Ologies with Alie Ward - Smologies #35: COMPUTER PROGRAMMING with Iddris Sandu

Episode Date: January 4, 2024

At just 22, Iddris Sandu’s life story was 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. In this episode from 2020 we talk coding, holograms, what ancient flutes have to do with computers, how programming works and why it's important. The designer and entrepreneur also shares his favorite programming languages, philosophies on future technology and why we should all strive to be dynamic rather than single-minded. He’s a true inspiration and Alie shamelessly begged him for life advice. Follow Iddris on Instagram and TwitterVisit Spatial Labs, the tech company founded by IddrisFull-length (*not* G-rated) Architectural Technology episode + tons of science linksMore kid-friendly Smologies episodes!Become a patron of Ologies for as little as a buck a monthOlogiesMerch.com has hats, shirts, hoodies, totes!Follow @Ologies on Twitter and InstagramFollow @AlieWard on Twitter and InstagramSound editing by Steven Ray Morris, Jarrett Sleeper of MindJam Media and Mercedes Maitland of Maitland Audio ProductionsMade possible by work from Noel Dilworth, Susan Hale, Kelly R. Dwyer & Erin TalbertSmologies theme song by Harold Malcolm

Oh, hey, it's that squirrel staring at you through the window because you're late with the peanuts today. I'll award back with an extremely digital episode. We have a full length version. If you have more time, that's linked in the show notes, but this is an episode of SmallerGees, which means it's shorter, it's safer classrooms, it's safer work, no swear words, and a little bit more compact of a digest of an episode. So if you want the full length, it's in the show notes. If you're here for small j's, stick around.

You're in the right place. Okay, Ali, you say, Dadward. We love Snail Funerals and Coyote Ghosts. 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, 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 Archi 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 architect technology, 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

ones left behind. Now thisologist is just about to become your new hero. 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 how would you define an architectural technologist or someone who doesn't know? Yeah, so architectural technologist or more like, you know, important like digital architect

is really this like term that I coined around applying the concepts, the ideations and the design thinking that goes into, you know, architecture and applying those to digital systems, right? So it's about understanding like, Dita Rams, 10 Principles of Designs. So I note 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 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 sand setters to your web pages. Glitter be gone. And when did you become so curious? Oh, I think I've always been a curious kid. I remember being 6, 7, 8, growing up,

we were financially deprived. And 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. PSPCB 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 a shaped. I would look at it and reroute everything and connect this to the USB and then take the USB to this this and then I remember this one time I created a I took a remote and then I basically reroute it and reprogrammed in Java. The ability for me to point that at our ceiling fan and I could change the speed of the fat, right? And so like I had always been curious. 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? 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. Oh my god. 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 gonna go quick. So first off, machine language is chattering via binary code. So 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 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, Tribbi Alert,

was around the year 800 in modern day Baghdad and involved in Atomata, which was a programmable steam flute. Priorities. Gotta get those flute jams in. Now, in the 1700s, we had punch cards that helped operate jackhard textile looms. 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. 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 just started going to the library and read and read and read. To the University of 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 like that was really the start for me in this space. And now you were in the library, you're studying code, you were what maybe 13 of the time and you started entering for Google? Yes, various points of 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 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 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 factor. And I was like, wow, this is how it works. I want to create this. How did you like to talk about factors, Charlie? I think it's most wonderful place in the whole world.

And that would basically shape my whole life around ownership. And 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. That's what Apple does. So Apple, as a company,

has a multitude of different devices. Now, for everyone of those devices that they have, there's an integrated operating system that they created for each of those products. So if you have an Apple watch, it runs what? Watch OS. If you have an Apple watch, it runs what watch OS, if you have an iPhone, it runs iOS, 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, right? Okay, cool. That's why everything always came down to me. So when you ask your, I had to give that preference before answering your question in regards to how does that light bulb moment go to an actual product for, you know, for, for like me? I divide things I deal with in two states, right? There's, I came up with this term called aspirational necessitation. Now aspirational necessitation, you just simply means 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 to you, roadblock, street signs, pedestrian buttons, you know, parking meters, all of these things are designed very, very poorly and with very little design thing. 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 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 car is drive to. Yeah. That has a machine. 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? Something that is really striking about you is you are 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, of showing up when the opportunity kind of knocks. And are you ever called to give advice to people who 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. Yeah, I mean, I think even now, like I was just reading a Wall Street Journal article earlier about how, like, the coronavirus has wind coronavirus is going to literally shift the paradigm

for an unfinished generation social skills, Gen C, like these kids that are now 8, 9, 10, or even like 5 or 6, they're going to grow up in a completely different world now because of coronavirus, you know, and 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 certain things have to happen for us to go into new ages of time. Right? Scientists have to try and get us to the moon and create a new technology and mistakenly create microwave.

