Algorithms + Data Structures = Programs - Episode 93: Special Guest Kate Gregory! (Part 2)

Episode Date: September 2, 2022

In this episode, Bryce and Conor continue their interview with Kate Gregory and talk about CppNorth and her keynote.Link to Episode 93 on WebsiteTwitterADSP: The PodcastConor HoekstraBryce Adelstein LelbachAbout the Guest:Kate Gregory is an author, sought-after conference speaker, trainer, Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP), and partner at Gregory Consulting. Kate has been using C++ since before Microsoft had a C++ compiler. She is an early adopter of many software technologies and tools, and a well-connected member of the software development community.Kate is one of the founders of #include whose goal is a more welcoming and inclusive C++ community. She also serves on the board of directors of Cpp Toronto, a non-profit organization that provides an open, inclusive, and collaborative place where software developers can meet and discuss topics related to C++ software development.Show NotesDate Recorded: 2022-08-15 Date Released: 2022-09-02Keynote: “Am I A Good Programmer?” - Kate Gregory - CppNorth 2022CppCon 2015: Kate Gregory “Stop Teaching C”KEYNOTE - Emotional Code - Kate Gregory [ACCU Conference 2019]PluralSight - Kate GregoryBeautiful C++: 30 Core Guidelines for Writing Clean, Safe, and Fast Code by Guy Davidson & Kate GregoryCppNorth ConferenceCarbon Programming LanguageIntro Song InfoMiss You by Sarah Jansen https://soundcloud.com/sarahjansenmusic Creative Commons — Attribution 3.0 Unported — CC BY 3.0 Free Download / Stream: http://bit.ly/l-miss-you Music promoted by Audio Library https://youtu.be/iYYxnasvfx8

And on that note, I got to say, we got to have those maple tarts every day next year because I didn't get any and I really would like some. You missed your chance. Well, you see, that's the nice thing. If you had looked at the published menu, you would have known that the maple tarts were only on one magical day. Yes. And you would have got them. So you're telling me that not only did you miss out on the maple tarts, did you eat hickory sticks? Welcome to ADSP, the podcast episode 93 recorded on August 15th, 2022. My name is Connor and today with my co-host Bryce, we continue with part two of our four-part interview with Kate Gregory

and talk to her about CPP North and her keynote at that conference. I'll link a collection of all of Kate's talks, including Emotional Code, which was one of your more recent favorites of mine that you've given in the last couple of years. But the most recent talk, unless if you've spoken in between now and CPP North, which I don't think you have. The last three weeks I have not. You gave the opening keynote with the title, Am I a Good Programmer? Which is now, I believe, available online. I saw the YouTube video go out.

Yeah. So maybe if you want, give us a little bit of an overview of that if you want and the feedback you got to that. Because I heard the talk. I mean, I was there. I saw it. It was awesome. But I heard it got a lot of awesome feedback from folks that were in the audience. And then from there, we can talk about it was awesome, but I heard it got a lot of awesome feedback from folks that were in the audience.

And then from there, we can talk about how running a conference, because you were there from day zero with Mike setting this up even before I got involved. So I did this talk because people tell me all the time that they're worried that they're not good programmers. And often the reason they think they're not good programmers is because they're nice people. Like they're not, you know, maybe people don't take me seriously. I don't snark at other people. I don't put other people down. I'm always trying to find something nice to say or something helpful to do. And is that just the behavior, you know, like a crutch or weakness of people who aren't very good at what they're doing? And how can I know if I'm good at what I'm doing? And especially if you're trying to ask someone to leave meanness and snarkiness behind they feel they don't have any other yardstick to measure themselves with so um I've had this feeling for a long time that that there's some skills that can't really be objectively measured but that you can measure assess yourself

