The Changelog: Software Development, Open Source - JavaScript and Robots (Interview)

Episode Date: April 19, 2016

Raquel Vélez, aka Rockbot, joined the show to talk about where she came from, how she got into programming with JavaScript, her passion for robots and mechanical engineering, the culture of npm, and more.

I'm Raquel Velez, and show. And if you don't know Raquel Velez, she's rock bot pretty much everywhere out there. But we talked to her about where she came from, how she got into programming with JavaScript, her passion for robots and mechanical engineering, and also the culture of NPM. We have three sponsors for the show, TopTow, Linode, and FullStackFest. Our first sponsor for the show today is our friends at TopTow. Now, if you're new to the show, let me tell you, we love TopTow. If you've been listening for a while now, you know that we love TopTow. TopTow is an exclusive network of top freelance software developers and designers.

Top companies every single day rely on TopTow freelancers for their most mission-critical projects. And one of the things we love about TopTile is that it's this worldwide community of engineers and designers that just love to enrich the community. As a TopTile engineer or designer, you'll have the flexibility to travel the world, be able to blog on their blog, be able to apply for open-source grants and contribute back to things you really care about. Head to TopTile.com to learn more. That's T-O-P-T-A-L.com to learn more.

Or for a more personal introduction, email me, Adam at ChangeLaw.com. I'd love to help you take your first step with TopTal. And now, on to the show. all right everyone we got a fun show lined up today raquel velez is here and kind of an interesting story to this show because we had it scheduled a couple days ago that didn't work long story short if you haven't been following along, we shared in our email, we shared it on Twitter. I shared it on my personal Instagram and elsewhere on the internet, but my wife and I, we had a kid. So it's been kind of craziness for us. And that's always fun to have a kid. But it's crazy times that first couple of months. But Jared, we got Raquel here,

aka Rockbot. What do you think man i'm excited and uh i think you probably haven't heard it yet but i congratulated you on our start of our last show just want to reiterate that you and heather and exciting times at the stachowiak house yes a new change logger in the system love it but but we have Raquel here. Yes. Raquel, welcome to the show. Thank you. Hello and congratulations. Oh, my God.

Thank you. Like a little human. Yeah. You know, it's the craziest thing. They, you know, they come out and they become humans. Isn't that crazy? They were human all along, of course. Well, I don't know.

They start out kind of nugget shaped. Yeah. You know, and then like slightly lizard-y. And then eventually over time, they become more human. What we can do is we can argue about exactly when that moment is. Or we can talk about this. I'm not sure if you saw this or watched it, but you were featured prominently on our Beyond Code interview series, which is actually how I found out about you, Raquel, which is a video series we do where we interview people at conference after parties. And we ask everybody the exact same five or six kind of deep questions and watch them squirm and watch them have fun answering those

and in season two we'll link it up in the show notes we had amanda she i think is how you pronounce her last name and we asked her what her programming hero or who her programming hero is and she had this response which is actually probably my favorite moment in beyond code so far yes i agree well we got a clip so let's go ahead and play the clip and we'll let y'all hear that. That's a hard one. I have to say, I have, I guess, kind of a developer crush on Raquel. I'm pretty sure she doesn't know that I have a crush on her. But I think she's pretty awesome.

She, you know, does robot stuff. And yeah, that would be one there's a lot i like looking up to people and i think it's good to be inspired by people so but she's one that i can think of off of the top of my head i was interviewing her at that time and i just had to kind of act like i knew who raquel was because she didn't specify and i'm like cool you know good answer good answer um and then i'm like adam it's raquel and it's rock bottom mpm i'm like, cool. You know, good answer. Good answer. And then I'm like, Adam, it was Raquel. That's Rockbot from NPM. I think you're talking about Rockbot.

I'm like, oh, okay. So that was a fun way of introducing you to us. Just curious how you feel being someone who Amanda, she thinks is pretty awesome and even so much to have a developer crush on you. Yeah, no, I saw a tweet along those lines and I think I saw the video and I just, I sat there like staring at my monitor and just being like, oh my God, this is adorable. I think I'm honored, honestly. I think that's so, it's so heart lifting

and just warm, fuzzy feeling that how can you possibly say anything negative about that? Like that is just so cool. I spend so much time. I was on a speaker panel the other day and they asked me, like, what got you into speaking? And a lot of people are like, well, the reason I started speaking is because I wanted to, prove that I understood something or, uh, you know, I wanted to get over my fear of public speaking or whatever. And for me, it's, uh, one of the biggest reasons is, uh, so there's this really amazing quote that I've heard from lots of different sources. So I don't know who to attribute to, but, um, you can't see it if you can't, or no, if you, you can't be it, if you can't see it if you can't or no if you you can't be it if you can't see it and and so I was sick and tired of seeing the same same type of person on stage at tech conferences and I was like you know what forget it like I need more people who look like me on stage so I'm gonna go

and just be on stage and let's just do this and uh so so hearing other people like kind of recognize that like I'm out there and doing stuff like that's just super cool and I love that it it feels really really warm fuzzy yay plus it was totally the robots too I think everybody there mentioned Johnny Five yeah yeah. Yeah. Which is JavaScript conference. So there was a lot of, um, it was down in, I was in Houston,

right? So there was a lot of, uh, node and node bots people in the house. Yes. Quite a fall. Just to give you a brief introduction for you, just for our listeners,

Raquel, you are, uh, you work at NPM and you've been very active in the, uh, no JS andBots community. When you're asked to intro yourself or introduce yourself, I noticed on your website you have like four or five versions of your bio, which I thought was kind of funny.

How do you introduce yourself? I basically say, you know, hi, I'm Raquel Velez. I'm Rockbot on Twitter, which always feels weird because people are like, why do any what does anybody care about your Twitter handle? Except that so many people know me as rock bot. So like they won't know my name, but they'll know my Twitter handle. So I'm like, hey, you know, I'm rock bot. I work at NPM. I work on the web team.

My claim, one of my claim to fame is that I was employee number one at NPM. So I've been there the whole time of the company. And then from there, things go kind of haywire. I can say so many things. So I was a huge, huge part of the NodeBots movement. I was one of the original kind of core members of NodeBots. And I still cheerlead on the sidelines. I've taken a little bit of a hiatus.

I've been doing it for three years and there are so many incredible people who have taken up the torch that I want them to get the recognition because I'm not doing it as much anymore. And then, you know, other things, what other things do I want to tell people? Like, I generally tell people that I just love to geek out and nerd out on stuff.

But I don't know. What about your podcast? Oh, yeah. I have a podcast, Reactive, Reactive.audio. It's a weekly podcast where we basically just kind of three people hang out and chat about what happened over the last week in tech tends to have a bit of a JavaScript angle. Um, but we'll talk about pretty much anything. And yeah, in my off time, I tend to actually have started stepping away from the technology

as much as I can, just because my work at NPM is so intense that it's nice to take a complete break. So I do a lot of, so fun fact, I have a degree in mechanical engineering. And so the software stuff is, is really, it's really fun, but I miss working with my hands. So in the last, last year or so, i've started taking up things like sewing and knitting um which to me is just mechanical engineering with fabric or yarn and it's like super cool to me doing all this like engineering in three-dimensional space as opposed to you make um so clothes actually because clothes are hard no no, no, I make, I make people, I make, I make. I was trying to get some baby clothes.

I'm sorry. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the thing about baby clothes is so weird is that babies grow so fast. Yeah. It's a waste of time. For a month, you're done. Yeah, exactly.

Exactly. I think I like Netflix for babies is a really good idea. I mean, Netflix clothes yeah yeah you're constantly trading up and i'm sure that that probably exists out there that makes sense but so you're making clothes you mentioned you have this this different background and actually just looking at one of your bios you've lived in four different countries you speak five different languages so you're polyglot in like the traditional sense of polyglot. Yeah. We like to, you know, learn how people came to where they are. Yeah. And especially you being now such a prominent member of the open source and JavaScript community. I was surprised to find that you you're kind of relatively new to it in terms of your overall

history. Can you take us back to this degree in mechanical engineering and how you got from there to, you know, a software developer at NPM Inc? Absolutely. Okay. So, first of all, we have to do the Wayne's World, like. Yes. We go back. Very good, I like. So, let's see.

