Coding Blocks - As the Watercooler Turns

Episode Date: October 24, 2022

We gather around the watercooler to discuss the latest gossip and shenanigans have been called while Coach Allen is not wrong, Michael gets called out, and Joe gets it right the first time.

You're listening to Coding Blocks, episode 196. Subscribe to us on Spotify, Stitcher, iTunes. Hey, I guess Google Podcasts is still a thing too, so maybe there. Visit us at codingblocks.net. Oh, yeah. No. Alan, aren't you supposed to say that? What am I doing?

I don't know. It looks like I'm on the next one. Change it up. Oh, you changed it up. Okay, fine. Fine. I'll continue on then. Visit us at codingblocks.net.

That's all lowercase. One word where you can find show notes, examples, discussion, and more. We're going to be extremely verbose in this episode. You can send your feedback, questions, and rants to comments at codingblocks.net. And you can follow us on the Twitters at CodingBlocks. And all of our webpages have at the top of them social links, and that can be found at codingblocks.net or. Oh, also, I'm Joe Zach.

Did you say or? Yeah, I read it backwards. I thought it was hilarious. Well, I thought you were trying to say, like, the website would be like codingblo hilarious. Well, I thought you were trying to say the website would be codingblocks.org and that's why I was like, no. Can you buy those though? You have to apply for them.

No, you can still buy those. They don't have to be special. Who are you, outlaw? Well, I mean, if you give it away. Right. You can see through my costume isn't good enough that you can't tell. First of all all hold on can we address something because i heard a rumor like can we my alan underwood impersonation is

spot on yeah i disagree it's really good yeah i was listening i didn't think so just saying i didn't hear that buttery smooth Southern Californian voice coming through. All right, watch this. Watch this. You ready? I'm Alan Underwood. That's not terrible. See?

That's not terrible. Boom. I got a that's not terrible from the man himself. Yeah, that's not terrible. I don't know what I sound like because my ears are not as good. So, yeah, I'm Alan Underwood. That was spot on. I can't even tell a difference.

Did you, Jay-Z no no yeah well i guess i'm technically technically i'm michael outlaw all right so uh our topic introduction for tonight is we're kind of freestyling right like we're gonna just talk about some things that like imminent yeah that's right we're good like that um so yeah we're just going to talk about some things that i don't know just have another water cooler talk it's been a while so that's what we're going to do but but first we must get into our news section and uh outlaw you read all our reviews nope nope okay jayizzy, what you got? Well, I mean, to be fair, I'm not reading them because there's none to read.

Yeah, it kind of hurts our souls a little bit. Yeah. Is anybody out there? Yeah. Out there. Oh, I thought you were going to say like a Pink Floyd song. Oh, no. Oh, by the way, this is what happens when we like finish a book you know because now we're

like i don't know what to do i guess we'll just yeah it's weird now water cooler like you want to meet up with the water cooler and gossip exactly well i'll tell you it's almost time to start talking about january not yet but we'll-Jabuary. Not yet. But we'll have a couple links in the show notes so you can watch videos of past games and see what those look like. And they're super awesome, so you should. Man, it really is around the corner, isn't it? It's crazy.

Alright. Have you already been thinking about a theme? Like, anything related to it? No, probably do the voting thing and suggestions. I always think that's a lot of fun. So no, I haven't really thought about it. Now, I'll probably do the voting thing and suggestions. I always think that's a lot of fun. So no, I haven't really thought about it. I haven't done another game jam. I still keep planning on it, but I haven't

done it. So how about this then? For the listeners who want to be part of the game jam, start thinking about what you might want to do as a theme so that you can give that, uh,

submission, you know, when it does come to contest time to decide like what the thing will be. And we ask everybody to submit their theme ideas. Oh yeah. We actually have one suggestion already. Oh yeah. I've already tried it.

It's from micro G. I can tell you what it is though. I don't want to taint the pool, but yeah, if you got them, I'll start recording them now. Way to tease it right i gotta wait till january yeah or you gotta you know you gotta uh kiss up to uh micro g oh yeah okay i'm able to tell you all right so the first one i had because i'm curious where we're all feeling about this. Now that we're sort of post-pandemic, right?

Like, mostly. Everything's open. Not a ton of restrictions. We're technically in an endemic, right? Am I wrong? Did we go back to endemic? I mean, endemic is within a nation. Are you in there?

No, I think it's the scale of it, right? Like, pandemic is across the globe. Endemic is usually, you know, bounded to a particular country or land, I thought. I thought they had announced over the summer that like, hey, we're out of the pandemic stage. Okay, maybe I'm wrong. I don't know. I'm also the guy that thought that Google shut down their podcast thing. So yeah, whatever.

So endemic is a disease outbreak that is consistently present, but generally limited to a particular region. So basically it's here, it's going to stay. Yep. And pandemic is like global sort of thing. Um, so with that though, are there any plans for, I don't know, Jay-Z outlaw me going out, doing more meetups, doing presentations again, doing any of that kind of stuff? Have you put any thought to it? Have you, like, any plans going forward here?

I got kind of lazy. It's easy to not do anything, right? So I missed Atlanta Code Camp. I really wanted to make it. I just couldn't make it this year. Orlando Code Camp is back on for 2023, so I'm definitely'm definitely gonna go and i'll probably put in a presentation i do enjoy it it is stressful though um so i you know i don't know um i uh haven't i guess i did i did do i spoke at one meetup recently at the elastic meetup in orlando so i guess officially i am getting back

out there and doing stuff again but it's it's very easy to just watch stuff on youtube so yeah i don't know what about you outlaw i know you like doing the booth stuff what's your thoughts i think i i guess that i'm already past that is that like i thought that you know vaccinated boosted whatever like you know whatever vaccinated, boosted, whatever, like, you know, whatever, go out, have fun. So I've already, I guess, been doing that. No, no. But I mean, like, are you planning on doing any conferences or meetups or presentations or anything like that? Like, have you been thinking about it?

I know we were looking at doing the Atlanta Code Camp and we kind of ran up late on that thing and, and scheduling and all that kind of stuff kind of, kind of messed us up. But yeah, I guess the point that I was trying to make, although poorly is that, um, I mean, like,

like you said, we, we had planned, we had all plans to do Atlanta code camp and it was only just at the, uh, bad time management on our end that we didn't do it. Um, and what I was trying to say though,

is that like, um, I haven't been thinking about it from the regards of like, Oh, this, you know, now that this thing's, you know,

trailing off, like, what am I going to go to do? Cause I've already been in that mindset for a while. Oh, no, I wasn't. Yeah, I wasn't talking about whether you're worried about being sick. It was more about things are actually starting to happen again, right? Like, is it going to be the same?

Right. Like, conferences are actually now starting to meet in person again. Because even there for a while, like, I mean, up until just recently, most everything was still digital and they weren't trying to do a lot of things, at least in the techie world. Okay, so specific to tech, then. Yeah. Because – Yeah, not going to concerts.

Yeah, because – okay, that's where I was about to go, because I'm, like, thinking about, like, concerts, and I'm like, well, I don't know, man. Like, I've already been to so many. Like, was I not supposed to go? Right. No, no. Don't look at the tour date on that shirt because I promise. Yeah. No, the tech scene starts to – it seems like it's starting to come back together.

Like, meetups are actually starting to happen in person again and conferences are starting to do it. Because, I mean, I don't know if you guys remember, right before the COVID breakout happened and everything got locked down in March of 2020, right? I just got back from NDC London. I actually came back like two weeks before they locked down the country. And you almost had been stuck there. I do. I'll never forget when I was, when I was getting on the jet to come back, there were questions about, have you been to China in the past 14 days? Have you interacted with anybody from China in the past 14 days? And I'm like, what are they asking me this stuff for? Like, you know, I'm getting on my jet.

Like, you know, I'm just trying to go home. And it turns out, you know, that's what the whole thing was. And so, you know, at the time, I was super gung-ho about it. It's like what Jay-Z said. you know, there's, there's two sides to it. It's really exciting to get in front and, and talk about technologies that you're learning about and having fun with and all that kind of stuff. But I mean, it's probably not farfetched to say that you usually spend anywhere between 20 and 40 hours preparing for a one hour talk.

And so it's like, so it's like, man, like I, I haven't been in that mode in now two years and I'm just wondering, do I want to devote that kind of time to get back in and put those things together? You know? Yeah. I guess, I guess the answer to, since I haven't been really good at answering your question, the answer really is that I don't know. I haven't, as a spectator or participant, not as one of the speakers or as a sponsor, right? Because that's different. I mean, I look forward from the sponsor kind of perspective of Orlando Code Camp or Atlanta Code Camp.

But that's a different kind of experience working the booth like I do, right? Because, yeah, let's face it, I'm pretty good at it. That's right. But from the participant side know audience side of it like i guess i just haven't seen a topic that was like has made that has made me want to go yet but if i did you know i'm not i would i would just jump in the car and go i guess so yeah i haven't i haven't like found anything to, to that's like gotten me to that level of excitement that I'm like,

okay, I'm going. So you probably haven't even been out looking for them, right? Like I guess probably that's yeah. Yeah. Cause like when connect tech used to come, we'd look at that when elastic would do their conferences.

