Tech Over Tea - Developer Of Super Productivity | Johannes Jo

Episode Date: June 5, 2026

Today we have the developer of Super Productivity on to chat about about the development process and what it's capable of.==========Support The Channel==========► Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/brodierobertson► Paypal: https://www.paypal.me/BrodieRobertsonVideo► Amazon USA: https://amzn.to/3d5gykF► Other Methods: https://cointr.ee/brodierobertson==========Guest Links==========Website: https://super-productivity.comYoutube: https://www.youtube.com/@superproductivityappGithub: https://github.com/super-productivity/super-productivity==========Support The Show==========► Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/brodierobertson► Paypal: https://www.paypal.me/BrodieRobertsonVideo► Amazon USA: https://amzn.to/3d5gykF► Other Methods: https://cointr.ee/brodierobertson=========Video Platforms==========🎥 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBq5p-xOla8xhnrbhu8AIAg=========Audio Release=========🎵 RSS: https://anchor.fm/s/149fd51c/podcast/rss🎵 Apple Podcast:https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/tech-over-tea/id1501727953🎵 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3IfFpfzlLo7OPsEnl4gbdM🎵 Google Podcast: https://www.google.com/podcasts?feed=aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmNob3IuZm0vcy8xNDlmZDUxYy9wb2RjYXN0L3Jzcw==🎵 Anchor: https://anchor.fm/tech-over-tea==========Social Media==========🎤 Discord:https://discord.gg/PkMRVn9🐦 Twitter: https://twitter.com/TechOverTeaShow📷 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/techovertea/🌐 Mastodon:https://mastodon.social/web/accounts/1093345==========Credits==========🎨 Channel Art:All my art has was created by Supercozmanhttps://twitter.com/Supercozmanhttps://www.instagram.com/supercozman_draws/DISCLOSURE: Wherever possible I use referral links, which means if you click one of the links in this video or description and make a purchase we may receive a small commission or other compensation.

Good morning, good day, and good evening. I'm as you as your host, Brodie Robertson. As I tend to do, we are currently doing a late night episode. It is 12.30 a.m. So by the end of this, it's going to be 2.30 a.m. We'll see how we go. But putting that aside for now, today we have the developer and creator of a project

known as super productivity. I am not much in the productivity, planning sort of space, but apparently people like this application. So introduce yourself and yeah, let's get into talking about what the project is. Yeah, hi. Thank you very much for having me. Yeah, I started working as a programmer for like 15 years or so. And it happened like for one project. I had to do like gyra time tracking, sing some.

nine years ago and yeah and as most programmers i have found it quite cumbersome to do like all this manual steps again and again and so like i wrote a little tool for myself where i can do that and yeah for some reason it really stuck with me as a tool and i kept changing it i kept adding stuff stuff and yeah and recently like it has grown quite a bit. There are more and more people contributing to it. And yeah, it's also really gotten quite complex, I'd say. There's a plug-in system. There is a dedicated sync server. Yeah, there's lots of integration. There's lots of stuff. And yeah, I still really enjoy working on it. Yeah, I'm looking at the commit graph right now. It's like it started. It, sort of went up a bit, and then it kind of died down around 2022, 22, 23-ish,

and then it's just flown back up. Yeah, actually, now that you mentioned, I don't really know, like, if it's maybe also a little bit connected to corona, and people, I don't know, who worked from home for the first time, maybe they started to look for some way to organize themselves, because it's, yeah, not so, easy for everyone, I think, like if you're used to having this outer structure. Maybe that's the reason.

And recently, I think, like the recent influx of new contributors, it's also maybe related to people having more access to coding with the whole AI thing. I think that makes it much easier to contribute. code. So that's maybe a reason for it, sure. But it's definitely, at the time being, I would say it's a very good thing that it's more accessible to people. So for anyone who might be sort of unaware of what this project is, because for me,

I have a very structured day. It might look chaotic to anyone else, but I have a system. that I follow, I don't deviate from the system. So for me, I don't really need to, you know, plan out, oh, there's a meeting here, there's a thing happening here. You know, I structure everything in a way where I'm going to do the same thing every week, that same day, every time. But for someone who maybe has a more hectic day or really wants to keep track of what they're doing,

they want to make sure they are, you know, not wasting time on things. what does this project actually do? Like, what makes it interesting? Yeah. Yeah, there are two sides to it, like two main features, or at least that's how it started out. The one part is the to-do thing, the writing down of what you're going to do, so you don't lose track of it.

And the other part is the time-tracking part, which turned out also to be quite a good productivity tool in itself, because at least for me, like when I thought about time tracking, it's more like a cumbersome thing. Yeah, I'd rather avoided it. But it turns out like that the act of starting a timer before you work does something to your brain. Like especially in programming, yeah, for some reason, at least for me and apparently also for other people this works, it helps you to stay on one, to zoom in on one task. And this is, yeah, this is often important in program, maybe also like in knowledge work.

Also, especially maybe if you, if you have something which is a little bit harder to do. And yeah, I found this helps me and this is a good tool. another thing which I was going to say I guess with that's going to happen a lot what I was going to say is a lot of people find it very easy to get distracted and I guess if you have a

you know you have access to social media you can go watch YouTube video so having a timer there you know when you're in school for example you have this is the class time this is like the dedicated time there's someone watching you doing the work but when you're

especially if you're doing your own thing like you're doing contract work you're not in an office I could very easily see and I do tend to get distracted myself people either bouncing around between tasks or just not really be out of focus without having some sort of

structured environment around them and having a timer there is sort of a artificial but still a structure that you can sort of lock yourself into for that task. Yeah, yeah, that's a good way to put it, I think. And it's also like this way of working, it also is like, it's a good reflection tool because like you, you recognize when you're switching task, when you're ending at a completely different task when you're working on something.

And for the most part, I think we touched briefly, like before we started recording. Productivity is a very individual thing. Like everyone has different preferences. And also like what works for one is also changes over time and it changes with the circumstances. So like maybe also part of the reason why the tool stuck so much with me. that there was always something new to try out for me personally, what works, what maybe it doesn't work. And, yeah, that's...

And I think it's really a good tool, like, for this experimentation kind of stuff. Yeah. I think you can sort of get yourself into a... You can sort of trick yourself to being productive when you start testing out a lot of these productivity tools, where rather than actually, you know, trying to accomplish the task, and it's sort of a problem with customizing your Linux desktop as well,

where you are customizing it, you are trying to find the perfect thing for you, and you end up never actually doing the initial task that you had intended to do. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I know it pretty well. Like many years ago, overall, my master sees this, and I was really not motivated to do it. And I, yeah, I obsessed about other stuff, but not really the stuff I was supposed to do.

Right, right. And so I'm not the biggest fan, like, of this hustle culture that people want to get, yeah, always amoused out of themselves. I also think, like, it's also not always the best way to go about productivity. because like working long over hours and pushing yourself very hard that might work for for a time but it's yeah it usually doesn't in the long run there may be few exceptions like I don't know like top managers or politicians which work a lot a lot a lot and keep doing that but many other people also friends of mine yeah they tend to burn themselves out. So for me, like the name, I'm not so happy with it, actually, to be honest, like, because super productivity sounds really like hassle culture. But what I'm trying, the tone, I'm trying to strike with the episode,

also like more one of a bit more self-compassion, which is also like a very, very good productivity too, surprisingly. but usually procrastination also has to do with pushing yourself maybe too hard often.