How did we start? So, I got a degree in mechanical engineering from Caltech, which is a pokey little tech school in Southern California. Yeah. And and so I was really into robots. My whole my whole undergraduate career was all about robots and robotics. You can do either mechanical engineering, electrical engineering or computer science. And electrons and I don't get along. So that was out. And computer science just seemed really, really like I didn't get to play with my hands.

It was all like extremely mathy. And I don't know, the computer science nerds, no offense to computer science nerds, but they just they weren't like like I didn't get along with them on like the same in the same way that I got along with the mechanical engineering nerds. So it's like, all right, mechanical engineering, it's like arts and crafts with big machines. Let's do this. So I did that. But hilariously, over the course of doing all the mechanical engineering and doing robotics, there was always a need for more people to program stuff. So and I got really interested in the,

the artificial intelligence side of robotics. So I did a lot of programming just because I wanted to make the robots think, but I never thought of it as like computer science. Computer science was for like the really theoretical pushing computers and like computational mathematics into a whole new realm. I was just programming. Um, and so that was like, that was cool. That was fun. I did that for a really long time. Um, and then eventually I got a little bit burned out on robotics cause they don't really talk back. And if they do, something's very wrong. Um, and so I just was like okay I'm going to take a little bit break from this and I I was a CTO of like a little startup that ran out of money eventually thank goodness because I had no business being a CTO but I thought you know I mean I have a degree in mechanical engineering

from Caltech I've built robots like I could totally be a CTO of a web company. No, no, I could not. And that was terrible. So that, that ended. And then I was like, okay, you know what? CTO was a little bit too big for me. But let me try something a little bit easier. And I had this like vision of what I wanted the internet to be like. And I wanted, I had this like vision of walking into a room and having this like wall size screen where I could just kind of say, Hey, like take me to target. And I want to buy a few things without any sort of keyboard or anything like that, or a mouse and like something kind of a, what's that movie? Or like there's the Tom Cruise has like the gloves.

Minority report. Minority report. Yeah. So I was kind of thinking something along the lines of minority report where I could kind of like scan through different things. And it was like this whole three dimensional experience. And I was like, that sounds really cool. I want to build that.

And I was getting into like websites. Cause I kept coming with like new ideas for companies because I don't know I just thought I should just make a new company all the time um and that was also a bad idea but eventually I was like okay let me let me get into this website thing surely that can't be that hard like CTOing was a little bit out of my element, but I have a degree in mechanical engineering from Caltech. I should totally be able to handle this whole internet thing. Yeah, I was an idiot. Anyway, so. It's like your internal thought process. Like, because I have this, I should be able to do that. Obviously, right? Like how hard. Also your humble retrospective perspective of it too. Of course. So what I did was I asked a bunch of my friends, I was living in Charlotte, North Carolina at the time. And there were a bunch of people who

were like into like Ruby on Rails and JavaScript and whatever. And I was like, so what do I do? How do I get into this? And, and they were like, well, you know, just ask around and stuff. And I was like, you know what? Okay. I identified what I consider to be the quote unquote coolest company in town. And what I did was like totally fearless. I just called up the CEO of the company and I was like, hey, can we sit down for coffee? Let's chat. And then I was like, hey, how do I get a job at your company? And at the time, like node was just kicking up. This was 2000. This was the

end of 2009, 2011. Yeah. So it was end of 2011, early 2012. And he was like, so node, if you can, if you can program a node, I will hire you. And I was like, all right, I have no idea what node is, but let's do this. Let's just whatever. So I just, I sat down and I kid you not, over the course of like three weeks, just started learning everything I could about Node and HTML and CSS and everything. And it was overwhelming, but I still did the, like they had a little code challenge for engineers and I did the best I could, and they rejected me. And I was like, this is stupid.

I learned everything I needed to learn, and they still rejected me. But then somebody at the company saw my application and was like, oh, this is interesting. Oh, I should also note that I sent in, along with the code challenge, I also sent in some previous code. I had written in my first, I had attempted JavaScript two years prior, and I wrote something that's, like I wrote, I created a hand, like an actual human hand all in Canvas and HTML and JS and CSS

and stuff and I like made it so that you could move all the joints in the hand and have it be a perfect hand model it was the crappiest JavaScript you've ever seen in your life because I didn't know JavaScript I knew C++ and so I wrote JavaScript like it was C++ and it was a nasty mess. Like looking back on that code, you're like, oh my God,

what is this? But it was still really cool. And there's somebody at the company who's like, wow, she has potential. And so he calls me up and he's like, hey, do you want to do an internship? Like we've never done an internship before, but you know, you could be a good intern. So I, I went in and like, you know, put everything into like a little humble bag. Um, and it was like, all right, I, you know, have worked at companies like NASA and MIT, and now I'm going to be an intern for $500 a week and learn this JavaScript node, HTML internet thing. And after, it was supposed to be a six week internship. After five weeks, they hired me on full time. I was a junior developer and then I just learned everything I could. And then it was And then it was a consulting company.

So they had me doing some PHP, some JavaScript, and all sorts of things. And I was like, you know what? I really like Node. Oh, I went to a NodeConf summer camp 2012, which was kind of the huge jumping off point for my career because I met a whole bunch of people in the Node community. And this was NodeConf summer camp 2012. There was like 100 people there. So anybody, it was like 90% of the people who are like huge figures in Node were there.

They were at that event. And I met them and I got to know them. That was where I met Isaac for the first time. It's where I met all sorts of people. I mentioned Isaac because he's important to later in the story. Um, and, and I was like, these people are amazing, but they're all living on the West coast, uh, in, you know, the Bay area. So my husband and I got married and then I was like three weeks later, I was like, you know what, let's move to San Francisco. And he was like, okay. And I was like, yes, let's do this. So I

got a job at a startup in San Francisco. It was all in Node. And so like, I just slowly moved my way up. After six months there, I moved on to another company after six months. And then about six months into that second position. So all the while I'm giving talks and I'm going to more Node events. And I'm just like really getting to know everybody in the community. At this point, I've already started. Okay, I should backtrack a little bit. At NodeConf Summer Camp 2012, I also met Chris Williams, who is the curator of JSConf US. And I met him and somehow he learned through grapevine that I used to build robots. And he was like, hold up, we need to talk about this. Because he was starting, like, he created node serial port, which is the interface by which you can use node to talk to serial devices,

which is a huge, huge component to nodeot. And he had hung out with Rick Waldron, who is the creator of Johnny5, and he was like, I need you to, like, we need to talk about this, because you actually know robotics. The rest of us know JavaScript, and we want to get into robotics, and you know robots, and want to get into JavaScript. So let's see if we can, like, make something happen.

Emerging of the minds, basically. Yeah, exactly. And he was like, I want you to speak at JSConf you know put in a proposal let's talk about robots and then my proposal got accepted and then he was like also I want to do a NodeBots

workshop so my very first like major conference I not only gave a talk but also ran a workshop and that was when NodeBots was like really really born. And we can talk all about that. But meanwhile, I'm doing this NodeBots thing. I'm working in San Francisco. And then I get an email from Isaac Schluter, creator of NPM and at the time the benevolent dictator for life of Node, BDFL.

And he was like, hey, I'm spinning NPM into a company and I'd love for you to join. And I was like, how do you know who I am? I mean, obviously he knew who I was because he'd seen me at all of these different events and we had a lot of friends in common and we were semi-friends as well. And it was just kind of like this amazing opportunity.