Like the, I don't know. There was like this sort of buzz before, before the country shut down for the world shut down to. There was like this sort of buzz before the country shut down, before the world shut down, to where it was like we were constantly going out and getting involved in these. And I don't know what it is, but it just seems like it's not as.

Connect Tech just got pricey, though. It really did. It really did. Like the cost from when I originally started going to, I'm trying to find out like what the last. Oh, my. Yeah. What is it?

I just got a last one for the individual conference only. Not the workshop was $695. Oh yeah. It used to be half that, right? Yeah. So, so I,

I, it's not to say that they don't offer a lot. Cause I mean, they, they do, but, um, yes,

I just kind of like lost the excitement for that particular one since she, since she brought that one up. I mean, not to pick on it, but yeah, I don't know. It's just felt weird. It's like,

I don't know the the buzz around a lot of these things seems to have died off a little bit especially since most of it went digital at one point or virtual i should say and so i don't know maybe i just need to get my feet wet and again and and the excitement and joy will come back but i don't know you know i actually had a quick like one of the things to talk about today, one of the topics was related. I'm going to go ahead and mark it off the list. But I wanted to mention that it was basically

what does your dream conference look like? Some of the things I missed the most or like my favorite memories from conferences like weren't actually like the sessions, although I've seen some good ones. But like I went to AWS reInvent one year and they had like this big arcade and you got to like play, you know, all arcade games and talk with other techies. And there was Atlanta B-Sides, I went to AWS reInvent one year, and they had, like, this big arcade, and you got to, like, play, you know, old arcade games and talk with other techies.

And there was Atlanta B-Sides, I think. I forget if you all went. They had, like, lock-picking tables, and, you know, they teach you how to pick locks and, you know, board game conferences to play board games, of course. But also just the vendors are kind of cool to walk around and see those, so it's kind of cool. So, you know, I don't know. There's some stuff that i miss there and even just like the you know conferences like eating lunch and stuff and kind of getting to meet other people or you like the speaker dinners and stuff you get to meet the people who are doing these talks and you ask them like what their lives are

like and this is you know often very different which is cool uh so that's what i miss well i think that goes along with what i was saying too, from like the working the conferences from the booth perspective, because a lot of what you said could be summarized as the social aspect of attending the conference, right? Not that the talks aren't great themselves, but just that social interaction with everybody there and all the random conversations you might have. Yeah. It's funny because I see it's, it's good that you didn't actually completely scratch it off the list. Cause I think it's interesting. So I too, like when I went to NDC London, I loved meeting the people, right? Like Jamie and, and, and all the other people I hung out with there, um, Zach and,

and, and tons of other, but the sessions were really good, but it was like all the in-betweens that was the most fun. And even, so one thing that's interesting being a Microsoft MVP is I think the thing that most MVPs would tell you that they love the most about being an MVP was going to MVP Summit out in Washington. And since the pandemic, it's all gone completely virtual. And here's one thing that kind of stinks, right? Like when you would fly out there, you took the week off, right? You took the week off. You went out there.

You had fun. You learned some stuff. You met people, all that. And the week off, you went out there, you had fun, you learned some stuff, you met people, all that. And the whole experience of being there was awesome. Well, when they went virtual, they still blocked off the same three or four days, but it's really hard to get excited about taking three or four days off and staring at a computer screen for eight or nine hours a day and not having those interactions. So you end up trying to attend some of the sessions, but you're probably paying more attention to the work you got to do. And so it's,

it's just not the same, right? You're not getting into it the same way. And that's why you need to attend using the metaverse. That's next. There you go. We're probably not far off. Jump into the Oasis.

Oh man. And you know, but yeah, I mean, I get your point though. Like me, me basically when you pick up and go, then you don't have the distractions of home or work with you right there in

that room. Right. But if you're going to watch the conference, you know, streaming, you know, whatever the technology might be, then if you didn't bother to go somewhere to get away from your office and home, then you have all those distractions. So it's like easy to, to lose focus. Yeah, completely. And it stinks because there's good stuff there, but it's just not the same as being in person, right?

It's not the same as having those interactions. Yeah. All right, cool. So the next one that I had that I was just thinking about, because we do a lot of this now, which do you guys prefer? Did we ever answer the Dream Conference one? Well, that's kind of what we were talking about, I guess. What's your Dream Conference look like?

Mine was NDC. Or the MVP Summit. Either one. Like just getting together, learning a lot of cool stuff, but then having a lot of fun. Just like what Jay-Z was saying. Like whether you go to an arcade or like Microsoft. I think the last one that they did at Microsoft that was really cool is I think they had rented out the floor of the Hyatt or something and they brought in a dance floor and it's weird. I've never seen this before, by the way.

I'm sure that you guys have heard about it, but they have these, it's almost like, um, silent dance floors. Everybody's wearing headphones and they've got multiple DJs and you can tune into whichever DJ you want to hear. And so you got a bunch of nerds out there dancing around, right? It's really kind of, whoa, whoa, whoa,

it's totally, no, no, it's totally, yeah, yeah, it is indisputably, indisputably,

indisputably. Um, but that's a lot of fun, right? And, and then they had all kinds of food, like foods from around the world. And it's just, you know, it's a really cool experience.

And you get to meet people from all over the world and you have a blast. That's, I love that, right? I love seeing different types of people come together, all excited about the same type of stuff. And then they get to have fun and unwind at the same time. And that's just, that's a blast. Okay. So both of you, your dream conference is less about the technical part bits of the conference and more about like all the other

things that are, you're going to do to fill time in between talks. Equal amounts, equal amounts for me. My, my, my dream conference would be about Git. They're actually there. I don't know if there still is there used to be a git uh conference but when i had looked at it it was all overseas this was you know several years back i couldn't check to see if there's still going on but it was all overseas so just you know the cost of even getting there was just outrageous so i, well, it's kind of cost prohibitive, prohibitive to go. So, and you know, speak there.

Uh, yes. So if you speak there, Hey, Hey, here's, here's a little possible that someone could, could speak there.

Yeah, sure. So if you decided that you wanted to be one of those people that could potentially speak there, they will typically pay for your plane tickets and your hotel and all that kind of stuff. So it's not cost prohibitive if you're going to participate a lot of times. Sure. Yeah. I'm not going to, but yeah. Oh,

it's easy and I will sign you up. Don't worry. Yeah. Right. It's called get merge is the name of it, by the way. I'll put it. Nice. Yeah. You know, what's funny about that though is I could, I could tell you from having God, we've known each other. All of us have known each other now for 10 or 11 years. I don't know. It's been a while.

Outlaw doesn't like to do anything that he's not done previously. So you just got to push them into it. And then afterwards, he's like a little kid smiling the whole time. So, so if we were to sign him up for it, you probably push them into it. And then afterwards he's like a little kid smiling the whole time. So, so if we were to sign him up for it, you probably end up loving it. Um,

after he tried to find us and hurt us for doing so, but, Oh, I heard you. Yeah. Yeah. This one, the next one is,

is, isn't quite as a cost prohibitive because it's only in Chicago. So it's a little bit easier for those of us on this side of the pond to get to, but yeah, but as much as I love get, I'm like, ah, So it's a little bit easier for those of us on this side of the pond to get to. But yeah. But as much as I love Git, I'm like, are we really just going to talk about Git the whole time? Right.

Although we just did a whole series of episodes on it. Yeah, I guess. I guess. It's possible. Yeah, it's possible. Yeah. Their description of it is one conference, all things Git. Hundreds of developers joined for technical talks, handson workshops and breakout discussions about get and the people who build the world's technologies with

it so the one thing that makes me like super curious about going to something like that is like what are what are like all the breakout discussions like the workshop the hands-on workshops like are there some things that we the three of us have never even considered that you know some people come with some like amazing workflows and like you know think about like every like we even had a whole episode just on workflows episode 90 and but uh you know like i don't know maybe there's something else better maybe there's like some new workflows out there they're even better like so that's the one reason that would make me like super curious to to go but yeah well you know like what i would expect at a get conferences

people talking about get of course but i i would expect there to be Git competitors there, and I would expect there to be the people who write tools so like plugins, stuff like that, UIs, but also what's like GitOps, this is what I'm thinking is basically there's a lot of tools and a lot of companies that have built really big

services that use Git as a core part of their actual pipeline and a core part of their actual like kind of pipeline and uh like a core part of their business and so i would imagine there's you know people talking about new features and how they're integrating and how they're making use and like complementary tools and stuff i bet it would be cool i really like to go to kubernetes conference i feel like there's still a lot i don't know and the ecosystem is so large i feel like i could like i could spend all day to going to conferences for things i'd never even or sorry sorry, going to talks about little kind of corners of the world that are larger than most other worlds.

Yeah, Docker and Kubernetes are like two of my favorite non-Git technologies here in recent years. Oh, man. Child number two and three. Oh man. All right. So, so my next one was born out of, of thoughts and frustrations and whatever else.

Like what do you guys prefer? So we're, we do a lot of cloud development now, right? Working in the cloud and have been for several years now. Do you prefer using managed services with potential vendor lock-in, or do you prefer managing your own service that might be more cloud agnostic? So a good example, right?

