Ologies with Alie Ward - Architectural Technology (COMPUTER PROGRAMMING) with Iddris Sandu

Episode Date: May 5, 2020

Iddris Sandu is only 22, but his life story is already legendary. This Architectural Technologist learned to program at the age of 11 and has worked with everyone from Kanye West to Nipsey Hussle to Space X. We talk coding, web design, holograms, and how programming works and what languages should you learn and why it's important. The designer and entrepreneur also shares his creative process, favorite programming languages, philosophies on future technology and why empathy matters in life and in design. He’s a true inspiration and Alie shamelessly begged him for life advice. Bonus: this one is pretty kid-friendly so spread it around to anyone who needs a new hero. To see some of Iddris’s work, check out www.spatiaLABS.io Follow him at Instagram.com/IddrisSandu and Twitter.com/Iddris_Sandu Sponsor links: thegreatcoursesplus.com/OLOGIES More links at alieward.com/ologies/architecturaltechnology Transcripts & bleeped episodes at: alieward.com/ologies-extras Become a patron of Ologies for as little as a buck a month: www.Patreon.com/ologies OlogiesMerch.com has hats, shirts, pins, totes and STIIIICKERS! Follow twitter.com/ologies or instagram.com/ologies Follow twitter.com/AlieWard or instagram.com/AlieWard Sound editing by Jarrett Sleeper of MindJam Media & Steven Ray Morris Theme song by Nick ThorburnSupport the show: http://Patreon.com/ologies

Oh, hey, it's that squirrel staring at you through the window because you're late with the peanuts today. Ali Ward, back with an extremely digital episode of oligies. Ali, you say, dadward. We love snail funerals and coyote ghosts and mushroom gonads, but let's bump this into the age of the worldwide web, shall we? So we are. Today, I get my head out of the handles of dusty natural history books, into the ones,

into the zeros, and into the head of a genius programmer and designer and entrepreneur. But first, a few thanks, of course, to the folks on Patreon for supporting the show and sending in questions to acidologists. A dollar a month gets you into that club. And thank you to everyone who has been quarantine binging and telling friends and family and subscribing and rating and, of course, the reviews that keep me going on days when I feel so lonely, such as this week's spotlight on school ain't so bad, who wrote, oh, hey, it's that guy with a PhD who dropped a green bean on the floor, but then shoved it into

his beer to sanitize it, but then couldn't figure out how to retrieve it. I simply want everyone to know that you should make this podcast your weekly go to because it is a great way to remind yourself that even if you have a PhD, you can still find questions you've never thought of and learn things that you never wanted to know. This podcast is the bean and my beer. So thank you, school ain't so bad. That was a very nice review. Buckle up to hear your old dad out of her comfort zone and into the matrix.

So architectural technology, I know you are definitely thinking that this is an episode about how arches are built or glass buildings with solar panel windows. I know. But watch out. That is not it at all at all. So archie means having or conceived of is having a single unified overall design and texture comes from the Greek for chief weaver or builder. And then technology is also from the Greek, meaning art or craft coming from weave.

So the tech and architect and technology are the same tech. So architechnology, you'll hear more on that. Now, okay, I don't know beans about programming and when things start to get over the average or in my case below average person's head, I'm going to stop and just clue us all in for a second just to get up to speed so no one's left behind. So I made this episode kid friendly just because we'd need the youth to solve all of our problems. Thank you in advance for doing that. Now thisologist is just about to become your new hero.

At 14, he got the Presidential Scholar Award from a guy named Barack Obama. And at the age when most of us are just sweating over getting our learners permit, he was working on data analysis for Twitter and with Instagram and Snapchat. Still in his teens, he was pioneering autonomous driving systems and he's worked for SpaceX. He's spoken at TEDx. He has created the user experience for Nipsey Hussle's smart store, Marathon Clothing. And just in 2020 alone, he's collaborated with Prada, Versace, Travis Scott and Fenty. He launched an augmented reality visual studio called Spatial Labs and as the designer for

Snoop Dogg's new retail store, he's also releasing an EP of his own. Dude is busy and he's awesome. I was very lucky to be introduced by our mutual agents at WME, so hi Travis and hi Matthew. And then for the week leading up to this interview, I just had knots in my stomach about how cool he was and how little I understood about programming and just want to ask him. But he is as patient and as gracious as a genius could possibly be. And we chatted all about the value of hands-on tinkering and different programming languages and what they do and how to start coding at any age, advice he gives kiddos and grownups

and being part of technological movements, how he's worked with everyone from Kanye to Rihanna and more, what the future will look like and why being flexible and collecting varied life experiences is the key to excellence. So cozy up and get ready for your mind to be blown and your heart to be warmed by architectural technologist Idris Sandu. But luckily for you, I imagine a lot of your stuff can be done on a computer, right? Oh yeah, I mean, for me, work has always been about being digital. And even though we have an office, you know, it's really been about like, you know, I just

the comfort of like having an in-home office and a studio. And I mean, I mean, I do everything here from software developing to architectural fixture. Like, you know, I do a lot of prefab architecture. So creating the concepts here, 3D printing them. There's a CNC machine in here. There's like all these different machines. So we just constantly keep the creative juices flowing. PS, speaking of juggling several different intricate tech projects and creative juices,

I asked him how much coffee he has to drink to handle it all. He told me he doesn't even drink coffee. This man is just naturally turbocharged. OK, let's get right into it. And how would you define an architectural technologist or someone who doesn't know? Yeah, so architectural technologist or more and more like, you know, important like digital architect is really this like term that I coined around, you know, applying the concepts, the ideations and the design thinking that goes into, you know, architecture and applying

those to enhancing, enriching and scaling digital systems. Right. So it's about understanding like Dita Rams, 10 principles of design, you know, Zahideed's like principles or Mark Newsome or Johnny Ive or even like, you know, Bauhaus, right, taking these elements of design and applying them to create efficient systems around digital infrastructure. That's like the, you know, way that I could break it down to people. They see the vision, but once they like have those conversations and it gets deeper, it makes total sense. That list of designers, I don't include visionaries who have made fluid,

sloping opera houses to elegantly minimalist German buildings, to knighted designers and the minds behind everything from rounded lounge chairs to the Apple Watch. Now, Idris mentioned the 10 principles of design by Dita Rams, which I will list very quickly for context for this episode. Good design is innovative. Good design makes a product useful. Good design is aesthetic. Good design makes a product understandable. Good design is unobtrusive.

Good design is honest. Good design is long lasting. Good design is thorough down to the last detail. Good design is environmentally friendly. And good design is as little design as possible. So less is more, something to consider before adding a bunch of glittering clip art and comic sans headers to your web pages. Clutter be gone. And what, what do architecture and digital landscapes have in common?

