Thunder Nerds

In this episode, we get to talk with Preston So, Senior Director of Product Strategy at Oracle. We talk to Preston about his new book VOICE CONTENT AND USABILITY. We discuss the concepts of building conversational designs that are ethical, accessible, and usable.

• Auth0: https://auth0.com
• Auth0 on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/auth0
• Auth0 on Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/auth0
• Auth0 Avocado Labs online meetup events: https://avocadolabs.dev/

• Preston’s new book – Voice Content And Usability: https://abookapart.com/products/voice-content-and-usability
• Publisher: https://abookapart.com/
• Preston on Twitter: https://twitter.com/prestonso
• Preston’s Website: https://preston.so/
• Preston on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/prestonso/
• Oracle: https://www.oracle.com/
• Previous episode – 🪓 Headless CMS, Decoupling Drupal with Gatsby, & Conversational Design with Preston So https://www.thundernerds.io/2020/06/headless-cms-decoupling-drupal-w-gatsby-conversational-design-w-preston-so/
• Ask GeorgiaGov: https://georgia.gov/chat
• Google Cloud Dialogflow: https://cloud.google.com/dialogflow
• Diglossia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diglossia
• Word by Word: The Secret Life of Dictionaries: https://www.amazon.com/Word-Secret-Life-Dictionaries/dp/110187094X
• Conversations with Things: UX Design for Chat and Voice: https://www.amazon.com/Conversations-Things-Design-Chat-Voice/dp/1933820268/ref=sr_1_1
• Invisible Man: https://www.amazon.com/Invisible-Man-Ralph-Ellison/dp/0679732764
• Gatsby: The Definitive Guide: https://preston.so/books/gatsby/
• Hosts: 
  • Frederick Weiss: https://twitter.com/FrederickWeiss
  • Brian Hinton: https://twitter.com/mrbrianhinton

Brian Hinton: [00:00:00] I’m Brian Hinton.

Frederick Weiss: and I’m Frederick Philip von Weiss.

[00:00:46] Brian Hinton: [00:00:46] and do

[00:00:52] Frederick Weiss: Yeah, thanks

Brian Hinton: We’d like to thank Auth0, Auth0 is

[00:01:43] I love that name. An online destination that their developer advocates run

[00:01:52] Frederick Weiss: [00:01:52] Yes. Thanks

[00:01:50] Frederick Weiss: [00:01:50] Thanks so much,

[00:02:17] Preston So: [00:02:17] Hey Frederick.

[00:02:26] Frederick Weiss: [00:02:26] I

[00:02:32] Preston So: [00:02:32] What that. I

[00:02:51] It was my launch event for my new book, which is here, voice content and

[00:03:13] And of course, The vaunted and traditional book cake, which is something

[00:03:33] Frederick Weiss: [00:03:33] Oh,

[00:03:35] Like

[00:03:35] Preston So: [00:03:35] utterly a

[00:03:55] Yeah.  So it was a great launch event and  it was a real

[00:04:09] Frederick Weiss: [00:04:09] And

[00:04:16]     If you can just chat with us, ask us your questions. Maybe

[00:04:35] Decoupling Drupal. Am I saying that correct?

[00:04:38] Preston So: [00:04:38] Yes. Decoupled

[00:04:42]    Frederick Weiss: [00:04:44] How was the success of that and how did that  prompt you to  start writing a

[00:04:54] So I see a pattern every year, a new book,  I wish I could come out

[00:05:19] Preston So: [00:05:19] The first book

[00:05:38] So this book is actually my first book that is not a coding book, not a

[00:05:58] It's really focused on the user experience and design audience and the

[00:06:16] That's oriented towards things like JavaScript applications or other

[00:06:49] But the other thing I will say is that I actually made the mistake. I had

[00:07:08] So right back in the other direction.

[00:07:10] Brian Hinton: [00:07:10] So

[00:07:12] Frederick Weiss: [00:07:12] every

[00:07:14] Brian Hinton: [00:07:14] three

[00:07:15] Preston So: [00:07:15] I was thinking

[00:07:25] So why is voice content usability? Like, why did you're like, okay,

[00:07:33] Yeah. Yeah. Specifically too, if I

[00:07:34] Frederick Weiss: [00:07:34] could

[00:07:42] Preston So: [00:07:42] the

[00:07:44] So I've always been  really into web development, but my real

[00:08:02] But it really wasn't necessarily something that was  an itch. I

[00:08:27] I was also really interested in how we can actually best serve. Users that

[00:09:15] I worked to ask Georgia gov, which had the specific goal of really

[00:09:45] And I think one of the really interesting insights that we found is that

[00:10:04] The website is really  the gospel of how people should now consume

[00:10:26] And in some cases, diametrically opposed to the sorts of queries and

[00:10:43] Towards the website as the primary conduit for information, when in some

[00:10:56] Frederick Weiss: [00:10:56] do?

[00:11:14] Or am I  or does it behoove us to write content that is a uniform and

[00:11:31] Preston So: [00:11:31] That's a

[00:11:42] Please don't give everything away just a little bit. Could you read

[00:12:10] What do we do with all of these things that we've built that are in

[00:12:37] Let's say when people were experimenting with voice interfaces or chat

[00:13:04] How do you keep those two things in sync? And now that we have regulations

[00:13:24] Now, my book definitely doesn't make any prescriptions about going in

[00:14:00] So we ended up keeping it all in one source and we ended up maintaining it

[00:14:25] I'm curious, there

[00:14:25] Brian Hinton: [00:14:25] was a course

[00:14:33] Preston So: [00:14:33] Didn't

[00:15:08] However, one of the things I will share is that in some ways there's

[00:15:27] Have worked in the web for a while, will recognize, for example, the

[00:15:46] One example of this that I'll share and I'll keep it just to one

[00:16:08] And we had a parallel set of logs and reports that would sit right next to

[00:16:39] So we had this retrospective about eight months after the launch of the

[00:17:00] There was this one result that kept on coming up over and over again, this

[00:17:20] If I remember correctly in the log and we thought. Who is searching, who

[00:17:38] And one of the native Georgians in the room suddenly perked up and she

[00:17:57] That was exactly what happened. And this is one of those situations where,

[00:18:17] But ultimately it's in the hands of people like Amazon or Google,

[00:18:35] But they're not yet at that point where they can beat us at our own

[00:18:40] Frederick Weiss: [00:18:40] This

[00:19:00]     Preston So: [00:19:01]

[00:19:20] Voice interfaces  that are pure voice interfaces, which I, and others

[00:19:37] And I think this is not really an edge case  so I don't wanna say

[00:20:10] And the notion that I think a lot of people have today, Is  

[00:20:34] Yup. And yeah, so that's  yep. Yeah.    That's

[00:20:52] That's very rooted in the visual structure of a webpage it's very

[00:21:12] The edge case, however, that I will share is I think a lot of people also

[00:21:38] We know this web meter and  some of these  browsers or three

[00:22:01] Just  one of those things that we didn't necessarily expect,

[00:22:41] And how do you actually address that learning curve in a way that makes

[00:22:47] Brian Hinton: [00:22:47] Yeah,

[00:23:03] What are they asking? And it's like the difference, like the capital

[00:23:19] Preston So: [00:23:19] Yeah.  I

[00:23:32] And it's a really challenging kind of thing because a lot of these

[00:23:49] But there is a lot of work being done to improve the situation. So back in

[00:24:17] Intent identification where the user interface is able to piece together a

[00:24:37] You're trying to identify a question like    what is the

[00:24:56] And as we know, as users. The ways that we actually respond to some of

[00:25:14] And whenever we have, what's called a, an out of domain error where

[00:25:39] So I'd talk about intent identification   and  the problems

[00:26:00] That's not natural, right?  Nobody really wants to have to say

[00:26:36] Even though this person might have said something that's very remote

[00:26:45] Brian Hinton: [00:26:45] Yeah. My

[00:26:56] And I said, Coke. And they're like, I'm sorry. Is that okay? Yeah.

[00:27:04] Preston So: [00:27:04] That's

[00:27:07] Brian Hinton: [00:27:07] I can't

[00:27:48] Frederick Weiss: [00:27:48] A lasagna

[00:28:01] Preston So: [00:28:01] to this,

[00:28:17] And one of those really  is the building blocks of language. And

[00:28:34] But the biggest issue, I think a lot of us face is we're moving.

[00:28:56] Are we, how are we? Normally I actually write content. And  just one

[00:29:17] And there's two ways in which this really. Can be a problem. The first

[00:29:48] This is something that is  talked about quite a bit in voice

[00:30:09] Types of conversation. And this really comes to, I think, some of the

[00:30:30] And one of those issues is when we think about the ways in which we want

[00:30:48] But that is a  very different kind of proposition when it comes to

[00:31:08] And one of the things that is really interesting to me is that I'm

[00:31:28] There's a phenomenon in linguistics called Dyke Glossier. And this is

[00:31:50] And in some cases. Like Brazilian Portuguese, for example, you really have

[00:32:10] It I'd be understood because people would be able to understand, but

[00:32:36] But there's a big problem with that, because that assumes that the

[00:32:57] It isn't the case that our spoken conversations are word for word or

[00:33:16] A lot of those considerations and concerns become a lot more important

[00:33:38] Brian Hinton: [00:33:38] Yeah, all of

[00:34:00] Spanish slang, very different and English slang, different, like someone

[00:34:15] Preston So: [00:34:15] Yeah. And I

[00:34:18] You've got the subtext that is not something  in UI text or in

[00:34:43] Like those three things can mean very different things, even though they

[00:34:58] We also have very important differences. Like I mentioned earlier with

[00:35:19] And it's very similar in some ways to the ways in which newscasters

[00:35:43] And that's something that's represented now in voice interfaces,

[00:36:17] Representative voice interfaces too, because maybe the kind of

[00:36:46] But also the fact that we have been very marginalized and

[00:37:14] For example, why is it that  we can't hear those sorts of

[00:37:33] And by the same token  we know  that those who identify as LGBTQ

[00:37:54] And this ties back to one of the things I talked about. In the final

[00:38:20] So many people are doing this because these airlines, hotels, large

[00:38:44] It's somebody who might be in the Philippines or somebody who might be

[00:39:03] And this really illustrates a very, I think, big concern in voice

[00:39:26] What does that do to our future as users? What does that do to our level

[00:39:52] I'm not so sure that I want that replacement to be this uncanny valley

[00:40:18] These are also domains that are not exempt from the issues that we have in

[00:40:24] Frederick Weiss: [00:40:24] we start

[00:40:41] Frederick, there's not, yeah. I don't want to go down the matrix

[00:41:01] Preston So: [00:41:01] Yeah,

[00:41:19] Not just the facts. And this is not something I mentioned very much in my

[00:41:42] And  I do want to make sure to hold space for those who are

[00:42:05] There is research that suggests that having a voice interface that is

[00:42:28] I think we can really look forward to a lot of interesting, let's say

[00:42:47] And we know about the kind of tech or AI singularity, the conversational

[00:43:09] And one of the things that I think is important to call out, of course, as

[00:43:27] Let's say conversations, centric, approaches that are coming out,

[00:43:43] They can only help you order a pizza, but they can't help you book a

[00:43:58] With extra pineapple as it should be. And then directly into booking a

[00:44:16] Yeah. Some of these  issues that we have with how conversational

[00:44:41] Frederick Weiss: [00:44:41] I

[00:44:53] Preston So: [00:44:53] I can totally

[00:44:57] Frederick Weiss: [00:44:57] yeah, I,

[00:45:09] Yeah. It could work. I'm sure.  One day, like you said, a person

[00:45:17] Preston So: [00:45:17] Yeah.

[00:45:32] I think we've all done this, you accidentally answer somebody's

[00:45:43] But yeah, I think   it's a really exciting time and I do think

[00:46:03] It's one of the first ever content driven information driven voice

[00:46:24] Everyone's buying them, they're flying off the shelves and

[00:46:48] And voice is just one of those. And  I think we're going to see a

[00:47:25] Frederick Weiss: [00:47:25] Makes

[00:47:31] We're

[00:47:31] Brian Hinton: [00:47:31] getting

[00:47:33] Frederick Weiss: [00:47:33] flying

[00:47:37] Brian Hinton: [00:47:37] Yeah. So

[00:47:49] Preston So: [00:47:49] I have to

[00:47:59] Frederick Weiss: [00:47:59] Preston.

[00:48:04] Preston So: [00:48:04] Oh my gosh.

[00:48:28] And that's given me a lot of good perspective. I'll say that.

[00:48:39] degrees? Wow. This is like Snowpiercer versus thread 3d or something like

[00:48:57] And  so yeah, it's definitely snowing all the time. I could

[00:49:06] Frederick Weiss: [00:49:06] Preston,

[00:49:12] Preston So: [00:49:12] enjoying. All

[00:49:28] One book that I'm reading, which I will share, which is a very

[00:49:49] And I forget the co authors name. I have it right here. I should look at

[00:50:09] Cool.

[00:50:09]   Brian Hinton: [00:50:11] What

[00:50:19] Preston So: [00:50:19] Oh my God.

[00:50:48] Frederick Weiss: [00:50:48] I

[00:50:54] Preston So: [00:50:54] giving them

[00:51:14] Kids, we deal with  speech impediments or other issues with

[00:51:43] Of course, there's 3000 people listening to this right now.  And

[00:51:52] Frederick Weiss: [00:51:52] Nice.

[00:51:58] Preston So: [00:51:58] this book?

