The Changelog: Software Development, Open Source - Coming home to GitHub (Interview)

Episode Date: December 9, 2022

This week we're joined by Christina Warren, Senior Developer Advocate at GitHub, and a true tech and pop culture connoisseur. From her days at Mashable covering the intersections of entertainment and technology, to Gizmodo, to Microsoft, and now her current role at GitHub we talk with Christina about her journey from journalist to developer, and the latest happenings coming out of GitHub Universe. BTW, we're planning to get Christina on Backstage in the new year to talk about Plex, MakeMKV, and all things that go into hosting your own media server. Drop a commment on this episode with a +1 if you want to see that happen.

This week on The Change Lab, we're joined by Christina Warren, senior developer advocate at GitHub and a true tech and pop culture connoisseur from her days at Mashable covering the intersection of entertainment and technology to Gizmodo to Microsoft and now her current role at GitHub. We talk with Christina about her journey from journalist to developer and the latest happenings coming out of GitHub universe. By the way, I'm planning to get Christina on backstage

sometime in the new year to talk about Plex, make MKV and all the things that go into hosting your own media server. Drop a comment on this episode with a plus one if you want to see that happen.

A massive thank you to our friends at Fastly and Fly. Our pods, hey, they're fast to download because Fastly is fast you to our friends at Fastly and Fly. Our pods, hey, they're fast to download because Fastly is fast. Check them out at Fastly.com. And our friends at Fly make it too easy to put your app and your database closer to users with no ops required. Check them out at Fly.io. This episode is brought to you by Influx Data, the makers of the InfluxDB time series platform. With its data collectors and scripting languages,

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data including native sql support if you want to learn more and see how the new influx db engine works sign up for the influx db beta program at influxdb.com slash changelog again influxdb.com slash changelog so so we're here with christina Warren, finally on the pod. Been a fan for a while. Been a fan of you for pretty much forever. I can remember the oldest of days, I would say. Maybe Mashable to Gizmodo to Microsoft to GitHub. That's sort of a paraphrase of your journey, but welcome to the show.

Thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited to be here. I'm also a fan, and you two had pointed out beforehand, and we met, I guess, like four and a half years ago at a podcasting meetup. Yeah, 2017. Yeah, 2017 or 2018 at Microsoft Build, which feels like forever ago, but also feels like yesterday. And we had a great conversation about podcasting

stuff. So I'm a big fan of the podcast and very happy to be here. We've got similar roots too, I believe. Did you begin at 5x5 or was that like one of the first podcasts you had done? I did. Okay. Because Jared and I were even trying to like go back in our history to see like when things began. And he was like, I think she was before that. Yeah. I was thinking you're on Twit for some reason, but it was five by five. Oh, I'm not, I'm not actually sure which one I did first. They might've been around the same time because I was friends with Dan Benjamin

and before he started five by five, ironically, I actually think the reason I have a GitHub account was because of Dan Benjamin, because it was 2009 and you know, he was big into the Ruby world and we were, you know, using it for something. And so I think that was why I originally signed up for GitHub back in 2009, when the service was about a year old. And before he formed 5x5, he was kind of had the idea of what would this look like. And he and I would be on instant messenger all day. And we'd kind of, you know, he'd throw ideas off of me back and forth. And so I had one of the first podcasts on that network. It didn't last very long, but we did do a show together.

And I don't know if I was on Twit, if I'd been on Twit yet or not, but 5x5 was definitely one of the first. Yeah, it's just interesting that there's so many roots. We just talked to BDougie, actually, speaking of GitHub. And he and i have a history i was not aware of when i when i met him for the first time at all things open just a few weeks ago he reminded me that he actually interviewed for a job with me at a non-profit

i was working at he didn't end up taking the job because it just circumstances whatnot but i don't even remember any of it honestly and uh and I was like, wow, I sure hope I wasn't a jerk and just all that good stuff. It's like, you know, hey, was I? I was kind. Thank you very much. I appreciate that. But there's these rich histories that I guess

if you've been in the game long enough, and we have been in the game for quite a while, it's like, you know, there's a lot of history there that is interesting, one, to just remember, but then two, just to sort of bring up because we'll have brand new listeners come to the show or old time listeners who are like catching up and they're like what's Christine up to

what's her journey and how do we all sort of like uh intertangle with our histories and what not and 5x5 is one of ours because we were on 5x5 for a little bit we began as our own show and we thought let's let's migrate to 5x5 because Dan was you know so prolific and doing so well and we thought let's let's migrate to five by five because dan was you know so prolific and

doing so so well and we needed a better home than i think the janky tumblr we were on and i forget what our podcast setup was but seemed you know he was really helping it was tumblr wasn't it it was tumblr originally but i think we were what was the actual podcast we're using i believe buzzsprout which is still around and actually has gotten like a Renaissance for Buzzsprout. Like they were lingering for a while and not so much innovation. Now they're really big into podcasting, but it's just interesting. Like we were, we thought, well, five by five and Dan will help us to build our bigger audience and stuff like

that. And, you know, we ended up coming back to ourselves cause we had different motives and, you know, different trajectory. Cause we really wanted to be a self-contained brand. And we realized that we couldn't be that. We'd be an also-ran or in the shadows in 5x5's world. And that was okay while the time frame made sense. But Dan helped us like you as well. No, totally. Yeah. A show that I still do called Overtired originally started at 5x5. And then we migrated to our own thing kind of similarly. It also, you know, it's a smaller show.

But no, I mean, I think that's, for so many of us, it's interesting how small, I mean, it's such a big world, but it's also a small world, you know, the tech space. And there are people that you run across, like you said, all the time, and people who help you on your journey. And sometimes you remember those interactions. Sometimes you have to be reminded when you catch up again. But it's that's one of my favorite things, I think, kind of about the world that we're in is that lives and stories intersect and overlap and sometimes in ways you don't expect. And for me, it's always a reminder.

I'm not always successful, but I always try to be kind to people and to be helpful to people because I always remember and I'm always grateful to so many people who've been helpful to me and who've given me chances over the years. And I always want to do what I can to try to, like, pay it forward, you know, for them. And I'm sure that you should feel the same way because those people who help you out really, really help you out and don't often know that they've made an impact. And so I think that that's one of the best things we can do is to try to pay things forward when possible, because you never know this person you meet. This has happened to me a number of times where I meet someone and they might, you know, not have a name, might not be anybody just working on a small project. And then a few years later are like a BFD, you know, or like a major, major person. And you're like, wow, that's amazing.

You never know. You never know who somebody is going to become or where your journey is going to take you. So it's a good reminder to not be a jerk, to be kind, but more importantly, value the relationship and the smallness yet bigness of our tech world. Because, you know, we've said this recently, I think even on a All Things Open podcast,

the anthology we just released recently from the conference, the hallway track we call it, is just this idea, I mean, obviously, to just not burn bridges and to be kind because the world is small

and the shoe does go to the foot, so it does happen. It really does. I think I love that. What I think is interesting too is your journey. I mean, you were not always I think is interesting too, is, is your journey. I mean, you were not always in the developer world. You were, I would say more so I knew you from the pop culture where your, your handle film girl, I mean, kind of alludes to that, right? I

mean, it didn't turn into dev girl. It's, it's still film girl. No. Although you may be a developer today, you know? Yes. Well, so it's funny because my background, like going all the way back to when I first got into anything, you know, I, when I built my first website, when I's funny because my background, like going all the way back to when I first got into anything, you know, when I built my first website when I was 12, you know, I've always, for as long as I can remember, the two things I've loved the most in the world have been, you know, movies, pop culture, TV, and technology. Those have always been kind of my two biggest passions. And I was lucky enough when I was a journalist, and the story there is that I graduated from college in 2008, right in the middle of the Great Recession. And I'd always thought I was going to go to law school and wanted to be either

a technology attorney or an entertainment attorney, ideally an entertainment attorney, because I figured, well, I could leverage that and maybe be a producer and work at a studio or for a TV network or something and use my power to get projects I want to get made made. That was the big pie in the sky goal. But in 2008, going to law school and taking out loans didn't seem like maybe the best idea. It was a little bit. I think that I totally understand the hesitancy of kids who are graduating now or who are going to be graduating next spring, you know, about the uncertainty in the world. And so I did the very logical thing, which I'm being ironic here because it's not logical at all. And I was like, well, I'll just go into

the very stable career of journalism. She's rolling her eyes, by the way, for those who don't see the video. She's kind of rolling her eyes. Yeah, I'm rolling my eyes and being very sarcastic. I was doing some freelance web development stuff, but I was like, okay, well, I need to make some money. What can you do? I was like, well, I can write. And blogging and new media were really starting to kind of take hold.

