They dive deep into the world of mentorship, personal growth, and problem-solving with our special guests, Joao and Manny, alongside our insightful panelists, AJ and Charles.

In this episode, they explore the transformative power of weekly accountability meetings (WAM), where tasks are committed and followed up with a yes or no, no excuses allowed. Joao and Manny share their journey of mentorship that crossed borders, forging a strong bond through adversity and mutual respect. We'll also delve into how their dynamic friendship amplifies professional standards, and the importance of balancing personal and professional relationships.

We discuss the profound impacts of structured problem-solving methods, specifically George Polya's renowned four-step process. Joao and Manny highlight how this systematic approach has refined their coding skills and overall problem-solving abilities. Alongside, we touch upon the fascinating intersection of human learning and AI, emphasizing the unique capacity humans have for generalizing new problems from limited data.

In addition, our speakers will share their roadmap for continuous learning, curriculum development, and practical exercises—highlighting tools like Trello for task management and Anki for reinforcing learning. AJ O'Neil offers his unique perspective on the talent it takes to thrive in programming and how personal enjoyment is crucial for sustained success.

Later, we'll transition to our Picks section, where AJ, Charles, and the guests share their latest recommendations, from essential productivity tools and engaging books to top-notch apps and board games.

Finally, we'll wrap up with some valuable insights on time management, consistent study habits, and the importance of finding a mentor who truly cares about your growth. Whether you're a seasoned developer or just starting out, this episode is packed with practical advice and inspiring stories that you won't want to miss. So, tune in for all this and more on Top End Devs!

Picks

Charles Max Wood [00:00:05]:
Hey. Welcome back to another episode of the JavaScript Jabber podcast. This week on our panel, we have AJ O'Neil.

AJ O'Neil [00:00:12]:
Yo. Yo. Yo. Coming at you live from Stromboli.

Charles Max Wood [00:00:16]:
Yeah. I timed that well. I saw you were chewing food. But anyway, I'm Charles Max Wood from Top End Devs. And this week, we have 2 special guests. We have is it how do you say?

Joao [00:00:28]:
Yeah. Joel. Anywhere close. You you can call me Victor. It's easier, I think.

Charles Max Wood [00:00:34]:
Okay. Do you wanna just do a quick introduction? Who you are, what you do?

Joao [00:00:39]:
Sure. I work, full time as a AI engineer, in Brazil in a innovation lab here. And I also, do freelancing, at CoMaintor. And, I help I have helped people from all over the world, you know, from Kazakhstan to Canada, US, Europe. And there, I met Manny, and we established a partnership there.

Charles Max Wood [00:01:08]:
Awesome. Yeah. So, you mentioned Manny. Manny is our other guest. Manny, do you wanna introduce yourself real quick?

Manny [00:01:15]:
Yeah. My name is Manny. I live in Dallas, Texas. I'm a post at JavaScript developer working with React, on an internal cloud platform for a bank. Been there about 5 years now. Gets sort of, like, midyear mid mid level. I think that's what Joao was describing me as. And I actively been seeking mentorship for a while.

Manny [00:01:38]:
I had a very difficult time finding it until I actually got on CodeMentor in in. Okay.

Charles Max Wood [00:01:45]:
So, yeah, we're we're talking about I should set the stage, I guess. We're talking about mentorship and friendship and, you know, how that helps personal growth and things like that. It's kind of the the overall idea that at least was put put forward, you know, when when Manny and and Joao or Victor. Sorry.

Manny [00:02:07]:
I'm gonna mess that up the whole time. Anyway,

Charles Max Wood [00:02:12]:
so, you know, that that was the idea that we got to while you know? And and why we set up this episode is because this is an area that I guess, we focus a lot on the technology, and I think this is an important area. So, yeah, I'd love to just kinda get the story. I love I love hearing stories. So, Manny, maybe you should start out and just kinda tell us, okay. This is where I was at. This is this is what I was looking for. This is how I found CodeMentor and then, you know, how you kind of moved into this, you know, mentorship relationship.

Manny [00:02:49]:
Sure. Yeah.

Joao [00:02:49]:
So I,

Manny [00:02:52]:
at 35, I, you know but just back, like, in 2015 to give away my age, I decided I was gonna, like, change my career. I know. I was gonna decided I would change my career. You're fine. I know. I know. It's all good. But so I decided I was gonna change my career, which at that stage, like, I had, like, no background in programming other than some, like, HTML stuff I had learned while I was a copywriter.

Manny [00:03:17]:
But I had an interest in all the things that I was told not to touch, like CSS and JavaScript. And I just I wanted a better job with, you know, more fulfilling and and, you know, that way, like, challenge me a little bit more intellectually. So I went to, like, a I don't know if you'd call it boot camp. It's, like, a 9 month kind of, like, introduction to JavaScript, and I learned probably, like, 10% of what I needed to know there to be successful. So I get out of there. I don't know hardly anything, and I have to, from that point, actually start making up all the things I need to know to be able to get myself into a job after 35. So I did a lot of self study, put myself through, like, a lot of, just sort of, like, rigorous hard lessons of, like, working for free, although I don't recommend that, doing internships to be able to get the experience that I needed in order to be able to build things. So in doing that, I learned a lot about how to manipulate data, how to think about state on the front end, mobile applications.

Manny [00:04:13]:
I learned a lot from work in solving business problems in, like, critical situations where I have, like, intense pressure on me to do so, which was good. But during that process, I really, like, neglected, like, learning, like, computer science stuff.

Joao [00:04:27]:
Mhmm.

Manny [00:04:28]:
1, probably because I was intimidated by it, and 2, I didn't necessarily need it to get a job, and 3, just, like, the time allotment that I had, you know, versus what I could learn versus what I had time to do. So fast forward in my current role now for 5 years, really like my job. Like, the people I work with, I'm well respected. You know, I have good time off. Like, I'm off today for Labor Day. So I really like where I'm at, but I've started feeling I've been getting too comfortable. And with a lot of the turmoil in the economy, I'm like, okay. Well, what would happen if I had to go back out there and interview again? Like, where am I at? Like, is the experience that I have building things good enough? So I was like, I I wanna learn this stuff.

Manny [00:05:11]:
I don't wanna do it alone because I I need some motivation. And I know that if I just start by myself, like, it'll like, I'll get sidetracked by things. So I went on CodeMentor and looked for a mentor and found as well. Cool.

Charles Max Wood [00:05:23]:
So what I mean, what's the process? You get into CodeMentor. Yeah. I mean, did you do they just match you up based on skills, or No. You kinda get in and say, hey. This is what I want or

Manny [00:05:34]:
yeah. Kinda, like I mean, you put alright. So I think if I remember correctly, you just put, like, a basic feeler out there, like, with the message, like, hey. This is where I'm at in my career. This is what I'm looking for. You know? This is my time zone. And then within, like, 5 minutes, you get inundated with, like, 5,000 people, like, trying to get you to, sign up with them. And, obviously, you know, they're looking for business.

Manny [00:05:56]:
They're looking to mentor. So you have a lot of stuff to filter through. So I actually found someone before Joao around the same time, and I met with him. And, like, he the first thing he did was, like, started taking me through, like, merge sort. I was like, woah. Back out, dude. I'm looking for, like, long term mentorship here. We haven't even started talking about a raise yet.

Manny [00:06:17]:
Why are we getting in like, I just felt like he wasn't, like, targeted towards me. Now I had a message from Joao that said, hey. Let's meet. I wanna find out if we can work together. And that kinda stuck out stood out to me, and plus, he was Brazilian and, you know, my dad had lived down there. And we just made the connection. We had, like, an initial meeting. And from there, I think we took some time to figure out if we were gonna work together, and then we decided to, and we've been going at it since the beginning of April.

Manny [00:06:45]:
Cool.

Charles Max Wood [00:06:46]:
So, I

Manny [00:06:48]:
got lucky. I got really lucky.

Charles Max Wood [00:06:50]:
Right. So, Joao, when you're looking at at people that you can help, right, because because it's it's a two way street. Right? So if you're looking at people you can help, how do you decide, okay, you know, Manny looks like somebody I can help versus maybe, you know, I'm not gonna pitch this person because I don't know if I've got what they need.