[00:52:10] Unexpected applications of accessibility. And unexpected challenges around

[00:52:31] Not only are there    so many different types of interfaces that

[00:52:57] Sort of user interface, you're building and using it from the

[00:53:28] That was a very long answer.

[00:53:31] Frederick Weiss: [00:53:31]

[00:53:35] Brian Hinton: [00:53:35] What book

[00:53:41] Preston So: [00:53:41] What book has

[00:54:22] Both of those were probably invisible men.  Which is a book that I

[00:54:40] Frederick Weiss: [00:54:40] I'm

[00:54:43] Brian, do you have anything else on that? Oh, no, I think we're good.

[00:55:01] Preston So: [00:55:01] Yeah.

[00:55:16] But I think one of the things that I would recommend for everyone who is

[00:55:41] The lived experiences of those who are completely unlike you. And by

[00:56:09] And I think one thing that is really important to me, and one thing

[00:56:42] And there's no way to do that unless you really deeply understand and

[00:57:02] Frederick Weiss: [00:57:02] Very well

[00:57:07] So on Twitter, your website is Preston So. Presence on LinkedIn. And of course the

[00:57:32] Brian Hinton: [00:57:32] No, thank

[00:57:35] Preston So: [00:57:35] Thank you both

[00:57:47] Frederick Weiss: [00:57:47] Thank

[00:57:48] Yeah, for the next book. We'll see you then. Thanks everybody. Oh,

If you have questions, or suggestions to modify the transcript, PLEASE let us know at

In this episode, we get to speak with Maggie Appleton, Art Director & UX Designer at egghead.io. We discuss the ethos of Digital Gardening and the value of cultivating ideas in public. We also dive into Maggie’s digital anthropology work and discuss how visual metaphors better shape our understanding of technology.

• Auth0: https://auth0.com
• Auth0 on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/auth0
• Auth0 on Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/auth0
• Auth0 Avocado Labs online meetup events: https://avocadolabs.dev/

• Website:  https://maggieappleton.com
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/mappletons/
• Github: https://github.com/maggieappleton/
• Dribbble: https://dribbble.com/mappleton
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/maggieappleton/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/maggieappleton/
• Sketching and Logo Creation (with Maggie Appleton) — Learn With Jason: https://youtu.be/4mrrNAjiTvk
• A Brief Introduction to Digital Anthropology: https://maggieappleton.com/digital-anthropology
• Digital Gardener: https://github.com/MaggieAppleton/digital-gardeners
• Digital Gardening for Non-Technical Folks: https://maggieappleton.com/nontechnical-gardening
• Obsidian: https://obsidian.md
• Keychron: https://www.keychron.com
• If Then: How the Simulmatics Corporation Invented the Future – by Jill Lepore: https://www.amazon.com/If-Then-Simulmatics-Corporation-Invented/dp/1631496107
• Bret Victor: http://worrydream.com
• Hosts: 
  • Frederick Weiss: https://twitter.com/FrederickWeiss
  • Brian Hinton: https://twitter.com/mrbrianhinton

Brian Hinton: [00:00:00] I’m Brian

Frederick Weiss: and I’m Frederick Philip von Weiss. And

[00:00:46] Brian Hinton: [00:00:46] and do tech

[00:00:52] Frederick Weiss: Yeah, thanks

[00:01:15] Brian Hinton: We’d like to thank

[00:01:43] I love that name. An online destination that their developer advocates run

[00:01:52] Frederick Weiss: [00:01:52] Yes.

[00:02:00] we have an amazing guest today. We have Art Director. Writer, Designer,

[00:02:21] Maggie Appleton: [00:02:21] Thanks.

[00:02:22] Thanks for having me on. I’ll also say I’m a mediocre version of

[00:02:31] Frederick Weiss: [00:02:31] You are a

[00:02:43] Maggie Appleton: It’s not too

[00:03:04] So we’re still, you can’t go out in groups of like more than 30 or

[00:03:16] Brian Hinton: [00:03:16] you on, oh,

[00:03:24] Maggie Appleton: [00:03:24] Yeah. We

[00:03:41] Yeah. But vaccinations are rolling out. So like I got my first one last

[00:03:49] Brian Hinton: [00:03:49] happening?

[00:03:54] Frederick Weiss: [00:03:54] and what

[00:03:56] Maggie Appleton: [00:03:56] So

[00:04:03] Brian Hinton: [00:04:03] too.

[00:04:04] Frederick Weiss: [00:04:04] Yeah,

[00:04:16] Maggie Appleton: [00:04:16] Yeah. I

[00:04:29] We have some people in Portland. And yet we’ve always just worked

[00:04:54] But work-wise, I was very fortunate. They didn’t change much in my

[00:04:59] Brian Hinton: [00:04:59] I think the

[00:05:10] Frederick Weiss: [00:05:10] Yeah. So

[00:05:17] What exactly do you do at egghead?

[00:05:20] Maggie Appleton: [00:05:20] I

[00:05:37] Who’s, an incredible unicorn who knows everything from react to front

[00:05:55] So I’m on the two ends of the spectrum, right? If you usually have UX

[00:06:05] Frederick Weiss: [00:06:05]

[00:06:09] Maggie Appleton: [00:06:09] Yeah, I,

[00:06:14] The company I work for teaches front end web development. So we teach

[00:06:36] Being a teenager on the internet and customizing my Neopets page and my

[00:06:54] And of course I love the animations and, what would be database, but

[00:07:13] Brian Hinton: [00:07:13] Yeah.

[00:07:24] Maggie Appleton: [00:07:24]

[00:07:28] Brian Hinton: [00:07:28] Yeah.

[00:07:33] Maggie Appleton: [00:07:33] I studied

[00:07:37] I did a, liberal arts school in the U S which was great. And I found out

[00:08:02] So yeah, so I majored in that as an undergraduate. And then of course

[00:08:12] Brian Hinton: [00:08:12] So has that

[00:08:20] Maggie Appleton: [00:08:20] Yeah,

[00:08:27] Brian Hinton: [00:08:27] And for

[00:08:28] Frederick Weiss: [00:08:28] to

[00:08:52] Maggie Appleton: [00:08:52]

[00:08:53] Yeah. I, and it’s funny too, that it came back around with UX design

[00:09:16] So yeah, so once I realized that UX designers were just like

[00:09:29] So yeah, so I’m very much kind of leaning back into my aunt’s

[00:09:35] Frederick Weiss: [00:09:35] maybe it

[00:09:49] Maggie Appleton: [00:09:49] your

[00:09:50] Sure. Yeah, That’s definitely not an obvious thing. Because

[00:10:13] So I started cultural, which is, yeah. Again, the way people behave on

[00:10:31] So it gives you a broad span. But digital anthropologists tend to study

[00:10:52] What is valuable to us? It’s a broad range of things. You’ll study

[00:11:12] Alignment

[00:11:17] like what stickers are shirts and how you’re signaling to the other

[00:11:23] Brian Hinton: [00:11:23] does matter,

[00:11:26] Frederick Weiss: [00:11:26] Yeah.

[00:11:28] Maggie Appleton: [00:11:28] Yeah.

[00:11:43] Brian Hinton: [00:11:43] I’m

[00:11:55] Maggie Appleton: [00:11:55] No, I was

[00:12:06] I’ll just start reading Elise theorists and love it. And it was only,

[00:12:32] Like what is shameful for them and what are their weaknesses and what do

[00:12:45] Frederick Weiss: [00:12:45] Just like

[00:12:53] Maggie Appleton: [00:12:53] Yes.

[00:13:09] Brian Hinton: [00:13:09] That’s

[00:13:11] Frederick Weiss: [00:13:11] I really

[00:13:28] Telling us what, that’s about and what, you do with those and why, you

[00:13:45] Maggie Appleton: [00:13:45] Sure.

[00:13:56] With my work at egg head when I first got started there, most of what I

[00:14:11] And I came on as the illustrator and it’s the coolest we put out, I

[00:14:34] I really was like, okay, how do you come up with a metaphor? That actually

[00:15:03] Yeah, so and so, some of the weapons yet, these cool illustrations

[00:15:19] Which, everyone, what do you mean by API? What do you mean? It’s one

[00:15:38] And you can only say certain things. You can ask them for certain things

[00:15:56] So that’s like robot weight and robot weight, as we can say, will have

[00:16:14] And you can only be awesome for a limited set of things. So, the

[00:16:31] And there’s tons of qualities about a hypothetical robot Weta that

[00:16:46] So like those qualities are hidden and only the two things, the qualities

[00:16:56] Brian Hinton: [00:16:56] metaphors in

[00:17:23] See it can’t understand it, then we don’t get a lot of that or

[00:17:33] Maggie Appleton: [00:17:33] Yeah.

[00:17:45] we’ll have the audience do that. Okay. Yeah. If you find one, like

[00:17:55] Brian Hinton: [00:17:55] Yeah. I like

[00:18:05] We made it not that gross to

[00:18:08] Maggie Appleton: [00:18:08] look at,

[00:18:26] Won’t really have to kill animals with this idea. We’re just gonna

[00:18:42] So I have a reference folder. It’s just like butcher shops and blood,

[00:18:50] Frederick Weiss: [00:18:50] It looks

[00:18:55] Maggie Appleton: [00:18:55] or your

[00:19:06] Frederick Weiss: [00:19:06]

[00:19:17] I think you guys were coming up with ideas for. Some sandwiches and you

[00:19:34] Maggie Appleton: [00:19:34] Yeah.

[00:19:35] Jason’s wonderful. And he’s incredible at running that show. I

[00:19:46] Frederick Weiss: [00:19:46] Yes,

[00:19:49] Yeah, we had him on a few months ago. Great guy.

[00:19:52] Brian Hinton: [00:19:52] It looks as

[00:20:00] Maggie Appleton: [00:20:00] So

[00:20:30] And people were using this metaphor of gardening, right? So you are going

[00:21:06] And he now works in disinformation studies. Anyway, he wrote this long

[00:21:23] And everyone built their own weird little website and they linked to all

[00:21:36] And like you know if anyone else went to that website, you saw the same

[00:21:54] When you sit back and a stream of content is delivered to you and your

[00:22:11] So actually we listened to him more than my feet, a little bit, but things

[00:22:25] The New York Times actually just made a film. Was it? Last week, or this

[00:22:40] And so this is a long way of saying gardening is this idea of getting back

[00:23:06] What if you can’t tell? But coming back to this idea of you have your

[00:23:26] And you’re just trying to cultivate your own personal Wiki on the web.

[00:23:37] Brian Hinton: [00:23:37] Yeah.

[00:23:41] Like you, you can’t your plants can’t spread and grow and. Span,

[00:23:50] Frederick Weiss: [00:23:50] And

[00:24:10] And why do we need to have these? Things that are stuck on on medium,

[00:24:31] Maggie Appleton: [00:24:31] yeah.

[00:24:38] So yeah, you can put up an idea and it might not be perfect. You’re

[00:25:01] I’ve revised it a ton. It’s really like solid boarding as it’s

[00:25:17] So people have different levels of this and another puzzle says, who does

[00:25:39] Giving you yeah, like visibility into how the post came to be and what

[00:25:54] Finished things someone’s thought through, but having spaces for

[00:26:02] Brian Hinton: [00:26:02] It reminds

[00:26:21] And with removing the walled gardens, you spread it out. So I may take

[00:26:35] Maggie Appleton: [00:26:35] Yeah And

[00:26:46] It gives us space to play. I like the idea of playing with different kinds

[00:27:01] So right. You put your photo here and you put your hometown here on your

[00:27:25] I arrange things anywhere and I can decide how I want to present these

[00:27:47] Frederick Weiss: [00:27:47] Do you

[00:28:05] If you could explain that to somebody like in a real example

[00:28:10] Maggie Appleton: [00:28:10] So wait,

[00:28:25] A year ago. And I started writing. I put up a page that said the history

[00:28:39] They’re like, oh, you should finish this. And I also put ’em in a

[00:28:55] But that post, I just, I kept working on it and it would get revised and I

[00:29:11] Totally understood what digital gardening was and was watching the trends

[00:29:31] So I built it really slowly 20 minutes, every two weeks or something

[00:29:48] So gardening appeals to those people.

[00:29:50] Brian Hinton: [00:29:50] Yeah. And

[00:30:08] Zen Zana, dude, I love the draft in progress and then there’s a coming

[00:30:34] It’s almost like your own. Docs.

[00:30:39] Frederick Weiss: [00:30:39] And I

[00:30:57] You have all your illustrations down here. It’s a long article, but

[00:31:11] Maggie Appleton: [00:31:11] I’ll

[00:31:35] And I wish there was more of a name I could give to this community, but

[00:31:50] And you’re just, it’s just like community knowledge coming

[00:32:05] Who’s like helping a community tell their story. Like I would love it

[00:32:17] Frederick Weiss: [00:32:17] Hey,

[00:32:19] Brian Hinton: [00:32:19] Brian? Yeah,

[00:32:23] Nikki Dix says I was originally inspired by Maggie’s website. I’ve

[00:32:38] Frederick Weiss: [00:32:38] She goes

[00:32:45] How much HTML do I need to learn and where should I start? Maggie?

[00:32:51] Maggie Appleton: [00:32:51] Sure.

[00:33:07] And roam research is one way you can use it as a source for your notes.

[00:33:29] And obsidian is another tool that’s doing this. I’ll be getting a

[00:33:54] Frederick Weiss: [00:33:54] Yeah. I

[00:34:12] Maggie Appleton: [00:34:12] I’m

[00:34:30] I don’t have room.