And I knew that there was no way that I was going to, even though I was a very good writer, that I would never get a job at a major magazine or newspaper without that sort of pedigree because I didn't study that in school. And I didn't live in New York. And there were just a lot of things that at least back then were not going to be aligning to me immediately being able to go into that sort of career. And so I had this feeling, I was like, you know, technology, this blogging thing,

this social media thing is really taking off. And so I was early on Twitter, I was early on a lot of other platforms. And I sort of was lucky enough to build a name for myself in those spaces and blog. And I blogged about technology and about pop culture, you know, like, I was like, well, write about what you love, write about what you know, I know, the entertainment industry in that world. And I know, you know, the tech world, both gadgets and some more developer focused topics. And then that ended up merging into me getting a job at Mashable, which is a website that it's still around, but it used to be a very, very big website, like one of the biggest in the social media web 2.0 world. Like it's hard for me to explain, I guess, how big Mashable was at its peak, but we were like

BuzzFeed before BuzzFeed. BuzzFeed wound up taking over Mashable and became much, much bigger than Mashable ever was, even though we still tried to think that we were competitive. We were not. But we were a really, really big site that went from being nine people, like I was employee number nine when I joined in 2009 to, I think at its peak, there were 300 people employed, you know, across all departments and across, you know, we had. That is big. Yeah, it was, you know, we had offices in London and in Australia and we had an operation for Mashable Asia out of Singapore. And we had, you know, office, we had, our base was in New York city, but we also had a San Francisco office and a Los

Angeles office. Yeah, it was a real company. We had a real dev team and real stuff. It started out as a WordPress blog, one of the largest actually, then migrated to our own stack and had our own product team and all that stuff. But when I started there, you know, small, I got to kind of see the rise of everything. But I was lucky that I got in at kind of the right time and then, you know, kind of rode the wave. And then I wrote about pop culture because that's what I liked. But I always tried to write about the intersection. My favorite thing to write about was always the intersection between digital and entertainment, which wound up, honestly, I don't often like to give myself too much credit because predictions were often wrong.

And we remember the times we're right, but I have to also remind myself of the many, many times I was wrong. But in 2011, when I started the entertainment section at Mashable, I have to say I was dead on because what would become one of the biggest stories of that decade was, I think, like kind of the streaming media and the intersection of

technology and entertainment and how those two worlds would collide. And I knew it. I knew that that was going to be a thing. And I really wanted us to be the place that would be the definitive site for that. We were not, to be very clear. It didn't work out that way, but we tried, and it was a lot of fun. Those were all the fun days. That kind of journey was fun. I mean, from the outside, I would say you were. To me, Mashable was the place.

My wife's homepage was Mashable. She would send me links all the time, and my wife is also in tech, too. And it was just funny. That she would send me links all the time. And my wife is also in tech too. And it was just funny, like that was a different day to, from the outside, it seemed like you, you very much were, you know, I know Buzzfeed eventually came around, but. Totally. No, at our peak, we definitely were. I just mean like in terms of where things went and obviously everybody else caught up. Like I, I remember having a conversation, I think it was in 2011 with some of my colleagues at Mashable and realizing we need to become the New York Times before the New York Times becomes us. And I actually,

I know I said this because it's quoted someplace. And I have to give the New York Times credit, they became us better. It's interesting. I don't want to go on too much of like a digression on this. But when I think about company pivot stories and transformation stories, Apple is obviously the gold standard and one of the best examples. But I have to say, from 2014, where the New York Times was then and what they are now and how they completely pivoted their business and became digital first and actually now are an incredibly strong tech company. A lot of what they do really is, you know, tech. A lot of their stuff is product focused, as well as being fantastic journalism. I have nothing but respect and admiration for that,

because it's rare for large companies to make those sorts of pivots, let alone, you know, like the biggest and to do it so well that you wind up not only succeeding, but beating all of the digital first companies that were nipping on their heels. Vice, BuzzFeed, Mashable, Business Insider, Huffington Post, all these Vox Media, all these really big, high investment things are smaller than the New York Times. And the New York Times, you know, has managed to actually also be profitable. So it's, we definitely, the way I guess I, ways I said we didn't succeed is because they did become us before we could become them. But back in those days, the Web 2.0 kind of era back when things were starting to become siloed,

but it wasn't as siloed as it is now, that was a really fun time to be on the internet, both for people making things and people just excited about experiencing the web. And I'm really glad that I was able to be part of that. That statement reminds me of Reed Hastings, which you're probably well aware of what he said about HBO back in the day. Yes.

Which is that Netflix has to become HBO before HBO becomes Netflix. We're like a decade past then. The streaming wars have somewhat peaked and settled. And I don't know, it's curious as another digression, like here we are almost 2023. What's your take on like the state of streaming, the Disney, you know, moves, what's going on today and where's it headed? Yeah, no, I think that's great. And I have to say, I probably was ripping off Reed Hastings when I made that statement great. And I have to say, I probably was ripping off Reed Hastings when I made that statement

about like Mashable at New York Times. I probably was- It was a smart thing to say in both cases. Very smart. I was probably unintentionally ripping him off because that was, you know, they famously bought Game of, not Game of Thrones,

they famously bought House of Cards. HBO, what had bid, was going to buy it. And then Netflix said, we will pay an amount of money that HBO cannot pay, which I think was $100 million, which was kind of a record at the time. And it totally transformed their business. Streaming is an interesting place right now. Obviously, it's the future, but...

It still sucks, though. It does. Right? It's supposed to be better. Tell like it is, Jared. Tell like it is, man. No sugarcoat. Well, it sucks, but there are benefits i have to say like if you think about how we watched tv a decade ago we had some

streaming services they were nascent there was a tivo oh i loved tivo i loved tivo yes but in comparison to what we have today i'm saying honda man is better but tivo was cool well not only that but tivo and and we're now we're going back more than a decade. We're talking the aughts. TiVo had a service. I remember this because I was one of their beta testers, because that's the sort of nerd I am. And they would send me pre-production units to test, and I would test software things.

But they had a server option where you could run software on your computer, and you could basically stream from your home TiVo your recordings on your computer. And then I think they eventually released like an iPad app like years later. And it was never a big thing for them. And, you know, they are a great example of somebody who has the best product, the best interface, but because of the price and because they didn't license, which, you know, it's a whole other digression, the generic versions won out. But if you think TiVo notwithstanding how we watched TV a decade ago, you had a couple of streaming things, but you had to mostly watch it, you know, on the terms of the content creators. And there was some

video on demand stuff, but it was, you know, not a great experience. And so you had to be there live. And that could be great. But it also meant like had to be in your house even if you wanted to stream stuff. I couldn't be. I'm at my parents' house right now as I'm recording this. So I wouldn't be able to watch stuff that I paid for because I was in a different location. And we've taken that for granted. I think that now we can watch things on our own terms. And I think that is a huge benefit.

But the challenge, obviously, is that the content budgets have blown up so much that it's not sustainable. And I think if anything, also, as consumers, I think a lot of us have been overwhelmed by all the choices. And so you had this big boom. And now what we've seen happen over the last year with Netflix and some moves with Disney Plus and some other things is the reconsolidation of, you know, the second acquisition of HBO and whatever that story is going to be is that I do think that there will be a little bit of a, you know, reckoning and probably less smaller content budgets, you know,

maybe fewer shows. But I hope that also I hope that we invest more in UX and discovery. When I said it sucks, that was what I was referring to. The shows are better than they've ever been, right? Like I'm not complaining about shows, but gosh, the experience is not good. It's awful.

