my Vue project, I have like the regular Vue, I have the Nuxt docs open, I have Tailwind docs open because I also joined that bandwagon. I love Tailwind. And, what is it? Also MDN because you have to read 100 times what reduce does.

[00:19:37] T: I mean, you have to have MDN open.

[00:19:38] AC: Every time.

[00:19:39] AR: Yeah. I definitely have quick binding for searching MDN specifically, so that I can vary quickly be like, I know that the thing that I need is on MDN, so just search that specifically. Don’t mess around with anything else.

[00:19:55] AF: Who knows all the JavaScript array properties?

[00:19:58] AR: There’s —

[00:20:01] T: There’s people like that, I’m sure.

[00:20:02] AR: And there’s filter.

[00:20:05] AC: Find index and find.

[00:20:09] AR: Indexl.

[00:20:10] AC: And index, and indexOf, and flatMap and Map, and —

[00:20:16] AF: There’s sort.

[00:20:18] AR: Sort. Oh yeah. [00:20:18] T: Is it find? I never remember what the find one is?

[00:20:22] AR: The reverse is the one that I found out —

[00:20:24] AC: I think I use find more than anything.

[00:20:27] AR: Yeah.

[00:20:27] T: Find is the one I always have to look up again.

[00:20:30] AR: Filter is the other one that I always —

[00:20:32] AC: It’s like filter, but it returns one thing.

[00:20:36] AR: Reduce is the one that I’ve been using a lot lately, that I’m starting to fall in love with.

[00:20:41] AC: I was terrified of reduce at first, but yeah, I have been using reduce more recently. Whereas for like three years, I successfully did not touch it once, but it turns out it has value.

[00:20:54] AF: I’m trying to use reduce more. My mentor, [Cal Shovlin 00:20:58], he has this concept of saying like, “Technically, everything is a reduce; filter, sort and all that stuff.” It’s been going through those properties and trying to build it out again with reduce.

[00:21:12] AR: Yeah.

[00:21:13] T: Yeah. Although technically, a lot of people like to use like reduce or map for everything, but a lot of times, if you’re in a situation where you really care about performance, such as more like fintech, then for-loop might be the fastest but — I guess, we all love reduce, reusing and recycling over here. That’s why Vue is so green. I’m curious to hear more about why you were asking around about what tools to use to build your products if you were already — given that you’re already familiar with React?

[00:21:51] AF: React set up takes a long time. I admittedly don’t know how to use Webpack.

[00:22:00] T: Does anybody?

[00:22:02] AR: Yeah. The dark magic of Webpack is — mmm.

[00:22:04] AF: Like I feel like I was going to be doing a lot of set up. I was like, “I don’t want to do all that.” Again, the coworker was like, “Oh, yeah. We had a project that we were working on and we built it in Vue, just because we didn’t have time to do that, or want to do it.” They’re like, “It’s so intuitive. Everybody should be using it.” Like they gave rave reviews. I was like, “Okay. I trust your opinion.” The fact that I was able to get up and running in one weekend is just a testament of how quickly you can get a project started and going in Vue.

[00:22:36] T: Yeah. I will say the Vue and the Angular, so that’s 2+, and Ionic, I tried recently. Like CLI set ups are very nice. But to be fair, I haven’t tried the React one in a couple of years.

[00:22:52] AC: Yeah, we’re told they’re super similar, but I just don’t know if I believe it.

[00:22:58] AR: I don’t think I’ve ever touched the React [inaudible 0:23:01] thing yet, so it’s on my to-do list.

[00:23:05] T: I don’t know if they have — do they have their own? Because it used to be an independent project. You think it holds it in?

[00:23:11] AF: They have the create React gap.

[00:23:13] AC: But is that like officially supported by the React team?

[00:23:17] T: I thought I heard it is now, but I don’t know.

[00:23:19] AC: Oh! That would make sense.

