Hot Takes, Web Technologies, and Learning to Code with Ken Wheeler

Ken Wheeler is a software engineer with well over a decade of experience. He shares stories about his journey into tech, his life, and his hobbies. Ken fell in love with coding as a kid, building his skills from QBasic to PHP and HTML. He recounts his transition from being a rap producer for a decade to stumbling upon a job listing for a web developer using Flash. After twisting the truth to get through the interview, he spent five years building local restaurant websites with Flash animations. Ken dives into some unfiltered hot takes from TypeScript to CSS and the ongoing debate of sidebar placement in VS Code. He shares his love for inferred types over explicit types, arguing in favor of TypeScript's Hindley-Milner type system. In this episode, Ken talks to Robbie and Chuck about his thoughts on types, Tailwind and VS Code, his coding journey from QBasic to HTML as a kid, and his technique for landing his first job. Key Takeaways [00:48] - Introduction to Ken Wheeler. [01:56] - A whiskey review: Basil Hayden Straight Bourbon Whiskey. [19:03] - Tech hot takes. [40:57] - Ken discusses his New Jersey roots and how he entered the tech field. [49:51] - Chuck, Robbie, and Ken talk about cars. [59:00] - Chuck’s plans to move to Italy. [01:04:41] - Chuck, Robbie, and Ken discuss burgers and sandwiches. Quotes [19:20] - “Typescript is good. It's better than Javascript.” ~ Ken Wheeler [34:50] - “A senior at dickhead.com is not the same as a senior at Google.com.” ~ Ken Wheeler [37:48] - “Webpack actually isn’t that hard, believe it or not, if you just dig into it.” ~ Ken Wheeler Links Ken Wheeler LinkedIn Ken Wheeler Twitter OpenAI Twitter Formidable Basil Hayden Straight Bourbon Whiskey Sagamore Spirit Rye Whiskey Buffalo Trace Distillery Pappy Van Winkle Maker’s Mark Coors Light Topgolf Crocs Timberland The Ritz-Carlton DoorDash Taco Bell Tabasco Cholula Tailwind CSS Vanilla CSS NPM Shepherd JS YAML Serverless UI Syntax.FM Beflo Joe Rogan Podcast All-In Podcast Darknet Diaries Google Amazon Webpack ChatGPT Vite NextJS Airbnb Ruby on Rails Django National Geographic Juul Marlboro Oracle Salesforce jQuery Versace The North Face Red Wing Shoes Thursday Boot Company Porsche Jeep Volvo Solo Stove Flex Seal Inter Milan Five Guys Jersey Mike’s USA In-N-Out Shake Shack First We Feast Arby’s Burger King McDonald’s React Miami The Primeagen Chick-fil-A Connect with our hosts Robbie Wagner Chuck Carpenter Ship Shape Subscribe and stay in touch Apple Podcasts Spotify Google Podcasts Whiskey Web and Whatnot Promos Top-Tier, Full-Stack Software Consultants This show is brought to you by Ship Shape. Ship Shape’s software consultants solve complex software and app development problems with top-tier coding expertise, superior service, and speed. In a sea of choices, our senior-level development crew rises above the rest by delivering the best solutions for fintech, cybersecurity, and other fast-growing industries. Check us out at shipshape.io.