Is there something about like a user experience of it being clean, but big, but navigable, but complex? Like how, how would you kind of relate those two? Yeah, well, I mean, technically, you know, when I use the word architect, I don't mean in the context of the noun, right? And as a noun, it's somebody that, you know, assist, create or develops, you know, using the skills of design, creates, builds, assembles or supervises buildings and their construction, right? Architects. And although I would love to be in that category, I have not, you know, took the bar test for architecture. And, you know, I never went to college, guys.

If you look in the dictionary for the word architect in a dictionary, there's another definition. And as a verb, it's a process. It's a living thing, right? The, the, the noun version, it confines you to a box. It puts you in this box of you are an architect. And in many cases, you're building either physical things or digital things, right? Architects don't always have to build physical systems. They can also build like virtual systems.

OK, quick aside, I look this up and yep, sure enough, architect is both a noun and a verb. And the verb is more common in the tech industry. Now, Idris defines it for those of us outside of those digital domains. As a verb, it's a process. It becomes a living thing. It becomes universal. It becomes water in itself because it teaches you that as a verb, it's the process of taking figments of an idea and making it into an actual product.

And I fell in love with that definition of life. And I was like, every time I'm like, I'm a digital architect, not as a noun, but as a verb because people need to understand the power and verbs being used to define what they do. Right? Like we live in this era of like people be like, oh, I'm a tourist. I'm a Gemini. I'm an Aquarius.

I'm an introvert. I'm an extrovert. I'm not a fighter. I'm a lover. All these boxes that we put ourselves in. And then when the moment somebody calls this or puts it in a certain box, what's the first thing we say? Stop trying to put me in a box.

But we put ourselves in a bigger stock. So yeah, that's what digital architecture really is to me. Like the usage of architecture in a verb definition. I think the similarities that tie everything back to each other, which took me years. That 22, it took me years to learn was that what connects synchronous designs together is the synchronicity between all forms of design is empathy. Right? And I think that's one thing that architecture is a representation of.

Architects ironically build either physical buildings or digital systems for everybody else but themselves. Architects are the equivalent of the doctors of the design world that find viruses and pathogens and all of these things and of design, right? And create using certain elements and patterns and tessellations together to form whole buildings that can protect people and cause shelter, like being an architect, whether the noun or verb, it's the highest human achievement and that everyone can do it. Like the connections are in understanding that all elements of design together are precisely

woven together, connected by one medium and that's empathy. Wow. You know, it's funny because you say that and I think of all of the different scientists that I've interviewed in my work and I always find that they usually start with a problem and their science kind of revolves around a solution and it never occurred to me that yeah, at the root of that is empathy is okay, well, here's something that someone needs and so I'll build it or I'll dream it up or I'll fix it, you know? And you know, were you always a very empathetic kid?

Were you kind of out like romping around and looking at bugs or were you more like a bookworm inside or when did you become so curious? I think I've always been a curious kid, you know, I remember being six, seven, eight, you know, growing up we were, you know, financially deprived, but I'm very, very, very particular with words because words are frequencies, I prefer the term financially deprived instead of low income because it low relates to us, you know, beneath level, right? It's just a lack of resources to be able to perform. So yeah, we were just like financially deprived and I would always like my mom would always

have to buy new controllers because I would always break them and, you know, just look at, oh, okay, cool, these are what transistors are and I will look at a PCB board. PS, PCB is a printed circuit board and no, I have never taken one apart myself and yes, I just had to look up what a PCB was. I'm not ashamed. I would look at it and reroute everything and connect this to the USB and then take the USB to this and then I remember this one time I created a, I took a remote and then I basically rerouted and reprogrammed in Java the ability for me to point that at our ceiling

fan and I could change the speed of the fan, right? And so like I had always been curious, you know, it was one time I programmed the light bulb to have a two simple digits, a zero and a one node and when it was in a zero state, it was off. When it was in its one state, it was on and that moment was when I just knew that this is what I was meant to do, the curiosity of understanding how things work and more importantly, including this common theme that would forever be, you know, in my life, digital alchemy, which is the reusability of products once, you know, it's the way that it's been designed

to use. Once that is depleted, being able to repurpose things to form things completely new. So yeah, so like answer your question, I'd always been creative. I mean, I can't remember a time when I wasn't creative, but every single thing even to this day that I create is not for me, it's about the people around me and I mean, growing up in Ghana for a little bit and, you know, growing up in Compton and moving to Harbor City and being around, you know, every type of person from different communities, everything that has woven my work and even in my DNA has been around clear using that curiosity, not to

create inventions, right? Inventions are like a blatant form of ego, whether people realize them or not. Innovation is truth. Innovation is humility and an invention starts with you wanting to create something for the sole purpose of it satisfying your needs or your immediate surroundings. Innovation is about creating things to help the masses. That's the true test of humility. Oh, that's really beautiful.

Always curious. And, you know, when did you go from, you know, hardware and taking apart controllers and changing their frequency and into coding and into kind of software? Like when did you make that jump? Okay. So there's two people, right? There's two people that inspired me. One is fictional and the other is non-fictional.

Okay. Steve Jobs. Hello, I am back in touch. Tony Stark. I am Iron Man. Okay. You know, to a date, you know, Tony Stark, you know, like, because that was my Howard Hughes. That was my Nikola Tesla.

That was my Steve Jobs even because he set the bar for me in terms of what could be created because it never really was created. It's not real. And that allowed my imagination to be very fueled. But to answer your question about, like, before all of this, what got me into coding, I remember watching the keynote, right? The Steve Jobs keynote of him in 2007, right? Mm-hmm.

Oh, I'll tell you. Are you pulling it up? Yes, that's how I can show you this. Like, you know, it's like, so I can let you know what mark about, I think, like eight minutes in. Okay. In the first iPhone presentation, Steve Jobs said something that the rest of the world at that time might not have been, might not have noticed because they were just thinking

about the product. Mm-hmm. Steve Jobs took a quote from a very popular, I would consider him an anthropologist, a teacher, a guide, a philanthropist, Alan Kay. Are you familiar with him? No. Alan Kay. He's huge.

He was very fundamental towards, like, the early stages of Apple and stuff. These are just, like, super cool. He took a quote from Alan Kay that said, people who are really serious about software should make their own hardware. To build your own hardware, build your own software. That was the quote. And that went over so many people's heads, but that was the birthing place that, or that was the mark that signified the birth of Apple as we know it today from a perspective of

creating their own hardware and controlling the own software. Mm-hmm. Right? And I saw that from our early age. And as I would age, I realized how every brand started to assimilate in that same way. You're able to control the narrative around whatever it is that you're pushing if you're the platform owner. Yeah.

