Are Frameworks Still Worth the Tradeoffs? w/ Adam Rackis

This week, Chuck talks with Adam Rackis live from React Miami. Along with special guest-host Aaron Francis, they dig into React Server Components, the quirks of modern JavaScript frameworks, and why TanStack might be the future. Sipping an Appleton Estate Rum, they swap hot takes, get candid about developer trends, tech philosophies, and share some unexpected guilty pleasures.

In this episode:

• (00:00) - Intro
• (02:37) - Rum tasting and review: Appleton Estate
• (11:27) - Hot Take: Why Adam is cooling off on React Server Components
• (14:56) - What makes TanStack the most exciting tool in frontend?
• (16:52) - Are we still chasing SSR for the right reasons?
• (21:26) - Comparing frameworks: Laravel, Next.js, Redwood & more
• (24:34) - Should you pay for Auth or build it yourself?
• (25:13) - Why does the JS community resist “batteries-included” frameworks?
• (27:54) - A look at Adam’s React Miami talk: From PHP to RSC
• (30:45) - Hot Take: classes vs hooks
• (33:31) - Adam’s military background
• (35:08) - Milestones: Spotify, marriage, and careers
• (36:56) - Has Disney ruined Star Wars?
• (38:17) - Guilty pleasures: Jackass, Fast & Furious, and more
• (43:29) - If not tech, what would Adam do instead?
• (44:05) - Plugs

Links

• Appleton Estate Rum: https://appletonestate.com/
• React Miami: https://www.reactmiami.com/
• Spotify: https://spotify.com/
• Riot Games: https://www.riotgames.com/
• Ron Zacapa 23: https://www.zacaparum.com/
• Laravel: https://laravel.com/
• Postgres: https://www.postgresql.org/
• Ken Wheeler: https://x.com/ken_wheeler/
• Disney: https://www.disney.com/
• Vercel: https://vercel.com/
• Next.js: https://nextjs.org/
• Django: https://www.djangoproject.com/
• Rails: https://rubyonrails.org/
• TanStack: https://tanstack.com/
• Remix: https://remix.run/
• Svelte: https://svelte.dev/
• HTMX: https://htmx.org/
• Vue: https://vuejs.org/
• Dan Abramov: https://github.com/gaearon
• Inertia: https://inertiajs.com/
• Sam Selikoff: https://x.com/samselikoff
• Ryan Florence: https://x.com/ryanflorence
• Big Sky Dev Con: https://bigskydevcon.com/
• Drizzle: https://orm.drizzle.team/
• RedwoodJS: https://redwoodjs.com/
• Tom Preston-Werner: https://x.com/mojombo
• Clerk: https://clerk.com/
• Auth0: https://auth0.com/
• NextAuth.js: