Frontend Coffee Break - Podcast
Take a break, grab a cup of coffee and join us to discuss what's new in frontend development and, why not, outside of it? Jesus 'Chucho' Castañeda and Ricard Torres are both Principal Frontend Software Engineer at Cognizant Netcentric. They bring your most needed monthly break. Tune in!
Ep. #56: The state of coding with AI
We chat about the state of coding with AI; context engineering, tools tips and recommendations on what to be in the lookout for. How to leverage AI, how to let it support you, while learning... Adapt to the new ways of working and share what works for you.
Ep. #55: CSS is getting a boost in 2026
We discuss a bunch of new CSS features you should know in 2026. Not all of them are baseline available but we should be ready for when they are. Here are the new things we talk about:
corner-shape: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/Reference/Properties/corner-shapeCustom Select: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Learn_web_development/Extensions/Forms/Customizable_selectScroll State: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/Guides/Conditional_rules/Container_scroll-state_queriesText Box: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/Reference/Properties/text-boxSibling Index: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS...Ep. #54: From "Works on Chrome" to "Works on Web"
We discuss Interop 2025 and the upcoming 2026 edition that has opened the call to action for feature suggestions. Chucho and Ricard explain you how they used to hack browsers to get that cross-browser support with JavaScript polyfills and CSS conditional rules. These days are gone, we look forward to more browser interoperability. We have a small wishlist for 2026, what's yours?
https://wpt.fyi/interop-2025
Follow us:
- Chucho Castañeda https://x.com/honupo
- Ricard Torres https://ricard.social/@dev
Ep. #53: The raise of the amateur website and AI
We discuss how inexperienced developers are leveling up, how no-code solutions are taking over, and do you even need to know how to code anymore? Is vibe coding the new go-to for everything or just certain use cases?
Follow us:
- Chucho Castañeda https://x.com/honupo
- Ricard Torres https://ricard.social/@dev
Ep. #52: The Importance of Taking Time Off
Long vacations, short vacations? How to take time off, how to plan your vacations? How do you unplug from coding in your time off? Or do you keep coding on personal projects while you're off work?
Follow us:
- Chucho Castañeda https://x.com/honupo
- Ricard Torres https://ricard.social/@dev
Ep. #51: The State of the Framework in 2025
The State of JS survey is open. We discuss React, Svelte, Vue, vanilla JS... We have opinions about it and we want to hear yours too.
Follow us:
- Chucho Castañeda https://x.com/honupo
- Ricard Torres https://ricard.social/@dev
Ep. #50: How to deal with impossible deadlines
We've all been there, you're thrown into a very tight project schedule that might be impossible to deliver. What can we do in these situations?
Follow us:
- Chucho Castañeda https://x.com/honupo
- Ricard Torres https://ricard.social/@dev
Ep. #49: FE is complex, can we make it simpler?
Frontend has gone from FTP to the frameworks war, to complicated pipelines with hundreds of node modules. Why did we do this? Is it getting better? Should we do something about it?
Follow us:
- Chucho Castañeda https://x.com/honupo
- Ricard Torres https://ricard.social/@dev
Ep. #48: FE Journey Through the Remote Work Revolution
Chucho and Ricard discuss how remote work has changed, where are they more productive now and invite you to share your take. What's your best work setup?
Follow us:
- Chucho Castañeda https://x.com/honupo
- Ricard Torres https://ricard.social/@dev
Ep. #47: What motivates FE Developers?
We talk what lights a fire under us, what motivates us to continue working FE. Is it the stack? A new shiny framework? UI? UX? Have a listen and let us know what motivates you to code.
Follow us:
- Chucho Castañeda https://x.com/honupo
- Ricard Torres https://ricard.social/@dev
Ep. #46: Are Frontend Developers going away?
We discuss how AI is making FE developers obsolete (maybe!). Are we going to disappear? What can we do to ensure we continue to exist? How to embrace AI to be more productive?
Follow us:
- Chucho Castañeda https://x.com/honupo
- Ricard Torres https://ricard.social/@dev
Ep. #45: Storybook, Web Components and Figma Tokens
This is an angular-free podcast but we do talk web components. Chucho and Ricard discuss Storybook, what to consider when thinking about using it. Are Figma tokens the future? Sources of truth are nice but are they worth it?
What's your experience with these tools?
Follow us:
- Chucho Castañeda https://x.com/honupo
- Ricard Torres https://ricard.social/@dev
Ep. #44: Technical Interviews in the age of AI
We discuss how AI has changed the way we do interviews. Remote only, plus access to AI chats has forced the industry to work differently. How should we conduct interviews? What should we ask? What should we look for in candidates?
Follow us:
- Chucho Castañeda https://x.com/honupo
- Ricard Torres https://ricard.social/@dev
Ep. #43: Mobile First in 2025: Why Are We Still Getting It Wrong?
Ricard today complains about sites not being mobile-first and Chucho drops a history lesson. What is mobile first? Why are we still talking about this? How can we deliver better experiences?
