Build and Learn

This time around Colin and CJ talk about learning styles and how to learn to learn. We highlight a documentation framework called "Diataxis," which provides a structured approach to content categorization, differentiating between tutorials, how-to guides, explanations, and references. The significance of recognizing and adapting to varied learning styles, such as visual, auditory, and kinesthetic. 

We share our personal experiences and emphasize the importance of diverse teaching methods and creating content even when the subject might have been covered elsewhere. Mentioned were unique projects like an offline Wikipedia on a tablet and a hacked Casio watch that serves as a two-factor authentication generator. The session ends with considerations on video creation and the challenges of live streaming.

Resources:

• Hackers Inc Fitness Episode - https://hackersincorporated.com/episodes/losing-70-lbs-getting-in-shape-and-15-minute-workouts 
• By Mody Tutor - https://www.mybodytutor.com/
• My Fitness Pal - https://www.myfitnesspal.com/
• Sendgrid - https://sendgrid.com/
• Resend - https://resend.com/
• Rails Conf Webhook Workshop - https://github.com/colinloretz/railsconf-webhooks
• diataxis - https://diataxis.fr/
• Cloudflare Docs - https://developers.cloudflare.com/
• Crunchy Data Postgres Sandbox - https://www.crunchydata.com/blog/learn-postgres-at-the-playground
• Pragmatic Thinking and Learning - https://www.amazon.com/Pragmatic-Thinking-Learning-Refactor-Programmers/dp/1934356050
• The Dreyfus Model - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dreyfus_model_of_skill_acquisition

It's the One Year Anniversary of Build & Learn!

In this episode we chat about refreshing OAuth tokens and building CRM features with SMS/voice APIs. CJ and Colin also talk about the tradeoffs of building "calm", bootstrapped companies versus venture-backed startups. It seems like everything that is old is new again! What startups from the 2009-2012 vintages do you think could do with some disruption today?

Some resources mentioned:

• GoRails
• Twilio Flex

Follow along off-pod!

• @colinloretz on Twitter
• @cjav_dev on Twitter

In this episode you'll hear about Colin's adventure of building a Google Calendar Discord bot using CloudFlare, mastering Google Calendar APIs, and navigating serverless Postgres with neon.tech. We'll also share our insights on the benefits of being part of Y Combinator, and the unexpected hiccups we faced with Rails' Turbo Streams. Dive in and learn from our experiences!

Resources:

* https://neon.tech/
* Jason's tweet: https://twitter.com/jmcharnes/status/1687286039356829698 
* Cloudflare Worker docs: https://developers.cloudflare.com/workers/
* Jumpstart Pro starter kit for Ruby on Rails: https://jumpstartrails.com/
* Turbo Streams documentation: https://turbo.hotwired.dev/handbook/streams
* YCombinator: https://www.ycombinator.com/
* Google Calendar API docs: https://developers.google.com/calendar/api/guides/overview 
* Microsoft Startup program for credits: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/startups

Welcome back after the summer break! CJ and Colin get caught up after a summer of adventure and... new job announcements!

• CJ update 
  • Tahoe Time / Family Time
  • E-Bike with Dad
  • Boat / Plane flight simulator
• Colin update 
  • Spending time on the coworking space
  • Summer camping
• Role reversals and announcement 
  • We have new jobs!
  • Context switching 
    • Colin: product & engineering → developer relations
    • CJ: developer relations → product & engineering
  • Fewer guard rails, much less narrow focus, wearing more hats, more autonomy, freedom and responsibility
  • CJ is now at Craftwerk
    • NextJS
    • T3 stack
    • MySQL with Planetscale
    • Drizzle ORM
    • Zod schema validation
    • Back office/Admin CRUD app in Rails
  • Colin is now at Discord
    • Currently onboarding and learning
    • Building a Google Calendar app to get fully up to speed on all the areas of the developer experience
• Other happenings: RailsWorld is happening later this year in Amsterdam
  • Tickets sold out in 45 minutes
  • Speakers announced this week
• Must download calendar app for MacOS folks: Fantastical

In this episode, we chat with Dave Paola, the founder of the Agency of Learning, an organization aimed at getting early-career developers job-ready, especially developer boot camp graduates. We delve into the history of boot camps, identify key gaps in current education methods, and explore how the Agency of Learning addresses these gaps by simulating a real-team environment and emphasizing technical and non-technical skills.

