Anthony Campolo discusses his work as a developer advocate for the RedwoodJS framework and StepZen, emphasizing his cross-community learning approach.
Episode Description
Anthony Campolo shares insights on RedwoodJS, StepZen, and his holistic approach to exploring frameworks and tools across various communities.
Episode Summary
This conversation highlights Anthony’s multifaceted role as a developer advocate, RedwoodJS core team member, and enthusiastic tech community participant. He explains how exposure to multiple frameworks, from Redwood and Blitz to Remix and SvelteKit, fosters a deeper understanding of universal concepts in modern web development. Anthony touches on Redwood’s evolving deployment story, emphasizing how serverless technologies and new tooling continue to shape the framework’s “universal deployment machine” goal. He also describes his work at StepZen, a managed GraphQL gateway, and how it complements Redwood by simplifying data integration from various APIs and databases. Along the way, Anthony draws parallels with his background in music—explaining how a willingness to explore diverse influences leads to greater creativity and versatility. By examining tools, documentation, and real-world use cases, he illustrates a grounded yet expansive perspective on staying current without being overwhelmed. His cross-community insights provide a roadmap for anyone seeking to balance depth with breadth in their software projects.
Chapters
00:00 - Introduction and Redwood Overview
In this opening segment, the hosts welcome Anthony Campolo and revisit his growing list of roles and affiliations. Anthony explains his background as a RedwoodJS core team member and developer advocate, elaborating on how his passion for open-source communities guided his choice of projects. By tracing the roots of his involvement with Redwood, he illustrates how the framework’s focus on GraphQL and serverless architecture initially drew him in. Listeners also learn that Anthony’s approach to learning new tools involves joining community forums and Discord servers, where he picks up knowledge through casual interactions.
He goes on to describe Redwood’s early ambitions and how the team rallied around providing a strong developer experience from day one. While Redwood remains a work in progress, Anthony highlights its progress toward a stable 1.0 release. Through detailed anecdotes, he underscores Redwood’s supportive community culture, which encourages newcomers to experiment, give feedback, and contribute. This mindset sets the stage for the broader conversation on bridging different tools and ecosystems.
05:00 - Evaluating Tools and Developer Advocacy
Here, Anthony reflects on his role as a developer advocate, demystifying the term and clarifying how it involves much more than mere marketing. He stresses that effective dev advocacy centers on educating users, fostering community engagement, and learning from real-world product feedback. His personal method involves scanning GitHub stars, documentation clarity, and community attitude to decide which technologies merit deeper exploration.
In describing the constant churn of the JavaScript ecosystem, Anthony explains how he filters through the noise by focusing on simple proof-of-concept projects. He discusses the joy of creating “Hello World” tutorials for various tools, from React meta frameworks like Next and Gatsby to bundlers such as ESBuild and Vite. This approach not only helps him document his findings but also reveals each tool’s nuances, enabling him to guide others more effectively.
10:00 - Redwood’s Deployment Journey
Anthony dives into Redwood’s evolving deployment story, starting with its initial focus on Netlify and AWS Lambda. He recalls the framework’s original design around serverless functions, noting how that approach powered its early successes. Yet, as more users requested diverse hosting options, Redwood had to stretch beyond a single vendor or methodology, leading to experimentation with AWS directly and even traditional servers via PM2.
The conversation highlights the complexities involved in bundling both the front end and backend—plus a database—within a seamless deployment flow. Anthony points out that Redwood’s emphasis on convention and portability allows it to handle an array of providers, from Netlify to AWS and more. By dissecting each evolutionary phase, he illustrates how the Redwood team steadily works toward a universal deployment model that addresses user demands without sacrificing simplicity.
15:00 - Envisioning a Fully Integrated App
This segment centers on Redwood’s ambition to integrate database provisioning into its universal deployment approach. Anthony explains how, until recently, developers had to manage databases independently, connecting them via environment variables. He describes how Redwood’s integration with Render, a service combining Heroku-like server hosting with Netlify-esque automation, enables a more cohesive experience.
Anthony lays out why this “all-in-one” vision is especially valuable for developers who want to avoid wrangling separate services. By simplifying the connection between the frontend, backend, and database, Redwood hopes to replicate the ease of a standard Jamstack workflow but with the power of a full database. This shift epitomizes Redwood’s broader philosophy: give developers strong conventions that streamline the path from code to a fully operational environment.
20:00 - Revisiting Familiar Frameworks and Concepts
Switching gears, Anthony compares the Redwood approach to other rising frameworks like Remix. He admires Remix for its reliance on web standards and the simplicity of conventional HTML forms, but notes that Redwood’s approach to forms leans on React Hook Form. These small design differences, he suggests, reveal each tool’s core philosophy—Remix prizes lean, platform-native strategies, while Redwood layers on abstractions that fit comfortably into a JavaScript-heavy workflow.