Follow us:
- Chucho Castañeda https://x.com/honupo
- Ricard Torres https://ricard.social/@dev
Ep. #42: Accessibility in 2025, tips to be ready
We discuss the European Accessibility Act (EAA) that might affect your website, how to check, and deal with common issues. How hard is it to follow the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 Level AA? We give you an insight and share our experience.
What's your experience with accessibility?
Follow us:
- Chucho Castañeda https://x.com/honupo
- Ricard Torres https://ricard.social/@dev
Ep. #41: How we manage stress in the FE world
We chat about things that can be stressful as a FE developer, we suggest things that work for us on how to deal and mitigate it (for you and you team).
Share your tips and tricks with us!
Follow us:
- Chucho Castañeda https://x.com/honupo
- Ricard Torres https://ricard.social/@dev
Ep. #40: CSS in 2024 was fun
We share what we loved most about the 2024 CSS Wrapped as well as other CSS changes we've witnessed over the years that changed our way of working (yes, we will talk about border-radius).
What where CSS changes that blew your mind?
https://chrome.dev/css-wrapped-2024/
Follow us:
- Chucho Castañeda https://x.com/honupo
- Ricard Torres https://ricard.social/@dev
Ep. #39: Best practices, standards and guidelines
We discuss how we work with guidelines, standards and best practices at Cognizant Netcentric. Including our very own ESLint and Stylelint open source configurations.
Do you follow any guidelines when coding FE?
Follow us:
- Chucho Castañeda https://x.com/honupo
- Ricard Torres https://ricard.social/@dev
Ep. #38: Morals, ethics and being eco-friendly as a FE Developer
We discuss the moral of working for certain industries, how can we be more green (spoiler: it's web performance) as developers, as well as open source.
Follow us:
- Chucho Castañeda https://twitter.com/honupo
- Ricard Torres https://ricard.social/@dev
Ep. #37: Lessons learned as FE Developers
Chucho and Ricard have been coding for more than 18 years. These old time developers will share some of their hard learned lessons on being a developer and/or a FE Lead.
Share your sips of wisdom with us.
Follow us:
- Chucho Castañeda https://twitter.com/honupo
- Ricard Torres https://ricard.social/@dev
Ep. #36: How to keep up to date with FE?
Why is it important to be on the loop for the latest and greatest FE technologies out there? The latest JavaScript framework? What's possible with the latest CSS? Performance and SEO... There's just so much. We share our tips and tricks to stay fresh and relevant.
Follow us:
- Chucho Castañeda https://twitter.com/honupo
- Ricard Torres https://ricard.social/@dev
Ep. #35: Patterns, anti-patterns and dark patterns
We explain the differences, share examples and give you plenty resources to get you started. Chucho can't stress enough that you should read these at least once!
patterns.devGang Of Four GOF Design Patterns Design Patternsdeceptive.designFollow us:
- Chucho Castañeda https://twitter.com/honupo
- Ricard Torres https://ricard.social/@dev
Ep. #34: Development conferences. Worth it?
We talk about web development conferences, going in-person or attending online. Are they worth it? What's the benefit? Couldn't you just watch a recording?
What's the most interesting conference you've ever attended? If you haven't yet, any conferences you'd like to go to?
Follow us:
- Chucho Castañeda https://twitter.com/honupo
- Ricard Torres https://ricard.social/@dev
Ep. #33: How to write quality and maintainable code?
We chat what is code quality, what are code smells, tips and tricks to make your code readable and maintainable.
What are your tips?
Code quality metrics: https://www.sealights.io/code-quality/code-quality-metrics-is-your-code-any-good/
Follow us:
- Chucho Castañeda https://twitter.com/honupo
- Ricard Torres https://ricard.social/@dev
Ep. #32: Knowledge Sharing in your Team
We discuss different ways to do knowledge sharing in your team or company. The challenges we've faced and what has worked for us.
Find out about our Netcentric Academy https://www.netcentric.biz/jobs
Follow us:
- Chucho Castañeda https://twitter.com/honupo
- Ricard Torres https://ricard.social/@dev
Ep. #31: How we started 2 frontend podcasts
Did you know we have both this and a different internal FE podcast? The internal podcast started first and gave us the idea to start one on YouTube. Tune in to know how it all began and what we learned along the way.
Follow us:
- Chucho Castañeda https://twitter.com/honupo
- Ricard Torres https://ricard.social/@dev
Ep. #30: Accessibility Month
What is Accessibility? What's your experience with Web Accessibility? What does it mean a website is accessible? Keyboard navigation? Labels? These and more in today's episode.
https://accessibility.day/
https://www.w3.org/WAI/
https://dynomapper.com/blog/27-accessibility-testing/273-wcag-the-web-content-accessibility-guidelines-explained
Follow us:
- Chucho Castañeda https://twitter.com/honupo
- Ricard Torres https://ricard.social/@dev
Ep. #29: Should you use Web Components?
What's your take on Web Components? What are the best use cases? Should you use them for regular AEM projects? What's the best thing about Web Components?