[00:23:23] T: I mean, it would make sense maybe if you’re a framework. If you’re a library —

[00:23:28] AC: Touché. Which is why I prefer frameworks, because I get first-party support.

[00:23:35] AF: I do like the Vue UI, working with that. It’s really pretty.

[00:23:40] AR: Yeah. That has definitely changed my workflow on many things, where I’m just like, “Oh! I need to add a thing. Well, let me just go like Vue UI.”

[00:23:48] T: Well, except every time I go to add a library, I accidentally search my own installed libraries instead of search for the libraries I don’t have yet. That makes me so upset every time.

[00:24:03] AC: I’ve only used it once.

[00:24:04] T: Oh! I was going to ask if you also entered server rooms on a skateboard in a foot-length, I mean, head to floor length trench coat. That was my attempt at a hackers reference.

[00:24:17] AC: I do not, but I pretty rarely add anything of like significance after a nap has started. I’m like Amina, with the growth mindset. I’m just like, “Vuex from the start.” Yeah, I just bloat my project at the front.

[00:24:42] AR: Yes. All of my projects just start at five megabytes for the bundled package. Then we go from there. That’s everything you could need.

[00:24:53] AF: If you ask me, I restart the project every week. Even like the thing I’m working on with like Doc Like Me, I’ve restarted it like five times. Where like, first I had it in Vue 2 and then in three and in Nuxt. I’m going to keep on like what I have now, but then I see like Nuxt is upgraded. I was like, “Oh! I kind of want that.” But I got to be like, “No! You got to know your limits.”

[00:25:23] AC: I’m super curious. Okay. Impressions on Vue 2 versus Vue 3 versus Nuxt.

[00:25:29] AF: I’m going to be honest. I was using Vue 3 and I was like, “Wow! This is great.” But it turns out, I actually didn’t write one line of Vue 3 stuff. I was just writing everything in Vue 2 style.

[00:25:43] AC: Nothing wrong with that.

[00:25:44] AF: That’s the truth. I was like, “Okay. I can use the new reactive library in there.” But then I was like, “Wait! I’m using Vuex, I don’t have to do this.”

[00:25:56] T: Yeah, that’s true for a lot of cases, actually.

[00:25:58] AF: Yeah. I was like, “This is kind of cool.” I guess if I was writing — if I didn’t have a growth mindset, this would be the way to go.

[00:26:08] T: There is also like a contingent of people who want to try growth mind setting composition API, so just get rid of Nuxt entirely and do everything 100% in composition API and I’m just sitting over here.

[00:26:20] AC: Do those people hate themselves? Just curious.

[00:26:26] AR: Then you have people like me who make horrible things and write Vue components the way that you’d write a React component, and it’s just — yeah, if you don’t want to do have that. It’s fun but I would not do it in production.

[00:26:45] T: I only used Vue 3 so that I could try out teleport.

[00:26:48] AC: Probably I’m the only one here who hasn’t actually used Vue 3. Because I —

[00:26:54] T: Sign up to give a talk on Vue 3 and then you’ll have used Vue 3.

[00:26:58] AR: You should just open up a couple of tabs about Vue 3, and then they’ll just always be there.

[00:27:05] T: Never look at them again.

[00:27:06] AR: And you will be ready to use it.

[00:27:10] AC: I mean, I’ve read about, I just haven’t actually used it. Because as a lot of you know, I’m very anti side-project. So if I’m not using it at work, I’m not using it.

[00:27:24] T: Yeah. I mean, speaking of side projects, I’d like to hear more about Doc Like Me and what your goals are with the project, where do you want to take it?

[00:27:33] AF: My goals are just to get some doctors to sign up for it. The main thing I’m building with Vue is a dashboard, so that they can log in and update their information on their own. Because a lot of, kind of, existing directory boards, they don’t really have an interface where they can update their information on their own. It’s really like a Google doc and you email the person and they change it when they change it. Because building out like a log in or, I guess, a membership page, it’s not easy. Unless you know how to code, there’s not really many no code ways to do that.

