Programming Throwdown - Soft Skills with SimpleProgrammer

Episode Date: July 19, 2017

Today we chat with John Sonmez about soft skills: communication, self-motivation, learning to learn, and negotiation, Show notes: http://www.programmingthrowdown.com/2017/07/episode-68-soft-skills-with.html ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

programming throwdown episode 68 soft skills with simple programmer take it away jason hey everyone this is a super cool episode. People might remember, you know, when I said what was my favorite book a while ago, it was not, you know, the awesome Ballstead book on statistics or things like that or the AI book. It's actually Negotiating for Dummies. That's the book that's really had the biggest impact on my life. And so these sort of things are extremely important. And I'm really excited that we could dedicate kind of a whole show to all the other aspects beyond just, you know the really important kind of career skills and really personal skills that can help kind of push people forward. And to do that, we have John Sonmez, who is the founder of Simple Programmer, which is a site where he talks all about this and he kind of indulges us in his expert information. So thanks for coming on the show, John. Yeah, thanks for having me, guys. I'm glad to be here and throw down.

All right. Sounds good. So why don't you tell us, you know, what is Simple Programmer? You know, why did you why did you kind of start that and where did that come from? Sure. So what it is now is much different than what it was then. And the why I started it has changed into the purpose of it now. So to go back in time, I started it really out of two main motives. One was just because it was a passive aggressive way where I was at to get people to listen to me. Because if someone reads something on the internet, it has a lot more clout, even if you just publish it yourself rather than me saying it. And plus, you get to finish your sentences and paragraphs. So I was working on a scrum team and they were doing some things wrong and I just thought, okay, I could just blog about kind of this stuff and my manager and my coworkers will read this.

And they did and it did have a good effect. So that was sort of one of the complex and making it more complex. Or taking the simple and pretending like it's complex. Because it gives you, I don't know, it's an ego boost. It makes you feel like you're more valuable than you are. And I was like, no, no, this is wrong. Because we should really be telling people that programming is simple. And we should be explaining things and making things simpler rather than more complicated because at its at its heart i still firmly believe this there's

nothing really hard there's there's there's things that are that in in conglomeration are hard but when you break things apart to the smallest pieces they're usually pretty simple right i mean you know i know i'm saying that with an extreme viewpoint, but in general, that's the case, especially in our field. So, yeah, I was sorry. I was talking to somebody today at lunch and there's someone who actually they used to work with me at a different company and they just came to my current company. And both of us kind of had the same experience where when we left, we thought I mean, we left on good terms and we thought, i'm have to write all this documentation there's so many things i know after you know x years and the reality is you leave and the company just keeps going as if you weren't even there right i mean i mean it it turns out that that uh when you get in in the middle of what you're doing it can

seem like you know the it could seem like impossible for other people to sort of jump in. But the reality is that if you've kind of, uh, made things sort of, as you said, simple and kind of broken things down and written some documentation, um, you know, you've set up a nice path for the people who come kind of after you. Exactly. Yep. I, I totally agree. it's funny how people have that that guilt when they leave a company like they're gonna it's trust me it's not gonna it's not gonna crash into the ground yeah but um but but yeah so that's where i started out and so my blog was i mean i didn't know what i was doing right i just just created this blog just wanted to get some of this

knowledge out there like i said and it was it is technical content some of it was stuff based on agile and scrum that i was experiencing with the teams and i was really just blogging like i think about three times a week and that was all i really thought of it but then some weird stuff started to happen like i'd start to get a bunch of emails and all these opportunities started opening up i got invited to do courses for a online training company called Pluralsight when they were first starting out. That was a really good opportunity. I got phone calls from people wanting to hire me for jobs, not to interview me for jobs, but to hire me for jobs because they read my blog. I remember thinking, wow, this is just crazy.

I wasn't intentionally going out there trying to market myself, but I did. And I just ended up going. I remember the first podcast I did was Hansel Minutes way back then. It was like Scott Hanselman was this big star to me back then. And here I was on his podcast. And all my coworkers were like, man, I heard you on Hansel Minutes podcast. And I started to realize, man, I heard you on Hanselman. It's popular. That's awesome. And I started to realize, wow, this is interesting. So I started doing some talks on how to market yourself as a software developer because I accidentally did this.

And then I started intentionally doing it. And it was, I mean, my career was taken off. I spent 14 years honing my technical skills and no one cared. But as soon as I figured out the soft skills, how to communicate and talk and do those things and market myself and build a brand, bam, everything started to take off. So I gave a couple of talks and people were just enthralled with that. I was talking to people after a conference in CodeCamp, it was like five, six hours, no one was doing this content. And so to fast forward to where things are now, what ended up happening was I started to realize that even though I had created a bunch of technical training content,

I ended up doing that, I just ended up having all these great career opportunities. I started to realize that my heart was really for personal development and helping the developer and that no one was doing this. There was this big hole in what you could call life coaching or personal development for software developers and soft skills, all of that that's kind of rolled into their self-helpy type of things that people make fun of but are really beneficial in life. And it was super beneficial in my life right i went from an introverted shy kind of afraid to talk to girls guy that that was bold and out there and and and and stop being lazy and conquering my you know conquering things and

and becoming an entrepreneur and i wanted to teach other people how to do that so really what simple programmer ended up becoming and what my mission is now, I actually sort of, I'd say retired like four years ago because I hit my passive income goal, but then I decided I'm going to pursue this full time. And so Simple Programmer has really become the place where developers can go to improve themselves, to reach their potential as human beings and to find fulfillment and happiness in their lives, not just from a technical perspective. A lot of it now, a lot of my content is out on YouTube and the podcast. I still have the blog that's still going.

Yeah, that's basically it. It's grown to a company. We've got three full-time employees and a few part-time employees. So it's grown to this huge, massive thing. And it's all based on that whole idea now of personal development for software developers. Cool. That makes sense. I mean, one thing that kind of is amazing that a lot of people don't pick up on, you know, when I read, you know, let's say Business Insider or one of these kind of like,

you know, news, you know, kind of mainstream news organizations, is this idea that if you look at what percent, you know, a company such as Intel or Google or Facebook or any of these Apple or any of these companies, the percent that they spend on their salary on compensation is at the level of the medical field. used to be just doctors, lawyers, and just a few other kind of niche areas. And in all the other places, the majority of the expense was in capital costs, maybe servers, or you're buying a power plant or something like that, right? But now with high tech, you have engineers who sort of are in that position where basically a company like Google sells, you know, what crackles of energy over the Internet. Right. And so their their their biggest expense are their people.

And also that's their biggest source of income. Like it's entirely driven by people. And so that's why, you know, there's there's a lot-hanging fruit that people can grab in their personal life as software engineers. Like just by sort of developing sort of this marketing, this negotiation, and sort of you can raise sort of your own value as an engineer, it's incredibly important. And it's something that, you know, hasn't been typically afforded to engineers. As I said, it was something that was really not part of this profession. So we have a lot of catching up to do. Oh, yeah, yeah, definitely. You're, you're, you're very right. Especially there's a huge amount of opportunity, especially, you know, I always talk about the

commoditization of software development. And it's really coming. I mean, when I hire developers, I hire developers on Upwork to do work for me, and I can get, like, here's the thing, and this is what it is, is if I can be very specific in what I want, and I can describe it really well, which most managers and project managers cannot do, I can get programming labor done for extremely cheap, like ridiculously cheap. But so what I'm saying is that it's no longer good enough to just be a programmer, right? It's writing code and the technology part of it. Yes, there's still a premium on it, but that's fading away quickly with the globalization, right, with a world economy. But what won't fade away with the thing that's going to set you apart, that thing that's going to stop the commoditization

from taking your job as a software developer is going to be the communication. It's going to be the soft skills. It's going to be the, the person, the personality and being the person that understands the bigger thing that can, that can run with the project and communicate to other people on the team. That's the biggest thing that I think. So that's why I think there is still this, and software developers that are highly valuable are more like doctors and lawyers and so much spend is on salaries because they're not really paying, I think personally that tech that most companies

aren't paying necessarily for the technical aptitude anymore because there's a lot of that all over the place but the and this also goes to speak to why so many developers tell me oh i get why does everyone say that developers are in such high demand but i can't get a job it is because no it's not just programming it's not just the technical skills it's not just developers that are in high demand it's highly functioning developers that not only possess technical skills but have the the soft skills and the people skills and those kind of skills that in conjunction with those technical skills those are the valuable ones that's what everybody wants and that's that's what's high in demand.

Everything else will be commoditized. At least that's my prediction for the future. Yeah, and I think it's incredibly possible now to build a brand with no resources at all. I mean, people know this. We've mentioned it. We have, I mean, now thanks to Patreon and some of these things, we have some funds. We can actually spend a little bit on advertising. But we went years without doing any advertising at all, just 100%, just organic, just putting out shows that we would find entertaining,

really putting out shows for our children to be able to watch later if they're interested, listen to later. And it just kind of grew. The brand just kind of grew completely organically um and now more and more companies are looking at uh your github profile uh your your hacker news rank or whatever you know all of these all of these things that uh kind of can represent you that you can cultivate um you know without having you know a massive army of resources or without having been born into any kind of family or anything like that. As long as you have a computer, you can sort of build a brand.

And that's also something that's kind of unique to maybe this or the past generation, right? Oh, yeah. Yeah, definitely. I mean, I've got a similar you know with simple programmer i i mean we do maybe like you know around fifty thousand dollars a month in revenue and i have not my advertising budget is almost nothing right we don't spend any money advertising it's just all organic it all built up from me with a blog i mean like what's like seven or eight years ago and and just pumping out content. And that's, I mean, that's the thing.