on with these three questions that I that I ask rhetorically and then answer in the keynote about whether or not you've ever truly badly failed a lot and whether you do that on the regular or not, what other people are willing to ask you about or ask your advice about, and then finally how you feel about the work while you're doing it. And, you know, those are better measures of whether you're any good at this or not than how often you commit code or um what certificates you have on your wall and uh and just sort of walk through that and then there's a bit of a i don't know what you call it a diversion in the middle where i'm like well here's how here's some ways to get better we'll talk about that for a while before coming back to the to the fundamental question And really, it's a talk that's, it's not language specific. I mean, okay, I think I do say that's rotate at some point, but

it's not, it doesn't have to be a C++ talk exactly, you know, it's just to have the confidence to know, you don't know all it, but you know, the parts you need to know. People ask Bjarne, you know, for like a rating from one to ten. What's your skill level? And he'll say seven. You know, because there's because there's stuff he's not keeping up with or doesn't care about or doesn't use. Right. He's I saw the papers. I heard about it at the meetings, but I've never written something to do that for real real and I think we all have a piece of C++ that we can say that about oh a piece holy smoke I mean I mean I'm thinking of like a pie and like to call what I don't know about C++ a slice would

be an understatement um it's it's I mean what was it a couple episodes of prize we're talking about is 1800 something pages and in the C++20 standard, and I don't even know how many are going to be in the 23 standard. I think it'll be over 2,000. Yeah. And I think it's unreasonable to expect that the average C++ programmer is going to have holistic understanding of that whole document. I don't think that's necessary to be a good C++ programmer. Absolutely not. And stuff is still, you know, landing. There are people who can use modules and there are people who can't. There are people who can use coroutines and there

are people who can't. One of my favorite like sports to watch, not do is uh the the ranges channel and they include c++ discord oh i thought you were going to say an actual sport i was like this is going to be so interesting to see where this goes i was like some c++ to cricket but it is a sport because someone's like here's what i need to do and i have this loop but it's really kind of gross so maybe it's two loops and i i don't like it and then within a day someone goes well you could just do this it's like three lines you know yeah that's what i have connor for exactly like like that that is i'm not saying that's the only thing that we like employ connor for but that's that's one of connor's job functions. It's just astonishing. You just

look at it and you go, oh, that's what this is for. That's excellent. And it's more readable. It's more expressive. I can't generate those yet. So I can't look at the first loop and go, oh, well, clearly you should, whatever. But that's my next next plan i'm not paying a lot of attention right now to to coroutines i'm not paying a ton of attention to concepts but i i want to get a lot better at the range stuff because it's so beautiful you know yeah i mean c++ 23 will be a good step because it's kind of c++ 20 has the basic stuff but like very quickly like there's not even ranges colon colon two um or formatting with um format which means you can you can't even either print out or convert your range into a container so like you're just stuck with it in range form which means that you have to set up

like a range based for loop and then print things out element so it's just it's not it's sort of like the in the c plus plus 11 to 14 like like some features were, we just got some, some errata that are missing. I really feel that one because I, I did put some range of stuff in the courses that I've, that I've written, uh, the what's new in C plus plus 20 and then the big C plus plus 20 fundamentals. And it's like, this is beautiful, but I can't hover over it in the debugger to show you. I have to write a loop and print it on the screen. Forgive me. That's one of the things I say in Stop Teaching C. You know, because the title and the abstract were out there

and my talk was not on the first day of the conference and people were accosting me in the Maiden Bower. This was CPPCon when it was in Bellevue. And they're saying, you say in your abstract that we shouldn't be teaching printf on day one. Well, my heavens, what are you going to teach them instead? You can't possibly want to teach them streams.

That's the grossest thing in the universe. And so when I get to this part of the talk and I'm like, here's what do I think you should do if you don't do printf? I'm like, how about nothing? How about you teach them the debugger? And people's mouths came open, you know, because like, yes, teaching the debugger is actually

very useful for the world outside the course, right? And way better than memorizing all the printf format strings. And so I try really hard not to print stuff out in my courses if I can. With Pluralsight, I'm at a bit of a disadvantage because I don't know what tool the learner is using. They could be on any operating system. They could be using any editor. They could be using any compiler. So I can't tell them, just hover over this in the debugger

and you'll see that the value is now three because they may not have that. So there is output statements in some of those courses. But I try really hard not to if I can. And with the ranges stuff, I had no choice. I had to write loops and print things out. I was just like, I'm going back in time. Do either of you know if, because my first thought when hearing that is like, it's so true.