It's not. And it's because we know it could be better, right? Like there is something to be said, I think about curation, about discovery, about making it easy to access things and not always be some A-B tested. Who's going to tap on this more or click on this more with a remote? Just what is going to be a better user experience? I wish that could be prioritized more because I think that if companies did that, maybe this is wishful thinking.

This is probably wishful thinking. This is probably wishful thinking. But in my part, I'm thinking if you gave a better product, you'd probably have lower churn rates and could maybe even charge higher prices. But that is probably wishful thinking. by far my favorite platform to TV on. Like I will buy one for every TV. I wish they would actually make a TV so I don't have to actually buy a TV and then attach a device, but whatever. Then you'd have to like replace your TV when you want the newest chip or something like that. So maybe that's a good thing, but. Right, yeah.

Some of the LG TVs have it built in. I think some of the Samsung ones do too. I know my parents. It's not the same though, really. I mean, it's the app. It's not really the Apple TV itself though. So I kind of get that. The Apple TV itself is a phenomenal piece of not the same, though, really. I mean, it's the app. It's not really the Apple TV itself, though. So I kind of get that. Like, the Apple TV itself is a phenomenal piece of technology.

No, I totally agree. The interface, yeah, you're right. I wish that, like, my LG TV had that interface. It has AirPlay on it, which is great. Well, the horsepower. You know, the Bionic chip, the E15 chip is amazing. You know, a lot of stuff they're doing around 4K. I wish they would get lossless audio because I'm the kind of person who rips my stuff to Plex lossless via MKV.

See? Kindred spirits here. Me too. I'm exactly the same way. I'm a diehard Plex for life person. You know, I will not put a disc in. I will rip it before I put a disc in. But you're probably like me.

I still buy a lot of stuff on disc because I want the best quality and I want the extra features. Yes, precisely. And then I have to use MakeMKV or something else and rip it. And I have scripts. I have a whole process. Yeah. Adam, you and I, we should have a separate podcast sometime about how we could manage

media. Yes. Let's do a backstage on this because I think there's a lot of people in our audience who would love to hear more of this. This is not more of a changelog topic, but we should do it. We have a show called Backstage. It's the inside of the changelog, basically. Things we're interested in. We just nerd out on stuff. Let's nerd out on some MKV

and Plex stuff. But okay, so the Apple TV is by far the best interface, in my opinion. So at least on that front, we are innovating. The UX is amazing there. But when you get to the streamings, then it's like jump from app to app and no unified interface and even you know the things that apple's doing i don't think unifies all of them very well no because

they can't get everybody to agree right like they have some partners who can be part of it and other people don't and and it's have you used the amazon prime app it's awful i have i have i have and we shouldn't have i think the app as paradigm like it's no longer channels, it's apps. I think that was wrong. I agree. It should be unified. It shouldn't be apps. I don't want to switch between Amazon Prime and Netflix and have two different UIs, two different experiences.

Right. No, it's interesting because I think in a lot of ways, this is actually what the halcyon days of Web 2.0 and a lot of things like Web development was to have these open standards and to make things interoperable. And in a perfect world, you could just have a feed that you could get, an API that you could call, and pull in those shows into an interface if you're choosing. But instead, it moved into this very app-by-channel design where everybody wants their own silo. And it's been interesting to see a lot of the discussion around Mastodon. And look, I have plenty of issues with Mastodon, but I think ActivityPub and I think that a lot of these open standards around federation and being able to syndicate and subscribe to people's services and your own terms, I think that's actually going in a really good direction.

And I hope that there's more appreciation of that. Yeah. We can talk a lot of crap about it now, but there will be innovation. We just had Eugene on the show five years ago. We want to have him back on sometime soon. We have an email invite out to him. There was nobody using it back then. We said, Federation is here, something in the way, it's messed up in a way. Join the Federation, and then no.

The answer was no. And, you know, sometimes things take a decade to really get to the place it needs to be at the right moment, which I think is the case there. Yeah, I do too. But I think that that's sort of the story of open source, right? Which is also sort of a GitHub story in some ways too, is that it's slow at first, and then the momentum builds,

and then all of a sudden it's just ubiquitous. Well, at this point, open source just keeps winning, you know? And I think that, and that's our story too. Like we began the changelog similar to you with our inception date was November 19th, 2009. So we just celebrated our 14th birthday. I don't know what it was, November 19th, you know? So we began this a year after GitHub was formed. And time and time again, open source has won again and again. And we began this show around open source. Now it's become more of the direction, the future of innovation around software, not just simply open source. But because open source has won, of course it is open source. So everything is open source now. Right. I was going to say, the reason your focus change isn't because you care any less about open source,

but because you no longer have to make that distinction. Because it's just the accepted, like, you just expect. It's the expectation it becomes the de rigueur kind of goal, which is it's going to be open. And people that aren't, it's no longer people asking,

you know, is this on GitHub? Is this open source? And I'm not trying to conflate the two, to be clear. I'm just saying, you know, like, can I have access to the source control? Can I, you know, see this? That's no longer the question. It's more, if it's not there, it's people questioning, why isn't this, right? Like, that's changed, where it used to be people having to almost beg and, you know, almost like, beg to be open. And now it's like, no, you have to defend your choice if you're going to not make some of your stuff available. And look, there are valid reasons people can do what they want to do.

But yeah, to your point, like that's this is just now the ethos of how it works, which is incredible. This episode is brought to you by Sentry. Build better software faster, diagnose, fix, and optimize the performance of your code. More than a million developers in 68,000 organizations already use Sentry, and that includes us. Here's the easiest way to try Sentry. Head to sentry.io slash demo slash sandbox.

That is a fully functional version of Sentry that you can poke at. And best of all, our listeners get the team plan for free for three months. Head to sentry.io and use the code changelog when you sign up three months at a century.io and use the code changelog when you sign up again, century.io and use the code changelog. Let me share a quick related win. So I did set us up, a Mastodon instance at changelog.social. And, you know, I've been on Twitter since I think back to the same time, 09. I can't remember the age of my Twitter account, but just forever.

And I've used it in enjoyment and anger and all the different places Twitter has been for like a large like pretty much my entire adult life which is kind of strange to think about but I set up a Mastodon instance and then I went to our home page there and I was like why is nothing trending I'm like that's kind of weird it's only changed all accounts there's nine accounts so it's not like everybody and I wanted to know why nothing was trending and so you know what I did I just realized I can clone the repo I can load up the code into my editor. I can find the code that runs the trending page, and I can read it. And I can know exactly what's going on. And it's like, hello, Jared, you've been in software development for a long time. You've been in open source a long time. But I feel like

I've just been stuck in this proprietary land and kind of forgot how cool it is to just have the code of the website that you're currently running, right? Of the app you're using. Even if you're not going to change it now, I got to there and I realized, oh, you got to have at least five interactions before it trends. And I'm like, well, I would like that to be lower because we have a smaller account. I could change that code and deploy it. I mean, I'm preaching the choir here, but it's just so much cooler. No, it is. It is. I mean, it's just, that's fantastic. I love that so much. So, uh, I guess we're far afield here talking to Macedon, but, uh, it's on our mind. It's closer to GitHub though. Closer. We are getting closer to GitHub. Bring us to GitHub,

bring us from Mashable to GitHub, GitHub in 30 seconds or less. Gotcha. Okay, so I worked in media. I enjoyed my life there and wrote about a lot of tech things. I kind of shifted away from doing pure entertainment stuff to mostly actually doing a lot of tech coverage. I often wrote about developer experience stuff and would go to developer conferences

and often attend the technical sessions too. Some journalists do that, but it's not a super common thing because most people who write about that stuff don't care about all those intricacies. But I'm a nerd first and foremost, so I always did. And Microsoft reached out to me in 2017 about a job, and that ended up turning into a role where I was there for about five years. I was a cloud developer advocate working in developer relations and working on some video strategy and content strategy stuff, speaking at a lot of conferences, doing hosting for things like Microsoft Build and Microsoft Ignite. And also, my last year there, I actually was focused on trying to kind of be a bridge in some ways between all the various Linux groups at the company and focusing on trying to kind of be a bridge in some ways between all the various Linux groups

at the company and focusing on trying to improve the developer experience for Linux users on Azure. And I've always been a huge GitHub fan. As I mentioned, my account goes back to 2009 and was a fan before the acquisition. And I think I even sent an email to some execs when the acquisition happened. And I was like, don't mess up my favorite website. They're like, we won't, we won't. And then the opportunity came for me to join GitHub this past spring. And so I joined the developer relations team there.