Like, if you create value in the world, you've got an opportunity now, right? You know, I did, and I've done it on multiple platforms. You know, on YouTube, I put out two to three YouTube videos a day. And that, just by creating that much value, you're going to build a brand. If you're willing to do the work, I guess that's what I'm saying, is that you've got the opportunity like there has never been in the world before for someone to build a personal brand, to be an entrepreneur, but not necessarily even just to be an entrepreneur, just the programmer who builds their own personal brand, who builds a blog or creates some YouTube. I just interviewed a guy today who created a YouTube channel after doing some of my marketing courses, how to market yourself course.

In two years, he's built it up and he's been getting all kinds of job offers and contract jobs. He's able to freelance without having to go out there and pound the pavement. And so that opportunity is just amazing that we have today to be able to do that. And I think so many developers aren't taking advantage of it. That's the thing that I don't understand is it doesn't take a huge amount of effort to build yourself a personal brand and to build a blog and to do some of this stuff. And the payoff is so great when you do that. One thing I always compare it to is like, you know, if you've ever been to, if you've

ever heard like a cover band play, right? And they play some song that is by some famous band, right? Right. And sometimes I go and I listen to a cover band and I'm like, they're better than the original. Yeah. And sometimes I go and I listen to a cover band and I'm like, they're better than the original. One time I went to a karaoke bar and there was a lady who sang songs better than the original. It was amazing.

Yeah. And so I did this enough times. And same thing with celebrity chefs. And you can find this in a lot of places. And it's not like you don't, like I'm saying that you can get away with no talent but what i'm saying is that the thing that differentiates the cover band from metallica or you know whatever band is not the skill it's not the skill it's the same thing in programming it's the marketing it's it's the style it's it's that piece of it and so i mean you can't you can't fake it you can't not have the technical skills.

But for so many developers, the greater amount of effort, if they spent more effort right now with the technical skills they have in developing a personal brand and learning how to market themselves, they would have a much greater lever than they would have by increasing their technical skills further. It's just like the cover band. It's the same phenomenon. And I saw it in my career, and I've seen it in so many developers' careers. That makes sense. I mean, I have a friend who, he's actually pretty successful. He's in finance, but he had some trouble in his past. So he had some trouble with alcohol and he got convicted.

I think it's like a DUI. I believe it's like a felony. I don't know the details. But basically, if you Googled him, you got mugshots.com as the first link. And he's saying, you know, look, I paid some people that were supposed to take this off and it did go off, but then Google found it again. And, and he's trying to sort of get these links off. And I said, instead of trying to remove, cause you know, it's Google, they're going to find this somehow. Right. So instead of trying to remove, you know, this, why don't you build, you know, uh, just some, I mean, I didn't call it a brand at

the time, but I said, why don't you just build a persona online and just cultivate that and post pictures and talk about finance and build something that where people will know the modern you and where that will be the people's first impression. I mean, at the end of the day, if you're looking for a job and you've had these issues, it's going to come up like there's going to be a background check and so on and so forth. The best thing you can do is build a brand, like project the version of you that you want. And that's kind of an extreme case where this person has this problem. But I think it could be advice given to everybody is there's effectively some type of noise about you right now there is a brand it's like effectively let's say random whether it's good or bad um but you can

take control of that um by by sort of building a persona for yourself online and and and turn it into something that you're really proud of. Oh, definitely. Oh, good. Yeah, so I was going to say, I think the only thing with all this to caution people is that you got to use time. It's like the same thing as like investing. People invest money and think like, how do I double my money in the next year? It's like, you don't.

Oh, yeah, that's true. Or you gamble it and it goes away. So I think people look for this, like I'm going to start a blog. I posted twice to it and then I didn't get a million followers and a big exit. And it's like, well, no, of course not. You do it over years.

Like you post blog every day or once a week. You pick a schedule, but then you stick to it. And it's over a long period of time you sort of get that compounding interest effect. I mean, I guess we'd have to think about it economically and puzzle it out if it truly is a sort of exponential thing. But, you know, in my head, it sort of maps that way, which is like you do these things over the course of a career and you build a brand. You know, it isn't that you can't buy the marketing, you can't buy the spot in Google, but posting enough things over the course of, you know, a year, two years, that's very

beneficial. And it shows, you know, employers consistency, right? Like, if I go to your website, and it looks like you threw it together last night, or your GitHub has one, you know, project on it that you committed to once, that's not actually that interesting. But if you sort of are doing little bits of effort over the course of a very long period of time, then it's like, wow, I see much more of a better picture of this person. Yeah, that's actually a really good point. I think a lot of people have goals.

And I actually, I mean, you know, goal is just a word. I don't want to say I'm against goals. It's kind of like being against Christmas or something, right? But I feel like it's better to have a system than a goal. Like, for example, this year I really wanted to remove, like, declutter my life, right? And so I could say I want a goal to declutter, but it's kind of, it's really hard to. The other thing about goals is they're kind of designed for you not to reach them. Like, have you ever seen one of these charity goals where they just meet it and they say, we're done?

No, right? They always set the goal to something they know they're not going to reach, right? So instead, I said, look, every day I'm going to go through my email and I'm going to unsubscribe. If there's something that I can unsubscribe from, I'm going to do it, you know, if I'm not interested. And so I created this sort of system and it became kind of a metaphor for kind of unsubscribing myself to things at work that I'm not using anymore, you know, things. But that became kind of like that system became an anchor for other things. And the podcast is kind of the same way.

We really wanted to educate. And for the first maybe two years, it was just, you know, our moms listening. And I was fine. Oh, my mom stopped listening. That's true. And it was fine because we had this sort of system and we were we were building stuff that we were kind of proud of. And then eventually, you know, we had this sort of geometric increase in the number of people. But, yeah, it's as Patrick said, it's really important just kind of you could obviously have a vision for what you want your future to look like.

Like in case of my friend, he obviously wants to have a future. We can go on Google, type his name and get really nice things. It's fine to have that projection, but yeah, it's really important to build sort of the system that's going to ramp you up and take you there. Oh yeah. There's a book, if you haven't read it already,

I'm sure you would love it. It's by Scott Adams. It's called How to L scott adams it's called how to win how to lose that everything and still win big and in that book he's he's basically and it's the same mindset that i have which you just described which is he he says don't use goals create systems instead and that's i mean that has been the secret to my success by far is is creating systems and And again, to what you guys talked about, it takes time. I always say consistency, commitment, persistence. That's the formula for success because you have to be consistent.

You can't just release random podcast episodes or YouTube videos or blog posts. And you have to be committed. You have to do it rain or shine, whether you've got good content or not. I mean, sometimes I make YouTube videos and it's like, if I'm doing two to three YouTube videos a day, I'm not always in the best of spirits. Sometimes I don't have any wisdom to share and I'm like, wow, this is going to suck, but I'm going to release it anyway because I'm going to suck in public, right? I think our podcasts are always awesome yeah right i think it's important yet to be authentic too i think some of the times where you know we've recorded sometimes where one of us was sick or down or

something like that and of course sometimes it comes through but i think actually the time where you sort of struggle people kind of pick up on that. And they say and I feel like sometimes that actually builds a way stronger relationship than the ninety nine other shows where everyone was was healthy and fit. Oh, definitely. Yeah. One hundred percent agree with you. One thing that that has really helped me, especially with the YouTube, is just focusing on, you know, I've got to post on my board to be genuine, always genuine, you know, and that's, it's so important. You have to show some of your vulnerability, right? And vulnerability and weakness are two different things. When you show vulnerability, it actually shows strength because if I did this video

and I was talking about like, you know, in Braveheart, you know, where they turn around and they lift up their kilts, right? Showing their butt. So they're making themselves vulnerable to their opponent there, right? So you don't like reveal your butt to your opponent where they could hack at it unless you're feeling pretty strong. When you show the vulnerability, it actually shows a lot of strength, but that connection, it also shows that you're human. That's the key thing. People know that you make mistakes.

You want people, especially if you want to inspire people. One thing I've learned in this self-development is that I can't just be like, look how awesome I am. I have to be like, look at, I'm just like you. I'm just like you, right? I screw up just like you. I still screw up just like you. But there's a difference and I'm getting to where I want to get in life and I can show you how to do it too. Here's my hand.

Let's go together as opposed to, oh, yeah, yeah, you know, you guys suck and you're doing it wrong. And I never do anything wrong. That's not a way to teach. It doesn't work in any kind of field. But to show that, to be genuine, to show that vulnerability, to say, look, hey, this is me. It's cool. I screw up all the time, too, in school. But, you know, we'll get there together.

To me, that's always been the – even teaching technical content. I screw up all the time too in school, but we'll get there together. To me, that's always been the – even teaching technical content, I found – I did a bunch of courses for Pluralsight, and I found that that was the thing that helped set my courses apart was the fact that I'm willing to make some mistakes and own up to them and just, hey, I'm your buddy here. Let's figure this stuff out together. Yeah, so one thing that's always kind of a tricky thing, but I'd love to hear your insight is, you know, if you're, for example, I'm trying to get back into running. And so I have, I bought one of these watches that measures your heart rate. And so I'm getting kind of better every week and I can measure it, right? Or if you write code, you can kind of feel yourself getting better.

You can measure it, lines of code or more ambitious projects. These things are generally kind of pretty easy to measure. Your wealth is everyone measures that every time they go to pay a bill or something. But some soft skills like negotiation or maybe the ability to strike up a conversation with a stranger. Some of these things are kind of hard to measure, your nonverbal communication. So how do you go about, you know, how do people know that they've taken your advice, applied it? How do they know they've actually improved? That's a good question.