[00:34:33] Frederick Weiss: [00:34:33] Gotcha.

[00:34:52] Like what, are some of the biggest challenges to overcome this start?

[00:34:57] Maggie Appleton: [00:34:57] I think

[00:35:23] Yeah. Static site generator. That is the official tent. Next JS is a

[00:35:45] So there’s lots of really interesting things. Themes being built if

[00:36:09] Cause you know, you do say we will see long-term in the web companies fold

[00:36:25] And then after that Yeah, it depends on if people are really clear on what

[00:36:45] And it’s easier to put small notes okay, this is one thing I’ve

[00:37:01] And it takes the pressure off you to create something that is an opinion.

[00:37:06] Brian Hinton: [00:37:06] Yeah. I

[00:37:31] Move forward. I love that. I love it, I just like clicking through and

[00:37:46] Maggie Appleton: [00:37:46] So I

[00:37:50] Let me zoom in.

[00:37:51] Brian Hinton: [00:37:51] Here we go.

[00:37:54] Maggie Appleton: [00:37:54] I forget

[00:38:09] Project human light qualities on to physical objects or you mistake the

[00:38:28] So I actually have to write more on that piece. I’ve just only written

[00:38:37] Brian Hinton: [00:38:37] Yeah. Yeah

[00:38:40] Maggie Appleton: [00:38:40] Yeah, I

[00:38:45] Brian Hinton: [00:38:45] Oh, Nick

[00:38:54] So I was thinking of creating a digital garden for my learning. Yeah,

[00:38:59] Maggie Appleton: [00:38:59]

[00:39:34] Brian Hinton: [00:39:34] Chris

[00:39:46] Yeah. That’s nice. Yeah. Advice. Good advice. Yeah.

[00:39:50] Maggie Appleton: [00:39:50] Yeah.

[00:39:58] Brian Hinton: [00:39:58] applied

[00:40:03] Maggie Appleton: [00:40:03] Nice.

[00:40:09] Frederick Weiss: [00:40:09] All that

[00:40:30] I don’t know if it’s fair to say in certain fields, like in our

[00:40:44] Maggie Appleton: [00:40:44] Yeah.

[00:40:51] It’s a web log. Cause, the thing, the difference that we would say

[00:41:11] You want to arrange them by topics and you want to make sure notes that

[00:41:29] Frederick Weiss: [00:41:29] Just like

[00:41:30] It’s blogs assume that they have to be perfect and perfect. Again is

[00:41:52] Don’t be afraid to put something out there in the world and show your

[00:41:59] Maggie Appleton: [00:41:59] Yeah.

[00:42:15] And he’s also really into digital gardening and is cool. So like

[00:42:24] Frederick Weiss: [00:42:24] Okay.

[00:42:32] Brian Hinton: [00:42:32] One, I do

[00:42:49] Frederick Weiss: [00:42:49] Oh sorry,

[00:42:53] Who was that? What we just mentioned?

[00:42:55] Maggie Appleton: [00:42:55] Oh, Shaun

[00:43:10] Frederick Weiss: [00:43:10] Thank you

[00:43:11] Maggie, Brian.

[00:43:13] Brian Hinton: [00:43:13] Oh, yeah.

[00:43:26] Maggie Appleton: [00:43:26] I

[00:43:30] And so he likes to stare at the problem for a while and then you’re

[00:43:47] So I know I’ve bookmarked a bunch of those and I need to just set

[00:43:54] Brian Hinton: [00:43:54] write a

[00:43:58] Maggie Appleton: [00:43:58] Yeah.

[00:44:04] I have to make my website more spatial and it’s still pretty linear in

[00:44:18] But I’d say I’m trying to think of ways to put sidebars in or move

[00:44:27] Brian Hinton: [00:44:27] So yeah, as

[00:44:38] Where we ask you questions and it’s like one after another, I go,

[00:44:59] Maggie Appleton: [00:44:59] Okay.

[00:45:00] Frederick Weiss: [00:45:00]

[00:45:10] Maggie Appleton: [00:45:10] I’m

[00:45:18] Brian Hinton: [00:45:18] Well,

[00:45:27] Maggie Appleton: [00:45:27] I feel

[00:45:39] Maybe I can’t tolerate too high of a standard. Okay.

[00:45:45] Frederick Weiss: [00:45:45] Earl gray

[00:45:48] Maggie Appleton: [00:45:48] Oh, just

[00:45:55] Frederick Weiss: [00:45:55] Oh. So

[00:45:59] Brian Hinton: [00:45:59] Okay.

[00:46:02] Where we were somewhere where you’re okay. Waiting. You don’t mind

[00:46:07] Maggie Appleton: [00:46:07] anywhere

[00:46:10] Brian Hinton: [00:46:10] Oh, nice.

[00:46:12] Frederick Weiss: [00:46:12] Nice.

[00:46:16] Maggie Appleton: [00:46:16] This is,

[00:46:29] And, trying to Matt human behavior and put it into computers and then try

[00:46:44] Interesting. Yeah, it’s really good.

[00:46:47] Brian Hinton: [00:46:47] I’m to

[00:46:59] Maggie Appleton: [00:46:59] Shot out

[00:47:04] Frederick Weiss: [00:47:04] is

[00:47:09] What is your podcast that you’ve been going to lately? Just for

[00:47:15] Maggie Appleton: [00:47:15] Oh, I

[00:47:28] But he’s really funny as is his co-host and they just comment on the

[00:47:37] Brian Hinton: [00:47:37] I love that.

[00:47:45] Maggie Appleton: [00:47:45] In the

[00:47:52] And you just have to spend like all weekends, just scrubbing it off. It

[00:48:03] Frederick Weiss: [00:48:03]

[00:48:08] Maggie Appleton: [00:48:08] Since who

[00:48:13] Frederick Weiss: [00:48:13] Let me

[00:48:19] Maggie Appleton: [00:48:19] I’m

[00:48:25] Frederick Weiss: [00:48:25] It’s

[00:48:25] Maggie Appleton: [00:48:25] all

[00:48:33] Brian Hinton: [00:48:33] Yeah. I have

[00:48:43] Maggie Appleton: [00:48:43] Now I

[00:48:49] Frederick Weiss: [00:48:49] it’s

[00:48:57] Maggie I’m home. It’s one in the morning. You’re just trying

[00:49:07] Brian Hinton: [00:49:07] It’s

[00:49:11] Maggie Appleton: [00:49:11] Try to

[00:49:15] Frederick Weiss: [00:49:15] All

[00:49:24] Maggie Appleton: [00:49:24] I was

[00:49:33] Brian Hinton: [00:49:33] What’s

[00:49:45] Maggie Appleton: [00:49:45] Oh, God,

[00:50:04] Like it was, yeah, very much just like spending hours, getting lost in

[00:50:11] Frederick Weiss: [00:50:11] I hear

[00:50:22] Maggie Appleton: [00:50:22] It’s

[00:50:41] It’s just sort of me trying to think with my hand and my body really

[00:50:46] Frederick Weiss: [00:50:46] I do have

[00:50:52] Brian Hinton: [00:50:52] What kind of

[00:50:58] Realty?

[00:51:03] Frederick Weiss: [00:51:03] Anyway

[00:51:36] Maggie Appleton: [00:51:36] Yeah, I

[00:51:56] Look at what you’re drawing and respond to it in a constant feedback

[00:52:12] Like how did you come up with the ideas of when he drew like Adams and

[00:52:26] Process to be in. And that kind of thing, I’m always addicted to.

[00:52:37] Brian Hinton: [00:52:37] Nice. I love

[00:52:44] Because he never lands.

[00:52:48] Frederick Weiss: [00:52:48] Oh,

[00:52:50] Maggie Appleton: [00:52:50] that is

[00:52:58] Brian Hinton: [00:52:58] Yeah,

[00:53:01] Frederick Weiss: [00:53:01] W

[00:53:11] And then, your website, of course, Maggie appleton.com dribbbles with your

[00:53:24] Maggie Appleton: [00:53:24] No, they

[00:53:32] Brian Hinton: [00:53:32] yeah.

[00:53:32] For our audio listeners. Can you put that back up? Like a reference?

[00:53:36] Frederick Weiss: [00:53:36] Yeah.

[00:53:36] Brian Hinton: [00:53:36] Yeah, sure.

[00:53:51] Frederick Weiss: [00:53:51] I want to

[00:54:03] Maggie is here. Do you have anything to say to the audience chairs, yours?

[00:54:11] Maggie Appleton: [00:54:11] Ooh. The

[00:54:26] So that’s the only thing I’d recommend.

[00:54:28] Frederick Weiss: [00:54:28] Awesome.

[00:54:32] Brian Hinton: [00:54:32] Thank you,

[00:54:44] Frederick Weiss: [00:54:44]

[00:54:47] Maggie Appleton: [00:54:47]

[00:54:58] Frederick Weiss: [00:54:58] Thank

In this episode, we get to speak with Arit Amana: Software Engineer, Founder, Writer, Mentor, and Conference Speaker. We discuss Arit’s day-to-day as a Software Engineer and her career journey. We also dive into Arit’s organization OurTimeForTech.org, a nonprofit online program that empowers early-career & career-changing Women in Tech!

• Auth0: https://auth0.com
• Auth0 on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/auth0
• Auth0 on Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/auth0
• Auth0 Avocado Labs online meetup events: https://avocadolabs.dev/

• Twitter: https://twitter.com/AritAmana
• Website: https://arit.dev/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aritamana/
• Founder: https://ourtimefortech.org/
• Github: https://github.com/msarit
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/AritDeveloper
• CodeNewbie Podcast – What it’s like to break into tech as a mother Arit Amana: https://www.codenewbie.org/podcast/what-it-s-like-to-break-into-tech-as-a-mother
• Virtual Career Talk with Arit Amana: https://youtu.be/c-njpDjJOy0
• Firehose Project: http://thefirehoseproject.com/
• Forem: https://www.forem.com/
• Host: Frederick Weiss: https://twitter.com/frederickweiss
• Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/i74Swu8Us-A

Frederick Weiss: [00:00:00] I am Frederick Philip von Weiss.

[00:01:14] Welcome to the show.

[00:01:16] Arit Amana: [00:01:16] Thank you so

[00:01:23] Frederick Weiss: [00:01:23] I try

[00:01:36] Everybody’s yeah, it’s Saturday. And then Oh wait, I gotta do this

[00:01:44] Arit Amana: [00:01:44] It’s going

[00:01:52] Frederick Weiss: [00:01:52] Yeah, our

[00:02:14] Are you, do you

[00:02:15] Arit Amana: [00:02:15] feel safe?

[00:02:40] Not so much necessarily for me, but just to still send that message that I

[00:03:05] At the end of the day we have different types of people with different

[00:03:18] Frederick Weiss: [00:03:18] Yeah.

[00:03:23] I got a little bit of trepidation. I also have my I’m fully vaccinated

[00:03:42] So I’m just a little scared, but I want to see what happens. A month,

[00:03:51] Arit Amana: [00:03:51] off. Yeah.

[00:04:02] Like I think for me, that’s my mindset, let the fall come around and

[00:04:13] Frederick Weiss: [00:04:13] Yeah, I

[00:04:19] And at that point I’ll be very excited. I’m optimistic by the end

[00:04:28] Arit Amana: [00:04:28] nice. Yeah,

[00:04:31] Frederick Weiss: [00:04:31]

[00:04:33] Arit Amana: [00:04:33] I think we

[00:04:36] Frederick Weiss: [00:04:36] Yeah.

[00:04:45] Let’s talk about what you do. You are currently a Software Engineer

[00:05:04] Arit Amana: [00:05:04] at forum? Yes.

[00:05:10] And what that means is our code is completely a hundred percent open

[00:05:31] How are online communities that value data privacy and basically just

[00:05:58] So one of the, one of the tools in our store software are our moderation

[00:06:28] Yeah. So that’s day-to-day what I do.

[00:06:31] Frederick Weiss: [00:06:31] But now,

[00:06:48] Bingo. That’s a great example, but let’s roll with a pizza. Bingo.

[00:07:07] Arit Amana: [00:07:07] Excellent

[00:07:57] And have it be self hosted. We are going to make it very modular. And so

[00:08:18] Frederick Weiss: [00:08:18] Oh, I

[00:08:34] So yeah. Let’s talk about your career journey. You didn’t start

[00:08:56] And it just blossomed. And it went down that path. I know for you, at a

[00:09:08] Arit Amana: [00:09:08] in the house.

[00:09:15] Like part of his job was outfitting companies, banks and the like with

[00:09:37] Soles and the printers and we were always surrounded with technology. And

[00:09:59] And so that was yeah. That was my MD for all my Teddy bears and my dolls

[00:10:18] Frederick Weiss: [00:10:18] So, you

[00:10:21] Arit Amana: [00:10:21] that right?

[00:10:25] And for the most part, most of my life science came easy to me yet. I talk

[00:10:48] And so I’m taking all the Oracle and the microbiology and the physical

[00:11:21] And so that was one of my early earliest mistakes. Career-wise was

[00:11:39] And so I took it to me and, Oh, I don’t have what it takes to become a

[00:11:57] Cause I figured it’s still healthy, not as intense as medicine. I

[00:12:08] Frederick Weiss: [00:12:08]

[00:12:22] You could still make it through a lot of the things, what is it? The old

[00:12:43] So you, could have finished that in a degree in three years, you could

[00:12:49] Arit Amana: [00:12:49] right? Go

[00:13:04] No, it’s the reality. I think I was, I felt like I had this all or

[00:13:26] Yeah. It’s,

[00:13:27] Frederick Weiss: [00:13:27] amazing

[00:13:54] Some kind of a mentorship relationship, you’re getting that input or a

[00:14:04] Arit Amana: [00:14:04] things. Yes,

[00:14:08] Frederick Weiss: [00:14:08] So, then

[00:14:11] Arit Amana: [00:14:11] I’m saying

[00:14:12] So I got my master’s in public health and I worked as a public health

[00:14:43] So we would scour the literature, the scientific literature, and come up

[00:14:58] Frederick Weiss: [00:14:58] Wow.