He then briefly touches on the challenge of deciding which new technologies to invest in. Just as Redwood moves toward bridging gaps between providers, frameworks like Remix prioritize tight integration with the web platform. Anthony reiterates that the “meta framework” phenomenon reflects the community’s drive to make high-level development tasks both accessible and flexible, leading to robust debates on best practices.
25:00 - Musical Influences on Tech Perspectives
In a personal detour, Anthony recounts how his background as a musician informs his approach to software. Just as eclectic listening broadens one’s creative toolkit, exploring many programming languages and frameworks expands a developer’s perspective. He likens each ecosystem—be it Phoenix, Rails, or Redwood—to a distinct musical genre, each offering its own strengths and stylings.
The discussion highlights how bridging these communities spurs cross-pollination, enabling someone well-versed in React to bring fresh ideas to a SvelteKit project, for example. Anthony emphasizes that being open-minded to new conventions or patterns enriches one’s overall skill set. In his view, this open exchange promotes innovation, where lessons from older or more niche ecosystems resurface in next-generation tools.
30:00 - SvelteKit and the Future of Meta Frameworks
Anthony explores his fascination with SvelteKit, recalling how he followed it from its initial announcement through rapid alpha releases. He praises its serverless-first mentality, explaining that SvelteKit introduced him to modern build tools like Snowpack and Vite in a practical context. For him, witnessing SvelteKit switch bundlers midway underscored how decisions about build pipelines can reshape a framework’s development.
He parallels SvelteKit’s philosophy with Redwood’s, noting both are “opinionated yet flexible.” By observing both communities, Anthony notices convergent trends such as smaller bundles, quicker hot-reload times, and more modular architectures. These overlapping goals highlight how meta frameworks are shaping the future of web development, unifying previously scattered concepts into cohesive, developer-friendly experiences.
35:00 - Bridging Services with GraphQL Gateways
Shifting the focus to StepZen, Anthony describes his role in educating developers about managed GraphQL gateways. He explains that Redwood already gives a comprehensive experience for apps reliant on a single database and set of APIs, but StepZen enters the picture when multiple data sources—like Shopify, Airtable, or other SaaS APIs—need consolidating under one GraphQL endpoint.
He details how StepZen uses GraphQL directives to abstract away complexities, letting Redwood make a single query to unify disparate data. By handling authentication and API integrations behind the scenes, StepZen simplifies Redwood’s data fetching and keeps API keys secure. Anthony sees this coupling as an ideal solution for projects that want Redwood’s ease while pulling data from numerous external services.
40:00 - Crafting an All-Inclusive Development Flow
Here, Anthony elaborates on how Redwood’s architecture inherently supports secure data exchanges. Its separation into “web” and “api” sides allows for serverless function handlers that conceal sensitive credentials. With StepZen layered in, Redwood apps can treat multiple external services as a single, cohesive data source—a major selling point for teams juggling many integrations.
He notes that Redwood encourages best practices around environment variables, secrets management, and continuous deployment. By turning these often complicated tasks into conventional patterns, Redwood significantly lowers the barrier to building complex, data-rich applications. Anthony stresses that this synergy between Redwood and StepZen is a practical illustration of how well-planned abstractions reduce friction for working developers.
45:00 - GraphQL Helix, Envelope, and a Peek Ahead
In the final stretch, Anthony teases Redwood’s plans to replace Apollo Server with a next-generation GraphQL server stack built on GraphQL Helix and Envelope. These tools, developed by members of The Guild, aim to resolve longstanding issues around GraphQL deployment, especially on platforms like Azure. By decoupling Redwood from Apollo Server’s lambda-specific design, Redwood gains broader portability and potential performance benefits.
Anthony views this transition as emblematic of Redwood’s constant evolution, demonstrating the team’s willingness to adopt improved tooling. He anticipates the shift will yield a more adaptable architecture and hopes it will further Redwood’s reach across diverse cloud platforms. While the underlying technical challenges are deep, this step reflects Redwood’s core mission: offer a powerful, flexible path to building full-stack, serverless-ready applications.
50:00 - Concluding Thoughts and Future Directions
As the discussion winds down, Anthony underscores the synergy between Redwood’s broadening deployment story and his role advocating for StepZen. He encourages developers to experiment with Redwood’s simple scaffolding commands, whether they choose Netlify, Render, Azure, or a more traditional server environment. By breaking down the complicated aspects of hosting and data management into straightforward patterns, Redwood aims to bring full-stack development to a wider audience.
Anthony also touches on his ongoing blog writing and community involvement, which keep him at the forefront of new frameworks. He hopes sharing these lessons will encourage a culture of curiosity, where teams comfortably explore unfamiliar tools without feeling overwhelmed. The episode closes with the hosts thanking Anthony for his enthusiasm and wealth of knowledge, hinting at future appearances to discuss Redwood’s continuing progress.