Check out a performance comparison of different frameworks and techniques to create Web Components: https://webcomponents.dev/blog/all-the-ways-to-make-a-web-component/
Follow us:
- Chucho Castañeda https://twitter.com/honupo
- Ricard Torres https://ricard.social/@dev
Ep. #28: Chucho loves Single Page Apps
SPA? MPA? Are these still relevant in 2024? When would you use an SPA vs a regular MPA? Have you heard about the new View Transitions API?
Follow us:
- Chucho Castañeda https://twitter.com/honupo
- Ricard Torres https://ricard.social/@dev
Ep. #27: What is a FE Lead?
FE Manager, FE Lead... there are many names for what we think might be the same thing. We discuss what a FE Lead is accountable for. What to expect from a FE Lead? Types of leaderships. Join the conversation and tell us what's the your ideal type of FE Lead.
Follow us:
- Chucho Castañeda https://twitter.com/honupo
- Ricard Torres https://ricard.social/@dev
Ep. #26: How much UX should a FE developer know?
We discuss UI, UX, design and the role of the frontend developer.
Reading recommendations
Linkshttps://www.nngroup.com/articles/https://www.nngroup.com/articles/usability-101-introduction-to-usability/Books by Donald NormanThe design of Everyday ThingsEmotional DesignBooks by Jakob NielsenUsability EngineeringDesigning Web UsabilityEyetracking Web UsabilityBooks by Steve KrugDon't make me thinkRocket Surgery Made EasyBooks by Robin Williams (not the actor or singer)The Non-Designer's Design BookBooks by Jason BeairdThe Principals of Beautiful Web DesignFollow us:
- Chucho Castañeda https://twitter.com/honupo
- Ricard Torres https://ricard.social/@dev
Ep. #25: Open sourcing our FE Build
Today we're joined by Dragan Filipovic, Senior Front-end Software Engineer at Cognizant Netcentric. We talk how he spearheaded the initiative to open source our FE Build.
A Frontend build system that can be used in both AEM and non-AEM projects.
Try it out here:
https://github.com/Netcentric/fe-build
Follow us:
- Chucho Castañeda https://twitter.com/honupo
- Ricard Torres https://ricard.social/@dev
Ep. #24: Content management, decisions or options?
When creating web components for content editors, do you give them all the options? or take decisions that will work best for development and maintenance?
We discuss headless vs server-side rendering as well. Ricard loves JSON files. Chucho? Maybe not.
Follow us:
- Chucho Castañeda https://twitter.com/honupo
- Ricard Torres https://ricard.social/@dev
Ep. #23: Impostor Syndrome in Frontend
What is the Impostor Syndrome? How to fight it? Why is it more common than we think in Frontend development? We discuss this and offer some tips that have worked for us!
Follow us:
- Chucho Castañeda https://twitter.com/honupo
- Ricard Torres https://ricard.social/@dev
Ep. #22: AI tools in our every day work
We talk about GitHub Copilot, ChatGPT, phind, and Bard. We share how we use it for coding. How about you?
Follow us:
- Chucho Castañeda https://twitter.com/honupo
- Ricard Torres https://ricard.social/@dev
Ep. #21: How to find time for career development?
How can you find time for your career development? ⏱️ Here’s our take on it:
In the latest episode of the hit Frontend Coffee Break podcast, we discuss the strategies that frontend leads and managers employ to make room for growth amidst their daily responsibilities.
Follow us:
- Chucho Castañeda https://twitter.com/honupo
- Ricard Torres https://ricard.social/@dev
Ep. #20: Is Mobile First still a thing in 2023?
Is the mobile-first mindset still relevant in the world of development? 🧐 Here’s the deal:
Today we discuss the best practices and approaches for developing websites and apps for mobile devices.
Chucho mentions Ricard's library for Two Way Data Binding, here it is: https://github.com/quicoto/two-way-data-binding
Follow us:
- Chucho Castañeda https://twitter.com/honupo
- Ricard Torres https://ricard.social/@dev
Ep. #19: Should you be constantly challenged?
What benefits frontend developers the most: working on long-term projects, or switching every six months? 🤝
We discuss the FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) on new technologies in the changing world of frontend development.
Follow us:
- Chucho Castañeda https://twitter.com/honupo
- Ricard Torres https://ricard.social/@dev
Ep. #18: Core Web Vitals in 2023
Looking for a better way to optimize and improve your project’s web performance? 🚀 We’ve got you covered:
Today Chucho and Ricard are joined by Ines Akrap, Senior Web Performance Engineer, for insights into Core Web Vitals in 2023.
Follow us:
- Chucho Castañeda https://twitter.com/honupo
- Ricard Torres https://ricard.social/@dev
Additional resources:
🔗 https://github.com/Netcentric/progux
Ep. #17: How to work with images on the web in 2023
Are you a web developer or designer passionate about creating visually stunning, high-performance websites? 🤩
We review the optimal ways how to upload images in 2023.
Follow us:
- Chucho Castañeda https://twitter.com/honupo
- Ricard Torres https://ricard.social/@dev
Additional resources:
- https://web.dev/learn/images
- https://squoosh.app