[00:15:08] And then there was I dunno if there was a pivot, but maybe there was a

[00:15:22] Arit Amana: [00:15:22] Exactly. So

[00:15:25] And I had just had my son. Son, my son was one plus and I had gotten into

[00:15:46] And that was something that I. Still dead on the side as I was a public

[00:16:08] Can you help me with that? And I had other friends who started asking me

[00:16:29] And it dovetailed quite nicely with also my desire to be home with my son.

[00:16:50] So that was my first taste of work from home. In a sense. And so

[00:17:07] So it was a win-win. Yeah.

[00:17:09] Frederick Weiss: [00:17:09] It’s

[00:17:33] But yeah, if you can and you have that opportunity, that’s amazing.

[00:17:54] How do I choose that? That the clients are coming to me. I don’t, I

[00:18:15] Th. This is too much for me. I can’t make it. I’m going to do

[00:18:37] Arit Amana: [00:18:37] Yeah. So for

[00:19:08] Literally like she had a date book and it was paper and pen and everything

[00:19:29] And so she was leaving a lot of money on the table. And so I was able to

[00:19:54] It was just she wasn’t, they weren’t falling through the cracks.

[00:20:10] It was, I see the value of what I’m doing. The money is good, but I

[00:20:34] And I. Couldn’t find those perfect combos of plugins and themes to do

[00:20:59] And see how this works under the hood.

[00:21:01] Frederick Weiss: [00:21:01] Yeah. Now

[00:21:18] Like you, you would go from seven to 11 at night. That was your time to

[00:21:44] Whoo. So yeah. Love to hear some of your insights on that.

[00:21:48] Arit Amana: [00:21:48] Absolutely.

[00:22:10] And so even though the free resources were great, I didn’t feel like I

[00:22:28] And so that’s when I looked into boot camps. And so I took a couple of

[00:22:48] And so they didn’t have this IAS. I S a thing, which is like all the

[00:23:06] And so you complete a module and module two opens up and you complete that

[00:23:24] What if at mybaby’s teasing and I’m not sleeping, and so I wanted

[00:23:48] He would not for three hours straight, but my daughter was more active.

[00:24:07] I’m going to sleep, train her. So I know she sleeps well during the

[00:24:33] She’s not going to stir. My son was with his dad and so I could, so I

[00:24:51] 24 seven. Seven days a week, basically.

[00:24:55] Frederick Weiss: [00:24:55] Yeah.

[00:25:13] You just have to roll with it. And a lot of these. Life happens. And a lot

[00:25:35] On the same token, that’s not for everybody and not everybody could

[00:25:53] So everybody’s different in that way, right? Yeah.

[00:25:56] Arit Amana: [00:25:56] Yeah. I think

[00:26:14] Like throughout the day. It just wasn’t an option for me. And I’m

[00:26:42] I’m still in touch with Jeremy today. Shout out Jeremy. He was

[00:26:57] Frederick Weiss: [00:26:57] I love

[00:27:09] What, what, exactly was that like? And how did you land your first tech

[00:27:13] Arit Amana: [00:27:13] It was, I

[00:27:29] But I don’t think because you can’t, no one can really prepare

[00:27:52] I started bootcamp, but I never really networked at any point in, even in

[00:28:13] And even to find my first tech job, I had no network. I was just hitting

[00:28:39] And so they got in touch. That’s how I got my first tech job. Yes. My

[00:28:57] And I think they remembered me from the last interview. And so they came

[00:29:06] Frederick Weiss: [00:29:06] Nice. And

[00:29:20] I, I. I see that you wrote that you were, you completed this bootcamp and

[00:29:41] Running on their golf carts, exercising on the moon, all this goofy stuff

[00:30:03] Arit Amana: [00:30:03] I think

[00:30:28] I know for me I wouldn’t say that I didn’t feel fear about age-ism

[00:30:54] But so I felt the disadvantage or I guess. I felt it, but I didn’t let

[00:31:15] And so I think that was my mindset. I didn’t let myself really sink

[00:31:43] And so I think that’s why I answered both. On the one hand, I

[00:32:06] Or else you, end up being limited, I think by these systems.

[00:32:12] Frederick Weiss: [00:32:12] Yeah.

[00:32:30] Okay. I won’t do that, but that doesn’t happen. It all begins and

[00:32:50] Arit Amana: [00:32:50] 22.

[00:32:51] Yeah. How do you know? I think it’s a great question. Yeah. That’s

[00:33:17] And so even if I felt. That way in my job hunt process, I didn’t

[00:33:40] She let’s just say it’s true. Does that mean I stopped? Does that

[00:34:01] But does that mean I don’t want to work? And so I think I just kept.

[00:34:23] Frederick Weiss: [00:34:23] Yeah.

[00:34:45] Work with a partner to start your own. There are a lot of opportunities.

[00:34:59] Arit Amana: [00:34:59] please go

[00:35:15] I applied for a position. I get it within a couple of weeks. I’m

[00:35:37] And I think that’s another thing I had to learn. Maybe I’m not, I

[00:35:57] And I think privilege comes into it, right? Like I had the privilege of a

[00:36:18] I think that different people face. And yeah. On the one hand, like you

[00:36:38] Yeah,

[00:36:40] Frederick Weiss: [00:36:40]

[00:37:04] And what, goes into that? You were talking about some experiences you had,

[00:37:24] So that’s when you have to go. Hey everybody, I gotta go. I gotta go

[00:37:42] Arit Amana: [00:37:42] Absolutely. So

[00:38:03] And just like you said, Any child that starts daycare that first month

[00:38:26] So you have to come and get your child. And so with my company it was an

[00:38:53] I don’t have any PTO saved, but my daughter’s sick and I need to

[00:39:14] So I didn’t feel that connection of having to work from home with my

[00:39:33] A lot of the conventions were still very new to me, so it was really

[00:39:59] And so that was just mentally. That was a challenge as well. So just

[00:40:16] It was rough. I have to say it was rough. I got through it. I tried to

[00:40:41] Or than what it really is. And so I just focused on just being the best

[00:40:59] Like things like that. Yeah. But it was rough. Yeah,

[00:41:02] Frederick Weiss: [00:41:02] That

[00:41:20] Break out and do things. And you’re like, sorry, I’ll be with you

[00:41:36] It’s hard for people to understand. And I think for me, sometimes

[00:42:16] Arit Amana: [00:42:16] hear it.

[00:42:19] I’m still, it’s so funny. Everyone tells me are you’re a

[00:42:46] I felt as though when I reflected over my journey and how I got to where I

[00:43:18] I felt like a lot of my confidence came from my connection to those

[00:43:50] I hear from a lot of women who say, I want to get into tech because of the

[00:44:10] Frederick Weiss: [00:44:10] Nice.

[00:44:17] So I founded. Our time for tech to give women what is often missing from

[00:44:36] Arit Amana: [00:44:36] So you’re

[00:44:45] So bootcamps are great. I love the fact that boot camps are providing that

[00:45:15] I wasn’t looking to duplicate that. And so for me, I want it to fill

[00:45:41] And so at least for like in my bootcamp, we had one-on-one mentoring

[00:46:05] Support another gap that I discovered Frederick is a lot of times with

[00:46:34] And that was another gap that I was realizing, even with the bootcamp

[00:46:57] I should say all our fellows, they never, they didn’t know how to use

[00:47:27] When you’re coding with a team, as opposed to just building your own

[00:47:50] But I find that these are the gaps that are still persisting in the. In,

[00:48:03] Frederick Weiss: [00:48:03]

[00:48:10] Yeah. What, does experience mean? How do we quantify that? How can we

[00:48:32] So a lot of times people will hire different individuals just because they

[00:48:55] You just want to be able to, get things done and have somebody that’s

[00:49:20] He might’ve known a little bit more than some of the other people and

[00:49:44] That’s wonderful.

[00:49:46] Arit Amana: [00:49:46] Even technical

[00:50:04] Some of my mentees will tell me, Oh, I’ve had job interviews and say,

[00:50:24] And they freeze. Because they never thought about it. They only

[00:50:42] You’re completing boot camps, but are you really. Thinking about what

[00:51:09] If they ask you questions about what you built and you don’t have that

[00:51:42] When your colleague makes a pull request, how do you review code? Not just

[00:52:07] And so I’m talking about the code collap track. We have better prep,

[00:52:32] Yeah.

[00:52:33] Frederick Weiss: [00:52:33] Yeah. W

[00:52:55] Yeah, I dunno it doesn’t sell it to the C levels. You can have some

[00:53:15] Your website is art.dev. Obviously our time for tech.org. And if you go to

[00:53:41] And I think a lot of people are just. Really afraid sometimes to one open

[00:54:01] Arit Amana: [00:54:01] right?

[00:54:02] Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I started a YouTube channel. It’s so funny.

[00:54:21] There’s just so many tutorials and videos. The more I got into it, the

[00:54:43] And really just, show that we’re out here doing this and you can too.

[00:54:48] Frederick Weiss: [00:54:48] Yeah.

[00:55:09] I could do that too. We, we all need role models and mentors and that,

[00:55:34] Which one of the things I know you said is. It’s taking your time and

[00:55:51] Arit Amana: [00:55:51] Yeah. What I

[00:56:22] And they make you feel like I can do this. But I think you really do

[00:56:45] What privilege. Do you enjoy that you can leverage? And what I mean by

[00:57:16] And I think when you slow down , you plan accordingly. I think when the

[00:57:41] And so it’s just as easy as following people. If their DMS is open,

[00:58:04] But for the most part, people are helpful. And so take advantage of that.

[00:58:23] Think if you manage your expectations, you will be better equipped to To

[00:58:34] Frederick Weiss: [00:58:34] I love

[00:58:44] Yeah. That’s that? That’s such great advice because if you

[00:59:03] It’s not the easiest thing for us, for everyone to do so really,

[00:59:07] Arit Amana: [00:59:07] appreciate it.

[00:59:30] So I want to recognize that you’re doing this and you’re doing it

[00:59:35] Frederick Weiss: [00:59:35] very

[00:59:43] Arit Amana: [00:59:43] all. Thanks everyone.

In this episode, we get to speak with Joey deVilla: Tech Evangelist, Author, Senior R&D Content Engineer, and rock and roll accordionist. We discuss Joey’s new job at Auth0, what it takes to be an R&D Content Engineer, and an array of super cool technologies.

• Auth0: https://auth0.com
• Auth0 on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/auth0
• Auth0 on Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/auth0
• Auth0 Avocado Labs online meetup events: https://avocadolabs.dev/

• Twitter: https://twitter.com/accordionguy
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joeydevilla/
• Global Nerdy: https://www.globalnerdy.com/
• Joey deVilla’s Personal Blog: https://www.joeydevilla.com/
• Previous episode – Jupyter Notebooks & Accordions with Joey deVilla: https://www.thundernerds.io/2019/02/jupyter-notebooks-accordions-w-joey-devilla/
• iOS Apprentice: https://www.raywenderlich.com/books/ios-apprentice/v8.3/
• Carole Baskin of Tiger King Launched a Cryptocurrency: https://www.thestreet.com/crypto/news/carole-baskin-makes-her-own-cryptocurrency-with-nfts
• Henry Petroski’s books: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=henry+petroski&i=stripbooks&ref=nb_sb_noss_2
• “How to Solve It” by George Polya: https://www.amazon.com/How-Solve-Aspect-Mathematical-Method/dp/4871878309/ref=sr_1_3
• The developer world of Okta and Auth0: https://auth0.com/blog/developers-explore-okta-auth0/
• Korg i3 Music Workstation: https://www.korg.com/us/products/synthesizers/i3/
• Host: Frederick Weiss: https://twitter.com/frederickweiss

Frederick Weiss: [00:00:00] I am Frederick Philip von Weiss, thank you

We have Auth0. Let’s talk a little bit about them and we’ll get into why that’s a

[00:01:25] Also, you could go to their sites that follow the same pattern on social

[00:01:49] And please, if you can go to the YouTubes and subscribe, subscribe to the show, click

[00:02:09] We have a very special guest today. We have a tech evangelist,

[00:02:31] Joey deVilla: [00:02:31] Always glad to be here

[00:02:34] I do love that show intro that you have.

[00:02:38] Frederick Weiss: [00:02:38] Thanks, man. Really

[00:02:43] Joey deVilla: [00:02:43] It warms my

[00:02:48] Frederick Weiss: [00:02:48] The thunder cats

[00:02:54] Like they have a little kid version where it’s all funny, all new

[00:03:05] Joey deVilla: [00:03:05] of

[00:03:05] Joey deVilla: [00:03:05] fun. I have

[00:03:13] Always classic. Exactly. A

[00:03:16] Frederick Weiss: [00:03:16] Great,

[00:03:33] I think you’ve been on the Thunder Nerds now for 333 times we first

[00:03:58] You can’t travel. How’s business going? a big question. Go for it.