Like using a debugger, especially if you have like, you know, Visual C++ or Visual Studio, something like that where it's got, you you know it's a world-class editor and debugger um but half the time i do my prototyping or even developing like i will if it's a standalone thing i'll do it in godbolt and then copy it back just because it's it's so much nicer and i feel like i have better control does godbolt have debugging capabilities because i think a lot of the times when i'm doing ranges stuff there that's the you need some nice way to format and then i usually like you have the, you need some nice way to format. And then I use like, you have the ability to include Victor's format library and then also Kneebler's range V3.

So you can get access to all the goodies, but you need to know the headers and stuff. And it's definitely not the nicety of just working with what comes in your library. Well, if it doesn't have it now, Matt, consider this a feature request does he listen to this i mean everybody listens everybody's right bryce's understanding or view of what this podcast is is so he thinks we have fans everybody we have fans that just call people out

on the podcast that approach us that approach me at conferences somebody somebody was so excited about this podcast that they tweeted because they wanted to know whether or not we were actually you were gonna actually come to new york you're you're able to change your flights to come see me like come on we we have fans i just think that's an avid i think that's an avid listener and a curious listener it makes me so uncomfortable an awesome listener our listeners fans we don't even have stickers yet we're not even really like a fully formed podcast until we have stickers i'm not i'm not gonna i'm not gonna call out that listener by name because i don't want to like like call undue attention to them that they may not want, but thank you. You made our day. Right. So we were talking about debuggers printing. Yes. Matt, if you're listening,

I mean, I'm sure one of our listeners will comment on the tweet of this if it is, and I'm sure we could check in a couple of minutes. But yeah, so we were talking about your keynote. What was the feedback like? Did you have folks coming up afterwards asking or responding? Thank you. I now feel like I love what I do and my coworkers do ask me for advice. So I did, I did have a couple of people who told me they felt, they felt a lot better about it. And, and I've had multiple people tell me that, uh, the idea of your own emotional reaction to your work as a measure of whether or not you're any good at it was a new one for them. That that was a, that was a new insight for them that,

you know, it is unpleasant to not be good at things every day, you know, to, to have, if you have a boss to have your boss say, no, no, this is, this is not what I wanted. I'm sorry. I'm going to give it to someone else to do it. because we don't have time for you to do it again or those those things are unpleasant and if and if that's not what happens to you at work if you get given a task and you do a task and everyone likes it you know that makes you happy and so you know that just kind of emotional in the moment reaction has all kinds of really useful information in it. Years ago, our staff asked us why we didn't have automatic deposit of their paychecks into their bank accounts, why they got paper checks signed with a pen. And I imagined doing the automatic thing and I didn't want to. And I

sort of sat with that, like, why do I not? Like, we're high tech people. We should do that, right? And I was like, because it's actually the world's smallest performance review. Like, every two weeks, here's a little tiny piece of paper. It's got your name on it. It's got a number. And then I have to sign under the number. And I was actually, like, going, like, yeah, that's that's okay yeah i'm good with that you know and if i ever if i'm ever like what this much money for what i had what happened the last month here

i don't think so then you know that it was time to maybe do a slightly longer and more important performance review but there are these like little emotional reactions to things that actually carry just a huge quantity of information if you let yourself listen to it. Yeah, there definitely been moments I can think of where, I mean, I'm sure almost every C++ developer has been there. I mean, whether their reaction at the end was the same, but you've been working on some issue that, you know, for hours, whether it was, you know, till late in the same, but you've been working on some issue that, you know, at for hours, whether it was, you know, till late in the morning, all in one session, or over a weekend, or over several evenings, or even days at work. And then you finally get something to work. And it wasn't just like, you know, a single character missing, it was a was a challenging problem that you were having