And now we have microwaves in our house. That scene in Star Wars and You Hope where you have Princess Leia, R2D2, projecting her hologram and her telling Obi-Wan help Obi-Wan Kenobi, you are 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 everything will think that happens. And when we talk about 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. When you ask me like, what advice do I give to people? It's that 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 a child, if I tell young kids what programming languages they should languages they should they should enforce, 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 program of language is not going to be it, you know, new program of language will

be created, but you know what, what we knew, your ability to dynamically it, you know, new program language will be created, but you know what will be new? Your ability to dynamically think, train that muscle and your brain to be able to be adaptable. Information of the current is by default already information of the past. As we're communicating right now, the things we're saying, the things we're talking about right now, it involves dimension and new technology that has a six week shelf life. A year from now, we got on your iPhone technology that has a six week shelf life. A year from now, we got on your iPhones and then we're talking about something else. You like, so it's like my advice to any kid or anyone really, I feel like we're all kids. I just says that we must all accept that we are children and keep learning and asking questions. What 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 theologist choosing and that donation was made possible by sponsors of the podcast, who you may hear about now. Okay, on to your questions. Can I ask you a few questions from listeners who knew that you were coming on? Yes, of course, please. I call them. I'll run through them like lightning round. Michelle Jacobs wants to know if you have a favorite programming language and why?

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, I still currently use today, but more importantly, it's 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 the British English, then there's the American English, then there's like Patoa, you know, and then there's like Broke Pigeon English, right? And programming, there's a very wide array for different applications of what you're doing. There are like array languages,

they're like assembly, there's just so many, there's compiled languages. Okay, 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 doing, but Percy, 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. Okay. 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 bootcamp 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. So this Facebook has two major programming languages. One is called React, and one is called React Native. And by the way, before people grill 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.

Okay. script library, but it is a programming language as it's currently used. Okay, 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-dank backslashes and such. So, these shortcuts are valuable, given that experienced programmers can make upward of a hundred bucks an hour, in case you were interested in learning to code.

There's never been a more exciting time to get into programming like there is now. You know, I'm 22, but I remember being 11 years old, having a gospel library and reading books there. And now, 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. The reality of being a programmer is you're always learning just like the English language. You're learning new words all day and I'm learning a lot. I even sometimes Google things or go on YouTube.

Heads up this question and answer, killed me dead. And last, last list of question, Mads Clement wants to know, what's the silliest thing that you've ever coded? Like a ridiculous website or something 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 a lot. I think you would long press it twice again and then long press it again. And it was just like this Kanye meme that would pop up and he'll be like,

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, 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 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 okay, make that the new norm. I know I'm not the con... There's people that might be listening to this and be like, he's not a conventional programmer or, you know, whatever they might like say about this,

but one thing that they can't say is, wow, he's so multi-crafted and multifaceted. He is, you know, part of the new renaissance of being, you know, multifaceted. And I should be too, right? We can talk about music for go to tech, and then from tech, go to art, that should be a norm, right? Artists, music artists, fashion designer should be working with programmers. In fact, for the last 20 years, what I've personally like seen, you know, like that being 22 and then turns it 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. Take your hat field, design pretty much every popular Jordan shoe that ever came out. He has an architecture background.

Virgil Ableau. I didn't know that. Yeah, Virgil Ableau has an architecture background. You know, just a bit of renaissance, like it's okay. Yeah, that's such good advice. I mean, I'm very, my science teacher in high school, she would always, she always would tell me that the brain was not meant to multitask, according to what she said. You know, it's like, I'm only going to get that efficiently doing things one time and

the truth to that is realizing that sometimes we just be trying to do so much and then we forget to focus on one thing and complete and go on to the next. Not because we're 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 understanding, like, you know, I have a lot of time in this world. It's a lot like to do a lot of things.

So yeah, I would rather work hard now, so later I don't have to. I'm 22 now, and eight years, I want to retire. Just go around the world building more schools, like what we're working on in Ghana right now, and building shelters and changing how cities are built from an infrastructural level, using and leveraging AI in agriculture to be able to let farmers know what seeds

or what crops should be in rotation using AI metrics. These are things that I wanna 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. You're doing so much just amazing stuff. You're such an inspiration. I mean, I 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 then thank you. I really appreciate these moments too, because it humanizes technology. So ask smart people just the stupidest questions, because that is the only way we learn, and also look, they're so so kind and so patient. So get more address in your life. You can follow him on Instagram at address sandu or Twitter at address underscore sandu. You can check out his TEDx talk and you can gok over some of his work at spatiallabs.io. We are at allergies 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' work up at alleyward.com slash allergies slash architectural technology. Also linked is alleyward.com slash smologies, which has dozens more kids safe and shorter episodes you can blaze through. And thank you Mercedes-Mateland of Madeleine Audio and Jared Sleeper of Mind Jam Media for editing those as well as Zieg Rodriguez-Thomas. And it seems we like to keep things small around here. The rest of the credits are in the show notes. And if you stick around to the end of the episode, I give you a piece of advice for free. And this piece of advice comes courtesy of my husband's mom. And once my husband said when he was a kid,

that he was sad that none of his friends had reached out to hang out with him. And his mom said, we'll have you reached out to them. And he said, well, shoot, that's great advice. So if you're lonely and you haven't heard from a friend, reach out to them. They might be sitting around lonely too, thinking no one's reached out to them. So don't be afraid to make the first move. It might be exactly what someone else needs. Okay.

Have a good one. Bye. it might be exactly what someone else needs. Okay, have a good one, bye bye. No, please.