Joao [00:07:11]:
Mhmm. Yeah. Sure. That's why, I said to to him to that we should first, meet and talk about his goals, his struggles, and, understand him, you know. Listen actively and, see if my skills and, the way that I teach, would help him. Because, I believe that, from the standpoint, from the main team also from the mentor, we had to deliver an excellent, service. Right? And yeah. So so I also interview him, as a mentor.

Charles Max Wood [00:08:00]:
Gotcha. So let let me back up for a minute because, you know, I'm looking at this and looking at kind of the relationship and the process. And, AJ, feel free to jump in anytime you want. But what made you decide that you wanted to do this kind of mentorship? Right? How did you get into the CodeMentor arena?

Joao [00:08:22]:
You you mean me or Manny?

Manny [00:08:23]:
Yeah. You.

Joao [00:08:26]:
I actually, I, freelanced for some ad tech startups, and I I always love it to help people, from, you know, like, from as early as I remember. I love it to to help, colleagues in class, and school, and, it's just a personal trade. It's something that I I have passion, about, and I enjoy doing this. So it's, aligned with my values, you know, my my beliefs. So when I do this, I'm happy. When I'm helping someone, teaching someone, and making someone, progress and accomplish goals, I feel that, when many accomplish goals, it's like, I am also accomplishing the goals, you know. I'm I'm I celebrate with him, you know. When he, like, he's, trying to learn learn a new pattern, in coding, and I give him, like, an exercise, some challenge, And I see that he, understood and started to generalize to new problems.

Joao [00:09:43]:
That's an important component variable, to assess learning. If you can't generalize to new problems, it's not that you memorize it. It's like, in a AI, you know, like, I like to do this intersection when I'm, explaining things because of my background. And in AI, you over if your model overfit, you know, what the the data, he's not he he can't generalize. He can't he didn't learn. He didn't learn. And the same is for us, you know. If we can generalize, to new problems, then, you can, feel more confident that, learning happened.

Joao [00:10:27]:
And, many, we monitor. So, as we were talking before, some of the components of, great mentorship. One of them is to monitor progress. So you have to have some kind of system to monitor progress. So we have a system, that, many we and, we have, we record the data. So I know which, exercise he he found, hard, easy, medium hard, you know. And I can, this way, set, personalized lessons for him, and exercise. And this way, he can, progress in a more accelerated pace.

Charles Max Wood [00:11:16]:
Gotcha. And just just to give people a little bit so you you mentioned, like an AI overfitting data. Effectively, the idea behind overfitting, if you're not familiar with the term, is that your results too closely match to your training set to the point where if you try and run other things through it, right, because you train it so that you can give stuff that it hasn't seen before and it does the right thing. If it overfits, it means it fits the training data when you look at the results on the training data, but it doesn't, work well with things outside the training set. And so Exactly. You know? The So so what Yes. What yeah. What Vitor is talking about is he's saying, you know, we we wanna teach people like Manny or other people that he's, mentoring concepts that they can use outside of the couple of examples or exercises that he's giving him.

Charles Max Wood [00:12:14]:
Did I state that properly?

Joao [00:12:16]:
Yes. Yes. Very well. And one of the great things also that, I think helps in learning for us humans is, there is this word that's, meta cognition, and I try to to make although, many maybe he doesn't know, that he's doing meta cognition, but he is doing because meta cognition is thinking about your own thought process. So this this also helps you get better at coding. So how how do you think? You know? Reflect on how you think, how you solve things. What's your, thought process to solve a problem? You know? Mhmm.

AJ O'Neil [00:13:01]:
Did you did you say meditation? What was the word? Cognition. Medi Cognition.

Joao [00:13:07]:
Yes. Medi Cognition. Okay.

Charles Max Wood [00:13:09]:
Thinking about how you think.

Joao [00:13:11]:
Exactly. Meta is, is thinking about your your own thinking exactly max. Yep.

Charles Max Wood [00:13:19]:
Yeah. It's it's interesting that you bring that up too. And then I'm gonna ask Manny a question, because I've been reading, so I I've been doing this mental toughness program called 75 hard, and one of the things you have to do is read 10 pages out of a book every day. And the book I've been reading is awaken the giant within, and it's kind of the same idea where, you he talks a lot more about, like, changing your state, but you do a lot of the metacognition type things where you're saying, I'm thinking this, and I need to change it to that. Right? And so you you're paying attention to what makes you do what you do. Manny, I'm I'm kinda curious. Vitor has talked about a bunch of different things, like what you wanna accomplish and, you know, kinda setting goals and and keeping track of your progress and then kind of this metacognition. How would these things work for you? Like, which parts really stand out?

Manny [00:14:18]:
So I would say the, like, the first thing that really stands out to me is the fact that we have a way to track progress. So, generally, like, if, you know, you try to learn something on your own, there's, I mean, you can hold yourself accountable, but you don't really have anyone outside yourself that can observe you and really give you, like, the proper feedback that you need because you're stuck inside yourself. So from from the very beginning, like, we established, like, a very, I guess, like, kinda, like, agile way to think about, like, the work that we're doing in terms that we share progress every day and get feedback every day. And part of that is being able to share, like, where I get stuck in my thinking. And I think, you can correct me if I'm wrong, Joao. But, like, from the notes that I take and what I write, I think you're able to get, like, some of an idea of, like, where I get stuck and where my thought process is. And it goes beyond just, like, like, oh, how you know, I don't understand this concept. It's more about, like, what am I thinking about myself and my ability to succeed throughout this? So a lot of things come down to, like, internal, internal dialogue and pushing through hard things.

Manny [00:15:28]:
I think I kinda went off track in your question. I apologize about that, but it's just something that came to my mind.

Joao [00:15:33]:
Mhmm. Yes. Many I think that you're in a great point. As, you are talking, Max, at the beginning of the show, that coding actually, there is more about coding than co only coding, you know, because we are effective emotional beings. Sometimes the problem is not, so much of the, the coding, part of the the process. But, in in in beliefs, you know, sometimes, you are your self talk is not, good. So you say, oh, I can't I can't solve this. It's too hard.

Joao [00:16:13]:
And it's also important for problem solving. The you want self talk, and, and you create limiting beliefs. And I think, in in your book, I'm not sure, but, probably it it will touch in these, topics, about, your own self talk, about what, is limiting you in in fulfilling your, whole potential. And this is also something that, I think a great mentorship is should should do is to fulfill, your whole potential because I I truly believe that, everybody has a potential and, should be feeling, you know, or should put the, you know, like, turn max on that.

Charles Max Wood [00:17:00]:
Mhmm.

Joao [00:17:01]:
Yeah.

Manny [00:17:01]:
I mean, a lot of the stuff that I struggle with initially, you know, that that having the structure of the mentorship has helped me with is just, like, the belief that I can do it. Right? Like, I'm Right. You know, kind of past the point where a lot of people I think are learning new things. Like I said, I'm pretty comfortable where I'm at. Like, I don't feel like, an immense threat to my job. Like, I've been there a while, but I was uncomfortable with kind of being too comfortable. And going through this, you know, learning, like, computer science algorithms, data structures, it's not easy. Like, especially, it's been a long time since I was in college taking a math class.

Manny [00:17:37]:
So, you know, I've had a big thing hanging over my head for a long time that probably led to my avoidance of things that basically said, yeah. You you're not smart enough to do this. Right? I mean, that's a that's a thought that I have. You know? Mhmm. That comes up in the back of my head a lot. And through the mentorship process, like, I think that's been one of the main things that we've come to. I don't sit around beating myself up all day, but there are times when I'll get, like, a super hard problem, and then I'll see the, you know, the answer might I never would have come out come up with that on my own. And, like, we kinda discussed, like, that feeling of going through that because that's a place where a lot of people when you start to feel uncomfortable, hit those walls, and people quit.

Manny [00:18:17]:
And I think that that's probably the reason that most people a lot of people don't succeed is, like, when they get there and it feels bad, they take that as a sign, like, that they're not capable when actually that's a sign that you're actually learning. And if that's when you push through harder.