Like if you're in Google, you could use G. So a good example, right? Like if you're in, if you're in Google, you could use, um, GCPs cloud spanner, right? For your database stuff, or you could run your own Kubernetes versions of Postgres or SQL server, whatever you want,

right? Like what, what, what are you guys' thoughts and why? I have an easy answer. Yeah. Managed databases, period. period everything else you know kubernetes okay so tell me tell me give me give me why oh because i don't want to deal with that it's hard it's painful uh i just feel like the managed servers have a lot to offer there uh and

some of the other services that these cloud vendors offer, a lot of times they aren't at feature parity with the open source alternatives. I feel like they're just better. It's probably the same is true of databases, but just the database is so important and so hard to get right just on its own that I just don't want to deal with it. I have a different answer. All right. That's interesting.

So my preference would be to lean towards Kubernetes all the things and stay away from managed services. But that assumes a certain amount of scale. So if your use is going to scale to a place to where it becomes tedious trying to manage, there's a point to where trying to manage this in a single Kubernetes namespace would grow to be ridiculous. And so you would really benefit from having a managed service at some point, right? But that's a pretty big scale that you've gotten to, right? Like you're already doing like Google, Amazon type of things anyways at that point. So if you're not at those scales though,

then I would, my preference is stay away from the managed services so that you don't have that vendor lock-in. But more importantly, you have the ability to easily spin up wherever you need. And yes, you take some pain. It's not easy to Jay-Z's point in the beginning. But you learn those things, and then you move on. And now that obstacle is behind you and you're a better person for it. You're stronger for having that knowledge in theory, I guess, is I don't laugh there. Yeah. Yeah. So it's interesting. I mean,

I'm actually surprised that, that I had two different opinions on that. I guess is polarizing opinions on it because, man, I'm super torn. I think for me, it's somewhere in between what you guys said. Mine's dependent on the technology we're talking about. So, for instance, right, if you're managing a Kafka cluster, like that's a decent amount of work. Right. And there's there's a lot of nuance to it. So if you're doing a lot of things with Kafka and you're having to spend the time to manage it, keep it up, you know, do do all the things that require that are required of any kind of scaling system like that. That's that's a decent amount of's, that's a decent amount of knowledge. And that's a decent amount of work for somebody even managing that thing in Kubernetes,

right? Whether you're using operators or whatever, like it makes things easier, but it's still a lot of work. Whereas almost every cloud technology has this notion of a pub sub type subscription to where you can publish messages and have other things subscribe to it, which is essentially what Kafka gives you. And you don't have to worry about any of the infrastructure, right? You don't care if there's brokers, you don't care that there's a zookeeper behind the scenes. You don't care about any of it, right? Like you just, you publish messages and you subscribe to them and that's all you care about. And there is a lot of freedom and peace of mind that comes with, it just works, right? Like I don't care how many servers they have going behind the scenes. I don't care how many brokers, I don't care how many partitions, like they do it and I use it. So it's weird.

I don't love vendor lock-in, but on a certain level, there are certain services that I think are like no brainers that you should use. Like another example would be, um, the managed services that I think that everybody should use in every single cloud provider is their own storage blob storage, right? Um, there's no reason for you to try and run a MinIO cluster in a Kubernetes, in my opinion, because now you're having to manage the disks that are backing all that kind of stuff. And now you have to manage scaling those things and all that, right? It's like having your own Hadoop cluster or something like that. That's a lot of work. Whereas cloud storage blob storage is so cheap and mostly so easy to use that it just does not make sense to try and work your way around it just so you can be portable and go

from Azure to, to GCP to AWS or whatever. Right? Like, so it's hard. What I've grown to appreciate over time is, is managing server technologies really is an absolute pain in the butt, right? If you have a database cluster that you need to keep alive, you've got masters, you've got failovers, you've got all these replicas upgrade, you're like, oh man, we need to check these 20 boxes to make sure that if anything does go wrong, we can recover from it. It's a management nightmare. Whereas if you're just like, hey, I'm going to use Google's Cloud Spanner and I never have to think about it to do a mixture of both. So my flip side to my own argument here against managed services is it's really hard to do unit testing or anything in a manner that allows you to check this stuff. Because the tooling just isn't great for it, right? So I'll give an example. Some of the stuff we do is Flink and Flink, you can manage state. You can basically save state off in blob storage, right? Well, if you want to do that in a local way, the easiest way to do is to like spin up a min IO pod and then write state to it. Like it's a blob storage in the cloud.

The problem with that is, though, that's different code than what you have running with your managed service. And so while you're able to test stuff and while you're able to do things sort of the same way, it's not the same way. And so you still haven't set yourself up for avoiding failures in those environments. And it is mind numbingly frustrating to, to balance a managed service world with being able to do testable things that aren't brittle integration tests. I don't know if you heard though, Alan.

So there's this guy, uncle Bob, and he was able to abstract his database away to the point to where he delayed that decision until the time that he decided what he wanted. Then he's like, you know what? We're good with the file that we got. Oh boy. Do I recall that? So maybe you haven't abstracted away your storage enough.

If you care about men IO versus Google storage or AWS or. Yeah. Yeah. It's tough. It's like once you get to a whole bunch of teams trying to share stuff it's it's hard but i mean yeah i mean i think it's good lessons and good things that we talked about back then but it's uh oh it's tough uh you know you know the funny part about that is that abstraction thing even when you do do it, do do whatever. I came out wrong. Right. It did. Even when you, even when you do that properly, you get questions like I was in a conversation with somebody the other day and they're like, well, it looks like the way that this is set up,

it's a decent amount of configuration. I'm like, yeah, there's a factory that, you know, will basically return you the GCP provider for this thing. And then I'm like, well, there's only one implementation in that factory because all we have is GCP. And it's like, well, why did you create a factory? Well, it's extensible now, right? I mean, if we wanted to plug in Met.io, we could.

If we wanted to plug in local, we could. But we just haven't done that because we didn't have time because we had to make this work. But we made it pluggable. So, yeah, man, it we made it pluggable. So yeah, man, it's always fun having those conversations. Yeah.

I mean, you definitely bring up a good, I, a good point with the storage. Um, that one, I don't know that I would have bothered to even try Kubernetes. I would have probably just been lazy and be like, yep, that one is going to be there.

Um, but the Kuber, but Kafka though, I mean, like, I think, I mean, like, look, the three of us learned a lot about Kafka. I think we're stronger for it. We're better for it. I don't care what Jay-Z tells you. He's weaker. He tells the breeze could bowl me over right now.

We are running it in Kubernetes and we're fine with it. I was kind of saddened that that was the one that you went to first as why this is a problem. I mean i go confluent cloud if i if like i mean you know it's all about scale too if like if i had a thousand developers you know that would be a different thing but if i was starting a project that i would be working on

with like less than five people you know um then yeah i would totally go to confluent cloud to do the managed service that one's even outside of out of any particular cloud provider you're actually talking about going to you're talking about going the managed service route with providers of services right so whatever is best in breed so yeah

they'll let you run it like they have different options so you can run it in your cloud of choice whatever I wouldn't want to be paying egress for that but they'll spin it up in your cloud of choice, whatever. I wouldn't want to be paying egress for that, but they'll spin it up in your cloud of choice. I don't know what all they offer, but I'm also not actually in this situation. Yeah, it's interesting. So like what he just said for anybody that's not familiar with the cloud world.

So if you are in AWS, right, like they have, we actually did a show on some of this where we talked about all the? Like they have, we actually did a show on some of this, or we talked about all the ridiculous icons they have for their 9 billion services that they provide up there. Oh yeah. You can never figure them out. No. I mean, and they now have so many that it's actually hard to, to find exactly what you're looking for in some cases, but they probably have, or I'm sure that AWS and Azure and all of them, they have like a search thing, right? So if you have the need for full text index search or whatever, they have a service that you can use.

Or you could go to Elasticsearch's site, which is elastic.io, is it? It's co. Is it elastic.co? Oh, yeah, elastic.io, is it? It's co. Is it elastic.co? Oh, yeah, elastic.co. Yeah. So you could go to them directly and say, hey, I want to pay you for you running Elasticsearch, and I want you to do it in AWS, or I want you to run it in Azure or whatever. And so you can actually go to an outside third party and pay for those cloud services that way, too, right? So it's interesting.

A lot of times what I think about, I think about what's within the ecosystem, right? Like if you're an Azure, what are their features? If you're an AWS, et cetera. So,

um, yeah, it's, it's actually hard, man. Like trying to figure out the right balance of this stuff, it will drive you insane. Well,

this is why I phrased my, my answer is like, it's, it's all about the scale of what you're doing though. You know, like if you get to the point of the scale where, you know, maybe there's some kind of like global resiliency or whatever, that it might be better. You might be better off having the experts at Confluent run your Kafka cluster for you or Elastic run your Elastic cluster for you. Okay. But otherwise, like if you can get away with it in Kubernetes, there's something nice about that portability, you know? There is, but so let me pose it to you a different way. What if it's not even about scale what if just all of a sudden like

take take your application out of it what if one of the nodes or one of the pvcs goes bad in your kubernetes cluster and now your database is down like you got to deal with that now well right and have a good backup dr strategy anyways right maybe but then you got to deal with that too and i guess that's what i'm getting at is, you know, everything's humming along just fine. You've got your 20 users that are using your thing. And then something happens that's completely outside your control. A node goes bad, a PVC goes bad, whatever, it's corrupt. And now you're on the hook for, okay, I got to kill this thing off.

