PodRocket

The PodRocket panel is back for their February roundup! Paige, Paul, Jack and Noel dig into the biggest stories reshaping the web development landscape right now.

The panel kicks off with a deep dive into OpenClaw, it's transition to a foundation, and Peter Steinberger joining OpenAI. Is a foundation the right long-term home for fast-moving AI projects? And what does the continuing flow of talent into big AI labs mean for the open source ecosystem?

From there, the conversation shifts to the browser's changing role in the web, how the lines between native and web experiences continue to blur, and what that means for developers building for the future. The panel also tackles growing pressures on open source sustainability and the widening gap between developers who are deeply integrating AI agents into their workflows and everyone else who hasn't even heard of these tools yet.

Resources

TechCrunch: OpenClaw creator Peter Steinberger joins OpenAI: https://techcrunch.com/2026/02/15/openclaw-creator-peter-steinberger-joins-openai

Interop 2026 report and dashboard: https://web.dev/blog/interop-2026

Google Chrome announcement on Gemini auto-browsing: https://blog.google/products-and-platforms/products/chrome/gemini-3-auto-browse/

What to expect for open source in 2026, Github blog: https://github.blog/open-source/maintainers/what-to-expect-for-open-source-in-2026/?ref=thecodebrew.net

We want to hear from you!

How did you find us? Did you see us on Twitter? In a newsletter? Or maybe we were recommended by a friend?

Fill out our listener survey! https://t.co/oKVAEXipxu

Let us know by sending an email to our producer, Elizabeth, at [email protected], or tweet at us at PodRocketPod.

Check out our newsletter! https://blog.logrocket.com/the-replay-newsletter/

Follow us. Get free stickers.

Follow us on Apple Podcasts, fill out this form, and we’ll send you free PodRocket stickers!

What does LogRocket do?

LogRocket provides AI-first session replay and analytics that surfaces the UX and technical issues impacting user experiences. Start understanding where your users are struggling by trying it for free at LogRocket.com. Try LogRocket for free today.

Chapters

00:00 Intro and Panel Welcome

01:00 What Is OpenClaw

03:00 Moving to a Foundation and OpenAI Concerns

08:00 AI Security Risks and Malware Issues

13:00 AI Haves vs Have Nots

18:00 Evaluating Open Source AI Stability

26:00 Browser Interop 2026 and Compatibility Gaps

31:00 Designing for AI Agents First

37:00 AI Search vs Google

42:00 Gemini in Chrome and Browser Lock In

49:00 Hot Takes

55:00 AI Burnout and Developer Mental Health
Special Guest: Jack Herrington.

Gil Fink breaks down web rendering patterns including server side rendering, SSR, client side rendering, CSR, and static rendering, along with newer approaches like islands architecture, resumability, and hybrid rendering. The conversation explores tradeoffs around hydration, web performance, INP, CDN caching, and bundle size optimization, and compares frameworks like Next.js, TanStack Start, Astro, Qwik, and Remix to help developers make better decisions about React rendering strategies and overall application performance.

Links

Resources

We want to hear from you!

How did you find us? Did you see us on Twitter? In a newsletter? Or maybe we were recommended by a friend?

Fill out our listener survey! https://t.co/oKVAEXipxu

Let us know by sending an email to our producer, Elizabeth, at [email protected], or tweet at us at PodRocketPod.

Check out our newsletter! https://blog.logrocket.com/the-replay-newsletter/

Follow us. Get free stickers.

Follow us on Apple Podcasts, fill out this form, and we’ll send you free PodRocket stickers!

What does LogRocket do?

LogRocket provides AI-first session replay and analytics that surfaces the UX and technical issues impacting user experiences. Start understanding where your users are struggling by trying it for free at LogRocket.com. Try LogRocket for free today.

Chapters

00:00 Introduction and Gil’s Background

01:00 Why Rendering Patterns Keep Evolving

02:00 What Problem Rendering Patterns Solve

03:00 Frameworks and Rendering Decisions

04:00 Server Side Rendering Explained

05:30 Client Side Rendering and Hydration Costs

07:00 Performance Tradeoffs Between SSR and CSR

08:30 Static Rendering for Blogs and Marketing Sites

09:30 Hybrid Rendering and Progressive Enhancement

11:00 How to Choose the Right Rendering Strategy

12:00 Interactivity as the Key Decision Factor

14:00 Islands Architecture vs SSR

16:00 Common Mistakes with Rendering Choices

17:30 Real World Performance Tuning Examples

19:00 When You Don’t Actually Need Next.js

21:00 The Rise of Hybrid Rendering

22:30 Next.js vs TanStack Start

24:00 Final Rule of Thumb for Choosing Rendering Patterns

Russ Miles joins the show to unpack why developer platforms fail and how to rethink platform engineering through the lens of flow of value rather than factory-style developer productivity metaphors.

Russ explains why every organization already has an internal developer platform, and why treating it as platform as a product changes everything. The conversation explores cognitive load and cognitive burden, how to design around strong feedback loops, and why the OODA loop mindset helps teams make better decisions closer to development time.

They discuss the risks of overloading pipelines and CI/CD systems, the tension between shipping fast and handling security vulnerabilities in a regulated environment, and how to “shift left” without simply dumping responsibility onto developers. Drawing on lessons from Rod Johnson, the Spring Framework, TDD, and modern software engineering as described by Dave Farley, Russ reframes platforms as systems that support experimentation through the scientific method.