I mean, that's, it depends. I would go kind of back to the goals, honestly, again, here in saying that, you know, to go to zoom out a little bit on this picture of what do you, what are you aiming for? Right. You know, sometimes I think that we, we aim for, it's not the goal, right? So like, I mean, I've, I've achieved goals. Like I had financial goals. I hit those fitness goal. You know, I've achieved a lot of the goals goals. I hit those, fitness goals. I've achieved a lot of the goals I set out in life, and I have found that on the other side of a goal is usually disappointment. And sometimes, honestly, you can go into depression because you made your life about this thing. You got there, and now what?

And I've learned a lesson, you know, from doing that. And what I've sort of realized is that it's never about what like for me, all the things I'm aspiring to do now are all about the kind of person that I become in the process of achieving that goal or going down that path. The goal that I never really achieve. Right. It's about. And so what I would say is that, you know, a long way to answer this question, but where I'm getting at with this is that for these kind of skills, for these kind of soft skills, I mean, so if I could give you a badge and say you're a level 10 negotiator, ding, what if that really gets you, right? It's like, okay, so, you know, it's more of a, I look at it in terms of I want to maximize my potential and I want to show you how to maximize your potential. And to be honest, like I was doing this video just the other day because I went and I got my body fat measured at the gym. Wait, hang on.

How do you do that? What does that mean? Oh, like where they check your body fat level? Is that – oh, is that like the – because I know there's BMI, right? Where they weigh you and they get your height and they do some math. But is this, this sounds like something like more sophisticated. There's a lot of ways to do it. The way that they had to do it at the gym was using calipers.

Like, so it's a skin fold caliper that checks the thickness of your skin at different points. Got it. skinfold caliper that checks the thickness of your skin at different points got it and and of course i've got you know i've done a dexa scan which is like a radio act or a dual radio image rescan they use it for like bone density i'm actually doing one on saturday but but when i went there i mean most most people like i i'm a i'm a youtube channel guest that i'm probably like you know seven and a half eight percent body fat or so and and that's where I kind of pegged myself and the guy measured at 11%. And I was talking about how like, man, I, like I, I could be pissed, right? I could be like, oh, that's not right. This you like measured again, right?

Or I could be, or I could be excited about that and, and be happy that man, I, if I want to get down, like I've got more room to go. There's more low-hanging fruit than I thought, right? I feel like I look great now. I could look better, right? So my point of it was I talked about this idea of like when you measure something, like when you measure a foot, use a 13-inch ruler instead of an 11-inch, right? Although we want to go through life and we want to use these 11 inch rulers to measure a foot. Like we want to stretch it and say, oh yeah,

I got it. I hit the goal. Look, my net worth is a million dollars or whatever. You know what I mean? Like whatever it is, but use the 13 inch ruler. So then you know you got it. And that's how I feel about some of these things that are hard to measure. It's like, okay, have I, have I over, you know, I do a lot of coaching for guys, like dating coaching and, and teach them how to go. And I, I, I'll just put it plainly and say, pick up chicks, but that, you know, to, to go in and overcome their social anxiety, right. To be able to go in and talk to, to women, it is difficult for guys to do a lot of guys in our field. Right. And, and the thing is like, you know, whether you got it or not, you know, whether you're afraid or not, you know, right. Deep down for a lot of things, we could use an objective.

We could use a measure and say, Oh, you know, like I said, you know, measuring with the ruler and we could say, Oh yeah, yeah, I'm, I'm, I'm really, I'm here, but it doesn't matter because that's, again, that's that goal thinking as if having some number, as if my body fat were 8%, if that would now magically make me. What I'm ultimately trying to do is look good when I look in the mirror. That's the ultimate perspective, right? That's the ultimate thing. And so the same thing, it's like an integrity issue. It's not something that you can necessarily measure from an external viewpoint, but you know it.

You know where you're at, and you know if you're improving, it you know where you're at and you know if you're improving and you know if you're faking it and you're like you could lie to the world and and you could appear to be super successful and you could appear to be progressing in all these areas but if deep down you know that you're not where you want to be or where you should be that's that that's your integrity that's that's the thing that that counts and matters in the end yeah that makes sense. And that's not the goal. I think it's super important to be honest with yourself.

That's one thing that, you know, that's kind of like a slippery slope. It's kind of hard to come back from. But it's really important to kind of stay there. Yeah, and personally, I use a lot of sort of these proxy systems. Like, for example, I mean, to give another example, there was one time where I decided I really wanted to look people in the eye when I was talking to them. And I could just kind of say that, but it's hard, especially when you work, you're super busy. It's hard to really make that a priority or keep it in your mind. So I said, I'm going to, when I'm at say the

grocery store or the bank, or I'm at one of these situations where I'm paying for something or I'm, you know, someone's providing me a service. When I signed the check or when I saw my name on the bill or whatever it is, I'm going to look the person in the eye at that point. I'm going to make that kind of a conscious part and i know that you know my i could have my head in the game at that point on you know focusing on that one thing and and then again like make that if i can do that consistently then that will sort of spread to you know because a lot of what we do is unconscious right i mean you talk about exactly non-verbal communication you talk about even you know maybe the way you say things, the way you dress, the way you conduct yourself.

Life is just, there's so much going on in life and you can't really be conscious of all of it. So the vast majority of it is just your brain is just unconsciously doing things. Everything from walking, breathing, and then even higher level things. It's like someone throws a baseball at you what you do you just reach up and you catch it you instinctively or you block your face or something right and so you need to sort of develop those same unconscious instincts so when someone's you know asking you a super tough question in an interview that your sort of unconscious memory will kick in and you can maintain the eye contact, be friendly, be positive, even though

you're flipping out because you have no idea what like my SQL is or something, right? So that's where I think, yeah, setting these sort of proxy goals, especially in situations where you have a lot of control, such as in the case where, you know, if I'm signing my name and handing it to somebody, I mean, I don't have to think about a lot of other things. I can sort of control where my eyes are. Then that can sort of give you the unconscious ability. It's kind of like if you ever take – I used to teach taekwondo. And a lot of taekwondo and self-defense and these things are to give you that unconscious ability. So when somebody kind of grabs you you you just your brain your unconscious

brain kind of just takes over you react you immediately do the thing you need to do and then you can consciously do the more important thing which is run away or something like that oh yeah yeah i totally agree it's funny that you say that with that about the eye contact too because i had this i had this exercise again for overcoming social anxiety and i had different levels of it and one of them was you know i did this video and i was talking about how like and i did this myself i i would go and i'd go for a run and i would make eye contact with with people and i would i would not be the person to break it and i would and the other rule was that you couldn't smile or nod your head because

those were both signs of kind of weakness of like of deference right and so you just had to like not not like angrily staring people down but you just had to realize that there's no reason why you should break eye contact first you can control the frame if you choose and you have the power to do it and this is uncomfortable but and i strongly believe that the only way to grow everything that makes you grow in life is something that's uncomfortable and so i did that exercise myself it made me feel real uncomfortable at first and and a lot of a lot of people that subscribe to my channel did it and what what we found from this was that now it just became now we mastered that and we had it in that specific context like you said and now we just we just have the power to do it like you

don't even think about it it doesn't it's not even a thing because you've done it in such a difficult situation and i took it to some different levels of some other things but it's it makes a lot of sense i mean that's one of those things like you practice it over and over and then it becomes again same thing even i'd say like when i i just shot some videos today and i'm walking down the beach you know with my my phone and you know there's tons of people around i'm just walking talking to my phone but i've done it so many times now that i i'm not saying that i'm not self-aware at all but i it was uncomfortable at first but then it became a thing that became normal and now I can do it. But you got to step out of that comfort zone if you

want to be able to expand your ability in any of those areas. Yeah, that makes sense. So what do you think if you had to pick just one thing, maybe from your entire website, just one lesson that you wanted people to follow, you know, the most important, the most underdeveloped soft skill for software engineers. What do you think that would be? This is a tough one because it's going to change from day to day for me, like just from my perspective, right? I like to talk about looking at things from a different perspective. But the one that I fall back on a lot, even though it's not super exciting, like I want to say something more exciting. But honestly, I think this is the most valuable skill in life, period, is the ability to teach yourself, is learning how to learn. If you develop that skill, and it is a soft skill because there's not a technical way to do it.

It's not learning one thing. It's the ability to acquire knowledge, the ability to self-educate, to teach yourself. This is one of those things that it's so – like if you can do this, and a lot of people think they can, but they can't. What they can do is they can go find teachers that tell them what to do. And that's not the same thing as teaching yourself. But if you can honestly figure out how to teach yourself and how to learn, how to learn, then the doors of the world open up to you. Like there's nothing that you can't do. You can, you want to become an entrepreneur. You want to build a business. You want to, you know, get this job. You want to learn this, you know, so many people, the people that, you know, you could go to the whole mindset, the fixed versus, what's it, elastic mindset viewpoint on this.