And you mentioned that you talked to BDougie at All Things Open. He was my manager until he left. But I work with Martin Woodward, who's fantastic. He actually originally created Microsoft's GitHub instance and account and was the first person to really fight and get Microsoft using GitHub, which even before the acquisition, they were a really big customer and user. And he really fought hard for that. And I really, really enjoy it. What we do in developer relations, developer advocacy specifically,

is BDougie used to call us the hype house for GitHub. And I think that's a pretty good approximation insofar as we're working a lot with the product and the engineering teams and giving them feedback based on what we're hearing from users and from customers and community members. But we're also directly engaging with the community. When I say that I develop Ravikate, a lot of people wonder what that means. They're like, are you just a paid shill for GitHub? No, no. If anything, like I kind of think it's the inverse. Like I'm actually like a paid shill for our users because those are the people I care about and, and, you know, the community members. So if there are problems, then I want to be able to know that and do what I can to bring

it back to people who have the places that they can reach out to that. But sometimes like we all know, like when you're in the middle of a developer cycle, development cycle, you know, you have your own ideas about how something is going to be used. And you might not be aware of some of the edge cases or you might not be aware. Some people might use things in some ways you didn't anticipate. And so it's useful for people to get that feedback. We can offer that. We can also show off cool things that we're doing because there's so much stuff going on.

It can be hard to keep up. So create videos or do live streams, give talks. And then, you know, beyond that, also just trying to kind of find and celebrate all the amazing things that are happening within the broader open source community, because so many cool things are happening. And I, that's my favorite part of my job, honestly, is being able to give shout outs and to highlight the great stuff that people are building all the time because I love that. I've always loved that. When I was a writer, I used to love to help people discover cool things. bought my car or this had a big impact on how my business was able to grow. And I've never tried to take that lightly in terms of what you can offer when you have an audience and showcasing others.

And so I love being able to find really cool projects happening in the community and hopefully share those out and get them more attention or more support through things like GitHub sponsors and working in other ways to try to make things more sustainable. So that's, that's the longer than 30 seconds, but, but that was kind of the journey. I like the idea of the hype house, honestly. And I think BNugget hit it on the head. Cause I think that that's, you know, the line between, it's almost like you've said it a couple dev relations dev advocacy well what is the difference can you just say one of them does it have to be both of them and what does that role

even do we've had several shows on that in the past but it's it's a fine line really and then people want to say you're a paid shill well i think it it could be true if you didn't opt in to work there and if you didn't really love the thing right and if you didn't really love the thing, right. And if you didn't, then you would be a paid show because you're literally just collecting a paycheck to just do the stuff. But like, if you have a true passion for it, it's different. It is also be totally honest.

Like, look, if that is what you are, you're not going to be successful. People like when I joined Microsoft, like I was a well known Apple user and like an Apple pundit. And like, that was what I was known for.

And so people, when I said I was joining Microsoft, people were like, wait, are you joking? And I had to like, when I made my announcement tweet, I had to like have a follow-up. This is not a joke, right? Because people thought that I was, I was joking. I was like, this is not a joke. This is real. So I still obviously was a fan and user of Apple stuff. In fact, I primarily like like they gave me a Surface, but I primarily use a MacBook, you know, Microsoft. And then, like I said, my last year there, because of what I wanted to do, it was my choice. I wanted to focus on on Linux stuff, because I've, you know, not a big Linux on the desktop person. I mean, I've looked, I've been there, I've done that many, many times over the years, but I have respect for it. But it's, you know, I'm a Mac user.

But I'm a huge proponent of, you know, I'm a Mac user, but I'm a huge proponent of, you know, Linux in the server and in that ecosystem, and really wanted to do what we could to improve our tooling there. People would know if I suddenly started saying, oh, use this particular tool or package, like they would know that that wasn't authentic, right? But if I'm finding things that I find are really interesting, like, you know, the Windows subsystem for Linux, which genuinely, to me is one of the coolest and biggest things that's happened in a long time, and I think has hugely made the development experience for people who use Windows so much better, the Windows Terminal, things like the remote extension for Visual Studio Code.

These are all things that I genuinely am excited about and like. And so I was happy to talk about them. Also happy to take feedback and to let people know, hey, when something's broken or if it's not working, right? Like I at least can find the right people to yell at, right? Like yell at me, I'll find someone else to yell at, right? That's sort of how that goes. But you have to be authentic about it. And if you're not, if you don't really care, like it's not going to work because developers, they smell it immediately. Like we are a very discerning audience. And if you don't really care about what you're talking about, people will know and it won't work. And I've turned down jobs before, frankly, that I've had about things that

I just wasn't passionate about because I was like, I can't, I can't fake this, right? Like, it's not me. That's what was so great about me joining GitHub is that, again, like I've been like a fan, like a genuine fan through many of the different iterations of GitHub as a company and as a service. And for me, it was kind of a dream in some ways because I was like, oh, this is an opportunity for me to come home. You're home finally, right? Exactly. Because I get to work on stuff that I love so much and I get to share the cool things happening. And, you know, ideally also get to represent and highlight and help people in the broader, you know, ecosystem, broader communities, you know? I do know. Somewhat of a potential side tangent, but still on point. In terms of like fighting for your authenticity inside of a company, let's say with Microsoft, if you're I don't know if you're still sort of like, you know, super pro Apple or how your position has changed.

But like, how do you how do you fight to maintain your own DNA inside of a place where you're like, well, I'm really a fan of this direction, the Linux and the Apple direction, not so much the Microsoft direction. How did you did you find it challenging to fight for your own personal taste? Yes and no. So I was lucky enough that like part of the reason they hired me and at least as I saw it, I was like, okay, well, you're hiring me, you know, for me. So if I change, that's not necessarily going to be useful for all of us.

And Microsoft, especially at that time, was really trying to make entries into communities that had historically not had any strong affiliation for Microsoft at all. And you do that by having, the only way that works is if you make changes that are actually positive. And if you show that you've changed and evolved and that you can do things for those communities. So my personal rule of things has always been, there are always exceptions. But in general, I will, and this is not just specific to Microsoft or GitHub, this was even when I was a journalist working at media companies, I'm not going to use my platform to just, you know, there are people who can do that. And I think that's great. That's just not my thing. As we were talking at the very beginning, don't burn bridges.

That's just not my thing, right? Like, I'm not going to use it to insult things I don't like. Having said that, I'm also not going to promote things on my own personal channels that I don't think are cool or that I don't like. So for me, that was sort of the balance, right? Like, if you want to pay me to make something better or to promote something or to write a talk on something, and I realize that there are some problems, then that is my opportunity because I'm an employee to then find a way to make this something that I can emphatically support and promote, right? But just because I work for you doesn't mean that I'm going to use my platform and my name, because it is my name at the end of the day, to, you know, again, like sell something that

or encourage something that I don't like or that I don't agree with. I will do the courtesy of abstaining from making any comment on it, but I'm not going to promote it, right? No, of course, that isn't to say that just because I don't talk about something on Twitter, that means I don't like it. I'm not saying that. I'm just saying like I to me, that was always sort of the balance, which is I will do the courtesy of not of taking all of my critique and the work that I want to do to improve. I will keep that private. I'm not going to do that publicly. I don't think that's effective. But I'm not going to, you know, promote something under my name and shows me off and get excited about it under my name.

