I'm Sean,
I maintain webpack.
I work on Microsoft Edge DevTools.
I love Γ°ΕΈΒβs.
Ask.
Me.
Anything.
:-D
For further actions, you may consider blocking this person and/or reporting abuse
I'm Sean,
I maintain webpack.
I work on Microsoft Edge DevTools.
I love Γ°ΕΈΒβs.
Ask.
Me.
Anything.
:-D
For further actions, you may consider blocking this person and/or reporting abuse
Oldest comments (114)
I've heard you are a farmer + developer, which is literally my end game.
How did you do it?!?
Or more specifically, if you'd prefer, what similarities in both do you see and how does one help the other?
Do you find farm work and programming compatible in terms of scheduling, or do you often have to choose one over the other?
When I was still living in Lincoln, Nebraska the laws for owning birds and chickens is pretty flexible and loose.
So it only took owning a house, building a coop, and filling it with birds. I might say urban farmer.
If someone wants to become a core contributor on a popular open source project, what would you recommend they do to get started on that path?
Maintaining a project In my opinion takes a lot of passion and love for it and it's users. So with that in mind, I'd say picking a project that you really really really enjoy.
I love webpack, the experience it gave me, and most days I can't stop obsessing about it π.
I guess to answer the second half is: show whatever existing team that you want to help and build and create the relationships with them over time. Gaining trust is part of how new responsibilities are handed over to potential maintainers.
Great advice. How do you keep up the motivation to keep contributing to the project?
What motivates me more then the project itself is the people behind it.
A great example. I've been working to empower and create communities outside of the US for webpack. Specifically, Africa. I had recruited some very passionate and excited individuals who wanted to lead the efforts to help grow and teach the communities there and represent their voices (in many places where I cannot). So we met and talked about a few things and some take away items. This morning, I got this image in my twitter DM's:
This left me with watery eyes and a sense of overflowing joy and pride just being able to know that there are people out there who are just as passionate and excited to help grow and build a more vibrant, diverse, and inclusive community, even globally. At the end of the day if I can change one persons life for the better, I've won. And open source and the incredible blessings it has provided me, have been the perfect vessel to continue that mission.
How did you communicate to your employer that you have outside interests/pursuits that have nothing to do with the company? Along the same lines, how do you manage your time between your day job, your OSS maintenance, and your other interests?
When I was at Mutual of Omaha, I was very up front with them about my passion for maintaining webpack, working on open source, and speaking at conferences.
Because of that honesty I think that they were more flexible and generous with the amount of time I could spend on OSS and speaking.
How do I manage my time? Honestly I don't whatsoever. There are some days I feel I'm constantly under water. (Which may sound scary, but in fact, it's an open source authors greatest asset for new contributors as long as you work hard no matter what you do). If people see me drowning, they always reach out their hand. Many of our most active contributors we're drawn to us this way.
What is your favorite chicken breed and why? :)
Ugh really hard question. Instead I'll just put a few of my favorites.
Ayam Cemani - Pure black breed because of genetic mutations
Black Copper Marans
Mille Fleur d'Uccle Bantam
Speckled Sussex
Ayam Cemani are pure beauty! They look like ninjas!
Ayam Cemani is definitely my favorite!
thank you.
Hey Sean, thanks for doing this AMA!
Can you expand on your love of πs and farming in general?
I feel very disconnected from agriculture and animals β sitting here behind a computer all day β so I'm curious about your experience given that you have a career in tech alongside this entire other perspective and life experience.
Well I think the connection really likes with being in tune with the source. The source of the food we eat. The source of the code we write. I also wanted to breed chickens. they are perfect specimines for genetics studies as their young hatch in 21 days. So it's awesome to see and study how chicken breeds have evolved over time.
As someone unfamiliar with Microsoft Edge, what sort of innovation is the browser bringing with it?
As for the agriculture and farming world, are there any innovations there that you are particularly interested in?
Right now, as we speak, we are working on Remote Desktop Protocols and Remote Debugging APIS. This really excited me because it opens up the opportunity for us to debug edge on every windows device. Xbox One X, Hollolense, and Everything!
So that testing story will be fun playing with the super secret hardware dev kits π.
If I had any it would be an easy way to harvest pumpkins. Like, common. We need that.
Sean!! Two Qs for ya:
OMG NO IVE NO TIME ππππππ
My approach is to foster an environment that enables the mentee to go from Deer in Headlights, to brave enough to try anything and ask any questions. Most of the time I've seen the problem with paired programming is that it puts developers in either role in a nervous state and doing anything I can to remove that is super effective in the learning experience.
This may have been me. But then, I see something and I'm like ILL DO THAT SOME TIME.
Do you use Edge as your default browser? Should it also be my default Browser?
I do use it as my default browser!!! What has blown me away is how fast improvements get made for things like performance, stability, etc. And so I've really enjoyed Edge since the last insiders build that shipped!
As for you, try everything once, and then use what compelles, and engages you the most.
We use webpack with watchers to continually rebuild css + Javascript. The project we're working on actually has multiple sites each with their own webpack config, so we actually have one webpack worker running per site - currently that means 6 different workers all watching the files.
This is putting quite a bit of load onto our dev machines - and we'll need to add more sites as time goes by. Do you have any advice on how we can keep the ability to have the js + css built continually but without adding too much load to our boxes?
It seems like a unique challenge. Whenever I try and figure out ways to optimise webpack I boil it down to "how can we do less work". Tools like DllPlugin are a great approach to this and may work for you. If not, put in a github issue! We want to help you innovate these kind of challenges.
whats it like going from a small town boy to living in the big city??
jk haha, thanks for being so welcoming to the webpack project!
how do you manage to be so available while still having a life let alone a growing family and full time job?
Well I grew up in Metro Detroit so "the big city" has always been in my veins. As seen above, I always am missing or behind on something. I really rely on giving more responsibility to those who want to step up and do more. It's been really fruitful.
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