But essentially, the people that I know, and, you know, I've had this experience a lot from YouTube just because of the kind of people that are on YouTube sometimes watching my videos and commenting on them are not the kind of people I would normally associate in daily life. And, and some of those people, their problem is very, very clear. They have a very fixed mindset. They don't know how to teach themselves. They don't believe it's possible. So, so, so much of life is shut to them. They, they, they have no ability to, to change a lot of their situation in life because they can't see it because they don't have that skill. If they, if they had that one skill, if they could just teach themselves, if they figured out that they could do that, everything would open to them. And the people that I see that are most successful in life are people that, that you basically would say, or the kind of people that would say, well, you know what, if I needed to become a lawyer,

I could become a lawyer. I could probably do it in a few years. And I'd, yeah, sure. Doctor, fine, whatever. You know what I mean, those are extreme examples. But programming language, yeah, I could learn that programming language, right? Every single thing that you could possibly throw at them, they're like, yeah, I could do that. There's no reason why I couldn't do that. I could learn that. And it's because they have that ability. They've taught themselves how to teach themselves, honestly. And so I would say that's really the most valuable thing. Yeah, that makes sense. I mean, I always find it kind of interesting

when there are jobs that, you know, I mean, there might be a job that's, you know, building the Java virtual machine for Oracle. Well, I'm sure you need to be a Java expert, right? But there's so many jobs where they're building a website and they say, you know, need to know java and and i bet if you went there and you said you know look i have never done java i've done php but i could probably pick it up in a couple of weeks i mean they would at least give you an interview um and

so i think uh yeah a lot of it is as you said it's sort of knowing that that you're much more malleable than you think that that you can learn anything and being able to project that um to other people i think is super important so what about let's say there's a college student you know cs grad has all the technical background uh you know but but uh someone like like like patrick or myself in in college you know i only worked my first job i was uh doing taekwondo i taught taek my first job I was doing Taekwondo. I taught Taekwondo. And then I did Taekwondo in the Mulan parade at Disney.

So I would just break boards. I'd pretend to be a Chinese Mulan soldier, right? And so you get college students who have, they have all the technical background, but from the workforce, they're experiencing the workforce background, but, you know, from the workforce, they've just been, their experience in the workforce is, you know, selling popcorn, right? So what's the best advice you could kind of give them to get started in industry? So, I mean, I think there's a few ways to look at this, right?

So the advice I'm giving most young developers now or want to be developers is to to to really go out on your own and figure out i mean it depends on which path you want to go but there's opportunity now to like don't go into debt don't get shackled with a big car payment and house payment like figure out how to limit your means as much as possible because that's that's how you gain freedom right so i would say that from the bigger perspective, I always talk about the idea that you've got this mortgage on your life, right? And we're all born with a mortgage on our life. And as soon as we have enough income that we can pay all of our upkeep costs, right, then we're free. We have have freedom we can do whatever we want

essentially right and so i would i would i would say that if that appeals to you think about that like you could do that now as far as like the more traditional route of going you say no john i i really couldn't care i want to i want to make a six-figure developer salary. Okay, well, then my advice would be a little bit different, which would be essentially don't assume that you have to do everything whatever the dice or whatever the job search boards are and apply for 500 jobs with the same resume and cover letter and then hope that some people call you back and get interviews. That's not it. If you're going to do that, you could do the numbers game. If you're going to do the numbers game, then I would say,

hey, treat it like a sales funnel and measure the metrics. And I've got some sections on my new book on how exactly to do that. But I honestly would rather see young people figuring out out just get some – build up your network that way. What about going and what about you got a company you really want to work for? What about building a tool for that company, right? That makes, you know, some product that they're using more efficient or that improves their website in some way or, you know, something where they're going to hire you because you did something that's actually value. You immediately have value from the beginning. You know, what about What about doing what a lot of really successful salespeople do and calling the CEO of the company and just asking his secretary to put you through to him and talk to him and just saying, hey, I'm a software developer. I'm a new developer.

I wanted to just, if I could listen, get five minutes of your time and pitch it. I mean, there's five minutes of your time and pitch it, right? I mean, there's a lot of ways. I'm throwing out some crazy stuff here because so many people think that what they have to do is they have to put in their resume and they have to go through HR and they have to have these keywords and then they go to the interview. And it's not like that at all. I mean, some of the best jobs I ever got were jobs where someone called me up and said, hey, come work for us, right? Yeah, that makes sense. I think it definitely is something that, yeah, I think to extend on that, like don't think your first job is going to be your whole life. I mean, like my father worked the same job his whole career. My father my, my father worked the same job, his whole career,

my father-in-law worked the same job for, I think, 50 years. Um, but now things have kind of changed, especially in our field. And, uh, it doesn't mean you should really go into your first job saying, oh, I, you know, I'm my, my, my, my goal is to get out of this job. Right. But but, you know, you kind of go into it, you know, wanting to think of it as a bank where, you know, you want to deposit a lot of your effort and time. But you also want that deposit to mature and to grow and get interest. Right. And you want to be able to withdraw more than you put in. And through building the right connections and through developing some of these soft skills, also developing some of the technical skills as well, through all of that, you can either advance in that job or if you find one that's better later on, you can switch and you can hopefully switch with having gained some interest on that.

Yeah, yeah, I totally agree. It's all about that long-term perspective, right? Because you realize that you're not probably going to be there forever. And times have changed. It really has changed. You know, a lot of times, in fact, what I found is that a lot of times today, the only way to make an advancement in your career is to switch, is to move. It used to be frowned upon to job hop.

Not saying that you should switch jobs every six months, but every couple of years, that is not necessarily a bad idea. Sometimes that's the best way to scale up the ladder. Yeah, and again's it's one of these things that should be natural right i mean you can't go into it saying yeah in two years i'm going to either get a promotion or be somewhere else it's more just yeah as i said before you're depositing this this time and this effort but you're also kind of being self-aware and and uh if if that opportunity if an opportunity comes up there's going to be a chance that the opportunity will be in your current job. But there's also going to be a chance, probably a much greater

chance, that that opportunity is going to be somewhere else in this very large world, right? And so, you know, it's important to make sure that you sort of honor your obligation. You can't just leave after six months. I mean, they're hiring you because they want to ramp you up and then you have to put in that deposit, right? Otherwise, you're not going to withdraw anything. Right. Yeah, but I think the self-awareness is extremely important. What about, so we have a lot of people listen to the show who, they're kind of on the other side of the fence.

So they might have incredibly good soft skills. They also have an incredible ability in some area, let's say biology or chemistry, or maybe they are a carpenter or they have sort of a discipline and they have put many years into that and now they want to switch. They want to go into CS, right? And so they have the industry experience,

but they're kind of transitioning to a brand new field, right? And so they're kind of in a different boat than the college student. What kind of advice would you give them those are my favorite developers first of all the best developers i've ever met and worked with have always been those kind of people that amazingly that you know after a career 20 years as a biologist or there's a guy i worked with i was an environmentalist of some sort and And then they become a developer. And in the short three years that they're a developer, it's like they have 10 or 15 years of experience. And I haven't really been able to.

It was a strange phenomenon that eluded me for such a long time but what i think about this is that when you achieve a mastery level in one skill it a lot even this stuff that doesn't seem like it carries over it carries over it carries over because you've you've maybe it's just the time and the dedication and the grit that you've developed in in becoming a master at something or but but it does it really does and so what i would say to them is that they have a distinct advantage for multiple reasons. One, because if you've already been successful at one thing, I mean, and you see this all the time, you see people, you, you see people that are super successful in multiple areas, right? Because it's success begets success. And so what I would say to them is, you know, you have an advantage because of that,

so it's going to be easier for you, right, than most people. And then second, you've got another perspective that is extremely valuable, right? Not coming from the whole, you know, sometimes we can be cynical and jaded in the software development community. We don't see things because we're too much in the water. We're too much in the thick of it and everyone has the same opinions. And so bringing in those outside opinions, seeing things from a different perspective is really awesome and is very valuable. And you end up making a really valuable member of the team because you have that perspective. So I would say that it seems overwhelming, right? There's a lot of stuff to learn. And yes, there is a lot in software development.

And yes, it can take you years and years to achieve what you're never going to totally master. And technology completely changes. But have a little bit more confidence than you might have and dive in and, you know, pick. And the key thing, especially when you don't have 20 years of career, maybe laughter or whatever, is that you be very specific about what it is you want to do and what you want to learn, right? But within software development, there's so many things. There's so many technologies and programming languages. I mean, you could spend your entire life learning JavaScript frameworks, I'm pretty sure. Yeah. And it would be a treadmill that you'd just be slipping backwards on. So rather than trying to learn everything and trying to know a little bit about everything, be very, very specific. Say, you know, I'm going to be a mean stack developer.

Good. Learn everything in that if you're going to do full set right or be very you know pick a specialty be very specific pick exactly the skill set that you need to to learn in order to do that and be functional then you can fill in the gaps and the other stuff later you know you'll eventually need to to you'll eventually do better if you do pick up that CS background that a lot of CS students have, but they forgot anyway. You need to know. If you know the algorithms and data structures, it is actually pretty valuable, but don't start with that stuff. That's not going to help you immediately.

And you won't see the value of it until you're actually working as a functional software developer this is why our colleges are so messed up is today in the way that we teach developers is because we start with the basic cs stuff which which you don't understand the value of until you're actually working as a developer for a couple years and then you go back and like oh yeah oh okay man now that makes sense like using that hash that That's why I would use that, right? And so then the stuff sticks. So I would say, you know, just jump in, but be very specific about what you're jumping into so that you cut that down. It can be overwhelming with all this stuff out there, but you don't have to know it all and no one can know it all. Even veteran developers that have been around for 20 years, trust me, they don't know it all

they know a very small fraction of it but that's all you need we're in a field where there are 5,000 tools 5,000 different kinds of hammers and you only need to know how to use one of those hammers

and you can hit your nails you've got to have a few more tools in your tool belt but don't feel like you have to know all this stuff yeah that makes sense that's some kind of like beam search where basically you know i think if you if you don't have a background in cs and you don't have the degree then um people aren't going to give you the same sort of um cushion that they'll give someone with a CS degree. I mean, I know people who have a CS degree. I mean, I'm almost guilty of this myself, where it's all purely theoretical.