Again, if you want me to create demos or tutorials for something that I think could be improved, that's completely different. But stuff that is under who I am, I'm not going to do that if I don't believe in it. So that was always how I kind of, I think, accomplished that. That's awesome. I'm glad you shared that because a lot of people

just need that framework, permission to say no, almost, you know, like especially the newer up and comers that don't have the pedigree in the in the history that you have and been down those hard roads because it's like, well, I'm still trying to make it. So I got to do what I got to do, you know, and say, well, if you stay true to yourself and you can make it. Yeah. And that's the thing, right? And that's the's the thing too and this is what i always try to say and again like there is a difference between channels and things that are owned and operated by your company versus your own channels but even if you're brand new don't forget it is your name that you're putting this content under right so at the end of the day it is it is you so never forget that right like that's that that's ultimately who you have to be i think true to and responsible for. And it's completely okay to say no. But also, again, what I would kind of use is that,

okay, I have an opportunity now to do what I can do internally, to make this into something that I that I'm excited about. And maybe I'm successful, maybe I'm not. But for me, reframing it that way, and making it a challenge and making it an opportunity, also, I think, really kind of changed my thinking about stuff like that. Well, let's turn to things you're excited about then. Yeah, I love that. So GitHub Universe just happened recently. Yes.

There was some excitement there. What was, let's set aside the GitHub excitement and talk about your excitement. What was it that got you excited from Universe? Well, I loved it. Okay, first of all, it was a hybrid event, which was great. So we were in person. We were back in person for the first time. I think since 2019, it was the first in-person universe, but we still, I think, had a good hybrid experience from people I've talked to. It was in San Francisco. It was really great to see people. I've been to a couple conferences since 2020, but

up until March of 2020, I was on an airplane almost weekly. I was in the air all the time and speaking at tons of conferences in lots of countries, as I know many of us were. And then it stopped. And so I've been to some conferences since then, but this was definitely the biggest one I've seen. And so for me personally, even putting aside all the product stuff that we'll talk about, just being able to, I was doing along with Anwan Simmons and Damian Brady, I was hosting the events for our audience online. And we also had like a big stage that was available to people in person that was outdoors. It was really cool. And when I would step off of stage, you know, and kind of go mingle in between setups to a time, you know, I was just immediately would run into people that I hadn't seen in years

or people that I'd only met online. And that to me was the best thing. Just being able to, you know, we were talking before the pod about how you two hadn't seen each other in three years before all things open. And I imagine that, you know, with your hallway track stuff that you did, that it had to be similar, where you're running into people that maybe you met them over the last couple of years. Maybe you haven't seen them in years. And just that kind of, to me, that's what conferences, the really special thing about

them. The content's great, that the new products are great, but it's those connections with people that are really incredible. Interesting for us was we got new listeners since we last saw folks face-to-face. So we had new listeners since the last several years come up and say, I've been listening for the last several years. Nice to put a face to a name.

Wow, you guys are so awesome, et cetera, et cetera, whatever. And that's super cool. And then we always apologize for letting them down. No, no, no, whatever. And that's super cool. And then we always apologize for letting them down. No, no, no, no. The reason we're podcasters. Just kidding. Right. But well, okay. No, don't be mean to yourselves. But that's amazing though, right? You have all these new listeners and people who joined. You were talking earlier about people who are new to things like DevRel. What's so interesting is that a couple of my colleagues who are brilliant and they're so good at what they do, they got started in DevRel during the pandemic.

And so for them, some of the things they've been doing, they haven't given in-person talks. They've given countless virtual talks. They haven't done those things and haven't been around people. And that's been really exciting to observe. That's been really exciting to see because it just shows how much like the, the job that I do has changed software, a lot of things that have changed, you know, podcasting, things like that. And, and you're kind of reminded about when, when we're back the way things used to be, you know, it's fun. You know, one thing I was telling Jared about in our, I guess our preparatory

call for this, when we were saying like, what are some of the things you want to cover? What are some of the things I want to cover? And I was thinking about you particularly, and then this role of DevRel and DevAdvocacy is that you have a particular skill set that sort of not so much transcends, but you're confident with being on a microphone. You're confident with being in front of a camera. That's a skill that's like just not in every DevRel's back pocket. And I think that's admirable. I was watching some of this stuff. I'm giving you a big compliment here, by the way. Oh, thank you so much.

I really appreciate this. I was watching some of the stuff on Twitter. And I love seeing you with the microphone roving around. And that was so cool to see, one, as a fan of GitHub and a fan of Universe and the things that come out there and the announcements and whatnot. But just the level of professional coverage and then like you doing the role but that's so cool to get that because like that's things that we want to do forever ago kind of like go to a conference and

real-time cover this thing I think it came off really well and you did a great job but like that's not a it's a skill you develop over many many years and not many people can do that very well well thank you so much I really appreciate you saying that because it is something I've It's a skill you develop over many, many years, and not many people can do that very well. Well, thank you so much. I really appreciate you saying that because it is something I've worked really hard on over the years. And I've been so lucky over the course of my career in different jobs that I've had the opportunity to, I think, hone in on that skill. And it was funny because I didn't realize how useful, like when I joined tech, I was

originally, it only lasted like months, and then I wanted to develop for advocacy. But I was hired as a PM. And so I thought I was going to be giving up some of that stuff, and that wasn't going to be part of my job anymore. And Microsoft, to their immense credit, recognized that it could be useful. And to your point that this isn't something a lot of people have lots and lots of experience with, and let me do more of it. And my skills, I think, have only improved. And GitHub, to their immense credit, absolutely has encouraged that. And I think it's been really great for me because this was part of my life I thought I was going to be giving up. And if anything,

it's only grown. But I've been able to take it into a different direction and about different topics and about other things that I'm really passionate about. So thank you very much for saying that. Do it again next year. Keep going. Yes. Yeah, that's definitely the goal. That's definitely the goal.

I'm curious about the technical side, Christina, because we've had a lot of conversations over the years and there's been two refrains that we hear a lot and they both are basically imposter syndrome. But one of them is, I'm not really a developer. And usually you find out that person has this amazing thing they built and them is I'm not really a developer. And usually you find out that person like has this amazing thing they built and like, they just don't consider themselves a developer because they're not like, you know, I don't know a big name or whatever. And they're the ones I'm not really a maintainer. It's not the stereotype. Yeah. I'm not really a maintainer.

And it's like, usually it's because like their repos only have a few people using them and they're not like on jQuery core team. Oh, I'm dating myself. They're not on Dino core team. There we go. Relevant again. Yes. I was going to say, there you go. Yep. Yeah.

But I'm curious from your perspective, coming in as a journalist, as a pop culture, as a writer and covering stuff and playing with stuff like Linux and stuff. But did you have to face your own imposter syndrome coming into like dealing with software developers every day? Oh, 100%. 100%. I felt confident in, look, I'd always say this. I was, I think, one of the more technical technology journalists when I was working. I feel confident saying that.

Like I, you know, could go to developer sessions. I had a background, you know, in mostly web development, but, you know, I even took classes in C and I had a math tutor teach me Fortran and I knew Python and, you know, I would dabble with languages. I would say, you know, I'm not a deep dev. I'm definitely one of those T-shaped developers. I felt confident that I knew more, you know, at least surface level things. So I was higher skilled in some regards, more technical than a lot of my peers. But when I joined, you know, Microsoft, that was one of my biggest fears and like a big thing I had to kind of focus on, A, improving, but B, also kind of getting over it a little bit was, okay, you know, am I good enough to stand toe to toe with these people who oftentimes maintain

amazing projects and have massive experience and are real, you know, 10X engineers. You know, they might not call themselves that because they are actual 10X engineers. And that means that you don't have a... That's a douchey thing to call yourself. Well, it is. Well, if you call yourself that, you're not one. But if you are one... Yeah, you're not one. You're disqualified. Exactly. You don't have to because everyone knows that you are, right? It's like the word luxury. If you say you're luxury, you're not really luxury.

Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. Like, if you have to advertise it, you're not it. So there was imposter syndrome with that. And one of the things that helped me a little bit, A, was just continuing to learn and to improve and to play around and to be okay with things breaking, right? And even making that public sometimes because everybody goes through a journey, whether you've been at this for 20 years or 20 weeks. But B was talking and meeting so many amazing people who are so good at what they do. And when they would share with me their imposter syndrome. And I would go, and weirdly, that would almost make me feel better because I would go, man, if Sarah Drasner, who is one of the smartest and most talented people I've ever met, she's a friend of mine. I love her.

You know, if she feels not good enough and not, you know, strong enough, then you can't win, right? So why bother holding yourself to these things? If everybody feels this way, then it's okay. And I think that, you know, when we think about what is a developer and we kind of ask that question, I think that if you are building or excited about contributing to things or playing around with things, you can be a developer. Because so many people, the lines get blurred all the time. And I think that trying to hold anybody to any specific definition really, I think, lessens people experimenting. Because how most of us got into this was that we hadn't... Look, some people were very pragmatic and said, this is how I can make money and this is what I'm studying in school. But I think for a lot of us got into this was that we hadn't, look, some people were very pragmatic and said, this is how I can make money. And this is what I'm studying in school. But I think for a lot of us, I don't know if I can say most, but definitely a lot of us, it was because we were passionate about something

and wanted to build something and do it or needed to figure out a problem. And so we looked into how can I do this? And we experimented and we played and we tried, right? Maybe it was, I love video games and I want to know how can I build my own. Video games, yeah, exactly. Right? For me, that was kind of a big one. For me, building a website, that was the click with me because I loved writing.

And I was like, oh man, I can have my own, you know, like online zine basically, right? Like that's amazing. And for some people, it might be like, I want to be, I want to have a YouTube channel or a podcast, but I want to figure out

how I can make that work more efficiently and more technically. Maybe I want to customize my Tumblr. This is actually a great story. There's a whole generation of, especially younger women, I think, that we haven't catered to enough who, because of fandom, because of Tumblr, because of Discord, because of other services, frankly, they're little mini DevOps people, right? And they're sometimes very skilled web developers and JavaScript developers who never anticipated that's what they were doing. They were just, I want to make my site look as pretty as possible. I need to figure out bots to work so that I can get updates when my favorite band member posts to something or when a new shoe becomes available, or I want to have other engagements and these people who then, you know, build up these skills. And I talked to some of them, and they're like, Oh, but I'm not really a developer. And I'm like, look at all the stuff that you do. Like you have these, you know, really complex scripts, or you're doing some really interesting things in JavaScript, you have

all the stuff, of course, you are the same thing as you were saying about maintainers. Okay, so you have 50 stars, and only a handful of hardcore users. You're still updating and releasing and adding and doing security updates and making changes based on feedback and solving issues. You're a maintainer, right? Don't hold yourself to some standard because, going back again, I've talked to people who are on those core teams for things like NPM or Deno or whatever, who many of them still have imposter syndrome. So, you know, I don't think it ever goes away, but it does, I think, make it better when you realize that it happens to everyone. And that makes it, I think, a little bit easier to be less hard on yourself. Yeah, if the best out there struggles, it's okay if I struggle a little bit too, because hey, par for the course.

Well, and the other thing too, I'll say, and I don't remember who it was who framed this to me this way, but when they did, it unlocked so many things in me. Was, you know, I used to be really, especially when I was a kid, I never wanted to admit that I needed help or that I, you know, I was struggling with something. Because it almost felt like admitting a weakness, admitting defeat. And then I thought to myself, I was like, when someone has admitted to me that they don't know something or they're struggling with something, have I ever thought any less of them? No. If anything, when somebody says, oh, I don't know what that is, or I don't know how to do that, your first instinct, I think for most of us, is to help them, is to inform, is to teach. But we're not thinking, oh, you don't know what this thing is, so you absolute idiot. There might be some jerks who do that, but I think by and large, most people don't

have that perception. So why are we so afraid of admitting when there are things that we're not as good at or that we could improve at or that we don't know about, right? Because we're afraid of people judging us, but in our real life, when we're faced with those same situations, that's not our response. Our response is to want to help and inform. And so I think that that's part of it, too, is being okay with not being the best at everything or knowing everything and being open to learning. And for me, when I made my transition, because I love to learn, that I think was the most helpful thing was, and I'm never going to stop, right? I'm a much better developer than I was five years ago. I will be an even better developer five years from now. hey friends this episode is brought to you by my friends and potentially your friends too at fire hydrant and i'm here with Robert Ross,

founder and CEO of Fire Hydrant. And Robert, there are several options out there for incident management, but what is it that makes Fire Hydrant different? The reason that we think that Fire Hydrant is on to something is because we're meeting companies really where they are. We face the same problems that every company in the industry that is building and releasing software is also facing. So we want people to be able to sign up for Fire Hydrant and immediately be able to kick off an incident using the best practices that we've built and we've experienced and have gathered through the other amazing customers that use our tool. It really is a very quick time to value. And we want people to have a long jump from where they are to where they want to be in incident management.

I love it. Thank you, Robert. Small teams up to 10 people can get started for free with all Fire Hydrant features included. There's no credit card required to sign up. They are making it too easy to get started. So check them out at firehydrant.com again firehydrant.com so there's no easy segue back to github universe we'll take the hard path back you said you the thing you were excited about was seeing people but you didn't touch on any of the cool new tech that's coming now surely there's cool new tech there's amazing new tech well you told me other than the new tech okay so let's be very clear on that uh jerry oh okay you told me not to mention the tech so i mentioned the people first but well, we're not giving you permission. You can mention the tech. Okay, thank you. Okay, there was some amazing tech stuff. Okay,

so some of the first things, Codespaces is now available to everyone. And it's been in beta, you know, at this point, it's gone through a couple of iterations, but it's now available to all users and free accounts get 60 hours of usage a month. Pro accounts get 120 hours of usage a month for free. Codespaces and just the whole movement of cloud development environments, whether using Codespaces or something else, it has fundamentally changed the way that I spin up projects and try things out now. That isn't to say that I don't still have local instances of things that are running on my own machines, but many, many times if I'm wanting to check out something, if it has a Codespace attached or a devcontainer.json file attached

that I can turn into a Codespace, I would much rather use that as a way to explore and test things rather than doing the old method of installing the Docker file or trying to run locally with my dependencies and whatnot. So Codespace is going GA for everyone. I think that was huge. Really excited about that,

especially I'm glad that we have a free offering for people to get started and to figure out if they like doing development from a cloud environment or a cloud VM or not. We also announced, and I think this is really great, especially when it comes to accessibility

and helping more people get more out of coding. We announced an experiment that's taking place within GitHub Next, which is sort of like our incubator for some of our next ideas. And it's called Hey GitHub, and it's like a voice assistant for GitHub Copilot. And so you can use Copilot, but you don't have to type. And so this, I think, has massive potential. I was hit by a car a few years ago. I was crossing the street. I was hit by a car and thrown underneath a bus. It was a whole thing. And I broke my right

wrist and invested my shin, but I'm right-handed. And once I got in the cast, once things were, the swelling was down enough, I was in the cast, I could kind of use my fingers. I could kind of type a little bit, but there was like a 10-day period where I only had use of my left hand. And that made typing and doing any coding work very, very difficult. And I hate to admit this, but I hadn't really thought much about a lot of accessibility until that happened. And I hate admitting that, but what can I say? Sometimes we're selfish beings and we need that personal experience. Now I think a lot about it.

And so I look at something like, hey, GitHub, which to say, hey, GitHub, show me how would I write a function in Ruby to do X? And it can do that and can complete things with your voice and can do add-on parameters on top of that. I think that that has a ton of potential for people who might have site issues or might have RSI or might have other accessibility issues that make typing not great. So I'm really excited about that. That's still an experiment, but I think that the learnings from that are really, really exciting.