I've got to go find my backup that I've got stored off in Cloud Storage. I've got to restore it. Whereas if you just use a managed service, you don't care. It's always running in theory. Well, no, no, no. Even in a managed, okay, I take issue with this argument because shenanigans have been called, sir. Because here's the problem. You could poorly design your solution regardless of what the technology is.

So you could poorly design a solution that uses cloud services and still lose when that region is lost. You're like, oh, man, I just lost everything. Because you didn't have a backup, a good backup DR strategy to deal with that situation or whatever. So, I mean, it can, it can handle, it can, it can happen regardless. Now, the one thing though, that, you know, that Kubernetes example might not be so great at is if you wanted to have like a, you know, it might not be as good at a global global span kind of, you know, approach. But even then, though, because of the database, you're going to use something to like replicate that data across regions. So you'd probably still want to spin up multiple instances of your app

and then just have it like eventually consistent data getting from like one region to the next and et cetera. So I guess what I'm getting at here is you're totally right, right? Like if you didn't check the right boxes or whatever when you set up your data storage, then you could run into this. But I guess what I'm getting at here is what you just said is if you were going to do this in Kubernetes, you have to have pretty intimate knowledge of the database system that you're setting up, right? Like, how are you going to replicate these things? How are you going to set up disaster recovery? What's the right way of doing this? Like there's

a lot of knowledge in that particular system that you have to do. Whereas if you're using a managed service, typically it's just a few check boxes, right? Like I want this thing in multi-region. I want, you know, whatever other features are there. And that's kind of it. So it takes the onus of having to understand exactly how everything runs off of you and puts it onto the infrastructure you're running it on, which is managed by AWS or Google or Azure or whatever. Right. But now, I mean, I understand what you're saying, but now instead of having like the intimate knowledge of how do I do Postgres backups and Postgres restores so that, you know, and how do I cluster Postgres?

Instead, that intimate knowledge is, okay, how does Google Cloud SQL work? How do I do backups and restores for Google Cloud SQL? and you know, so, so you're still, you're still have to like go through the documentation or whatever to figure out like what those same answers, those same problems, right? You're just changing, like instead of it being Postgres directly, you're going to use a cloud SQL, for example, and you're in, it's going to be a Postgres database in under covers. Right. And even then there might be like a ramifications of like, Oh, you picked Postgres, in undercovers. Right. And then even then there might be like, uh, ramifications of like, Oh, you picked Postgres, but had you picked this other database, then you would get these other features that might be better. So, you know, there's still some give and take there.

I mean, I understand what you're getting at. The one, the one thing I would definitely urge is that if you were going to go this route for all this, holy, please terraform it. Like it should all be scripted. Right. Yeah. Like,

and, and that's, that's the beauty of, of going back to our Kubernetes thing, right? It's like your infrastructure is, uh, is,

is scripted out. And, and at least if you're terraforming it, then it still is and you can have all of that uh configuration you know you can see that history and iterate it on it in your uh your what repo oh your git repo hey but in fairness uh you can also terraform whatever services and whatever cloud you choose right Right. So you could, you could, yeah. So what, what outlaws getting out there is terraform this stuff so that you got it in

source control and so that you can iterate on it and it does the stuff for you in a consistent way every time. Right. I mean, for those, those not experienced in the cloud world, then just to be clear, I mean,

I guess a, a, a way to describe that is that, uh, terraforming would be terraforming is a, I don't want to say a YAML base, but a description base. Declarative. Declarative. Thank you. A declarative way of describing what your cloud environment and services look like, what options you want set, you know, things like that. And it's the cross-platform way of doing things, Terraform is, because each cloud has their own

ones. Like I want to say Azure uses what's called ARM templates. I forget what AWS calls theirs. Like, so you could do these things with these declarative setups in each one but terraform is sort of the one that allows you to go across clouds right and say hey um i need these resources in this one whatever so um yeah it's sort of like it's actually hashi corp it's it's a hashi corp thing right our friends are our makers friendly makers of Yep. Can we also discuss like, hey, Azure, like really ARM template? Like you couldn't call it, like that one might have already been in use

and you didn't have to confuse the industry and maybe like, you know, make our Bing searches worse by ARM. Totally. Yeah. I should say too that although it is like a common kind of language for going across clouds, like the capabilities of the clouds are different. So you can't really just take the one that you're using for AWS and apply it to Linode or whatever. That's a good point.

You still have to tweak it. But it's better than most other things. It's better than converting ARM gross to cloud formation or whatever. Oh, that's right. That's what AWS was. Yeah, so, all right. That was pretty good. Yeah, so where did we leave off?

Oh, nope, that was the other one. So I guess I'll go then because Jay-Z's not doing it. And if Jay-Z does it, it'll be weird. So I will definitely say if you haven't already left us a review, we would greatly appreciate it if you did leave us a review. My first. Okay. There you go.

You're doing good, Jay-Z. You've learned something. 196 episodes in. We learned, Jay-Z, how to ask for a review. Six stars, also fine. I think to get that, though, you have to leave one five-star review and one one-star review. Let's not do that. That doesn't sound so good.

I wasn't going to say it. You said it. Oh, dang it. All right. Well, at any rate, you can find some helpful links at www.codingbox.net slash review. I wonder how many people would be like, Alan said he learned you something. Like, does he know that that's not right? Like, I was, I shouldn't have said anything because I am curious how much feedback I get. Like, this dude's an idiot.

How's he having, how's he doing a podcast? Well, we just heard your opinion on managed services so that's a good point yeah yeah i learned me something too oh boy i'm gonna get some bad feedback all right um all right so with that we head into my favorite portion of the show survey says all right so we're gonna play a little game All right, so with that, we head into my favorite portion of the show, Survey Says. All right, so we're going to play a little game. So in the spirit of Family Feud, what I'm going to do is I'm going to read off a question, and each of you are going to get one chance to give me an answer.

And I thought, well, depending on how time we'll see how quickly this goes maybe up to five but no you know maybe three we'll see how fast how it goes but i got like a little calculator at the ready already ready to keep track of your points and your points are going to be like whatever the whatever your answer is if whatever the number of respondents gave that answer, right, that's your score. Do we buzz in?

Like, do we have a buzzer? Well, so I was thinking about that. I was like, I think I'm just going to have to like alternate it back and forth. Like, you know,

you know, one question, one of you go first, the next bounce, you know, so you each get your turn to go. Uh, but this being episode one 96, according to to Tutko's trademark rules of engagement, Jay-Z is going to go first.

Okay? Yep. So question number one. Name a house you never want to be in. Jay-Z? I'm going to call it the big house. although I was torn between that or jailhouse. Okay. Okay.

Doghouse. Doghouse. Ooh, doghouse. All right. Well, doghouse was number three with eight respondents. All right. Jailhouse was number two. Jail slash big house was number two with 11 respondents. All right. Jailhouse was number two. Jail slash big house was number two with 11 respondents.

The number one answer on the board was haunted house. Man, I thought that with 27 and I was like, it's Halloween. Like it's, it's October. Why are you guys not just saying that? Man,

whatever. All right. Do we call you Steve? Are you Mr. Harvey? Well, it depends on what kind of answers you give me. It's going to be like five times, you know, I'm asking you the same question. You give me the same answer. You just change the syllables.

Maybe. Throw that up there. All right. Question number two. Name something. And Alan, you're going to go first on this one. Name something associated with vampires.

Sucking blood. Okay. Bats. Ooh. Ooh. Blood sucker was the number two answer. Oh, come on. 29 respondents gave that one.

Okay. Bat was the number four answer with only seven. Oh, no. I took a lead. Number one answer on the board. What'd you say? The Vampire Teeth. No, Fangs was way down on the list. Oh did you say? The vampire teeth. No.

Fangs was way down on the list. Oh, wow. Okay. Number one was Twilight. Oh, no. And I checked the date on this. This is not that old of a thing. This survey is fairly recent, like within, let's

say, 12 months. The last October, let's say, 12 months. The last October, let's say. Yeah, I call that out because this is not like right after like the first Twilight book or movie came out. So none of that. Well, I'm glad I didn't get number one. Well after that. Yeah, I'm glad I didn't get number one.

I will say that had either one of you gone with that one as your first possible choice, then I'd be like, huh, they're cheating. That's weird. Like, really? Okay. I mean, if I had said, like, name something associated with glitter and you said twilight,

I'd be like, okay, I get it. Glee. Okay. Name something in a person's closet that only comes out on special occasions jay-z no this is yours

I mean my closet I said a person's they didn't ask they didn't ask 100 respondents what comes out of jay-z's closet yeah i guess right um i mean this is tough what comes out of a closet on special occasions uh holiday decorations decorations i don't think he's getting any points on that i want to say jewelry jewelry decorations was not on the board at all jewelry is the number three answer look at me

all right you're in sync with the twilight generation congratulations how many points i get on this one yeah 10 respondents on jewelry. Suit tux was number one answer, 35. Dress was the number two answer at 26. I was going to say dress, but I don't have one. All right. So we'll do, let's see. Yeah, one more. You got to give me the chip for a shot this one.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Would you rather the question be, I'll let you guys decide. Would you rather it be something to do with Oz or baseball? Baseball. I'm a coach. If you did know. Jay-Z, you got a preference?