And some of us have done coding, had done coding on the side. But I know some people who, you know, their CS degree was totally off the chalkboard. And those people are afforded a cushion when they interview and things like that, because people know that they spent a lot of time on this theoretical. And they're expecting to companies are expecting to have to kind of pay a price up front, having to ramp this person up on, you know, C++ or something. But in exchange, I'll get someone who has sort of a good growth in the tail, like in the future. If you don't have a CS degree, then it's going to be hard to get a company that gives you the same sort of cushion. But that's where, as John said, you can kind of be really specific and become kind of really proficient in one thing, get that first job. And then and then you can really broaden your horizons then and look at sort of how that

thing you learned fits into the bigger picture and all of that. What about what do you think about, you know, we get a lot of emails that are sort of, you know, should i go back to college or should i do this boot camp and um patrick and i we interviewed uh um art gill up gillis epi from uh udacity a few months ago and udacity is a pretty cool program um but in general we haven't at least patrick and i haven't seen a lot of people um you know in the places we've worked or or in our context like uh who have come from sort of these kind of boot camp environments most people are either self-taught or from university and so we're kind of torn

because on one hand something like udacityera, these kind of things are kind of revolutionary, and I'd love for MOOCs like this to succeed, but on the other hand, it really kind of hasn't happened yet. And I feel like you will probably have a broader vision than Patrick and I, who we basically live, I don't know, five miles away from each other. So what do you think, in kind of a more holistic way, do you feel like these of a more holistic way, do you feel like these boot camp classes are valuable?

Are they a scam? Are they somewhere in between? Is there a huge variance? What's kind of the landscape like? That's a great question. This is a question I get all the time. In fact, the new book that I'm putting out, I put like the very first portion of the book is like, should I go to college? Should I go to bootcamp? Should I self-teach? Right. Because it's such a critical

question. And then, and then how did it succeed at each one of those? But here's the thing. I'm very bullish on bootcamp as a choice based on, on a couple of parameters that, that, that I have to set up front. First of all, it's, it's based on, I think that it's the best bang for your buck if you do it right. And it just makes sense to me today, right? Like I'd rather, if I were starting out today, I wouldn't even go the self-taught route simply because it takes more time

and it's harder to figure out what you need to know, right? If someone can give me, you know, a a really intensive, I think of an immersion program and just get me working as soon as possible, that's great because then I can start. That's the beginning of my education, but I can get paid while I'm getting my education the rest of the way. I think that that is definitely the promise of boot camp. Now, in reality, does this happen? So in reality, what we're faced with is a landmine of there's some crappy boot camps, of course, right? It's hard to judge the level of some of the boot camps. And it's sort of in between, right?

College, you go to college, they tell you what to do, right? Like it's completely tell you what to do, right? Boot camp, they're giving you the instruction, but it's it's completely tell you what to do, right? Bootcamp is they're, they're giving you, but they're giving you the instruction, but it's sort of really very much up to you, right? I mean, you've got this time and you can decide how you're going to use that time. Like, are you really going to hunker down and learn what you need to learn? And then, you know, for, for self-instruction, it's, if you need some kind of structure, self-instruction, I mean mean I know a lot of developers that have been self-instructing for four or five years and they haven't even created a resume or applied for any jobs. So it can be an issue.

But what I'd say with Bootcamp is this. First of all, don't – okay, it's a very cheap alternative, right? So the advantage of boot camp is, like I said, it's short learning curve, getting you a job very quickly, and the investment is relatively small. So don't cheap out, right? If you're going to do a boot camp, don't price shop the boot camps. Go and pick a quality boot camp where people have graduated and gotten, they have a high placement rate, and then go and call the references and check and see. Okay. So that'd be my first piece of advice. Then the second thing I would say

is that here's the thing, as long as it's a decent bootcamp, if you think of it this way, okay, if you're the top person in the class, let's say it's a three month program in that bootcamp. If you're the top person, do you think you'll get a job? Right? Probably. And you'll probably get a good one, right? I mean, any bootcamp, a bootcamp would be really, really crappy if the best person in the bootcamp didn't get a job. Their homepage would look so sad, right? I mean, their homepage would be, look at Jim, you know, he's on the street. Exactly, right? So you've got to assume. So I would assume that the top 10% of people in a particular class are going to almost have like a 90% chance of getting a job.

If you've filtered okay, right? I mean, and that's a pretty conservative estimate. But if I'm going to a boot camp, this is my objective. I am going to be the number one person. I'm going to bootcamp, this is my objective. I am going to be the number one person. I'm going to work harder than anyone else. I'm going to apply myself more than anyone else. If it's within my ability, I am going to, and especially it's an intensive program, right? You're doing this for three months, like a full-time job or more, you know, 10, 12 hours a day, freaking bring it all, go all in on this and, and be, because,

and this is why I'm saying this is because I feel like if you, if you take some basic steps, right, if you filter and make sure that you've got at least a semi-quality boot camp, right. And you are aiming at being in the top, top one, but let's say top five or top 10% of the, of the boot camp realistically, because there might be some genius. You might have, what's his name, Doogie Howser in there, and he might just whoop the pants off you no matter what you do. But if you're aiming for the number one slot, you're almost guaranteed success. I mean, this is so much the truth in life in general, right?

But this is how I would hack the boot camp, right? In my mind, I'm thinking there's no way you fail. If you take this approach, what, what, what, where you fail is when you take the half-ass approach, when you're like this, when you're like, Oh gee, gee, Bob, I I'd like to get a software developer job. Cause those guys make a lot of, a lot of freaking money. My, my, my friend Joe has a software developer job. So, Hmm, what should I do? Should I learn on my own, like do some courses online? Nah, college, I don't want to really spend four years. Oh, there's a boot camp for eight weeks. I'm going to sign up for this boot camp. And they said, they'll get me ready

and get me a job. If that's your attitude and you go in and you think that somehow magically you're going to go into this program and then eight weeks later, you're going to get a six figure developer job. No, sorry. It's not going to happen but if you're like man i really want to become a developer and i'm willing to do what it takes and i'm i'm learning on my own as much as i can in preparation for this boot camp i'm going to sign up for this thing and i'm going to put my all in it i'm going to stay after i'm going to tutor other people in the class i'm going to get as much help as i can and see if i can help the instructor right i'm going to really devote my life to this and try to be the top person in this class. Yeah, I don't see how you could possibly fail if you have the second attitude. But the first one, you know, is guaranteed

failure almost. I agree with most of that. I was having this conversation with someone at work as well. And I have a couple additional heuristics but i you know i don't know because i think it's still a little bit early but one of them is finding a place that has teachers the instructors that work or have worked at jobs you would want oh that's a good point so if you you know so here we're in the san francisco silicon valley you know if you want to work at uber find a boot camp that has instructors that came from Uber. A couple reasons. One is because they'll help you with what you need to be able to do to get a job there.

And the second one is because they have a network or either are still there. And that can definitely help with placement of, like we were already talking about, the top people. The best people are going to get the referrals and they're going to refer people because that helps them and it's a it's a self-fulfilling thing like if they refer the best people it increases the their you know instructor aptitude it increases the college like everything at the boot camp everything gets better so that's one and the second one is sort of similar which is do a boot camp if possible in an area you would like to have the job for for basically the same reasons so if you want to work in the silicon valley my advice would be to find a boot camp in silicon valley because you're going to have peers graduating and instructors that have connections in that area

if you do one and i don't know where all the you know large bootcamps are but if you do one in florida hoping to get a job in california it can happen but it you know you're just not helping your odds yeah that's a good point um yeah that's really good points yeah yeah the other i mean i so you know i get like my i have a like huge like uh uh bias in this because you know my grandfather's a math professor, his father's a math professor. My dad's was a, was a engineer. And so, so, uh, um, like a ton of academic sort of people in my family. And so I'm always in the mindset, you know, go to college, but, but, uh, but the, the thing that, that I, I totally, uh, uh uh uh believes that college gives you the the the lower bar in other words you can get a degree and be like let's say incompetent and you have that diploma

so like it will take the worst people and bring them up but college won't necessarily take the best people and and give them the best possible experience right so um you know i think it's sort of a toss-up i mean i think if you already went to college for biology let's say it's probably not a good idea to go back through another four years to get a cs degree that's that's something i agree with um but either way yeah i think the goal should be to be the best. And this is true, even if you want to be any career, like, like, uh, I feel like anything I say, I will disparage that career. So I'm not going to pick anything up, but no matter what you want to be is, is, is, is, uh, the goal is to, yeah, go into it, looking, look at the best people in that career

and, and you should want to be, uh to be uh to have the same sort of career experiences as those people um and that that should be kind of your target like if you want to be a basketball player you know when people who want i actually went to basketball camp uh when i was in high school i was terrible at basketball um but i went to basketball camp and uh there were people who said, you know, I want to be like Shaq or I want to be like Anthony Hardaway, who is popular at the time. And they had sort of role models and they had kind of targets and they had sort of respect for that. I feel like it's the same kind of thing where know what it means to be the best person at

whether it's your university or your boot camp class or what have you, and then strive to sort of be better than that person, right? Exactly. Yeah, you're dead on. It's funny. I was talking with a friend of mine, and he was talking about his kid being in Little League and how the kid was being benched all the time. And I told him, I said, there's a real simple solution to this rather than complain to the coach.