AJ O'Neil [00:18:32]:
So I I have some some questions about this because I I I have the controversial opinion that not everybody can code, that it's not something that you can just work hard at and be good at. I I kind of believe more in the philosophy that, you could spend your whole life investing in something that you're not talented at. Invest all of your skill where you have no talent, and you'll become mediocre. But if you invest your skill where you have talent, you can become great. And so I I'm I'm of the opinion that not everybody should learn to code because not everyone is talented in that area. But I'm I'm curious to whether or not like, I discovered it early, and I was talented in it. Like, I I, but the the first few programs I wrote, no. I I didn't really understand it.

AJ O'Neil [00:19:29]:
I was I struggled. But I don't know. After I had probably less than a 100 hours programming, I I was like, okay. I get this. I understand what this is about. And I made a lot of poor choices because I didn't have the skill and I didn't have the wisdom, but I had a knack for it. And so I'm curious with your experience, do you feel like you're someone who has a knack for it or not? Do you feel like you're someone who is going to become great at it or not? And, you know, like, what are what are your some of thoughts around, around that?

Manny [00:20:09]:
So it's I'm, like, historically, like, in my life, like, pretty hard on myself where I don't really think I can do anything. So that sort of, like, clouds over just about everything that I do. Right? The one thing that led me to think that I possibly could do it was the fact that when I was in college, I learned how to play jazz music, and that was really hard. And Mhmm. It, yeah, it was like the it was kind of similar to programming in that. Like, you you first have to, like, learn, like, the language. Right? And then you have to start learning how to play music. And then, like, the the challenging part is you're taking language and you're taking music that might have, like, some structure, but you're being asked to create something completely new on the spot.

Manny [00:20:54]:
Right? So I I've been able to sort of relate that to programming and and the fact that, like, you have to kinda grind through, like, a lot of, like at least for me, like, with tougher things, just getting, like, used to the concepts and stuff. But over time, as it as I start as I'm not wasn't struggling with the language so much and I was able to start to create things, that's when I started to have the belief that I could do it. When I was able to have somebody give me an idea, and then I I've never seen what they wanna do. I don't have any code written about it, but I can create the idea. You know? So that helped give me the belief that I could do it. Whether I'm great or not, I don't I let other people make that judgment. And, generally, it's the people who pay me money. Right? That's that that's how I go.

Manny [00:21:40]:
And if they think I am, then that's good enough for me.

AJ O'Neil [00:21:43]:
That's, yeah, that's a that's a great way to go about it for sure.

Manny [00:21:47]:
Yep. And yeah. I mean, so, yeah. I have you know what? Here's the deal. I when I was first learning and it was hard, like, there are obviously times I'm like, man, you know, am I really cut out for this? But the one thing that I knew was that when I solved the problem, it made me feel good, and I had a lot of fun, and I wanted to keep doing it. So I was like, well, you know, I I kinda like this, and maybe I sucked, but, you know, whatever. You know, I'm gonna keep doing it. So and and was able to kind of, you know, launch that into doing some pretty cool things, you know, after I kind of got my feet on the ground.

Manny [00:22:22]:
You

AJ O'Neil [00:22:22]:
know, the thing that you said about music, it is astonishing to me. I noticed this connection very early on. In fact, my my high school, technology teacher was he had his degree in music. And so many of the programmers that I meet have some sort of musical talent as well. So it's very interesting. I mean, maybe it's just because lots of people have music talent, period. But I I've met more musicians that are programmers than, say, chefs that are programmers or you know? Like, it seems to be tightly, correlated. Yeah.

AJ O'Neil [00:22:57]:
And also something that I like that you're saying is that you push through it and you felt a sense of satisfaction and and some sort of sense of fun. I see a lot of people that are the people that I believe ought to try to find something else where they have a talent that's gonna give them that reward, but they wanna they wanna, like, push through just for the money. And it Right. It doesn't it doesn't look like I I don't know that I've I've heard a success story from somebody who pushed through because they were determined to make the money. May may I don't know. Maybe

Manny [00:23:34]:
I I never have. I never have. And I think that that would be a pretty miserable life because you'd wind up doing something that you hate to do every day. And that's, you know, and that's challenging. Right? Like, I I can't see I'm sure there's people out there like that who could just shut their their mind off and just do whatever. But for me, I have to have fun at my job. Like and I have to enjoy what I'm doing and enjoy the people around doing, or I'll go do something else.

Charles Max Wood [00:23:57]:
Well, I've I've met people that they didn't hate programming. They just didn't love it the way that I love it. And so, you know, they yeah. And so they wind up being passable programmers. Right? They they can get the stuff done. They can write decently maintainable code. But, yeah, they they never become great at it. And and I think that there are different aspects to this as far as, you know, AJ's talking about, you know, maybe natural talent or, you know, bent toward it.

Charles Max Wood [00:24:28]:
But I also think there's there's a certain amount of passion and and then other things that go into it as well. I I wanna change gears just a little bit because you guys talked about some stuff that it sounds like kinda nuts and bolts stuff that that I think is important to kind of understand. And and I don't know if this process works for everybody, but you're talking about, kinda checking in on a regular basis. Like, how do you keep track of what you're, you know, what you're working on as far as, you know, if if Joao gives you, an exercise to do or if, you're coming up with some goal for something you wanna learn or do. Like, what what's your system for this back and forth? So it's okay. This is this is what I want. Okay. This is how we're gonna get you there, and this is how I'm gonna check-in on it.

Charles Max Wood [00:25:16]:
Do do you understand what I'm

Manny [00:25:18]:
Yeah. I mean, I could tell you straight up we have a Trello Kanban board that we just created a couple weeks ago to keep track of everything. So it's like and that work kind of, I tag things. We write up, you know, kind of I don't know if we do user stories in it, but that's how we we keep track of stuff. We treat it like as a You know, we organize it. We we have 3 simple, rows in it. You know, like our backlog in progress and done. Everything I do, I upload on whatever problem I'm working on, and then we add notes and feedback from there.

Manny [00:25:48]:
And we keep in touch, you know, every day, like, communicating too. That's super important.

Charles Max Wood [00:25:54]:
So how do you decide, I guess, then maybe you should just give an example, right, where it was, hey. This is a thing that I, you know, I either was told I needed to learn or, this is a thing that I told him I wanted to learn, and then what's your process going all the way through it for, you know, getting to the point where you feel like now I've mastered this?

Manny [00:26:18]:
It's a it's a good question. You you wanna share some of that, Joel? Like

Joao [00:26:21]:
I think you can share it then. I I will give a more technical, answer.

Manny [00:26:26]:
In terms of, like, what like, why I'm kinda going back and learning, you know, the computer science sort of side of things, it's because I feel like it's important, you know, to become a better programmer. Like, it's not something I I I don't wanna know how to do. It's you know, so I I feel like I'll, you know, have some more respect for myself for doing it. But, also, it gives me insight into, you know, designing better applications and making decisions in in a better thought process. So I I guess I've always known for a while that that's something that I I I want to do, and that's important. Right? It's not there for no reason. Right? Also, it does open up more opportunities, the better you can perform at things, and I think it just, you know, makes you better programmer all around. How we communicate that was I mean, basically, I said, this is what I'm looking to do.

Manny [00:27:14]:
This is what I've done, and can you help me get there? And then Joao kinda comes up with the curriculum from, you know, because we're starting, like, the very beginning. Like, what's an array? You know, how is it, you know, how is it in stored memory and stuff like that? Just going from the very beginning all the way up, like, through wherever we're gonna be.

Joao [00:27:32]:
Right? So one mhmm.

Charles Max Wood [00:27:34]:
No. I think you're gonna answer the question I'm gonna ask, so go ahead.

Joao [00:27:40]:
Uh-huh. One one great way to, assess his skills is testing testing him. And there are, many ways to to do that, you know. I can ask him to to write about the topic, and I can evaluate, what he knows about that. I can give him, multiple choice questions, to him and see what he gets right. I can give him, like, a lead call exercise to see what he knows. And so, there I collect data from from him to to know what, his strong, what he's weaker. And another, important component, in, this, journey is, to start, really mastering the core concepts, you know.