Yeah, you definitely hit on something important there where a lot of people if you don't give yourself a break, you're eventually going to if you don't give yourself a break you're eventually going to break, right? Yeah.

And like even even the highest of high performers they have, they might take very small breaks. They might have some crazy life you don't understand. But they have a system that works for them. And I think ultimately, that's what you need to find. You need to find what is going to work for you. How do I best handle the time I have?

How do I, how do I achieve the things that I want to achieve. It may not be the most extravagant of extravagant goals. It might just be, hey, I want to sit down and, I don't know, make sure I language study

every day, right? Something like that. You know, you want to, I don't know, you want to learn French. I don't know. Pick a language. And it's not the craziest goal. But it's something where you are

saying the, I am going to do this and I'm going to make sure that I find a way to make it happen. I think a lot of people really struggle with sort of, I guess, planning out... Again, goes back to what I was saying, right?

A lot of people really struggle to get themselves to actually motivated to do something without having something there that is pushing them to do it. Yeah. I mean, like, no productivity in the world will give you motivation to do something you don't want to do or you have like strong resistance to. And sometimes there are good reasons for that, I think.

Maybe, maybe, I don't know, you should clean your room once in a while and that's something to get over. but yeah there might be there might be asks which like a work culture for you personally which not is not really worth it so yeah for example like the app has has like a break timer this is one thing that um yeah tries to to help us that like yes you mentioned like breaks are quite quite important and um there's also like you have a daily's summary part which you don't have to use but also like a little bit of reflection at the end of the day is usually a good thing not only for productivity in itself but also for yeah maybe life life satisfaction if you want to for example i i often ran into the phenomenon that i um yeah work quite a lot over the day but um But for example, I just take GitHub issues and work one after the other, one after the other, one after the other.

And at the end of the day, I did quite a lot of stuff, but I didn't really remember what I did. And it often feels very, it doesn't feel so good at the end of the day. So it's, for me personally, at least, it feels better to be more. conscious about what I want to do over the day, which doesn't mean there is room, there isn't room for deviation from that, but so in order not to get lost, like, by what you feel is, yeah, like from outside pressures, so to say. I definitely have that similar sort of feeling. It might seem weird with, like, because it's such a different thing, but I will work on a video, I'll record a video, and I'll be locked in on that video.

You've probably had a similar thing where you are locked in on an issue you're working on. And I will do all these videos. I usually bulk records, so I'll do four one day, two the next day, and then I have my videos for the week. I sometimes forget. I have to go back to my list of videos to remember. Like, what is it? I know I recorded two other videos today.

What the hell was I talking about like three hours ago? I don't. And it can be a problem, right? I have a system that's managed to make this work, but I know exactly what you're talking about. You can kind of sort of memory hold those things you've worked on, even though you cared about them, even though they're important when you're doing them,

when you moved on to the next task, it's just vanished from your mind. Yeah, yeah. And as I mentioned, like it's not really that, that's the only way to do it. Maybe like I think there's a lot good to say about pen and paper because it also connects your brain in a different way. But yeah, for me,

I like to remove like friction. And then for example, like for the super productivity, I can, it's easy to, with the integrations, you can pull in stuff. For example,

When I worked working as a freelance programmer and very often companies use gyra and it's somehow nice to pull the information into one place and to have it accessible quickly because like another is important factor especially for this kind of deep work is how much context switching you have to do, which is another thing which is really. exhausting for the brain. And so, yeah, that's also a thing which helps me quite a bit that I don't have to, yeah, open the browser or just have all in one place to visualize how things could play out over the day. Well, the thing with context switching, well, especially when it comes to opening the browser, that is a point where you can distract yourself, right? you've opened the browser. Now, oh, well, hey, look, I have my favorite sites here.

I could go to YouTube or the other thing. Just watch a video for 5, 10, 15, 30 minutes. It's crazy. Some things I have so ingrained into my muscle memory. Like when I open the browser, and I don't have a particular task. It's so often that I have RE for Reddit typed in. So it happens automatically. Also with my phone, like there's stuff is so ingrained.

Like because it probably gives you like this dopamine. It's so connected to getting that like eating chocolate. I think it's. It's something that you're, you know, these sites are designed to pull you in as much as possible. I think it's something you have to acknowledge because you can't change the problem without acknowledging. I think that I guess is something,

even if you're not going to plan a lot of other stuff with this, with a tool like this, using that as a way to track how much time you're wasting, even something like that by itself, I think already has some value. you. Yeah, probably. Yeah. It definitely works for me. So what is some of the other, like, functionality that exists in super productivity now? Because you've talked about stuff that's been there pretty much since the start,

but obviously it has expanded quite a bit since then. Yeah. Yeah, one thing, which is a little bit new, it's like the whole plug-in system. So, yeah, there are several built-in plugins. I don't know. For example, there's an automation plug-in. There is, actually I have to look it up what we got. There is like a procrastination, anti-procrastination plugin. There is several integrations.

There is like a, a one- voice reminder, which was previously called Domina mode, because it repeats the title of the current task you're working on every, I don't know, how often you want. And then there's lots of stuff. There's also like a very cool community plug-in, which it's called Quest Arc, which, yes, like a gamification system.

Do you have like an experience point? and different levels. Where can I find these plugins? If you have the app open and... Oh, okay. You can go to the settings. Oh, is there somewhere I can see them online? I don't have the app open right now.

No, it's only in the app, but you can... Okay, okay. I sent you a link. You can also... use it as web app. There is everything. Oh yes, yes, okay, yeah, see the web app. Okay. Okay. Okay.

Okay. There we go. Now. Okay. Ah, here we go. Okay. Yeah. What do you know? Then at the button left, you have like a settings button. Uh, sorry. I had another tab open with it. Okay, here we go. Here we go. Uh, okay, let's see simple to-do list. So here we go. Okay, yeah. Now, now, now we're good. Okay, sweet, sweet. Um, okay, settings and then the plugins. Here we go. Okay, sweet. Yeah, yeah. Okay, sorry, it's sidetracked there a little bit.

No worries. And I think also like, yeah, not everyone is such a big fan of AI, but I think like having this plugin system also also very accessible. You can give the specification to the AI of your choice and you can say like I want to have this and that and usually it, if it's not too complicated of an idea, like it should, it should, should work pretty well, maybe with an iteration or two on it. So that also really plays into the thing of experimenting with what works for you personally. Yeah, so I think it's pretty flexible in this regard. There's also furthermore you have, you can configure the app quite a bit also.

because I mentioned there are quite a bit of features, but you can turn everything off. And then it's just really a very, very simple bare-bone to-do app. And just, yeah, I would recommend to try it out. Maybe just turn out what you find is interesting or might work for you and not start with everything all at once. There's also like if a simple to-do list is working for you,

I think there's no. there's no reason really other than your curiosity maybe to change something about it. You don't, it's not required to use all the features of the app. It's, yeah, it's totally fine just to use what works for you. Yeah, as you said, it's a very sort of personal thing. having a system that works for what you specifically are trying to get out of it. Yeah, yeah. So how long has the project been in development for at this point?