So from a very young age, I always wanted to be a platform owner. I wanted to think about, yes, I want to build software and I got, I started learning how to code, in fact, at the age of 11 and went to a library for almost two years straight, only missed three days and learned everything. And I saw the differences. When I was in Compton, I was reading legacy programming languages. Okay. I wasn't sure if legacy was the actual name of a programming language.

So I had to look it up and wow, okay, no. So a legacy language as opposed to a modern one is older and usually not the base for today's coding, but it's really important to know because new technology sometimes has to interact with a legacy language that may be the base for other programs. Also please pardon this aside up top, but I just want to get some programming basics just out of the way for context so no one feels lost and also full disclosure because I needed to look it up to understand it also. I'm going to go quick.

So first off, machine language is chattering via binary code. The ones and zeros and those are expressed via tens of thousands of transistors that flip on and off to relay those ones and zeros. Now a programming language is a way for us to tell those ones and zeros how to behave and what to accomplish for us. So just remember the task of a thousand steps begins with a single beep boop. Life is just a series of tiny beep boops that can change the world. Now some of the first programming, Tribute Alert, was around the year 800 in modern-day

Baghdad and involved an automata, which was a programmable steam flute. Priorities. Gotta get those flute jams in. Now in the 1700s we had punch cards that helped operate Jeckhard, textile looms, and in 1843 Ada Lovelace, a writer and mathematician who is also the daughter of poet Lord Byron, wrote an algorithm to calculate Bernoulli numbers, which are a sequence of rational numbers that occur often in number theory. Anyway, some of the first computers in NASA's history were women, crunching numbers behind

the scenes to figure out flight paths and fuel needs, and programming the first electronic general-purpose digital computer for the US Army in the 1940s. Fast-forwarding to the last couple of decades, let's have a very brief simplification of what a programming language is. Essentially means how plain text, or what's called source code, is formatted and written to tell the machine how to flip those transistors, making all those ones and zeros, to get stuff done. And some older legacy programming languages are COBOL, aka Common Business Oriented Language,

which has been around since the late 1950s, FORTRAN is casual for formula translation. It's also from the 50s, there's RPG, which was developed by IBM in 1960, C has been around since 1969, and it's the foundation of languages like C++ and Java and C-Sharp. Perl has been around since the late 1980s and gained traction doing CGI graphics, and it's open source, meaning you can futz with it and modify it. So anyway, thank you for bearing with that history and context. Idris was at the library at the age of 11, feeding his hungry brain with legacy programming languages, as one does.

I was looking at mainframe, like Lisa, I was looking at all these different scratch, basic assembly, very, very low level. Okay, so low level, easy? High level programming is actually low, and low is actually high. Okay, I don't know that. So when I say low level programming, I'm in the kernel, I'm learning about the machine language, of how computers not interpret data, but really process information. There's different forms of computer language processing, it's a lot.

There's interpreted languages, there is machine language, there's a whole bunch of different ones. But then I just started going to the library and read and read and read, well not ironically, but to the universe and God's grace, I would end up meeting a Google engineer that happened to be there that day, and saw me reading my books, and that was really the start for me in this space. But yeah, it really started with just seeing the possibility of, are you a huge Marvel fan?

Okay, I was already clueless about programming, but now I also had to admit that I am like a weird old lady who has not seen a lot of superhero movies. But somehow he was perfectly kind and gracious about it, so much that it almost made me cry, to be honest. No judgment at all. No judgment. No, don't worry about it. You have a whole lifetime.

No, I'm not even being ironic right now. You're still young. You have a lot of time to watch it. But in the first Iron Man, there's a scene of Obadiah, who was the villain in the first movie, pressing the scientist, they're like, yeah, we tried it, but we can't. He's like, Tony Stark built this in a cave, and then the dude like, well, I'm sorry, sir. I'm not Tony Stark, you know, and I think that ability for him to build anything, anywhere at any place is what gave me the push in a very digital way, right?

The digital architecture. Tony Stark instilled the digital design thinking in my mind, and Steve Jobs, or he instilled the physical design thinking in my life, right? So like, these are very two, similar yet different people. Yeah, it was ultimately around like, watching the Afro Kino and at the same time discovering, because Iron Man also came out in 2007, by the way. Oh, did it? I just realized that.

So it's like these people together are literally like shaping my design thinking process and everything for years to come. Idris was nine in 2007. I still have pants from 2007 that I wear, like legacy bootcut, baby. But yes, he got started really early learning to code at 11 and by chance meeting a Google designer while studying at the library. And now you, I know that you were in the library or studying code. You were what, maybe 13 at the time, and you started interning for Google?

Yes, various points in my life. I was being allowed to be in spaces that I normally wouldn't have been in, right? So me being a 13 year old kid with somebody that, you know, believed in me so much and saw what I was doing to let me have an opportunity to see how things actually worked and being able to go into the Google building and go in and see how ideas then went to the drawing board and the drawing board then went to the designers at that time. Like UI UX, was it as big as it is now? You know, so it was like that, you know, the interface designers.

And then from there, it going to like the programmers and the programmers working with the marketing team and the marketing team distributing the app that was built. I just got to see so much and I was like, oh, wow, it was like being a Willy Wonka's factory. And I was like, wow, this is how it works. I want to create this. How did you like the chocolate factory, Charlie? I think it's the most wonderful place in the whole world.

And that would basically shape my whole life around ownership. I started with ownership. I started by watching Steve Jobs unveil the first iPhone and Tony Stark, you know, wanting to own his Iron Man tech and not give it to the Pentagon. Like seeing these two parallel stories informed every single time, everything about me. One thing that I practice a lot is vertical integration, right? Now vertical integration is a form of business in which a business owner or entity controls the whole product lifecycle of their creation, right?

That's what Apple does, right? So let me like break it like back to what I was saying by the reason why throughout this whole interview, the Allen K to build your own hardware, make your own software is going to make so much sense, right? So Apple as a company has a multitude of different devices, right? Now for every one of those devices that they have, there's an integrated operating system that they created for each of those products, right? So if you have an Apple watch, it runs what?

Watch OS. If you have an iPhone, it runs iOS. If you which they own these two, which they own, if you have a Mac computer, you're running Mac OS, which they also own. And if you have a TV, it runs what? Apple TV, ATV, AOS. Right? Okay, cool.

Maybe I just got lucky. Maybe I just got lucky with that, you know, that that's maybe just a coincidence, even though I said, you know, I did four different comparisons. Let's keep going. Let's look at Google. Google's phones run what? Android. Their TVs run Android TV.