Baseball. Is that the one? Is the one with the feet? They have touchdowns and stuff. Yeah, let's do that. Yeah. Name something you might see a commercial for during a baseball game. And, Alan, you're first. Oh, man.

Well, I thought this was going to be easy. Cars. Okay. Cars. I was going to be easy. Uh, cars. Okay. Cars. So I was going to say trucks, but I don't know. I feel like there's probably a car slash truck. Yeah.

Yeah. Um, so I'll say beer. Ooh, here. Okay. Good one. Car slash truck was the number one answer.

28 respondents came back with that. Yeah, baby. And JZ, I gotta tell you, man, number one answer 28 respondents came back with that yeah baby and JC I gotta tell you man I would have thought beer would have been number one it was number six for responding who are these people

they only got four respondents like have you been to a baseball game this isn't NASar guys this is baseball yeah so i alan handedly won that one yeah there's no reason to even calculate i think i beat you with one of my answers yeah he's not wrong jay-. Yeah. I mean, considering that he had like two answers that were like the top near the, you know, one or two on the board. So, yeah, that went a long way.

Allen has 75 points on the board. Yeah, baby. And Jay-Z had 22. Yeah. They were quality 22. Clutch 22. You know, I was thinking like if we were to do this version again,

we should just do like the first to like say 50 points or something. And then that way, like whoever gets to 50 first, or if both of you got to it on like that last answer, then like whoever had the highest score, then I like it. I like it. Yeah.

All right. A lot of fun. Well, yeah. All right then right then so so the next next topic up here what is the right balance of processes in your daily job please somebody tell me like that's tough it's really tough you got jira you got you know scrum you've got sprints you've got youints, you've got, you know, planning, you've got all like, what's the right amount guys?

Like D like story pointing or putting estimates on things like how much is too much and how much is, do you think is like the, uh, what was it? Goldilocks? This one's just right. Yeah. Yeah. that's tough um i uh i am a being of chaos but i do really well with the organizational rules and like whenever i i have that i just seem to do better with it and so i tend to kind of tend to favor uh having more process because it helps me personally.

But, oh, man, it can really tie you down and be miserable. So it's hard to give a quantitative answer. Like I wish I could say like one hour a day. That's the right amount. But that's nonsensical. So I don't really know how to answer the question. Okay. How about this?

So, Outlaw, you can answer this in a second too is there any particular one of the processes that you find counterproductive so like i said we got ticketing we got all this stuff you got estimation is there any particular part of it that you just look at and go why i think anytime that you've got JIRA, but then also spreadsheets, that frustrates me. I want to, you know, and I say JIRA, I just mean any ticketing system. I like the idea of having, I like the idea that people put their information somewhere and then other people can go query it or organize it

or whatever they can check the status file, I have them talk to me about it. That sounds great and seems to just never really happen and if it does it's to my detriment you know it's uh somehow miscommunicating my intentions um but yeah anytime anytime spreadsheets are evolved really it just seems like bad news okay what about you outlaw well i mean kind of going back to the original question of like how you know how much was the right balance of process i mean if they're getting in the way then that's an indication of too much right like that could be like whatever the

equivalent of like project manager code smell or code smell for project managers or whatever. Right. Like, um, I mean, I don't like it. I don't like process for process sake, but I do like structure in, in there to, you know, um,

yes, but I don't know. Like when you start, if you get into situations where you're spending like exorbitant amount of time doing stuff, planning stuff or, you know, whatever your case might be, where it's like hours and you know,

like the bulk of a day or even a full day or more than a day, then that, that feels counterproductive. But also I kind of question like, well, if that's the kind of level that you've gotten to, to where you're like wrangling those types of things, like, like you mentioned Jira, for example, then maybe you changed jobs and no one told you. What's exorbitant? I don't know how to define it. You could have two people on the team and one person says we're due too much and the other says not enough.

I don't even know where I fall in this. I know that when I start feeling like, like my whole day is trying to track minutes and, and, and statuses on things like constantly making sure that, that I'm more worried about the visibility of what I'm doing than what I'm actually doing. That's where I feel like the line's been crossed. Right. And on the flip side, I like what you said, Jay-Z about I'm a creature of chaos. I totally am.

I 100% am like, I don't mind bouncing around from thing to thing to thing, but I also do agree that having some process and some structure in place helps helps um leverage the ability to do that chaos and in a productive way sort of which is weird but but yeah man I I don't know I've seen over the years that I I've felt like there weren't enough. And then there's other times where it's felt like you went too far in it. And it's hard to find that right balance because when there's too much, you feel like you're strangled. When there's not enough, you feel like you're not productive because you're constantly just, you know, shifting gears. And

it's really hard to strike that balance. I think at least in terms of what I've seen over the years. Well, did, so something you just said struck a nerve because, and I don that balance, I think, at least in terms of what I've seen over the years. So something you just said struck a nerve. And I don't remember if we talked about this before. Have we talked about it on the show, the maker's schedule versus the manager's schedule? No, we haven't, but I've seen the article. So I just put a link in the notes, and we'll have it in the show notes as well. But, um, this was from, uh, Paul Graham who, who wrote it. It's super short, like, you know, a five minute or less read, um, that,

that was written back in like 2009. And he was, uh, I think he somehow related to the Y Combinator. So if you're, you know, Hacker News kind of related, like it's part of that world is where he came from. I don't recall his exact affiliation with it. But at any rate, he's talking about like how there are managers who, their whole job is like the whole visibility thing. And so for them, having a meeting where they, when they bounce around from one meeting to the next, to the next, to the next, that's literally what they do. That's their job. So they're okay with

it. They're comfortable with it because otherwise what know, otherwise what would they do, right? Versus the maker wants to stay in that mindset of like whatever that problem is, that complex problem is. They want to stay in that mindset. They don't want to bounce around to something else. Even a context switch to a different ticket, you know, they're trying to solve a hard problem. They want to stay in that mindset until they're done with it. Right. And, um, and, and it can feel if they see that, well, there's, I have this 30 minute gap of time because the way the meetings are laid out, right. Then that 30 minute gap, the maker can see that 30 minute gap and say, well, I'm not really incentivized to try to start something new

or to continue on something new because for me to get back into that headspace, it's going to take, you know, it'll be 26 minutes before I even get back to where I back into it. And so I guess I won't bother and I'll just waste that 30 minutes and not get into it at all, right? So going back to the process thing, like bouncing around, there definitely is, for the maker, the advantage of not being involved in those things and not getting mired down with all the process and other BS that and, and other BS that we have to, that might need to be explained away to somebody else. Right. Like if you can stay in that headspace and do what you gotta do, but you know, there, and again, it goes back to like, you know, what I was jokingly

referring to a minute ago, where it's like, well, if your job is to report all of those things and you attend all of those meetings, then maybe you got like a new job title and you didn't realize it or no one told you, you know, like you have a huge, you suddenly have new job responsibilities. That's totally true. And by the way, that, that article, the outlaw links and this read it, it's really good. It's, it's an excellent read and it is exactly what you would expect to feel as a developer and it's and it's put into words that that makes sense to everybody who reads that article so um if we're skipping ahead to the next one then then I had one which super small you know group of people that might be working on that thing like maybe one other person you know no more than two

right but but for the most part maybe you're just working in isolation on whatever your project is or with a team of people where a team would be like you know know, four or more, you know, people, three or more, let's say four, you know, point is, is like, there's a lot of interaction with those other people. You're communicating regularly. Like you're, you're not just doing something on your own. You're not making those decisions. You're, you're having communications with others. Which environment do you prefer if i work alone can i choose not to work

just wondering like if i was alone on island i mean like maybe i just eat some coconuts and you know hang out this comes from jay-z the guy who's like does more than anyone else that i know he's always got like some random here's a game that I wrote in my free time while I was, uh, you know, in between a commercial break while I was watching TV with the missus. And, uh,

Oh yeah. Hey, I just dropped this new album. Check out my new heavy metal jazz album, uh, that I just put together. Yeah. But most of the time I don't do any of that.

It's the vast majority of time. Nothing. I'm just sitting idly, staying at the the time I don't do any of that. The vast majority of time, nothing. I'm just sitting idly, standing at the wall. I love it. My true answer, though, is two pizza team. I think that works perfectly. That's the right answer. To be a part of a team? Yeah, two pizza team, a small team.

Oh, two pizza team. Okay, gotcha. Yeah, I'm there, too. So this one's interesting for me. I love doing all types of development, right? So, so I mean, we've all been given tasks where it's like, Hey, you have to do the UI, the middle tier, the backend, and you know, everything in between on every stack of the layer. And I love that. I love having my hands in all of it. However, I don't like being isolated, right? I don't like being the

only person thinking about something, doing something, whatever I do like working on a team. So, um, I agree though, if the team gets too large, it feels counterproductive. It feels like you're not getting enough done and there's too much disconnect. So I think a small functional team is, is fantastic. And that, that is, that is my, my favorite way to work. So I don't know that I actually have an answer.