Joao [00:28:28]:
Because you may say, like, oh, okay. Arrays, this is so easy, so basic. I know. But they're, like, really tricky, you know, things about concepts that, sometimes, we we move too fast, and we just don't know, you know. And, and, when we are problem solving or even designing an app and application, these things, you know, the these basic fundamental core things, they are important, you know. What kind of the infrastructure are am I going to use to design this application? You know? There there are, trade offs that you make, and you need to understand that.

Manny [00:29:07]:
Yeah. Yeah. I think the trade offs part of it, being able to to start thinking that way, is like a a quality of, like, a more mature programmer. Right? And that's sort of, you know, where where I wanna be. But going back to some of the things that I think help us learn, like so we do we don't just be like, okay. How do you memorize this algorithm? Whatever. And, you know, the the, time space complexity? Like, what I'll write about, write, like, every line about what each line of the code does, why we would do it, why we might not do it. And then something else that we did was like he's like, okay.

Manny [00:29:42]:
You know, I was I think I was having trouble, like, understanding something, like, pretty basic. It was, like, move zeros or whatever. So what Right. What the exercise was was, like, alright. Build, like, a just a I could visualize that app. And so I went and just built, like, a basic React app for moving zeros. And going through that process, like, having to integrate that code into something with UI made me really start to think about each step a little bit more and, like, sort of nail down my thinking on different concepts. Another thing we do is we we try to cluster problems together, so we're relating certain concepts or certain patterns to each other.

Manny [00:30:16]:
So I guess we can just, like, make it easier to understand, more complex problems that way. So it's not focusing in, like, okay. This problem did this, this, and this. It's like, okay. We're moving something to the end of the array. We're deleting it. There's a certain there's a certain way that we can do this.

Joao [00:30:31]:
Right? So Yeah. We we start to see the patterns.

Manny [00:30:36]:
Yeah.

Joao [00:30:37]:
And, how how problems connect is also really important in learning and in problem solving. When you are solving a problem, it's good to, try to think of similar problems you saw with, before. But, this, really helps.

Manny [00:30:56]:
And also create new problems. Like, create a variation of a problem with the concept. Right? Write your own problems. That's that's very helpful.

Joao [00:31:05]:
So That's some exercise.

Charles Max Wood [00:31:08]:
So so I wanna back up and kinda go up a level here, which is kind of the question I was asking initially. So let's say Manny says, hey. I, you know, I wanna get better at computer science concepts. Right? And then maybe you have some back and forth, and you figure out exactly, you know, what areas, Manny needs to learn about. So then, Joao, you're just you're putting exercises and and other things into this Trello board, And then maybe you have discussions about what any of that means, and then you just kinda work through it and do evaluations and things like that all, you know, back and forth either through the Trello board or whatever other means you have for communicating. I mean, is that more or less what it looks like?

Joao [00:31:57]:
Yeah. I I I think so many.

Manny [00:32:00]:
I mean, it's I mean, a lot of it's like, here's some theory. Here's some problems. Review the theory. Do the problems, and then we'll talk about it. So it's a lot of it is still very self directed, I think, because that's, like, such an important skill as a developer. Right? Is being able to take, something that you're not quite sure about, read about it, and be able to apply it to something new. Right? And so I think we're reinforcing that skill a lot. That's just important to be able to grow as a developer.

Manny [00:32:30]:
So I think that's generally how our flow is. Right? And and then Mhmm. We get together and we'll discuss the problems. And if I have an issue with something or a concept, then we'll communicate by notes on Trello or things like that. So

Joao [00:32:44]:
Yeah. There are, strategies that, he's learning to to, learn better. Okay? So there are scientific backup, methods to learn better. Mhmm. For example, there is a thing in, cognitive science. It's a forgetting curve. We when we learn something, we start to forget it, you know, hours after it. And if we don't reinforce, this learning, we just, end up, just, like, not learning, just with a trace of memory.

Joao [00:33:26]:
And there's another component that, we use is Anki. I don't know if you guys know Anki. It's an app. Uh-huh. No.

Charles Max Wood [00:33:36]:
Nope. I don't know that one.

Joao [00:33:38]:
So Enki, has an algorithm that, try to, combat this, forgetting curve. And you put information in there, like, let's suppose, he's learning a pattern in coding. And then, Enki shows him, from time to time, and there's an algorithm behind. Okay? So it's not, like, random or oh, okay. I I'm going to review tomorrow or, I don't know, 1 week from now. Oh, Anki, does this for you. So Anki, will show you when you need to to be, reminded of that. So this, gets into your long term memory.

Manny [00:34:21]:
Yeah. So you don't have to worry about so much about what you're gonna study as you kinda can trust the algorithm. Base it's like based off of the difficulty of a problem, it will show up, like say you said it was easy. Right? It might show up again in 7 days. If it's medium, it might show up in 4. If it's hard, maybe it shows up in 2 days. If it's very hard, you might review it again in an hour. So by going through that like, it's algorithm that it has, it sort of prevents you from studying the same stuff that you're already good in and sort of tricking yourself into thinking that you're learning because you can already answer the easy stuff and sort of forces you to to deal with the harder problems that you, you know, that you're not that you think are hard,

Joao [00:34:56]:
which I

Manny [00:34:57]:
think is super important not to waste time.

Charles Max Wood [00:34:59]:
So what was the name of that app again?

Joao [00:35:01]:
Many. I don't know. Do you have to

Manny [00:35:03]:
n k a and k I.

Charles Max Wood [00:35:05]:
I'll have to check that out.

Manny [00:35:06]:
Yeah. It's pretty big in Brazil, isn't it, Juul? Yeah. Oh, the

Charles Max Wood [00:35:09]:
flash cards app. Okay.

Joao [00:35:12]:
Yeah. And there are many types of care cards, you know. Yeah. I mean, you can, type in. So for coding, it's great. And, there are a lot of variations of cards and ways to to study there. Some, also, you know, like, inside Denki, there are, more effective ways to to learn too. You know, like, you start to drill down on on, learning, and there are many strategies that are very interesting.

Joao [00:35:45]:
And, as many were saying, here in Brazil, the location of system is very focused on testing. So this, I think, ends up making, people, you know, students and also, investing in new ways to to to learn, for testing, you know, and to to combine this kind of, effects like, forgetting folks, to to forget something. And I think this also was an important component in my journey to to teach. You know?

Charles Max Wood [00:36:24]:
AJ, do you have anything else you wanna dive into? Because I've got more questions, but I'm gonna change direction again.

Joao [00:36:29]:
Not right now.

Charles Max Wood [00:36:30]:
Okay. So so I guess the next question is and and I don't know well, I'll just ask the question instead of, you know, giving all the caveats and background. So let's say that somebody is new ish or maybe they're, you know, they're feeling stuck like Manny was. Right? It's okay. I can do my job, but I wanna get better. How do you go about finding a mentor? Right? I mean, you use CodeMentor, but, yeah, how do you how do you decide whether it's CodeMentor or something else? How do you find somebody, and how do you decide that they're a good fit for you?

Joao [00:37:09]:
Okay. I will give my answer, then I think it's interesting to to Daniel also to give his answer. I think this is kind of, a open problem, that still needs to to be solved more effectively. There are platforms, like CodeMentor, but there's many, said, there are people who don't actually have so much experience, in mentoring or teaching. So they end up doing, like, giving him, like, a true advanced concept to to learn, and he was not prepared. So, as I said, yeah, there is not, like, a result, you know, that, okay, just follow these steps like an algorithm. Then you find an interview.

Manny [00:37:58]:
Yeah. So for me, looking for someone I I knew I was looking for a long term mentorship, someone who would be willing to, like, go deep with me into problems and work with me through, like, my struggles and not, like, write me off, like, just because, like, I wasn't great at something the first time we did it. So that's what I was looking for. And I was, you know, interviewing people. I was like, look. I'm paying money for this. Like, I'm gonna get somebody I want. Right? So I, you know, I I think I got super lucky because Joao was the 2nd person I worked with, and the first person was just, like, not I could tell they didn't care about, like, my progress.

Manny [00:38:36]:
Right? They just were there to collect their money and teach me something and then whatever. Right? I mean, that's the feeling that I got. Like, I don't wanna work with this person. It's not worth my time or my money.

