Coding Blocks - What Should You Learn Next?

Episode Date: March 4, 2019

After being asked to quiet down, our friend, John Stone, joins us again as we move the conversation to the nearest cubicle while Michael reminds us of Bing, Joe regrets getting a cellphone, and Allen's accent might surprise you.

You're listening to Coding Blocks, episode 101. Subscribe to us and leave us a review on iTunes, Stitcher, and more using your favorite podcast app. And you can find show notes, examples, discussion, and a lot more at codingblocks.net. Send your questions, feedback, and rants to comments at codingblocks.net. Follow us on Twitter at Coding Blocks or head to www.codingblocks.net and find all our social links there at the top of the page. With that, I'm Alan Underwood.

I'm Jerzak. And I'm Michael Outlaw. And I'm John Stone. He's back. That's right. John's back for us for another special episode, so we hope you enjoy it. This episode is sponsored by Datadog, a monitoring platform for cloud scale infrastructure and applications. Now, Datadog provides dashboarding, alerting, application performance monitoring,

and log management in one tightly integrated platform so you can get end-to-end visibility quickly. Yeah, and you can visualize key metrics, set alerts to identify anomalies, and collaborate with your team to troubleshoot and fix issues fast. Try it yourself today by starting a free 14-day trial and also receive a free Datadog t-shirt. Head to www.datadog.com slash codingblocks to see how Datadog can provide real-time visibility into your application. Again, visit www.datadog.com slash codingblocks to sign up today. All right, so who did this numbers game thing? All right, so that was me.

So I've had a lot of fun with some interesting stats and making a game of some of the interesting stats with you guys recently. So I thought, you know, hey, maybe we would do that some more. So that sound like something of interest? I like stats. All right. So this comes from an article that was published just January 2nd of this month or the 2nd of this month. So amazing social media statistics and facts 122 of

them we won't go through all 122 but let's say let me see what would be a good one here how many myspace users do you think there are? MySpace? MySpace. What's MySpace? We're starting it off. Awesome. So let's put things into perspective. Facebook has 2.271 billion users with a B. All right.

So, MySpace being the one that came first, how many things got? So, like the peak of MySpace or after it got bought out and turned into a music site? We're talking about now. Now.

Oh, so like the weird music site. So, like 50 people. Yeah. All right. We got 50 people. Yeah. All right. We got 50 people. I was going to say 50,000.

50,000 people. Well, you got to find a point of reference. So my blog gets like, I don't know, a thousand views a year. So I figured they got to be at least double that. So I'm going to say 2,000. Wow. Man. Well, I guess Alan is technically closest at 15 million users.

Oh, wow. I don't know anybody on that site. Isn't that the one that Justin Timberlake bought or put money into? Yeah, and they had the sideways scroll. Yeah. It was like the craziest design concept. Just make it hard for people to know. How many people are still using Friendster?

You should check that one. Friendster. That's my first. You know, surprisingly, that wasn't in here. So, yeah. Now, how about this one, though? I thought this would be interesting because I shared the Facebook one with you. Or Google+.

What do you think the count of Instagram users is? And I say that because Facebook bought Instagram. I'm going to say $650 million. What? $650 million. I'm going to say $2 billion. No. $2 billion.

$2 billion. I say everybody who's on Facebook minus grandma and papa, and that would be half. So half of whatever Facebook is. So you're saying 1.65 billion somewhere in that ballpark? No, you said 2.71. 2.271. So 1.1 billion we'll call it roughly. Well, I'm going to give the win to John. 1 billion users. Wow.

There's a lot of people on it that's a lot of folks like i keep forgetting it exists like i'll pull it up like wow everybody's posting on here yeah you know but how many how many users do you think that are on the internet well it's got to be more 2.2 billion come on it's got to be i'm gonna go with 3 billion because the current population according to this article now, is 7.7 billion people, total worldwide population. How many users are on the internet? 3.5, Bill. 3.5. Wrong. It's 4.2. Wow. 4.2 billion users. Now, here's where it's crazy. 4.2 billion users. There are 3.397.

So almost 3.4 billion active social users. So active social media users. That's a lot. Yeah. How many of those are bots? Yeah. I mean, I got a bunch of different accounts, specifically Russian bots. I mean, I've got like five Twitter accounts.

Well, okay. How many accounts do you think the average person has? Across all of them? Geez. Wait, we're not talking about multiple Facebook or multiple Twitter. We're talking about just total social accounts. Across all, on average,

how many, the average social media accounts five five they're really close five and a half 5.54 wow uh let's see what would be another good one here i don't know what the median is you know here's what's weird though like this from the same article says on average people have 5.54 social media accounts but then it says internet users have an average of 7.6 social media accounts so i'm like uh what does that mean i don't like wait if you're on social media aren't you by effect using the internet i think it counts pets like people have a lot of pets who have social media. That's true.

My hamster has a Twitter account if you guys want to follow it. Or maybe internet users could take into consideration bots. Maybe. I don't know. Think of how many bots are on Twitter. Bots are people too. They have rights.

80% of stats are made up anyway, so whatever. I see what you did there. How much do you think is spent on social network advertising in 2016? Geez. Now, I'm going to put this in perspective. In 2015, $8.3 billion was estimated to be earned from advertising. I'm going to say $3 a user.

It was like 9 billion? That's 9 billion. No. man, you know what? I'm going to go with how much did you say was earned in 2015? Social networks earned an estimated of 8.3 billion from advertising in 2015. $20 billion in 2016.

Okay. I mean, Instagram got bought for $1 billion, so I got to think it's at least $21 billion. I see what you did there. Everybody go on OnePlus tonight. You got dunked on. Well, the answer is $40 billion in 2016. I've seen the best minds

of my generation advertising. So how about this? Fill in the blank. Facebook now sees blank average daily video views from 500 million users the autoplay right the blank average daily video views i don't know i probably watched like 20 so 2.5 billion 2.5 billion way off my friend facebook now sees 8 billion average daily video views from 500 million users wait a second that means that's now here's 16 video views per person per day yeah are they self-reporting these numbers i'm sorry i should have said this before

this is from an article i'll have a link to it from brandwatch.com how about this one uh where to go uh and coding box would love like a thousand video views a day like if you guys can go and hit that like button hit subscribe mash, mash that thing, that would make me feel a lot better about all those videos you guys were watching on Facebook I didn't know about. There's some good stuff up there. Here was a sad one, though. We'll do another fill in the blank.