And we also open sourced some fonts. So as a font geek, that was really great. So kind of our logo font, Mona Sans, and then we have another more robotic font called Hubot Sans. They're both open source. They're available under, I think it's the OFL license. And what's the term?

Not monospaced, what is it? Monospaced is a term. No, no, they're variable fonts. So these are variable fonts. Variable fonts, yes. Those are cool. Which I love, and they're open sourced. A number of companies have done this over the years.

JetBrains Mono, which is a monospaced font, is open source. Cascadia Code, which is one that the Windows Terminal team did. There are some others. There are some great ones. Google obviously has a lot, but I was really happy to see that happen. We also used Universe as the opportunity to share the

annual Octoverse report, which is our annual report of everything that's happening in open source and the ecosystem amongst users. The trends and the things that come out of that are really interesting too. Scripting languages, shell languages are back, baby. Oh, yeah? Shell, of all things, actually.

Like, it had a real glow up. It was like one of the... Like SH, not bash or anything, like shell. Like shell. Shell script was one of the top... Why? How? Automation.

A lot of people building automation things. The fastest growing language of 2022 was, it was HCL from HashiCorp. And so I think that's what it is, is the people writing more and more scripts to automate things using DevOps and get things running maybe through their IoT devices. I don't know. I was surprised too, but I'm also a big Shell script fan, so I was not mad about it. That's cool. What's old is new again. That is cool.

Adam's a font nerd. Have you had a chance to take a look at these? Adam's a font nerd. Have you had a chance to take a look at Mona or Hubot? I saw them, yes. And speaking of JetBrains Mono, I'm a JetBrains Mono for life kind of person. So it's going to be a challenge for me because I like it. Well, these are not Mono fonts.

So you can still use that as your coding font. These are Sancero fonts. Right. Right. It's weird. Isn't it weird that GitHub doesn't release a Monospace font though? Shouldn't you guys have one? Well, these are not monophonts, so you can still use that as your coding font. These are Sancero fonts. It's weird, isn't it weird that GitHub doesn't release a monospace font, though? Shouldn't you guys have one? Yeah, kind of. You know what? We should.

We should. That's a good idea. Next year, maybe. Or do a pull request and say that we need Mono Mono. Mono Mono, for sure. We'll just assign that to some design. File a Mono Mono, and yeah, maybe next year, but yeah. So I briefly looked at these,

Jared, thought they were very cool. Didn't see a particular use for me right now. And I filed it under to be used in the future. There you go. So that's where I'm at with GitHub fonts, Mona and Hubot. So big fan though.

I mean, I'm a big fan of like well done fonts that are open for everybody to use. Well licensed that are, you know to use, well-licensed, that are good, for real. And the Hubot font, Hubot Sans, is it Hubot Sans is how you say it? Yes, Hubot Sans, yeah. Looks a lot like the font you've all been using for Universe's font for a while. I think it's an evolution of a font, right? It is, it is. So I think we worked with a foundry who had created fonts specifically, I think, for us,

and then made our own modifications, which is often the case with custom brand fonts, and then decided, because we worked with Dagarism. I think that's how you pronounce it. If it's Dagarism, I apologize. I think it's Dagarism. And so I think that it was an evolution of that. But we've then made it open source, which I think is really great. Right. Alliance was the font you have been using for a while. Yes. Alliance is their font, their typeface.

And I'm a big fan of that typeface. So, I mean, just by nature, I'm a fan of Huwot Sans, right? Because, I mean, it's the next evolution of Alliance, which is super cool. Exactly. And I've been a big fan of the design for Universal site for every year you all do it. So the last several years, I don't know who's behind that, but whoever it is, give them the big high five for me because I've always been a fan of like the, the uniqueness of it. And it's just a really well done site for a conference every year. Well, thank you for saying that. I

will, I will pass that along. I cannot take any credit, but I totally agree with you. I love, I love the design and the work that goes into that stuff. And it helps, right? I think that, you know, we have, like, GitHub has kind of a brand and kind of a thing we're known for and a little bit of a swagger. I think why a lot of us were drawn to working here and why it might be one of the reasons why people, you know, are interested in trying our products out.

So I appreciate you saying that. I totally agree with you. I think that the team did a great job with the design this year. I think you have to be a fan. Well, I guess have to. I guess you don't have to be a fan, but it would be nice to be a fan of GitHub

if you work in GitHub, right? I mean, that would make sense. Like for you, it's a homecoming, right? Oh, for me, it's a complete homecoming. And I've actually met a couple of Hubbers this week. You know, working remotely is interesting because the serendipitous meeting an employee thing happens over Slack rather than in an office. But I've met a couple of co-workers for the first time this week on Slack, and we've all bonded

over the fact that we were really big GitHub fans before we joined GitHub. Like, yes, my people. That's really fun. That's really fun. What's interesting, though, about Codespaces I want to mention is that, you know, there's a lot of people who push back on this idea of coding in the cloud, but I think of people who ask for that super beefy Linux machine, and it costs just so much money. And then the idea of, like, to tinker with a new thing,

like you had said, like, would I rather run it in the already made Codespaces container that I can just spin up rather than changing my local environment? I don't think it's a daily driver for a lot of people, but I think eventually it's a daily driver for specific projects and things like that because like I've been thinking about that. I've been doing a lot of like Linux work behind the scenes here. I tell Jared about this all the time. Right now I'm playing with Debian. I got a fun thing I'm doing right now. I turned a Mac Pro, a 2013

Mac Pro, into a Debian 11 machine running Proxmox. Oh, nice. Virtualizing containers, running Pilehole in it. It's super cool. And this is a beefy 12-core, 128 gigabit, 2 terabyte SSD machine

that back in the day cost $7,000, $10,000, whatever thousand dollars. And now it's dated. It's basically used as technology because it doesn't even run the latest Mac OS. However, it does run the most latest Linux and it can run ZFS and it can do RAID and all this fun stuff. But I've been doing a lot of this fun stuff behind the scenes, a little story short. But I've been thinking about this idea of having my.files everywhere I go in this environment. It's kind of like that, but very specifically. And I feel like Codespaces or coding in the cloud or a VM in the cloud is not going to be the daily driver or the

daily dev environment for everybody, but it might be for very specific concerns and areas. If you have a massive test suite, are you going to run it locally in your MacBook Pro? It might run, but what if you have a super beefy code space, right? No, I mean, I think you're exactly right. And I think that you framed it perfectly. It's not necessarily going to be a daily driver for everything. For example, at GitHub, we use it for our GitHub slash GitHub repo. So we have a big monorepo. The code space that we have set up and configured to use it is a 32-core dev machine.

And it can load the entire website. And the thing is, I can spin that up. We also have a process to pre, I guess, basically have the container pre-spun up so that even the spin-up time when you start the code space is much faster. That happens daily. So I can, in 90 seconds, have access to this massive monorepo and this really big code base that, if I were doing this locally, could take, even on a very beefy machine, would

take a tremendous amount of time unless I was just using that machine just for that purpose. And I was, you know, taking the latest version, you know, merging my branches frequently, right? Like it would be a big lift, I think, for most people's machines. Like, okay, if you've got like, if you have an M1 Pro Max or something, or, you know, Mac Studio, maybe you'd be okay. But this is still less of a lift than having to do all of that. Or on the converse, having to say, okay, well, I only need these branches. I only need this subset of code, right? Which is typically how you would deal with that. So I think that even us internally, it's changed things a lot. But I think you're exactly right. It's not like, and I don't see it as for every person, like replacing your daily dev environment but if something does require

the power that you don't have because you don't have you know a eight thousand dollar mac pro in a closet running debian and proxmox or the project might even exceed that or as i was saying you know i want to try something out but i do not want to have to go through the drama of getting all the dependencies installed or making sure the docker setup is going to work with what my local, you know, networking things are. I think this is a really, really great option. And it's the future for large bases like that. Code bases like that need this because even to accessibility, right?