Resources and Links

• Visit the Agency of Learning to learn more about Dave's innovative approach to junior engineer hiring and management.
• For a more in-depth understanding of teaching for mastery, check out Sal Khan's illuminating TED Talk.
• Get involved with open-source contributions and support social good with Ruby for Good.
• Discover Casa, a case management open-source app that supports volunteer work for children in foster care.
• Dive deeper into the tech industry's professional growth and career progression with Engineering Ladders.
• Check out "Engineering Management for the Rest of Us" by Sarah Drasner for relatable and pragmatic advice on engineering management.
• Read David Marquet's transformative leadership book, "Turn the Ship Around" for a novel perspective on leadership and management.
• Connect with our guest on Twitter @dpaola2 for more enriching content and discussions.

In this episode, we talk with Chris Oliver about his deliberate approach to building GoRails and his other businesses on Rails. In a tech world that only seems to be moving faster and faster, we discuss the slow and steady path he has followed to create a fulfilling life for himself and his team while shipping awesome Rails things for his customers.

Some links to things we discussed:

• Build Your Saas Episode: Nobody in SaaS wants to talk about this
• Build Your SaaS Episode: Super Fun SaaS Sales Tax (Part Deux)
• Die With Zero book

Some of the things Chris and his team work on:

• GoRails
• Jumpstart Rails
• Hatchbox Hosting
• The Remote Ruby Podcast
• and many other things you can find at https://excid3.com/

In this episode, we're joined by Alan Shreve, the founder and CEO of ngrok, to discuss the future of software development and the emergence of innovative tools that simplify complex tasks -- like ingress. We talk about ngrok's solid approach to error handling, which enhances troubleshooting and user experience by assigning unique codes to each error. The conversation also delves into the evolution of ngrok, an "ingress as a service" platform designed to streamline the setup of web application infrastructure by abstracting complexities of networking, thereby reducing your workload.

We address the challenges in distributed systems and the importance of automating processes, focusing on the role of tools like Heroku, Vercel, and CloudFlare in managing infrastructure and security. We explore the concept of edge computing and globally distributed applications, envisioning two potential futures - one with advanced storage layers handling global distribution and another where applications can split between the origin and the global edge.

The discussion also highlights the shift in the industry away from tasks like memory management and assembly language and the rise of cloud-based tools, which lowers the barrier to entry for new developers. Despite the potential pitfalls of abstraction, like the reduced need for developers to tinker and learn, we see this as a positive development. We wrap by emphasizing the end goal of software development - delivering a product that serves the customer's needs, facilitated by tools that simplify and standardize the development process.

Resources:

• ngrok: ingress as a service - https://ngrok.com
• Introducing ngrok-go - https://ngrok.com/blog-post/ngrok-go
• ngrok-go library - https://github.com/ngrok/ngrok-go
• Introducing ngrok-rs - https://ngrok.com/blog-post/ngrok-rs
• Vim plugin for GitHub CoPilot - https://github.com/github/copilot.vim
• Stripe's Embeddable Payment Components - https://stripe.com/docs/payments/payment-element

CJ and Colin are back to chat about getting outside, recap the recent RailsConf and discuss building and participating in developer communities in 2023.

Getting Outside

• The Nature Fix book
• Outside 365
• RailsCamp in Hawaii

RailsConf 2023 and Webhooks Workshop

• Webhooks Workshop Github Repo 
• Marp Markdown Presentation Tool
• Ruby Central YouTube Channel 
• RubyConf San Diego

Some other cool events/conferences that we've attended

• Blue Ridge Ruby Conf
• Rails SaaS
• RailsConf
• RubyConf
• RailsWorld
• LaraCon
• WordCamp
• GDC
• Apple’s WWDC
• Google I/O
• Startup Weekends
• NASA Space Apps

Follow us on Twitter

• @buildandlearn_
• @cjav_dev
• @colinloretz

In this episode, Colin and CJ discuss using the new GPT tools for work and play.