U.S. adults spend an average of blank each day watching video on digital services. What you got, John? 1.5 hours. Oh, that's low. On internet? Oh, is that

counting Netflix? Streaming, yeah. Video digital devices. Five hours. I guess it would be more. Yeah, I'm'm gonna say four yeah i'm taking three and a half all right well john should have stayed with his gut damn u.s adults spend an average of one hour 16 minutes each day watching video on digital devices and we gotta work get back to work what are you doing digital devices like tvs and everything

yeah tvs phones tablets whatever i was like giving out my number. I was like, ah, probably. People probably watch more. I don't even have cable TV. So it's like. Yeah. All my stuff streaming. How about this one?

How much, what percentage of a day's queries to Google do you think are brand new queries that have never been asked before? Ooh, that's an interesting. Oh, wow. What percentage? Yeah. It's definitely low, right? Like 1%.

I don't know. I type things in real dumb ways sometimes. Well, Google now leads the witness, right? Like every time you start typing words, I want to say 2%. Yeah, I rely on that now. So, yeah, I'm going to say 2%. Every day, 15% of the day's queries have never been asked before. Wow. What percentage of Google searches do you think come from mobile devices?

Oh. I'm going to say high, 75%. Yeah, that's crazy high. I'm going 40. 60%. That's my second guess. 75% yeah that's crazy high I'm going 40 60% John was really I'll say John was close how's that what about last one about Google that I'll do

blank percent of all internet searches are carried out by Google internet searches yeah that's going gonna be up there yeah now don't forget you got bing what that changes everything duck duck goes great for code searches i would say 70 70 oh i'm i'm definitely going high 99

i'm going high. Nobody uses Bing. Yeah, but there's China that doesn't even use Google, right? Oh. Counting China? I mean, it said the internet. Oh, okay. China is pretty big, isn't it? Kind of large. China gets at least 15%, so 85%.

I said 75%, right? I don't remember what I said. I think you said 75%. Oh, I don't remember what I said. I think you said 75%. Well, I'm still Googling. 91.47% of all searches are carried out by Google. What percentage of Americans do you think are on Facebook? Of Americans? North or south?

85%. 85%? Yeah, that sounds right. I'm going to go with that. 68%. Wow. I'm proud. That's pretty good.

Now, if we were to break that number down a little bit, what percentage of online U.S. adults use Facebook? So I guess we're implying the kids probably bring it down because they're not using Facebook as much as adults and our grandmas. I'm going to say 85. 85 again. I like it. 79%.

We're close. I don't use it. I just look at the pictures in the post every day like six times. Isn't that using it? No, I mean I don't really use it. You don't type use it. I just look at the pictures in the post every day like six times. Isn't that using it? No, I mean, I don't really use it. You don't type on it. How many accounts on Twitter do you think have no followers at all? How many?

How many accounts? 23%. Well, okay, how about we start? Let's work our way to that question. How many accounts are on Twitter? What do you think the total number of accounts are on Twitter? Yeah, I think that's helpful. 400 million.

400 million. 600 million. 10 billion. 600 million. Okay. 1.3 billion accounts. Wow. I'm looking at the billions.

Now, out of those, how many accounts? I'm looking for a number, not a percent, do you think have no followers at all? One million. One billion. One million. 200 million. Alan's got it. Closer. 291 million accounts have no followers at all.

Now, out of that 1.3 billion accounts, how many never bothered to send a tweet? A lot. Yeah. 400 million. I'm sorry. Percentage. Give me a percent. 80.

80 percent? Nah. 50. 50 percent? Nah. 50. 50%. 50. 50. 44%. Wow.

Thanks. Let's see what else we got here. We've covered YouTube a lot in the past, so I'll skip that one. Maybe a Pinterest one? Because, you know, we all love Pinterest. Uh, how many, what percentage of Pinterest users do you think are under the age of 40? Percentage under four? Oh, 30.

50. I'm liking Alan's number 50. Yeah. 67% of Pinterest users are under the age of 40. Wow. 50. I'm liking Alan's number 50, yeah. 67% of Pinterest users are under the age of 40. Wow. So if you wanted to advertise to the youth, that's the platform you need to be going after. Yeah.

All right. So Snapchat, what percentage of Snapchat users are under the age of 25? 89. Geez. No, no. No way. I use the filters. There are some filter pictures of me.

So I'm going to go with 65. John? 46. john uh 46 60 of the oh you know what i said that wrong that was of the daily users are under the age of 25 yeah they have 187 million active daily users isn't that the one where the picture disappears after? At least originally. I don't know if it still does that. It's what we would all use as a feature. And if you try to snapshot it, it will alert the other

person as well. Okay. Oh, you've done that. Yeah. Okay. Now, out of its total user base, though, what percentage are between the ages of 18 to 24? 60. Hold on. Let me just do a random number generator here.

I feel like this is another section of the podcast designed to troll me. I'm not going to remember any of these numbers. You love taking guesses based on your feelings, right? Yeah. 49 says random number generator. I like it. All right. Well, the answer is 78% of American 18 to 24-year-olds use Snapchat.

Wow. That's crazy. 78 78 that's a crazy number crazy high number yeah i'm just gonna say 50 for everything because there's a lot more numbers there in the middle than there are that's that's crazy there's a whole lot of more a whole lot of other statistics all all about uh uh you know various mobile plot or social media platforms. Um, but so I'll include a link to that in the show notes. How about one last one? Uh,

that I'll tell you more than half of YouTube views come from mobile more than half. But it looks so bad there. Nah, man. What on these new phones? It looks amazing. I don't have to raise my font size. I'm going to have to raise my font size.

I'm going to do some more streaming stuff. That's actually one thing I do on the streaming is I lower my resolution on my monitor to something crazy low. And then that way you don't have to mess around with your IDE. So, like on my ultra wide, I'll make it, you know, something by 720, or I might even go lower just to make everything bigger for the mobile. All right. Thinking ahead, pep 80 and size 48 pond. Seriously, it definitely helps for watching it because otherwise like coding videos are usually just abysmal on mobile. So this episode is sponsored by clubhouse clubhouse is the first project management platform for software development that brings everyone together so that teams can focus

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And you can sign up for two free months of Clubhouse by visiting clubhouse.io slash coding blocks. Again, that's clubhouse.io slash coding blocks. And you get your two free months and you can see what companies like Elastic, Full Story, LaunchDarkly. You can see why those companies love Clubhouse. All right. So here was another topic here that I had. There was an article that caught my attention on Dev2 a while back that was the 29 must-reads for programmers. And we've done a book series in the past. And I have thoroughly enjoyed every one of them.

And we've gotten a lot of positive feedback. Everyone seems to love them. We just wrapped up the imposters handbook, but before that we've done, um, uh, clean architecture, clean code,

uh, um, domain driven design, uh, how to be a programmer series. Yeah. So, you know,

a lot of great reads there in, in just really enjoy digging into the details. And there were two books that always seemed to be there, every developer's list of books. And I was like, huh, which one? Should we do one of them, and which one should it be? And the two that you always hear about are code complete and working effectively with legacy code. Thoughts, opinions, or maybe you don't like either of those choices. John, have you read either of those?