So how many hours a day do the other kids practice? Right? And he's like, well, they just go to their practice, and I think some of their star players, you know, they'll do like an extra hour of practice every day. And I was like, tell your son, if he really wants to never be benched again, put in four hours of practice a day, three hours of practice, whatever it is. Whatever they're doing, do twice it. Guaranteed in six months or one season, guaranteed you'll

be starting. You'll be so much better. Just do whatever the best person is doing and double it. Do better than whatever the best person is doing. Look at their training and do more of it. When I say it, it sounds so damn simple but it's one of those things that you get frustrated and you're like, I don't understand. I can never be like that but the answer is really it's putting on the overalls. That's it. Yeah, and I think one of the great sort of tragedies is, you know, I grew up in a part of my city where a lot of people played basketball and not a lot of people went into really engineering. And I found myself being really bad at that. I played basketball for years. I was terrible at it the whole time.

And in hindsight, i never really practiced like even i went to this camp i wasn't really actively participating and uh it just wasn't really my thing it wasn't really what i did for for fun um but then um you know the things i did do for fun like i did all sorts of like coding things. I did visits to Linux, like kernel hacking and things like that, and emulators. And these things, I ended up spending just an extraordinary amount of time on them. And the reality is, you know, there's people who are spending an unbelievable amount of time practicing, let's say, basketball. And there really aren't that many people who are spending that amount of time, you know, becoming the best JavaScript developer

or something like that. I mean, obviously there are people, but it's just not the same, let's say, ratio of people who are dedicating, let's say, 100 hours a week to JavaScript versus the number of jobs. That ratio is totally different than a number of people are dedicating, let's say, 100 hours a week to JavaScript versus the number of jobs, that ratio is totally different than the number of people who are dedicating 100 hours a week to football versus the number of football jobs, right? Oh, yeah. Yeah, so, I mean, you've got, it's an arbitrage situation, right?

You've got a huge advantage. Like, the bar is actually pretty low, right? Like, if you wanted to become the best in the world at JavaScript, it's conceivable, if you wanted to become the best in the world at JavaScript, it's conceivable. If you want to be the best in the world at basketball, good luck. I mean, you know, right? As much as you practice. But you could do it at JavaScript.

Honestly, you could, right? You know, that's the bar is low there. You just have to be willing to do the work. I'm being so mean to JavaScript programmers. Poor JavaScript. Actually, somebody told me, I said, I was talking to somebody at work, and they said, oh, you know, you have a podcast. I'll follow you on Twitter.

And so they followed me. So I looked up their profile, and they have something like 10,000 followers. And I said, how did you get so many followers on Twitter? And he said, dude, a javascript developer it's like all you have to do is be a javascript developer you get 20 times as many followers on twitter so i don't we give them a lot of hate but they're also probably the biggest community it's an it's absolutely astounding yeah it's funny i did a one of my more popular blog posts like for for a while i got i did this blog post on why javascript is is dead or doomed javascript is doomed and this was like you know

four or five years ago and it went front page on hacker news and i was like the worst thing like i was crawling under my desk crying because the nasty comments I got. Oh, my gosh. And a stream and streams of them, like, for days. It was like, I hope you die. I will find your children and murder them. Well, if you want to hear worse comments, write such an article about any functional programming language.

Oh, my gosh, yeah. Our Lisp show was unbelievable. Lisp is dead. Haskell is dead. Just pick any of them. Closure. We actually, you know,, our Lisp show was unbelievable. Lisp is dead, Haskell is dead, just pick any of them. Closure, Steam. We actually, you know, I learned Lisp, I don't know if it was my second language, but anyone who took intro to AI had to learn Lisp.

And so I was, you know, I was a Lisp sort of sympathizer. I didn't know that much about it, but I took the course and I liked it. And when Patrick and I did this show on lisp we got just unbelievable hate mail people are just like oh you don't understand it's really like this is you know you have to use this other expression and they've moved on for and it was just unbelievable it just never ended it's yeah it's funny it's it's funny how you know sometimes we get so religious about technology and stuff and it's Ultimately, it's like results. At the end of the day, the academic exercises are great.

But ultimately, what is it you're actually accomplishing and doing? It's easy to get distracted and forget that that's the whole point. Yeah, that makes sense. The other part of it is to you know, uh, as you, uh, also is, is to keep a good network of people, right? Like for example, if you start to become the best JavaScript person in the world, then, then, uh, you're going to, let's say you seek out some people who you think are great at JavaScript and then you get so good, uh, or, you know, so much about the language that these people

aren't really you know reading their posts let's say isn't informing you like we did a post on crypto we're going to release a show on cryptocurrency that will be out by the time you see this show hear this show and uh you know let's say you're going to get to the point if you're into cryptocurrency where that show is going to be boring to you right right and when that happens you got to find the person who can sort of inspire you the person who knows way more about cryptocurrency than patrick and i and eventually you'll know more than that person you got to you have to constantly be seeking out um that that advancement and as you do that you'll notice the community even if it's a global community, it gets smaller and smaller and smaller. And it also gets more intimate. And you'll start to build those

relationships that ultimately will be bridges to new opportunities. Oh, yeah, definitely. And if you're in that level of that inner circle, I mean, you'll never be looking for a job because there's so few, right? And everyone, it's that weird thing where it takes another expert to recognize an expert. Like someone, like to the novice, someone who's like at the 80 percentile

and someone who's at the 99 percentile look the same. But to the person who's like up in the 90 percentile of something, they know, they're like, yeah, OK, this guy is like one percent better that, you know, like think think super marathon runners. Right. That understand the difference between like a couple of seconds in a marathon time. Like it's it's it's a huge deal. Right. So I think that's that's definitely definitely the case. And once you become become part of that inner circle it becomes extremely valuable so the very the anecdote i'll share about that is at work we

do c++ programming so we often ask candidates you know what is their experience with c++ and we have this joke that you know on a scale and we ask each other like you know on a scale of one to ten what would you rate yourself as far as like c++ experience a lot of people this is and it's not meant to be a trick question but it's very revealing yeah because anyone who's like out of college and rates himself above a five is almost guaranteed to be sort of never done much programming you know when you when you start talking to them and you ask it's very clear they've not done much programming um yeah yeah and so then so we all you know kind of compare our scores and most people and a lot of people i think are very knowledgeable in c++ will rate

themselves like five six and they've been doing c++ programming five six seven years um and we were sort of talking like we don't think anyone would be a 10 you know maybe herb sutter uh would be like a nine you know people who you know write the standard template library are probably like an eight people who go to cpp con are like a seven people have been doing like 10 to 15 years like a six right like the scale is really strict but it's almost universal across everybody at work it's very consistent right and it's very clear as you're pointing out people who don't fit in and it's not like a mean thing but it just instantly reveals how long someone's been doing something no you just have to ask who's your

favorite author and if it's not um scott myers then you know then you can't be more than a five it's funny i was i was real big into the c actually it's it's funny i when i was a big c++ developer when i started out and i I thought I was hotshot. I thought I was good until I went to TabCoder. It's kind of a new thing. But, man, I went into there, and I went into the single room. I went into the SRMs, the single room matches, and I was like, I can't even solve the easy problem, right?

So I had to, like, learn STL. And I had to read, read you know and so then i'm you know my head is in i read effective c++ you know probably like 10 times more effective c++ effective stl i'm learning all the you know all of the stl inside and out the boost library right like all this stuff right that i had no idea i'd been doing c++ development for like three four years no idea about any of this stuff i was just getting by and i thought i was good right and then and then after that experience man could i ace a i could ace a c++ interview like like nobody's business at that point and and i would give c++ interviews and i had this like eight

page c++ and it would start off at easy questions and it'd go to medium and it'd go to hard and go to very hard and and i swear people would would apply for jobs i was working at hp at the time and i was i was you know i was the worst you would never want to interview me at hp i was a i was a dick basically just like just because i'm so excited about you know i mean i mean you? I was Scott Myers with my idol. It's funny how things have changed. But I would have this, you know, like APA. And people would come in and they'd profess to be these C++ gurus, and they wouldn't make it past page one. And so, you know, there was – I remember this one guy.

I still remember his name, Hai Biao. And he, like, he got it all. And I was just like – I was trying to explain to my hiring manager i was like look you don't need to do this we're done you just hire this guy like i guarantee i don't even care if he's the most socially retarded person i've you've ever seen in your life you have to hire this guy like you don't understand and like he just he couldn't grasp how how important and phenomenal it is but it's funny like i mean it took it it it's it's so true like you know it when you when you see it like the kind of the things that people say the language

that they use and and it's that inner circle that uh that you can recognize within each other you know yeah there's this idea of uh i think it's i can't remember the four levels but i'll try to kind of piece it together but there's you, unconscious ignorance where you don't really know what you don't know. And then what you really want, the hardest step is that step from unconscious to conscience ignorance. As you said, like in the case of Topcoder, it's that going on Topcoder, realizing, whoa, there's this whole world. Because once you get to that step, that's where you can start the stepping stones. That's where you can kind of get that sort of gradient that takes you to conscious knowledge. And then eventually to unconscious knowledge, which is kind of circling all the way back to where you don't even really have to think about it. It's just in your unconscious.

