Algorithms + Data Structures = Programs - Episode 87: Special Guest Tony Van Eerd! (Part 4)

Episode Date: July 22, 2022

In this episode, Bryce and Conor finish their interview with special guest Tony Van Eerd!Link to Episode 87 on WebsiteTwitterADSP: The PodcastConor HoekstraBryce Adelstein LelbachAbout the Guest:Tony Van Eerd has been coding for well over 25 years, and hopefully coding well for most of that. Previously at Inscriber, Adobe, and BlackBerry, he now enables painting with light at Christie Digital. He is on the C++ Committee. He is a Ninja and a Jedi.Show NotesDate Recorded: 2022-06-24Date Released: 2022-07-22Revolution - BeatlesUniversity of WaterlooWhat Belongs In The C++ Standard Library? - Bryce Adelstein Lelbach [CppNow 2021]Keynote: SOLID, Revisited - Tony Van Eerd - [CppNow 2021]C++Now 2019: Conor Hoekstra “Algorithm Intuition”C++: Engineers Wanted, Programmers not so Much - David Sankel - C++Now 2019CppNorth ConferenceIntro Song InfoMiss You by Sarah Jansen https://soundcloud.com/sarahjansenmusicCreative Commons — Attribution 3.0 Unported — CC BY 3.0Free Download / Stream: http://bit.ly/l-miss-youMusic promoted by Audio Library https://youtu.be/iYYxnasvfx8

Welcome to ADSP The Podcast, welcome to adsp the podcast episode 87 recorded on june 24 2022 my name is connor and today with my co-host bryce we finish part four of our four-part interview with tony van eerd so my sister had a had a a dog like that australian sheep dog or whatever super smart right super smart dog yeah they're very smart dogs and friendliest dog in the world you know and then i go over to my sister's house one day and nobody you know i you know knock on the back door and it's like doesn't seem like anyone's home or whatever and i think i was dropping something off or something so i just like open up the back door and i'm like hey is anyone home today and everything right and i'm looking around and i was like i'll just i'll just put this thing on this

table or whatever and then i noticed the dog is not barking and trying to like protect the house the dog is trying to sneak up on me it's just like coming i saw it sneak around a corner and then it's just like backed away a little bit and it's like the dog was like i'm like this dog knows me it should be it should be you know hey hey tony blah blah blah and wagging its tail it's like no right now it is in protection she was flanking you yeah yeah like totally this dog loony is uh is a very smart dog and uh yeah and she like she loves toys she's not food motivated at all she loves toys but toys are not fun for her unless like the humans are playing with with the toys too like it has to be interactive and uh and like she's yeah she's pretty she's pretty smart like like a ball gets

like under like a table or something she knows how to how to get the ball out from under the table i had a dog who figured out how to how to open the door in the barn because like one way you just push the door open it was like just the door in the barn that didn't have a doorknob so it had a string tied to it that like through the whole like you could just pull it open and stuff and so this dog figured out one way you push the door open and the other way like grab the the string the rope on the door and pull it open and it could open the door by itself i was like really cool smart dog do you think i could do you think i could teach the dog to do it on command like i'm carrying something hey dog open the door like we're standing the dog like would stare at me he's like why aren't we opening the door i'm like my hands are full yeah smart dog but i don't know we had a dog that could play the piano that's nice i mean

didn't play it well but he played the piano we had it we had a a parrot that could ride a horse well okay i mean i'm sure there's plenty of animals that you could put on the horse but like no like control the horse well this is this is the thing so if you if you're in the in the horse world right um you go to the horse shows and they have all these contests that horse you do with your horse and one of them is is to run the barrels right you have to there's some barrels set up on the corral thing that you're doing this in you have to run you have to ride the horse as fast as you can around the barrels. You have to do a certain pattern. You have to turn the right direction, do it the right pattern, and come back. And it's who can do it the fastest.

It's the same with catching a steer and all these other things they do in these horse shows and stuff. Dying to know the connections to the parrot. Go on. So my dad taught the parrot to ride the horse to do the barrels. So no one on the horse, the horse would do the barrels, the right pattern correctly. And it was like a complicated pattern. And come back and my dad was like, look, I trained this parrot to ride a horse. Really, he trained the horse. The parrot just sat there.

He trained the parrot to not fly away and trained a horse to run the barrels by itself. So, yeah, that's what we do. I have no idea at this point what I'm going to be calling these episodes. If we could just brainstorm for a second here. Did you want to talk about C++ ever in this episode at all? We did talk a little bit. Cancer, dismemberment.

Cancer dismemberment in horses. I think it's going to be like Tony's career. Tony's dad. Tony's dad's finger. I don't know. No. Tony's parrot.

