Hey everybody, and welcome to another episode of My JavaScript Story. This week
we're talking to Kevin Kreitzer. Exactly. How's my Swiss? Did I do?
Okay? Yeah? Yeah? Perfect? Is is it a German name?
Yeah? I think actually it's a German name. Yes. Nice.
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dot co to learn more about G two I. Well, yeah, we
had you on episode two hundred and twenty seven of Adventures in Angular talking about
source maps in Angular. Yeah, do you want to just kind of give
us a quick introduction to who you are and what you do and all that
stuff? Yes, for sure. My name is Kevin Krantzer, as you're
already introduced, like perfectly. I'm a freelance front and engineer from Switzerland.
I'm also a Google developer expert in Angler, and yeah, basically I love
Chavascript, I love Angler. So I also write a lot of blog posts,
maintain some open source libraries, and yeah, my free time enjoy snowboarding
and love to play football. Nice. Now, when you say football,
you mean what we in the US called soccer, Yes, exactly, Okay,
so that's making sure. Yeah, American food police too brutal. I
like to watch it. But playing yeah, well, I am a soccer
junkie myself. So yeah, okay, which team do you support? Uh?
Here in the US, I really supports Rayal Salt Lake okay. And
and in Europe my favorite team is Juventus okay, okay, but I am
somewhat partial to Manchester United as well. I like those guys, Okay.
Nice. Yeah, I lived in Italy for two years and so yeah,
one of these days I'll get to go back and actually watch Uve play.
But yeah, I have been to a soccer match in Europe and it was
crazy. Okay, which one was it? It was Verona and Venezia played
each other. They were both in Serie A at the time, and yeah,
people were like lighting stuff on fire and throwing it onto the field,
and I mean we're standing there going, holy cow, nobody does this.
They were throwing rocks at the bus from the opposing team. It was.
It was wild. Yeah, yeah, but that's usually I should have going
there. Yes, it's wild. Yeah. Some some people who were friends
of ours, Yeah, they found they got us tickets to the game,
and so we went and walked out of there and going, yeah, this
is nothing like American sports. Yeah, because if people did any of that
stuff, the police at haul them off. But anyway, I don't know
if it's still that nutty, but yeah, it was. It was definitely
a different experience. What team do you support. I'm a huge Rail Madrid
fan since I kid like. I support Real Madrid since years old. So
nice. Yeah, they're a sister team to Ray also Lake, so so
yeah cool. Well let's dive in and talk about Angular. I love getting
kind of the personal details. I don't mind talking about that, so yeah,
if there's something else to bring up, just do it. But yeah,
let's talk a little bit about your programming history for a minute. How
did you get into programming. Yeah, it was kind of special because I'm
like usually when you hear about a lot of programmers, they talk about like,
Okay, I started to program with fifteen years, I wrote my first
program and stuff like that, and I'm like a little bit from another side
because I'm now twenty nine years old and I started to program when I was
twenty one, so nice late. But yeah, yeah, I came somehow
into program It was like by yeah, by accident, I would almost say,
because after I finished, like high school, I wanted to do like,
yeah, in Switzerland, you have the choice either you do like you
go to work or you go to another school. And I wanted to go
to work. But I was quite good at at football or at soccer,
how you say, right back then, and therefore I wanted to do a
sports school and like I passed there, like the test, so you needed
to have like a sport level and also a school level, and I passed
those tests. But then some yeah, they changed somehow the criterias because skiing
is quite important in Switzerland, like they then changed it and wanted to basically
only have like guys who ski and therefore I then did like it was too
late to find a job. So I then somehow did commercial school, which
was like my only way out. And yeah, during commercial commercial school,
I kind of had like some troubles because everyone is not so interested in it.
Why did you what did you learn at the commercial school? Is that
like a trade school or it's more like accounting like French, different languages,
Yeah, accounting, like economics, stuff like that. Oh okay, it's
interested in learning how red flowers? How you stay is in French? Like
that was not interesting me at all, so it sounds fascinating to me.
But yeah, you know, in economics and yeah, accounting maybe not.
Yeah it was not so I didn't like it somehow, but I still passed.