I'm not very good with years, but I think it should be nine years now. Wow, okay. Yeah. As I mentioned, it started really as a small tool for myself, and then I put it on GitHub as a younger program. I'm hoping it's everyone jumping on board and, yeah, greatest tool ever. It's not how it worked. Like for many years, yeah, there always have been some users, some other users, but not many.

And for some reason it got a bit more popular and also got a little bit of press. And I think now it's probably one of the biggest open source to do apps, I would think. For me, it's still very surprising when I meet people in the real world or people writing me and saying, oh, yeah, this works really well for me. Because maybe also because usually I just to act with people over GitHub, over issues.

And then people are telling me, I, it's really, and I'm using it like this, it's always really cool to see that. I've got the GitHub star history open right now. It seems like it generally just trended upwards for a while. Then mid to late 2024, it had a massive spike upwards. I don't know if there was some press coverage then

or what happened at that point. I'll send you the link just so you can get a little idea of it. Here you go. Because clearly something happened at that point. If it was in the middle of... I think that might have been... a live hacker article that came out. Okay, okay.

This was, yeah, I think this brought in more users than, yeah, many of the other articles combined. Yeah. So it was never like a viral moment, I would say, even then afterwards. it still was not that all of a sudden a million people and were using the app and everyone was talking about it. It's more, yeah, more story of long and slow growth, I'd say.

Yeah, which I think is a little bit unusual for a GitHub project. I think there are many open source projects. If you take for example, JobLen, I think, that's a not taking application, which has similarity to super productivity. And I think for them, it was, they had their, they had to really their viral moment when,

whenever now, I don't know, they changed something. I think they maybe cost money or something like that. And then it grew really, really quite a bit. But so far there hasn't been something like this force of productivity. And yeah, probably there might not be because, yeah,

we touched it already like it's so individual and everyone, many people already have a tool which which fit they need pretty well. So it's probably something which I will hopefully, Hopefully still grew over time, but there might be not such a big spike at some point. Well, you've clearly already got something that people are really enjoying. I don't think it like, it doesn't need to just suddenly, you know, explore. Of course that would be nice. Having more people using it would be great.

But you've already done something really impressive here, right? You've already built something which a lot of people are clearly enjoying. and the growth isn't slowing down, right? Like, there's still a lot of people that are getting interested in it, people that are trying it out, and, you know, maybe it won't be the biggest of biggest things, but I think you still celebrate, like, what you already have. Yeah, definitely.

And also, like, for me, it's, like, as I said, maybe I've been working as a programmer for many years, and I said most of the, I have been working on most of the stuff I've been working on, I didn't feel any emotional connection to. Right, right. It was just like a corporate app you were working on because a client wanted it. Probably wouldn't have made much of a different if all of these apps never existed. And I didn't see so much value in them, to be honest.

And like for super productivity, yeah, it really has some value for me personally. which I really enjoyed to build something which makes me happy when I can use it during the day. I added a new feature and I think it works well. Like this is always a nice moment during the day. And also why I'm not the biggest fan of this hustle culture, I sometimes, I don't. I don't really know if it is like that, but I'd like to think that it's, yeah, also nice that it helps some people to get more enjoyment out of the work and other.

And it seems to happen. And it's also a really cool thing. And even if it's just a couple of 100 people, it's still nice. It's something you build with your own hands, so to say. It gets used, like to provide something useful. I like that quite a bit. So when it first got started, I guess what was that like?

And then when did you decide, I'm going to actually start just expanding this out? Because initially, it was probably for a very niche use case, right? And then you sort of added things onto it. from there. So when it first started, what was the project like? But it first started was just a to-do app with a connection to Jira

because this was the main use case back then for me. As I mentioned, the whole time tracking thing, I didn't want to do it anymore. So it probably would have taken less time to just do the damn time

tracking manually than building the tool. But that's how started and yeah I think it's still a bit of a niche tool like it's I think the people more strong to it are people who are privacy conscious because there is no necessity to have an online account with it you can use it completely offline you can use Dropbox for thinking if you want you can even and to encrypt the data before So it gets synced to Dropbox, so they can't read it. And that's probably a strong part of the user base.

And then also, yeah, people suffering from ADHD. At least I got several emails from people saying, yeah, it's really, I don't know, the first tool that worked for me or something. that and um insert uh developers because you have all these integrations and you can tinker around and um yeah that's probably the people who are most drawn to it so when it did you when you first made it did you initially publish it on github publicly or was that something that came sort of after the fact It probably was pretty soon after it was done, or after the first working version was done. Here's another thing.

When did you realize that you got to a point where you were making something that wasn't just for you? Because you had your use case, right? But as you added more things into it, I'm sure there are parts of the app that you don't use, maybe actively today, maybe you use at some point, but it's not part of your core workflow. You could, if that wasn't part of the project, you could completely live without it. So when did you realize that you were sort of building something

for more than just yourself that clearly other people were getting something else out of it? I think when I started receiving feedback, about like personal emails or also like a longer post just just mentioning not not mentioning a bug or something but just saying like oh it's really really cool I can't point pin it down and when when that started to happen but um yeah probably I don't know maybe one or two years in or something like that but that was um yeah that was the moment and I think I realized it.

And also think back then, beginning at least, I was also hoping that this might become the thing I can work on every day. Like I can sustain myself, Bills. And it didn't become that. But still like there are people using it. And also like it has the advantage if it's like that that I that I feel a little bit less pressured. Like it's less work and it's more like a hobby.

Like every time I spend time on it, it's because I want to and because I enjoy it. And there's definitely also some advantages to that, I'd say. And that sort of leads into the discussion around project funding. And I've talked to a lot of project developers about this. With what this project is, right, I don't think anyone would be surprised if you were charging for it. From what I can see, it seems like that's the way that a lot of things go. Either it is paid from the start or there is a additional paid premium tier.

What are your, I know you don't have that. What are your thoughts on that? And where do you sort of think about funding? Yeah. There are donations, but it's not enough to live from, at least not in Germany where I'm located. And also like with this whole air wave, like it's for programmers, everything got a little bit more complicated.

So I thought also like to take it as an opportunity to work on it a little bit more. And it was always out of question that, you can't, it doesn't feel right to make an open source app on an app that was free to make people pay for it that I don't want. But they have always been, like sync has always been a little bit tricky because, yeah, it requires a little bit of setup, like you need a Dropbox account or, and also like with this file-based things, it works. It works all right. But, yeah, like a file storage is not really like a technology really built for that. Like you always upload. the whole data and it takes a little bit longer and so so yes I started adding a sync as a sync solution which works a little bit better for it could be a way to go always was also always pretty clear that it should be open source so people can self-host it if they want to but that this might be a way to yeah maybe to

make it possible for me to work on it full time, which is, I have to admit, it's still like a thing I'd like, I'd love to see happen. And that this could maybe a way to get there. And yeah, at the moment it's also completely free. It might be like there's also big warning that it might cost some money in the future. I honestly don't know at the moment when this might be or if at all. But yeah, this could be this could be one way to do it. And I think everything else like having a premium version of the app, having paid for premium micro transaction, this all didn't feel good.