Their cars run Android Auto. And their watches run Android Wear. But now let's talk about like virtual assistants. Alexa is owned by Amazon. Apple owned Siri. IBM has Watson. Google has Google Assistant. So they've all vertically integrated their companies in plain sight in a way that people

have it. Like it's like a case of CSI and you're drawing like all the red lines between all the different points of, you know, origin or whatever. So with that in my blood and with that understanding that Steve Jobs and Tony Stark, one fictional, one non-fictional and sealed, that's why everything always came down to me. So when you ask, I had to give that preference before answering your question in regards to how does that light bulb moment go to one actual product for, you know, for like me. And it goes with understanding that if I know I'm not in a position to work on an immediate

solution to an issue or a problem that I can't vertically integrate or at least for the most part vertically integrate within my own immediate surroundings, I don't deem it as a priority for me. So, you know, because I divide things I do into two space states, right? There's I came up with this term called aspirational necessitation. Now aspirational necessitation, you just simply means or taking the 95% of design thinking that's usually attributed for 5% of products in the world and applying it to the 95% of the products, meaning the kids that graduate school and have the best ideas to come back

and fully sustain and develop our communities and scale them the way they need to get poached by big companies so they never have an opportunity to. If you look around you, you will notice that the products that are aspirational, the stuff you do not need are the most highly priced and are the, in fact, the most beautiful design things that you can lay your eyes on, whereas the products that are a necessity in your, to you roadblock, street sides, pedestrian buttons, you know, parking meters, all of these things are designed very, very poorly and with very little design thinking. And in fact, the moment that these systems are installed, they're already depreciating

in value, whereas on your phone, if you really think about it, it appreciates in value. Why? Because there's software updates. So why haven't we designed city infrastructure and things that are a necessity around us with the same thing? Could you imagine all these tech companies, Tesla, General Motors, Hyundai, Toyota making new cars all the time, making a car be smaller, faster, more efficient, but no one is thinking about the road on which the cars drive to.

That hasn't been changed. How about we just make efficient more roads, right? So aspirational necessitation, making the things that we all use as nice as the things only 5% of people can afford. Can you imagine that world of just beautiful efficiency? And then it gets into this conversation of like, well, do people actually want that or is it something we just say, we want to see better design, we want to see this. And then you start to realize the thin line between aspirational and necessity.

So yeah, like for me, it's like I divide things into two parts, products that are aspirational and products that are a necessity. And the necessity products are the things that I'm mostly focused on. But then again, I think about how far can I vertically integrate those ideas? If I have an app that, for example, tells people on their phone, like, you know, when COVID-19 or when there's a surge in their area, if I can't design it from my home and then build it and then distribute it all from my home, then I probably won't work on it. So I've vertically integrated everything, but that's my design.

I know that was a long answer, but no, that's amazing. Have there been any projects that you've worked on that you've really kind of, you felt like you've grown a lot having worked on them? Were there any projects that you feel like taught you a lot as you did as you did them? I would most likely say either my collaboration with Nipsey Hussle back in 2017. Okay. Quick side note for those who aren't familiar, Nipsey Hussle, LA-born rapper and activist who also started the Marathon clothing store, the first smart store of its kind that offered

consumers special digital experiences in the store and unlocked extras with their purchases of Crenshaw shirts and Victory Lep snapback caps. And Idris explains how that collaboration came to be, and he backs up a step to describe the project that he was working on when he met Nipsey. Or the way I have the phrases now is a software that I built called ACDI, Autonomous Collision Detection Interface that I pitched and had several meetings with Uber about. But I have this sensor right in front of me here that we're now refining, we're like at version 5.0.

We've designed our own chip under a company called Spatial Labs that I started. I was creating this system that would basically, using machine learning, we would be able to detect a driver's hand position in the car. And it cognitively would learn about how you drove and, one, assist you in driving. So the device can capture frames at up to 300 to 400 frames per second using infrared light. It would be able to get your hand position in the car in milliseconds and be able to do evasive maneuvers around it.

So let's just say you were texting and driving, but in a very likely layman's or baseway, it would be able to do a 50-50% distribution. So you're driving, you start texting, you're looking up and down, the car engages and knows that you're in a texting mode, and so it would assist you with driving. If you immediately let your hands go off of the car, it would engage full autonomy. And the moment that you put it back on the wheel, it would let you control it again. Wow. So this system would not only automate the driving, but figure out when you need help,

make a perfect, significant other. Who knows when to swoop in and bring you a cookie and when to leave you alone? Yeah. So the software, after I created it, I was like, you know what? I had this ultimate epiphany about just something that was coming, and especially with ownership as it related to, especially a lot of people of color and minorities, Africans, you know, like just in general. And I was like, the youth aren't given the necessary skill sets because I went to a public

school to be able to create on the level that I did. Remember that while the rest of us were going to Batmitzvahs and growing our first wisps of a mustache, Idris's profound curiosity led him behind the Google Fortress Walls at 13. To me, it's the equivalent of like going in and working for the greatest fashion houses. And it's like painting the Sistine Chapel and then not, and no one else can do it because you have the skill sets on how to build it. It's like having the answers to how the pyramids were built, but you're the only person that

doesn't know how to do it. So I wanted to get more youth and younger kids, especially of color, to get into technology. And the only reason or only way I could do that is if it was if I made technology cool. It had to be cool, you know, because we look up to the celebrities and the athletes because they break the mold. Very few of us get to escape our reality and actually live our dreams. But what if I could create systems and I could repurpose my code to instead of serving gimmicky, you know, values?

What if I could reuse those same algorithms on their sale code to create something else? So ironically, like I was sitting in a Starbucks one time, which I never go to because I don't drink coffee. But something to I had left, I've always been a librarian, right? Like I always loved going to. So I went to the Levy Library, you know, at USC on Figaroa. Something told me to go to Starbucks. I go into the Starbucks.

I sit down and I'm literally modifying this software that I'm telling you about. This was the ACDI software that he was working on, just coding in a Starbucks on Fig when Nipsey came in because his daughter had to use the bathroom. So good thing Idris did not have a laptop privacy screen because Nipsey spies what he's working on. I'm coding it, literally like modifying it. And then in comes, you know, Nipsey Hussle. And then he paces back and forth four times, sees what I'm doing on my computer and eventually

is like, yo, this is so crazy. Like what you're doing it. He approaches me in a very respectful way. He's like, sir, could you tell me what you're doing? And I'd let him know what I was doing. And then we came together and we created the Marathon Store. Nipsey described the concept of the store in 2017 on LA's Power 106 radio. Well, it's basically, there's going to be an app that you can download to activate the

smart features of the store. It's going to be the Marathon Store app. And basically, you know, when you walk into the store, there's going to be tags that, you know, going to have content. So tags of the clothing. So a certain shirt, right, will promote the shirt and it'll be a piece of content that's programmed specifically to this shirt. So that, you know, when the shirt drops, you get the shirt, but then you also get a piece

of content that's not on iTunes. That's not on YouTube. That is dope. That's not in the cloud. In the interview, he also praises Idris a bunch for his vision and advocates for more kids learning STEM. And the two of them working together created not just a landmark in the Crenshaw District of Los Angeles, but on the whole commercial landscape.