And one year there I didn't pass because I was doing like nothing.
And then yeah, this somehow changed my entire story because then I thought like,
okay, what will I do with my life? And then I changed
it and yeah I passed and the last year like quite good, and then
I needed to go to work for one year, because you can also do
like if you do an additional year of work, you get basically like entrance
to university. Right, And during this year of work, I kind of
discovered that I loved to work with computers. So I never wrote the program
before, but I really enjoyed time on the computer, like creating things.
Because I was working in a marketing department, I was creating a lot of
flyers and a lot of posters and stuff like that. And then yeah,
somehow I was thinking what do I want to study? And then yeah,
I went to study business information technology, which was like a lot of program
in there and very cool. Yeah. I also I just came to programming
because of soccer, basically because otherwise I would have just made some Yeah,
went somewhere to work. Well, soccer is life, so yeah life,
No, that's awesome, and it's interesting too, because yeah, we do
talk to a lot of people that it's Yeah, well I got into computers
as a kid, but I talked to just as many people. I swear
that it at some point as an adult. They thought that programming looked at
or sounded interesting, or you know, they had some opportunity present itself and
they went for it or you know, all kinds of things like that.
So as much as I think people kind of stereotypically think that most programmers come
into it early, that's not always the case. And so I like hearing
the stories where it's I kind of kind of wound up going through a different
pattern or whatever. Yeah, Because also when I arrived there at Business Information
like at university where I studied business information technology, so I specifically decided to
go to this universe because like business information technology in Switzer, when there are
different schools, some school focus more on business and some focus more on programming
and the technical thought right, And I was really interesting in this even though
I never programmed before. I had no idea what yeah, no idea of
programming. And when I arrived there, all the guys who were there already
had some technical background, Like I was basically one of the only guys that
had never programmed before. So right after the first course, she was talking
about strings and in teachers and floats and stuff like that, and I was
like, okay, what is this? So I thought, okay, maybe
I'm going to leave because I have no idea what I'm going to do here.
But then somehow I started to dive a little bit into it and it
was super interesting to me, and yeah, then yeah, just I stick
to it. And there was the best decision, I would say, Right,
So did they teach you JavaScript there or did they teach you some other
programming language? No, we started with Java there, and we basically didn't
wrote JavaScript in university, like just a little bit of JavaScript. Yeah,
but the whole world runs out of JavaScript now so now, yeah, but
it was back it was in twenty eleven, and yeah, yeah, it
was mainly Java. And the interesting thing is like, now JavaScript is my
yeah, my favorite language. I only code in Chavascript. Back then,
I didn't like Chavascript at all. Somehow that was interesting. I didn't like
to create web applications and stuff like that. I was more like, okay,
I like Java. But yeah, yeah, this has completely changed when
I went to work. So how did you wind up making that move to
JavaScript? Yeah? It started after university. I went to work, like
at a Swiss train company, and I started as a junior Java developer.
And then when you're a junior I went to I came to a quite huge
proach and then they gave me like one one team member who was kind of
responsible for me. He was kind of we told that we called him the
godfather or my godfather, and like he was super cool. He was one
of the most important persons in my career path, I would say, because
like the Chave project was huge, and also I would say, yeah,
not the most interesting one in terms of like if you start, there's a
lot of business know how you have to know and if you come as a
junior, you cannot do so many things. There's a lot of freedom of
documentation and like, yeah, and he wanted me to be still productive,
and therefore he had some side projects on helper tool, which was written in
a chas. Then he told me like, okay, you can read,
like half a day you can work on our project, like on the real
project, and the other half a day you can work on the saying of
the chas project. And then yeah, I started to work on it,
and I immediately liked it, Like I thought, this is what I want
to do, and that's the way I drifted into jobscript. Basically. Yeah,
it's interesting. I mean you wind up basically getting into JavaScript through work.
And what's funny is is that and this is something that's a little bit
unique to you is that most people I talked to they got into JavaScript and
they started doing a bunch of stuff on the front end, and then eventually
they stumbled into Angular somehow, right, or if they're doing view or react,
they kind of stumbled that way. And it sounds like it all kind
of came at you at once, both Angular JS and JavaScript. Yeah.
