I'm good friends with Guillermo, who is one of the Zeit team. I love what they're doing with Next.js, and I know they're solving an unsolved problem! (in fact, we're using Next in one of my latest projects, https://daybook.co)

The difference between react-boilerplate and Next.js is that react-boilerplate has always been focussed on apps. On the spectrum between websites and webapps Next sits in the middle, it allows you to easily build a hybrid, whereas react-boilerplate tries to be the best starting point for webapps. (which is also why the SSR integreation has been such a challenge)

I can't tell you yet when the react-boilerplate SSR PR will be merged, as it'll need serious real world usage before we can consider shipping it to every user. Please use it and let us know how it goes!

I tried studying twice, and gave up both times because there was almost 0 overlap with my interests. (see http://mxstbr.blog/2016/12/a-dream-come-true/) I'd still encourage everybody to try it, as you'll never get an easier way into a lot of knowledge about the topic. (especially if you come from a HTL, since you'll already have a bit of basic knowledge and interest in that direction)

I don't think not having a degree has really negatively impacted me, apart from the fact that I'll never be able to work in the US. (which I don't really want to with the new president, anyway) I'm learning the things I missed by not going to university as I go along and need them (e.g. algorithms and data structures), and I don't think I'll ever stop doing that!

I don't know of any particularly good reason to choose one over the other, I mainly try to be consistent within the project I'm working on. This means I go either all function expression or all function declaration for the particular project, and try to not switch it up for half the components!

Sometimes within the next few weeks. We're really close, and it's a really exciting release with lots of changes you'll love. I can't wait to show it to everybody!

The React community is a huge part of what makes it awesome. Everybody is experimenting and trying out new things, with new ideas making the rounds every single day.

No matter what drawback or issue you find, somebody's already found it and is working on a solution, guaranteed. It might not be the right solution for your use case, but you can always just experiment on your own.

It's super exciting to be a part of this amazing group of people!

Quite well, I've done a handful of them by now! It's a great way for me to earn some money on the side while helping companies with my experience from the past years. It's also a great way for me to get new ideas and inspiration of things we could do in react-boilerplate!

Side note: that sheer volume of high quality work is a total illusion. I'm a horrible procrastinator, in 2016 I spent over 1100 hours on Twitter, that's almost 30 full work weeks! (tracked with RescueTime)

The reason you might think I have a lot of high quality work is due to the fact that it's open source. Imagine if all of the code you wrote was open source. On top of that a lot of people contribute to open source projects I'm involved in, so most of the code you see isn't technically "mine".

To answer your question, I wish I had any reasonable routine. I use a bullet journal (yep, real paper) to try to stay organised and also try not to look on my phone first thing in the morning (see http://mxstbr.blog/2016/12/productivity-trick/), but that's not as easy as it sounds 😅

I'm still working on that part, hopefully by the next AMA I'll have a better answer!

lol.. makes sense.. Really appreciate the honestly here. Good perspective.

Hah, this is a lovely question!

We've been using Keystone for our production applications at Thinkmill for over 2 years now, serving millions, if not billions by now, of users. So, it's totally secure and absolutely ready for production. Actually, not only ready for production, it's battle tested with huge, real world apps.

The version number doesn't reflect that, so the next major release (which is currently in beta and already used in production by us) is going to be v4.0.0! (see this announcement blog post: https://github.com/keystonejs/keystone/issues/3415)

I've talked at length about the architecture part during this talk: https://vimeo.com/168648012

In terms of breaking things down into components, it's super valuable to go as small as you can. Build tiny, tiny lego blocks that are super simple, and then almost all you have to do to build a complex application is compose these tiny lego blocks together.

Because you understand the tiny pieces, you also easily grasp the whole app without big trouble. It's amazing!

Why the hell didn't you buy a ticket? 😁 (this is what he's talking about, the most epic conference ever: twitter.com/mxstbr/status/823938714346934277)

Very dope.

You'll have to ask Jed Watson (one of the owners of Thinkmill) for a specific answer to that! I can tell you what it looks like from my side:

Thinkmill, as a company, is much faster at producing value for clients due to open source. We use lots of OSS (React, Node, MongoDB,..) and without that we couldn't do what we do. Investing in a developer to work full time on open source is a way of giving back to something we've gotten a lot out of. (next to every employee working ~25% of their time on open source)

Also, I build tools that help Thinkmill do their job faster and easier. styled-components is a great example that'll help a lot when creating cross-platform applications, and allowing Keystone users (which includes our clients) to theme their applications!

Tell them Max Stoiber is speaking 😉

Just kidding of course. The best way to convince your company to send you to a conference is to be accepted to speak, that's free PR for them! (and a great way to hire new developers)

Submit CFPs to all the conferences you think are awesome, even (or especially) if you don't think you have anything to say, and believe me, many will accept you. See http://weareallaweso.me for some tips about CFPs and public speaking, and mxstbr.blog/2016/12/a-dream-come-true if you don't believe that I know what I'm talking about.