But having this sewing service, which also costs money and which is also a legal risk to have this user data. Like if you lose it, like people can sue you. I think it's pretty legitimate to say like, okay, for this in particular, it's a service maybe I can't provide for free. So, yeah, I don't know where, where, how the whole thing will develop. but yeah we'll see in the coming months I guess I think syncs one of those things which is like a reasonable thing especially with if you're

if you're just you know there's other solutions to sync it anyway right it's not like you're just like locking users out of the ability of manually syncing stuff if they want to sync it through Dropbox I think having a integrated and hosted solution that someone can pay a bit that's totally fine.

I think this is actually something that I think Thunderbird had actually been bouncing around that idea for their paid tier. I think that's generally an okay thing. Like funding is a weird one. I actually had a discussion with it.

The podcast I did earlier, I guess it would be yesterday now. The other podcast I did in the last 24 hours there's a problem in open source where the expected value of a lot of things and it's a problem and it's a benefit but the expected value of things is zero

and this creates a situation where obviously there's a lot of charity work done a lot of people who otherwise wouldn't be able to afford software wouldn't be able to do all these amazing things wouldn't be like you know it lets people have these incredibly powerful systems and you don't have to pay for it.

At the same time, there's things that cost money, right? And finding a way that you can fund that, I think ultimately comes like a personal moral question because a lot of people are totally fine selling a service. A lot of people are fine selling support services, right? Like the Red Hat model. A lot of people are fine,

just selling just an application to begin with. But I don't think I can really answer this question for anyone else. I think it's one of those things where you have to decide what you are personally comfortable with. And yeah, I think anything that wouldn't have made it into the core project, I think is up for grabs, right? I know you put out a post a while, like five months ago, about the idea of, paid premium plugins. If these were never going to be things that were built into the project, I'm not personally, like, I don't think it's a bad thing, right?

Interesting that you mentioned that because that was a moment I was a bit surprised because, like, in my head I thought, oh yeah, that's, I can do stuff. I wouldn't do otherwise because, yeah, I don't. Maybe out of scope of the poor application. Yeah. For example, like, yeah, maybe some freelancer tool for that connects to other services or stuff that I wouldn't need myself and that, but it's still very complicated, but such a niche use case that it isn't justified to spend so much time on it and to bring it, put the polish on. Also, yeah, without being paid for, that would be some. something like I just can't put the polish in.

But yeah, people were very opposed to the idea. I think also partly because like microtransaction have such a bad, yeah. There are so many bad examples of how to do it like with, especially with gaming with mobile gaming and yeah, the whole, maybe the whole software as a service thing. So that idea. that idea was crap, but yeah, it's, as you mentioned, it's a little bit of a tricky question

and also a little bit of a, yeah, sometimes maybe a little bit, I can't really put it, but like an expectation that something is basically done as as, as, you know, something for free as providing for society, which unfortunately, as our whole system works, is only something very privileged people. And I have the freelance program, have been very privileged over years to have been able to do something on the side, despite not needing a second job or something like that. And so there's definitely some attention to it because people need money in our economy and that probably won't change anytime soon.

But there is a little bit this expectation that it has to be free and morally pure, so to say, maybe. and I don't have any answer to that at all, but yeah, I find it interesting. No, it's definitely an interesting philosophical problem to deal with. I think when it comes to, I also think a big part of it is like who is the target for the feature, right? If you're building some integration with a corporate system, right, I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing to charge for that

because if it's something that is only reasonably being used by programming professionals, for example, people that are actually employed as developers, I don't think it's unreasonable to charge a small fee because those are people that you know are going... Like, these are not just the average person. Like, this is someone you know is employed in a relative good job that can afford to spend a bit on well-made professional software, right?

You know, if you're operating in, I don't know, you're operating in graphic design, right? You're paying ludicrous amounts of money to Adobe. I don't think it's unreasonable, especially if it's like a one-time fee of five euros, 10 euros, to have something like that. But again, it's a matter of like, where do you really stand on this? I personally don't have an issue with it, but at the same time, I can understand why people do. Yeah, maybe it has something to do, like how the whole internet thing came to life. that yeah we are so used to like all the Google apps and stuff being being free or at least you don't see so much but you're paying with or it's less of a cost for you to do that in the

moment and um right that the Google apps and other other that I think that's a that's kind of a that is a big problem that does exist again it's it's a problem but it's it's nice to have them a lot of really big whether they're open source or whether they're proprietary a lot of really big projects can afford to be free because they're being subsidized by the existence of a big company that funds it right

if Google wants to release and let's say they want to release an ad that doesn't even like an app that doesn't even collect your data It's just a good free app. Google can tank the hit for that. They can spend $100,000, make it really professional. They don't even have to think about it. They can just release it for free. And that has created a market where, again,

the expected value for a lot of things is nothing, but the environment where it is made is very different. And the environment of some random guy making something open source is very different from a team of developers at Google or some other company that made something and they just happen to release it for free. Yeah. Yeah. I don't really have an answer to that. But maybe it's good to take this into mind before getting... you when small apps start

to wanting your money well some of them especially mobile apps some of them can get pretty egregious I've seen there's some which do like you know it'll be like hey it's a $15 a week

subscription fee sorry how much did you say because what they expect people to do is sign up once and then forget to cancel their card and then just keep paying for it. There are like these really scummy tactics which do exist. And that's not something you really see in the open source space,

at least. There's probably something, but I completely understand your sort of, your concerns with actually doing this. But I think it's good that you're actually having the concerns, right? I think it's important to think about why you're doing something, how you're going to approach it. Yeah. I mean, personally, I'm now different. Like, I don't like to have like 20 subscriptions going and to have like, yeah, going.

Not like back then you bought software once. It's of course, it's software works different. You can't do that anymore. But yeah, there's definitely a barrier to it to do doing that. And I don't know, yeah, sometimes it's easier to just pay a little bit of money. For example, if I use something for work, then I don't think about it too hard if I really see some value in it. But yeah, I don't know for, for a mobile game or something. it would feel weird.

Also like I feel very strongly put off. If, if I see the only way is like to pay for something is you, you, you have to make, you have to manually cancel like the. So what you mentioned this is, oh, you accidentally want to try this out and then you forget to cancel. And that's really, I had that. I had it. I always can't sit right away if something like that occurs. I think with how bad subscriptions have gotten,

a lot of people are coming back around to the idea of one-time payments. Just let me buy, even if it's just for this major version, let me just buy a license. It's just one fee, even if it's a bit more expensive, right? it's nice to know that you don't have this recurring payment that is constantly ticking away

and then again, like, if you forget about the software, you stop using, you swap to something else, then you got another thing. It's... It's nice to just know that you have bought something. And again, this is talking from a position where I have the money to be able to buy a bit of soft, where if I want to buy it. It's really important that we do have all of this stuff that is for free. But,

look, I don't, I don't, I don't know what the answer is here. I really don't. Yeah, it's really messy for some reason. Yeah.

Yeah. Software, I think just software in general is kind of messy. There's, there's, but I do think it's, it's definitely fun to get into these, discussions, right? I think it's nice to sort of see the different perspectives that people have on this and where they are approaching these issues from.