It was more like I started directly with Angler chairs and had no idea about
what stollerscope and these things, and then I thought, okay, this is
pretty cool. I can do powerful things after like one or two days.
And then because back then I still had like one hour to go to work
one hour in the trade like one way, so basically each day two hours
and all those two hours I spent only then on researching Angular chairs. And
also then I realized that I don't understand the concepts of childscript, like what
is prototype chain and stuff like that. Yeah, and then I just started
to just in my free time, like learn chadascript. So basically as you
said, normally learned chadscript and then you go to English chairs. For me,
it was like started with England chairs and then I thought, okay,
I need to get a better understanding of chaaskrit itself? Right, that's really
interesting too. Were you able to effectively write Angular jas not knowing JavaScript proper?
It seems like a lot of people kind of come, yeah, come
that way too, right, the newer programmers I'm talking to it. Well,
I got into react or, I got into Angular, and then I
realized that I didn't understand anything about JavaScript or I ran up against the limitations
of what you can do and react or Angular without owing JavaScript, and that's
when they start to learn it. Yeah, so I would say I couldn't
really. I could write some features, but they were not written in the
nicest way, and it was a lot of like Stecco would flow helping.
But once I got better, I released them and then yeah, I rewrote
them. I think today it's a little bit easier because you have already like
typescript, which is much Yeah, it looks more like Java than normal JavaScript,
like kind I mean, you have classes and stuff like that, which
is kind of familiar to you if you come from Java, right, makes
sense. Have you thought about learning to do native iOS development? Are you
using Swift at work, or maybe you've considered writing applications for mac os.
We have a podcast that covers all of that called I Freaks. We have
a new panel and a lot of exciting things to talk about, so come
check us out at ifreakshow dot com. So yeah, I mean you stuck
with Angular and with JavaScript as opposed to Java, and you stuck with Angular
through the transition in the Angular two and you know networ Angular what nine?
So what made you stick around? What was it that made you a give
up on Java and then b stay with this technology for so long? Yeah?
So when I started to do it, I was then also I liked
it that much that I started to reduce MYA to go back to eighty percent
working and like use that one day to go to university and learn JavaScript.
That was really like I really wanted to do this, and why I start
with it was kind of I really liked this fast feedback cycle. So when
you program something, you got this fast feed feedback. And then for me
it was like one language to rule them all. So when I was doing
stuff with Java, I could not just go home and prototype things and it
was more like okay, I need a frondand for it. And with JavaScript,
I could do the fund and and I could easily do a note back
end, which is pretty amazing for me. And yeah, and then also
I think another thing was the whole community. Somehow, I like that it's
so fast, that it goes forward so fast. And also the people in
the community were welcoming and like also somehow if you go to conferences, I
think they were just like had so much passion about Chavascript and things. I
think the community was also not saying that the chav community is bad, but
it was more like there was less going on, I would say, makes
sense. So, yeah, what was it like making that transition from angular
JAS to angular because I mean, you know, we kind of have the
infamous what was the angular EU talks where they had like the tombstones, We're
not gonna have this anymore, and we're not going to have that anymore,
and everybody kind of went For me, it was less like that. For
me. I was really seeing it as a new chance. I mean.
The cool thing is also this was for me, this was the first framework
that I followed from the beginning. Like when I started working, everything was
already there. This was the first which I really followed from the beginning,
and so I was kind of embracing it. I felt like typescrip looked super
promising. Back then r x JAS was super cool, like yeah, I
felt from yeah, from the first touches I got to Angler two. Back
then, I thought, yeah, this is coming to be a huge improvement
over Angler chairs. So I was less like oh no, it was more
like embracing and looking forward to it. Right. So, I guess another
question that I have as we kind of get your story, is that you
said that you're a Freelancerwitzerland. Yeah, now I've I for the what to
just give some contacts. So I worked in regular jobs for about three or
four years after I graduated from college or from the university, and then I
wound up going freelance. And I was freelanced for what like four or five
years, and then I've been able to do the podcasting for the last three
years full time. So I know what freelancing looks like here in the US.
