The Data Stack Show - The PRQL: The Portability of Engineering Fundamentals with Ioannis Foukarakis of Mattermost

Episode Date: June 5, 2023

In this bonus episode, Eric and Kostas preview their upcoming conversation with Ioannis Foukarakis of Mattermost.

Welcome to the Data Stack Show prequel, where we replay a snippet from the show we just recorded. Kostas, are you ready to give people a sneak peek? I am, of course. Let's do it. Let's do it. Kostas, what an awesome episode with Yanni. I mean, it's clear that the big takeaway is that if you neglect your Quake Arena practice, those skills will atrophy over time and will cause regrets for you.

I actually made me think about Duke Nukem. You remember Duke Nukem yeah I do that was again like you had those friends who were just like how would you know how did you get so good at this like yeah it's amazing it's interesting how I mean if you think about like because we had like this conversation with Janssen like I started, I started, like, remembering, like, how we were, you know, like, playing games and stuff like that back then. And so there were, like, a couple of things, like, in Quake Arena that... Okay, you've had, like, first of all, like, it was crazy to see with a railgun, like, the aim that some people had

and how they could do headshots. That was like crazy. I mean, I don't know what kind of reflexes these people I never managed to get to that level but there were people that when they entered the arena, you would just leave because it didn't make sense.

It was almost like cheating. And they were not cheating yeah and usually this was the result of like spending way too many hours like playing instead of studying oh 100 yeah like an effect on your oh yeah i mean you're talking about people who would like take the mouse apart and like clean the ball and like clean the mouse pad before the game, you know, because they had like a very... The ball, the ball, the ball. Like something that doesn't exist anymore.

Yes, exactly. Yeah, but it's super important because like, you know, once you got really good, you could tell if the ball got dirty. Like it wasn't. Yeah, 100%. And yeah, measuring the ping to the server, like, because. Yeah. That was.

Oh, yeah. So good. The other thing that I think, like, it's a testament of, like, the human creativity here is that there was, like, this thing going, like, the rocket jump right which technically but with the default like settings you couldn't do it because you were actually like exploding yourself right but we were changing like the settings so you could use like the rocket jumping and that's like completely like changing like the way that you were playing right so actually it's like very interesting to see how people were not just playing, but also innovating on top of the game to make it a new game, right? 100%.

I think that's actually a really good... That was really fun to talk about. When we think about the episode and talking with Yanni, who now works as a data engineer at Mattermost, who does really interesting work around super high security team collaboration for the Air Force and for Bank of America and other huge companies. He's a systems thinker, right? He breaks a systems thinker, right? He breaks down systems. I mean, it sounds funny, but the way that you talked with him about trying to break down the Quake Arena game and execute that during class and other things like that, it was a bunch of really smart, creative people solving a systems problem, right?

And so that's really, really cool to me to hear his story. And I think anyone who's interested in sort of transitioning from different disciplines and taking the best of that discipline with you to the next one, this is a really great episode. Oh, yeah, 100%. Like Jan's like give like, I think like a very pragmatic, like, how to describe how like the fundamentals at the end do not change. I think he mentioned also a couple of times of how we go back in circles in a way. And things that we were doing in the past, we do again today and all these things.

And that's not actually a bad thing. It's a good thing. Innovation doesn't mean throwing away completely what was happening in the past and bringing a completely different paradigm. It's much more, let's say, iterative in a way. And there are fundamentals that remain there, no matter what. Some things cannot change. The fundamentals are there. And so investing time in

learning these fundamentals and enjoying working with these fundamentals, I think it's probably the most important thing that someone can do in their career. And it doesn't matter. If you have them, you can go through software engineering, backend engineering, frontend engineering,

ML to data engineering and whatever is next. So I think it's a great episode for anyone who wants to learn about that. I agree. Well, thank you for joining us. Definitely subscribe. If you haven't, tell a friend.

Give us feedback. Head to the website, fill out the form. Send us an email. Actually, send an email to brooks at data stack show.com. He'll respond faster than me or Costas. And we will catch you on the next one.