Yeah. So if somebody... Go on. What did I want to say? Yeah, maybe this, like for those niche apps to exist, of course they need to. they maybe provide, say, less value or less features than, then like some maybe in the space of productivity, like maybe to-does would do. I don't think that's true, but just as an example, because they're just not as many people using it.

I don't know. one last thing on that topic I think it also matters how many other things are similar in that space right like if we're talking about a code editor or we're talking about a to-do app right there is a whilst

whilst this tool might do a lot of things if you specifically just want the to-do functionality there's a lot of different alternatives to that so again it's like it's hard to sell something in a market where people have alternatives

that are vastly cheaper. Yeah. Yeah. And also interestingly, the visibility thing, no? It's like what you don't always have all the information, what might be the best solution out there. And so yeah, I did a little bit of research on the to-do space. And yeah, to some apps which have like millions of downloads, they don't offer a lot of functionality.

They're probably doing what they do pretty well in some regards. Some of them have really, yeah, really pushy sales mechanics in them. But still, it's because I have this big budget, they reach so many more people. That this works well for them. It's also interesting to me. So as the project has evolved and as it's got new functionality, how do you find yourself using it today? Because obviously initially you had that Gero integration.

But what about now? Yeah. I usually I try to do a little bit of planning at the start of the day. I have my main project set up, which I use. Then I have Google Kellen integration because I have that. And then because most of the project lives on GitHub, I'm pulling in, I'm using the GitHub integration quite a bit that I'm putting in the issues from there. So I have them directly inside the app.

And then I have a little timer for how much I use the standing desk because I have a back pain. And then for planning, I sometimes use the bots feature also, which is pretty nice. It's like very configurable lanes or panels you can have. I don't know, similar to what's called, hello, but very flexible and customizable that I use. And then I use standard features like tags. And I use the time tracking, just not, I don't have to send it into anyone,

but just for me personally, just as a psychological, ecological thingy and also like to have an overview maybe where my time went. To be honest, I don't get as much. I think that's basically it. So nothing too fancy about it. Sometimes I use a new feature for things. And so there's something else maybe which. Yeah, there's the focus timer I use it sometimes now, especially.

We just recently got a baby, which means that I have less time a little bit, or that I have short windows where I can work. And so I use the focus timer like for that to set a count down. So I can work an hour and then I have to change some diapers or something. and I use this new sync feature of course and I don't know does it make sense to show a little bit of it via screen sharing or if you want to yeah if you'll fine doing that let me just check real quickly that I don't have anything compromising in my to-do list

So, yeah, then Okay. Eoretically, we can do this and then do... Yeah. That? Yes, that works. Lovely.

Okay. Yeah. Okay, sweet. Can you see it? Yep. Yep. Is the format, okay? Should I make it a little bit bigger or smaller?

If you can make it just a little bit bigger, that... Let's do it. OK, that should be fine. It gives us a rough idea. OK, that's basically how it looks. As you can see, I'm also tricking our call. Then I have different tasks from different projects,

like these little badges are projects. And there are tags, for example, A is I did use it for top priority. That's usually what I have open all the time on my second screen, on my laptop screen. And then if I need to do some planning over time, I use a planner. Then here's a board feature. For example, you have a custom board just for super productivity. Like here is stuff. I configured this lane to just show things.

things I've already planned for a certain day, then if those for priority and another one, this I use sometimes, then there's also like the schedule which auto generates how it would play out over time, which I find useful sometimes. And yeah, that's what I use, use mostly. At the moment, There's also Habits feature. I just use it for standing desk. And you can see here are the projects on the left. And then it's also, maybe the issue panel I'm using often. Maybe that's also interesting.

Like you have it here pre-configured to you can use this GitHub mark syntax. And this is pre-configured to do these things. You can bookmark that and so it's a state in there. This button. And then I have all the issues that are assigned to me and are open here. And then when I click here, maybe this. And I have it inside the app and I can also check here the issue stuff. There are the logs, the comments and everything.

This I use very often. And there's also like a deadlines feature. I don't have too many deadlines these days. I don't set myself. And so I don't use it as much, but it's there. You can add notes here with Markdown. You can also, if you need to need. level deeper you can also use marked on this inside here you can attach things

lots lots of options let me also show this yeah but you can in the settings you can turn everything off like I have everything on but yeah maybe also a little thing we added what I like also I haven't used quite some time. It's like this schedule panel, you can open it. And then you can, this time, you can drag your tasks here to. Yeah. OK, that's cool.

Can resize them here. And as you can see, as you can see, remind us our approaching. You get a little bar at the top. You can also always turn everything off. And see. Does he know where the settings in his own app are. Yeah. Yeah, maybe here, a short glance at the plug-ins.

I'm using GitHub issues and the Google Calendar thing. And yeah, but there are also lots of more stuff. And yeah, recently, very recently they added, ah yeah. You can also add sections. Oh, okay. Yeah, that's maybe, let me think, maybe something else interesting. It's probably probably the most interesting stuff.

Yeah, maybe plug-ins is also, let me show how our example plug-in looks. For example, here is like the procrastination Buster plug-in. What this particular plugin does, it adds a button here at the top. And if you have here like different triggers of procrastination or different modes of procrastination, or different modes of procrastination. And then for example, I don't know, I feel overwhelmed by the stuff I have. And then strategies and like this one, yeah,

has a link, like so you can execute it directly. And yeah, maybe one last thing, yeah, there seems. So this is I also was added recently, that it's a little bit more wear bones. And you can, yeah, and you can, can set different background images and colors for the project and focus mode. Now also you can use flow time, Homodoro countdown. For example, if I want down, then yeah, we have a countdown which is running here.

And also write some notes. And because this is, you won't see it, but yeah, because this is, because this is, is like I see the icon it's not probably aligned but if you have like a task which is connected to an issue provider like which also like the kind of calendar stuff sounds as accounts as one then you also have a link here directly for example if this would be a GitHub issue you would here have a link directly to to the issue yeah yeah yeah okay I think now I'm done Okay.

Um, that's really cool. Um, if you're done, um, can you close the, uh, the capture? Yeah, yeah, there we go. Sweet. Okay, sweet. Now we're back to normal. That's cool. That's, that's really cool.

Oh. I always, see, here's the thing, right? I always like to try out these products. apps. And the problem that I have is I then get... I stop filling them out, right? And they're only as useful as you make them. So it's something where if you're going to use it,

you have to actually use it. Otherwise, you know, you're just... Half using it, like filling it out some days, not filling it out, I was like, maybe you have something out of it. But if you're not using it consistently, you're eventually going to hit a point where you just stop using it entirely. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Yeah, as we already said, like, people are very different. And I think if you don't feel like you're missing out on something, then I think there's also no reason to force productivity or to do app into your day. It's more like if you try it out and sticks, then it's probably a good thing. And if it doesn't, yeah, like people are so different. Also like, I don't know, what your regular work day looks like, but maybe for the work or how you work, it's really not necessary to have that or pen and paper are just better fits because maybe you don't do all this stuff. at the computer or something like that.