[00:04:04] Joey deVilla: [00:04:04] Tricky. All

[00:04:22] And does one of the newer people? Yeah I just got cut. What I did was I

[00:04:48] So I was taking care of the half of the book that covered Swift UI

[00:05:19] You were declaring the actual UI in code and doing it declaratively. If

[00:05:43] There’s really, it’s not that STEM, okay. Yeah. It, yeah, it is

[00:06:07] And then if you wanna, if you want if I were Johnny Cochran, I would just

[00:06:31] Oh yeah. Did I change that variable? Oh, I better update that thing on the

[00:06:37] Frederick Weiss: [00:06:37] Is it

[00:06:53] I was doing things with less friction. I’m going to keep on the path

[00:07:04] Joey deVilla: [00:07:04] happens

[00:07:14] C has less than 40 keywords. Nice and simple. Like even the latest version

[00:07:38] And if you can continue programming in a language from 1970, that’s

[00:08:00] Yeah. All the more, power can get all the good object oriented goodness

[00:08:20] You can do it. If you’re programming in GTK, that’s exactly what

[00:08:33] Frederick Weiss: [00:08:33] Yeah.

[00:08:44] Hey, the results are the results and if they’re great, Good for you.

[00:08:58] Joey deVilla: [00:08:58] In that, in

[00:09:05] And I would say something like when you get the notification badge on an

[00:09:26] And you were getting an update from minutes or hours ago. And I would

[00:09:52] And then display that value somewhere on the UI. That’s already been

[00:10:14] Like the Eric Raymond’s hackers ditch, the jargon handbook, the hacker

[00:10:34] Frederick Weiss: [00:10:34] I never

[00:10:38] So yeah.

[00:10:40] Joey deVilla: [00:10:40] Did you and

[00:10:41] Frederick Weiss: [00:10:41] how to

[00:10:45] Joey deVilla: [00:10:45] don’t

[00:11:02] They were offering a lot of courses and I think there was some government

[00:11:20] So I thought I taught two two Python courses and a JavaScript course. And

[00:11:45] They now go by the name neon temple. And it was security training from

[00:11:55] Frederick Weiss: [00:11:55] Oh, that

[00:11:59] Joey deVilla: [00:11:59] Yeah, it was

[00:12:09] Or let’s see, no DDA. Yeah, Or just set up a DDoSs or just look yeah.

[00:12:16] Frederick Weiss: [00:12:16] What was

[00:12:19] Joey deVilla: [00:12:19] Ooh,

[00:12:23] Frederick Weiss: [00:12:23] Just one

[00:12:29] It was a

[00:12:29] Joey deVilla: [00:12:29] big

[00:12:30] Joey deVilla: [00:12:30] pro it was a

[00:12:42] Frederick Weiss: [00:12:42] No,

[00:12:43] Joey deVilla: [00:12:43] is a

[00:13:02] If anybody’s listening to the podcast, go look it up. Pona Gotzsche

[00:13:11] Frederick Weiss: [00:13:11] I love

[00:13:23] Good for you. What, let me ask you, what was the what was it, what was the

[00:13:32] Joey deVilla: [00:13:32] The, a,

[00:13:35] Frederick Weiss: [00:13:35] I’m

[00:13:36] Joey deVilla: [00:13:36] Oh, going

[00:13:44] So it’s been published for a good long time. But the other thing is I

[00:14:12] Because well, one, it would be absolute fun, but two, I I want to pay it

[00:14:28] Frederick Weiss: [00:14:28] It must

[00:14:31] Joey deVilla: [00:14:31] to be able

[00:14:32] Oh yeah, absolutely. And the other thing of course is that this is the

[00:14:50] I basically said, look, if this. If all the books you publish are the

[00:15:11] Frederick Weiss: [00:15:11] And

[00:15:14] So where can somebody find out about the book?

[00:15:16] Joey deVilla: [00:15:16] Okay. We can

[00:15:26] Frederick Weiss: [00:15:26] We’ll

[00:15:44] You did some research, maybe you, looked at some people on this. I

[00:15:50] Joey deVilla: [00:15:50] did some

[00:16:01] Frederick Weiss: [00:16:01] the

[00:16:01] Joey deVilla: [00:16:01] because

[00:16:07] Nice tip. Okay. And the reason for that is I used I use this for research

[00:16:29] So I figured I should do my research. I should find out who is the same,

[00:16:54] And Sam let’s see, he’s now head of developer relations.

[00:17:26] So it was really handy. So yes big, debt of gratitude to the thunder

[00:17:35] Frederick Weiss: [00:17:35] I tell a

[00:18:03] Joey deVilla: [00:18:03] Okay.

[00:18:29] And talk to them about a couple of things. One of which is programming

[00:18:53] Ah that’s that, that, that sort of thing. And it’s and it is both

[00:19:28] That sort of thing, but it’s something that you don’t do under

[00:19:53] Instead you go to home Depot and you buy a standardized door. And ideally

[00:20:20] Yeah. That is the same day. That is the same deal with Auth0. We are using

[00:20:47] You can worry about what the main thing your application does. Yeah.

[00:20:55] Frederick Weiss: [00:20:55] Yeah,

[00:21:13] And, then being able to depend on that and even more validity to the, to

[00:21:35] Joey deVilla: [00:21:35] It’s

[00:21:40] Frederick Weiss: [00:21:40] What

[00:21:44] Joey deVilla: [00:21:44] Okay.

[00:21:50] Frederick Weiss: [00:21:50] They,

[00:21:53] Joey deVilla: [00:21:53] it’s

[00:21:58] fast. The love. Okay both there is a company called Okta and they are a

[00:22:26] In fact they aren’t in. I mean they’re real bread and butter

[00:22:56] So there are these large fortune 500 fortune, two 50 fortune 100 companies

[00:23:25] Whereas OD zero on the other hand basically is going after milkers, who

[00:24:09] Okay. Gotcha.

[00:24:10] Frederick Weiss: [00:24:10] I was

[00:24:18] Joey deVilla: [00:24:18] That’s

[00:24:20] Frederick Weiss: [00:24:20] you have

[00:24:34] Serve all these different levels of clients from what you said with the

[00:24:46] Joey deVilla: [00:24:46] Yeah. And

[00:25:03] And our sales teams will take a look and go, you know what? Our buddy here

[00:25:25] Or on the other hand, somebody is going to go, you know what you need. You

[00:25:44] Frederick Weiss: [00:25:44] but no, I

[00:25:55] Is there very advantageous things that come along with this, where they

[00:26:07] Joey deVilla: [00:26:07] right? Yeah.

[00:26:18] It’s like going to Amazon and suddenly finding double the page, double

[00:26:24] Frederick Weiss: [00:26:24] Wow.

[00:26:42] Joey deVilla: [00:26:42] gather,

[00:26:54] And a lot of that re a lot of that requires a lot of that just requires a

[00:27:23] Earlier today we had a joint show off your projects. Show off your

[00:27:46] Yeah. And we’re, just beginning, we’re just beginning to get to

[00:28:10] I knew him back from his Bismark days at Microsoft when I was a developer

[00:28:20] Frederick Weiss: [00:28:20] did my

[00:28:26] Joey deVilla: [00:28:26] Oh, yeah.

[00:28:38] And actually it was the last Zune, the Zune HD, the one with a windows

[00:28:55] And it turns out it was already in the works.

[00:28:58] Frederick Weiss: [00:28:58] Isn’t

[00:29:01] Joey deVilla: [00:29:01] That, that,

[00:29:23] Sure, Yeah. That, that’s the way. Yeah. So yeah. So I am sure there

[00:29:48] Every, every day is going to be a little bit of a surprise. I don’t

[00:30:04] Frederick Weiss: [00:30:04] Are you

[00:30:08] Did you get your Tuk two vaccines and what flavor did you get? You get a

[00:30:14] Joey deVilla: [00:30:14] Pfizer? Yes,

[00:30:46] Bendix it’s the air force who are helping hustle people from from

[00:31:06] And they were quite efficient. If it weren’t for, yeah, like the

[00:31:27] The parking was a time-consuming thing.

[00:31:31] Frederick Weiss: [00:31:31] Yeah. I

[00:31:48] They were very professional. They got me in and out like that. It was the

[00:32:07] I’m two weeks in. I’m still scared to go out in public, even

[00:32:24] Joey deVilla: [00:32:24] know.

[00:32:28] You play D and D

[00:32:30] Frederick Weiss: [00:32:30] I know of

[00:32:34] Joey deVilla: [00:32:34] You have

[00:32:37] Frederick Weiss: [00:32:37] have a

[00:32:44] Joey deVilla: [00:32:44] Okay. So

[00:33:10] That’s rolling. A one, any D and D player knows sooner or later

[00:33:17] Frederick Weiss: [00:33:17] why

[00:33:20] Joey deVilla: [00:33:20] 5%. So

[00:33:39] There is Dr. Fowchee and the rest of the CDC and I have an additional

[00:33:58] Frederick Weiss: [00:33:58] Your

[00:34:03] Joey deVilla: [00:34:03] So yeah. All

[00:34:31] They were actually both in St. Pete. The new the new doc Ford’s the

[00:34:59] And that’s about it holding off until I’m holding off. But I

[00:35:19] Outdoors is a meetup where my wife and I run coders, creatives and craft

[00:35:44] Frederick Weiss: [00:35:44] I, hope

[00:36:15] You it’s, a thing, I guess it, it just progressively makes sense as

[00:36:36] Can you give me some tips, some ideas to help me improve my career journey

[00:36:49] Joey deVilla: [00:36:49] Okay.

[00:36:58] Frederick Weiss: [00:36:58] I love

[00:37:00] Joey deVilla: [00:37:00] right. And I

[00:37:28] Let’s let’s do a little bit of experimenting. Let’s see.

[00:37:56] It comes, disguised in all sorts. It comes disguised as all sorts of

[00:38:38] I’ve got to use the standard, or I’ve got to use the Canadian ism.

[00:39:01] Because you’re doing some development work, right? Yeah. All right.

[00:39:07] Frederick Weiss: [00:39:07] bit of a

[00:39:11] Joey deVilla: [00:39:11] cetera, et

[00:39:29] Yeah, 2000. It’s actually the newest of the mainstream languages,

[00:39:58] Yeah, that’s right. Ruby 1995 and Python the super hot language. 1991.

[00:40:26] Yeah, but no, that’s funny. Yeah. Talking about lately are these is

[00:40:53] Lessons learned from programming in the eighties. And a lot of them are

[00:41:23] Yeah. So then these nineties languages are carrying a lot of baggage of

[00:41:43] Simple. Yeah, simple C plus syntax. That is the only time you’re ever

[00:42:06] You can use the really well as object oriented programming languages or

[00:42:25] Let’s see. Now they provide some declarative interfaces. A lot of them

[00:42:46] It causes lots of problems. That’s what optionals are there for. Yeah,

[00:43:06] Frederick Weiss: [00:43:06]

[00:43:08] Yeah, there you

[00:43:09] Joey deVilla: [00:43:09] go. Some

[00:43:34] What, if you could treat the network as a data type and that and

[00:43:50] You have to get to fire up the modem and make the modem sound like

[00:43:54] Frederick Weiss: [00:43:54] you to

[00:43:58] Joey deVilla: [00:43:58] Yeah. And in

[00:44:10] Frederick Weiss: [00:44:10]

[00:44:12] Joey deVilla: [00:44:12] While they

[00:44:16] Frederick Weiss: [00:44:16] awesome.

[00:44:27] Joey deVilla: [00:44:27] I have

[00:44:30] Frederick Weiss: [00:44:30] Oh, you

[00:44:43] Joey deVilla: [00:44:43] able to,

[00:44:46] Yeah. Before hacking, there was something called freaking P H R E a K I N

[00:45:20] So John Draper tries, he makes himself the operator gives himself all

[00:45:32] Frederick Weiss: [00:45:32]

[00:45:44] Todd Willoughby is asking for any R&D books that you could recommend

[00:45:59] Joey deVilla: [00:45:59] books,

[00:46:21] But my last name is Paul. Yeah. P O L Y a. Okay. The classic book called

[00:46:47] At the very least what it does is it teaches you an approach to problem

[00:47:09] He’s written a whole bunch of stuff about the way engineers think, and

[00:47:32] Taking what we know of science or what we generally know and finding a way

[00:47:52] Frederick Weiss: [00:47:52] All

[00:47:52] We’ll find that we’ll put a link in the show notes then. Yeah. I

[00:48:15] I’m so passionate about this, whether it’s a new technology or old

[00:48:29] Joey deVilla: [00:48:29] yeah. And

[00:48:51] Just because you know what it is it works on all sorts of platforms. Like

[00:49:21] What I mean by that is that generally what I’m trying to do is I’m

[00:49:51] And it’s the same way where an investor would go, yes, 70% in mutual

[00:50:15] Why not? 2021. Yeah, exactly. That was, not on my 20, 21 bingo card, but

[00:50:38] Frederick Weiss: [00:50:38] the link.

[00:50:40] Hey we’re getting close to the end and I want to get to our next

[00:50:51] You have been getting, obviously you’re the accordion guy, but now

[00:51:03] Joey deVilla: [00:51:03] us actually.

[00:51:32] Oh, sorry. Yeah, it was terrible. I did one last performance and yeah.