Savage would go on to inspire a whole culture of artists, performers, you know, to think differently about their brand and how they can use technology to enhance it. 21 Savage, right? Who's known as like, you know, I'm sure, you know, he's like notoriously known as like a rapper, right? He did a collaboration with Spotify on machine learning after he came in and saw that we were using artificial intelligence and geo fencing to deliver music exclusively to the fads without the need of a middle of middle people.

He was inspired to go do a machine learning collaboration with Spotify, where they had this app that you would just hold your phone. He has this like famous tagline Issa is a knife. So you would just hold your phone over different parts or different objects. The machine learning algorithm would automatically detect what it is and it would say what it was. It's a cup. It's a hat.

It's it is. And I thought it was so genius because that's what's going to get more kids and that's what's going to gravitate more people to getting into technology. So I mean, to answer your question, those are the two things or the two pivotal moments like, you know, in my pre like twenties, where like I felt like it was that really changed it for me, understanding that I could repurpose my code from going to creating a platform called ACDI Autonomous Collision Detected Interface, which I pitched to a company like Uber to repurposing that same code and creating a system for, you know, musicians to be able

to DJ using their hands and then meeting Nipsey Hussle. Oh my God. Nipsey passed away on March 31, 2019 from gunshot wounds sustained in the parking lot of the marathon store. He was 33. 20,000 mourners showed up at his memorial at Staples Center in LA and lined a nearly marathon length funeral procession through the streets of Los Angeles. And Nipsey was an outspoken advocate for peace and for opportunity and for learning.

And he had actually been due the next day to meet with community members about reducing gang violence in his beloved neighborhood. And what was it like working with him too? Nipsey, he's just an amazing, he was and is an amazing human being. I think where I was like past political black leaders gave us like political power. He was all about economic empowerment and giving you economic power. There's three things that you need to change a community. You need you need buying power, you need economic power and you need political power.

But political power and buying power need a resource to be able to they need a feel. And that is economic power. So that's what his messaging was. And I think it all makes sense to me now how everything happened and the reason why he chose me to really like and highlighted me and went so hard for him because he knew I was like one of the only people around him in a circle that could articulate the full complexity of how his mind worked and how deep it went. This was not no ordinary rapper.

This was not no ordinary person. This man understood a lot of things. And had he been here, I would I feel very comfortable putting him part of part with being like our modern day Jay-Z, you know, in terms of cultural influence. But yeah, I mean, you know, he was my brother, protector. We traveled the world together. We did a lot of amazing things together. And we're just going to continue working.

But to answer your question, like it was a very amazing, lovely time spent with him. Yeah, I'm so sorry for the loss on that. His accused assailant, a former childhood friend, was arrested two days after the murder and awaits trial. Nipsey Hussle went on to win multiple Grammys posthumously earlier this year. Something that is that's really striking about you is you are you're so obviously like focused and passionate about what you do. And you're also so good at having an opportunity and taking full advantage of it,

you know, of of showing up when the opportunity kind of knocks. And, you know, do you are you ever called to give advice to people who, you know, are have less confidence or aren't sure that they could accomplish anything near what you have asking for myself? Because I will shamelessly take any and all advice this dude has to offer. But also for, you know, the youth, Gen Z's and beyond. Yeah, I mean, I think even now, like I was just reading a Wall Street Journal article earlier about how like the coronavirus is going to shape is going

to literally shift the paradigm for an unfinished generations. Social skills, Gen C, like these kids that are now eight, nine, ten, or even like five or six, they're going to completely grow up in a completely different world now because of coronavirus, you know, and so what it means to be social is going to be different. What it means to interact face timing or video calling or even volumetric. Like, you know, certain things have to happen for us to go into new ages of time. Right.

Scientists had to try and get us to the moon and, you know, create a new technology and mistakenly create microwave. And now we don't have micro microwaves in our house. That scene in Star Wars and New Hope where you have Princess Leia, you know, R2-D2 projecting her hologram and her telling Obi-Wan Kenobi, help Obi-Wan Kenobi, you're our only hope for us to get to that level, for us to get to the shift. Certain things needed to take place in the world.

And so ultimately, like I'm a huge spiritualist and stuff. So what I tell like people around me, whether it's now in terms of advice or whatever, or in the past, it's like there's always a blessing behind every single thing that happens. And when we talk about that hologram age, in recent events, what's going on in the world, what's happening right now is going to force that to happen now because we're going to have to rethink media. Magic Leap, the company that makes those like, you know,

mixed reality goggles and hollow lens are going to be way more powerful and needed now, right? When you, you know, ask me, like, what advice do I give to people? It's the advice is simply just be dynamic. Even when I have like kids come out to me like, what programming language is? I feel that if I tell children, if I tell young kids what programming languages they should they shouldn't force, especially when those kids coming out to me are like minorities, I feel like I'm not giving them the right information.

The right information for me to say to those kids would be learn how to be dynamic because one programming language is not going to be it. You know, new programming language will be created. But you know what won't be new, your ability to dynamically think, train that muscle in your brain to be able to be adaptable, teaching kids the importance of not only just, you know, going to the river and giving them a fishing rod, but also letting them know that they might not be able to fish all year round, even if they have a fishing rod.

So teaching them how to go to other beaches and other oceans to fish and how to identify the flow of current and when fish are coming and when they're not coming, teaching them the high levels, right? Thinking about it very dynamically, thinking about how to help the youth in such a way that it's not a now. So my advice is really centered around. Balance and not even the future, but balance, right? Information of the current is by default already information of the past.

As we're communicating right now, the things we're saying things we're talking about right now, even if I was to mention a new technology that has a six week shelf life a year from now, we got all new iPhones. And then we talk about something else, you know, my advice to any kid or anyone. Really, I feel like we're all kids. We're all children in the most respectful and honorable way. We are all children and children are the most creative people. And I believe we all want to be considered creative.

Idris says that we must all accept that we are children and keep learning and asking questions, which, you know, I love. Now, speaking of asking questions, we're about to ask questions submitted by folks on patreon.com slash allergies. But before we do each episode, we donate to a charity or a cause of the ologist choosing and Idris is actually building a youth center and a school on land that he's just purchased in Ghana. So we'll see to it that that donation goes straight toward that incredible work.

And that donation was made possible by sponsors of the podcast who you may hear about now. OK, on to your questions. Can I ask you a few questions from listeners who knew that you were coming on? Yes, of course, please. Yes, I'll run through them like lightning round. Michelle Jacobs wants to know if you have a favorite programming language and why. Or if you have a few that you'd break down to sort of tell people to start looking at.