to learn stuff for and work through, and then you get it working. And it's just, it's like the best feeling in the world. I remember times in my first job like it being like 11 p.m at night and just like running around the because no one's no one's there it's just you and just like there's no one to talk to there's no one to celebrate with that you finally cracked it yes yeah and uh and i've had that conversation with a few people that like you know that moment where you've been working on a hard problem for um whether it's you know a number of hours in've been working on a hard problem for, um, whether it's, you know, a number of hours in a day or spanning like a couple of weeks and then you finally crack it. Um, and it, yeah, it just, it's, it's like the best, it's, it's like a dopamine hit.

I'm sure there's some, some parallel to, to, you know, um, what did I, I learned at some point that, um, when you run and you get what they call runner's highs, it's like endorphin is an actual opioid. So it's technically like you're getting— I was about to say, Connor, please don't compare everyone who works in our industry to drug addicts. But you are—and then I thought maybe he's not going to go down that route. But no, you're going there. It's like a healthy—I mean, I've heard people unhealthily being addicted to running, but like of the things, and like I think programming, it's not the same as running, but I think these things that like they cause a chemical reaction in our brain, and that is like a healthy chemical response of our, you know, some reward system of being like, this is awesome.

Do it again. Yeah. You solved it. You're the genius. No one is as smart as you are. Yeah. That was such a great idea. And it is, it's, it is, if not addictive, it's certainly, it's like salty potato chips or, or your favorite chocolate or something, you know, you want more of it. And I think for most people, it's a healthy addiction, you know? Yeah.

Yeah, there's something about even like I used to when I used on the last team, I worked at NVIDIA, they had little better code meetings. And every once in a while, I'd just do a meeting where I'd show like three or four, I'd create small PRs of like replacing for loops with algorithms. And like, that's all it was. But like, there was like a tiny little, I don't know if it was endorphins or dopamine or whatever it was, but like a finding a raw loop and then being like, huh, that's a count if, or, ah, that's whatever it is. And like, it's a small thing.

Maybe for some people it doesn't cause that little chemical, but like for me, it's like, and then your PR is always like a net minus. Cause you're replacing like these four or five, uh five line loops with like a single line algorithm call. And you make a little lightning talk out of it. It's like a small thing, but like every once in a while when I get frustrated with whatever task I was working on, I just go open a PR and start like raw loop hunting and then create like whatever, a five file PR, took a couple hours and I'd feel better after it. And I think, yeah, that it's something that I hadn't heard up until your talk is like, ask yourself, like, do you actually enjoy what you're

doing or are you miserable every day? And, and I think that was one of the things you said in your talk. Like if you are miserable every day, like potentially, you know, you should take a step back and reassess. Um, because you shouldn't be miserable every day doing, doing your, your, your job. Um, that's right. And it may not have anything to do with the tech. You know, I mean, it may. Maybe you're not working in a language that's a good fit for how your brain works or whatever. But, you know, you may work with horrible people

or you may work in an industry you're not proud of or something. But there's a lot of joy to be had in this work. And I think many of us were raised that if there's work for which you get money, make sacrifices, you put yourself through it because that's what we do. And then there's fun. And that's kind of cheating. You know, if your work could be fun and lucrative and you could be proud of it and know you were really making a difference.

And for a lot of us, you know, we are making a difference. We're making people's lives easier, smoother. We're not all saving lives, but we're not all wasting our time either. You know? Yeah. Yeah. No, it's, it's definitely a privileged position to be in, to be able to, you know, one thing my dad would always say is like, if you find something you love, you'll never have to work a day in your life. But like, to be in that position is a very, very privileged position. But yeah, it is awesome to find something that you like, you know, every once in a while you hear people, they whisper and say, oh, don't tell my employer, but I do this for free.