And the thing is Tony has plenty tony has plenty of like amazing awesome tech stories but tony also has plenty of crazy life stories yeah it's true one one thing now well because we're a few minutes over but um no one's been saying they have to exit you say a few minutes over you say that as if there is like a set agenda or schedule for when we record. I mean, you booked a 90-minute time slot, and we are over that 90 minutes. And Tony probably does need to go back to his family at some point. Forget Tony. I got to go, like, cook.

Oh, yeah. Bryce's food. That sounds more important than family. It's not my food. I got to cook for the... My family is full grown now. As my girlfriend likes to say, the division of labor is I cook, she eats. Question. So you were in Windsor. Did you go to Waterloo and your family still stayed in Windsor?

We moved out of Windsor when I was eight or nine, which still didn't get me to Waterloo. It got me to a town called Bothwell. Bothwell? Yeah, it's like a thousand people. It's between London and Chatham for those people who know. Never even heard of Chatham either. I've heard of London, definitely.

So, okay, it's between London and Windsor. Put it that way. There we go. That's London, Canada, folks, just in case we're a little confused there. Yeah, like both London and Windsor. Put it that way. There we go. That's London, Canada folks, just in case we're a little. Yeah. Like both London and Windsor are like in Chatham. Those are all,

uh, uh, England, uh, towns. Yeah. Cause you know, people came over here,

had no, um, creativity. Um, and so this is kind of a funny thing that I, uh, so I grew up in a small town outside of, you know, left Windsor, rest of my childhood is in a small town and in a log house instead of, in Windsor, we had

a writing stable and people all the time. Instead, we like lived in the middle of nowhere. And then I went off to high school. And I remember in grade nine, in in high school I wanted to be an architect right because um I actually did art um I've always I've always drawn and stuff like that um like my my high school art teacher was distraught when I didn't go to art school like she wanted me to go to uh Ontario College of Art and I'm like I'm gonna take math and physics she's like what why why would you do this I'm like I like math and physics. She's like, what? Why? Why would you do this? And I'm like, I like math and physics.

But if you're good at art and you like math and physics, architect is a great job. It fits everything. And I like being outdoors. And I figured as an architect, you would sometimes be out on site. And you wouldn't be. I was like, I'd never want to have a job where I sit behind a desk all day and stuff like that. That's, you know, I grew up in the, in the country.

I want to, want to stay there. Right. Um, and so, and then in grade nine, I looked up, where would you go to school for architecture? Right. And the, in Canada, the best place to go is Waterloo. It's, it's the architecture school, right? I did not know that. And in grade nine, I looked that up, and I said,

Waterloo, and that's like two hours away from home, and I was like, that's too far. I don't want to go that far from home. And I just dropped it out of my brain. I'm like, I'm not going to be an architect. And then eventually, I ended up living in Waterloo. I ended up going to school up here. And then eventually I ended up living in Waterloo. I ended up going to school up here, and then I just stayed up here.

Wait, you did go to Waterloo though, right? I actually went to Laurier, the tiny high school down the road from Waterloo. I always thought you went to Waterloo. I took courses at Waterloo as well, and courses in Guelph. I kept taking courses after I graduated. I took courses at Waterloo as well, and courses in Guelph. I kept taking courses after I graduated.

For all of our American listeners, these are places in Canada that I know. Well, so Waterloo, everyone in programming should know about Waterloo because it really is a top programming school. It's a top 10 CS school. At least it was last time i checked and and people that go there like to say it's the harvard of canada which it is it's good no no if you had said that i would have made fun of you and i would have made fun of waterloo and i would have made fun of harvard yeah it is a very i wouldn't say it's harvard ivy league status but like it is a very, very good school.

Yeah. For programming, it is. I mean, it's where I get all my interns. We constantly have interns from there. That's where I get them. Their co-op program is phenomenal. And they also run a series of math contests through high school. And if you place in the top 10% or 5% or something, you get automatic admission and access to like an honors program.

but you know what? No one told me that getting like 75% on that test is, is, is like in the top 5%. Right. Yeah. Like I took that test in high school, right.

Before you go to university. And I didn't, uh, my teacher taught me calculus in two days because I was in a semester at school, so I hadn't learned calculus yet. And he's like, you're going to need to know this for this test. So like two days, like here, I'll teach you calculus. I'm like, all right.