The episode also touches on AI assisted coding, developer focus, and how thoughtful developer experience and DX surveys can prevent burnout while improving value delivery.

Links

Website: https://www.russmiles.com

Substack: https://russmiles.substack.com

X: https://x.com/russmiles

Resources

Talk: https://www.russmiles.com/platform-engineering-failure-keynote

Substack article: https://russmiles.substack.com/p/developer-platform-devrel-listen

We want to hear from you!

How did you find us? Did you see us on Twitter? In a newsletter? Or maybe we were recommended by a friend?

Fill out our listener survey! https://t.co/oKVAEXipxu

Let us know by sending an email to our producer, Elizabeth, at [email protected], or tweet at us at PodRocketPod.

Check out our newsletter! https://blog.logrocket.com/the-replay-newsletter/

Follow us. Get free stickers.

Follow us on Apple Podcasts, fill out this form, and we’ll send you free PodRocket stickers!

What does LogRocket do?

LogRocket provides AI-first session replay and analytics that surfaces the UX and technical issues impacting user experiences. Start understanding where your users are struggling by trying it for free at LogRocket.com. Try LogRocket for free today.

Chapters

00:00 What Is a Developer Platform

03:00 You Already Have a Platform

08:00 Cognitive Load vs Cognitive Burden

12:00 Feedback Loops and TDD

18:00 Pipelines, Security and OODA Loops

26:00 The Factory Metaphor Problem

31:00 Modern Software Engineering and Value Delivery

40:00 Avoiding Burnout Through Better DX

46:00 The Software Enchiridion and Final Thoughts

Rich Harris joins the podcast to discuss his talk, fine-grained everything, exploring fine-grained reactivity, frontend performance, and the real costs of React Server Components and RSC payloads. Rich explains how Svelte and SvelteKit approach co-located data fetching, remote functions, and RPC to reduce server-side rendering costs, improve developer experience, and avoid unnecessary performance overhead on mobile networks. The conversation dives into async rendering, parallel async data fetching, type safety with schema validation, and why async-first frameworks may define the future of JavaScript frameworks and web performance.

Links

X: https://x.com/Rich_Harris

Github: https://github.com/rich-harris

Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/rich-harris.dev

Resources

Modern front-end frameworks like Svelte are astonishingly fast at rendering, thanks to techniques such as signal-based fine-grained reactivity. But there's more to performance than updating the screen at 60 frames per second. In this talk, we'll learn about new approaches that help you build fast, reliable, data-efficient apps.

Slides: https://fine-grained-everything.vercel.app/1-1

We want to hear from you!

How did you find us? Did you see us on Twitter? In a newsletter? Or maybe we were recommended by a friend?

Fill out our listener survey! https://t.co/oKVAEXipxu

Let us know by sending an email to our producer, Elizabeth, at [email protected], or tweet at us at PodRocketPod.

Check out our newsletter! https://blog.logrocket.com/the-replay-newsletter/

Follow us. Get free stickers.

Follow us on Apple Podcasts, fill out this form, and we’ll send you free PodRocket stickers!

What does LogRocket do?

LogRocket provides AI-first session replay and analytics that surfaces the UX and technical issues impacting user experiences. Start understanding where your users are struggling by trying it for free at LogRocket.com. Try LogRocket for free today.

Chapters
Special Guest: Rich Harris.

In this mini-panel, Jack, Paige, Paul, and Noel discuss how AI reshaping developer tooling is impacting open source monetization, including the recent Tailwind layoffs and the collapse of Tailwind documentation traffic caused by AI. The conversation expands into broader developer tooling business models and reacts to claims like Ryan Dahl stating that the era of humans writing code is over.

They also cover the Astro Cloudflare acquisition, what it means for the Cloudflare developer platform, and how this shapes the frontend frameworks future. Hot takes include light mode vs dark mode SaaS, shifting developer aesthetics, and why AI productivity for developers may now come down to workflow design rather than raw coding skill.

Resources

Tailwind Layoffs and AI

Tailwind layoffs: https://www.businessinsider.com/tailwind-engineer-layoffs-ai-github-2026-1#:~:text=Tailwind%20laid%20off%2075%25%20of,on%20our%20engineering%20team%20lost

Tailwind layoffs: https://github.com/tailwindlabs/tailwindcss.com/pull/2388#issuecomment-3717222957

Ryan Dahl Tweet: https://x.com/rough__sea/status/2013280952370573666

Apple and Google joint statement: https://x.com/NewsFromGoogle/status/2010760810751017017

Astro joins Cloudflare

Astro joins Cloudflare: https://blog.cloudflare.com/astro-joins-cloudflare

We want to hear from you!

How did you find us? Did you see us on Twitter? In a newsletter? Or maybe we were recommended by a friend?

Fill out our listener survey! https://t.co/oKVAEXipxu

Let us know by sending an email to our producer, Elizabeth, at [email protected], or tweet at us at PodRocketPod.

Check out our newsletter! https://blog.logrocket.com/the-replay-newsletter/

Follow us. Get free stickers.

Follow us on Apple Podcasts, fill out this form, and we’ll send you free PodRocket stickers!

What does LogRocket do?

LogRocket provides AI-first session replay and analytics that surfaces the UX and technical issues impacting user experiences. Start understanding where your users are struggling by trying it for free at LogRocket.com. Try LogRocket for free today.

Chapters
Special Guest: Jack Herrington.