Episode 56: Dominic Tarr on Coding What You Want, Living On A Boat, and the Early Days of Node.js

Panelists Allen "Gunner" Gunn | Eric Berry | Justin Dorfman | Richard Littauer Guest Dominic Tarr Show Notes Hello and welcome to Sustain! Our special guest today is Dominic Tarr, an open source sailor hacker person, calling from his boat in New Zealand. He’s been instrumental in the early JavaScript scene. Dominic tells us how he got into open source, coding, and how he got involved in JavaScript and Event Stream. We will also learn what Dominic is doing now and how does he envision open source going forward. How does Dominic fund his life living on a boat? Download this episode now to find out! [00:01:35] Dominic tells us how he got into open source, how he got into coding, how he ended up where he is today, and how he got involved in JavaScript. [00:06:45] Richard informs us that Dominic was in a group of influential people in Node JS who made a bunch of modules, one of them being Event Stream, which is Dominic’s. He also tells how many modules he’s written for NPM. Dominic also talks about how he initially dealt with the “fixing the bug” issues, since he was making these modules in his spare time and coding for fun. [00:10:00] Justin wants to know how Dominic got 700 modules and how did he manage it for as long as he did. [00:12:02] Richard wonders what Dominic is doing now and how does he envision open source or JavaScript going forward if it’s not fun to work on. [00:14:07] Eric wants to know if Dominic has any reflections or thoughts around the shift in the overall view of NPM over the years. [00:20:19] Richard wonders how Dominic’s funds his life because he lives on a boat. [00:24:55] Where can you find Dominic on the internet? Find out here. Spotlight [00:25:16] Eric’s spotlight is called Mind Stream. [00:25:47] Justin’s spotlight is EthGasStatio.info. [00:26:15] Gunner’s spotlight is signal desktop. [00:26:48] Richard’s spotlights are Scuttlebutt and Patchwork. [00:27:11] Dominic’s spotlight is the Project Gemini. Quotes [00:11:13] “We had this one SquatConf where we just had our own