Charles Max Wood [00:38:48]:
So it sounds like you knew what you wanted, which I think is kind of the first step. And so yeah. So then you decided what I don't know if we got into this, but what made you decide to go to CodeMentor as opposed to, I don't know, going to users group or, you know, finding another

Manny [00:39:05]:
Because that's the only only thing that I knew. Okay. I I didn't know, like, anywhere else to find anybody.

Charles Max Wood [00:39:11]:
Now on the other end, you know, let's say that somebody's put in a position where they're they are mentoring. Right? Maybe not by choice. Right? So they don't go to CodeMentor and say, hey, make me a mentor. But they're, you know, maybe they have some junior programmer at work that they need to help bring along or something like that. What recommendations do you have on the other end to be a good mentor to them?

Joao [00:39:36]:
Mhmm. Well, first, have structure. You know? Like, try to develop a plan and, talk to our main team and see what he thinks. He needs to be very personalized. So, also monitor the progress, have some kind of system to to manage, Verinti as a such as a Kanban board. And, give him exercises is really important. Have, like, great, high quality content to give him to study, you know, like, filter, the content to to to make him be able to to learn the concepts and, have, like, regular feedback, have excellent communication, you know, open have an open, communication, with Remini. And basically, I would say these components.

Charles Max Wood [00:40:42]:
Sounds good. I'm I'm curious now that you've mentioned this, you know, have have, content for them to go check out, things like that. Do you I I'm just want because there's new stuff coming out all the time. Maybe it's not something that I've studied for a while. I I mean, I know it and I use it, but I don't, you know so do are you going and finding some of this stuff on the fly? Right? And then it's, like, okay. This this this is what I need him to be able to right? So then you evaluate it and give it out, or do you have, like, a a list of resources that you like to just send people to?

Joao [00:41:19]:
Mhmm. Yeah. Both, happens. Some of the things, I already curated, because I I have been there before. And I I know that it's good quality, and I can share it with him. But sometimes, it's such a specific topic, you know, that, I need to, filter. And, I I try to find the content or if it's, something that they can find. I I in in the meeting on the lessons that we we do together, I I try to teach him.

Joao [00:41:59]:
One one thing that I also like, is the when when maturing all this, is the Socratic method, you know, like, asking questions when he's doing, like, a problem instead of, like, giving him the answer, asking questions for him to try to, find the answer by himself. This is important also eventually.

Charles Max Wood [00:42:23]:
Right.

Manny [00:42:23]:
I think the most important thing, like, if somebody wants to really get serious mentorship, I think you really have to first, like, understand that the person who's mentoring you is, like, giving you their time and be respectful of that and, do what they've suggested that you do and be you know, no matter how good the curriculum might be or how many problems or how awesome as well might be at teaching others, like, it's up to me to get better. Right? I have to put in the work, and I have to to work through difficult things, and I get as much out of it as I put into it. And and then that's so important. If if somebody's not ready to, like, really do that and and make it like a priority in their life, like, for example, like, I, you know, I get up, go to work 8 to 5, 8 to 6, go to the gym after work, and get home at, like, 7:30. I'm usually in bed by 10. I got 2 and a half hours to do stuff, and I, you know, I can say, alright. I can sit here and feel around on my phone for 2 hours, or I could spend the rest of the night, like, doing like, spending the time I I can to learn. Those are some sacrifices that you have to be able to make too.

Manny [00:43:32]:
It's like managing your time and and putting in the effort. It's so important.

Joao [00:43:38]:
Yes. Indeed. Many, is, almost an outlier in that he he really is motivated and put some lot of effort. As I said, I I have, helped many people from the the world, you know, and, there is a spectrum of, of of, how how the main piece behave. And and he he's doing, great. You know? Mhmm.

Charles Max Wood [00:44:09]:
So that's one that's another thing that I'm wondering about. This is something that I'm trying to get into with, JavaScript geniuses or, you know, some of the other, coaching programs that I have is the time management, things like that. Do you help him with that, Vitor, or is that something that Manny's kinda done on his own?

Joao [00:44:27]:
No. I sometimes, if I see that he is struggling with that, like, he he was spending too much time on a problem, like, almost the whole week with just one problem, and then I said to him, no. We have more things to cover, and so let us set a minute of the time you you spent, doing a problem. Okay? So we set, half an hour to 1 hour, trying to to solve this particular problem. And if he can, he just moves to the next problem. So yes.

Manny [00:45:04]:
And then I come back to the next day. But also in that process, like so this is super important. I think you'd you know, in being able to measure, like, success, like, in a mentorship as like, someone being mentored, you have to really be willing to like, the goal is, like, to be great. Right? I mean, that's that's actually my goal, to be, like, one of the best in my profession. That's generally my goal in anything that I do. But, like, where am I at right now? Am I there? No. Like, it's gonna take a while. Right? It's not easy.

Manny [00:45:34]:
So, like, I say, where am I at compared to what where I was when I start? And I look back, I'm like, you know, wow. Like, look at what I didn't even know back then and what I can do today, and that helps keep me motivated. So it's it's and even within solving a problem, if I can't get the answer right the first time, if I can get the majority of it, like, a super hard problem right, and it's just some small thing, I could say, you know, 3 months ago, I wouldn't even know what to do with this. Now I you know? So measuring, like, your own success, like, incrementally is super important to to keep so you keep going. You know?

Charles Max Wood [00:46:09]:
Yeah. Makes sense. I I think the other end of this though is and and this is something that I'm trying to encourage people to do too is just it's like, look, you know, you have your full time job or may maybe you don't. Right? Maybe you're between jobs or maybe you're, you know, a contractor and you have a 30 hour what whatever. Right? But you have your work, and so then it's you're doing this outside of work. Right? You're doing this as as as an effort to become better, but, yeah, your your employer isn't paying you for your the time you put in on this stuff. So my question to you, Manny, is how do you manage that time? Like, how do you how do you figure out how to fit that in, and is that something that, Joao helped you with as part of the mentorship, or is that something that you've just always done or been good at or approached in that way?

Manny [00:47:02]:
I wouldn't say that I've I've necessarily always been good at it, but so at when we started doing this, I really started had to look at my time. Right? Mhmm. And it it's basically just saying, okay. If I really wanna do this, like, what what's more important to me? Right? Coming home and and goofing around and watching TV or or going out or, like, is getting better and more important. Right? So it's really about priorities and where what I make most important. Right? And right now, the things that I make most important for the time that I have are, like, my physical health and learning. Right? Right. So it's it's really just sort of like making that decision and say, this is what I'm gonna make most important in my life.

Manny [00:47:44]:
And just, you know, believing that's the lead to success.

Joao [00:47:50]:
Just an interesting, thing that I just, remembered is that, learning is, also, a great I mean, for an organization, making employees, to learn, you know, giving opportunities to learn is a great, mechanism for retention to keep employees. You know?

Charles Max Wood [00:48:11]:
Yeah. Absolutely. So so what's your trick then, Manny? I'm I'm curious. How do you decide when you're going to do this work, and and how do you make it fit in? Because, and and I don't know what your situation is. We didn't talk about this at all, you know, leading in, you know, whether you're you have kids or because I I wind up my my wife has a job. Right? I have 5 kids. Uh-huh. You know, my 18 year old doesn't have his driver's license.

Charles Max Wood [00:48:40]:
My 17 year old is getting hers. Right? But that means I have to drive her to and from the driver's license stuff. You know, my 15 year old has stuff going on, and so I'm driving them around. I'm doing all this other extra stuff. Right? So so how do you and I have my own ways of doing this, but I'm curious what your solution is. Right? So given where you're at with your life, how do you make it fit with everything else that you may be doing?

Manny [00:49:07]:
So, fortunately, I don't I don't know if this is that's unfortunate. Right now, like, I don't have, like, any other responsibilities but to myself, so I can be selfish with my time. And so part of that, like, you know, I was been divorced for a couple years now and I've thought about, like, you know, looking for other relationships and I've dated a little bit. But, like, right now, like, I I make that kinda that sacrifice in terms of, like, okay, I know I don't necessarily have the time for someone else. So if I'm going to get where I wanna be, I sort of have to, like, take this time to be a little selfish of my time. And it maybe doesn't sound like the best way to live, but it's something I'm doing right now. You know? Because I am fortunate enough to have the time that I have, you know, after work to to do it, and I could be consistent. Especially on the weekends, I get a lot of stuff done.