I don't read books. No, no. Oh, come on. So then Joe's the guy. Joe, you've probably read code complete, right? Yeah, I think I don't know if I did cover to cover, but I would say I at least got through 80%, which is better than most things I've read. Okay. Quote, unquote, read.

But yeah, I mean, I think Code Complete is fantastic. I really like that it pulls together a lot of studies and looks at things objectively. And so, I mean, I just love that book. I haven't read anything in working effectively with legacy code, but I have a feeling it's going to tell me to unit test stuff. Well, it's funny that you say that because in the article here on Dev2, they have a bunch of different categories of like, hey, here's the 29 books that you should read, but by category, right?

So like if it's career, then here's your choice. If it's learning how to learn, then here's your choice. If it's learning how to learn, then here's your choice. You know, I'll go through the topics real quick. Personal effectiveness, programming effectiveness, writing code, software engineering, leadership, I'm sorry, project management, advanced project management, unit testing, data analysis and statistics, user interface slash user experience. And I'm sorry, that was the last one. So out of all of those, you know, kind of to your point, Joe, code complete is in the category of writing code, whereas working effectively with legacy code was in the unit testing section.

That makes sense. I mean... So my vote is you guys read a book about OCaml. I think that is a good one to read. I mean, there's this new language called Reason, and that's based on the OCaml

syntax. And it's being on the OCaml syntax. And it's being developed by Facebook, who are the same guys who bring you GraphQL, React, all these different forward technologies. So OCaml plus one. And also a reference back to Joe Zack talking about OCaml. We've never done a tech-focused book, but maybe it would be cool to do something on a specific technology like even if it was like say graph ql or something i don't know maybe that's crazy talk that could be interesting let us know hey if you let us know what you think about that idea in the comments then you might uh you know inspire us but also you might win i like this idea like what if we did do like a dive on, like, a learning react or something like that? But, you know, then I say that, but then the problem with that, though, is, like, as soon as you try to find that book, right, it's already outdated.

Oh, it is. Yeah, you know what I mean? Like, you mentioned GraphQL. As soon as you find that GraphQL book, it's outdated. That's true. And CodeComplete is, like, I don't know, know, like 1991 or something and it's still pretty awesome. That's the thing about certain, some of these books they just stand the test of time,

right? Like the Clean Architecture series, the Clean Code series. We should do Pragmatic Programmer. It's got nice, easy to do chapters. It's, oh, okay. Leave a comment. You might win. And also, leave a comment about Pragmatic Programmer. Maybe we'll do it. Yeah, which book do you think that we should cover if that one for sure which which category you get you have an

opinion on what kind of category you think that the pragmatic programmer might belong to in those categories i said the coding one writing code yeah yeah i think it's i think it's more along the lines of like the clean code kind of holistic, like how to write code and also how to just deal with people and organizations and change. It is not in the writing code category. Where is it at? Soft skills? It is in the programming effectiveness. Once you've mastered personal effectiveness, it's time to learn how to be an effective software developer.

Interesting. And that's where the pragmatic programmer from journeyman to master falls yo paste that into the intro second episode those notes hey so i have i have a random curious thought for you guys like when you when you go to focus learning something or improving upon something do you focus more upon skills that you can apply? Or do you, do you concern yourself with soft skills? Like if you go to listen to another podcast, are you going to learn about, Hey, how do I communicate effectively? Or how do I deal with other people? Or how do I, you know, worry about people's feelings or is it, Hey, I want to learn how to write better code. I want to learn how to make code more abstract. Like what,

what's more important to you guys? guys when you sit down to do something? John? I liked your algorithm episode where you went over breadth-first search and depth-first because it's just giving me new ways to do my job better. I mean, honestly. So skills, like skills you can apply that are not soft skills but they're more of the programming side of skills that you like. Yeah. And if you get good at that episode, you'll be able to get a job at one of those top companies in Silicon Valley, you know, because they're going to ask you all those things.

But yeah. Yeah. I was looking at Netflix salaries the other day. It's like over 300,000 for dev jobs. Yeah. And if you can get out of college and get a job doing that, just go there, move wherever, and just save like 5% of your salary, right?

You won't even miss it. But man, when you move back to, I don't know, like Omaha or wherever you're from. You're going to be doing all right. You're going to be doing all right. But I mean, those skills are so important for the job too. Otherwise, your job is just going to be about moving data from here to there. I mean, those algorithms are just key to saying, hey, you know what? I can do this 50 times faster. I mean, it's just really exciting to be able to do that. So I like those

topics. So what about you, Joe? Is it soft skills? Is it, is it a hard ability to code skills? Like what, what do you spend your time or what's most important to you? For me, the things I wrestle with are basically kind of organizational and maintenance type stuff. Like the things that I trip on are the stupid things I did last week. And so, you know, I think I've said this before, like the algorithms and data structures and design patterns aren't the things that I feel are bogging me down. So I'm trying to always figure out how to write more maintainable software quicker. And so that's the thing that I'd really like to get better at, but it might just be because,

you know, I'm bad at those things. So it's coding related stuff though. It's not, it's not how to be a more effective communicator or anything like that. I mean, I want to do that stuff too. Like I do a lot of conference speaking and stuff now that that's a big part

of it. So I want to get better at everything. I'm a terrible person to ask. What about you, Outlaw? I will say I was really surprised by John's answer. That was not the answer I expected you to give, John. I would say that

I am kind of cyclic in where I'll pick a subject and I am kind of a cyclic in, you know, where like, I'll just, I'll take some, I'll pick a subject and then I just try to, I kind of go all in, right.

Like total immersion, trying to like understand it. And, you know, maybe I succeed, maybe I don't. But yeah, so it really depends.

Sometimes, sometimes it might be on like a technology and then sometimes it might be something a little bit more, you know, higher little bit more higher level. Does that make sense? I don't gravitate towards listening to podcasts about it. I don't watch YouTube videos on it. How can I be a better me? Like that just does nothing for me. I don't enjoy it. And I don't think I'm being non-humble here, but I think because of this group of people, we have pretty decent communication skills. So maybe that's why we don't gravitate towards that.

But I think they're important skills, right? Like it's, it's a weird thing. Like I think that communication and being able to do all those things and work with other people and work effectively and communicate, it's huge. But if I'm going to sit down and spend my time, it's going to be on what new technology that's going to solve a problem that I, that I have, or the, the, I see coming up or how can I improve my programming? So, you know, the algorithms that I think about, I can, I can solve a problem in a particular way or something. So yeah, I don't know. It's, it's funny. Like I see other podcasts out there that are focused on like soft skill stuff and I just don't subscribe to them. And it's because I don't know, man.