I'm kind of torn because on the one hand, if you are working alone on that, then like you want to believe that you're free to like make your own decisions and do your own thing. Right. And you're like, you know what, I'm going to, I I'm free to like clean this up. I want to do this, you know, I want to make this my way, blah, blah, blah, whatever. I'll ref, I can refactor this and this would be great. And I always didn't like the way that was written anyway. So I want to improve that. But the reality is, uh, you still have deadlines. So, you know, you still might have to cut corners here and there

like everyone else always has, right? Like, you know, I mean, that's just, that's the reality of it. You know, sometimes it's more important to just get it out there. So on the one hand, so it sounds like it would be promising, but there is also the discouraging kind of aspect of it where, you know, your other peers, you know, might, that are working together on teams with other things. So you're just kind of like, Oh, well, I guess like they're off playing, you know, uh, they're all, they're all playing halo together and I'm over here, you know, by myself. And, and so, so there is a discouraging aspect of it. Does that make sense? Um, where like you, you know, it's, it's like you feel left out, but not left out. I don't know how to describe it.

But, um, so, you know, working as part of a team can be, but definitely, you know, the small team, I would definitely agree with that. I remember the two pizza thing, but like how many, how many pizza, how many people was that per pizza? Cause I mean, I pretty, I could,

I could tear up a pizza, you know, like if I, if I were going to, if I were going to like have a carb day, let's be clear. If we're going to, if we're going to cheat and have a carb day,

then I feel like I could destroy a pizza pretty good. Didn't they say the ideal was five and no more than seven? Yeah, I think that's right. Five pizzas? No, five people. It was the Amazon thing, these initial articles. But I will say, I do feel like, and I'm not just saying this because I'm biased, I do feel like East Coast can eat a lot more pizza of the U.S. than West Coast people.

Just saying. I feel like New Yorkers, Floridians, Georgians, we can eat, hands down, more pizza than anyone in Seattle, California. Yeah, I'm going to take Chicago for East Coast, too. I feel like we can eat more pizza than anyone in California. I don't know if that's a good thing, Jay-Z. I'm saying it in a weird way, but you know what I mean. I feel like, on average, people on the East Coast can eat more pizza than people on the West Coast. So we've got smaller teams.

I'm willing to die in this hill too. You're saying on the East Coast we should have three-man teams and on the West Coast they need seven-man teams. That's what I just heard. Same productivity level. Okay. Yeah, I got it. I think that's probably right. Is that really what he was getting at?

Yeah, I think so. I really thought this was a thing of like California pizza is not as good as New York pizza. And so therefore we can eat more New York pizza because it's better. Yeah. That's legit too, I think. That too. It's all, this thing is so true. I've stumbled into it.

Listen, I have this artesian flatbread pizza that. Yep. With broccoli on it. It's really good. We've gotors on it i put it's it's really good we've got broccoli on it is freshly sourced uh from a local farm here dude you said artisan i can't get past oh wait artisan yeah whatever you know that top 40 pizza's got some avocado on it get out of here get out of here hey but way to call me out, though, Alan. Sorry. In fairness, though, ain't nobody eating a lot of Chicago pizza, all right? No.

Because you can't. You would die. Yeah, it's like eating biscuits with pizza on top of it. You can't do it. Do yourself a favor, and even if you've seen it before, even if you've had it, just Google Chicago pizza again and just look at it. Man, it's amazing. I got to do do this let's do this yeah man chicago pizza yeah i mean that should exist it's amazing isn't it like now oh wait i clicked like why did they why did they make it like that but man great idea it's really where the word pie should have come from.

That's what I, that's what I was thinking. It would be like the, the original pizza pie. That's amazing. Yeah. I mean, and if you're going to like cheat on carb day,

I mean, what better way? This sounds like the way to do it. And I even prefer New York pizza, but I mean, there's nothing wrong with this. Yeah. Right.

I think I was just sort of watering. When you eat your New York pizza, but I mean, there's nothing wrong with this. Yeah, right. I think I just started watering. When you eat your New York pizza, how do you choose to eat your New York fold it? Yes. Yes, sir. Well, there's no other way. It just falls apart on you if you don't do it that way. Right. Fair enough. We're all in agreement.

I don't know that I could fold the Chicago pizza, but I'll try it. No, no, no. You have to go to the doctor. And I'll fall on the floor and I'll be like all sad looking down at it with like tears coming out. I'm like, my pizza fell on the floor. Dislocating your jaw like a shark to try and take a bite. Oh, yeah.

Yeah, man. Worth it. Hey, you mentioned Kafka and Zookeeperkeeper and i meant to call this out earlier just to close the loop on this but uh kafka removed the dependency on zookeeper if we run it in a fancy mode right i don't think the main line like you have to enable it via some flag or something right 2.8 uh gave you the early access to it yeah yeah so it's kind of in like preview mode so i think you still can run it in like the kind of normal mode but there's like a like raft mode or something but that was from a year ago though yeah so maybe

it's out now so i mean yeah i don't know let's see i was excited that it was like uh available because with that with 3-0 it was supposed to get i think 3-0 is supposed to like totally gone like you cannot run it like that anymore right and it's exciting because i i think i've grabbed about several times like tofka is fantastic but it's an ecosystem. You can't just spin up a Kafka pod. You need bootstrap servers and replicas. You need Zookeeper previously.

It's like somehow you're spinning up eight or nine different various services that all have to be working together. It's super easy. I mean, Jay-Z, I don't know what you're talking about. Yeah, I feel like I uh struggled long enough with it now that it does kind of feel easy because i i feel like i've hit uh you know like 9 000 different problems with it and slowly but surely overcome them all i wrote the faq and and see you're stronger for it you're better for it right i told you unless there's a stiff breeze right weeping

in the corner yeah all right well uh before we get to the last one do you how about if i were to ask you why is peter pan always flying because he can never never land, look at that. Because he never lands. Nice. So what's the last one, Jay-Z? The last one. Oh, what are you going to be for Halloween? Me? Yeah.

Can I say me? Yeah. Is that an answer? It's an answer. Alan? Actually, I'm going to go as Alan. That's a big choose to fill. Actually, it's not. was alan that's the big shoes to fill actually not um uh i don't think i have anything but if i was going to do something it would have to be something scary like uh i don't even know if

there's anything scary anymore but i mean it's coming up pretty soon you should know what's gonna be yeah man i you know honestly my son ordered like this mask that's actually really cool. And you can Bluetooth it to your phone or whatever, and you can upload images to it. And so you can kind of make the mask whatever you want it to be. And it can also like have things in motion. Like that's really cool. Like that's something I'd want to do. So is it like a digital, like it's basically like a digital screen oh man which character is that oh it's so cool man like and

it's not it's not like photorealistic there's i don't know how many um big pixels or whatever that they have on it so it has this sort of cool retro look that you could do all kinds of cool stuff with like it's got flames and like that's what i'd do i'd probably put on a cape or something and then and then get something like that and then i saw some dude years ago that took like two ipads and one on the front and one on the back and he used the camera from the one on the front or on the back or whatever to where it looked like there was a hole in the dude yeah i saw that because the camera was recording on one and streaming to the other one like that's just super. Yeah. I saw that because the camera was recording on one and streaming to the

other one. Like that's just super cool. Right? Like that's, that's the kind of stuff that's just like really neat. So yeah, I like to scare people. Like when,

when we would set up at my previous house, I don't know that we'll do it this year cause we're in the new house, but we would set up all kinds of stuff to scare kids. Right? Like I'd have spiders on, on pulleys and stuff that I dropped down on them and have them squeaking running out of the yard like yeah i like to have fun right like halloween's about being creeped out and having fun at the same time so yeah yeah we had we had a little bit of a reputation our house had a little bit of a reputation to be in the scary wood there for a while. That's fun. But my wife told me I had to stop. Really? It just,

you know, didn't want to scare me more. I don't know. We had fun with it, but I had some good ones too, man. I give you some pointers. I give you some pointers of like good ways to like get the Halloween kit, get the kids and you're here. Here's an easy one here. This was like one of my favorites. I'll give you two. Actually, I lied. I'll give you two. One was, do you remember Screamy? I think they just called it like Screamy Face from Scream. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So have you seen those like uh the the the candy um not dispensers but like it'll it'll be like a statue that just holds the bowl and and then the kids can go get it so one year i dressed as screamy face and pretended to be one of those statues and i would and i would just be like i would lay in like weird positions you know like i'd be like sitting in a chair like acting like I was just like stuffed full of like a pine straw or something to make it look like you're not a real person and sit in the chair with like the – and you're kind of sitting there like uncomfortable, right?

But you're holding the bowl. And then when they would go to like grab the candy out of the bowl. Oh, man. you're holding the bowl and then when they were going to like grab the candy out the bowl i mean you could get some reactions like you could really get them good it was so it was so fun but uh yeah so that was that was one and also like you know like i would even stand kind of like like as if i was like uh like a mannequin but kind of like propped up against the the wall of the house or something you know to where it you know it it didn't look like a like a normalquin, but kind of like propped up against the, the wall of the house or something, you know, to where it, you know, it,

it didn't look like a, like a normal person wouldn't stand that way kind of thing. And you're holding the candy and then get them that way when they come to get it. That's beautiful. That's so much fun. It was so fun to get the kids, but I mean,

it's like you, you'll, you have limited time that you can pull that off, right? Like you can't do that you can pull that off right like you can't do that year after year after year well even on the same halloween because the kids will go running up the street and be like hey watch out for the dude up there in the yard and it's like man and no and the kids would never buy it either or the other thing that they would do is they would bring their friends back and not tell them. And they'd be like, no,

I'm going to sit. Are you going? I'll wait here. And I would see the faces. I'm like, I recognize that kid. He's already been by. Yeah.