Interestingly enough, the majority of Doc Like Me is actually a no code. The marketing page is built on Webflow. Right now, the search and the log in is built in Webflow using memberstack. But I’m going to be migrating that onto the Vue app, just so it can run smoother, and so that I can get more search stuff, so I’d like to do like search by geolocation. So you type in your zipcode and it will show you all of the doctors near you.

[00:28:52] AC: So someday, I’m guessing you’re hoping to quit your day job and then do this full-time because that sounds like an awesome idea.

[00:28:59] AF: No.

[00:29:01] AC: No? You’re just going to —

[00:29:04] AF: I don’t have a business bone in my body. One of the main reasons that I was doing it in no code is that I can hire someone who doesn’t know how to code to run it.

[00:29:15] T: Nice.

[00:29:15] AF: I’m just building because I think it’s needed. I also have a personal stake in it, where I’m trying to look for new doctors. I just found that my dentist moved, he didn’t even tell me, so I needed —

[Crosstalk 00:29:27]

[00:29:29] AF: I know. I mean, he opened up his new office. This is all great, but I’m not driving all the way to Alpharetta to see him. Alex knows that —

[00:29:40] AR: Yeah, no. Uh-uh. No.

[00:29:43] AF: So like things like that I’m like, okay, I need to have this up and running because I have a personal stake where I need to find a new doctor and a new dentist.

[00:29:51] AR: Really, you’re wanting to interview doctors so that you can choose the one that you want, is really where it comes down to.

[00:30:00] AF: Then I shut the site down.

[00:30:03] AR: Yeah. Mission accomplished.

[00:30:06] T: Now my mind is like stuck on that episode of Monk, where he has to find a new therapist.

[00:30:12] AC: Dude, finding a new therapist. Uh-uh.

[00:30:17] AF: That’s actually kind of where I got the idea from the site, because there is a website called Therapy for Black Girls, that was started by a therapist that I knew from college. She ran a women’s group for black women on campus. They can come in once a week and just talk about whatever issues they’re going through. I kind of kept in touch, so she created that site. I was like, “Well, this is a great idea. Someone should make that for doctors, then nobody did.” I was like, “Oh man! I guess I’m that someone.”

[00:30:46] T: Someone is me.

[00:30:47] AF: Yeah, it’s me.

[00:30:50] T: Nice. Another thing I was really curious about was like the art and design on your site. It’s like, is that custom? Because I noticed that like all the images have black people. I feel like I’ve heard a lot about assets, and like stock photos and things like that with black people being really hard to find.

[00:31:05] AF: Yes, that’s true. It’s actually from a website called Black Illustrations, which has, all the illustrations are black people doing regular things. It’s by John Saunders. I know about it because the website is hosted on Webflow. That’s how I stumbled upon it. It was like posted at work, “Hey! So I made a website you can find a black illustrations.” I was like, “Oh! That is extremely helpful.”

[00:31:34] T: Nice.

[00:31:35] AF: Yeah. I was able to get the illustrations from there.

[00:31:40] AC: Is it currently just like in one market, like the Atlanta area, or are you trying to expand it everywhere?

[00:31:49] AF: I’m trying to expand it everywhere. I currently have a couple things to fix around, but I’m getting ready for a stage where we start signing up doctors for some beta testing to make sure it works. I did run into one problem where a friend was testing it on an android phone. It turns out, it’s a little difficult to upload a photo there. Of course, in like — in true developer fashion I’m just like, “Well then, don’t use that.”

[00:32:24] AR: Works on my machine.

[00:32:25] AC: So relatable.

[00:32:27] AF: Yeah. Who told you to buy that phone? I was like, “You’re right. I should go —” I was like, to be fair — I didn’t know it was a problem because I don’t own that piece of technology. I’m going to go fix that now. Thank you. This is why we do testing. But yeah, just going to try to sign up some doctors pretty soon, so we can start building out a list, so we can start having patients be able to find some doctors and see where we go from there.