I feel like for the sake of dealing with distractions, like having a timer there might actually be something that's useful. I might have to properly mess around with it. Yeah, maybe just start with like, I don't know, a timer on your phone or something like that. Maybe just to see how it feels. Mm-hmm. I think that's the other It's nice to you have the ability to disable a lot of the functionality

Because that is something that A lot of these really big applications They can feel kind of overwhelming There's You know a great example It's a really good app for people to like it Obsidian, amazing app There's a lot of functionality it has though

And It can take a bit to sort of feel comfortable navigating around it, accessing the functionality you want to access. And obviously, you can still use it in a basic way, but it can be overwhelming to try something like that out. That's my main point. Yeah. Yeah. It's a, it's a, it's a big risk also. I think obsidian is a very good example for people. I'm also in the, um, I'm also in the, the obsidian subreddit and there are often people who say like or I'm tinkering with my tools rather than doing this stuff I'm supposed to do and there's a little bit of that risk also

with super productivity I'd say so yeah I really recommend just start with the basics don't don't think too much about it and if you feel like that is an actual gap or the problem that might need solving then then expand from there but yeah don't don't spend uh yeah just working on your tools rather than your tools yeah yeah this is a real common problem on on linux people will customize the desktops and never do anything useful i'm at the point where my system is my system i don't need to touch it nothing needs to change it it is It is what it is. It's not going to be good for anyone else, but it works for me.

But it took me a long time to get to that point. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's funny also for me. Like I remember when I was starting out as a programmer, I was always jumping like on the new stuff. Oh, there's a there's a new norm release or something. Let's try it out. Or there's a tool to try this out. And I don't know if it has to do with age.

But these days also like I'm pretty conservative when it comes to that and I'm just happy if my setup works and I don't have to spend so much time tinkering. So if somebody wants to get started with super productivity, what's the, like, what would you recommend they take a look at? I assume you have some documentation somewhere that they can get it started out or something? Yeah, there is some documentation now. I think it's still a bit work and progress. But I can send you a link maybe later for the docs. For me, personally, I'm not such a documentation guy. I like to do, yeah, just try things out.

And so what my recommendation would be is just to enter the web app. to your browser and then play around with that a little bit because it has almost all the features already which also the desktop app and the mobile app have and if you like it and then download it that's probably the best way to go about it

yeah that's something we didn't mention before but this is available on pretty much anything anything that you want to run it on is probably going to be available in some form I regret that I assume that's created a bit of a support nightmare yes yes

unfortunately yes it's yeah it's also like the problems you encounter with different platforms it's also not my favorite type of problem there you require some very specific knowledge and you knowledge you want you need

for ever again in your life. And yeah, you're spending a lot of time in the dark if something doesn't work. But yeah, now that it's there, I can't pull it at the moment, at least. Maybe if I find out, like, for example, like that nobody uses the snap release anymore, then maybe I can limit it

to just flat up. I don't know. Yeah, I'm looking at it right now. You've got, obviously, the Windows version. We've got a Windows Arm version of well for the three people that are using Windows Arm. But then on Linux, you have the App Image, RPM, Deb, Snap, and Flapback. Yeah, we've got everything. And those are like, yeah, those are all official packages.

Those are not like, hey, somebody has made one. Go use that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Usually people pick, like, one or two of those. Yeah. I don't know. I don't know. I think I wanted to make it available everywhere,

but yeah, in hindsight, maybe I shouldn't have. Like, I mean, like personally, I also have, I, because some apps are only available on FlatHub, some only on Snap. I have both on my system. And I think most long, long time Linux users have it. And, yeah. would have been probably fine.

No, I like, you know, if you can keep it up, I like having the options there, but I understand as well that desire to... See, the problem is if you cut back now, it's like, it's hard because people are using it. Oh, people don't like that. Understandably so. I said, like, I'm conservative myself, and I also hate it, like, when I start my computer and then something without me being responsible stops working.

I don't like that as well. Right, right. No, I get it. I do get it. Maybe just don't add any more platforms, and you'll probably be good. Thank you. I hope I take it too hard. Yeah, what even what even else could you add?

I don't even know. You know what? I don't know, you could make an AUR package. What package? That's the, yeah, another package. You can make the AUR, the arch user repository, the third-party package repo barge. There is one. This is actually, this one is not made by you.

Okay, it's not made by you. Yeah, of course, yeah. Okay, okay. But it's cool that it exists. I like that because I don't have to think about it too much. Luckily there's someone else doing it. Thank you, by the way. Yeah, that is nice.

I don't know if it's packaged well. I've got no idea. We can quickly find out to have a look. Is anyone who's complaining in the comments on it? looks like the current version actually might be okay wait no

okay so this comments a year ago okay there hasn't been a comment or not for about a year so it seems like it's been fine for a while okay very good

good well operating system are you on yourself I'm on Arch Linux oh yeah wow yeah yeah that's I'm a little bit

I thought I don't want to have my system break on me when I don't have to time. That's probably not fair to say it because I think it's probably pretty stable.

There's been... How's it going? There's been problems that have happened over the years. But we've been on a pretty good run for a while. There hasn't been any major issues. Yeah, I would say maybe the last two or so years, there hasn't been anything for my system, which has caused a problem. Now, whether that's happened for other people, who know.

but at least my run has been pretty stable. Granted, I don't change things out a lot. As I said, I have a setup that works for me and I pretty much just stick with it. So with there being less things to break, you're less likely to run into issues. The only issue I've had with my system have been hardware related, but that's unrelated to Arch.

That's just faulty drives dying and causing me a lot of fun and nightmares. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, when you're like editing and rendering video, the drives tend to get hit quite a bit, so it does sort of burn through them a little bit quicker than, you know,

regular system use. Yeah. So you had another project you wanted to talk about as well. I just didn't bring that up a bit. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, recently, and now it's a little bit of a controversial subject, but working as a programmer or at least like a web developer full time, there's currently no way around AI. And so yeah, I've been using it also a lot in the past months.

And there were many things I, or there were problems I encountered in working with it and in combining it with the existing tools I had. And so naturally I built my own one. And yeah, it's called parallel code. And I have to say for me personally, at least, it's really, it's really, it's really, really working well because I don't know if it's if it's a problem most people encounter. But for me, I'm very bad with this waiting time. If it had a compiling compiler or something, I, when I have to wait longer than, I don't know, six seconds, then then I open a browser and start procrastinating or yeah.

Uh-huh. Yeah. And so for me, I started doing multiple tasks side by side. Multitasking, not the best productivity strategy, but in this case, it's just, uh, yes, just become a reality. And it led to me at the end of the day program, I often felt very exhausted because, uh, uh, content switching. requires a lot of mental capacity and it's yeah it's it's it's really exhausting and um so i thought what would maybe ways to um reduce the stresses it produces and um what i mean you can't eliminate the stress completely but uh but with the good u i you can soften some of of the problems that arise with and also related to that the feeling of being lost a little bit, especially if you're doing these tasks side by side,

it's easy to lose track of what you're doing and getting in a weird, I don't know, sleepy, trans. When you don't know, just go from terminal to terminal and press yes, allow. And yeah, so yeah, I came up with parallel code. It's at its core, it's basically a terminal wrapper. So you can run different agents side by side. What comes on top of it is like automatic workflows. I don't know if you're familiar with Git workflows.

It's, yeah, it copies a Git folder completely. So you can work on the same project in different branches at the same time, basically then how I would put it. That's integrated into it. And then there are several helpers to make it easier. Maybe I can also show. Yeah, yeah, if you want to show it. Yeah, go ahead.