Yeah, I mean, personally, I mean, I started off with Java and Java is one of the most, you know, it's not only just one of the oldest programming languages that we still currently use today, but more importantly, it's a programming language that is like the grandfather of all other programming languages, right? There's different forms of programming languages. There's different languages, and then there's different, like, broken versions of those languages, right?

So you think of like English and then there's like the British English, then there's American English, then there's like Patois, you know, and then there's like broke Pigeon English, right? And in programming, there's a very wide array for different applications of what you're doing. There are like array languages under like assembly. There's just so many there's compiled languages. OK, I looked it up in Wikipedia, lists over 50 types of programming languages.

How exciting. Why are there so many? It depends on what you're what you're doing. But personally, one of my favorite programming languages is not Java. Actually, that's just a language I started with. I really love C. I love C sharp. OK. And the reason why I love C sharp is obviously it has way more memory advantages and speed improvements over Java. But the thing I love about C most importantly is because it's really widely accepted.

I can compile that on my Mac computer running like boot camp or running parallel desktop side by side with the computer. And platforms that I in the past that I've used a lot of like unity, which is a game engine for a lot of visualizations we've created in the past. We've built them in unity using C sharp. So I love, love, love C sharp. C sharp is one of my favorite languages. But there's a new programming language that Google created called Flutter

that I love so much because I've been using a lot of Facebook React native. OK, so there's Facebook has two major programming languages. One is called React and one is called React native. And by the way, this is another moment for me to go back to what I was saying about to build your own software, build your own hardware. Yeah. Facebook has their own programming language. It's called Facebook React, which is it's and it's well, you know, before people grow me because I know this is going to happen.

Let me just reiterate and say, I know that Facebook React is not a programming language and it's a library, but it's pretty much a programming language. We can agree to disagree. It's pretty much a language. It's a JavaScript library, but it is a programming language as it's currently used. OK, from what I gather, Bootcamp, side note, is a software that helps install Windows OS on Macintosh computers, which, like other types of bootcamp, sounds like a sweaty endeavor and a library is a bunch of reusable programming routines that a coder can grab so they don't have to physically

type all of that source code out like they know what it does and what to use. So, you know, you can copy and paste the basics to avoid needing like bionic wrists to peck out all those ding-dang backslashes and such. So these shortcuts are valuable, given that experienced programmers can make upward of 100 bucks an hour in case you're interested in learning to code. Yeah, I had been using a lot of Facebook React Native and the difference between React and React Native is one of them is like it's simply in layman's term is just a web browser being hosted on an app form.

And the other allows you to use native components that are that are native to device specifics like having Android or iOS. But not to confuse anybody. Let's just keep it like this. I think my favorite language is C sharp. OK, oh, that's amazing. That's so good to know. There were some people who are asking questions about Python, like Anna Valerie asked any tips or tricks learning coding as a quote old dog.

I wasn't taught R in high in school and I'm finding myself meeting it for positions in my field. And then some people were saying start with Python. Python, by the by, it was born in 1991 and it's known for having really readable code and a big library. So you can grab existing source code from the community and modify it. And it's used for websites and desktop applications. Also for really complicated data analysis and back end developers use it

to communicate database information to the browser. And after many years, Python 2 just got retired and a new version of 3.9 was just released. So is Python like a better trick for old dogs? Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think Python is I mean, it's mostly used as a back end programming language. OK, so there's, you know, there's different forms of programmers. There is a front end, there's back end and there is full stack, right?

So front end basically is going to be more of your HTML, CSS, React, Flutter, you know, relating to how the app is going to look. All the different programming languages, the animations and everything communicating precisely with each other from a front end perspective. Back end is usually like Python, you know, no JS, like all the things on the back end. So you think about servers. A lot of servers are using Python. Like, oh, let's pair it with like a Linux virtual machine or a virtual system

and then run it from there. So for anybody that's, you know, that feels, quote, unquote, that they're that they're like, you know, older and they missed a lot. There's never been a more exciting time to get into programming like there is now. I remember, you know, I'm 22, but I remember being 11 years old, having to go to a library and read books there. And now with just there's so many free courses online. There's platforms like Udemy, there's Khan Academy, there's Treehouse

that teach you Java from start to finish that teach you Swift, which is Apple's official programming language that I think a lot of people should start learning. And does Idris like Swift? Be honest, Idris, I'm not going to say it's easy or not. But it's like, you know, I personally don't like it too much. But I do know it because I like to build cross platform apps. If I just build one app, that's iOS and one app, that's Android. That's double the work.

So I like to create like that's why I love C sharp and or Facebook React, which allows you to code once deployed at all. But I will say for anybody that feels like they're late or whatever, the three program languages, if I had to give any, I would say to look out for our Swift, which is Apple's official programming language that runs within their IDE called X code. Java, which runs inside Android Studios, which is Google's official IDE, which is powered by IntelliJ and JetBrains.

And then I'll also say Facebook React, which is created and maintained by Facebook, the community, and more importantly, React Native, which gives you access to even more native components. OK, three. And then one more, actually, I would also add in Python. OK, yeah, because a lot of machine learning stuff. I mean, when you're training data sets, when you're getting into machine learning, which I think more apps will start tapping into Python is

the language that you'll be using for a lot of those things. So four languages, Python, Facebook, React, Java, Swift. OK, four. Got it. And actually, I lied. Five program languages. So so Facebook, React, native, Swift, Java. Which one did I miss? Yes, so Swift.

Yeah, C sharp, Swift, Facebook, React, Java and and Python. All right, then five, five. And then I'll also add Flutter, Flutter, because there's no, there's a lot. There's a lot, right? There's like so many, Flutter is a new programmer language that hasn't had too much adoption, but it's so promising. And I think it might be able to replace Facebook React and Flutter is a programming language created and maintained by Google's community,

which is very similar to, you know, you know, Facebook React. But yeah, those would be my top picks. That's amazing. So it's like, you're number one by one. We need six, which is same, which is amazing. Right, my number one to like, because you also don't want to like, you know, one thing I don't like, like, you know, what works for me might not work with somebody else, right?

So giving people like the languages that I feel like are not going anywhere. Right. Yeah. That they should know now. Yeah, that's amazing. That's such good advice. So that's six. We got six. Python, Facebook React, Flutter, Java, Swift and Idris's Secret Darling.

C sharp. I love this question from me handlebars. First time question asked or wants to know what is the most cringy depiction of programming you've seen in mainstream media? And did anyone ever get it right? Have you ever seen programmers depicted in movie or TV where you're like, oh, come on. Yeah, I mean, I think the funniest thing is like, and, you know, the tech community will understand this.