So that was number one. That was number one. Number two was, um, uh, a ghillie suit. I think, I think I'm pronouncing that right.

The, the, the camouflage suit where it looks like. Yeah, yeah. It looks like you're just a pile of leaves or something, you know? Yeah. Especially in the fall here in the south, right? Like you could just blend in.

You're raising up out of the ground all day. Yeah, exactly. So they walk by. They walk by you to go to the front door. Like you're waiting off somewhere close to the street or something like that. Right. They walk by you unsuspecting of anything. And then all of a sudden you pop up and you're walking behind them.

Bad. Yeah. Kids having heart attacks. It was so good. Yeah. My, we, my neighborhood did lead, uh, you know, the, the, the community community for child heart attacks. That's good. That's good.

They need that on occasion. So, JC, you're being a blooming flower? No, I'm going to be turning off the lights and playing my Steam Deck. Dude, that's dirty. Go buy yourself some candy and hand it out to the kids, man. What are you doing? No way. I do have something scary about my house

i have a dog that uh like barks uncontrollably insanely like sounds i mean sounds like kujo sounds like a werewolf just absolutely his bark is just terrifying it shakes the windows and i'm not dealing with it so you're not you're not you're not being anything for Halloween then? No, I mean, I'll put a bowl out front. Oh, well, that's no fun. The first kid that comes by is going to get all of it. I got a camera so at least I know which little brat to hate on from afar. It's killing me. This image that you put out of that mask that you were talking about, there's a comic book character that has the same kind of

like that's his face is a mask like that. I'm pretty sure his name is Death Rage, if I remember. Let's see. And in fact, the crazy thing is I clicked on the one for the, um, the, the direct company site and they came up with like,

uh, this promotion, uh, you know, Hey, give us your email. We'll give you 10% off. And the face is almost identical to the comic book character.

Awesome. I'll have to send you guys a picture of this thing. Like it's actually, it's super cool. Like when he said he wanted, I was like, eh, whatever.

And he got it. and i was very impressed the really neat part is he can take a picture of anything around him too and have it go on to the mask he took a picture of me and put it on there it was really kind of creepy looking at my kid wearing my face on you know the mask looking back at me so in the pictures it looks kind of pixelated though but maybe that's just a picture does it like what's the resolution i put those pictures in there i would i was just wanted to so we'll get the real mask and we'll put it in the show notes but that's not the one that alan's talking about okay oh okay so he didn't know what i was talking about then okay well there's this this mask that jay-z put up there looks pretty cool though right where'd you put it it's in the show notes oh in the show notes it also reminds me of um uh oh shoot

like a kind of that's it dude that's it that lunar lights thing that's totally not daft punk but that's that's absolutely the one and the thing that you don't see from these pictures this it's lunar lights is it will also do animated stuff right so like it's it is super duper cool and it is pixelated like that it looks okay like said, it's got a very retro look to it, which adds to its appeal. It's almost like sort of creepy. How do you see through it though? There's holes.

You can't see it in the pictures they have right there, but like the first picture where they have the circles right above it, there's slits for the eyes. Oh, so it's technically like further down on your face. No, I mean, the whole thing can have a picture on it, but there are two slits for your eyes where the image can actually go around it. Like it can fill up basically that entire mask. It's super cool, man.

All right. Well, I guess we're all going to get one of those for Christmas. That is so neat. Okay. Well, with that, we'll head into alan's favorite portion of the show it's the tip of the week yeah all right and my tip is uh duck tv have you all heard of duck db before no it came out of nowhere for me wait are you saying duck tv no totally different definitely don't watch that don't google that duck db um duck db is an in-process sql olap database management system uh in process meaning you can just kind of embed it into uh your application like uh say you can drop it in your palm file you can npm install it whatever you can also use it via command line

so i've seen some cool demos where someone just kind of like uh you know dropping this you know take a csv file and start doing you know sql queries on like aggregations and sums and you know where clauses and just kind of cool stuff with like really big uh sql files and i haven't done much with it i just installed it and i was going to give it a shot, but I keep hearing people say really good things about it on Twitter or on Reddit or Hacker News. It just sounds really cool.

It's kind of like a SQLite Lite almost. Well, SQL OLAP Lite. Yeah, so OLAP is definitely kind of the interesting and different part there. It does support Parquet files. I don't know if you ever figured out how to pronounce that.

In addition to CSVs. Yeah, so it's really good at handling really big data, columnar data, stuff like that. So if you're doing analytics, you know, that's all really good too. But it also handles some basic SQL type stuff too. Very cool.

I haven't used it much yet, so maybe I'll have some better tips on it later. But yeah, I like the idea of like not dropping it into a cell, not dropping it into, you know, loading it into a database. If I just want to kind of do some stuff, I just want to be able to like, you know, drop it, take the file that I've got and just run some queries on it. I guess I'm just struggling to figure out

how can they do that in an OLAP fashion? Like that's impressive. I think Parquet is the columnar storage format. It is, yeah. Yeah, so I think that's where that kind of comes in. Okay, so then, okay, because the CSV part was throwing me. So you're saying then it's like dependent on

like whatever the source file is that you're going to point it to. It does. I think it does handle some indexing, but I'm not really sure how or when it does that sort of parsing. It's supposed to be really fast and efficient. So I don't know if it does it when you query it or if it does some sort of pre-processing step. I haven't used it. I just kind of got it working and good night. I'd be curious.

Like you got it working with a plain CSV file? I got it on Bash. Yeah, and I used a plain CSV file. And it did all of the aggregates that an OLAP would do? I just summed the column. I was trying to manage my JIRA tickets in a spreadsheet. Wow, Jay-Z. Wow. Wait a minute. Hold on. Wow, Jay-Z. Wow.

Wait a minute. Hold on. Let's back up a few questions. When you're talking about your processes. Yeah. Oh, I do things that I think are wrong all the time. Most of the time I'm doing things I think are wrong. Well, no.

I'm just saying if you need a SQL OLAP tool to manage your your jira tickets then something ain't right we need to we need to like have a intervention or something oh i mean i close a lot of tickets oh he needs this fast process yeah you see these guns right here that's right what was best is that like the audience couldn't see the way you raised your hands and were dangling your fingers. Like your fingers were the guns. Sun's out, guns out. Yep. Yeah.

Okay. Well, no, that's super cool. Can I run it in VS Code, though? Because it's dead to me if I can't. I don't see why not. Yeah. Does it really have a VS? I was joking.

Does it have an extension for VS Code? Let's see here. You know, I really, part of it is just, I like the idea of, I'm Googling that, by the way, of these, I keep seeing SQL type solutions where the SQL engine is kind of broken out into multiple pieces. So it's like, we saw this Apache drill, remember that?

And some of the other things that we've looked at uh where it's like the storage engine is attached from the query language so you can almost like say i'm going to use this query language with this storage engine running in this cloud and i want it to be this programming language you know and so it's interesting to me that you can kind of like plug and play different parts of the database in a module format which i think is pretty cool and i've been interested to see how that evolves in the future but that is kind of similar to like that's where parquet we were previously looking at as it related that and uh i i knew it as hoodie but i think they pronounced it as hoodie or no backwards. It was Apache hoodie. Yeah. Yeah. Um,

it, as it really, there was, it was based on some like Uber, uh, their engineering blog. And I'm trying to remember what we were using. We were talking about,

I think it was maybe just Python as the thing to read those files. I don't remember now. It's been a while. We used Apache drill at the time to read those files. I don't remember now. It's been a while. We used Apache drill at the time to read those files in. Oh, maybe that's what it was. And presto. I mean, the point being though,

that is going to Jay-Z's point of separating the storage mechanism of the file away from like what technology you're going to use to read or write or manage that file. Right. So, um, and by the way, uh, there is, uh, you're going to use to read or write or manage that file. Right? So. And by the way, there is an extension that will do code highlighting for it, you know, basically SQL. But I also did find a couple other extensions that would support DuckDB

in addition to BigQuery and Postgres and other kind of, you know, common database querying languages. Cool. Very cool. Okay. Well, so for my tip of the week, first I need to know, what do you call a sheep with no legs?