So... I did have the video you had on the website playing, but I think, yeah, if you walked me through it, that probably would be... Oh, um... There we go. Sorry, closed off... I closed off the thing. Just one second. Okay, here... Yeah, there we go.

Oh yeah, perfect. Yes, you can see. Currently, I have... I have three tasks for super productivity. Here these are the main agenetic terminals which are running. I think it is cloud, cloud and codex. And then you have changed file views, which shows like which files have been changed. You can also, here I just have this Tafone commit. You can also go through the commits,

which have been done in this branch. So you can review changes, uh, more, um, more granular, which makes it easier because AI just produce a lot of code and, and the reviewing part, um, yeah, becomes more important. So I thought this might be helpful. But I also like you can navigate everything with the keyboard. Can for example, you can open like the changed fire views and then you have you plan. If there is a plan written to disk, you can also review the plans in rendered markdown, which makes it a little bit easier to read. And then also common parts of this plan. Or you can ask it maybe what the fuck.

And then it spins up in line agent to explain what probably take some while. And you can. then the review comments you can send back to the agent terminal, then it does something with it. Oh, you can see. Oh, yeah. What the fuck? It's probably... Yeah. Yeah, this I like. And then you have a notes panel, which also like you, for example, can,

can use it to write down afterwards remember to run a to e or you can use it for follow-up instructions yeah find this quite handy and there's also a full screen view or then you can still switch between tasks via keyboard very quickly and Here, you can drop in GitHub links, which I did here, and so you have a building to it. Feature branches are created automatically. The work trees are created automatically. If like a merge view, show us which commits. Oh, lots of commits.

And you can also push directly if you have a CI running to that. There's also, it also indicators if there are errors on CI. Recently also added code coverage detection. So then it would show you in the change file panel, like everything has code coverage. Then this is also a feature, an optional feature which you can use, that it does summary while it's running stuff. So it becomes easier to if you are switching terminals really quickly, you have a quick way to recap what was it all about,

what did happen. And then what I also like is you have like terminal bookmarks, which you can use. For example, I could run the test and then I would have a little terminal here running the test and yeah, what else is there? Yeah, and if I can add new tasks, I can select like which CIA I want to use. You can also configure additional ones if you want, if your tool isn't cover. And you can also run things not only in a Virtry, but in a Docker container.

So it's completely separate. And I think that are the basic features. And then there's also an arena mode where you can let different models work on the same problem. So for example, maybe a. do it for a test project. I do, let's use maybe cloud and codex. And I can say write a beautiful problem. But something.

And then hopefully they don't crash. They sometimes do it if you run them from the. This way. Claude's dead. Oh. I know it works. Oh, yeah. You see, both are done.

This is okay, they, they throw out in line, but you can also check the terminal output here. And you can compare, like, what, what happened and what just better. You can merge them directly. You can, for your own purposes, you can rate them, how they did. So you have like a. I don't know, timeline then. And you can also take the results from both of them and say compare all.

And then it opens up a new third agent, which compares both. Let's see, maybe something interesting will happen. I'm not sure. Yeah, probably not because they have. haven't been file changes and what we requested. But yeah, I think that cover all. And you can also maybe also nice. You can do the same mechanic you have for the plan view.

You can also use for the code changes. So I can also say what the fact about particular changes if I want. don't write what the fuck be better be friendly to your AI overloads. And you can also ask questions about the code. And yes, it's not like something is not clear. And yes, it's not like something super innovative. But for me personally, like it really makes working

working much faster and also yeah much less training than it was before having this tour before I had like I was using multiple terminals side by side and I did the code review stuff I did in my IDE and and there was a lot of context switching involved and also yeah this I had to do the basically putting together what belongs together that I had to do in my head. And here I have it visually also, which looks really much better than it before. Yeah, and one more thing. You can also connect your phone to continue your work. I'd recommend that from a life quality point of view. But yeah, for example, if you go outside and you can use it to like the tail scale, and then you can say, yes, please do everything from your phone.

Okay. Yeah. Any questions? Well, this is not really an area that I've ever super... I've played with AI tools before. But dealing with agents are something I've not really played around with at this point. So a lot of what I'm seeing here is... Like, I knew it was possible.

I've seen people do it. It's just not something I really have any first-hand experience with. I think what you have here clearly lays it out well. and just sort of puts that information in front of you in a really convenient way. But I just have so little experience with this kind of software that it's hard for me to even sort of know what I would be missing or like what I could ask about it. Yeah, I see, yeah.

Yeah, I don't know. Are you writing quotes sometimes a little bit? or uh... uh... uh... personal projects yeah yeah

yeah yeah yeah it's probably probably uh hard to feel

the value in all this but it's probably also like depends on the person and I know there are different

many different tools all there already it's it's the space is moving crazy fast um

yeah but I I like the concept also like it's not like I mean there's open code also which is which is a cool project but yeah most projects around this say they have some venture capital and they have some big funding behind it and and their idea is often to to get you to pay for their AI rapper subscription right right and this is different in this regard because you just use the subscriptions you already have and you can use them within that tool and let's say in I don't know there comes a better solution along in a couple of months then there is no you don't use the skills you you develop with interacting with these AI terminals because it's not like a specific setup to it

It's just mostly a UI. I think it's cool. I think it's kind of cool. Are you done showing things at this point? Yeah, yeah, yeah, let me. Yep, easy, easy. There we go, okay, sweet. I think it's a cool project.

I think it's certainly... I've spoken to people who do mess around these AIO tools, and they do find it to be annoying until I have to, you know, place a bunch of windows all around the place and keep things sorted together. So having it all being integrated together and then not be something that is tied into, hey, you're in our ecosystem.

That seems like it has some value there. It seems like there's something... Whilst it's not a thing that I would use, it seems like for people who are in that space, there is something there that is at least worth playing around with. Yeah.

As I said, like for me personally, it's it really made my day more pleasurable. And yeah, as we's to do apps, probably it's like individual. Like maybe some people don't do this kind

of multitasking at all. Or maybe it's this also like more productive workflow in a way. but if you have like the same habit of getting distracted really easily when when you have to wait because that's probably that's how it is at the moment maybe they get faster in the future I don't know but yeah then then you might also find this helpful yeah um yeah I don't really have anything to add to that I I it's it

it is an area that I am very understand I understand that I'm very uninformed about what like the the current state of agents and really playing around with this software

it's an area that I really should I really should play around with more just to see what is actually possible at this point yeah Yeah. It's really an interesting question. Like for me as a programmer, I can't really make any predictions, like how the whole work situation will look like in a year or so. Because at the moment, like the CEOs of AI companies, they say like, oh, yeah, we are close to what's called the singularity.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And, well, but could well as be marketing, I don't know. And also what the impact of that would be if, like, having this capabilities means, like, you don't need programmers anymore or maybe you need more programmers and there will just be more software. It's, I really don't know. I really have no clue what will happen. But it's, yeah, certainly moving very fast.

And yeah, it's a really interesting times we're living in. Probably very likely not all for the better, but it's the moment, at least for the programmer sector, it doesn't look like it will be stopped or that there is any way of returning to the good old days. probably won't happen, which is also interesting, I think, for me, like programming changed a lot.