Joao [00:49:57]:
Yeah. I just I want to make a comment also about that. I have a major, like, you know, dads and and people who who have families. And, it's, of course, the their time is shorter. But, the thing is it's better to, you know, space your, time. You know? If you can study just a little bit every day, it's better than just, grab everything in one day. So consistency and discipline is very important. Doesn't matter if you have, like, a lot of, stuff with family or whatever.

Joao [00:50:44]:
If you can spread things and have discipline, you're you're going to progress too. So Mhmm. Yeah. Of course.

AJ O'Neil [00:50:52]:
Right. Yeah. I wanna ask a question about that too because I've I've heard the opposite, and that's how I tend to feel is that rather than having consistent do something every day to just binge, but semi consistently, like, you know, binge once a week or something like that, where you just go all in, really focus, get into get into flow rather than just doing little bits here and there. Get into flow where I'm actually working through, you know, a a full project or and anyway, so I've I've heard people say that that approach and and I think it maybe it's more the ADHD community that says that because we're terrible at consistency of any kind. Like, we don't even know what day of the week it is or time it is or what's going on. We we have the now versus not now brain. And if it's now, we're binging on it. And if it's not now, we'll do it sometime.

AJ O'Neil [00:51:49]:
But what are your what are your thoughts on that? Do you have pushback on that? Do you think, like, no. We we really would be better off with the consistency in smaller chunks or what?

Joao [00:51:58]:
Mhmm. Yes. This strategy may work for, some scenarios, but it's more for short term. And we are working here for long term. So you can grab and learn, but then, like, 15 days later, you you forgot almost, oh, you know, like, a lot of of things. But when you spread things, you because of, reinforcement learning this is also a concept in artificial intelligence. When you reinforce something, you also reinforce your synapses. Right? And because, there, this is actually physical learning is physical.

Joao [00:52:39]:
You know? If you look at your brain, you can see that. So by spreading out, you you you keep reinforcing the concepts, and then you learn for long term. But if you have, like, some tests, you know, like, and it's near and you have to learn, and you have just a a short amount of time, then cramming might work. So it depends of the scenario.

Manny [00:53:05]:
Yeah. And I do understand that flow flow aspect of it. When I can spend like, on Saturday, it's, like, my most free day. When I could spend, like, 3 or 4 hours, like, uninterrupted, yeah, I get way more done. I have way more progress. If I could do that every single day, like, if I could binge every day, I would. Like but, like, the I I think the thing about the consistency part is is it's important to not like, just because things aren't perfect, like, I can't do what I wanted every day, doesn't mean I shouldn't try to do something. And I think that's where the consistency comes in.

Manny [00:53:34]:
It's like working through a process and showing up even when it's not perfect. Right? Like, it's not the ideal situation because it never really will be because life is life. And then, you know, take advantage of the times when I can do more, but never stop doing something because I can't do it exactly the way that I want.

Joao [00:53:54]:
Yeah. And I'm not

Charles Max Wood [00:53:56]:
Oh, go ahead.

Joao [00:53:57]:
Oh, yes. I was meaning to say just not compare yourself with others, you know. Like, oh, many can study, like, 3 hours a day. Oh, I can't. So I'm not meaning to to try. You know? You have to compare yourself with with yourself, your progress. It's also important aspect of it.

Charles Max Wood [00:54:15]:
Yeah. I just wanna jump in because I think as we talk through this and I'm trying I'm scrolling through Audible on my phone because there's a book that I read that kind of outlines the way that I approach things, and there are a few ways that I I deal with this. One of them is is that I I get up earlier than the rest of my family. Right? So we get up at 6, We read scriptures. We get the kids dressed and ready to go to school, you know, depending on what's going on with my wife and her job, because my wife works at the school that my 2 younger kids attend. And so if she had to go in at 4, because she's the she's the lunch director there, so if she gets a food delivery, she doesn't take the kids. But, otherwise, you know, she'll she'll take them with her if she's leaving at, like, 5:30 or something. Anyway, so that that's kind of the how the morning goes, but what I do for a lot of this stuff and it's the same thing for working out or or the other stuff that I do.

Charles Max Wood [00:55:14]:
Right? So I'll I'll get I'll get up at at 5 and go for a run, and then I'll come back and, you know, I read 10 pages every day. That's the 75 hard thing. But for the rest of it, you know so AJ is talking about, you know, sometimes it helps just to be able to, you know, kind of binge into some of this stuff. And sometimes, all you can get is, like, 10 minutes to just pick up a concept. And I I think both of those are effective. I think the the more often and more time you put into immersing yourself in this stuff, the the better off you are because it'll help you retain it. It helps you kinda get back into the mode of learning this stuff. And, anyway, the I'll find the book, and I'll put a link up to it.

Charles Max Wood [00:56:03]:
But, basically, what they recommend, is oh, that's what it's called. It's called the 12 week year, is the book. And and I didn't find it in here. It just kinda came into my head. Anyway, it's a 12 week year, and they have a system for this where you you put up, like, a 3 or 4 hour block. You have a few of those every week that you plan in. Right? And so if you have to do work, a lot of times, you're planning that 3 or 4 hour block to just do work. Right? But you could plan that into, I need to learn this concept.

Charles Max Wood [00:56:37]:
I need to master this thing, and so you could put that in. And it's the same idea. Right? In order to be able to get real progress, sometimes you need that. The the other ones that or the other things that are in there that I really like, one of them is a weekly accountability call or weekly accountability meeting. They call it a WAM meeting. And so what you do is you commit to what you're gonna do for the week every week in your WAM call, and then you you went in the next WAM call, you report on what you said you were gonna do, and then you make new commitments. And for me, it it kills me off when I say, oh, I said I was gonna do these 3 things, and I only did one. And you're only given enough time to say whether or not you did it.

Charles Max Wood [00:57:19]:
You're not given enough time to say, and it was because my kids this and my wife this and, you know

Manny [00:57:26]:
Yeah.

Charles Max Wood [00:57:26]:
Hug this, and so I didn't do it. No. It's just, no, I didn't do it. And and yeah. Anyway and I think that's part of the nice thing about having a mentor or somebody to go to too is you have that level of accountability. Well, did you do it? No. Okay. Well, what are we gonna do to make sure you're doing it? Right? Because, yeah, otherwise, it's a waste of money.

Joao [00:57:47]:
Yeah.

Charles Max Wood [00:57:48]:
Anyway, I wanna I wanna go into just a little bit of this other stuff. So, you know, it says mentoring friendship and personal growth. So, you know, it sounds like this started out as a mentorship relationship, and it sounds like now you guys are, like, good friends. How how does that affect things? Like, how does that change the situation?

Manny [00:58:09]:
Well yeah. So it changes it a lot. So, I mean, Joao and I have the unique experience of, like, living in 2 different countries but meeting, and this kinda goes to the friendship part. So back in, my dad married a Brazilian woman. He lived in a town called Salto. And, in June, he had gotten sick, with some lung issues. And then in July, he actually passed unfortunately, passed away. And hear that.

Manny [00:58:40]:
Yeah. It was it was a tough time, and that's actually when we were able to meet because I went down to Brazil for the funeral, and then Joao came over to my house down there, and had, like, coffee with with me and my mom down there, and, like, we all kinda bonded in that way. And it was great to have a friend and also just be able to communicate that, because I think it was pretty soon, like, after we started the mentor stuff that, like, when my dad got sick. Right? And he was sick for about a month, I think.

Charles Max Wood [00:59:08]:
Mhmm.

Manny [00:59:09]:
And we still met and pushed through that time. And I'm really glad that that I had someone there to keep me accountable because that would be the time where I would be most likely to, like, be like, I can't handle this. But, actually, it gave me some solace and some focus and purpose to keep going. And and even sort of think about, like, I'm doing this for my dad in some ways. So I know that he would, you know, be proud that I was taking these steps. Right?