What does it look like in Switzerland? I would say in Switzerland currently,
it's like one of the best things you can do, if you ask
me, because the risk of like being unemployed is quite low, I would
say because the market, Yeah, it's quite dry. There are more jobs
than people than qualified people. And especially the cool thing is so that's like
if you of most people when they want to go freelancing, the first question
you ask is like the risk basically, Oh yeah, I hear that all
the time here too. I've had people complain I can't find a job I
love, and I'm like, go freelance, and they're like, hmm,
well I can't find a client. That's scary. Yeah, I would say
in Switzerland currently it's quite good to fight clients, but like that's not the
reason to go freelancing. Freelancing is quite cool because you have this experience like
working for you, and also you get like more flexibility and more like free
time and basically doing what you want to do. And I mean for me,
it was also always weird to have this kind of like if you meet
your boss which never works with you, and he tells you what your goals
are and where you should go in which direction, and so it was kind
of weird because I when I'm now working on a client, I'm there because
I'm motivated and I want to bring the project forward. It's not I basically
don't need somebody to tell me which goals I should read. I'm self motivated
and I have my own goals, so like if I don't have those calls,
that probably I should not go to the client anymore. But yeah,
I think it's a it's a kind of mind shift. I would say,
if you go freelance and you should definitely have the correct mind, I would
say, yep. Nice. So yeah, I how long have you been
freelance? Now? Like two years? Almost a little bit more. Yeah,
more than two years because I started to work in twoenty and fourteen.
R I mean, you cannot go from the university and immediately freelance, So
it started four years or five years as internal for the company and then I
decided to make this step nice, very cool. So do you have some
advice for people who are kind of thinking that that's the direction they want to
go. Yeah. For me, like in everything that I've learned, kind
of like because I also started laden programming, I'm now like eight years into
it. Basically now I made a career like living out of it, but
basically become freelance and now recently becoming a GD And like for me, the
main message to people is you don't have to be a genius to program,
Like it's more about hard work, about dedication about enjoying what you do.
And then also, yeah, I think that's that's basically the key if you
want to go in this direction. And for me, the mindset is kind
of important. If you have the correct mindset, then it's possible to do
these things, right, I agree. I think it's something that everybody should
try and then, yeah, you know, not everybody's cut out for it.
You don't feel bad if if you figure out you don't like it,
or you figure out that it's you know, harder for you than it looks
like it is for other people. Yeah, don't mean anything's wrong with you,
it's just yeah, yeah, anyway, Yeah, just if you try
it, I think then you also need to be willing to put some time
in and put something some working. You cannot just like dream around and then
think, okay, i'll go freelancing. But yeah, then you need also
to put some work in. Yeah. I just recorded an episode of React
Roundup, which is our React podcast, and we didn't have a guest and
everybody else was sick, so I just did it on my own. And
that's what I was talking about. I was like, look, you got
to do the work, you know, wherever you want to end up at.
You have to do the work. You have to do the work to
learn the technology skills. You have to learn the work, do the work
to learn the soft skills. You know, you can shortcut some of it
by finding mentors or going to conferences or you know, watching video courses,
but at the end of the day, you have to practice it or you're
not going to get it. Yeah. Yeah, nice. What are you
working on now? Yeah? Now, like in terms of open source or
like client projects, so yeah, maybe an open source I'm working now.
Yeah, I'm working on a project in a client where we basically built like
a new component library, like a framework, like basically like Angular material in
these directions of some of our own component library. And there are now implementing
like sbg itons, so basically an icon library like font us some kind of
nice and yeah, there are needed some tool and I that was a pretty
cool experience because the tool was super technical and it basically takes spg iticons and
then spitz generates them, processes them and spits them out in a tree shakable
way like yeah, the mask, And I thought, why not open source
this tool? So I'm kind of also working on this tool in open source.
And the cool thing was because it was pure technical, I open sourced
it and other people like could use it too, and then also started to
contribute in which was again a benefit for my compliment. Also that was a
quite cool experience. Where do people find it. It's on GitHub It's called
scy to t s and also an NPM you can download it. Currently working
on a new feature which makes I can I can even more tree shakable.