When like somebody is like writing a syntax or in a terminal on a computer. And they literally, I don't know if you'll be able to hear this, but then they do this. Yeah. It's like no programmer works that way. And this is like an internal joke. We know we all, you know, we get up, we stretch, then we crack our fingers. We're like, what should I create today? And next thing you know, you're on a GitHub looking at other people's code

and copying and pasting it into yours. So it's like, we know we all don't like just be like typing like that. But I mean, I think the media obviously is always going to do like, you know, Top Gun, right? They brought like the guy from, you know, a real Air Force pilot to come in and be like, what you think about Top Gun? What you think they brought a pilot to review Call of Duty for Battlefield or something about that scene where like the plane, he's like, that would never happen.

That would never happen. But I think like it's so funny, yo, it's humorous. And I mean, Bill Gates himself said, and I mean, I'm not from Silicon Valley, but I go there a lot. And Bill Gates said like shows like Silicon Valley are they do a very good job at portraying, you know, like what tech is. But I think about like Mr. Robot and all these other, you know, like shows. Yeah, probably that's that's my most cringy thing.

You would expect it because again, I'm a very unconventional architect or designer. I'm not going to give you like the tabs or spaces. Do you use tabs or spaces when you program? Like those are like to me, the corny ones that everyone expects you to say. But for me, it's really just like how the reality of being a programmer is you're always learning just like the English language. You're learning new words all day. And anyone that comes up and tells you that they know everything.

And I mean, I'll be wary of that. I'm learning a lot. I even sometimes Google things or go on YouTube. The difficulty is majority of the times that I'm trying that I'm doing my best to program something, it's not something that's referenced on the internet because I'm trying to do something completely new. Yeah, it kind of sucks. But yeah, like that's been one of the most cringy, worthy things.

Like we're just seeing how it sensationalized this idea of developers or programmers almost not having a soul and being very like machine like. And, you know, like, you know, no, we we take breaks and go use the restroom and come back and then don't finish our code because we don't know what to do next. And it's not always like, oh, yeah, I don't think you know, that's what I would say. And of course, you can trust computer people to just roast each other online. I don't know if you've seen like the memes around like the starter kits. Oh, no, I haven't.

Like the programmer starter kit, a monitor that's curved. Yes. Lining the mobile computer, not using a regular mouse, but getting like those old, you know, track like the ones that have the ball. Yeah. The mother that book for them is like on every program of language in front of them. Or like a Mac Pro or something like that. You know, it's like, oh, yeah, programmer starter kit.

I'm going to make a meme about that in post it later. Actually, hands up this question and answer killed me dead. And last last listener question, Mads Clement wants to know, what's the silliest thing that you've ever coded, like a ridiculous website, just something like so stupid that you just really wanted to make? I remember this one time I was developing an app for a client and then I put an Easter egg in the right corner. So you would have to like, I think you would long press it,

tap it twice again and then long press it again. And it was just like this, this Kanye meme that would pop up and he'll be like, was it for Kanye? No, it was not for Kanye. Well, it was it was for like a huge known person. And then like, I was like, hey, did you know that the Easter egg and you're like, it was it was just so funny to me. But yeah, I mean, I think what I love about programming is like,

no matter what language you're using, the ability to like comment in line. And I think when I when I think of clean code, which I'm a very clean coder, right, there's just been too much emphasis, especially because a lot of this parts of these codes or algorithms that are being developed by specific people are it's like a production line is being it's like, you know, you see people standing next to each other and then they're like, handing one box to another. So you want to type your code and you want to comment in line

in the most concise, brief way and make it really understandable. But sometimes I'd be like, man, I want to drop a code. I want to drop a I want to drop an inline comment slash slash, you know, forward slash forward slash. This is just some dope that I wrote. Let me know when you see it. You know, because I think like we as programmers, that's why the world never appreciates programmers because they're so

anal and they're so like machine like in terms of orchestration and I get it, you know, but I think we can that's what I feel like I'm here to do. I'm here to show people that like I'm a jack of so many different trades. I am a jack of many trades and confined by none. You know, I don't desire to be a master of any, but I neither decide to be confined by none. So like, you know, I feel like I've been put on this earth to show people like, yes, I'm an architect that can design like an experience for Kanye

and do stage designs and build Snoop Dogg store, but I can collaborate with Fenty and Prada and IBM on other projects and make it OK, make that the new norm. I know I'm not the kind of people that might be listening to this and be like, he's not a conventional programmer or, you know, but whatever they might like say about this. But one thing that they can't say is, wow, he's so multi-crafted and multi-faceted. He is, you know, part of the new renaissance of being, you know, multi-faceted.

And I should be too. Right. We can talk about music, but go to tech and then from tech go to art. That should be a norm, right? Artists, music artists, fashion designers should be working with programmers. In fact, for the last 20 years, what I personally like seeing, you know, like being 22 and in terms of just history, is that the people that are making the most impact are the people that started off doing something and did something completely different.

Tinker Hatfield designed pretty much every popular Jordan shoe that ever came out. He has an architecture background. Virgil Abloh. I didn't know that. Yeah. Virgil Abloh has an architecture background, you know, like. So Adam Driver was a marine, you know what I mean? It's like, yeah, just a bee of renaissance. Like it's OK. That's such good advice.

What is the most annoying thing about what you do or about programming? What is the one thing that just like, like just a real bee in your bonnet? What what just really pisses you off? I think probably because I mean, my work requires me to have a Mac as well as a Windows machine. So like, for example, when I'm working with like big data or like right now, we're working on a hyper realistic. We're essentially building an hyper realistic visual operating system.

I think the number one reason why people haven't been able to connect with Siri and Google Assistant and all those things is because unlike human interaction, there's there's a lot of physical or the notion of a physical person behind the person you're interacting with. Right. So even though I haven't met you in person, I do know that there's a person somewhere based off of everything else I've seen in the world that is communicating with me right now. Yeah. I think when we talk to programming,

I mean, when we talk to like these assistants, it's very, very, very linearly. And so we're creating an operating system that's basically a visual AI system. And so like in that case, for example, like I have a Windows computer and a Mac computer, my Mac, I have like the 2020 Mac with 32 gigs of RAM and a G force. It has a sorry, it has like an N video, something I don't know. Like, I mean, you have an ADM AMD Radeon Pro five thousand, right?

With eight gigs of video storage. But at the same time, all these so hard later to be like, oh, wow, that was pretty big. Right. But at the same time, like I have a desktop that has two G force RTX 2080Ti chipsets. And those are, by the way, the G force RTX 2080Ti is the most powerful graphics card you can buy right now. Oh, my God. And so I have two of those to and it's still lagging

because we want to we want to render out the frames in 4K in real time. So it's like, you know, for me to answer the thing about cringe worthiness is the or things that like kind of bother me going from Windows to computer, knowing that the key bindings and the key layouts are diff are separate. And sometimes like I'll be on my Windows computer for like a week and then not open my Mac at all, then go back to my Mac and then I forget how to do certain things because I'm like, why is this not working? Yeah, the muscle memory is like, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's like, you know,

sometimes my brain is processing things on such a high level that it forgets to think slow and down. So I'm like, oh, how do I eat? No, joking. I take really good care of my body, actually. I can I can imagine because your brain has to be so quick that you can't just like be kind of the trite like a programmer drinking like a two liter of Mountain Dew and a fistful of Cheetos.