It's like you ever get that feeling like, wait, you don't you don't know how to communicate with somebody. Like it feels like such a basic thing that it's hard for me to sometimes be to step back and be like, yeah, I guess I guess some people struggle with that. But I don't know. Well, to finish my thought, where I expected John to say, because I've heard you say many times, John, where you say something about I try to learn the things that I'm not good at. I try to focus my time learning something that I'm not good at. And that could be oil-based

painting or you know uh machine learning right like it can go from one end of the spectrum to the other end of the spectrum and that's why i was like really hoping you were going to say that kind of i like that answer i'm going to change my answer to that one oh okay i like that one better yeah i totally might have led the jury there but but i mean you're gonna do a whole episode on what i don't know yet i mean it seems kind of oh no no this wasn't about like what we're gonna do the episode oh okay okay all right yeah i i guess that's the thing is it's sometimes like looking at pragmatic program programmer or code complete or any of that kind of stuff like that's all things that seem to be tangible things that you can go work with.

Right. And you can measure how much better you got with it. Whereas some of the other things, it's just like, I feel like I got better, but, but you know, it's,

it's like this nebulous thing. Well, sometimes, sometimes it's, it's good to take like things like the code complete the pragmatic programmer, uh, you know, working effectively, like C code, clean code, all of those, they're not necessarily about a good, a specific technology. So it's like, you know, here's good practices that you should incorporate into your, your,

your workflow, right? Like, you know, how you should do things, structure things, name things, whatever, you know, get into these practices of unit tests, whatever. Right. And then other times you might focus something on like, Hey, I really want to understand, you know, angular, for example. Right. Like I want to, I want to know how to work.

So then you're not like, you know, I would hope that you put together whatever practices you've learned from those other, those other books, but you know, you're more focused on like the specific, you know, how to implement this thing, right? How do I do this thing? And it might not be Angular. Maybe it's like, oh, hey, like I want to create some cool thing with my Raspberry Pi. What do I need to do there?

Like, so it might be a little bit of hands-on hardware kind of, you know, learning as well as coding at the same time. Yeah. But it's, it's to achieve there. They're both learning, but they're different kind of goals in mind. Yeah. I'd agree with that. I would say that I do think soft skills are more important.

Kind of like John said, like way back at the beginning of episode 100, that like, if you can get out there and figure out how to make your customers happy, your business happy, things like that, and that's the more valuable experience in particular technologies a lot of times. If you can figure out how to make customer service happy and that's your job, then you're killing it at your job. Ultimately, if I'm looking to hire somebody, I want someone who's going to make those customers and consumers of their goods happy. And a lot of times that does mean things like communication and soft skills. But that said, a lot of that stuff is like... There can only be so much stuff said about it. So I've already read the Getting Things Done and the 7 Habits of Highly Effective. And I did this stuff on deliberate practice in all the books based on that. So I've read a lot of this stuff so many times now. And a lot of it is repeat. And so when I'm going to look for a podcast or

something, I'm just not ready to bring that in again. So even when I'm going to look for a podcast or something like, uh, you know, I'm just not ready to, to bring that in again. So even though I think it's really important, I just don't want to hear about it anymore. Yeah. I mean, I guess that's the thing, right?

Like I think it's things that can be learned, but you have to be willing to just actively try and change that stuff. And it's like you said, yeah, you, you only hear this stuff. You can hear it so many times and if it doesn't sink in it doesn't sink in right like it's i don't know that yeah it's just it's not

enough to know like you know i i know that maintaining good eye contact is important and during presentations but there's a difference between knowing that and being able to do it and so i think for me like i'd be better off going to and joining like toastmasters society whatever rather than reading another book that's going to tell me to maintain eye contact. A really quick way to improve your soft skills is opt for that next manager role that comes up. Go ahead and take that role because they'll send you to a lot of classes on how to listen appropriately and all that. Then you can get another job after that as a programmer again, but then you'll have the soft skills you need.

There you go. It is true. You know what, though? I think what you just said, though, Joe makes a lot of sense to me is if there's a specific thing that you're trying to do, like get better at public speaking or working with employees or working with upper management or whatever. Like if you go after that particular thing, that makes more sense than just listening to some self-help type stuff. You know what I mean? Like how to give effective presentations.

Like that makes sense. That sounds like something that might be interesting if you got an upcoming presentation, which I think both of us do. You know, that kind of stuff does make sense. But the general stuff, it's like you said, it's like rinse and repeat. And it feels like every author on the planet has done the same thing over and over. So I don't know. Anyways, every role in a company needs those soft skills though. Generally they do.

Yeah. And they're not, they are super important. It's just, I don't know. It feels like most people that get into particular positions either have them already or they don't, and they probably won't make it into that position if they don't. You know what I mean?

Yeah. So I don't know. Company is just a group of people working together to try to improve the world, potentially, or suck money out of it. Right. Something. Yeah.

So. Cool. Who's got this next one up here? Oh, I did that. Yeah. So I also do a lot of economic podcasts, like things like the indicator and planet money. And like, maybe I'm just, you know, getting old and paranoid and like whatever clutching my pearls. But it feels like those shows have all kind of gone from like, Hey, have we recovered in the economy to, Hey, you know,

are things still going well to, Hey, are things still going well? To, hey, is there another recession coming? And now I feel like they're saying, when is the next recession? And maybe they're just like, they know what it takes to kind of drag me in and keep me listening and whatever. And so maybe there's not some sort of big economic crisis kind of looming. But I do think it's been 10 years, at least in the US, since we've had a major recession. And I did just find out recently, by the way, that Australia hasn't had a recession in 30 years. So rock on, Australians.

But I was just kind of wondering. It got me thinking, if I do believe that a recession is coming up in, say, the next one to two years, what kinds of things as a developer might I try to do career-wise to try and insulate myself from like a negative economic environment that's you should run a podcast where you get your name out there and then people want to hire you busted but you know what in fairness what you just said like in jest yeah but in reality make your name bigger than just a signature on a sheet of paper that you're handing to companies, right? If you put yourself out there, whether you're writing blog posts or you're doing videos or you're helping people on forums or whatever,

like that stuff goes a long way eventually to, oh, I see this guy contributes. Oh, he makes good points and he communicates. Well, it's all things that become visible, right? I think that matters a lot. Yeah, I think that as well. And I kind of feel like stocks, they talk about kind of diversifying. And so with a portfolio, sometimes you want to have a good mix of things that are higher risk and lower risk. And so I kind of think of it as a developer. Now, if you want to have a good mix of things that are higher risk and lower risk. And so I kind of think of it as a developer. If you do think a colder climate is coming up, then you want to prepare for that winter.