And I was like, all right. So you're employee number one. I was employee number one. And so I've been there for over two years now. And like, it's just been this constant. It's been a constant series of learning, just learning more and more and more and more. And it is really shocking that I've only been in this industry for four years. Like I started in 2012 and it's now 2016. And like most people, most of the people that I work with have been in this industry for like

10, 20, like 25 years. And I'm like, hi, I've been doing this for not very long at all but i think a lot of it i think it helps that i did so much robotics before like so i understand the concepts of programming um my one my one like like i'm super proud of i knew git before everybody else knew git because we were using git in robotics or the web world was using git so like when i walked in people like do you understand uh source control and i was like you mean like like or subversion like what do you want like i i got them all and they were just like oh no we use git there's a thing called github and i was like what are you serious there's a thing called github like there's an there's like a platform like an online place where you can like do the git stuff in the cloud what this is so much better get stuff yeah it was

like like because we used to just have our own like internal servers right everybody had to like get to the different servers and i was like oh my god i'm actually old school in something that's awesome so that was cool so i'm sitting here listening to this story excuse me and i'm trying to i don't know i guess characterize you in in light of it and you keep saying this statement you know i have a mechanical engineering degree from caltech and and so i'm i can do this and you i seem to think of you as the word that keeps coming to mind is intrepid. Like you have this fearless, adventurous side or, you know, characteristic about you, which seems to have led you down this path. And I just want to tee this up for you.

And we'll talk about it on the other side of the break, which is where did that come from? Like, did you come out of the womb in this way? or did somebody instill into you this idea that you can succeed despite the odds or despite the circumstances? Seeming like you seem to be outside of your comfort zone, but yet you just kind of plow forward. So don't answer now. We'll take a break. I want you to think about it a little bit. And on the other side, tell us, where did this intrepid attitude come from? So we'll be right back. Our friends at Linode offer a pretty cool service I wanted to tell you about today.

It's called Professional Services. This is something where you can hire them to take care of set migrations, one-off system admin tasks, server installs, or anything else you can think of. They offer this as an add-on to their customers. And I talked to Dave Messina, the product manager of Professional Services, and I asked him what it's all about and why their customers love it. Professional Services is geared towards existing and prospective customers

that are looking for a system administrator to take on maybe a task that they don't have resources available to execute on or just don't have the time to get in there, you know, into the command prompt, diagnose, troubleshoot, configure their Linode to meet the needs of their application. So our team here is diverse and, you know, we specialize in, you know, multiple areas. We've been in, you know, the hosting industry for many years now. We specialize in Linux.

So that's our forte. So we have excellent people here that are skilled and experienced in multiple areas of Linux. So they can typically execute these projects or solutions efficiently for these customers that need our assistance. All right. That was Dave Messina, Product Manager for Linode's Professional Services. As you can see, if you've got a need, Linode's got your back. Head to linode.com slash proservices. Once again, linode.com slash proservices to learn more

and tell them the change law sent you. All right, we are back with RockBot, as she is lovingly known on the internet. And Raquel, before the break, you kind of gave us your history of how you moved from this degree in mechanical engineering to employee number one at NPM. And I asked you, you know, first of all,

do you think that's a fair interpretation of a characteristic of you, which is that you had you know, first of all, do you think that's a fair interpretation of your characteristic of you, which is that you had this fearless, adventurous, intrepid, you might say, outlook on life where it seemed you kind of just barreled into opportunities, you know, despite perhaps the odds being against you or being in over your head. And so the first part would be, is that you think that's fair or do you think I've mischaracterized? And and then secondly if it is fair where does it come from?

I have to say I think it's a fair characterization externally. Internally I'm terrified constantly, totally utterly terrified every single step of the way but I have this analogy

I'm really big on analogies. So no apologies. But I like to think of, so like there are people, like if you're standing at a beach, right? And you know that there's like something out in the water, there are people who are going to be like,

oh my God, it's too scary. I don't want to swim. Like, and they'll just kind of hang out on the beach. Um, and I'm the type of person, or like there are people who are like genuinely fearless who would just like go straight forward. I'm the type of person who sits there on the beach and is like, oh my God, this is terrifying. But what I want is over there in the ocean. And so I'll like take a really deep breath and be like, this scares the living everything

out of me, but I'm going for it anyway. And then I just go for it. And then, you know, there are some people who like just get lifted up and like dropped into the middle of the ocean and are forced to swim. That happens to me sometimes, but I like to be in control. So I tend to, I tend to be the type of person who's like this is terrifying but if I don't go for it then who will right and no one else is going to give this to me so um as for where that came from I think a lot of that really does come from my family and from my mother who uh so my family's from Puerto Rico and um both my parents grew really poor, but they they managed to get degrees in chemical engineering and they eventually worked their way up and and are now thriving as, you know, and, you know, living happily with their degrees and doing lots of great things and they own their own business and et cetera, et cetera. So like, it was never an option for me to just kind of sit still and let things happen. Um,

it's very much been a, well, what do you want? And for me, I think trying to figure out what I want, um, I'm in, in preschool. Uh, I was, I'm part of the generation of children who, for reasons completely unknown to me, teachers have decided to, like, add graduations at every ridiculously silly, menial opportunity. I had like a preschool graduation. I don't know why, but I did. And and like I was always the type of person who wanted to be at the center of attention. Like we had to do like a class song. And I was like, well, they can't hear me. Like my mother loves telling the story of how like I felt like no one could hear me. So I just walked up to the microphone and grabbed it for myself and just starts, just start like, like singing so that everybody could hear me. Cause otherwise I'd be lost in the crowd. That's silly. I don't want to be lost in the crowd. I want people to know who I am.

It's a good metaphor. It's truth, but it's also a good metaphor for, you know, life. Exactly. Exactly. So like when I was, when I was first thinking about like should I get into this node thing or not I genuinely was like well this thing is new enough I could probably work my way up to the top like it's such a small community right now I could probably get there and be known and like like like people would recognize who I am. Like people would. And like, as we've found that has worked out in my favor. Like I went out of my way. Like I, when it comes to meeting people, I'm extremely purposeful about who I'm meeting and when I'm meeting them.

And, um, I try really hard not to be disingenuous. I think I'm, I like to think I'm really genuine about when I'm meeting someone, I genuinely want to meet them and get to know them and become friends. If that's in the cards or if, if we're not going to be friends, then we're just not going to be friends. And that's fine. Um, like I don't go out of my way to like be friends just for the sake of networking and working my way up. But I do, I do like know who's going to be in the room before I walk into it and try to figure out, okay, well, who's here? Who can I get to know? Can I become friends with them? Like, but with the, with the added side bonus of, Hey, if things work out, I could, I could move up. Um, and, uh, and so like, that was very much my motivation in a lot of ways, not only for myself to be the person who is heard.

But again, like I like I mentioned before, there aren't a lot of people out there that look like me on these stages, in these communities, leading these communities. And if. If I'm not the person to do it, then who will? And there are so many people who look like me, who aren't at these leadership positions because they've never seen anybody who looks like them in those leadership positions. So like, again, if, if, if I don't do it, who will? So it terrifies me. I cannot tell you how scared I am all the time. Uh, but at the same time, like you can't grow unless you step outside your comfort zone. So I'm taking every single bit of it for myself, but with the added benefit of helping other people as well. It's funny you mentioned that you have this moment where you kind of take a deep breath and jump into the water, so to speak. And I've noticed that you

do write pretty prolifically on your blog. You have, I guess, 24 pages of archives, which is pretty good by any measurement. Yeah. Over the years. And I went back to your very first post because I always think those are the interesting ones to read. And you mentioned that you kind of got into the industry in 2012. Well, your first post was 2011. It may have been near the end of the year. But it was titled Smart Latinas Get the

Party Started. And I read it and it's almost that moment where you're taking a deep breath because the content of the post is very much motivational, speaking almost to yourself about writing this and putting this out on the web. Do you remember writing that post? And was that your, was that your moment? Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. That was a moment where I was like, I, I need to just own this. Cause it's so easy to sit in the backseat and just be like, I'm, I'm, I'm just going for the ride. Let's just see what happens to me. And I, I was tired of it. I was, I was in a position where I was like, I don't feel like people are taking me seriously and I'm sick of it. So now what do we need to do?