Put the two from there in the front. Yeah. And then, and I don't know if it's still that way, but at the time, they took marks off if you got the question wrong. Right? It was either you answer it or leave it blank it was better to leave it blank was a zero and if you answered wrong you got marks taken off yeah i i believe that's i mean i always thought it was still uh if you could eliminate

guesses yeah if you could eliminate choices still still yeah but i went through that and i'm like god i'm i'm barely gonna you know i don't know calculus also like i'm gonna get like a 70 on this i'm gonna do terrible right so i started guessing on on stuff i'm like like i ended up with like still getting over 50 or something and that was still a high mark right like the brightest people fail this stupid thing and then then i find out later that it's like oh yeah 70 or 75 or whatever like that's an awesome mark and i'm like well why didn't someone tell me this i wouldn't have guessed at all these questions that because you were in bothwell yeah yeah exactly and chatham for high school yeah interesting so it went from one generation of farmers to another,

and then your dad was in the rodeo, and then you took a hard left or right. Yeah. Farmer rodeo, software rodeo. Yeah, it's kind of funny because my brother and sister still live in the hometown, you know, with a thousand people. My brother still lives on the same property. He's a high school teacher. She was – what's she doing now

she's doing like stuff for united way or something now um uh but yeah they're still like the small town the small town kind of thing and i can still go back there and like just hang out in the in the log house and you know but i am the high tech one of the the family. Do they have any appreciation for, or not appreciation, I should say, but are they aware of the status of your words of wisdom? Every now and then, my sister will send me a link to like, oh my God, you're giving a talk at this thing. I'm like, oh yeah, I give a talk there every year. She's like, what?

I'm like, oh yeah, I'm giving a keynote there this year kind of thing she's like what don't worry about it it's nothing it's what we do around here but yeah yeah yeah you and I were keynotes of C++ now the same year yeah

mine obviously was the security keynote I'm just gonna say put that out there yeah i i so want to go back there um i want to i want to yeah we missed you were you there this no i wasn't i didn't want to travel anywhere um i want to keynote there i've had a keynote talk for C++ now probably since the first year I went, like when it was BoostCon. I'm like, I know what I want to talk about. And I haven't written it down, of course,

because why would I write it down except for the week before or something like that? But I've had it in the back of my head for like, what, 10 years now? And then I finally did a keynote, but I was online and I'm like, well, I'm not going to do that talk.

I didn't do a different talk. Um, but I still got, I want to do the keynote there. Got to, got to be there. And we also have to, you know,

you know, Bryce, we've got that plan of doing, uh, doing, uh, yeah, we,

we got plans for special talks at, uh, at C++ now. I, I still, uh, you know, I still have that in the back of my mind. Yeah. Yeah. We got plans for special talks at C++ now. I still have that in the back of my mind. Yeah. So I need to scout out first. I think I need a year of scouting out and planning it,

and then the year after that, do it. Oh, is this the – No spoilers. I think I know. Yeah, you mentioned this at some point to me. Yeah. Yeah, I mentioned this. It's the plans. Yeah. At some point to me. Yeah. Yeah, I need help with it too. So I need...

Yeah. It's going to require a staff. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. You need like three or four or five people. It'll be a little hard to record. A little challenging to record. I mean, with...

I'll say, I won't spoil anything, but with drones, it's possible. With drones, anything is possible. Anything is possible with drones. If we had enough drones, we could make it happen. And I'll just let the listener's imagination wander. I know what I wanted to mention. I'm the youngest of the three.

I've got my brother, sister. I'm the youngest. Computers showed up in our high school when I was in grade 10. My brother was in grade 12. My sister was in grade 13. We had grade 13 back then. And because they were almost out of school, they're like, oh, computers. We're not going to take the computer course, right?

So they just didn't get into computers. I was in grade 10. Computers showed up. I'm like, I'm taking a computer course. This is really cool. So it's the dividing line of my – anyone – probably different in every school. But my brother obviously uses computers and everything, but he is not friendly with computers. Whereas I just – I live with him every day, right? And it's just because they just missed the window.

They didn't learn it from the beginning, right? It's amazing how small things like that. Yeah, it makes a difference, right? Yeah. Like if the pandemic had started a year earlier, like probably this podcast, Bryce and I being friends, all of this. Because like my life and career took a different trajectory basically when. I would have found you, Connor.

There is nothing in the universe that would have kept us apart. Or actually, yeah, we probably would have been friends. But like the C++ Now talk that I initially gave like said a a bunch of stuff, chain reaction, and then I switched to NVIDIA. But like if the pandemic had started 12 months earlier, that conference wouldn't have happened. The talk wouldn't have happened. And who knows? My arch nemesis talk. Oh yeah, that's right.

I forgot. We're arch enemies. Wait, why are you arch enemies? Is it because Connor beat you up for all the awards? Because I wasn't there that year. But they used to call them the Tony Awards because I won them. And then Connor shows up, and he wins even more. Oh, that's because they created a bunch of new ones for me.

Every single award. Yeah. Minus one. But they made up new awards. Like, you know, best award by someone who starts with the letter C or something like that. Like, I don't know. I swear my hand to God, I had nothing to do with the awards process and I had no influence over who got the awards. Like, I know it seems like I must have set that up so that Connor, so that my prediction would come true.