[00:51:55] They were Frankensteiny and yeah, they were the goth. Yeah. Yeah. They

[00:52:17] And they, soon as they said, they basically said, here’s your

[00:52:37] Take it, you play it. I said, okay. So that’s how I ended up taking it

[00:53:02] Oh, there we go. Beautiful. It’s right behind me. Here. It is an

[00:53:25] And yeah, I do. And yeah, I am working on it. I am working on playing some

[00:53:49] Every keyboard manufacturer who makes an accord mace has an arranger kind

[00:54:06] Frederick Weiss: [00:54:06] Let me

[00:54:07] Joey deVilla: [00:54:07] Taylor Swift

[00:54:08] Yeah, exactly. So you’re all

[00:54:11] Frederick Weiss: [00:54:11] let’s

[00:54:12] Joey deVilla: [00:54:12] play,

[00:54:13] something. A quickly playing the song of the moment or I’ll play the

[00:54:19] Frederick Weiss: [00:54:19] Yes,

[00:54:29] Joey deVilla: [00:54:29] Let’s

[00:54:41] Is that coming across? I don’t, yeah, we can hear it perfectly, but

[00:54:54] Oh, nice. It’s close. There’s the real part is actually,

[00:55:08] yeah. So I’ve been having fun with that. I’m going to have to

[00:55:15] Frederick Weiss: [00:55:15] Yes,

[00:55:34] I see a pattern here. Then, Oh, LinkedIn, Joey Davila. The global nerdery

[00:55:49] Joey deVilla: [00:55:49] Okay. Global

[00:55:56] The name was randomly determined by a program that I wrote and two cows

[00:56:17] Yeah. And I tested my own app by going, I need a name for my tech site. I

[00:56:43] W doesn’t have characters like sniper Wolf and I was a global nerdy.

[00:56:52] Frederick Weiss: [00:56:52]

[00:56:53] Joey deVilla: [00:56:53] Yeah. So I

[00:57:17] Currently. The list is for online events that have some kind of online

[00:57:46] Yeah. So that’s basically, what that blog is about. It’s trying to

[00:57:53] Frederick Weiss: [00:57:53] I love

[00:58:00] Joey deVilla: [00:58:00] 2006 and the

[00:58:07] Oh, that’s

[00:58:08] Frederick Weiss: [00:58:08] awesome.

[00:58:19] Words of wisdom. Joey, I want to ask you at, the end here, if you could

[00:58:30] Joey deVilla: [00:58:30] yours. Okay.

[00:58:57] And now think of the current plate that we’re under and how it

[00:59:35] Its weight distribution is all wrong. It’s wing sizes, all wrong.

[00:59:47] Frederick Weiss: [00:59:47] awesome.

[00:59:59] Hopefully, we’ll be able to see you in the future, in the flesh at the

[01:00:13] Joey deVilla: [01:00:13] great.

[01:00:14] Joey deVilla: [01:00:14] All right,

[01:00:17] Frederick Weiss: [01:00:17] Thank

[01:00:23] Thank you so much, everybody for watching. Sincerely appreciate it. And

In this episode, we get to speak with Dan Mall : Co-founder and CEO of Arcade, and Founder & CEO of SuperFriendly. We discuss the origins of SuperFriendly, Arcade, the “Get It Out of Your System‬” podcast, and more.

• Auth0: https://auth0.com
• Auth0 on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/auth0
• Auth0 on Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/auth0
• Auth0 Avocado Labs online meetup events: https://avocadolabs.dev/

• Twitter: https://twitter.com/danmall
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/danmall/
• Website: https://danmall.me/
• Arcade: A Fun Way to Manage Design Tokens: https://usearcade.com/
• SuperFriendly: https://superfriendlydesign.systems
• Make Design Systems People Want to Use: https://superfriendlydesign.systems/classes/make-design-systems-people-want-to-use/
• Get It Out of Your System‬ – Podcast: https://superfriendlydesign.systems/podcasts/get-it-out-of-your-system/
• Invisionapp: Build your design system like the pros: https://www.invisionapp.com/design-system-manager/expert-advice
• Dan Mall – An Event Apart Orlando 2018: https://youtu.be/bHjSSfUpOvc
• Host: Frederick Weiss: https://twitter.com/frederickweiss

Frederick Weiss: [00:00:00] welcome to the Thunder

[00:01:15] Check at avocadolabs.dev. So with that being said, let’s go ahead and

[00:01:38] Dan Mall: [00:01:38] Yeah. Thanks

[00:01:39] I like this part two.

[00:01:41] Frederick Weiss: [00:01:41] Yes…

[00:02:02] It was great to get to know you, I’m really excited to have you back

[00:02:06] Dan Mall: [00:02:06] Yeah, me too.

[00:02:10] Frederick Weiss: [00:02:10] Yeah, our

[00:02:20]Over my bat tattoo. Ironically, what about yourself? Did you have you

[00:02:28] Dan Mall: [00:02:28] forward to.

[00:02:35] Number one on Saturday.

[00:02:37] Frederick Weiss: [00:02:37] W what

[00:02:42] Dan Mall: [00:02:42] It’s the

[00:02:46] Frederick Weiss: [00:02:46] Okay.

[00:02:55] I don’t know, but hopefully, I believe it gets you to 90, 94% security

[00:03:11] I’d like to ask you though, how has it affected you, your family, and

[00:03:16]Dan Mall: [00:03:16] In a lot of ways

[00:03:30]The big difference is that everybody else is home too. So it’s like

[00:03:51] So just adjusting to all of that has been weird.

[00:03:56] Frederick Weiss: [00:03:56] Yeah.

[00:04:03] Dan Mall: [00:04:03] actually started

[00:04:10]My wife’s a stay-at-home mom. She’s a writer also. She finished up

[00:04:26] So trying to figure that out has been a struggle. We’re coping and

[00:04:33] Frederick Weiss: [00:04:33] mind if I

[00:04:39] Dan Mall: [00:04:39] Yes. So it’s

[00:04:42] And I actually don’t know what it’s about because one of the

[00:04:57] I know it’s a, it’s bit Harry Potter esque. There’s a female

[00:05:07] Frederick Weiss: [00:05:07]

[00:05:19] But yeah I guess I broke that rule right away. Cause every time I wrote a

[00:05:26] Dan Mall: [00:05:26] Totally. Okay.

[00:05:33] I think it’s a little bit closer.

[00:05:35] Frederick Weiss: [00:05:35] Okay. If

[00:05:55] I think that was the title of the video. And you wrote about the common

[00:06:14]Do you mind going into that and how you started with you were working a

[00:06:27] Dan Mall: [00:06:27] Yeah, totally. I

[00:06:34] Signals as to whether someone is good or bad at their job. So if you think

[00:06:50]And then other people don’t, they just learn it on their own and they

[00:07:03] And there are also professional web designers who do that as a living. So

[00:07:18] So it’s hard for people to know what they’re going to get when it

[00:07:33] So I think we need better terms and we need better ways to signal that

[00:07:46]Which is that’s cute, but that’s very different than what I do too.

[00:07:56]Frederick Weiss: [00:07:56] I think a

[00:08:11] And especially in this environment, it’s really difficult. I don’t

[00:08:37]If you know that you’re a specialist, maybe you want to pursue that

[00:08:42] Dan Mall: [00:08:42] Yeah. I’m

[00:08:53] It’s just that it means lots of different things. And so that’s, I

[00:09:09] And then other folks are like no, this is the business that I want to run,

[00:09:23] Both of those are viable paths. Both of those are good paths. But we

[00:09:42]And I want to just do my own thing and be an independent person and work

[00:09:59] There are people who are one-person agencies, and that’s the way that

[00:10:16] So like, all of that is, is encompassed in the term freelancer. And

[00:10:28] Frederick Weiss: [00:10:28] Yeah,

[00:10:44] Which are freelancers and that’s how you could cite the best people

[00:11:25] Dan Mall: [00:11:25] sure.

[00:11:26] Yeah, totally. So definitely there’s a lot of, there’s a lot of

[00:11:40] They’re still doing great stuff they’ve been around for, I

[00:12:06] Would that be cool? Could I work here part-time somehow, but be treated

[00:12:20] I can basically work two full-time jobs. I would work at the agency during

[00:12:33]And before starting super-friendly, so when I started SuperFriendly in

[00:12:52] It was like, it was, I had a lot of things already. As I worked the two

[00:13:09]I didn’t have that risk. And I didn’t have that worry in a lot in a

[00:13:26] I already had contracts that I knew I could use. I already had a way of

[00:13:39] How do you direct them? How do you get everybody on the same page? Like

[00:13:51] Frederick Weiss: [00:13:51] Yeah,

[00:13:56] Like you said, feast or famine. It’s like the old thing where people

[00:14:22]Totally.

[00:14:22]Dan Mall: [00:14:22] One of the things

[00:14:35]That is a massive privilege to have, and that is a massive advantage to

[00:14:47] So the ability to observe how other people do things and then mentally

[00:15:03]How could I remix all the pieces that I enjoyed? And then also eliminate

[00:15:19] Frederick Weiss: [00:15:19] Yeah. So

[00:15:39] You’re finding people that fit within that special unique need that

[00:15:52] Dan Mall: [00:15:52] Yeah. You got

[00:15:59] Pitch that way, and say this is the best team for you. And one of the

[00:16:17] And co went around the table. And one of the people on the project is my

[00:16:31]Did you say you were an elementary school teacher? And Vic was like, yeah.

[00:16:47] So as soon as he heard that Vic was a teacher, an elementary school

[00:17:01]Sometimes the way that you win is the go you just have people on the team

[00:17:14] Like we win based on that now to employ all of those people would be

[00:17:32] And I could incentivize them appropriately, whether that’s with money

[00:17:48] That’s how Hollywood makes movies. Like the way that I talk about a

[00:18:08] And then they all go their separate ways after that. And they have no idea

[00:18:22]So it could that model work in digital, and so that was the Sega Genesis of

[00:18:28] Frederick Weiss: [00:18:28] It makes

[00:18:36]Dan Mall: [00:18:36] I prefer the

[00:18:38] Frederick Weiss: [00:18:38] Oh, is

[00:19:03] Sounds good. Yeah.

[00:19:09] So I imagine everybody could see this right now.

[00:19:11] Dan Mall: [00:19:11] I can

[00:19:11] Frederick Weiss: [00:19:11] see it.

[00:19:20] Dan Mall: [00:19:20] Yeah, sure.

[00:19:33]And I hope that’s the case for every time. It’s probably not. But

[00:19:50] So if there’s a client that can spend a million dollars, we have

[00:20:07]We try to be as accommodating as we can, but for those that have a thousand

[00:20:20] But, at least that’s something that hopefully that’s better than

[00:20:37] And they shared it with all the other teams and then no one really used

[00:20:52] And so we’re just not sure how to go about this. So that’s the

[00:21:06] So we just wanted to teach how we make successful design systems. I wanted

[00:21:12] Frederick Weiss: [00:21:12] read this

[00:21:27] Probably shy away from any kind of digital governance. They right away

[00:21:44] What’s that summertime some summertime. Yeah. Anyway, but yeah what is

[00:21:54] Dan Mall: [00:21:54] Yeah, I think

[00:22:15] Yeah, but that card doesn’t have two buttons in it. And I need our

[00:22:30] Ah, just use bootstrap. And we hear that all the time bootstrap. Ah, who

[00:22:47] So all of the things that design systems are supposed to do, help you be

[00:23:04] It’s been fine. So so the human nature stuff is. How do you get

[00:23:19] There is no incentive, usually in fact it’s the opposite. It’s

[00:23:50] And that’s the idea of piloting that I think it’s episode five or

[00:23:56] Frederick Weiss: [00:23:56] Gotcha.

[00:24:23]Why don’t we all take a look at these videos and they’ll help us

[00:24:30] Dan Mall: [00:24:30] know. Yeah.

[00:24:48]They may be, they may understand it at a high level. They might understand

[00:25:03] When they look at it, Oh, when I think about a design system, they

[00:25:19] Here’s why one thing, here’s why a component library is different

[00:25:40]And then it’s also for practitioners too. It’s also for designers

[00:25:54] So a lot of this is about understanding what the other side does. You know

[00:26:13] Frederick Weiss: [00:26:13]

[00:26:32] This is, this is my blankie, right? That’s a

[00:26:35] Dan Mall: [00:26:35] fair analogy or

[00:26:48] Not that somebody else saying Oh, this is better. I have kids. I remember

[00:27:01] They’re like, okay, cool. I’ll give up my blanket. So like some,

[00:27:19]Frederick Weiss: [00:27:19] And I

[00:27:45] Dan Mall: [00:27:45] Yeah, design

[00:28:00]The HTML, I paste it into my thing, but if you update something if

[00:28:19] They’re probably built on NPM or yarn or something that you can use as

[00:28:35] Well,

[00:28:35]Frederick Weiss: [00:28:35] And

[00:28:52] So we talked about the friction, the resistance. So buy-in isn’t a

[00:29:12] But also when you have these projects they live on, I think some of the

[00:29:28] These are things that live and breathe and the

[00:29:31] Dan Mall: [00:29:31] evolve as well.