[00:32:56] AR: Awesome.

[00:32:58] AC: I wish I had cool ideas like that, but I don’t, which is why I don’t have side projects.

[00:33:03] AF: Yeah. Side project, actually I do have another side project I’m working on. It’s with my cousin. We’re doing something for Atlanta Centric, where you can kind of see — it’s like a calculator with the Atlanta police budget thing to see if you were to allocate to different programs, like how much money you could spend on it. That one is — I have to remember what the URL is, mostly because — is it Netify? I can never spell that correctly.

[00:33:35] AR: Netlify.

[00:33:35] T: Netlify.

[00:33:37] AF: Netlify.

[00:33:40] T: We missed a chance to be like, “If only there was someone on the show who knew what the company name was.”

[00:33:45] AR: Ben works for Netlify.

[00:33:47] AC: You’re joking, Ben.

[00:33:50] AF: Great. I always start trying to write Netflix, and I was like, “It’s not helping me.” I hope that the browser thing would like correct it. Nope. It lets me go to that weird ad page.

[00:34:06] T: Oh my God! That’s like when people were using Facebook all the time, and my browser was stuck on sending me to the thaw.com, which is like some soccer website. But yeah, somebody I know, I thought they worked at Netflix this whole time. Then today, I realized, nope, it was Netlify, so I feel you. Well, I’ll add a link to that site in the show notes.

[00:34:35] AF: Yeah. It’s a work in progress. I just stubbed in some numbers, but it’s kind of a — I got a little working calculator there. Or not. I might not have updated the link yet.

[00:34:45] AC: This is really cool. Yep. See, you just have way better ideas than me. At least someone does.

[00:34:53] T: So sleek on both of your projects.

[00:34:57] AF: Yeah, the Netlify one is Tailwind DSS. I read through the course booklet on how to make good UI. For Doc Like Me, I just hired somebody.

[00:35:11] T: Nice!

[00:35:13] AF: I really believe in good design, good UX as the forefront of a website. The main thing I wanted with Doc Like Me was, it had to be simple and people to really — it just works and that what you think it does is what it does. Because a lot of, I found some other sites that, it was kind of clunky and it was hard to see the results or even find where to start [inaudible 00:35:39]. I want to make it really obvious what you’re here to do.

[00:35:45] AC: Eventually I need to try out Tailwind. I have regrets about my current project because I had the opportunity to like start with cool things and I didn’t and now I hate my life.

[00:35:59] T: That’s okay. You can just add .sync on everything, it will be fine.

[00:36:03] AF: Exactly.

[00:36:04] AC: Yeah. But I plan on working there for a little while, and I don’t hate myself that much.

[00:36:13] T: One thing I was really curious about was, how did you go about picking up these new technologies to build these projects?

[00:36:20] AF: I usually just watch the front end masters course on it. I started with Sarah [inaudible 00:36:27] videos, then they went on to Ben’s. Then some YouTube or just Googling. Then of course, when I fell really into the deep end of Vue, I went all in. I got a Vue Ambassadors’ subscription. That’s kind of what I’ve been doing. Also, asking the internet which, I’ve gotten lucky. They’ve been really nice when I’ve asked, but I know that is a gamble sometimes. [00:36:55] AC: I was like, that feels really hit or miss.

[00:36:58] AF: I do it at 3:00 in the morning. All the bullies go to bed at 1:00 AM. That’s the truth.

[00:37:06] AC: Sorry I just slammed my fist into my desk.

[00:37:10] T: You felt really strong about the 3:00 AM gang.

[00:37:14] AC: I was pulling on my slipper and my hand slipped off the slipper and just like, yeah, right into the desk. So sorry about that. Anyway, so Amina, if people want to find you on the Internet, where can they find you?