Then you might want to diversify your kind of knowledge there. So this might be a time specifically when you may want to consider going a little bit wider because certain sectors of the economy or whatever might be hit harder. And so if you have always worked in one particular domain, for example, like you've always worked for airlines or for cars or whatever, then it might be a good time to think about shifting that domain. And same with technologies. Like if you've worked in Java for your entire career, now might be a good time to kind of think about trying to expand somewhere that makes sense for you. And so that was the only advice I really had, but I just thought it was kind of interesting. Yeah. Keep looking on job boards, see what technologies are hot.

Yeah. And make sure. So I kind of think if you've got 15 years of job on your experience, year 16 isn't super valuable to you. So if you are thinking about moving careers and maybe look for something that's going to complement that. Yeah. And then go to your bank and get all your money out and put it in your bed. maybe look for something that's going to complement that. And then go to your bank and get all your money out and put it in your bed. Yeah, buy Bitcoin with it. Yeah, I was going to say definitely invest in Bitcoin, and then you'll be recession-proof.

You know what else I think is important is location. I know we talked about in the previous survey about we hope that it's not going to be as important to be in San Francisco in five years. Right. But if you live out in the middle of the boondocks and there's no companies around, like maybe that's another thing to write, like find a place that's got a decent tech hub around it and move on over towards that area. right? Because if a recession does hit, chances are it'll be more likely that you can find some work in that particular area. And then, again, look at the job boards. Find out what the technology is in that particular area

and polish up on it some. That hits on another point. Or you could just figure out how to do your job much better where you find more value than all your other competitors. And the next thing you know, you're the best company out there for that particular domain. And then all the other ones die, but you're there. So they still have to pay somebody. Even on a personal level. You were about to say, Joe, go ahead. No, no. I was like, yeah, I was agreeing with my hands. I mean, even on a personal level, I feel like it's that too, right? If you, if you are somebody that is seen as valuable in your position and, and because you provide, because you have the good soft skills, because you, you know how to code well and you get things done and you do the right job of balancing effectiveness with,

you know, timely deliveries and all that kind of stuff, you'll probably be gainfully employed. I mean, we've all lived through a recession where any of you guys unemployed during that time? Yeah. Were you? It's 1932. 2007, 2008. Yeah. 2007, 2008. Yeah, 2007, 2008, 2009. Yeah, I was rocking it.

Yeah. I mean, that's the thing. That's what I was going to say. A lot of times when you find people that are highly skilled and capable people, you'll typically – now, I'm not saying that bad things can't happen. But if you are somebody that is dependable and people genuinely like to work with you because you provide high quality work, chances are you'll be okay, right? Don't be a pain in the butt to anybody. Don't be that person that's hard to work with. Be somebody that's dependable and has a reputation for getting things done in a nice, good manner. That helps a lot. Yeah, I think we benefited from living in kind of bigger cities, though, too.

I can't imagine what it's like if you live out in, I don't know, the middle of Ocala, Florida or somewhere that's kind of like the middle of the state that isn't a big tech hub. And if you're trying to compete with the people that are in the cities and everyone's a little hungrier, a little bit leaner, then you're competing with those bigger agencies. Just the competitiveness is increased. So things like your location and the languages you work with, it's just going to be tougher.

It's kind of like this living organism, right? It's constantly like a jellyfish kind of like moving where it contracts and expands, contracts and expands, right? And so when the economy is booming, so it's expanding, and then the employee gets to have a little bit more say in what they want, right? So it might be things like, I want more money or I want more perks and benefits like the ability to work from home, for example. Whereas when it's contracting, then the employers get to pull on those strings and be like, no, no, no, no, no. I want you in-house. You're going to come work in my office and I need you to live in this radius or you have to be willing to do this kind of travel,

or I'm not going to pay you except for this amount of money, right? So it's constantly going back and forth like that, right? So when there is the recession, you just have to be willing to accept that that's what it is, It is contracting and that the employers get to pull on the strings a little bit and it's not your turn. Yep. I agree with that. I also watched a video. I think I might have shared with you guys recently, the Arnold Schwarzenegger motivational

thing. Oh, yeah. You must work every day. Yeah. Work your tail off basically is what it boiled down to. Organize your day. Organize your day. Yeah. Work your tail off basically is what it boiled down to. Organize your day. Organize your day. Like seriously, his big thing was work your tail off and don't have a plan B.

And that sounds so ridiculous, but if you work towards a particular goal and you have something in mind, that changes everything, right? And I'm not saying it's perfect, right? Like, if there are things that you want to try and do, go after them. Don't just let them lay there. Things don't happen just because, right? Like, we're not at episode 100 because we just sat there and thought, hey, you know, it might be cool to do a podcast. We actually went after it, right? And it's that kind of action when you actually go do things that make it happen. And I think that's the kind of stuff that will make you more recession-proof, right?

The fact that you are a person that goes and you learn and you gather these skills and you create these relationships with people, and that's what will help you more than just about anything else. And of course, we always say, you know, go to those meetups, listen to those podcasts, join those online communities where you kind of get introduced to new ideas and meet up with people that you wouldn't necessarily otherwise in your normal day-to-day.

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All right, then I guess on to the next one. This one's kind of sort of not completely coding related, but it's interesting. So John has recently picked up an HTC Vive. We have another buddy who's had one for probably about a year and he's been trying to talk me into getting one for a while. And I was like, I mean, come on, man. I've seen VR on a phone. It's all right. And it's John corralled all of us and got us over to his place and we tried it out. And I'd say that most of us were floored by it. Like it was super cool.

You want to. Yeah, it's gotten a lot better since the 90s. And even, you know, I got like the Oculus DK2. It's got, you know, and that was a few ago, and it's gotten a lot better since then. They figured out some things. If you tried it before and you got sick, they figured out what causes that. The resolution's gotten better, the refresh rate. It's getting up there to where if you add enough of these things, like maybe, like maybe wireless, you know, a nice room scale.

Like I got like a 16-foot room scale set up. You know, you start becoming really immersed into it where it starts getting a little trippy, where you think tables are real and you like put your arm on it and stuff like that. It starts to really trick your brain and then it's like magical. But, yeah, it's really cool. I got to say, I was probably the biggest kind of naysayer about VR.

I definitely – like John is a trailblazer and I tend to very much not be. I didn't think I would ever get a cell phone and I still kind of regret that decision. But going to the VR, I was like, I don't know. I have a stigmatism in my eye. So like 3D movies never look good to me. Like every other VR experience I've had has been really bad. I just didn't think I was going to like it. And I mean, I put that thing on and next thing you know, it's midnight.