[00:29:46] And that’s where we get Oh, we haven’t touched that thing in seven

[00:30:05] So why not change them in a way that everybody gets the benefit of those

[00:30:09] Frederick Weiss: [00:30:09] Yeah, it

[00:30:21] And I love this for design tokens. I don’t know if everybody gets the

[00:30:35] Dan Mall: [00:30:35] Yeah, sure. For

[00:30:41] There’s a great video that Gina Anne made about design tokens. She put

[00:30:57] So for example, think of every, any company that you might know of, or the

[00:31:15] The problem is if you have to distribute that brand color, that’s a

[00:31:44]What’d you change in that one place. Every other place that is

[00:31:58] Spacing its topography, it’s all, animation time, it’s all sorts

[00:32:14]Frederick Weiss: [00:32:14] So why

[00:32:23] Dan Mall: [00:32:23] So it’s

[00:32:31]So do we, we’re like a tool, like a tool that will help you capture

[00:32:45]There’s, they’re not sustainable in the same way that any

[00:32:59] So after years of actually just call our clients saying do you have a tool

[00:33:11] Frederick Weiss: [00:33:11] Makes

[00:33:15]I wanted to read this, which is, it says here a fun way to create, edit and

[00:33:37]Some of the challenges.

[00:33:38] Dan Mall: [00:33:38] Yeah, sure. So

[00:33:57] So the rebrand for this company was, all of our buttons are currently

[00:34:16] They have that many products, they have that many things, and it’s

[00:34:33] Imagine going into those apps one by one and just see, if it’s

[00:34:51] We’re talking about, kiosks, like all of that stuff. And it’s like

[00:35:07]We’re just going to make a bunch of stuff from scratch. Cause it’s

[00:35:20] But right now it is such a pain point specifically for enterprises that

[00:35:35] Frederick Weiss: [00:35:35] Yeah, I

[00:35:54] What am I talking about? Several hundreds of different team members all

[00:36:16] Dan Mall: [00:36:16] Oh boy. I think

[00:36:28]But it’s a podcast where we ask guests one question we ask what’s

[00:36:46] Frederick Weiss: [00:36:46] So w why

[00:36:55] Dan Mall: [00:36:55] like talking to

[00:37:06] I, generally relatively in our industry over the last decade that so many

[00:37:29] And I think, a design system is a community effort. Ultimately, when

[00:37:51] And I feel like we need more of those things. Like I think those things

[00:38:07] And I thought it was just me. So I think that was part of the impetus for

[00:38:19] It’s yeah, this is hard me too. And I think that even that is like as

[00:38:26]Frederick Weiss: [00:38:26] It’s

[00:38:39] And sometimes you come up with an idea afterward, too. Exactly. Yeah.

[00:38:59] She’s a, it’s our anniversary. Just wanted to wish her a happy

[00:39:13] Dan Mall: [00:39:13] Oh, I was going

[00:39:15] And and I love that book. That’s a great book. I recommend that book

[00:39:22] Frederick Weiss: [00:39:22] Yeah.

[00:39:30] So I had a good pricing design, which is a great book, but I saw a tweet

[00:39:47] Dan Mall: [00:39:47] You are put on

[00:39:48] I can tell you that it will probably be a book, Andy, probably with pages,

[00:40:02] Frederick Weiss: [00:40:02]

[00:40:03] Dan Mall: [00:40:03] That’s what

[00:40:06] Frederick Weiss: [00:40:06]

[00:40:11] Dan Mall: [00:40:11] something out of

[00:40:13] You might get a gap here and there if you keep poking on it.

[00:40:18] Frederick Weiss: [00:40:18] Cool. The

[00:40:31] Dan Mall: [00:40:31] That was maybe

[00:40:36] Frederick Weiss: [00:40:36] around

[00:40:54] You guys are, and yeah. So the heartache of design at scale selling the

[00:41:09]Dan Mall: [00:41:09] It is difficult.

[00:41:12] So I think that, when we made the podcast, or excuse me, we made the

[00:41:30] It’s really good, but nobody else here knows about it. So I just need

[00:41:43] Like I get it. It’s a good investment for a company. What we’re

[00:41:58]And it’s like trying to sell vaporware. So what a lot of teams try and

[00:42:12] Like you haven’t made anything yet. And you haven’t done anything

[00:42:30] And leadership is no, because I don’t know what I’m buying yet,

[00:42:53] And we want to try and scale that now. So you basically have to put your

[00:43:08] We have the number of people. We have the number of products we have, and

[00:43:21] Frederick Weiss: [00:43:21] Yeah.

[00:43:38] How is this going to make us more efficient, right? Yeah, absolutely.

[00:43:56]You’re organizing with other members of your team. Do you mind just

[00:44:02] Dan Mall: [00:44:02] Yeah, totally.

[00:44:09] I haven’t worked on projects in a couple of years. I am probably bad

[00:44:24] I’m the only employee. And I think a lot of folks are like, Oh, that

[00:44:37] So my time is generally spent working on super-friendly to figure out,

[00:44:52] So what I did today was this morning, I had a conversation with a writer

[00:45:17] So if anybody wants to work on a project or they want to hear about

[00:45:30]I talked to my head of operations today because she was like, I have a

[00:45:46]And I did some critiquing with her. And so that was my day. That was my day

[00:46:06]I still do some stuff like that. It’s kinda random. I don’t know if

[00:46:12]Frederick Weiss: [00:46:12] Are you

[00:46:24] Is that still true? Does that

[00:46:27] Dan Mall: [00:46:27] resonate? I get

[00:46:39] I have rest. And my brain is like, cool, let’s go. Let’s do some

[00:46:53]Frederick Weiss: [00:46:53] For the

[00:46:56]Is it more just that, it’s part of your lifestyle. Like for example if

[00:47:15] This is your life is part of an integral part of your life,

[00:47:19] Dan Mall: [00:47:19] right? W with

[00:47:30] So relatively, I don’t get a lot done, but it is relative. So I think

[00:47:45]Do you know Parkinson’s law? I’m talking about, I’m not aware

[00:48:00]If you give yourself four hours to do it, probably take four hours. So I, I

[00:48:17] And then I remember starting, and this is when I worked at happy cog. We

[00:48:31]They onboarded me and we want you to do a concept. I’m like, okay,

[00:48:43] I want more time. So it’s yeah, of course, I can do it. And you know

[00:48:56]So now I know, if I have an hour to get a Compton like I can do it in an

[00:49:13] So I, my work has to now fit in a smaller box. And every time that happens

[00:49:30] Am I doing homework with them? Is she going to sit with them during the

[00:49:43] My wife could work in the afternoon. And so I, my schedule became around

[00:49:59] It was still not at the quality that I wanted it to be. When I had three

[00:50:11] I can always iterate my way there let’s, there’s a time that I

[00:50:16] Frederick Weiss: [00:50:16]

[00:50:30]There is your Twitter account, which goes by your name, Dan mall. I see a

[00:50:54] Dan Mall: [00:50:54] Oh man.

[00:51:34] And I would like it if other people were kind to me too. If anybody

[00:51:41] Frederick Weiss: [00:51:41] liked

[00:51:50] one of the golden rule things, right?

[00:51:53] Dan Mall: [00:51:53] Maybe I dunno if

[00:51:56]Frederick Weiss: [00:51:56] No.

[00:52:05] He wanted to ask you how was the Whoopie pie that came with the lobster

[00:52:10] Dan Mall: [00:52:10] It was very

[00:52:25] It was all delicious. Thank you. Thank you, Todd, for all that.

[00:52:28] Frederick Weiss: [00:52:28]

[00:52:39]Dan Mall: [00:52:39] Yeah. That’s

[00:52:42] Frederick Weiss: [00:52:42] shot.

[00:53:42] nice. That was really cool, man. Thanks for sharing that with us. I

[00:54:00] Dan Mall: [00:54:00] Yeah, that’s

[00:54:07] Frederick Weiss: [00:54:07] Yeah.

[00:54:12] Dan Mall: [00:54:12] Absolutely. It

[00:54:14] When I switched between the piano keyboard and the keyboard on my desk.

[00:54:22] Frederick Weiss: [00:54:22]

[00:54:33] Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much.

[00:54:35] Dan Mall: [00:54:35] It’s my

[00:54:37] Frederick Weiss: [00:54:37] our

[00:54:50] Dan Mall: [00:54:50] Bye all.

In this episode, we get to speak with software engineer educator, Kent C. Dodds. We discuss community, giving back, and future technology.

• Auth0: https://auth0.com
• Auth0 on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/auth0
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• How I am so productive: https://kentcdodds.com/blog/how-i-am-so-productive
• The bot for the KCD discord community: https://github.com/kentcdodds/kcd-discord-bot
• KCD Office Hours: https://kentcdodds.com/office-hours/
• KCD Learning Clubs: https://kentcdodds.com/clubs/
• Front-End Engineering Courses: https://frontendmasters.com
• Egghead: https://egghead.io
• Hosts: 
  • Frederick Weiss: https://twitter.com/frederickweiss​
  • Brian Hinton: https://twitter.com/mrbrianhinton

Brian Hinton: [00:00:00] welcome. I’m Brian Hinton

[00:00:28] Frederick Weiss: [00:00:28] and

[00:00:41] Brian Hinton: [00:00:41] and do tech

[00:00:43] Frederick Weiss: [00:00:43] Ah,

[00:00:54] And also, if you can please go to YouTubes, go to

[00:01:06] Brian Hinton: [00:01:06] Hinton,

[00:01:25]Also check out them out on both YouTube and Twitch under a username. Auth0.

[00:01:47] Frederick Weiss: [00:01:47] Yes.

[00:02:05] Kent C. Dodds: [00:02:05] Thank you.

[00:02:07] Frederick Weiss: [00:02:07] happy to

[00:02:10] How you been. what’s up. What’s new for you, Kent.

[00:02:13] Kent C. Dodds: [00:02:13] Oh

[00:02:27]Yet I’m working behind the scenes on that sort of thing. My biggest

[00:02:39] Frederick Weiss: [00:02:39] Nice. And

[00:02:44] And apparently you also really love the Thundercats reference. Yes, I do.

[00:02:52] Kent C. Dodds: [00:02:52] I

[00:03:01] Brian Hinton: [00:03:01] Yeah. I

[00:03:04] That’s silver Hawks or silver Hawks. Yeah.

[00:03:11] Frederick Weiss: [00:03:11] Yeah,

[00:03:32] What’s how has this first, how has this affected you and your

[00:03:40] Kent C. Dodds: [00:03:40] Yeah. So

[00:03:52] And I don’t think I was impacted as much by COVID as lots of people.

[00:04:14] So I was really lucky in that way that it didn’t impact me as much as

[00:04:31] Frederick Weiss: [00:04:31] It’s

[00:04:35]I think there was some stuff written about the vaccine in South Africa that

[00:04:54] Kent C. Dodds: [00:04:54] Yeah,

[00:05:09]And so you just, you don’t know what to trust online because you hear

[00:05:20] Frederick Weiss: [00:05:20] So you

[00:05:43] You have four children. I have one child and I can’t find the time to

[00:05:49] Brian Hinton: [00:05:49] Could you

[00:05:53] Frederick Weiss: [00:05:53] Do you

[00:05:54] Kent C. Dodds: [00:05:54] confirm

[00:06:05] Cause I am child number 11 of 12 in my family. Wow. That’s impressive.

[00:06:32] And I do have a blog post called how I’m so productive that I wrote

[00:06:50]And so I have that blog post to people can go take a look at, cause it is

[00:07:00] Frederick Weiss: [00:07:00] I like we

[00:07:17] Where did you get the inspiration to be an educator? Why are you and in

[00:07:27] Kent C. Dodds: [00:07:27] Yeah, sure.

[00:07:37] It was just like an expected thing that you did every few months or so.

[00:07:54]I volunteered to be a tutor and help people in our classes. And I hosted a

[00:08:11]For learning and getting really good at whatever it is you’re trying to

[00:08:16] Frederick Weiss: [00:08:16] Yeah. The

[00:08:17] Kent C. Dodds: [00:08:17] code kind

[00:08:29] Let’s move on. I, that’s not what I do. And this is why I’m

[00:08:51]So yeah, I, I don’t know. That’s where things come in. And when I

[00:09:07] And that’s that was pretty cool.

[00:09:12] Frederick Weiss: [00:09:12] Let me

[00:09:31] Do you mind elaborating on where the Phil Collins, the Genesis came from?

[00:09:35] Kent C. Dodds: [00:09:35] Yeah, sure.

[00:09:48] And and I’ve over the last few years have just started to realize

[00:10:12] Oh, okay. That makes sense. Maybe I should research this a little deeper

[00:10:30]Or like we know where their money comes from. And it’s the reason that

[00:10:49] And and I said, I think every company should create a page that says where

[00:11:07] And then I realized, wait for a second, I have a company. So I was like,

[00:11:25] Because my mission is not pushed any further forward by showing people ads

[00:11:46] So that, I guess it’s useful, but it’s, that’s not where

[00:11:59]So that’s any way the transparency page helped me focus a little bit

[00:12:16] Brian Hinton: [00:12:16] Yeah,

[00:12:29]Yeah. I love that. Going back to what you said earlier about how you’d

[00:12:47] So I’m just curious, are you what are you working on now with

[00:12:52] Kent C. Dodds: [00:12:52] something.

[00:13:01] I’m just extremely public about it. There are very few things that I

[00:13:17] And so yes, I am working on a TypeScript thing right now. I’m in the,

[00:13:34] And I’ve been doing a lot of that as a practice to prepare for a

[00:13:54]I shouldn’t say a lot, but if you are that person, you’re in a very

[00:14:11] If you haven’t had much experience or you want to just freshen up and

[00:14:22]Brian Hinton: [00:14:22] Yeah.

[00:14:34] Talk about this episode as a community and building a community. So your

[00:14:46] Kent C. Dodds: [00:14:46] clubhouse.