[00:37:28] AF: They can find me on Twitter at @aminafoon. I think that’s my Twitter name. If it’s not —

[00:37:38] AC: I think.

[00:37:39] AF: If you just type it in, I should be like the first result if I even gave you the wrong name there. You can also find — you can go to my website, which is aminatafoon.com. It will just link you to my Twitter. You will get there eventually. Also, doclike.me, just go there, visit, play around with it. You can find me in Atlanta too.

[00:38:08] AC: All right. Let’s move on to picks. Drum roll. Who’s going to go first.

[00:38:18] AF: I’ll go first.

[00:38:19] AC: Okay. Let’s do it. That was amazing.

[00:38:28] AF: My first pic is Super Mario 3D World and Bowser’s Fury. It just came out on Nintendo Switch. It’s been a lot of fun to play. I’ve been playing with my 10-year-old nephew. Usually, when we play co-op games, I leave like 30 minutes into it, just like extremely mad at him. But when we’re playing Super Mario 3D World, it’s just been so much better. We’re able to collaborate well, and it’s just been really just fun.

[00:38:59] AR: All right. That sounds like a good game for me to take a break from my time at Portia and go —

[00:39:04] AC: We’re all going to have to trade, switch friend codes after this.

[00:39:07] AF: Yeah. And you can play this one online co-op.

[00:39:10] AC: Oh! Way to ruin my pick, Alex.

[00:39:15] AF: The Gilded Ones, phenomenal. I don’t want to give it away. The only part I would say is like the last 100 pages are a roller coaster. Stop trying to guess what happens in the book because, again, like every time we think you know, there’s some kind of twist. I will say I’m biased. The author of the book is my cousin. We just found out yesterday, it’s a New York Times bestseller.

[00:39:37] T: Wow! Congrats.

[00:39:39] AC: So awesome.

[00:39:40] AR: Nice.

[00:39:40] AF: It was also announced that it’s been an optioned for a movie, and she’s writing a script.

[00:39:47] T: Oh my God! That’s amazing.

[00:39:47] AF: Read The Gilded Ones while it’s still like the hipster thing to do. My next pick is Desus & Mero, it’s a late-night talk show on Showtime. It comes on on Sundays and Thursdays, [inaudible 00:40:01]. It’s a lot of fun. They kind of talk about the news or random YouTube videos. They are two guys from The Bronx, so it’s always a lot of fun and it’s really laid back. They can make fun of anything. Like a, what you call it, an empty can on the floor, they’ll make jokes about it and have you rolling. I highly recommend.

My last pick is apple-ginger sparkling water from AHA. AHA is Coca-Cola’s version of sparkling water. I used to be in the camp that said that grapefruit was the best flavor of sparkling water. But no, not anymore. It is apple-ginger AHA. It is the best sparkling water I’ve ever had. Unfortunately, it’s currently discontinued because of the pandemic. I don’t think they have the right ingredients. So you have to go in person to random Target’s and Walmart and find them. Which makes it even more fun. It’s sold out on Amazon. Go down to like your local store, or your local bougie store because they have to have sparkling water to begin with, and try to find this apple ginger flavor.

[00:41:12] AC: Best sparkling water.

[00:41:12] AF: Yes. If you don’t believe me. If you type in apple-ginger AHA in Twitter, it’s nothing but people are like, “Wow! Why is this the best flavor of sparkling water ever?”

[00:41:25] AC: I mean that flavor combination does sound amazing. So now I’m just sad because I probably won’t be able to find it because there’s a lot of bougie people around here.

[00:41:34] AF: Where are you located?

[00:41:36] AC: I’m in Colorado.

[00:41:39] AF: I found one in New York in a Target, so —

[00:41:42] T: Sounds like your ads aren’t bad. I haven’t tried the water yet. I only know the song from AHA, but I’m sure the water is just as good. [00:41:55] AC: It is a good song, yeah. Well, since you talked. Tessa, you’re up next. I know, cruel. So cruel.