Like, I wouldn't do it for free. But I mean, my day job that is. But like, I would, if I was a billionaire, still be solving APL, you know, little leak code or C++ algorithm, i was a billionaire still be solving apl you know a little leak cody or c++ algorithm like definitely i'd still be doing that um i'd probably be doing it on a beach somewhere uh you know with uh with you know i don't know some some whatever happens on a beach that i would not admit on a podcast that i'm pretty sure your boss listens to uh i have a new boss though and guarantee no your new boss i mean you think he listens do you think michael michael garland is in research for those um

yeah yeah you're right i was i was thinking of the of uh i was thinking of jake but he is not and he was not a new boss but you know what like if one of my staff were to say to me i would i so i have had people try to work for me for free and I don't, I don't, I don't allow it. Okay. Um, because you're going to have bad weeks, you're going to have bad months. And there's going to be times when the only reason you're going to come in is that if you don't come in, I won't pay you. And they may not happen very often, but I want you to come in on those days. So, uh, plus there's actually an awful lot of expenses, you know, associated with, with bringing in, especially students. Like it's not, it's not people who won the lottery who offer to work for you for free. It's like students. I remember we, we hired a student

and all his classmates were emailing me saying, I want what he's having because they'd seen the difference in him while he was working with us. He was working on real projects for real clients. He was learning what mattered. It was very different from what he was being taught in the classroom. And they wanted more of that. And I'm like, I'd have to sell work, manage you, talk to the client, check over your work and see if it's any good, blah, blah, blah. Like that's a huge lot of expense. The fact that I don't have to give you a salary is trivial. The salary of a student programmer is not an important part of the cost of this project, right? And if I don't pay you, I have nothing to hold over you, so I'm going to pay you. And if I can't make money paying you, then I can't make money not

paying you either. So go ahead, tell your boss that you love your work enough to do it for free, they'll still pay you. I have an answer to a question that we raised earlier. I was going to say, are you going to say a question that we haven't asked? No, no, no. As of time of recording, the C++ working draft is 2,062 pages. So it is over 2,000 pages. So it is over 2000 pages. It took me about five minutes to do the git pull from

main. Like just the length of the document. It took four minutes and 14 seconds on my workstation to build the LaTeX document. Wow. Which is impressive. And it produces a 7.5 megabyte PDF file. I'm actually surprised it's only, I think that's like less than 300 or just over 300 pages, considering all the stuff that went in. So I did not check how much stuff from the last plenary has been merged. I'm pretty sure that the top of trunk of the standard has most of the things that are going into the committee draft.

When all of the latex diagnostic vomit was scrolling through, I did see references to MD-SPAN, which means that the MD-SPAN, or I saw references to the MD-SPAN staple tag, which means that the md span or i saw references to the md span staple tag which means that that's been merged and that was voted in the last plenary and that was the biggest paper so that um in terms of page count so uh so that's probably what what what pushed us up over 2000 i mean i guess we should be glad that it didn't go up a thousand i shouldn't be complaining that it's only 300 like as if i want to read a 3 000 page standard but for me it's good because md span is a thing that i actually know so now like like as of the merging of md span i know a proportionally slightly larger part of c++ than i did before all right bryce i'm glad for your big win. It is a big win. Now I know like, I don't know, 10% of C++ versus like 8% before. Awesome. All right. So we've talked

about your keynote and link in the show note for those that weren't there in person to see it or haven't already seen it online. I'm sure several of our listeners will have already seen it. Maybe we can transition to talking about how CPP North went from your perspective as both a committee member and organizer, a keynote speaker, and also a, what was the term we came up with? We came up with BTFN, Benevolent Team for Now. Not a benevolent dictator for life. You're a benevolent team for now. It's going to catch on as the new acronym of, so Kate is one of the three BTFN members for Carbon. Well, maybe we'll start with whatever you want to start with. And this was a over year in the making now, I guess, for you because-