Joao [00:59:36]:
So Yes. I think, about the friendship, for us, it it helped us. It made our connection stronger. And, but you you have to keep it professional. Right? It's not because he's, my friend that he can, like, Slack, you know, on things, and I will make it his life easier. No. I'm I'm going to actually make it even harder now that I like him. So, I think that's an important aspect of it.

Manny [01:00:14]:
There's a level of trust there too. I mean, I think we actually have pretty similar personalities, and we think about things the same. So when we communicate, it's it's pretty easy. I think we both listen to each other fairly well, which makes it nice and, like, generally care about each other. So, it's not just transactional. It's actually, like, we're in this together. Let's learn from each other, become better people, better friends. And that's, like, super motivating.

Manny [01:00:40]:
Like, I don't wanna, you know, let you all down because he is my friend. You know? Like, there's that built in, like yeah. No. I'm not gonna just, like, disappear. So yeah. Yeah.

Charles Max Wood [01:00:58]:
So as far as the personal growth thing goes then, I mean, is is this because it says mentorship mentoring and personal growth mentoring friendship and personal growth were kind of the ideas we were talking about. I think we talked a lot about the personal growth as part of the mentoring, but is there anything else to that beyond your mentorship and friendship relationship?

Joao [01:01:20]:
Mhmm. Yeah. I think, one of the interesting things that we we do in our mentorship for, related to to coding is our approach to solving problems. You know? So we have, like, a structure that we base on Polya. He was a famous mathematician and educator, and he had, like, a 4 step procedure to to solve problems. And we we frame, usually, when we are doing, like, bit cold and this kind of exercise, first, we try to, I try to make him, deeply understand the problem. Okay? So think about the input, the output, all the restrictions. Try to make analogies.

Joao [01:02:18]:
Try to, as I said before, think of similar problems. So if you truly understand, then, the next step would be to create a plan to solve. Then you can, like, make, like, a, like, send the code, you know, in this step. But you don't need to to start, like, coding. Just, write some comments. Okay. I I have to create, like, I have to use a hash map then. I have to do, like, some kind of, loop and then and then you after that, you, start coding, and then you review, what you did, to make sure if you didn't, make any flaws and and gaps.

Joao [01:03:00]:
And so I also think that, it's, some interesting for the listeners.

Manny [01:03:07]:
Yeah. I think doing it that way, the coding is actually the easy part. Once you kind of figure out how to solve the problem, you can write it out. It's like, okay. I just need to write the code that does this.

Charles Max Wood [01:03:15]:
Mhmm.

Manny [01:03:15]:
You know?

Joao [01:03:19]:
Yeah. And Paulie has a book. I have it here. It's how to solve it. It's a great book.

Charles Max Wood [01:03:27]:
Oh, nice. I'm wondering if that's on Amazon or something. Who's the author?

Joao [01:03:33]:
It's George Pollard. It's on Amazon. It's a very famous book, and, it inspired, many programmers, like famous programmers, like, Donald Knuth. You know?

Charles Max Wood [01:03:46]:
Right. So it's is it a programming book? Or

Joao [01:03:50]:
No. No. It's a problem solving book, but, he he was a mathematician.

Charles Max Wood [01:03:57]:
Okay. Yeah. Polia. Forward by John Conway.

Joao [01:04:01]:
Yeah. John Conway was also a famous computer scientist. He created the Game of Life.

Charles Max Wood [01:04:07]:
Game of Life. Yep. Yeah. Alright. I'm gonna put an Amazon affiliate link into the comments on various streaming platforms. But, yeah, it was definitely easy to find. Alright. Well, is there anything else that we wanna dive into? I I think this was really just fascinating to get into as far as the, you know, how to find a mentor, what to expect, how to work through it, how to kinda get what you want.

Charles Max Wood [01:04:34]:
But, yeah, is there anything else that people ought to know?

Joao [01:04:40]:
About mentoring, problem solving, general? Yeah. There are a lot of things that we could talk, but, this show has a time limit. Right? But this is, like you said, a fascinating topic. I can't keep talking about this, like, for many hours, and there are a lot of, intersections with AI and and how especially generative AI, you know, how how, large language model learns and, and how human humans learn. Like, we we just need a few examples to learn. Right? Many can, like if he solves, like, 3 exercise, then then he can general generalize this to new problems. But, a large language model needs to see, like, medium soft examples. So AI still has this limitation over our type of learning.

Joao [01:05:33]:
Right?

Manny [01:05:34]:
Yeah. I think it'd be interesting to come back in a year and see where we're at actually

Joao [01:05:37]:
Yeah.

Manny [01:05:37]:
From from this point on and see where where the growth is, what we're working on.

Charles Max Wood [01:05:42]:
Mhmm.

Manny [01:05:43]:
Hopefully, not the same exact stuff. But, you know, we'll we'll see. Right? Let's see how things go.

Charles Max Wood [01:05:49]:
Yeah. How long have you guys been working together?

Joao [01:05:51]:
I think

Manny [01:05:52]:
April beginning of April.

Joao [01:05:53]:
Okay. So 4 Alright. Well 9 months. Yeah.

Charles Max Wood [01:05:57]:
Let's go ahead and roll into the the picks section of the show, and picks is just shout outs about whatever. So I'll I'll go ahead and let AJ go first. I am kind of considering, before we do this, limiting everybody to just a couple of minutes to just kinda say what what you're picking and give a really brief summary as to why. I've I've had a few people get back to me saying that some of the picks are long winded, and I'm gonna let Dan and Steve know that as well. But, yeah, just just let people know what cool stuff's out there. And then if they want to know more, they can go check it out themselves. But, anyway, AJ, what are your picks?

AJ O'Neil [01:06:37]:
Well, not the people that don't like my long winded raves. So Apple earbuds, the 3.5 millimeter earbuds are absolutely magical, and I don't understand why no one else has made anything like them. It seems like it's it seems like a commodity product that'd be super simple. There's nothing particularly special about them despite the fact that I called them magical. I mean, they're just they're just like the normal earbuds we had in the nineties except with a better shape and without and and not not the silicone ones that actually you have to stick in your ear, but they just fit in your ear more nicely, and they have, you know, the, like, the the bare minimum speakers that you need for quality. I I don't think that they're, you know, anything super special. But, anyway, Apple, of course, no longer sells them. They moved on to the lightning connector, and now they're moving on to the USB C connector.

AJ O'Neil [01:07:40]:
And I'm sure they just like to get rid of them entirely because why sell 1 someone a product that costs $5 that you sell for 30 when you can sell them a product that costs $10 and you sell for 300. But I I, I'm stocking up on them. I'm getting on eBay, and I'm getting all I care. Because, you know, eventually, after several years, they break. And so I've bought probably 10 pair over the years, and I'm gonna buy another 10 more when I get them all, because I just I just love them. They're simple. They sound good. They fit in the ear nicely.

AJ O'Neil [01:08:12]:
And I I don't I don't like these, the wireless ones. You know, the volume's never there. The ones that have the silicone tips. It just kinda feels weird. So Apple the old school Apple EarPods yeah. EarPods after earbuds, EarPods. And then the other thing while I'm fanboying out on Apple is SwiftUI. I wish that we had a framework like SwiftUI.

AJ O'Neil [01:08:37]:
It it seems like SwiftUI is what React people think that they're doing. You know, like, if you hear the words, like, if I was to listen to the conference talk with my eyes closed, it sounds like they're talking about React. Declarative UI. Don't worry about state updates. I've never met a React developer. It's not totally bogged down with bugs and state updates. But SwiftUI and again, I don't I mean, I'm looking at a conference talk, but it's so it looks so clean. And I'm gonna, GPT and me, we're gonna we're gonna build an app together.

AJ O'Neil [01:09:13]:
I'm gonna do it. I finally got past the hello world. Every time I've ever opened Xcode, there's always some problem. Number 1, it's overwhelming with, like, 6,000,000 menus and no clear path to, like, which one is the one I do to do the thing. But I'm I'm watching some conference docs at Apple, and I I find I because the way that I have Git configured with SSH keys and some other things, it it, like, failed the initialization process, but I I I fixed that. I had to add a manual path to GPG, and I had to use a special option with Git for the Apple keychain. But, anyway, I got past that, found out that the reason that the app doesn't build is that if you don't have an app icon specified, you don't get an error message, like your app icon is wrong. Well, if you have none at all, then it works fine.