We need to step up and, and make this thing happen. And that I think was very much that I think if it was late 2011, and I believe it was, I think that was that moment where I was like, all right, I'm at a crossroads. I've got to, I've got to decide what I'm going to do next. And let's just do this. Let's go for it. And that was definitely that was that was one of those moments where I was like, all right, I need to learn about this Internet thing.

I got to get into this because. Let's let's see what happens. Get the party started. How are how are you not being taken seriously? Oh, goodness. So many ways. Okay. So, everything from the fun stories from college, right?

I was one of very few women in my year, in my major. There aren't a lot of women, mechanical engineers. Um, I think, I think the ratio was like 10 to one in my class. Um, and just in mechanical engineering, like there were a bunch of biologists who were women and that that's cool too. Um, but in my classes specifically, I would be one or two, one, like one of like one or two women, maybe three in the room. And like there are just these little things where you're like at first when I first started college, I was like, OK, the civil rights movement worked. Feminism happened. We're good. Everybody's on an unequal playing field. And then there are these little things where you just start to realize, like, you know, the answer to the homework question, but nobody's asking you. And you're like, hey, I know the answer. And they're like, yeah. And then they start asking somebody else or the the shop, the people in charge of the shop, Hey, you know, go to it. Good luck. And then

they'll come over to you and say, so here's how to use a drill press. And you're like, bitch, please. I've been, I've been like, you know, using, using power tools since I was like seven, like, don't, don't do this to me. But like, and then like, there are moments where you're just like, I don't get it. How is it possible that people just don't understand? I am just as smart as everybody else here. And it didn't help that there were like there was always the one person who's like, you do realize you only got here because you're Hispanic and female. Right. And you're like, oh, no, I got here just the same as you did. I worked my ass off like no no no no um

so like like little things like that and and it's just it continues and it continues to this day and you're like man I'm so tired of this just people like they just ask you different questions like when you come down after giving a talk, sometimes people will be like, oh, so actually, this is what I've learned. You're wrong. It's great that you got up on stage and said all these things, but well actually, and you're like, oh, shut up. You didn't get up on stage. I did. So why don't you let me be the expert and you just shut up and sit down. Um, so like lots of little things, uh, in particular, I was at that particular time when I wrote that, that, that post, um, smartly teenagers get the party started.

I was, I was a CTO. Um, and I would walk around in like a business suit in downtown Charlotte and people would just be like, oh, you're adorable. Like you think you can be a CTO. That's so cute. And to be fair, I had no business being a CTO. Yeah, by your own admission. By my own admission. But at the same time, I know lots of dudes who have no right to be a CTO.

And they never got any crap like that. It was just like just walking into the room, people just kind of look at you funny, like, what are you doing here? And they haven't, like, I haven't even opened my mouth at all. So- So do you feel like you've made it over that hump or are you still treated that way in many contexts?

Some ways. It really depends on the context. I think I've gotten, I'm at the point now where giving talks and, um, like I've made enough of a name for myself that people get really excited when they see that Rockbot is speaking at a conference. They get really, really stoked because they're excited to like learn something mind blowing or whatever. Um, I should also note though, that I've spent a lot of time doing extremely technical talks to prove myself. Um, which is, I don't know that that's necessarily something that other people do. Um, I very, very actively

try not to give talks on diversity and things like that, just because I want to make sure that I'm pigeonholing myself into here is a super technical person, regardless of anything else. That said, of course, I still care about diversity and inclusion. And I talk a lot about that one on one. I just don't do it necessarily in a public forum. So, yeah, think, I think for the most part, I've also been told that once I opened my mouth, like people cannot doubt that I know what I'm talking about. So just the way you deliver or what do you mean? Yeah. Like, like I just like people be like, Oh, so, so do you work with computers? And I'm like, yeah, actually I'm, uh, on, you know, I like yeah actually i'm uh on you know i work at npm and i you know and then then just start spewing lots of technical jargon and people are like right oh

yeah okay you're not an idiot it's like no i'm not an idiot i can't understand people who make assumptions about people that that uh you know just kind of come at them with this negative attitude about what they know. My wife deals with the same thing all the time as a designer. She's a really good designer. And she's always telling me stories about how very similar perspectives but obviously different talents. But this perspective that because of your gender because of your background because of where you came from you can't possibly lead this team you can't possibly do this very well and they sort of like treat you like some sort of delicate thing where she is delicate

because she's a woman but she's also very strong and very passionate and very capable you know very capable and i cannot stand how it's like that. It drives me crazy. Yeah. No, it's one of those things. And it's not limited to just gender. It's not limited to just race. And there's so many things. Like, I can't tell you the number.

So one of the beautiful things about working at NPM is I would say our average age as a company is probably in the high 30s, like which is really rare for startups. Like the stereotypical startup is like a bunch of 22 year old guys eating ramen while like sleeping in bunk beds. Right. Like, I don't know. But like we're not like we're. Like over 30 and like the number of people that I work with who are just I mean everybody I work with is just phenomenally brilliant um but it's it's interesting to see how like sometimes some of them they'll walk into groups and they're like oh you're older and you're like oh my god this

person knows so much more than you do has been doing this for the entirety of your life. So shut up and listen, you might learn something. So let's let's tell this into some motivation. I guess we've got four minutes to the break. So let's give a snapshot of. We heard about your background, obviously, and obviously some of the negativity towards reaching your goals and you being self-assured to the point where you actually reach your goals, which is awesome. But you got a degree in mechanical engineering. You're not doing that directly now. I guess you kind of are with the robots piece, and we'll talk a bit about that probably here just after the break.

But can you tie in what was your motivation to go towards JavaScript? I know you mentioned the... Robots can't talk. Yeah, robots can't talk. You know, you mentioned talking to the CEO and whatnot, but I didn't hear what motivated you to do that. Was it just the fact that it was a goal to reach for you or what? So help us with the motivation piece.

And just after that, we're going to break and we'll come back and we'll talk about robots and deeper about what you're doing at NPM. Yeah. So the JavaScript was really just more of a means to an end. It was an opportunity. The CEO said, learn node. I was like, okay.

And JavaScript just made sense. I think a lot of people struggle with the asynchronicity of JavaScript. And for some reason, my brain, like it clicked almost instantly, which is not, it's a little bit rarer amongst people who are just learning JavaScript. And it's just, it was so much fun for me. I could, I loved the, the instant gratification of working on the web and like seeing my changes in real time, um, as opposed to having to like wait and compile and like, you know, hope for that, that you didn't have a bug so that you don't have to compile again, sort of, uh, kind of iterate iterative approach. And, um, once I, it was, it was about the speed is... So it was about the speed.