The conference, well over. So we were going to do it in 2021. We were planning- Oh, that's right. Yeah. So we were planning, I think in 2019, we started planning. And in some ways we started planning before that because Mike, Mike Dom makes things happen. And so does Jason and Mike and Jason together are a team that just makes things happen. Like, I can't tell you how many people have emailed me over the years and said, is there a C++ user group or meetup or whatever in Toronto? And if not, you know, why don't you start one? And I'm like, because I got stuff to do. But if you start one, I'll help you. I'll come and talk and I'll get my friends to come and talk

and it'll be fine. And no one's ever, like they've all said, oh, that's great. Thanks. And that's been the end of that. And Mike and Jason made it happen and, you know, created this thriving pre-pandemic, and I'm sure will thrive again, meetup that was changing people's lives, teaching people things, getting people jobs, giving people community. And Mike could have sat back and said, behold, I'm a person who can make meetups. And instead he's like, we need a conference, you know? And it's the same thing. I'm like, well, I'll help you. Right. And, and he calls my bluff and he makes a conference and he gathers together this really good team,

Nat and Diana as well. And then, you know, you're in his program chair and Guy came as code of conduct person. Like, you know, we pulled together a very experienced group of folks, who's not their first rodeo by any means. And I often say that my number one role on the board and on the committee of the conference is to say, well, here's how they handle that at this other conference. So here's how this got done at meeting C++. Here's how this got done at C++ on C,

at ACC, at whatever, you know, NDC Tech Town, wherever I've been and I've had a chance to see how things were done. And that includes places maybe that handle things poorly. And I'm just so, first of all, I'm so impressed at all the things that the conference managed to do. Still during a pandemic with a very restricted budget because of restricted attendance and everything else. We say that a lot of things you can do to be inclusive are almost free. And this conference, I think, really proved that. So we had the quiet room for anyone who was

a little overwhelmed by being at a conference and just couldn't people for a minute. We had a separate prayer room. Lots of conferences have had quiet rooms, but we had a couple people on the group who pray regularly and said they didn't like to pray in a quiet room, like a library type room. So we had a separate prayer room and it got used. We published our menus. That was just, that helped me. And I don't really have any food allergies, but just to be reminded what the food was and when it was going to be and where it was going to be and to know what every break was going to consist of and people with actual food issues whether they're religious based whether allergies based um i know someone who has texture issues and can't eat certain things if they're the wrong texture so they could eat a club sandwich but they can't eat a chicken nugget it's not the

chicken it's the texture of the chicken, right? Right. And so to know exactly what's going to be in every single meal was a very powerful piece of information to give people. And it cost a person's time, right? A human typed up the information and put it on the website and that's it. So there were so many things like that, captioning in every room. Yeah, I didn't even know. I mean, I attended the meetings and things, but there was things that were at this conference that were like off my radar, like that they had, because at first I was like, ah, the text, like you can definitely see it if you're in the front row. But from some of the smaller rooms, they just had a small screen. And then one of

the volunteers was like, Oh, yeah, just go to the app. And like, you can get it, like on your laptop or your phone. And I was like, What? Yeah. And they're like, Oh, yeah, like, it's a it's you can either sit at the front and read it from the screen, or you can just load it up onto your individual laptop screen. And I was like, Oh, wow, like, that's the that makes so much sense. And I would I would have never thought about that and had no idea that that's what we were providing. And that was awesome. It really was.

And there were so many things like that where someone just thought of something and just did a little nice thing. And so, you know, somewhere there's another conference that has someone like me who whenever people are trying to make decisions, they're going to say, well, here's what they did at CPP North. And so and so that's going to spread. That makes me happy. I think conferences are very different.

I've been going to conferences for 20 years and I've seen so many changes in that time for the better. I don't think that the people who used to feel excluded who now feel welcome, it's a one-way thing. There's not some people who are like, well, I used to feel excluded who now feel welcome. It's a one-way thing. There's not some people who are like, well, I used to really like conferences, but now there's enough bathrooms for everybody. So I'm not going anymore. You know, like it's not a problem to make things better for more people, you know. And yes, some things are really expensive, right?

