Rust Is Overrated w/ Naman Goel

This week, Robbie and Adam talk with Naman Goel about the origins and evolution of StyleX, how it integrates with React and other frameworks, and the pros and cons of different programming languages like Rust, TypeScript, and Swift. They dive into the challenges of building performant, type-safe styling systems, the surprising complexity of theme APIs, designing for developer experience, and more. In this episode: (00:00) - Intro (02:26) - Whiskey rating & review: Glenfiddich 12 Year Old single malt Scotch (09:13) - South Park, spy thrillers & sleeper hits you missed (11:20) - Flow vs TypeScript (14:59) - How CSS shaped Naman’s perspective on type systems (18:45) - How StyleX works—and why it’s different from Tailwind (21:02) - Tailwind Merge vs StyleX props: performance smackdown (22:16) - Real-world use case: when and why you’d want to merge styles (25:45) - Inside the making of StyleX and its powerful theming system (32:56) - Robbie and Adam wrangle Vue transitions in Astro (36:09) - GIF or JIF? SPA or “spa”? (40:36) - Building StarPod.dev: streaming audio across pages (42:30) - Can you reduce client-side router noise? (46:03) - Should you spec your idea or just blog it? (47:18) - Naman’s journey into writing web specs (48:44) - What is link delegation? (52:39) - Hot Take: Is Rust overrated? (01:02:17) - The dream language Naman wishes someone would build (01:04:57) - Are AI-generated programming languages just around the corner? (01:05:53) - A spicy take on CSS syntax and readability (01:06:27) - Is CSS finally catching up to StyleX? (01:07:43) - Plugs & where to follow Naman Links Glenfiddich 12 Year Old single malt Scotch: https://shop.us.glenfiddich.com/products/glenfiddich-12-year-old South Park: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Park Dungeons & Dragons: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dungeons_&_Dragons Alien Earth: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alien:_Earth Ozark: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ozark_(TV_series) Jason Bateman: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jason_Bateman Black Rabbit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Rabbit Slow Horses: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slow_Horses Slow Horses: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slow_Horses Typescript: https://www.typescriptlang.org/ StyleX: https://stylexjs.com/ React: https://react.dev/ Tailwind CSS: https://tailwindcss.com/ SolidJS: https://www.solidjs.com/ Svelte: https://svelte.dev/ Vue: https://vuejs.org/ Astro: https://astro.build/ QuickJS: https://github.com/quickjs-ng/quickjs Ember: https://emberjs.com/ Angular: https://angular.dev/ Vanilla Extract: https://vanilla-extract.style/ Chrome: https://www.google.com/chrome/ PHP: https://www.php.net/ Figma: https://www.figma.com/ Theme UI: https://theme-ui.com/ Stitches: https://stitches.dev/ Starpod.dev: https://starpod.dev/ Shopify: https://www.shopify.com/ Rails: https://rubyonrails.org/ Livewire: https://laravel-livewire.com/ Jason Miller - Application Holotypes: A Guide to Architecture Decisions: https://jasonformat.com/application-holotypes/ morphdom: https://github.com/patrick-steele-idem/morphdom HTMX: https://htmx.org/ React Miami: https://www.reactmiami.com/ CSS-Tricks: https://css-tricks.com/ Swift: https://www.swift.org/ Python: https://www.python.org/ C++: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/cpp Go: https://go.dev/ esbuild: https://esbuild.github.io/ OCaml: https://ocaml.org/ Prettier: https://prettier.io/ Haskell: https://www.haskell.org/ Elm: https://elm-lang.org/ CoffeeScript: http://coffeescript.org/ LightningScript: https://lightningscript.dev/ Anthropic: https://www.anthropic.com/ Chris Coyier: https://x.com/chriscoyier React Summit: https://reactsummit.com/ Solenoid: https://github.com/nmn/solenoid Connect with Naman Website: https://nmn.sh/ X / Twitter: https://x.com/naman34 Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/nmn.bsky.social Connect with the hosts Robbie Wagner: https://x.com/RobbieTheWagner Chuck Carpenter: https://x.com/CharlesWthe3rd Adam Argyle: https://x.com/argyleink Subscribe and stay in touch Website: https://whiskey.fm Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/whiskey-web-and-whatnot/id1552776603 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/19jiuHAqzeKnkleQUpZxDf Overcast: https://overcast.fm/itunes1552776603 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@WhiskeyWebAndWhatnot Whiskey Web and Whatnot MerchEnjoying the podcast and want us to make more? Help support us by picking up some of our fresh merch at https://whiskey.fund.