It just happens naturally. Um, but getting back to the connections that you, I, um, in, uh, 2004, I was the 30th person on top coder. So I was ranked 30 and, and, uh, Jason does not relate to your story about struggling through this. I'm just telling you, I went, I went on, uh, I went on top coder a couple of years ago or about 18 months ago, and I was just terrible. And the reality is, you know, it's been, you know, what, I guess almost a decade. It's been over a decade since I was sort of at my sort of peak on Topcoder. And I moved on to sort of other skills. I moved on to sort of you know building things that entertain me and sort of kind of putting

pieces together and less you know I still do I actually moved on to a lot more kind of statistics and math and away from like the algorithms and data structures and it just you know the bike got rusty right and but the thing I didn't lose was again

the connections like a lot of the top, top coder people, I know them pretty well. I stay in contact with them. We go out every now and then. And, and, and that's the thing that's, that's kind of permanent. Like it's, it's still super important to get, to get the skills, but, you know, along the way, take the free, almost free opportunity to also connect with the people. Um, because, you know, ultimately that's the thing that, that, uh, that either it never goes away or it's very

easy to bring it back. Like it's very easy to send an email and say, Hey, a long time, no C it's, it's much harder to get back into the, uh, you know, red target rank at top coder. Trust me, it's almost impossible. man that's cool yeah i i don't talk to many people that have actually actually done top coder that you're a number 30 that's that's pretty impressive that like people that haven't done this don't realize how amazing of an achievement that is it's and that was through By the way, that was through just again, just unbelievable effort. Like basically we used to I used to practice. I don't I think it was something like 40 or 50 hours a week. Yeah. And that and we did that. So so my university has this has this programming competition kind of programming team kind of a thing at the university and if you join you

you have to commit to practicing for about 40 or 50 hours a week and uh it's just it's just a a ton of effort um but uh and it's the kind of thing where if you don't uh it's just like being you know uh trying to trying to be an expert in anything if you uh at some level it requires like extraordinary maintenance um but uh uh but yeah i mean with the right amount of effort um especially in a field like this like there uh anybody can can make like enormous progress yeah i think that's also a sign of maturity is choosing that you don't have to be the best at everything. So saying like, you know, we're joking about the C++ skill, but I don't think it's perfectly fine for people to be a five or six and be paid a lot of money to write C++ code. It's OK. You don't have to be eight, nine, you know.

And I think that's a sign of maturity is realizing, getting past that and realizing like some things just may not be worth the effort at that time. Well, and you know, before I forget, a real good book I want to recommend is called Peak. It's a really good book on deliberate practice and it talks about the idea that you're, that essentially like all of this, all of the, forget what Malcolm Gladwell said. He's not accurate but but the guy that wrote peak is actually the guy that came up with the 10 000 hour uh concept that interesting malcolm gladwell borrowed and misused unfortunately i'm not a big malcolm gladwell we couldn't tell because i believe that it's skilled because i believe it is practice and that book peak like is really it really talks about and he has the studies to prove it and shows why that it is more than anything else not intelligence not iq not

anything else not natural ability or talent it's practice that that makes someone at the higher level at the highest levels right um yeah the other thing not to like to jump around too much, but getting back to the financial thing, I've met a lot of people in my career who I would consider retired. Some people because of their family, some people because of circumstances, and some people because they are just total rock stars. And the thing I noticed about most of them is they're still working. and some people because they are just total rock stars. And the thing I noticed about most of them is they're still working. And working might be a little, it might change, but you don't really see people, this sort of stereotypical, like I'm going to win the lottery, or maybe that's a bad example, but I'm you know uh you know do some kind of uh financial

situation and then i'm going to go to hawaii and do nothing and the reality is you know there might be some people out there who they set their whole vision and all their effort and everything is just financial but the majority of people i noticed who put themselves in what I would call the retirement category, which means that they're just kind of there for fun. Those are the people who sort of had that incredible passion and there's massive inertia there. Like the kind of people I've met who can just leave their job at any time are the same people who are there just because they love it. Like it's, it's very hard to do something you love and get nothing out of it for years. Um, um, uh, sorry, it's very hard to do something you don't love and get nothing out of it for years and keep that going. Right. But if it's something you love, uh, and you have sort of, you know, uh, a vision for where you want to be, that doesn't really depend

on anybody else, then you can continue to make progress. And you can sort of build this model in your mind, and continue to get better and better. And that's where sort of there's really no limit, because you're kind of, you're competing with yourself. And those are the people I notice who tend to do really well. Oh yeah. It's funny that you should say that, the Hawaii thing especially. From a young age, one of my goals in life was I wanted to retire young. I started doing real estate investment when I was 19.

I don't want to pretend like I had a plan then. I just didn't want to pay rent. But later I did develop a plan. And I spent a lot. I mean, I slept on mattresses on the floor. I mean, I put a lot of effort into this goal. Like this was my dream. I wanted to retire young in life so that I could do whatever I wanted. So in my mind, I was like, I just play video games all day.

This will be awesome. Right. I'm going to go live on the beach. All this stuff, I want my time. And so about four, I guess it's been four, five, four years, five years ago, about. No, four years ago. Four years ago, I hit it. I did it.

And coming up to it, I started to have like, when I was like, when I could see the goal, the end goal on site, I was like, I'm going to be able to quit my job and I'm going to have passive income for the rest of my life. You know? And I wanted to have like 10 K a month of passive income. So it's not like just living in a hut somewhere. Right. So it was like a decent lifestyle. And so I, I was coming close to that and I started to have these, like these, these, this kind of panic these panels like well what am I gonna do right and and my plan was and I did it I went I I quit my job I went to Maui okay oh you actually did it I did and I and I did that for about two months

and I when I came back I was like no I can't like I was strongly concerned just staying there forever you know and I was like no I can't I can't do this I like I don't need to work right so my definition of retired is is is is not like sitting on the porch or you know just surfing all day it's like you don't have to do anything if you don't want to but but you it doesn't mean you don't choose to and and that's what I came's when I came back with my renewed mission and I kind of really had to do some really deep thinking. If you ever get to that point in life, most people are so busy living life that they never really think about life.

When you get to that point, and here's a good exercise if you ever want to just think about, and it takes some meditation on this, But imagine if you woke up with $500 million in the bank tomorrow, what would you do? Spend some time meditating on the question because most of the answers that you first come up with are things that actually are things that would make you money. I use a big number like that, like $500 million, because it doesn't make sense to build a business. You go through a whole list. If you go through the exercise, you'll start to rule stuff out because as you go to the end of the line, you'll say, oh, wow, yeah, that would be to make money, but I don't need any money.

It's kind of a scary process. But I had to really do some deep thinking, and that's where I'm at. With Simple Programmer now, Yes, I make money. Yes, I still make profit from the best version of myself, about pushing my limits, about reaching my full potential. And it's something that I'll never reach the end of, right? So I don't have this problem anymore, but now it's like, how can I best utilize the time that I have to really maximize whatever potential that I could achieve during this time, not for an end goal, not so I can make so much money, not so I could play video games all

day. I have all those options, but it has a different purpose. It's really hard to describe, but it's funny that you said that about going to Hawaii because that was exactly my thinking and my scenario. And people all the time when I tell a story on my YouTube channel, they're like, oh, you're crazy. If I win the lottery, I'm like, no. The worst thing that could possibly happen to you is to come into an infusion of cash. It would ruin your life.

It would ruin your character. It would just ruin everything because everything you're dreaming for, everything you're aiming for, which suddenly you'd have it, and then you'd lose purpose and when you lose purpose you know everything it's horrible so it's just interesting yeah this is a good thought exercise for people who who want to understand this is get it get your favorite video game right and then go online and find the way to sort of cheat in that game like let's say let's take grand theft auto let's say you're a huge grand theft auto now now they have the version online which i don't know much about but i assume you can't really cheat on the internet but let's take grand theft auto 3 um let's say you're that's your favorite game you spent all the time

unlocking the t-shirts and getting all the cars and stuff now go in that game start over and and and use the cheat code which gives you like infinite money and the ability to fly right like superman right and see how long you'll play that game i guarantee you it won't be more than a week right like it's it's going to be amazing you can fly you could drop helicopters from the sky or something but after a week it's done it actually kind of killed the sort of narrative and the novelty and the experience of that game right and and and i would imagine winning the lottery is kind of like doing that to your life right like uh it's sort of it it doesn't really kind of it all of a sudden just throws all of your kind of goals and your values kind of out of whack exactly yep i i totally agree that's a great comparison that is it's so true

right yeah it's funny i'm playing like a breath i'm playing the zelda breath of the wild game and i'm like i am not looking on the internet for anything there's some stuff i'm like i don't understand how these recipes work and stuff and and i'm like no no because as soon as i look up anything it will ruin the entire game for me i just want to figure it all out and discover it myself yeah i'm exactly the same boat i played uh final fantasy 7 which is one of the considered one of the best video games of all time and i played it you know a very long time ago. And I'd beaten, I'd completed Final Fantasy, I think, four and six and two. I don't remember.

