hi! I'm going to interpret "famous" as "popular and widely used", so please correct me if I'm misinterpreting from what I can tell, there are a few key things that need to be present for a tool to become widely used: it needs to be solid. it doesn't need to be perfect, but it needs to work well enough that people don't get stuck the docs need to be complete and clear. especially the happy path / getting started sections, as well as the API reference it needs to have exposure to the community. there are SO MANY wonderful projects that we'll never hear about because the developers don't tell anyone it exists. marketing is a key part of building a successful tool: you have to let people know that it exists, what problem it solves, how it helps them, how they can get started, etc. it needs sustained sharing and educational efforts. this is where almost everyone falls down (myself included). for someone to try a new tool, they need to hear about it at least 7 times, and often twice that. we have to shout about the thing we're building CONSTANTLY for MONTHS if we want people to know that it exists and try it. this can be extremely challenging, and that's why it rarely happens. but if you look at the tools we all know about and use, they usually have a small handful of extremely active champions telling everyone about it all the time

because of the intense meeting schedule that comes with my job, I have to optimize for mostly improvisational content. Learn With Jason is entirely improv: aside from the initial booking of the episode, I don't do any prep ahead of time. the premise of the show is both an intentional teaching device (I want to ask beginner questions, so I want to make sure I don't have too much context ahead of time) and a survival technique (there's no way I could sustain the show if there were hours of prep required for each episode) for something like a blog post, I usually put in 4-ish hours. for a workshop, it's generally days or weeks of prep I really enjoy conversational formats, so podcasts are usually my preferred medium if I'm not streaming. I also really enjoy speaking at conferences in person (once it's safe again). writing is something I love to do, but struggle with since my time is so fragmented most days

whatever way makes you most likely to write! the best blog is the one that gets updated, so my recommendation is to start with something like Hashnode or Dev.to to develop the habit of publishing, and then build a custom blog once you've created enough of a content habit to justify the effort building a custom blog is very tempting, but I've often found that trying to optimize things is a very productive-feeling form of procrastination so don't overthink it! just publish!

hi! serverless functions are one of my favorite tools! I use them for anything that requires a bit of server-like processing or secure calls a few examples: to access an API that requires a token, I use a serverless function and add the token as an environment variable, which lets me securely get the data to provide a simple API, such as the Learn With Jason schedule API to handle form submissions to respond to events from other services (for example, sending a receipt whenever someone buys something from my store) the easiest way I know of to implement serverless functions is to create a new Netlify project and add a file at netlify/functions/hello-world.ts with the following code: export const handler = async function ( ) => { return { statusCode: 200 , body: 'Hello world!' , }; }; to test locally, install the Netlify CLI: npm install -g netlify-cli then start the site: ntl dev you'll be able to call your function at http://localhost:8888/.netlify/functions/hello-world I have a post on getting started with serverless functions , a video tutorial for getting started with serverless functions , or if you want a full-blown course I have a Frontend Masters course on serverless functions

hi! this is a very "it depends" question I've found that for sites where I'm the only one working on the content, or where everyone working on the content is a developer that prefers working in Markdown, a git-based flow of storing Markdown and building the site from there tends to work well however, if anyone working with the site isn't a developer, I prefer a headless CMS. I like Sanity and use it for several projects. I've also been impressed with Strapi, GraphCMS, and Contentful as CMS options if the folks editing the site are not super comfortable with the web, I'm also a fan of using WordPress as a headless CMS. it's one of the better editing experiences, and when you use the API instead of its page builder it's a wonderful tool

in my experience, it's very hard to start by getting people to come to you. at first, you need to go where people are. if you're someone people enjoy being around (and, in the case of trying to build out a community, someone they feel they can trust for guidance) you'll start to build a small following in each place you spend time however, if the goal is ego-driven (e.g. "I want people to validate me by adoring me") communities don't tend to thrive my approach has always been to build communities around a goal. for example, I wanted to experiment with all the tech I saw coming out, and Learn With Jason was a way to do that. people who shared that goal and interest showed up, and it's grown into a great community — but people aren't there because of me specifically put another way: I don't want fans ; I want friends I think people can sense that and it helps with building out a community as far as setting up Discord specifically, I haven't done that. someone like Cassidy Williams would know far more about that

I've loved working at Netlify. it's really nice to be at a company that's guiding metric is "build a better web" — it means I get to learn so many things and focus on making the web development community better as my job as far as I can tell, the journey to VP will be different for everyone, but there are a few big things that contributed to me getting here (I think): learning how to step back from a problem and see how it affects an entire company developing an understanding of how different departments function and what their desired outcomes are, then using that knowledge to frame proposals from that point of view being willing to own an outcome. I regularly stake my job on decisions, and I've been willing to do that for a while now. willingness to take full responsibility for projects that multiple people work on is rare because it can be scary to know that you'll be responsible for someone else's work and decisions — but without someone owning it, we get decision paralysis and bureaucratic gridlock taking most of my victories in the form of seeing other people advance . I try my best to give credit away and advocate for the advancement of my team (as well as people who don't work at Netlify but that I see doing amazing work) — my role is to be a springboard for others, not to hoard credit I could probably go on about this for a long time, but to be completely honest I think my journey was more timing than preparation. I was at the right place in my career at the time the role opened, and Sarah Drasner was there to advocate for me

you can never have too many boops 😅 I'm really excited about tools like Astro and Slinkity that are laying solid defaults for shipping less bloat to the browser. the DX of building with your framework of choice (e.g. React, Vue, Svelte) but having that compiled down to standard HTML except where it actually needs to be interactive is something that I've wanted to see for a long time, and I'm thrilled that the community is showing up to support better defaults than some of the old guard of "ship everything as JS" frameworks like Next.js and Gatsby — there's a time and place to go all-in on JS, but most web apps simply don't need it

hi! my biggest advice is to find an area of tech that brings you joy and that keeps you interested. the best dev advocates are the ones who are clearly having fun — there's a magnetism there that makes me want to hang out with them and learn from them for resources: Sarah Drasner has great posts on this. her ideas around what Developer Experience means laid a strong foundation for how I view the industry https://www.netlify.com/blog/2021/01/06/developer-experience-at-netlify Kurt Kemple has written up a lot of thoughts in this space as well, including this one: https://theworst.dev/developer-experience good luck!

keep showing up. people notice when you only show up to sell something or to ask for something, so it's important to actually engage with the community in ways that are helpful and casual more often than you try to extract value from it communities need to be additive, not transactional!