But no, I really just called it. The new award was, and I really liked the idea, was like Best New Speaker Award. Yeah, but he won like Best New Speaker and like Best Speaker and like all the other ones. What was the one award that you didn't win? David Sankel won it. Well, I also didn't win Best Talk when i won all my i i did my post-modern talk there first the first time i did post-modern and it didn't win and that's you know i will never win an award there now because that was it that was my peak well you don't have any well you can't

say that don't tell me that tony i'd. I'm looking forward to the, you know. Oh, the upcoming talk? This from the guy who said that he's not going to give any more C-Post post-talks. Who? You. Oh, yeah. Well, you can't say that on air. I know. I've heard you say that already.

I have an excellent editor. I have an excellent editor. What does me not giving any talks have to do with me not wanting to see tony's uh you've got like two categories of talks there's like the tony tony talks and then there's like tony technical talks and they're both great but like the tony tony talks are like it's like get your popcorn my favorite part about the tony talk is that the one tony talk where there's like where tony like accurately predicts that I'm going to be tweeting the talk. Yeah.

Yeah. I did get that right. I do. I do miss a good Tony talk. There will be, there will be some, some fun in my talk coming up. If you notice the,

did anyone read the abstract? I mean, I did, but I read. I haven't looked at the program. How can you say you read it and don't remember? It's the Beatles. He's the program chair. He has to say you read every abstract.

I, as a former prominent program chair, will tell you, you don't read all the abstracts my abstract is a beatles song um parodied you know change change some words there um i'm gonna i'm gonna go i'm gonna go look at look at it now this is why the the talk is called so you want to write a function i can i can just tell you so you want to write a function well you know we all want to change the code oh yeah see that's the thing is i do recall reading this but i don't know the beatles well enough to know that this is a beetle song oh man what are you 12 which one of yous and you're both i mean i the problem is i just don't know lyrics yeah i can sing you a couple like um we'll look up uh revolution revolution and also

the problem is is like this is not the first time if you've ever read ben dean's um abstracts he also does these kind of artistic i don't know if they're poems or if they're lyrics yeah um yeah you don't know what to base it off of did did you know that some people don't know dr seuss that's what i learned right like half the world doesn't know like if you're not raised english you might not know dr seuss i guess that's true yeah i mean i we i didn't i knew dr seuss because there was movies but we we didn't we weren't allowed dr seuss in my household what is wrong with you i mean my mother was very very i told a story about my father but my mother let us watch like four television story about my father but my mother let

us watch like four television shows yeah but dr seuss is the most educational thing ever i mean she would disagree she's wrong anyone out there listening our listener um uh who may be of that age where you're about to have kids and maybe english isn't your first language you want to teach your kids some english dr seuss books i mean also didn't dr seuss get canceled no they they they took out the and not it wasn't canceled the people in charge of dr seuss like the estate or whatever the publishers and stuff they said oh this book looking back like the guy wrote the stuff in the 40s or whenever it was right like culture changes so they're like yeah this book is a little bit let's not publish this one anymore right i see and but all the other books they're great all right i've got i've got

the beatles revolution up but i'll i'll play it um at a later date i'll'll put a link. That's going to be the outro or the intro. Yeah, we don't take too much concern. Unlike my other podcast, Arraycast, we do not concern ourselves with copyright. Feel free to sue us. It'll be good for our ratings. But remember, if you want to sue this podcast, you've got to sue Connor.

Because this is a canadian-based podcast cut it you're fine you're fine you're fine it's canada nobody's gonna come to canada that's true trust me you'll be fine everyone's gonna come to canada because uh your country over there is uh need some help well we're gonna have to have to have you back tony because i feel like we just got started. We just got the introduction out of the way. We lightly talked about functions at one point. We'll talk at the conference or after the conference.

Oh, yeah. But yeah, we'll do a live recording in T-minus 24 days for us, 17 days for the listener. Actually, at this point. It's after. It's probably past. Conference is over. It's probably past the CPP North. That was a good, man. This is one of my favorite conferences.

It was so good. You guys did an awesome job. I think my talk went well. I think all the talk. And that thing that happened. Oh, that thing. That was great. That crazy thing.

All the keynotes. Kate's keynote's always awesome. Sean. Like, everyone. That was... You guys did an awesome job. That was one of the best... It might be my new favorite conference.

Wait, what are we talking about? C++ North. Oh. Oh. I'm like, Kate wasn't at C++ now. What's going on? I did not register what was happening there for a solid 20 seconds. Keep up, man.

Keep up. Yes, it was great. And like Bryce said, that thing that happened. That thing that happened. That was awesome. I was literally like, I was having FOMO because I thought you guys were talking about some other conference.

I was like, what happened? I'm not in the know. It's the best conference. Why didn't you tell me? All right, Tony. Thanks for coming on. We will see you in T-minus. Yeah.

Yeah. A couple of weeks or we saw you in the past at this point. It was great. It was nice seeing you again in person. Thanks for listening.

We hope you enjoyed and have a great day.