Like, yeah, if you're a drive by contributor that can do it, but you don't, your daily machine is not that and you can add value. It's the ultimate invitation to add the value. No, I'm so glad you mentioned that because that's actually something we've had a lot of conversations with maintainers about how we can make good spaces better for them and how they can use it more. And honestly, one of the challenges we've run into is, A, I think that there just hasn't been enough awareness about it and that's slowly changing. But B, I mean, this is one of the reasons I'm glad that we have a free offering for everyone because I really do think that this will be so good for drive-by maintainers. I see something, I want to make a change. But the process, this is what we hear from maintainers all the time,

people want to contribute, but the process of allowing them to contribute can be so onerous for both people, right? It's onerous for the person wanting to get up to speed, but it's also a lot of work for the maintainer to have to walk people through what the process is and make sure that things are formatted a certain way and work through troubleshooting with people who are maybe trying to set up their environment. That if we can make that a lot easier where somebody can just, you know, clone something, open it in code spaces, make the changes they want, and then submit their PR. My hope, you know, what we'll see over time is that this will enable way more people to contribute and not have to either go through the setup process. Or when we talk about accessibility, I think that not only refers to,

you know, things that we can do for people who have different disabilities, but also people who live in different parts of the world and have access to different types of machines, right? So if I'm somebody who's in South America and I want to contribute, but my machine might not be powerful enough or my primary machine, if maybe I'm a student in the United States and I use an iPad, this is something that would allow that person to still contribute without having to have access to a full-bore Proxmox beast. Well, it's the ultimate setup

because if you're an open-source maintainer, one, it takes a lot of time to lay out the documentation to get the environment spun up. But then two, GitHub already has my public key. You know, it's the ultimate gift to verify, you know, commits to because you've already got my public key. If I've got GPG set up or code setting set up, then you can just assume that for my profile when I split up a code space for a drive by contribution. And, you know, for the, what is it called? The supply chain, the open source supply chain,

whatever that is, right? The security of that, to me, if GitHub can enable that to become more of a thing that is available for open source repositories or whatever, I think that has a net benefit for the future of security for open source software. No, I think you're exactly right. I think you're exactly right. Because like you said, you can use, and also you can now sign your SSH commits with GitHub using various password partners, like 1Password. If you use 1Password, you can use that to sign your SSH commits. With GitHub, you can use other services too. But I think to your point, that really does make things more secure.

And I think it also, if you have kind of a base where everybody, you know, everybody is working off of, or maybe you don't know everybody, but you can say that for a new person coming in, you're giving them a base, you know, code base and base like setup image to work off of that's going to eliminate some potential security vectors. For instance, if they're trying to build something and maybe they don't have, some of their libraries aren't up to date and whatnot, maybe they introduce another problem. I think you're right. I think that it can do a lot for security.

One of the other things, too, when we're talking about larger code bases and productivity, and this is also really useful with code spaces, but useful in general, we've done a lot of work, and this was also announced at Universe around improving code searching. And so the new code search experience is really, really slick, and I'm hoping that will help people too.

For sure. It's the ultimate no excuses, right? If I can give you an environment that I know works, then it also requires you zero effort, really, aside from understanding code spaces and how it works, then it also requires you zero effort, really, aside from understanding code spaces and how it works, you know, some knowledge, basically, that you're going to pick up no matter what. It's the ultimate saying, like, hey, you don't have to change your machine at all.

You don't have to do anything to your local Postgres or your local Homebrew or wait for a Homebrew update to finally run and be done and, you know, whatever happens when you run brew updates. Like, you know, like, no offense to homebrew, I love it, but there are some challenges when it comes to the ceremony of spinning up any project, whether it's your own or somebody else's. And all those hurdles

are just more hurdles to contribution, really. They are. You're dead on, you're dead on. And again, like I said, when we've talked to maintainers, that's what we've heard from them. And I've also talked to the Codespaces team and they're really doing their part to try to make that as easy as possible and trying to work on some templates and base images for Codespaces to help people contribute to things.

Helen Husandy, who works at GitHub, she's fantastic. She's been a core contributor to the WordPress project for a long, long time. And she is working on, you know, having an image, a code space set up for that'll make contributing to WordPress easier for folks. And WordPress famously still uses SVN as their version control system, although they have things mirrored on GitHub infamously. Yes. And so again, this also even like makes that somewhat easier because, you know, you can make the changes, do it on the GitHub site, it'll handle the things on the track SV inside. But I love this because going back to what I was saying before about getting rid of this idea of who is and who isn't a developer, I think the way we do that is by breaking down barriers and by making it as easy as possible for people to contribute. And that's how, to go back to way like an hour ago when we were talking, is kind of the idea around your podcast about open source.

This is how it continues to be ubiquitous, and how it continues to be the thing we all use, is by making it the easier way to contribute, and the easier way to be part of things. You know, by making everybody be able to hopefully contribute by eliminating that friction, as you were saying. Well said, well said. Well, Christina, we've been fans forever, pretty much. It was fun going down nostalgia lane with you. It was fun to even hear it from, you know, the person themselves, you, about your journey and your history. And,

you know, you are a developer, you're here now. You're killing it. I'm a fan of what you've done recently with Universe and your coverage and the kind of work you do. And I'm so happy you do that kind of work and that you have advocated for yourself to say no and keep your DNA and promote the things that you're really excited about and the things that you really are happy to see out there in the world. So thank you for coming on the show. It's just been a bummer, I guess, that it's taken this long to get you on the show, but finally here, I'm happy. I love it. I'm so excited. Thank you so much for having me. We definitely need to do another podcast backstage so that we can geek out about media stuff.

Let's do it. Let's do it backstage on Plex and media and oh my gosh, yeah. I would love to do that. It would be nice to have a friend in that room because room because jared not so much mk make mkvi use myself i have a license i paid for because i love the software it's just amazing i do too change my mind well look you know what you don't always need to do it yourself you can still have time to have friends like there's there's balance but i'm totally team adam on this one in terms of doing all of that stuff myself but i also find it fun yeah but i also understand j also understand when Jared's like,

no, I have too many other things to do. Too much to do, yeah. What we need is we need a Codespaces type of thing for a way to kind of automate the process of doing something like MakeMKV or Plex or whatnot. That's what we need to work on. Yeah, for sure. Containerize that, Codespaces it for me,

and then I'll look into it. Well, Christina, it was so awesome having you on the show. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for having me. This is great. Thank you, Adam. Thank you, Jared. Wow, what a journey from journalist to developer,

from Mashable, Gizmodo, Microsoft, and now the Mecca. She's home. GitHub. Yes, Christina, very excited for you. Very happy for all the moves you've made. You've been an inspiration. You're definitely a leader. We thank you so much for coming on the show.

And hey, we do want to get Christina back on to come on backstage. Yes, Plex, MakeNKV, 12-core CPUs, 128 gigs of RAM, massive amounts of storage, ZFS, network attached storage, all the fun things to build out your own home media server on your LAN, ripping disks, entertaining yourself, entertaining your family, entertaining your friends, whomever. That's the way I go. And I hope you go that way too. So join us on that future backstage again, plus one this in the comments. The link is in the show notes. And you may not know this, but this is pretty much the end of 2022. So next week, Jared and I are recording our State of the Log episode. We still want to hear from you. Last year, we included listener voices for the first time, and it turned out super awesome.

So we're doing it again. Please share with us your favorite ChangeLog guests, topics, aha moments, whatever that you've had over this last year. Record something and share it with us at changelog.fm slash S-O-T-L. Again, changelog.fm slash S-O-T-L. And by the way, if your message gets included in the episode, we'll send you a free T-shirt because because hey, that's how we do it. Again, a massive thank you to our friends and partners at Fastly and Fly. Great message to those beats are banging. And to you, our dear listeners, we love you. We thank you. We appreciate you listening to the show every single week. It is such an honor to produce this show, bring these guests on, have these conversations and to have you as a listener. So thank you. Thank you, thank you.

But that's it. This show's done. Thank you again. We will see you on Monday. Outro Music