It was. It was about the speed. It was about the ease of use, the fact that I could play with it immediately in the browser. I didn't have to, like, add any new stuff to my computer. And at that company that I finally did start working at,

I was exposed to other languages, like PHP and a little bit of, like, you know, Ruby and stuff like that. And I don't know, JavaScript just sang to me in a really fun way. And I was like, I'm just going to keep getting good at this. I'm really good at not getting good at things. I tend to be really, I like to think of life as a big buffet and just like try a little bit of

everything. I'm no expert in anything, but I'm really good in a lot of things. And I was like, you know what, let's, let's try being an expert in something. Let's try being an expert in JavaScript because it's actually really fun and I really enjoy it. So I just kind of like latched on and just decided to kind of keep going with it. Hmm. I think something about the web that excites, you know, people, myself included, especially when you come from a minority or in a position where you feel like, you know, people expect you to ask for permission or like, you know, we're asking why you're here or why you deserve to belong here is that you don't have to ask anybody's permission. When you start doing websites, you just put it out there. You start writing, you just publish. And sure, then you take the backlash from the publishing

or you have the problems that come alongside with that, but there's no gatekeepers. Yeah, that's true. And so you can deploy fast, you have the quick feedback loops, and you just have the open platform, and I think it's just a beautiful thing. And also the fact that the you know javascript is in every browser there is the accessibility is i mean aside from like mobile say an iphone or something like that you can't

really program javascript on an iphone but you can do it on ipad a bit easier with uh maybe some sort of cloud service or something like that but you, you know, the accessibility to JavaScript and programming with JavaScript is the barrier to that entry is so low as compared to like what you said before, PHP, a little, little easier. Yeah. Or, or even Ruby, you've got to get, you know, you know, in theory, you've got to get it right, right. You got to get the right Ruby version on, and then you've got to get, you know, all

these different things in place that usually requires homebrew and, or to make it a little easier to make it the way that you would want to develop long term on it. So you've got all these different bumps and hurdles that you got to get over with JavaScript. All you do is open your browser, enable a certain mode and hit, you know, command option I and boom, you've got a console and access to the source control, you know, the source code and whatnot. And you're on your way. Yep, exactly. Exactly. It was just it was too easy not to get into it

it was just so easy it was just so fun yeah yeah on that note let's take a break we'll uh we'll come back and uh we got 20 more minutes of the show so we'll talk deeply about robots as deep as we can go, the book you mentioned and any bit you can share about your experience at NPM and where you're going and what's happening there, especially around obviously what NPM is but just how JavaScript is moving forward

so we'll take that break we'll talk about that when we come back Full Stack Fest is sponsoring this show it's a week long full stack development conference We'll talk about that when we come back. whole technology stack and it's delivered by some of the brightest minds in our industry full stack fest will have a single track featuring talks along the following themes devops back end machine learning including ai and things like that ux browser technologies internet of things wearable technologies it's a full stack conference end to end september 5th through 9th 2016 in barcelona head to fullstackfest.com once again september 5th through 9th, 2016 in Barcelona. Head to fullstackfest.com. Once again, September 5th through 9th, 2016 in Barcelona. Fullstackfest.com.

And tell them Adam from the changelog sent you. All right, we're back from the break. This is interesting. So, Raquel, we've got a quote from you that says, you essentially use robots as an excuse to get people excited about code and math. Is that where the motivation came for you to kind of get into that piece, get into the robots portion combining JavaScript and your mechanical engineering background? Yeah, definitely. Definitely. I think so. So the the getting people excited about code and math. That's been something that I've been doing for a long time. I found so I have this really kind of

backwards way of of doing education. To me, I hate the way that the traditional education currently is set up, which is like, let's learn addition and then let's learn multiplication after that. And then let's start talking about algebra and then calculus and then da da da da. And I remember sitting in high school looking at my calculus teacher and I just he looked at me and he was like, what's wrong, Raquel? And I just I just looked at him straight up and I was like, dude, why are we learning this? This makes no sense. What is the point of all of this? And he was like, I promise it'll all make sense. It'll all make sense soon. And it took me another five years before it all made sense. It wasn't until college that I sat down and I was like, oh my God, all of this makes sense now. And I was like, this is backwards. This is completely and totally backwards.

The way I want to I want to teach people and what I've been doing ever since I had that epiphany is. Start with the cool thing first. Start with the cool thing that says that gets people excited. So robots are just so cool. People love robots. People love the movies and they love they just they love this idea of these little mechanical pets or mechanical like assistants or whatever that they can boss around the way that, you know, their older siblings boss them around. And, you know, like, it's just something really cool about robots. And so when you introduce robots to people, whether they're children or adults or, you know, whatever, like people are like, oh my God, how do I build that? Like the first thing that everybody does is I

can't do that. And then, and so then I start, well, okay, what if I showed you how to do this? How do I, what if I showed you how to build one of these things? Um, and people were like, oh my God, it's really that easy. It was like, yeah, it really is that easy. And so like, I use the, I like to use a carrot instead of a stick, uh, to get people excited about, about robots? And then what's the next thing that people ask? They're like, okay, wait. So if all it requires is me to start putting these things together, now what do I do? It's like, well, what do you want it to do? Then now the question, now the control is on their part to say, well, I want it to follow something around. Okay, cool.

So how do we get this robot to follow another person around or another robot around or a dot on the wall around? Well, now we have to talk about image processing or we have to talk about movement or we have to talk about basically physics and math. And now you're excited about it. Now I can say, okay, now here's this thing called calculus. We've already talked about now here's this thing called calculus. We've already talked about like, here's this thing called algebra. Let's, let's, let's, let's get into it. Like now it's no longer a chore, but a yak that needs to be shaved. And, and I I'm, I'm very careful with that because I think a lot of people look at chores as like,

oh, I just don't want to do it because there's no point except that I understand that later I'll be happy about it. But when you're shaving a yak, you're like, I know what the end goal is. Yeah, that's true. Now I have to go backwards and get to the point where I know enough that I can move forwards again. And now you're in control. It's not the teacher in control. The teacher is not in control of your learning saying, hey, here's how you do this or that or whatever. Now it's you in control saying I'm ready to learn this thing. And I found that to be extremely powerful because people all over it, like the node bots movement has completely just, it's, it's unbelievable. It is just massive right now. It started out with just like four

people being like, all right, let's see if we can get people excited about this because we're so excited about it. And there are NodeBots meetups all over the world. There's an international NodeBots day every July that like all the NodeBots meetups all have like a hack day. It's like the third Saturday in July or something like that. And all around the world, everybody's hacking on NodeBots at the exact same time. And to your point, Jared, like the beauty of like a lot of people are like, well, why the hell would you use JavaScript to build robots? Like of all the languages out there, like when you build robots, you use C++,

maybe use Python. But I like I've been an advocate for JavaScript. As soon as I figured out that JavaScript could be used for robots, I was like, forget it. Everything else, put it to the side. Let's focus on JavaScript. can get people excited about playing with robots because jobs are just so easy to use, then, then I can get them excited about other things and get them excited about like engineering and computer science and all sorts of who knows what else. And it's just, it's a game changer. It's an absolute game changer that you're not going to necessarily see in the next couple of weeks or the next couple of months, or even the next couple of years, but in the next

couple of decades, I really think people are just going to like, be like, well, I mean, I built a robot. So how hard can this internet thing be? Yeah. Let me ask you this. I have, I have a almost eight year old daughter and, um, we homeschool. So I'm very involved in just in her education and whatnot. What's the quickest or easiest way for me to go from zero to NodeBots with her or zero to excited? Yeah. With regard to NodeBots with her. Like, what would be my steps to have something where she's like, let's do this? All right.

So I would argue do the hello world. The hello world in NodeBots is like, it's not console.log, it's getting an LED to blink. And what's really cool about that is, so you start out with an Arduino and you've got a little LED and you can use Johnny5. So Johnny5 is a module that Rick Waldron created. Rick is on the board of jQuery. So what's cool about Johnny five is that it feels a lot like jQuery.

So if you're fairly proficient with jQuery, you can easily, even if you're not fairly proficient with jQuery, if you just understand the basic concepts of jQuery, Johnny five is super easy. It's like servo dot to some angle. Like, LED.on. LED.off. It's so, so easy. And so what I would recommend that you do is you start off with get an LED to turn on. And then add a button. Add a button so that when you press the button, the LED turns on. And when you let go of the button, the LED turns off. And then just start playing.

The documentation and the API for Johnny Five is so, so good. And it's really quite, it's pretty thorough and has so many different components that you can get and use and all that stuff. So that's a really fun thing to do if you want to use Johnny Five. I'm going to do something that's a little bit uncouth,

but because your daughter is eight, I don't know if you've ever heard of squishy circuits. Have you heard of squishy circuits? No. Okay, so there's this idea. Yeah, there's this thing called squishy circuits, which is basically electronics with Play-Doh. So you make Play-Doh at home and there's two different types of Play-Doh that you create.