[00:42:04] T: My first pick is a portable drafting table. Maybe not the one that I got, but I’ll link it, just because it’s a little bit unfinished. But I tried it last night and it was really nice to be able to stand it up, but also have it on my standing desk, so that I can have kind of an easel-like experience, but it’s a little bit more sturdy like a table. That’s a little bit better for my back, I think, so that’s been nice.

I also started listening to this book, Minor Feelings, by Cathy Park Hong. It’s a book about the experience growing up as an East Asian, or more specifically, Korean-American, in the US. Although she does talk at length as well about speaking to and reading about other East Asian American experiences as well as black and brown experiences, and kind of like comparing and contrasting, and talking about the overlaps between the different experiences and the ways that the communities support each other, and tear each other down and are also pitted against each other.

My last pick is kind of water related. I just got my TwoSet La Mer sweatshirt and I love it. I will also link that in the podcast. I don’t know why I say that. We always link the picks anyway. There you go.

[00:43:29] AC: You guys can’t see it, but she’s rocking the sweatshirt and she looks awesome. All right. Alex?

[00:43:37] AR: I have one pick this week that my wife generously reminded me of. We recently watched a really fun, really short show called Staged. It stars David Tennant and Michael Sheen. If you enjoyed Good Omens, which is on Amazon, you will really enjoy Staged because the two of them talking over Zoom calls about rehearsing a play and it is hilarious. There’s a brilliant cast of characters that join them, and yeah. Apparently, it’s been renewed for a season two, so super excited because I get to watch another season of it.

[00:44:21] AC: I guess it means it is my turn. As was alluded to earlier, my pick this week is going to be My Time at Portia. I would say, “Like Alex picked a couple of weeks ago,” but I think the way we’re doing releases this is going to be months later. So in case you forgot about it, now you remember. It is amazing. It is very much in the vein of Stardew Valley. If you were a fan of that, you will like this. But I like it because it does have a little bit more complexity to it than Stardew Valley did. Which, depending on how you feel, that could be a plus or minus. For me it’s a plus. I do sometimes have a hard time keeping track of everything. I need to be doing in my head, so I’ve had to start taking notes. That’s fun.

[00:45:12] AR: Going on dates is the worst, man. You have to remember.

[00:45:15] AC: I just went on my first one.

[00:45:17] AR: Yeah. You have to like remember their food order, and like for you to like — I have a notebook that’s just full of like food orders.

[00:45:23] AC: Yeah. Now, I just use the Wiki and I just bring up that person on the Wiki. Yeah, they of course have —

[00:45:30] T: I just reviewed our episode where you said that you don’t write things down, so I’m very entertained.

[00:45:36] AC: I know.

[00:45:39] AF: I had to look it up, because I thought you meant like Porsche.

[00:45:44] AC: No, yeah. No.

[00:45:45] AF: Like you worked Porsche and you’re recommending it. I was like, “Okay.”

[00:45:52] T: It’s [inaudible 00:45:52] Portia.

[00:45:54] AF: [Inaudible 00:45:54] of course. Okay.

[00:45:57] AC: I will clarify the spelling. It’s Portia, so not the car, which coincidentally Tessa has been known [inaudible 0:46:06] the car before. But yeah, I’ve really have been enjoying that game. Especially since I’ve had some not so great things going on in my life and it has been a nice reprieve from that. That is all for this week’s episode. If you aren’t following us on Twitter, head on over and find us at @EnjoyTheVueCast. Be sure to subscribe to us in your podcasting app of choice and if you have the time, leave a review, only if it’s nice. Just kidding. If it’s mean, we like feedback too.

[00:46:40] T: Send it to [inaudible 00:46:41].

[00:46:42] AC: Yeah. But then, we’re going to ask you to change it later. No, I’m kidding. Finally, remember, the first rule of Vue Club is, tell at least five or six colleagues about Vue Club. Thanks for listening and until next time. Enjoy the Vue.

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