This was all a long time ago. But I was playing through seven and I wasn't even stuck. I was just, there was one part where it was a little bit open-ended. You can kind of go to different towns. It wasn't exactly clear what to do next. And instead of kind of exploring,

I thought, oh, let me go on the internet and just see and once i went on the internet i realized oh i i missed this part back here and i can never go back and get it and it's done and it actually just killed the whole game like oh yeah like i realized like i i kind of you stare into the mirror and the mirror stares back at you or whatever it was just uh i just it literally killed the game for me and i haven't been able to i haven't played it since um and yes it's it's the same kind of thing uh um it's actually kind of a little dangerous to do that oh yeah yeah it's funny i mean i this is my philosophy in life and again a lot of people doubt doubt it on youtube but all the time i get i get people because there's all you know i my my

youtube channel is kind of a fitness youtube channel as well right because i do a lot of a lot of stuff and so all the time i get accused of being on steroids and i'm like i can't like there's nothing i go like i mean tests or whatever i can't prove that i'm not on steroids but what i could tell you this is that if you listen to any of my videos in my life philosophy you would know that i would never take a shortcut because i'm not about the end result i'm about who i become the process right and it's and it's like it's so hard to communicate this point to to people that are as much as i argue this point or like so many people are still like no i would still want to win the lottery it would still be awesome i would give the money to my family. And like, no, you like anything that you achieve that, that you haven't earned. Right. It's like

the, I, I get, I'll get flack for this, but I'll say it anyway. Cause I, I, is it, I, you know, I do, I run like 40 miles a week and I ran a marathon like a couple of weeks ago. And there's people that will sign up for the marathon and they'll walk and i mean if you're 90 that's fine but if you're like a capable human being and you're just walking a marathon in order to get a medal i'm sorry like i i don't have a problem like like that that's fine like i'm not saying it because like i'm judging you as a person i'm just saying you are jipping yourself like like how how much when you put that when i put the medal i've got a rack you guys can't see it here but i've got my medals for my half marathons and my marathons and my marathon medal to me like when i look at that means something right i can look at that and i'm like

man that like that was four and a half hours it wasn't just four and a half hours it was like weeks and you know months worth of work and effort and blood and sweat and tears. If you are like this overweight person who signs up for a marathon and walks it and didn't do any training and you get the medal and you put that on your wall, what is it? It's just to show other people. It doesn't mean anything to you. You know what I mean? That's my whole – that's the whole thing. It's so hard to communicate that concept to people.

It's the same people that say, I want to win the lottery or i just want the six-figure job i don't care if i actually know the programming you know i just want someone to i just want to get lucky and get the job and it's like it's all those things it's like if you haven't earned it yeah it might be fun to fly around in the video game like you said but it's going to be so meaningless and empty to you that uh that you you you start to think that all of life is like that. And you, you, you forget that, that, you know, that the meaningful things in life are the things that you actually, you know, it's that, it's that money you put together to, that you earn mowing lawns to, to buy that bicycle. That's what, what makes it all, everything in life valuable. And

it's so easy to get disconnected from that. I mean, we've, I've been guilty of it. We've all been guilty of it, but it's, it's so hard to communicate across that chasm, I find. Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah. Oh, go ahead, Patrick. No, I was going to say, so I'm not much of a quote person, but my quote is Warren Buffett saying that his goal was not to leave his kids enough money to do nothing, but just enough to do anything. Oh, I got it backwards. I think the goal is to leave your kids enough money to do nothing but just enough to do anything oh i got the backwards i think the goal is to leave your kids enough money to do anything but not so much that they can do nothing yeah it's sort of the same philosophy yeah like your point is to be able to do enough that you open doors not so much that you can just sit around and do nothing that's really boring the analogy was if you were on um the notch who invented minecraft and you followed his twitter

feed right around the time like microsoft bought out minecraft oh yeah yeah i don't know how many people did this and i don't know i was following him even before that and yeah i won't spoil your story but yeah i heard no it's okay but yeah i feel like a little bit this happened to him like he had other games that he was in the process now he suddenly i mean he already didn't need to work but he still was but to get sort of that major payout he bought a really big house he could pretty much do anything he wanted and i mean i i didn't kind of keep following him but he basically had a little bit of like a meltdown like he kind of lost lost direction oh yeah yeah i mean he was posting you know i mean you can you guys can look you folks can look it up but basically things like you know i have mean, you folks can look it up, but basically things like, you know, I have nothing in my life.

The people who worked in my company feel like I sold them out. I have no friends, stuff like that. And it's kind of sad, you know. Oh, yeah. And the nasty thing about it, being in that situation, is not only did he honestly feel that way people doubted his sincerity and then they were upset at him because he was expressing these these feelings and saying you have no right to have these feelings because if i were in your situation i would be happy and that that is just i mean that's going to make him feel even worse but i mean it's it's a human condition and and so like if you don't

figure out how to deal with this right like this is one of those things like I tell people all the time. Well, you know, but like I had to face this. Like you said, looking into the abyss and the abyss stared back at me. Yeah, that I had to face this. And I'm telling you, and he definitely had to face this. But like you got to think about this ahead of time and really figure out your life, because if your life is just about hitting some number, hitting some goals, man, you're setting yourself up for such a... How many rock stars, how many people that come into fame or end up making a lot of money or becoming super famous people, how many of them end up committing suicide or getting into just like their whole life becomes drugs

because they're hugely depressed? This is not just because they're defective people that don't know how to handle fame or money. It's because this is what most people will be like if they haven't actually thought about this and haven't really figured out how to live a purposeful life that is not just driven based on some goal, right? To tie it back into the systems versus goals from the beginning but yeah definitely cool well yeah we could obviously we could talk about this forever i think it's fascinating hopefully maybe we'll have you back later on like sometime in the future um but uh yeah this was awesome so if uh is there anything actually i think you you kind of alluded to it in the beginning there's a book that you have coming out pretty soon, right?

Yeah, let me, allow me to plug my book. That was your opening. There we go. So I do, I have a book. It should be out, assuming that, you know, July 19th is the launch date, assuming that those got around the same time. And it is called The Complete Software Developer's Career Guide. And it is a massive book.

We're talking like, right now the estimated page count is 800 pages. Wow. And it is everything I know about software development from my 15-year career and everything that I have gathered from, I mean, I know, you know, I've hung out with a lot of industry experts. I won't do a bunch of name dropping here, but obviously, you know, with Simple Program on YouTube and everything, I coach

people and I've gathered a lot of career advice and wisdom over this time. And I've basically put it into what I'm calling the like my goal in creating this book was to make the book that every software developer should have on their bookshelf like no question about it and you know I spent a lot of a lot of time working on this it basically to give you a quick overview that it goes from it has everything from the very it's broken into five sections the first section is how to get started. If you don't know anything about software development, what language to learn, you know, should you go to college, boot camp, self-taught, how to learn a language. The second section is how to get a job, whether it be your first job or your experience, and

then how to negotiate your salary, how to like choose between contract or permanent employment, like all these kinds of stuff that no one really talks about that is really important and how to do a resume, all kinds of stuff related to that. And then the third section is all the stuff you need to know as a software developer. I gathered like all of the like CVS

and source control and continuous integration and what is web development versus backend development versus mobile, like all of that stuff. And then the fourth section is how to function, work as a software developer.

So this is stuff like how do you deal with your boss? How do you deal with your coworkers? How do you deal with discrimination or prejudice in the workspace? How do you dress for work? This is all targeted towards software developers. And then the fifth section is how to advance your career. So you've got all the other stuff down. What if you wanted to go and start speaking at conferences?

What if you wanted to start a podcast? What if you wanted to go beyond and become a freelancer and bill a few hundred dollars an hour? How would you do this? And so the book is – that's why it's massive is because it tries to cover pretty much all of that uh at a pretty pretty in-depth level and so yeah it's going to be launching july 19th and i will be doing the kindle version of it for 99 cents for that day normally it'll be nine nine or normally be nine dollars and nine nine cents i'm not sure what i'm going to price the print version just but just because it's such a thick book, I have, I've got to get a quote. I'm working on getting it typeset right now. So I'm

guessing it, it'll be heavily discounted on launch day as well. But, uh, but yeah, so it's, it's, you know, the goal for this launch, by the way, too, is to be the number one bestselling book on Amazon on that day, like across all categories. So what's the title one more time? The Complete Software Developer's Career Guide. And so actually, if you want to check it out, if you just go to simpleprogrammer.com forward slash career guide, that will be, it'll be the book landing page pre-launch. And then on the launch, it'll have like bonuses.

I think we've got a package that we're putting together, like $150 bonus package of course material as well. That will all for 99 cents. So cool. And we'll have the link on the show notes as well for people. Awesome. Awesome. Cool.

Well, thank you so much for being on the show. Looking forward to checking out that book um i'll definitely pick it up for 99 cents i i buy almost every humble bundle where you you spend a dollar and you get three games oh yeah that's like your limit a dollar yeah yeah well you could uh yeah anyways but uh but even even if if like no matter what i will spend a dollar i won't even look at the games if they when they send me the email matter what, I will spend a dollar. I won't even look at the games. When they send me the email for the new bundle, I spend a dollar. And sometimes I spend more if the other games look good.

But, you know, I recently did this. I spent a dollar. I got this game. It had terrible reviews. And all the reviews kind of said, you know, look, the game looks beautiful, but the gameplay is kind of messed up. And the developers released this patch saying, oh, we made all these fixes, right? And I played it and it was amazing. And, you know, they just fixed the problems, you know, and they had just gotten a bad rap, right?

The book that I tell everyone to read was Negotiating for Dummies. I got that for a dollar. And just it was one of these kind of flash sales. And so I'll definitely pick this up for a dollar and check it out. Cool. Well, I appreciate it. Yeah, hopefully, like I said, this has been crazy trying to put all this launch together and writing this book.

But I really want this to be a book that every developer can put on their bookshelf because I feel like it's been lacking like this, this kind of advice, you know, I put the book together cause I felt like I didn't want to write another book, trust me after writing my first book, but I just felt like I have to put this out there. So. Cool. Well, thank you. And simple uh, simple programmer.com is the site. We'll also have the link to, uh, in the show notes and all that.

And, uh, thanks for coming on the show. Yeah. Thanks for having me guys. You guys are awesome. All right. Thanks.

Bye. Bye. All right. Take care. The intro music is Axo by Binar Pilot. Programming Throwdown is distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution Sharealike 2.0 license. You're free to share, copy, distribute, transmit the work, to remix, adapt the work, but you must provide attribution to Patrick and I and sharealike in kind.