[00:14:50] Brian Hinton: [00:14:50] maybe next

[00:14:55]And I was like, I just happened to go the NPM page to look something up. I

[00:15:23] Kent C. Dodds: [00:15:23] Yeah. I,

[00:15:43] And talk with each other. They’ll be able to help each other. And

[00:16:00] And so I can drastically reduce the price. But you lose that side of being

[00:16:21]So I started with actually spectrum spread spectrum. chat and that worked

[00:16:39] And I created discord in an hour made the images and whatever. And set up

[00:16:56] So that was a very important thing to me. If I’m going to be in charge

[00:17:14]But I also wanted to get email addresses and stuff as well. Not only for

[00:17:36] In fact, it says, do you accept the code of conduct here it is. And they

[00:17:56]So because of that friction that I’ve added to join the community,

[00:18:14] And so we have none of those because people realize that, and then they

[00:18:27] Brian Hinton: [00:18:27] Oh yeah. I

[00:18:29] Kent C. Dodds: [00:18:29] and I had

[00:18:33] And so now there’s this nebulous account just hanging out in some

[00:18:47] I, I love it. There.

[00:18:48] Brian Hinton: [00:18:48] Yeah. And

[00:18:53] Kent C. Dodds: [00:18:53] I know of

[00:19:01] Brian Hinton: [00:19:01] Yeah. And

[00:19:06] That’s an incredible concept. Could you tell us a little bit about the

[00:19:11] Kent C. Dodds: [00:19:11] So when I

[00:19:27] We’ll just see, make sure that everything flows nicely and everything.

[00:19:43]But yeah, so what I found in that process was that the people who, and

[00:20:08] And I didn’t want to lose that either. And so I wanted to have some

[00:20:22]And the problem with going recorded is now you lose access to the

[00:20:40]And so what a learning coach is basically my bot facilitates getting a

[00:20:56]But the idea is you have this curriculum you want to go through there,

[00:21:15]It’s been really successful. We’ve had I dunno, maybe two dozen

[00:21:28] And then it kind of tapers off in there maybe four or five people laugh.

[00:21:45]And having a group of people that I feel accountable to make me more likely

[00:21:54] Frederick Weiss: [00:21:54] with you.

[00:22:14] Kent C. Dodds: [00:22:14] Absolutely.

[00:22:18] Brian Hinton: [00:22:18] One thing,

[00:22:35] Frederick Weiss: [00:22:35] I know

[00:22:36]Kent C. Dodds: [00:22:36] A lot of

[00:22:54] And and I’m always way better equipped to teach the things that

[00:23:13] And then it’s B just become naturally interesting to me. And so

[00:23:21] Frederick Weiss: [00:23:21] got a, we

[00:23:24]Kent C. Dodds: [00:23:24] Yeah. It

[00:23:34]And I, of course, have to be a community. Yeah. They keep you there. Yes.

[00:23:50] Brian Hinton: [00:23:50] Yeah

[00:23:54] I’ve used it. A lot of people have joined my team. Some of them are

[00:24:10] JavaScript is reacted and I really. I appreciate that you did that. High

[00:24:16] Kent C. Dodds: [00:24:16] Yeah.

[00:24:36] So what you’re talking about, Brian, there is at the very first lesson

[00:24:50]And I feel like people are able to draw a line around abstractions a lot

[00:25:11]But the jump from what you could do with just react on dot render. And

[00:25:28]And I said, you know what? That test is actually not that bad. And I,

[00:25:41] I was going to make a list of here don’t do these things with the

[00:25:55] And I did this was like two weeks before I was giving a workshop at Trulia

[00:26:13] Yeah. I’m really glad that reacts.

[00:26:17] Brian Hinton: [00:26:17] That’s

[00:26:20] Kent C. Dodds: [00:26:20] Yeah. Yeah.

[00:26:33] And like comments and get a hub, all encourage people to, to write

[00:26:52] Brian Hinton: [00:26:52] Nice job.

[00:26:54] One thing I’m curious about do you have LA what are your next goals

[00:27:04] Kent C. Dodds: [00:27:04] Yeah. A few

[00:27:11] Like it, wasn’t just here’s the place that I’m talking about,

[00:27:31] just because it’s the KCD to the community doesn’t mean I’m

[00:27:47] And when you schedule a meetup, all your followers will get a notification

[00:28:05] And so now we have people who. Are hosting their own meetups and

[00:28:20] And that there are a lot of people who can help me in that mission. I

[00:28:37]Frederick Weiss: [00:28:37] Let me ask

[00:28:47] Kent C. Dodds: [00:28:47] Yeah,

[00:28:52] Frederick Weiss: [00:28:52]

[00:28:55] Kent C. Dodds: [00:28:55] Yeah. So

[00:29:16] And if I can help them to level up their skills, to be able to push their

[00:29:36] And that’s also like something that I’m thinking about pretty

[00:29:54] Brian Hinton: [00:29:54] What do you

[00:30:08]What are you, what are some tips and tricks for people?

[00:30:11] Kent C. Dodds: [00:30:11] Yeah. So I

[00:30:27] And we have plans that we make together. And then when we’re getting

[00:30:45] This is the next thing that I’m working on, but I don’t have to

[00:31:02]That means that when I have those slumps, I can just go hang out with my

[00:31:16] I’m doing it

[00:31:17] Brian Hinton: [00:31:17] now.

[00:31:20] Kent C. Dodds: [00:31:20] Yeah. So I

[00:31:35] Can I help Jane out with her thing or whatever just to change the pace a

[00:31:45] Brian Hinton: [00:31:45] So when will

[00:31:52] Frederick Weiss: [00:31:52]

[00:31:56] Kent C. Dodds: [00:31:56] You know

[00:32:11] Frederick Weiss: [00:32:11] We just

[00:32:14]Speaking of your courses, I just wanted to bring up this cause I’ve,

[00:32:34] Thanks for your testing article. Like how that’s some great feedback.

[00:32:43] Kent C. Dodds: [00:32:43] It makes me

[00:33:07]I’ve written a lot of articles about testing. In fact, I’m just

[00:33:18] Brian Hinton: [00:33:18] Oh, I was

[00:33:20] Kent C. Dodds: [00:33:20] Sorry.

[00:33:28]I know-how now, like I can tell you this story, but it was never a plan of

[00:33:48] And I test everything manually. I was like, what pain is that? And so I,

[00:34:02]And so I just started testing everything. And when you do something enough,

[00:34:18] And and then I became the testing guy. I made a course about it. And yeah

[00:34:33] I want to learn it. I want to really understand it. But’s a big

[00:34:46] Brian Hinton: [00:34:46] and anything

[00:34:53] Kent C. Dodds: [00:34:53] Oh yeah. Th

[00:35:05] JavaScript is there’s this new, relatively new software called MSW

[00:35:26]And then in 2019 I did a relaunch I, or V2, I just revamped everything. And

[00:35:51] So I recorded a couple of videos to show you a couple of cool additional

[00:36:06]I haven’t made huge changes like that. But it’s Hey, there’s

[00:36:13] Brian Hinton: [00:36:13] you, do you

[00:36:23] Kent C. Dodds: [00:36:23] Yeah. I

[00:36:30] Or most of the time it’s something that they built that has been

[00:36:44] And so those are pretty easy. I just say, Hey, I’m not your target

[00:36:58] So I, you just choose which things you’re going to spend your time

[00:37:03]Frederick Weiss: [00:37:03]

[00:37:17]I wanted to also ask you about the podcast. How’s that going? Or are

[00:37:23] Kent C. Dodds: [00:37:23] Yeah, so I

[00:37:40]Yeah. So the reason that I do that is I’ve done a lot of podcasts. I

[00:37:54]But yeah, and then I have a podcast on Epic react and where I’m the

[00:38:13]Yeah. And especially when you’re doing I did the live thing like you

[00:38:30]And so when I decided, Hey, I want to do this podcast. You think I want to

[00:38:47] And then there’s no expectation on consistency from me. Nobody people

[00:39:02] Frederick Weiss: [00:39:02]

[00:39:02]Could you imagine if you had a wait like a week for a new Wanda vision to

[00:39:13] Brian Hinton: [00:39:13] I just want

[00:39:16] Kent C. Dodds: [00:39:16] And I do

[00:39:18] People are like when on season four coming out and that’s fine. I

[00:39:34] Egghead helps me with that a lot. You’re not

[00:39:37] Brian Hinton: [00:39:37] doing

[00:39:41] Kent C. Dodds: [00:39:41] Busy was

[00:39:52] Or I’d say, Oh yeah. And then this they respond back. No, they never

[00:39:59] Frederick Weiss: [00:39:59] talking

[00:40:01] Kent C. Dodds: [00:40:01] Yeah. Yeah,

[00:40:09] And then I got to talk with amazing people. I started with angular air and

[00:40:26]So it’s not really a chore to me. But it does take time. And yeah.

[00:40:35] Brian Hinton: [00:40:35] Yeah. Same

[00:40:47] And I’m like Kent is four kids. He just ate the lasagna last night,

[00:40:51] Frederick Weiss: [00:40:51] yeah. Our

[00:41:05] And like you said, getting the opportunities to talk to some of the more

[00:41:15] Kent C. Dodds: [00:41:15] Yeah.

[00:41:17] Brian Hinton: [00:41:17] Yeah.

[00:41:23] Frederick Weiss: [00:41:23] think the

[00:41:27] Kent C. Dodds: [00:41:27] I am

[00:41:37] Frederick Weiss: [00:41:37] Ready to

[00:41:42] Brian Hinton: [00:41:42] Ramble time.

[00:41:47]My first question would be where do you mind not waiting?

[00:41:52] Kent C. Dodds: [00:41:52] Where do I

[00:42:11] Frederick Weiss: [00:42:11]

[00:42:20] Kent C. Dodds: [00:42:20] Ooh, this

[00:42:28]I am a very driven person. I‘m, I get really committed to things and

[00:42:35] Brian Hinton: [00:42:35] Nice. Okay.

[00:42:46] Kent C. Dodds: [00:42:46] shout out

[00:42:49] That would be so fun.

[00:42:52] Frederick Weiss: [00:42:52] Kent, if

[00:43:02] Kent C. Dodds: [00:43:02] I would

[00:43:09] Frederick Weiss: [00:43:09] It is

[00:43:12] Kent C. Dodds: [00:43:12] Yup.

[00:43:15] Brian Hinton: [00:43:15] Okay. You go

[00:43:30]Kent C. Dodds: [00:43:30] Shoot I with

[00:43:37] So it doesn’t make a difference. What I choose.

[00:43:39] Brian Hinton: [00:43:39] Oh, you made

[00:43:41] Kent C. Dodds: [00:43:41] Oh, so like

[00:43:45]Typing.

[00:43:48] Frederick Weiss: [00:43:48] There you

[00:44:05] Brian Hinton: [00:44:05] ghost. What

[00:44:07]Kent C. Dodds: [00:44:07] Invite them

[00:44:12] So may as well act friendly.

[00:44:17] Frederick Weiss: [00:44:17] Would you

[00:44:20] Brian Hinton: [00:44:20] what chores

[00:44:23]Kent C. Dodds: [00:44:23] I queen

[00:44:28] Frederick Weiss: [00:44:28] Nice. All

[00:44:37] Kent C. Dodds: [00:44:37] such as

[00:44:40]One thing that people know about me is I listened at three X that’s how

[00:44:49] Frederick Weiss: [00:44:49] this

[00:44:55] Kent C. Dodds: [00:44:55] I

[00:45:13] I’m a big fan. And yeah, like some self-help books and stuff like

[00:45:30] It doesn’t matter. I don’t even realize it. Sometimes it can

[00:45:45] Frederick Weiss: [00:45:45] Gotcha.

[00:45:51] He was talking about how all he does with podcasts is listen to them at

[00:46:05] Kent C. Dodds: [00:46:05] I know like

[00:46:12]So lots of that is because of the parts of their brain that are processing

[00:46:34]And and so I can listen. Otherwise, I’ll miss stuff. And I’ve just

[00:46:37] Frederick Weiss: [00:46:37] cleaning

[00:46:40] Brian Hinton: [00:46:40] I’ve

[00:46:45] Kent C. Dodds: [00:46:45] Yeah,

[00:46:54] can’t but slower.

[00:46:59] I talk fast. I don’t like wasting people’s time and I don’t

[00:47:03] Brian Hinton: [00:47:03] Would you

[00:47:09] Kent C. Dodds: [00:47:09] Oh, I find

[00:47:20] Kent,

[00:47:20] Frederick Weiss: [00:47:20] what

[00:47:31] Kent C. Dodds: [00:47:31] Sorry,

[00:47:42]And and sometimes you don’t realize that the thing you did was a

[00:47:48] Brian Hinton: [00:47:48] So wait,

[00:47:52] Frederick Weiss: [00:47:52] you

[00:47:58] Kent C. Dodds: [00:47:58] I can’t

[00:48:06] Frederick Weiss: [00:48:06] Yes,

[00:48:20] Kent C. Dodds: [00:48:20] Yeah. That

[00:48:22]I have made a living building or creating material for experienced

[00:48:43]And so I don’t know if I can recommend that path. If there’s maybe

[00:48:59] That’d probably be a good place to start.

[00:49:02] Frederick Weiss: [00:49:02] Oh yeah.

[00:49:04]Brian Hinton: [00:49:04] What do you

[00:49:11] Kent C. Dodds: [00:49:11] When I was

[00:49:28]I miss that. Now I have that, but like now I have a wife and four kids. I

[00:49:45] That’s like where I got my drive and my productivity, just like I have

[00:49:54] Frederick Weiss: [00:49:54] Love