Captioning is very expensive. Covering speaker travel is very expensive. But if you don't do them, then your speakers and your attendees are a different set of folks than who you would otherwise get. And if your speakers are only people whose employers are willing to pay them to come,

then you're hearing different voices than if there are some speakers who will come if the conference can pay for them to come. Yeah, no, I mean, one of the reasons I'm super excited, obviously, it's exciting to have a C++ conference in the place you live. But one, it means I basically can go every year, whether as a speaker or as an attendee. But two, it definitely reduces the carbon footprint for me because it's one of the things I always feel bad about is if you end up going to several conferences a year,

depending on where they are, if they're over in Europe, depending on where you're based, it can be a very large impact. And so, I mean, we were, it's something we took into account is that if we had local people like, you know, Patrice Roy was in Montreal and you're local as well. It's like, it's, it's helpful to have, you know, folks that I think, what was it? A third of our attendees were, were local, which is,

I'm not sure what the stats are for, um, you know, other conferences, but definitely being based in Toronto, we have a ton of companies here, you know, I won't list them off, but a ton of, you know, big, you know, three letter, however many acronym, other conferences with C++ developers that have, you know, local people that can attend and don't have to book plane flights and stuff. And so like very selfishly for myself, it's like, well, now at least I can, if I ever decide to go like completely carbon footprint and only attend virtual stuff, I still can go to one in-person conference, which is CPP North. I mean, hopefully it'll continue to thrive. I know we're doing at least next year,

and there are no plans to stop doing this. Hopefully it just grows and grows in future years. I sure would like it too. I think it's a wonderful atmosphere. I was really surprised the number of different people who said to me, I just like the vibe. I like the ambiance. I like the way people are interacting with each other, which is not something like I used to go to tech ed, right? So there's 10,000 attendees,

20, 25,000 people in the building, enormous thing. No one's ever said that about such a big conference like that. know it did have a a great vibe i really appreciated that the uh the conference felt like a love letter to toronto um and on that note i gotta say we gotta have those maple tarts every day next year because i didn't get any and i really would like some you missed your chance well you see that's the nice thing if you if you had looked at. Well, you see, that's the nice thing. If you had looked at the published menu, you would have known that the maple tarts were only on one magical day.

Yes. And you would have got them. So you're telling me that not only did you miss out on the maple tarts, did you eat hickory sticks? I did not. I don't even know what hickory sticks are. Did you eat ketchup chips? I did have ketchup chips.

That's a shame. Well, I brought a bag of a shame. You know what, if you're only going to eat one thing, you know, the Nanaimo bar is great. The maple tarts are great. I love hickory sticks. Ketchup chips was not the winning selection. Yeah, I ate about, I ate about a third of that bag. I brought the bag back and then I found my girlfriend had, had started eating the bag without prior authorization. It was my bag of chips. I literally transported it across international borders. A product which is unavailable in the USA. One of the problems with traveling is you get a taste for things that you can't buy unless you travel.

Right? Yeah. So I discovered, I forget whether I first discovered them in the Netherlands or in Scandinavia, but Mentos, you know the little roll of mint candies, they come in a licorice flavor. At least they do if you're in the Netherlands or the Scandinavia. Red liquor? Why can I not say that?

Red licorice or black licorice? No, black licorice. So in Dutch, it says drop on it, which I guess is Dutch for licorice. I'm a brilliant linguist. Anyway, I'm a big fan of the licorice mint mentos. And you really can. You have to go to Europe.

Interesting. I did not know that. I mean, technically I'm half Dutch and half relatives. If they ever visit, I'll put in a request. That's right. Say, bring the Mentos. I've had people bring me things. And Peter Bindels, who was supposed to come, was planning to bring me things and then mailed them to me because he couldn't come.

So my current licorice mint needs are sated for a while. Thanks for listening. We hope you enjoyed and have a great day.