One is with salt and one is with sugar. And what that means is one is conductive and the other one is not. And what you can do is you can actually create circuits with this Play-Doh as like the wires between your components. And you can learn about electronics using Play-doh as like the wires between your components and you can learn about electronics using play-doh and this is great for adults and kids and everything but especially if it's if it's like parents and kids working together especially in a homeschool situation I think it is just super fun because not only do you get to like learn about like you not only do you get to like learn about like not only do you get to play in the kitchen and like make Play-Doh, but then you also get to play with electronics and start learning about basic E&M and all of those things. And it's again, it's about getting your hands dirty and playing around.

And then the next thing you're going to be doing is trying to understand, OK, wait, so what is the polarity of all these things? How does a capacitor work? How does, you know, and those questions are things that you're going to be excited to learn as opposed to somebody sitting you down and be like, all right, so let's talk about Maxwell's equations. It's just like, oh, God, why? Why are we doing this? Right, right. So. Very cool. I will definitely check out squishy circuits.

Yeah. Absolutely. And Johnny Five. Absolutely. Oh, yeah. And Johnny five. Absolutely. Like, do it all, do all of it. Once you understand how electronics work,

then doing the Johnny five stuff is, is even easier. Um, you can totally do the Johnny five stuff without understanding electronics. I certainly did. Um, so yeah, it's pretty,

pretty straightforward. Let's approach though, to start them with the, the exciting thing to get to this, yeah, it's pretty, pretty straightforward. This approach, though, to start with the exciting thing to get to this, I don't know, this motivated state, I guess, is probably the easiest way to say it. Because there's times when you learn and you're like, I realize I have to go through the trenches for a bit to get to, you know, the other side. And I get that. And that's good if you're starting with motivation but if you're beginning with no motivation and someone started dragging you along yeah which is usually not usually it's it's often the case as someone beginning to learn you're motivated by some

sort of long-term goal but the short term is really hard and but starting out with this this goal of like here's something real that you can actually see tangibly this whole world that isn't just a console log kind of thing it's actually a blinking light or in this case the squishy circuits that's i'm surprised that squishy circuits isn't bigger it yeah like i google it and it's there's a bunch of stuff out there but it seems kind of like dated to a degree some of the sites that that it houses or or housing information around it it seems like it could be organized a bit more yeah also remember that a lot of it so that swishy circuits came out of uh a university oh yeah and so like is that it yep yeah university of saint thomas uh the person who created was actually one of my tas in college um And I worship at her feet. She's just so amazing.

I mean, I watch, and Jared does too, Shark Tank every week. And this should be on there. Like this should be a business. Right. Yeah, exactly. Because it's, I mean, this is, I think kids learning and this kind of kids learning stuff is just, I mean, it's so hands-on. It's so pliable to their minds.

They see, okay, this is green and that conducts. And this is a, you know, no color, for example, and that doesn't conduct. And I get that when I put these two together and I put this in there, you know, the light goes on. I mean, that's to me, that, that's the interesting thing, right? Like there's so many different parts of our society that haven't figured out how to work together yet. Like academia and, and like the whole tech movement has, there's so many opportunities for, for both to like really, really take off. But I don't know why I think, I think there's just this whole like academia, they don't know anything. And then there's like the academics are looking at like, oh, well, they're just a bunch of 20 year olds eating ramen while sleeping on bunk beds. Like there's there's so many opportunities for everything to kind of coalesce. And we're just messing it up by not by not taking advantage of that um so yeah i don't know i don't know why squishy circuits isn't bigger and like just marketed everywhere the other thing is there's

like how do you make money off of that yeah so you can make you can make the recipes at home like well i think that there's a lot i mean this isn't shark tank and i'm not uh mr wonderful but um you know there's lots of areas where people don't want to make this stuff. Maybe that's the interesting part too, but just giving them the information, information is, is sellable. Doesn't have to be a hardened product. You know, the, the book, for example, or a course or, you know, access to 10 videos that goes from zero to, you know, frog with blinking lights or something. I don't know.

Just something that I think there's something interesting there that could be education-based. Because kids' education and education in general is totally, not so much should be a capitalistic for-profit business, but there's certainly a lot of opportunity because parents will pay to have their kids be educated in all sorts of unique ways. And I'm sure Jared buys books or gets donated books or something for his curriculum at home. And there's some sort of monetary component that goes with it that,

you know, he would totally add on to his daughter's education cycle to that he would pay for. Yeah. I mean, there's no, and there's Jared's all over the world there's no uh better investment in my opinion let's ask this one last thing about

robots and then we'll talk about npm or cal we want to respect your time and we're getting near the end here um you've been in the nodebots community for a long time in fact you're kind of uh slowly not backing out of it but you're you're interested in other other things uh in 2016 but throughout your time what are just give us a couple of the coolest things that you've seen done with regard to NodeBots and robotics over the years. Oh my goodness. So I'm not going to answer the robotics general question because that's just too big. But NodeBots, I have seen, so it's so amazing to me how far people can go with just eight hours.

Just, not even, six hours. With six hours of time starting from nothing and building something really awesome. I've seen little robots that will, like, know how to use a keyboard because, like, they've just been, like, they can type stuff out for you. I've seen somebody built a little a Wi-Fi enabled cat laser thing. So like like they'll be in their office, like in another part of town, and they will like log into their home and just on their iPhone, move the laser around to like distract their cat in the middle of the day. Um, I have, uh, so the, there are lots of wearables, so many fun wearable type things where like, uh, a friend of mine cast perch makes a sash called node sash, where if you tweet at the node sash, uh, if you give it like a hex color, it'll queue up on the sash. And so like, like there's just every time that you tweet these colors, there's just like a rainbow of colors on the sash. Uh, there are, there are lots of robots

that can do object avoidance. Uh, my whole goal as a member of the NodeBots community was to just keep pushing the edge because a lot of people, again, don't know where the end is. And they'll just kind of be like, well, this is as far as I can go. So I'm just not going to go any further. So I built robots that had a little bit more AI in them. So like I had a robot that could draw, it drew like an abstract piece of art. Or like I had a robot that could scan an area and like know what's in view and all sorts of things. But probably the most impressive thing that I've seen to date is a hexapod, which is a six-legged robot that walks beautifully. Like it has a perfect gait, which is just, you know, a walking pace that it looks like a bug. And it's massive, it's like, I want to say it's

about two feet by two feet. Um, it like fits into it like a two foot square, uh, and it can like open up and it sounds so creepy. It is the creepiest sound because of all the servos and everything. It sounds like something out of the movies. And it's beautiful the way that it moves around. And the person who built it, he created it. And actually, he's in Houston. His name is totally blanked right just this second. Of course it does, right at the moment when you need to give a shout out. But he used JavaScript animations to help program the servos so that it would have a really fluid walk.

And it is the creepiest thing. Oh, Donovan Buck. Shout out to Donovan Buck, the techs on Twitter for making this ridiculously creepy but so freaking awesome robot. And he gives talks and stuff. So I recommend seeing some of his talks to see

this robot in action it is absolutely beautiful it was his second robot ever the first one was the hello world he was like alright this hello world is cool now I want to build a hexapod and I'm like okay you have the power

go for it and it it's really really impressive aside from johnny five which you've mentioned already any any interesting repos out there on github or elsewhere that uh that is like essential to getting started um johnny five is a really good one to start with and And it, and it like, there are add-ons to Johnny five that you can also, and you can find those. Um, I've, I built a module called vector. Um, but it's spelled with a K instead of a C, uh, that basically it does all of your matrix math. So you don't necessarily need to know how to do linear algebra, as long as you understand the basics of this is what a vector is and I need to rotate the vector or whatever. So like I wanted to abstract out linear algebra enough so that people could just start using

linear algebra and vector transformations and matrices. That was like my first node module. I was like, okay, I can get into this. I have this niche that I can get into. I'm sure at this point there are better matrix modules out there. But I made it specifically for robotics. That was kind of one of my little claims to fame

in the node community. Like, hey, I was the first person to add a matrix module for NPM. If you want to do some cool stuff. Also, if you like the matrix movies, yours will still be the best. Yes, indeed. Matrix 2 and 3 really didn't happen. No, they were missing something special,

and it just sort of went down from there. That's a whole different topic. I'm sorry, there's only one matrix movie. Oh, there is? That's real sad. The first. There's only one. I don't know what you're talking about what trilogy

while we're on the subject of open source and NPM we've talked a little bit about your work there but not deeply we talked about you being employee number one and Isaac reaching out to you when you thought you were an unknown at least to him from that perspective.