And so I was like, are you going to stop? Six hours later. I was like, oh, okay, actually. It did still look a little weird, but I was able to kind of forget about it. I don't know if my eyes adapted or maybe I'm just crazy or whatever. But I went from yuck to yum with that experience and so uh it's really changed how i think about vr and if you can kind of find a way to check that out and i think it's definitely worth it and what was most interesting to me is uh just how new the medium is that they're still

kind of developing those um interaction patterns like you remember when like they're still kind of developing those interaction patterns. Like you remember when like 3D was kind of new for games and every game you would play, like you had to kind of really learn how to play because like sometimes pushing left on the stick would rotate you left and sometimes it would turn you left and sometimes it would, you know, strafe or whatever. And it's because they were still trying to figure out like what that pattern was supposed to look like. And like playing different games and different ways you move around

different ways of doing things. Like it's very clear to me that we're still very much in the beginning stages. And I'm thinking like, well, this is, you know, we're primarily playing video games now,

but you could see how this could be like an organizational tool or, um, especially for like, um, visualizations and stuff like that. And I think there's just so much room for really cool and really different kinds of experiences that we've never been able to do before. It's a third dimension.

Yeah, it's amazing. And it's weird looking at a monitor after you're done with it. Like, oh, man, the whole world is right in this flat thing. How boring. Yeah. I want it all around me. But yeah. I mean, Outlaw, what were your thoughts when you first got it or when you first tried it out?

I mean, I'm excited that it's finally gotten to where it's gotten. I'm with Joe, though, that I'm not an early adopter, and I didn't think that it would get to where it's gotten. Well, I should say I didn't think I would like it as well as I did. Early experiences with Oculus Rift, for example, I was say I didn't think I would like it as well as I did. Like early experiences with like Oculus Rift, for example, like I was like, eh, just whatever. I just didn't. It was interesting. It was more gimmicky kind of gadgety than anything else, right? Like it wasn't, it didn't make me want to like go out and spend a bunch of money on it. Right. And, but then with the, the vibe setup, for example, the whole room, you know,

experience I'm with Joe, man, like, Oh my, it was just, it's, it's the whole room VR is different when you can walk around, like physically walk around and interact in that VR world. Now, it's a God. I've got to have one. And the precision, too. Yeah. They figured out, you know, maybe we don't want to track fingers. We'll give them these big devices and then they turn in the lightsabers. And then when you touch the lightsabers and they vibrate and you're like whoa i really got

lightsaber it feels like it right you just keep adding more and more things to make it more real and that's really cool yeah i mean the the part that's sort of i guess intriguing to me is when joe described how this this whole thing worked right like you put it on your head and you look and everything's like razor sharp in front of you. But looking around you is kind of weird, right? Like it almost has like this. And if you look at the lenses, they're shaped very concave like that or convex. No, they're concave.

And so things are sort of not sharp. And this is one of the reasons I wanted to bring this up is you have the HTC Vive, the original. They had come out with the HTC Vive Pro recently, which ups the resolution and gets rid of like the ability to see the pixels. Like it's way sharper. It's quite a bit more expensive. Like it's more than double the price of the regular Vive. Well, one thing that just came out at CES that was really interesting to me is they now have eye tracking. So what happens is you put these goggles on and if you turn, so like when Joe and I were talking about this before,

because things are very clear directly in front of you, you have to learn sort of turn your head to look at things as opposed to cutting your eyes over like you would in real life, because that doesn't give you a great experience. Well, what they figured out how to do is track your eyes now. So when your eyes move, it tells the program where you're looking and it makes it sharp there. But then on the periphery, it blurs it out. And then that way you reduce the graphical processing on the outskirts of where you're looking at and it sharpens things like crazy what you're looking at. And they say that this technology is amazing. And so what I'm curious about is where we see this stuff going as programmers, as things

going into the future. I think all of us maybe have tried HoloLens before. And now that we've tried this virtual reality thing, do you think there's anywhere for coders? Like if you were going to go in on an experience, would you see yourself writing code for VR? Would you see yourself writing code for augmented reality, something like the HoloLens? What do you guys see? Is this something that we should care about or is it just some sort of fad, some sort

of gimmick thing? I definitely want the Ready Player One experience. There is an app that I downloaded that you didn't get to try. There is a Ready Player One app and you go in these different worlds and stuff. I mean, you need the full Hapic suit.

You need that pad where you can walk in any direction. Yeah. I mean, in order to really make it happen, right? Yeah, holodeck. But does it make me want to jump in and start programming VR? Is that the question? No. Do we think this is where the future of computing is going?

So, for instance, why did Facebook buy Oculus Rift? Right? If you think about it, what is Facebook? They're a social networking company. They're all about managing the relationship between people and knowing what's going on. Why would they have bought a virtual reality thing? And my guess is because they want to be a part of what that world is. Everybody buys an Oculus, they put this thing on, and they all interact in their virtual space right now facebook as a company similar to google with an advertising platform if they want to advertise they got a room set up and they you know gm comes to them and says hey we got the new corvette you know hey let's show it to people that have money to spend they already have all the demographics hey on that point too by the way I am not a social media guy. Like, I rarely use social media.

But with the VR thing, you get placed in a room with lots of other people. And next thing you know, you're playing basketball with random people or you're flying the Starship Enterprise. And so, like, I become very social with VR. And I'm not like that in other mediums. So, I thought that's kind of interesting that you point out the Facebook thing. So you think Facebook wants to create the Ready Player One kind of environment that you're saying that

Zuckerberg is Halliday? I don't know that I give him that much credit. Or is he the 101s? Yeah, I was going to say. Or is Facebook the 101s? But seriously, i can totally see that becoming the the medium where they want people to interact right like

so do you guys remember what there was a name of an of of a virtual world it was like third uh yeah or second life yeah that's second life yeah and and people made gobs of money on that right like people that were in there that owned real estate in this place could make money because other people would want to come and advertise on it and all that kind of stuff like i totally see that being like another place where people are going to start taking taking real life things and putting them in the game, right? Like, oh, you need a luxury car. Mercedes-Benz is now advertising in your virtual space or something. I don't know.

I mean, that's already been a thing, by the way. Like, I remember IBM doing that in Second Life. See, and that's what I'm saying. And the CDC did too. It makes me wonder if we're at the beginning where this stuff is really going to start growing. And again, I think Facebook with Oculus Rift, I think their goal, and they actually have special apps, and I don't know what they are because I don't have an Oculus, but I think

that's where a lot of things are headed. And I'm just curious, are we looking at something like Ready Player One where people live in this virtual world? Or where do we think it's going? Is it something more like HoloLens and Google Glass to where you just wear this visor type thing or you have on these glasses much like – The demon. Yes. So we're saying then, is it going to be like you have these two worlds? Are we all in for Ready Player One?