Like your brain probably wouldn't work as well on that, right? Oh, yeah. I mean, I'm very my science teacher in high school. She would always she always used to tell me that the brain was not meant to multitask, according to what she said. You know, it's like, you know, we can only get at efficiently doing things one time. And the truth to that is realizing that I read an article that said it takes the average around 15 to 22 minutes for your brain to regain peak focus after you're distracted for something.

So I feel like there, you know, sometimes we just be trying to do so much and then we forget to to focus on one thing and completely go on to the next, not because we were confining ourselves and not because we're not capable of processing all that information, but because when we get to focus and then create something, our brain is operating within its highest peak. So, yeah, I mean, for me, it's like it's really just always about like just that peak level focus, right? And understanding like, you know, I have a lot of time in this world.

Each other like to do a lot of things, you know, so, yeah, like, you know, just pacing, pacing, if you ever have to turn your phone off while you're working on new apps, absolutely. Yeah, I have like, you know, I'm releasing, I'm releasing a new single tomorrow. It's my first debut like song. And it's going to be like a really exciting moment for me. But I was texting my friend, Jaden yesterday. And, you know, because Kid Cudi recently was like, Jaden Smith,

like is a Luke Skywalker. So I hit him up yesterday. But I only mentioned that to say, like, when I posted it on my Instagram, by the way, I just followed you too. But like when I went on the Instagram and then I posted the screenshot of like the text with Jaden, the people hit me because it showed that I had 230 unread messages and they were like, what? You're going to turn into this whole thing.

But no, absolutely. Do not just the DLDs be on all the time. OK, this is like very inspiring to me. It's like, yeah, I don't want to get better at that. But I mean, again, too, I think about how, yeah, I love to give people full attention and I also think too, just in the state that I'm in, I would rather work hard now. So later I don't have to.

And I think a lot of people prefer the other. They want to, you know, live their front in the youth and then work later. No, I want to be like, and I'm 22 now in eight years. I want to retire and just go around the world building more schools like what we're working on in Ghana right now and, you know, building shelters and changing how cities are built from an infrastructural level, using and leveraging AI, you know, in agriculture to be able to, you know, let farmers know what seeds or what crops should be in rotation

using AI metrics, you know, these are things that I want to do later in life. So I'm working my butt off now, so I don't have to like later. Oh, my gosh, that's amazing. And this is always my last question, but it's going to be hard for you to answer. I think, but what is your favorite thing about what you do? Like, what do you love the most about your career and your job and your? Yeah, the connection to God and the universe to me is really important and really how every single thing that I'm doing in my life

is for the next person because I know that's why I'm here. I'm not here to, you know, like if it was about a numbers game, you know, just as from a 22 year old's perspective, like, I'm already there, you know, if it was about working with Kanye or Rihanna or, you know, be whoever it was, I'm already there. But if it's about what really keeps me filled with humanity is if it's really about humanity, then I have an even scratch the surface. Wow. So that keeps you going a lot.

Yes. You're doing so much just amazing stuff. You're such an inspiration. I mean, also, here's where I confess that I was petrified to interview him because I know nothing about programming and in terms of cool factor, he might be the coolest person literally on planet Earth, just objectively, scientifically speaking. He's so smart. He's so accomplished. I don't even know what to ask.

So thank you for being so gracious. Thank you. And thank you. I really appreciate these moments, too, because it humanizes technology because I think oftentimes, even in the conventional programming mindset, programmers or people are so quick to tell programmers that they're introverted and tell them that they're bionic and they don't act human or whatever, but I want to be that representation for people to know, like, hey, we can have conversations about neural networks. We can have conversations about AI.

We can have conversations about programming languages and keep it very, very simple to where everyone can understand it. But humanize it in a way that it doesn't feel intimidating. I like to consider myself as a, I don't, you know, I'm not, I didn't go, I didn't go to college, you know, it's like, I'm a very unconventional everythinger, unconventional student, everything. Or I just made that word up unconventional student, unconventional programmer. Yes, I don't program the same way everyone does.

But I, my way is what makes me me, you know, and your way is what makes you, and never let anyone take that away from you. Oh, such amazing advice. You're doing such amazing things. It's, it's honestly such an honor to, to get to talk to you. I'm just like, and we'll see. Oh, you better get that before it turns into another message. It's like my phone.

Do not disturb. I thought I told you to turn. I'm gonna reprogram my iPhone after this call. Like Xcode, I'm, I'm opening up Xcode right now. You know, like I'm about to disable. The kernel for Siri. So ask smart people just the stupidest questions, because that is the only way we learn. And also look, they're so kind and so patient.

Even if you haven't seen Iron Man and in Idris's words, he says, we must not make the same mistakes those before us made. We must remember to be inclusive, diverse, and help everyone else around us, because we are one race, the human race. So get more Idris in your life. You can follow him on Instagram at IdrisSandu or Twitter at Idris underscore sandu. You can check out his TEDx talk,

and you can gawk over some of his work at spatiallabs.io. We are at oligies on Twitter and Instagram. I'm Ali Ward with one L on both. And there will be links to the sponsors and more on Idris's work up at aliward.com slash oligies slash architectural technology. That link is right in the show notes, of course. Ramadan Mubarak to all those observing it

and happy birthday to the wonderful Shannon Feltas who is our merch queen. Alongside her sister Bonnie Dutch, they host the comedy podcast You Are That. And thank you Erin Talber for admitting the Facebook group to Caleb Patton who makes bleeped episodes available. Those alongside of transcripts are up at aliward.com slash oligies dash extras.

Link in the show notes. Emily White heads up the transcription efforts. Thank you to everyone working on those. Thank you to Noel Dilworth for all the scheduling help, the very kind and athletic Jared Sleeper of Mind Jam Media for assistant editing and the beep boops that keep our code together Steven Ray Morris of the kitty themed podcast

and the dino themed podcast See Jurassic Right for lead editing Nick Thorburn of the Band Islands wrote and performed the theme music. If you stick around to the end of the episode, you know, I tell you a secret. And this week's secret is that we are in, I think, week eight of isolation and I have not cleaned out the closet that I have been meaning to clean out since day one.

I think about it every day. Among the items in that closet is a 15 year old external hard drive with a bunch of pictures and I had to order like six dongles in order for it to hook up to my computer. I'm thrilled. I'm terrified. What's going to be on that? Who's to say?

Stay tuned. Okay. Be nice to yourself. You're cool. Bye bye. Hackadermatology. I made him on fig at Starbucks.