A baa? There's got to be a baa in there somewhere. Okay. I don't know. A cloud. Nice. Okay. What else would it be we were talking about all the cloud marriage stuff earlier of course it had to be a cloud that's pretty good all right um so have you ever like wanted to i don't know about you guys especially like in this day and age like when it comes to anything on the internet like i have this like super, adversarial kind of relationship with the internet, like everything. I'm like, I can't trust anything. And so I found myself in this situation where, um, one of my

guitar amps is no longer supported. And, um, but you know, it was nice enough that it had the ability to update the firmware and you could like manage the effects on it, uh, via your computer and whatnot. And they had software, but you know, they decided to drop the support for it. So I was like, dang, cause I really wanted to like, you know, change some things. And I found somebody had taken an archive of the site before, or at least they claimed that was their claim, right? Is that they, they took an archive of it before. And I'm like, I don't know, how can I trust this thing? You know, is it, is it real? Like, you know, maybe I want to believe, I want to believe, right. That, that they really did just take an archive of the real thing and they're like sharing it with the rest of the world because they're just being nice and that nothing bad

really happened but you know it's like i don't know if i could trust that so you can definitely like have virus software installed on your computer and you could download it and all that if you wanted to but have you guys ever heard of VirusTotal? Virustotal.com. No. So you can go to VirusTotal and you can either, if you've already downloaded a file, you can give them the file or you can give them the URL to the file or whatever.

They have some other ways to do it. But the point is, so while you could have a single virus, you know, a type of tool installed on your system, if you wanted to, the virus total uses 70 different antivirus scanners. So you give them a file and they will check it against all of those. And as well as like other tools to figure out like, Hey, is this thing good or bad? And one of the things that they'll do to shortcut the whole process is they'll compute a hash of the file. And if they already have checked that, then they know they're like, Oh, we've already checked that. Here's the good or bad report for it. And they don't even have to do it a second time. Otherwise they, they will do it. So you, is that you don't necessarily have to go and have everything installed locally.

You can use the service. So I thought I would share that because it's a pretty cool idea. But, oh, I had these out of order. Keeping with that, though, so I download this thing. Virus Total says, yeah, we're not aware of anything. We didn't find anything. You're like, okay, but is it really the thing? How do I know that that's the original one from the manufacturer

and not something that you said is it right you know i could check some well more specifically in this day and age of code signing how can i verify the signature of the app to make sure that it is what it is now this is specific to a Mac OS platform, but I'll have a link to a handy article and the specific command, but there's a code sign tool that from the command line, you can verify the signing signature of the application. So the command will be code sign dash DV, and then you can turn on your verbosity. So I have dash dash verbose equal four, and then you give it the path to the app, the dot app file, not, uh, you know, anything else. And it'll, it'll tell you, it'll spit back either. If there is a signature on the file, it'll, it'll give you all the details of the,

the signing, or it'll just come back and say, there is no, uh, this, this app wasn't signed. So I'll give you, I'll give you the, um, you know, the example and the links to that. But then the other, the last one though that I had, um, cause you know, I'm taking a page out of Alan's book here and I'm coming at you with a whole plethora of tips. That's what you do. Just give me 30 more minutes.

I promise I'll make it worth your while. So I forget where this one came from. I'm pretty sure that I saw this one in Slack, but I can't for the life of me remember from who. But it was an article on how to get better diff support at the command line from Git. And I thought since we just had the Git discussion in great detail, that this might be like a good follow up or closing the loop on that where you can, if you ever do like your Git diffs from the command line and you just say like, oh, here's a bunch of minuses. And then, you know, all the lines that were changed, but here's a bunch of pluses of the new lines. And you're like, wait a minute, you know, like, let's say it was just one line that was minus and one line that was plus. So like meaning that one line changed, but it doesn't tell

you like which part of the line it's the whole line. Right. And so starting with a get 2.9, there is a diff highlight, uh, command, and you can change the configuration of the pager for that so that the diff highlight will actually highlight from the command line output, the actual portion of that line that changed instead of just showing you the whole line. Um, so, um, I'll include a link to that. Now we'll caveat that to say though, at least in my environment, um, I wasn't able to like see this for my own life. So, you know, I'm trusting the author here, but, um, because I call that out because one, I just, I ran out of time and didn't, didn't get to, uh, you know, actually go through the process of like updating my environment to, to get to that level of get, you know, cause I was stuck at like 2.25 and you had to be at 2.9.

But the one thing that I took issue with that I'll call out here is the way that he, the author put the, I think he actually like copied the diff highlight. I think he talks about copying the diff highlight into your user local bin path in order to then change your configuration. And my point was in my mind, I was like, no, I would have left the,

I would have left that command alone where it is. And, you know, just left and gone ahead and changed the configuration to point the change. My get config pager to use the original path. And then that way I don't have this thing floating around where like, you know, if some kind of vulnerability was found in the original one,

I don't have to worry about, you know, having something getting stale because I made a copy of it or whatever. And it would just be easier for my home, you know, self man, self system management kind of perspective to, in my mind, to just leave it where it was. Because if you're going to set it in the configuration file anyways, like who cares how long that path is.

So I didn't see a benefit from it. And I just saw negatives of, of making that copy, but I'll include links to all of those, uh, those tips. And yeah. Very cool. All right. So mine is kind of interesting, and I'll caveat it up front, saying that I've had mixed success with it totally. And I don't know if it's because I haven't gone through all the steps on Mac

to make it work perfectly. But my tip is it's the website telepresence.io. And what this is supposed to do is allow you as a developer working in a Kubernetes world to speed up your feedback cycles on development. So if you've worked in Kubernetes, you know that you're typically deploying pods and deployments and all kinds of other things, right? And typically to do that, that means you're building images before you actually push those things out and get them to run in your cluster, whether it's a Minikube or GKE or wherever, right? Well, one of the things that's frustrating about that is it takes time to build those images and get those things out there.

Telepresence is sort of a two-way proxy. And there's two things in my view, and there may be more, but two things that I'm especially interested in. One is this ability. Once you do a telepresence connect from the command line is you can now reference things in that Kubernetes cluster as if you were in the cluster. So for instance, let's say that you have a service called my API, right? If that service is installed in the default namespace, you can actually curl that service or make any kind of web request to that service using like a curl http://myapi.default, the.default being your namespace. And it will talk to it as if it was a node or a pod in the cluster, right? So that DNS will resolve to it. So that's

one thing that's already really amazing. Now, the reason that matters is if you've worked much in Kubernetes, then you know that a lot of times you're port forwarding things so that you can access things, right? So let's say that you have a Postgres. I want to say, what is it? 5.4.3.2 is the port that it's usually open on? 5.4.3.2. So you usually port forward that, and then if you want to connect to it, you're going to local host, and then 5.4.3.2 is your port.

Well, this way, if you named it Postgres, you could say Postgres.default, and you don't have to set up all these port forwards to do it. So that's one thing that's already nice. You're not managing much port forwarding. But the part that is way more interesting and in my view, way more valuable is it allows you to sort of hot swap something in for something else. So let's say that that my API thing, you have that running in your cluster.

Well, you're working on the next version of that API and you have things you want to test out. There's this ability and it's the telepresence intercept command to where you can say, Hey, anything that is going to my, um, my API service on port, you know, 80, if that's what it was set up as, you want that stuff to be routed to your local host on port 88, right? Like maybe you exposed your API in 88 running locally. And what telepresence is supposed to do is actually make it so that all traffic that was going in your cluster to my API on port 80, it will automatically forward down to your local running service on port 88 that you set it up as. And so what that allows you to do

potentially is develop locally as if your program was running in that cluster, right? And it's transparent to everything else. Now, this is where I've had mixed results. I haven't gotten this to fully work. And part of it is because we have a bunch of stuff already set up that works off port forwarding and other things. And so a lot of that naming, like the DNS type naming and all that isn't set up yet. So I haven't had a chance to go through and fully vet this out, but assuming it works the way that they say it does, that is a fantastic way to be able to develop things. Right.

And, and to take it a step further, and this is in the documentation, I haven't gone this far yet. Apparently it will even allow you to volume mount things that were in the original pod in the cluster and volume mount that to whatever a local pod might be running. So let's say that you had a Docker thing or whatever you can actually, and this is important, especially when you come into things like, let's say that you have credentials that need to be mounted to pods

that happen on some sort of deployment. So if you have a CICD pipeline and it mounts credentials into pods out there, you might need that stuff mounted into yours so that it will have the same rights to be able to run things. And they have this set up. Like again, it's, they have done a lot of work on this to make it to where you can actually develop locally by sort of hot swapping a pod in. So, um, again, I haven't, I wish that I could tell you that it works absolutely perfectly and all that. I have had a few problems with my Mac and, and, and I've had to try and do some things and they actually have an FAQ set up for that. But I think it's worth checking out, right? Like if, especially if you're towards the beginning of your Kubernetes development, if you can work in a way to where you can use this thing as you

develop going forward, it would make a lot of sense to try and set up your DNS and your configurations and all that stuff to be able to take advantage of this type of dual proxy and service. So check that out. Again, the website is telepresence.io. Very, very cool. And for those that wouldn't know the alternative, then the alternative would have to be to port forward a bunch of things from your local system into whatever your Kubernetes cluster is. But even then, there were still some things that you were able to do, telepresence, that you wouldn't be able to do just by a simple teleport, right?

Like the volume mounting thing, for example. The volume mounting thing, but even bigger than that, is just making it to where anything that was internal to that cluster that was calling whatever that service was originally, the fact that it can reroute that traffic away from the original service that was up there to your local, like that's, that's magic. That's amazing. So yeah. Cause typically by a Kubernetes environment, it's going to want to stay within its correct Kubernetes network. Yep. Yep. Yeah.

Without you going through a lot of hoops. Yep. Which this does for you. This does for you. Exactly. So, all right, well,

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