Or are we augmented like the demon? And, you know, well, okay. So one, I want to say, I want to correct a thing. I said the one-on-ones. I meant IOI and Ready Player One World. It would be a little bit sad, though. As cool as the Ready Player One World is, though, if that's all you did was you never physically interacted with anyone, that would be kind of sad, right? I could see it, though.

I know. You totally can. Look, look, look. We're definitely closing in as a society where we're not as open as we were. You're not sitting out on your porch saying hi to your neighbors. Instead, you're sitting behind your computer or behind your phone saying hi online on one of the many social platforms, right? Right. I mean, how many times you gone to a restaurant and seen like literally seen a table full of teenagers sitting together all on their phones? I was going to say, how many times have you been one of the people sitting at a table where

everybody, I don't, I don't allow it in my family. We, we actually, we put our phones away when it, when we go out and we go do things, we put our phones away.

But, but I mean, it's weird. Like I don't know exactly where it's headed, but it's really interesting to think about as coders, like we're creating these worlds and we're creating these interactions. And I wouldn't be surprised if at some point it's not going to be like an inverse. You're going to be creating applications to pull people away from their devices, right? As opposed to trying to immerse them. Like it's almost, it's almost like people who pay to go to a gym, right? They pay to go to a gym because they don't

want the exercise equipment at their home because they're not going to use it or that. So they pay to get out and do it, force themselves to do it. Right. So i can almost see the same happening on the on the opposite side of the coin where you know you're forcing yourself away from your devices somehow like you're paying to get away from your device because you know that it's a problem i don't know it's just it's it's interesting but back to the vr and the virtual thing like i honestly think that like we're at a point where if you're a coder and you're halfway interested in these, it's all stuff that's still being figured out, to Joe's point. They're trying to figure out the mechanisms, the controls. But once it happens, it's going to explode, especially when these devices become more affordable, right?

Like the PSVR went on sale for $250 with the headset and games during the holiday season. Yeah, I was actually really surprised how many VR-only games there were in Steam. Like I was just, I've been buying one like every other day, essentially trying it out. And then to create a game, I mean, you can just download Unity and you just throw in some assets and then next thing you know, you can actually hit play and it plays on goggles. That's the crazy part, right? Like it's not unrealistic to think that you could do something pretty quick because in Unity – It's all free too.

Yeah. They have a thing that literally shows you what it will look like, right? The two lenses and it's rendering to both of them and you're walking down a hallway. You can actually render in real time too. I had my wife with the glasses on laying on the floor while I was putting objects in the scene in real time and she was interacting with them and stuff like that.

It's crazy. I think I don't know, just the usability patterns are so interesting to me. I can imagine a day is going to come when I'm looking at a code base and rather than be like now where I kind of clone that thing, open it up in ID and start searching around for the index file or the main file, maybe there's a day where I can kind of look at the system holistically and kind of visualize, here's the front end and here's where the kind of

codes are. And so I can kind of explore the project from almost like a UI perspective and say, hey, click on this thing and take me to the parts or show me all the parts that are relevant to the construction of this widget or whatever so i just think that we're still figuring out that experiences those experiences can look like i think the the sky's the limit so wait are you thinking like minority report yeah i think yeah maybe maybe one day and it's not necessarily that that's that vr is requirement of that, but just the amount of creativity that I saw in a couple hours of playing around. What you're hinting on, as a developer, we're constantly trying to push the boundaries of user experience and making it better. And this is kind of like the extreme end, and it's kind of like, well, will we ever get there?

Maybe we will, yeah. I mean, think about this, right? Like we talked about the fact that, that remote work now is, is way better than it ever was. And it's enabled. Imagine you go into a meeting and you all put on your thing and you're in a room and you're looking at a board and you're drawing on a whiteboard. Like this is not unrealistic, right? Like you could literally have a board and write on the whiteboard and everybody's standing there looking at it. Right.

I mean, if I got to go in your scenario, if I got to go into an office and then put the headset on to participate, I'm going to be upset that you made me do that. I have that game. That's a game virtual office where you go into a virtual office and you staple things. We're going into a virtual office, but if I had to go into an actual office. Yeah, yeah. Nobody wants to do that. But I mean, when you think about the interactions between people and like you said, modeling, right? Things like that. What if you had some sort of CAD type interactions where you could show off the pieces of it and literally just do it in your virtual world.

It's pretty cool stuff. They do have a code view. That was one of the apps, too, I saw, where it just shows your code and tree structure in three dimensions, right? And you're able to interact with it. Oh, that's cool. I haven't seen that one. Where you can spray paint in 3D. I mean, it's just kind of neat having that extra dimension and then having that immersion where it's all around you instead of just a little square yeah i thought i would get more fatigued too but like yeah i was really in there

for hours and just didn't realize like there's no clocks you know in there i didn't see anything so i didn't know that it'd gotten so late john was like hey well try this one try that one next time it's like hey wait why do my feet kind of hurt that's the problem yeah after you stayed up for four hours like wait it's a great exercise too too, some of the games. Oh, dude. Oh. Beat Saber's amazing. Yeah, I've seen MVP do some pretty amazing things with Beat Saber, so. Yeah.

Gorn, I will literally start sweating, like, drenched in sweat. Because you're, like, in an arena, like, with axes chopping up, you know, other gladiators and stuff. It's absolutely crazy. And what you said earlier is the funny part is you look at a flat screen like if you have the vive on you can have it do marrying right so you can see what's happening on your monitor yeah and it's not it's not the same yeah if you put on that headset you're there when you're looking at the monitor it looks cool but like uh space pirate trainer is a great one that that i'll put on just randomly because it's like you're shooting at these things flying all around you, right?

And you're there. You need everything to work, even like headphones, you know. And I mean, the precision you need. I mean, there's so many pieces that go into making a quality VR experience. And they're just like improving it every year, it seems like. And so the opportunities are there. Like if you have half an interest in any kind of game development or interactive environment development, not, you know, that's different than what's already out there, man, like this is a great time to get in on it. Like you said,

Unity's probably, and I know Joe, you've mentioned in the past as well right like you've played with some unity stuff man you want to talk about a free tool set that allows you to kind of do stuff that is just insane yeah that's crazy and unreal i think is is free up to a level two but i think we lean towards unity because it you can do it in c sharp. Yes. But yeah. And doesn't it, doesn't it compile down to C or cause Unity's cross platform for the most part, right? Yeah. You can set the targets for it and it'll compile to those native targets. So it'll do web assembly too.