Like, before this AI tools, it was like a little bit like, there was also beauty to writing beautiful code and there's a lot of satisfaction, maybe a little bit comparable to solving a riddle or something like that.

Or maybe, maybe even writing a poem or something. And this is gone because at least me and my sector, there might be other sectors which are more security sensitive, sensitive where it might happen slower. But it's just, unfortunately, it's true that you are more productive as AI. And you kind of have to use it if you, if you won't have a job.

So, yeah, but it totally changed the profession. Yeah. Probably you're at a good place. I can't, well, I mean like AI influencers is also a thing.

It is a thing. I, are you worried that I will take your job? I don't know. I, like, I legitimately don't because right now it's still... There are these channels that do exist, but right now it's very obvious that... Like, what they are. But I don't know, again, where we're gonna be in three years.

Like, are we gonna be at a point where it is indiscernible? Right? But at the same time, what we have now, I think, has actually opened up the... Open up the doors for people who otherwise... who would make good content. who otherwise wouldn't have been out to get it out to people. So I've seen these, I've seen these like engineering channels and the channel creator is, I don't know, let's say they are from Pakistan, for example.

And English, they know English, like they can review what the AI is saying, but they're not comfortable in speaking it, right? And this has given them the ability to actually have a voice and they're physically making things, but they're using the AI as a bridge to sort of let them get that out there in a way that just was not going to happen before. And I think for stuff like that, it is really cool.

But when it comes to just entirely AI generated channels, right? Right now it's bad, but I don't know where things are going to be in a couple of years. And I think anyone who is saying that it's never going to be good, it's never going to get better, like you are delusional, right? Like you are deluding yourself. How expensive it's going to be? That's a whole other question. But I don't see things slowing down. And what that means not just in programming, not just in like news, content creation, what that then means in like, like,

legal field. What does that mean in basically any sort of knowledge work because robotics are much further away. There's definitely jobs that are being automated with machinery with robotics, but like we're not

replacing electricians with robots anytime soon. The robotics problem there is very complicated and I don't see that one or like a plumber, right? Things like that. You could build an AI system that can identify these problems but then actually having that operate in the physical world

is a whole, whole different matter. So these knowledge jobs, though, I just don't know what is going to exist 10 years from now. Yeah. Yeah, I have also no idea. Yeah. Yeah.

In the beginning, I thought like, like it's, yeah, there is just not, no real intelligence. Maybe that's probably still true in a way, but what you can do with that not real intelligence, it's really impressive. Like one example like this video generation, I remember in the beginning,

like there were these very weird looking faces and I thought, yeah, okay, this will take a long time. And now we have like very, very, very realistic videos to the point that it's that it's yeah that's also a little bit scary like when i for example my mother she is uh in her 70s and um i don't know even if i as someone in this specific specific business would recognize certain types of scams and yeah it's a little bit scary what what's coming possible

with that. Yeah, especially when with like scam calls, for example, when they're then combined with data leaks and data collection and they actually have private information that you wouldn't expect

a scam caller to know. That's really concerning. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I guess we are fight out. Yeah. We can't like, you know, you're not stopping, you're not stopping the train, right? This is happening and you're going to have to live in this world and you're going to have to work out how you operate in this world where nothing digital is real.

You just have to assume everything is fake. Yeah, probably they have to do so. Another thing I find interesting is like the amount of content that gets produced, like in form of text, but also in videos and now also on software, that there is so much, yeah, there's so much more software. I don't know, for games, I think it is like there are 10,000 games, new games, released every month. Yes, that's a lot of games.

Yeah. Who is going to play them all? Probably no one. Well, that's the thing. Most games on Steam, I don't think they actually make back the fee to put the game on Steam. Yeah. How many Steam games are released daily? This is in 2023, so it's probably sped up since then.

40 to 50 games a day. Ah, that's quite a lot. Yeah. Yeah, that is a lot. but almost all of these so there is this interesting this interesting chart I've seen whilst the number of games has

massively increased the number of good game it's not even proportional the number of good games hasn't right so total games skyrocketed and you look at this tiny little piece of the graph this pretty

stagnant line of the number of good games per year. So no amount of this tooling is going to make, at least for now, don't know where things are going to go, but someone who is a talented developer, a talented engineer, is always going to make considerably better products and projects with something than someone who has no idea what they're doing, right? Even if we get to a point where the AI can do everything for you, something needs to direct it in the correct way. And this, you know, before we hit superintelligence, above human intelligence, like, that's a whole other story. But whilst we're still at a point where they're kind of just, like, flopping around, you know, you know,

need someone there that is going to be able to direct it. Yeah, at least for the time being. It's also like, what I'm hoping was programming that like, it's said that AI is not yet a good architect. And I hope it will stay like this for a little way longer. But if it becomes a good architect, then it's, it's coming to the point where you have to ask like what, That's even the point of working on an anything.

Yeah, yeah. I don't have an answer. I don't have an answer. Damn it. I wish I did. Give up and go be an electrician. There's the answer. Go be a mechanic.

Yeah. Yeah. It's a tough problem. It really is. Yeah. I think we've been very a problem. much touch on everything I want to talk about. Unless there's anything else that you wanted to touch on.

No. I think, yeah, thank you very much for letting me talk this much. Yeah, no, it was a pleasure. I know, like, the main thing of that super productivity, but I enjoyed the rambling about AI and where things are going and project funding as well. And I think it's fun. I hope people enjoyed it. and they got something out of it.

Yeah, I hope so too. Um, if people want to check out the project and get involved, um, where can they go? Um, uh, for both projects. Probably the GitHub pages. Okay. Yeah, maybe I can send a link or? Uh, the GitHub's linked at the bottom for super productivity. Is it the same for the other one?

Yes, yes it is. Yep, so there's the GitHub for parallel code. There is the GitHub for super productivity. Yeah. Any... That's probably the best place for both projects. Anywhere else you want to direct people to? If you want to support the project or anything like that.

There's a separate for super productivity. There's also like a YouTube channel. There's not much content on it about super productivity. And there's also like social media. There is blue sky and must have done and also a discord community. A little bit if if you're into that. But for everything technical or for feature ideas of for bugs or all that kind of stuff, the best place is a GitHub page for both projects.

Fair enough. If people want to support the project or anything like that, did you mention that? I might have zoned out for a second. Yes, yes. There are lots of ways to do that. It's possible to donate, like we are GitHub sponsors. And also what helps quite a lot is spreading the word

that those projects exist. that's probably one of the most impactful things you can do. Okay. That's everything? I think so. Okay. I'll do my lecture and then we'll sign off. Okay.

My main channel is Brodie Robertson. I do Linux videos there six-ish days a week. Sometimes I stream it as well. I've got the gaming channel that is Brody on games. Right now I'm playing through Shenmoo 3 and Metal Gear solid too. If you're watching the video version of this, you find the audio version of basically every podcast platform. There is an RSS feed as well. And the video is on YouTube at Tech Over T. Also, we have a Spotify video, if you like Spotify video for some reason.

How do you want to sign us off? What do you want to say to end off the show? Thank you very much for having me. It was a real pleasure. Absolutely pleasure. Yeah, really cool. I enjoyed talking to you. And yeah, all the best of your endeavors. Thank you. I appreciate it.