But obviously this shows roots is in open source. We're called the change log. It's, you know, what's fresh and new and open source. That's what our tagline has been forever. Although I think our platform and this podcast and the content kind of has shifted and changed a little bit over that time.

And we're probably a bit more about deeper stories than we are about what's fresh and new, but nonetheless, uh, at NPM, uh, kind of give us an understanding of what your role is there and how you enjoy, um, being able to work at a company where so much is built around open source. It was built around open source. Um, yeah. Help us out with that. Yeah. So, um, so NPM as, as an acronym, which doesn't actually stand for anything. This is the one thing that will blow everybody's minds. NPM does not officially stand for Node Package Manager.

It's just NPM. Right. Yeah, I know. Why not? Because why should it? Well, it did at first. But now it doesn't. No, it doesn't. Never did.

It never did. You ask Isaac. Oh, man. No, no. It's just NPM. Just NPM. But NPM is a package manager for JavaScript. And it started out as just for Node.

But now people are using it for everything from backend node to frontend to robots. So it's for absolutely anything JavaScript related. Although, let's be real, there's CSS in NPM. There's C in NPM. There's even some Ruby and Perl in NPM at this point. So it's really just a really awesome package manager. And my team is the web team and our purview is when you go to npmjs.com, we take care of everything from the design all the way down to making sure those boxes stay up.

Um, so we are full stack and we care a lot about this website and making sure that it is up and useful. And we have so many things on our plate. I feel so bad because we're a really small team. NPM as a company is about 25 people, which I think surprises a lot of people. The web team itself is four. Actually, five. We're five people because we include the designer. Uh, and so five

people trying to tackle everything there is to tackle about the website. There's always somebody upset with the state of the website. And I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. We just cannot handle everything. Um, and, uh, and then, you know, so that's, that's our job. That's my team's job. We also have other teams at NPM. The CLI team is the one that everybody knows and loves because when they do NPM install, that's their code. And of course, we have our registry team and our sales and marketing and of course, our support team, which is phenomenal. And our registry team who makes sure that everything actually does stay up. Once upon a time, the NPM registry would go down pretty much at a sneeze. And now it's got like 99, it's got like six nines or something percent up. It's ridiculous.

Our teams are so fantastic. So what was I going to say with that? We love open source. So much of our code is open source. Unfortunately, as we grow, some things have to be a little bit more closed source just because we need to make money somehow. But the benefit of that is that other people get to make closed source things with NPM as well. So we introduced private packages and orgs, and we have our NPM on-site, which is our enterprise solution.

And what that basically means is you can feel comfortable using NPM for everything, not just your open source stuff, but also the things that you want to keep just within your team or within your company, or just on your private projects that you're not ready to say publish on because of all the possibilities that could happen when you publish a code onto the internet. Um, and I love that. I love that, that the community is number one in what one in what we do constantly. I think a lot of people got really angry when we became a company because they're like, wait, no, you can't be a company. You can't be a for-profit company. We could say open source and nonprofit, like nonprofit, et cetera. But the thing about open source is that you take advantage of the community who wants to put in their own personal time into making your product great. And that's fantastic. But the fact of the matter is that there are some things that nobody wants to do.

There's a reason why sanitation workers are paid so well, because nobody wants to do the crap work. And so we're getting paid to do the work that other people wouldn't necessarily step up to do with their free time. And you shouldn't have to step up with your free time to make sure that servers are up. So being able to pay people to sustainably work, that's one of the great things about NPM. We really care about sustainability in terms of just our culture. At 6 p.m. in our office, the lights go out. This is like a building thing,

but we never stopped it from happening. The lights turn off at 6 p.m. So it's time to go home. Like everybody leaves the office at 6 p.m. from NPM because there's no point in overworking yourself. Our VP of engineering likes to tell everybody, she's like, okay, look, I want NPM to exit. I want NPM to exit big. And so when that happens, in order for that to happen, I need everybody to be putting in their absolute best that happens, in order for that to happen, I need everybody to be putting in their absolute best work. The only way for you to put in your absolute best work is if you sleep well every night and eat well and enjoy your time outside of work so that when you're at work, you're actually doing your best work. So for the love of everything, just go home.

Stop working at 6 p.m. Don't't get back online we'll see you in the morning there's nothing so horribly awfully wrong that it can't wait until the morning unless it's like an ops thing right the registry is up all the time yeah now that the registry is up all the time like we have a really sensible ops rotation i'm on it um and that makes sense to have a rotation for those kinds of jobs though you know exactly exactly and we have have a team that takes care of things when we're sleeping. So we don't get woken up in the middle of the night. Like, I have never gotten woken up in the middle of the night when something goes wrong. Like, it's normally just like a little box that Amazon forgot to notify us that it was shutting down.

So we have to like, all right, let's fix it. But like, we have such a redundant architecture that 90% of the time, it's really not a big deal. So we really care about making sure that not only are our employees happy and, and thriving and successful, but that everybody else who's using our product is happy and thriving and successful. And yes, search still sucks. And we know this, we're working on it. But you know, there's just so many things there only there's only so much time for us to get all the things done. So if anything NPM related that's coming down the pipeline that you can share with us, whether it be you know open source side or even on the on the side?

Let's see. The website's getting a redesign. That's kind of fun. There's NPM camp coming up. It's it'll be like a really chill conference. It's not actually camping. It'll be in Oakland or, you know, you can find a tree every once in a while um and uh um actually i love working in oakland oakland is just a fantastic place to be i love it better than working in san francisco like by heaps and bounds um so shout out to oakland uh and uh let's see what else is coming up um you know things are just kind of right now we're focusing on our products and making sure that they are the best they can be. I know the CLI is working really, really hard

to just, they have such a massive, massive to-do list. It's not like there's going to be, there's not going to be an NPM4 coming out anytime soon. So NPM3 is still the hot thing, but they do weekly releases. So make sure you're constantly upgrading your NPM just so that you have the latest and greatest. Yeah, it's pretty much what I can think of.

Well, there is one topic that we have not talked about, which I'm sure if you're listening to this, you've been wondering this, like we have been wondering this for a very long time. You rocked the handle, Rockbot. Yeah. Right. Yeah. And so I'm kind of curious, knowing your history, knowing your path, as we've shared here on the show today, where did that name come from? Did you, is it self-professed or is it someone give you that, that name? Where did it come from? Yeah. So, um, uh, back to 2009, uh, there was this thing called Twitter and, uh, I wanted to be part of it, but, uh, online identity is scary. Um, so I didn't want to put my name on my Twitter handle. And

at the time, I go by Raquel all the time now, but my nickname growing up was Rocky, like the boxer or the squirrel, whichever your preference. Nice. Okay. And the reason my nickname was Rocky was because no one could pronounce Raquel.

Don't ask me how. Everyone kept calling me Rachel or Rochelle or Raquel. And I was like, I can't handle this anymore. I was in third grade. And, and Rocky was my nickname all the way through college. And so I was like, okay, well, Rocky, but Rocky is such a common like name. But i also do robots so rocky robots let's just squish the two together and i will i'll try being rock bot and that is basically forever and ever the thing is it a hard handle to maintain? Meaning, you know, as new networks come up, you're able to get it? I'm pretty able to get it. The only downsides are, so Freenode has Rockbot as a, like there's a bot named Rockbot.