Assembly. Yeah. Oh yeah. Ah, interesting. Full circle guys, which by the way, web assembly is a little frustrating cause it will run on a phone,

but it, most of them don't work. It'll even tell you. Yeah i don't know maybe that comes around at some point in the future but you know one thing i kind of noticed too is like you know like if i'm playing a triple a game like i might play spider-man or you know whatever pokemon let's go uh for you know i don't know say four hours or six hours stretch i have a hard time imagining playing one game for four hours or six hours stretch. I have a hard time imagining playing one game for four hours or six hours in VR. Maybe that's going to change. And I'm not saying that

I can't play games for a long walk, but it just seems really valuable and a really good experience to be able to pop into Space Trainer for 10 minutes or 15 minutes. Can you imagine how buff I'm going to be, though, if I play Heat Saber for six hours? Yeah. You'll feel it you'll feel

you know what's funny though i will say i've had more interest and desire to play games like john like what you were saying yeah since i've gotten the vr because that level of immersion just doesn't exist on on any other kind of system yeah when i sit at a computer i'm like oh man i'm working aren't i i'm doing homework for school or something, you know? Right. But in the VR,

it's like, no, no, I'm nowhere near the computer. You know? You're nowhere near reality. Like, you jump in there

and if you're playing the space trainer, the space pirate trainer, you're in outer space. My, my heartbeat will come out of my chest playing space pirate trainer.

Yeah. That, that game's so much fun. And like, cause you're like dodging and weaving and jumping around things and like shooting around yeah it's crazy cool application of like practical use is virtual uh the google earth oh yeah dude that's so cool it's very trippy yeah i mean i've literally gone back to places i grew up in germany and i could like you know hey that's where I lived.

And that's, you know, there's a mountain and you can warp all over the world and look at stuff. Like you can, Google has reconstructed the earth in virtual reality. It's free. It's totally free. Yeah.

I just want to clarify because like you might've just blown a lot of people's mind, but yes, Alan grew up in Germany. So like some of you probably recognize that's where his accent. That's my German. Right. Yeah, totally. So like some of you probably recognize that's where his accent. That's my German. Right. Yeah, totally.

So, but if you remember, I, I'm a California biker dude. So, so at least that's all in perspective. That's British. That's British. And yeah, born in Britain. Be shocked, shocked everybody. But yeah, I mean, just, that's like one of the practical things that i know i've heard in um in like hollow lens one of the applications that was super popular was companies that do design work like kitchen design work or remodeling right hey let's see what these cabinets look like

on your wall right and then they put them up there like that kind of stuff is crazy that mixed reality stuff is amazing too i mean like that uh that magic leaper or whatever it detects all the surfaces so you can put blocks on surfaces and stuff and i mean it's just that's a totally different thing that stuff hurts my brain to think about how well that works like it like you place something in one spot you turn around you walk around the room and you look back over there and it's still in that spot yeah you can like make a call and like there'll be a person standing there and you can walk around them and stuff you know think about the math behind that right good lord but all right so that that i just wanted to do

that because i think it is an interesting time for development and for making of things. Man, the sky in your imagination is sort of the limit now. Well, let's just wrap this up. I want to give you one more joke. I like that. But a software tester walks into a bar, orders a beer, orders 10 beers, orders 2.15 billion beers, orders negative one beers, orders a nothing, orders a cat, tried to leave without paying. And? That's a good one. Was a software tester.

And then? Yes. I like it. That's a good one. I like this one. Yes. That's a good one. It's a software tester. And then? Yes. I like it. That's a good one. I like this one. Yes, that's a good one. They broke everything. Yes.

So that one comes to us from Abdul Rahman. Thank you. I'm embarrassed that one took me a second to get. I did kind of trip up on the float. I messed that one up. But yeah. Whatever. Try as you may.

Alright, so with that, we will have some links to some of the references and articles and whatnot that we have referenced in the episode. And with that, let's head to Alan's favorite portion of the show. This is the tip

of the week. I'm going to go first for some reason again. And I'm going to go with Alan's favorite portion of the show. This is the tip of the week. All right. I'm going to go first for some reason again. I'm going to go with GetShareX.com, which is a tip given to me by my buddy Vincent Tang in Orlando who I don't think listens to the show. Maybe they will now if I tell them

that they're on it. GetShareX is kind of like a gene competitor, but it does a lot of other stuff too. You can get pictures of your desktop videos things like that and it doesn't look like jing which is also free uh it doesn't give you the video in flash format so that's really nice it's just a really nice tool it's free and open source and it looks really good so i just started to have uh recently giving a shot and it's Windows only though. So, you know, there's that.

But I really like it so far and I'm looking forward to getting even more used to it. Thanks, Vincent. Yeah, I have to give that a try. All right. Well, for my tip of the week, this one comes to us from our tip hotline. So if you would like to leave us a tip that we can share, you can visit www.codingblocks.net slash tips. And this one comes to us from Leitris Cthulhu, and it is go to web.dev. So we've all used tools for web development. Like I remember the Yahoo's Y slow back in the day, right? Google has the page speed insights and then like Pingdom has the website speed test. So this is in that same kind of vein. Uh, but just measuring your app

in, in just from the sheer shortness of the URL, like it wins, right? It's so clear. All right. So with that, we will say, hey, we hope you've enjoyed the show. Thank you, John, for joining us. And don't forget to leave a comment for a chance to win some dollars here.

Oh, look at this shirt. That's awesome. Awesome. Oh, I totally forgot. Now who's trolling who? Oh, that's amazing. Such a better logo. You're definitely going to have to.

I encourage you to go to this episode's video on YouTube to see what just happened. But with that, in case if a friend lets you borrow their device or pointed you in this direction, however you came to hear us, if you haven't already, be sure to subscribe to us on iTunes, Stitcher, and more using your favorite podcast app. And if you haven't already left us a review, like Alan said earlier, we really do appreciate it. You can find some helpful links at www.codingblocks.net slash review. And while you're up there, make sure you do check out our show notes, examples, discussions, and more. And send your feedback, questions, and rants to the Slack channel at codingbox.slack.com. And if the Join the Slack button link isn't working for you, then you can send us an email so that we'll hook you up.

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And don't forget to, you know, link the NS and all that stuff that makes us feel good. And, you know, we're lonely, I guess. Oh, come on. You're going to go out like that? Don't let us go out like that come on this is fun guys this is fun no this is really cool you guys are awesome you guys are my favorite podcast listen to you guys all the time now awesome nice it was nice meeting everybody as if it was on cue nice meeting everybody all the listeners it was nice meeting you see you on the internet we're in vr yeah