AJ O'Neil [01:10:00]:
But if you add an app app icon, but it's there's something wrong about it. You don't get an error message like your app icon was wrong. You just get failed to build. Assets don't compile. I got past that. Now I got the hell of a world running. So my first iOS app. Woo hoo.

AJ O'Neil [01:10:18]:
Alright. End Rave.

Charles Max Wood [01:10:21]:
Good deal. I'm gonna jump in here with a couple of picks. I'm gonna start out. I always do a board game pick. The pick I'm gonna do this time is Biblios. Biblios card game. Let me look up the board game geek wait here real quick. But, basically, what you're doing is, you get 5 cards in front of you.

Charles Max Wood [01:10:45]:
You get to keep 1. You get to put 1 into the auction pile, and then you flip the other 3 over and or or how yeah. However many other players there are, you flip that many over, and they they get to pick 1 in turn. Essentially, what you're trying to do is you're trying and they're dice. So some of the cards let you, change the number on the dice, and the number on top of the dice that you win give you the points. And you're you're trying to get the the most points at the end of the game. And so, effectively, what you're trying to do is you're trying to make sure that you have more of whatever color than anyone else so that you can win the die, that colored die. And there are 3 of them that have, I think, 11 cards, and then there are 2 of them that have, like, 25 cards.

Charles Max Wood [01:11:38]:
And so, anyway, you have to have at least 13 or at least 6 to guarantee that you have the most. But, you know, if if there's a, multiplicity of people having those that color cards, then you have to just have as many. So that's kind of the game. 30 minutes. Board game weight, 1.68, which means casual gamers are likely able to enjoy this game and not get bogged down in the complexity. Anyway, it was a fun game. Played it with my buddies on Wednesday, which is when I get together for that. So I'm gonna pick that.

Charles Max Wood [01:12:12]:
A couple of other things that I am, getting into or enjoying, one of them is, I went to the doctor, and it turns out that my blood sugar's high again. I'm diabetic, for those who don't know. And in the past, I've had to test my blood sugar by pricking my finger and then bleeding on a test strip. And, this time, the doctor actually prescribed me, and I'm wearing a sweatshirt. Otherwise, I'd show you on camera. But I've got this little, thing on my arm that just continuously monitors my blood sugar. It's, Libre 3 is the type. I can't remember the brand.

Charles Max Wood [01:12:49]:
Anyway, it's awesome. It's it's been really nice because then I can just I eat something, and then I can see what it does to my blood sugar, which is cool. So I'm gonna pick that. And then lastly, with my workouts, I've been using TrainingPeaks with my Garmin watch. And what TrainingPeaks does is you can put your workouts in. What I've done is you can buy training plans. And so I have a training plan in there for running, so I can go and do, a marathon. And I just put a marathon date in for a marathon I wanna go run.

Charles Max Wood [01:13:23]:
I'm not sure if I'm actually gonna go, run that marathon just because money's been tight. I'm between contracts right now, and so I'm not sure that I wanna spend the money to travel or register for the race, which is, like, $100. So I might just run there's a a trail, a running trail behind my house that runs down toward the lake and then all the way up into Salt Lake, and so I might just run my own marathon. But, anyway, TrainingPeaks is terrific, and so I just put the training program in, and then I just do whatever my system says to do. And I just barely added a a weight lifting one. And it's all body, bodyweight stuff. Right? Because, again, I'm as much as I love going to the gym and as much as I hate the crowds at the gym, again, you know, I'm just cutting anything I don't have to spend. So this is all bodyweight exercises.

Charles Max Wood [01:14:14]:
Right? It's it's squats, push ups, pull ups, and, anyway, so the the marathon plan, I think, cost me, like, 40 or $50 several years ago. The weightlifting plan cost me $20 when I bought it, and so I just plug it in, and I just do whatever it says to do. And the only equipment that it requires you to have is you have to have essentially a stopwatch so you know how long because you rest 30 seconds between each set and a pull up bar, which I already have. So, anyway, that's the stuff, and then go check out JavaScriptgeniuses.com. Manny, what are your picks?

Manny [01:14:52]:
Yeah. So for a book, one of my favorite musicians is Jocko Pastorius, any, bass player. And there's a book called The Extraordinary and Tragic Life Life of Jocko Pastorius. He's someone who died, I think, in, like, in 86, but he had, like, a tremendous influence on electric bass guitar and just where, like, music was heading at that point. And it's just a fascinating story about, like, how crazy his life was and how short it was. So I recommend that book if anybody's interested in maybe not as well known musician that you're interested in knowing the life about. There is, another book I've been reading called Heaven and Hell, and it's about the development of the concept of the afterlife, and how it has sort of changed, like, throughout, throughout history, where it comes from, like, looking at through loads of different cultures. I kinda got into that because my, you know, my dad just passed away, so I've been thinking about a lot about that.

Manny [01:15:48]:
And then, I guess, can I recommend a video game?

Charles Max Wood [01:15:52]:
Uh-huh. Yeah. Anything you want?

Manny [01:15:53]:
I mean yeah. But I mean, I'm sure it's been recommended, but Baldur's Gate 3, I still play that. It's probably one of my favorite games of all time.

Charles Max Wood [01:16:00]:
Isn't that an older game?

Manny [01:16:01]:
No. It's new. It came out last year.

Charles Max Wood [01:16:04]:
Oh, okay.

Manny [01:16:05]:
Just fantastic. So that's it.

Charles Max Wood [01:16:09]:
Cool. Joao, what are your picks?

Joao [01:16:12]:
Yeah. Okay. For productivity, a cursor ID, and also about

Charles Max Wood [01:16:19]:
that. Is it cool?

Joao [01:16:21]:
Yeah. It's interesting. It can, handle multiple files. It creates embeds of the files, and then it can search, and generate code at different files. It's an interesting idea. I think it's fun to play with for productivity. And the second one is Perplexity AI. It's also an interesting app that, makes search with generative AI, because generative AI has this problem of, hallucination, right, Inventing things.

Joao [01:16:59]:
And, perplexing tries to solve it with, giving sources of the information, made. And for learning, I recommend Anki. I think it's great. Also, there's a book that's called the the ABCs of How We Learn. It's from Stanford. But for the general public, it's also great. It has, 26, scientific, proven strategies to learn. What else? And for our out and for coding, big code, I think it's, great to to test yourself to to make you, get out of your comfort zone.

Joao [01:17:54]:
And I think that's it.

Charles Max Wood [01:17:56]:
Awesome. On the leak code pick, I'm just gonna throw it out there. Our pre our episode from last week that we recorded, we recorded I think it was last week. May it might have been 2 weeks ago, but we recorded with the leak code meetup in New York where they talk about, how to, how to figure out the solutions to leak code and, and yeah, they get together and yeah, make themselves better at this stuff. So anyway, if you're looking for that, just go look an episode or feedback. Alright. If people wanna check-in with you guys or connect in some way, how do they find you online? Manny, why don't you go first again?

Manny [01:18:30]:
Well, you won't find me on social media because, like, I withdrew from that a couple years ago, but I still do use email. So you can reach me at Manny, it's my first name, manny.hagman@gmail.com. That's the best way to get in touch with me.

Joao [01:18:46]:
Awesome. The

Manny [01:18:47]:
only way How

Charles Max Wood [01:18:47]:
about you, Sean?

Joao [01:18:49]:
Yeah. You can find me on CodeMentor or LinkedIn. Just search my name, and also, Algo Smith about tech.

Charles Max Wood [01:19:01]:
Very cool. Yeah. While we were talking, I signed up on CodeMentor. So

Joao [01:19:08]:
Cool.

Charles Max Wood [01:19:09]:
Alright. Same, actually. You what?

AJ O'Neil [01:19:12]:
I said same, actually. I was checking it out. I, apparently, I already had an account from some years ago, but never never actually, got past the welcome. Alright.

Manny [01:19:23]:
Good deal.

Joao [01:19:24]:
Alright. Well, we'll go

Charles Max Wood [01:19:25]:
ahead and wrap it up here.

AJ O'Neil [01:19:25]:
Till next time, folks. Max out.