So I can't get Rockbot there. I have to like add underscores or something. And then there's there's a company called Rockbot, which does it's like a it's like a crowdsourced jukebox sort of thing. So like when you go to a bar, you can like get the Rockbot app and like choose a song and pay monies to listen to the song in the bar, which is really hilarious because, A, they're also located in Oakland. And B, their Twitter handle is at GetRockBot because they couldn't get the RockBot handle because I had it first. They need to hire you as their CTO. Well, I mean, it's a fun story. They know somebody that I know.

So my first startup living in San Francisco, they knew my boss. And they asked via my boss if I would give up my Twitter handle for them. And I was like, no. At that point, I had like 2,000 followers and they had like 200. And I was like, no, no, no. That's not going to work. And at this point, I think very much differently. But it's super funny getting tweets every once in a while being like, oh, no, that's not going to work. And at this point, I think very much differently. But it's super funny getting tweets every once in a while

being like, oh my God, Rockbot is so awesome. And they like show a picture of a bar. And I'm like, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'll tweet that. I'll take the picture out. All right, last question for you, Raquel. We'll let you get back to hacking and slinging. Programming hero. I mean, we love, and we'll let you get back to hacking and slinging. Programming hero.

I mean, we love to hear who's influenced you, and obviously your path is a zigzag like anybody's. Not a straight arrow, but who would you consider a hero for yourself? Who's been an inspiration to you in programming, in open source, that you want to

give a shout out to? And it doesn't have to be one. A couple is fine, but who's your hero? CJ Siegebot. CJ Silverio is our VP of engineering at NPM. And she started at NPM a week after I did. And so she and I have been on this fun journey for for two years now. And 90 percent of the things that I've learned in the last few years have come from her. She is just above and beyond. Holy cow. Amazing. I also need to give a shout out to stubborn Ella Nicole Sullivan, who she does a lot, you know, she's more on the CSS type of

things, but she has taught me a ton about the non-coding side of things. And, you know, full disclosure, she's also my manager at the moment, but just has taught me so, so, so much about kind of like understanding a product and understanding how, how to kind of finagle your way to understanding what are the priorities? Because it's so easy when you're first starting a company to be like, all right, I have all these billion and seven ideas. Let's execute on all of them. And no, that's a terrible idea. Don't do that. But knowing how to figure out which one of the seven billion or one billion and seven, how do you pick just one to focus on? And she's kind of helping me understand that in the context of NPM. And so definitely massive shout outs to the two of them for just like i just bow at their feet for

like yes teach me everything you know we we have this joke at npm um that dj and i started that uh it's like have you ever seen heroes the tv show yeah um do you know how siler would like do something weird to people's brains and everyone just assumed that he like ate their brains to understand everything that they knew so we just like we just like walk around and and like i'll be like cj i need to pair with you because i need to eat your brain you know like so i could just just like and it's like gruesome but at the same time it's much better than pick yeah no i don't want to pick your brain i just want to eat it just just give me all the knowledge that's in your brain so I can put it in my brain so that I can become all the more powerful. Yes.

So I guess not really the last question, but this is really the last question. Since you're such a wealth of knowledge, we want to eat your brain. And we'll do that in a nice way. Yeah, in a nice way, of course. Oh, of course. Totally. My brain is for eating. In a non-creepy way. In a non-creepy way. What's on your radar? You know, there's lots of open source out there. You're, you know, deeply invested with a lot of fun stuff. If you could take a break from, I guess, maybe at 6 p.m. when you take your breaks, what would you hack on that's new, fresh, in open source? What's out there on your radar?

If you had some time to play with it yeah oh man i've like done such a good job of like avoiding everything for a little while um that said i've heard i keep hearing amazing things about react and i'm just like okay i need to build something with that um but i haven't yet uh i don't know i've i've just been kind of like uh i think a lot of the the robot stuff continues to be really fascinating to me just seeing how people are building cooler and cooler things especially on the like super mathy side of stuff.

There's somebody named Hackintosh, is his Twitter handle. He does some really, really, really neat stuff with regards to streaming data and hacking Chromecasts to stream data that you might have gotten from BitTorrent and just some fun things like that. That's the sort of thing that when I have time, I try to play around with that a bit more because it's something I don't know at all. I know nothing about data streaming. I know very little about...

I use streams, but I don't use them the way that they use them. And that's some really, really cool stuff. Mostly because I just, there's only so many things that are available via the Chromecast and I'm just like, I want to watch this other thing. Um, and so I think, I think that could be really, I think that's really fun and really cool, uh, mad science that people do. And I love seeing people do things with internet technology that no one ever thought that you should be able to do with internet technology. If that makes sense.

Yeah. So. Well, certainly fun things in react. We've we've talked a bit about that. We had Dan Abramov on not long ago. Jared, if you got the internet up,

pull up the number for me. Cause I forget, but we had Dan on talkedov on not long ago. Jared, if you got the internet up, pull up the number for me because I forget. But we had Dan on, talked about Redux. 187? 197? 187? 187. So go to changelog.com slash 187 if you're listening.

Also be in the show notes for you. 149 if you want to go back to the initial React.js episode with the Facebook team. Yeah. We need to circle back with them too and get them back on because lots has happened since then. And we can use a catch up of some sort. But React is certainly cool. What was the other one you mentioned? Just the Hackintosh.

Yeah, Hackintosh's stuff. Just everything he does. He blows my mind every single time. Him and Firas. Yeah. The two of them just build the coolest stuff. Like what? What are you doing?

How do you what? Where did you come up with this idea? I just I love I love watching their talks at different conferences because every single time is guaranteed. Just make me go, where do you find the time to come up with this ridiculous idea

and then execute on it and then blow my mind? I don't understand. Anyway. Somebody else was singing Firas' praises recently. Adam, who was that? I think it was Henrik Jorateg.

I was super excited about what Firas is up to. You might have to get him on the show. I had a conversation for our ad spots with Opbeat, Thomas Watson, who runs Opbeat Node and the Node piece to Opbeat for their application performance stuff. And he was talking about Frost and several others, but I think he was saying that Frost is sort of like

independently employed or something like that. I'm not really sure. Like somehow they're not really employed, but they're employed, this group of people. It's just one guy, isn't it? Yeah. I mean, yeah, I'm referencing the other people Thomas mentioned. Oh.

Not just Frost, but this group of people are doing really awesome stuff, as Raquel has mentioned. But I don't know. Raquel, is he employed somewhere? I think he just works on open source. And he just gets funded somehow. I don't know. He might be one of those secret Googlers or something. There's so many of them.

Oh, the secret Googlers. I think we need to start a conspiracy theory slash rumor about Frost right now. I love starting conspiracy theories. All right. Well, Frost, if you happen to be listening or someone who knows Frost is listening and they know the truth, email us. Editors at ChangeWorld.com. We'd love to hear more. Yeah.

We'd like to learn the backstory and even have him on the show to to dive a little deeper into what he's up to and all the unique things in this building but uh because it's such a pleasure to to learn more about where you came from especially this intrepid attitude that jared has coined for you i think that's such an interesting way to describe your um i don't know just this fearless way of approaching the highest mountain sometimes. And I think you're an inspiration to people. And we look forward to hearing more about the awesome stuff you have been doing and you will do. And we mentioned Off Air, but you're family now.

So you're part of the Chisell family and we'll be here to support you however we can. But that is it for the show is there anything else you want to mention before we go ahead and close um find a reason to smile every day yeah that's all nice that's the way to do it right there smiles every day don't right it's it's bad for your face right yeah indeed anyway thank you so much this is super fun yeah thanks everyone to uh for listening to the show this uh i think this is episode 200 so if it's not i'm sad about that but changelog.com slash 200 you'll find show notes there and all the details that rachel has mentioned on this show today and And that's it. So let's say goodbye. Bye.

Bye. you you