And yeah, I also plan to do a ride up on this. So
because it's a little bit hard to put everything to read me, so I'll
probably write a blog post about this and then yet people can check out and
hopefully enjoy it. Nice, very cool. Well, if I can get
a link to that in the chat, we'll put it in the show notes.
So so what's the rest of life look like? I mean, besides
soccer and programming, what what else do you do or spend time with or
on or yeah? Yeah, and winter I love to go snowboarding, like
because in Switzerland my girlfriend is from Mutt that's a quite famous place in Switzerland
with huge skiing area, so I like to go there. And then also
I play I still play football like soccer. Sorry, no, call it
football. People need to learn. Yeah, get over folks, football football.
I still play football. Yeah, I'm a free time So that's basically
it. What position do you play? Uh? Like, number ten is
my my favorite position? Number ten? Is that defense? No, that's
midfield, Like that's basically that's basically the guy who is almost like yes,
behind the attackers, doesn't have to care too much about defensive work. So
that's that's a position I like. Nice. Yeah, very cool. People
want to connect with you online? Is there a good place for people to
do that? Yeah, for sure, Like, so you can either follow
me on my githo project where you can find some of my open source open
source projects. Or a good place is also to read via medium that's where
I post my blocks, or of course Twitter. Twitter is, like I
would say, the best place. Nice. We'll make sure we get links
to all that stuff too, folks, so we can you can ask Kevin
all your deep and burning questions. All right, well, let's go ahead
and do some pics. Do you have anything you want to pick or shout
out about or do you want me to go first? Yeah? I have
like some technical picks and then some not non technical picks. So yeah.
One of the things I have is like I programmed the library which is called
ENNGI SORCRIT because I was using materials CDK and I have trouble like ordering a
grid in like multi direction. It was great to order it vertically or horizontally,
but once I went to mixed orientation, I had some issues and therefore
I put implemented like ENGI SOORCRIT, which you can check it out if you
want. It's basically a grinted supports drag and drop in multiple directions. And
then another cool thing I would recommend you to look at if you're using England
material. With version nine, they released component harnesses, which is basically something
you can use to test because currently if you want to test like a radio
button or something, you often go with fixture and then debug element and then
use some DSS selectors to go to some internals of material and execute a click
there. And now they abstracted it a way into these harness tests. That's
definitely something I would recommend you. And then last week I played a little
bit around CSS and one cool thing I learned is there's a clip path attribute
which you can use, or a clip puff property, a cess property and
it basically allows you to clip images based on a path, which is quite
cool. So those were my technical picks. I have two other picks,
like for everybody who loves movies. Yesterday we watched a movie called Jojo Rabbit,
which is quite I think it's a new movie. It is. I
haven't seen it, but I've seen yeah. Yeah. It was about a
ten year old boy who's Yeah, it plays like in the Second World War.
It is like super fanantic. But yeah. The reason I like this
movie is because it was kind of weird, funny, heartwarming and also heartbreaking
at the same time. And it was kind of a special film, like
a unique film. Yeah, I haven't seen anything that is like similar treat
so therefore I can enjoy it. And then yeah, if you like podcas
we spot a new game which is called The Settlers of Katan and it's the
version Rise of the Incas, which is quite cool to play. I would
say, nice, Yeah, we like Settlers of Katan. Here. So
my first pick is going to be the book that I'm listening to on Audible,
and what it is is it's Chronicles of Narnia, which I think most
people have heard of, but these these books are narrated by famous authors.
So the first book's narrated by Kenneth Brenna, the last book is narrated by
Patrick Stewart. And they are awesome, They are so well read. Really
really enjoying those, and you can pick it up on Audible. So usually
and I link out to books, I link out to Amazon, but this
one, it'll link to Amazon, but it'll link to Amazon where you can
get the audible version, so just be aware of that. And uh yeah,
those are my picks. Thank you for coming and talking to me,
Kevin. This was fun. It was a pleasure. Thanks for having me,
all right, folks, Well until next time. Max out bandwidth for
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