• Open AI
• Large language models
• Generative AI
• How do we use it, and is it going to be doom & gloom?

How We Use It

• Brainstorming & riffing on ideas 
  • I was building something in React and hadn’t touched React in a few years. I had all this iteration going on in my components to generate dynamic content. Still, I wanted the topmost component to be able to have references to all these components to download them all as images in a zip file.
• Assistance with math-based things like animation or rendering graphics 
  • Example: I had to display a bunch of circles in a 2nd plane in a random pattern
  • Computers are pretty good at that
• Learning how to do something new faster 
  • Explain this to me like I’m 5
• Summarizing
• We use Descript for editing this podcast
• Shifting the tone of writing, building a writing style
• Writing video scripts
• Finding obscure information
• Story arcs
• Brushes to write tailwind classes
• Jokes
• DnD character sheets
• Bing to find esoteric star wars character that’s buried on Wookiepedia

Doom and gloom or boon?

• What does this mean for the future?
• Privacy & security concerns 
  • Voice clones and scams (create a safe word!)
• Productivity + time 
  • Are we just going to be expected to be more productive with more output because cApItaLIsM
• Constitutional AI (Anthropic) 
  • give it principles to train on vs having human input
  • https://www.anthropic.com/index/core-views-on-ai-safety

ChatGPT coauthored a PR to a major open-source project

• via Ruby Weekly: How long is it until ChatGPT makes a pull request to Rails? Oh, it (sort of) just happened. Ultimately it's still under the name of Rails core team member Guillermo Iguaran, however.

People to follow

(Written by Notion AI)

Here are 5 social media influencers to follow to stay up to date about AI:

• Rachel Woods (@the.rachel.woods on TikTok, @rachel_l_woods on Twitter)
• Logan.GPT (dev advocate for OpenAI)
• Swyx (shares a lot of thoughts on AI)
• Lex Fridman (MIT researcher and AI podcaster)
• Siraj Raval (AI educator and YouTuber)

Tools

Github Copilot

• Copilot X for VS Code & VS Extension
• Copilot Docs
• Copilot CLI
• Copilot Voice
• Copilot for PRs

Resources

• Wolfram Alpha - How ChatGPT works
• Siraj Raval - Automated AI YouTube channel
• the.rachel.woods on safe words
• Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men
• Anthropic - AI Safety
• RubyWeekly - ChatGPT Co-authored PR

In this episode we dig into the HackerRank annual survey that was released a few months ago for 2023 including the top in demand skills from employers in this uncertain tech and economic environment.
 
Note from Colin & CJ: This episode was recorded in November 2022. It is amazing how much changes in a few months.

Languages By Volume of HackerRanks

• Java
• Python
• SQL
• C++
• Javascript
• Bash
• C#
• Go
• Typescript
• R
• PHP
• C
• Swift
• Ruby

Methodology for languages 

• To estimate employer demand for specific programming languages, we looked at HackerRank Work tests where a specific programming language was required, or where specific library questions were asked. Skill demand was estimated by the number of HackerRank Work tests using specific library questions.
• On the preference – or supply–side, we tracked submitted languages by candidates when they have multiple options available, as well as their proficiency in those languages. We also included HankerRank Community practice data to get a full spectrum of skill preferences.
• Notable these results are not survey results like the Stack Overflow survey
• Demand for most languages growing, but not equally
• Is there potential bias in the types of companies that use HackerRank? 
  • Companies that are more likely to use Java for example

Top 5 Skills in demand 

• Problem Solving
• Machine Learning
• REST APIs
• React
• HTML/CSS/JS
• REST API shows sustained drama-free demand growth 😂
• Keep an eye on Go and TypeScript

Outlook

• Tech hiring (and everything else) hit headwinds in 2022
• Overall, the tech industry continues to growing

Other Links Mentioned

• Art of Product Episode Episode 218
• Build Your SaaS
• Founder's Quest Podcast

Build and Learn around the web

• Twitter: @buildandlearn_
• Colin: @colinloretz
• CJ: @cjav_dev