Welcome to another riveting episode of Top End Devs! In today's "Year in Review" special, hosts Charles, AJ, Dan, and Steve Edwards take you on a retrospective journey through their most memorable moments and thought-provoking discussions of the year. From the amusing and insightful exchanges with influential guests like Rich Harris and Kyle Simpson to their deep dives into emerging tech trends like Svelte 5 and AI integration in development, this episode has it all.

They also explore Charles's experience transitioning from a Mac to a high-performance System76 machine, Dan's favorite and least favorite tech trends, and AJ's admiration for profitable and customer-focused approaches in the industry. Expect a blend of technical expertise, humor with those beloved dad jokes, and personal reflections that make this podcast uniquely engaging.

So, get ready as we reflect on the year's highlights, laugh at the dad jokes that have become fan favorites, and look forward to exciting developments in the tech world with your favorite panelists.

Picks

Charles Max Wood [00:00:05]:
Hey, folks. Welcome back to another episode of JavaScript Jabber. We're gonna do a year in review. I just wanna put that out upfront before we do, introduce the panel. And this week on our panel, we have AJ O'Neil.

AJ O'Neil [00:00:18]:
Yo. Yo. Yo. Coming at you live from the shed.

Charles Max Wood [00:00:21]:
We also have Dan Shapiro.

Dan Shappir [00:00:23]:
Hello. Coming to you from my birthday. Woah.

AJ O'Neil [00:00:27]:
Happy birthday. Hey, Chuck. Wasn't it your birthday recently? I would

Charles Max Wood [00:00:31]:
say I did that, like, 2 days ago, but Well, happy birthday. I'm I'm a little younger than you. So

Dan Shappir [00:00:37]:
Yeah. Actually, my birthday is tomorrow as of the time of recording. It's on December 17th.

Charles Max Wood [00:00:42]:
I gotcha. Yeah. Mine's on 14th.

Dan Shappir [00:00:44]:
So Like my wife.

Charles Max Wood [00:00:46]:
Yeah. It's a good day to have a birthday. So yeah. I am 45. I don't know if you're gonna share. I'm 45. So I'm too old. He's 27 again.

Steve Edwards [00:00:58]:
Yeah. Yeah.

Charles Max Wood [00:01:00]:
We also have Steve Edwards.

Steve Edwards [00:01:02]:
Yo. Yo. Yo. It's been a few weeks, but I'm back in the saddle. Awesome.

Charles Max Wood [00:01:06]:
Alright. Well, we're gonna jump in, do this year in review. Dan suggested it. I think it's a fun idea, and we should probably have to do it every year. Dan, you kinda gave us a list. Do you wanna just start at the top and do our favorite episodes? Or

Dan Shappir [00:01:21]:
Yeah. That's a good place to start. I just wanna say one thing ahead of that as well. It's the fact that this year, both Steve and I are celebrating our 50 year on JavaScript Jabber. It's it it was October 2019 when I got into podcasting with you, Chuck.

Steve Edwards [00:01:40]:
That was yeah.

Dan Shappir [00:01:41]:
I got into podcasting at all, happened to be with you. Right.

Charles Max Wood [00:01:45]:
And AJ and I have been on since the beginning, and next month, in the middle of next month, it will be 12 years.

Dan Shappir [00:01:51]:
Wow. That's, that's This was dog years? That's

Steve Edwards [00:01:57]:
Wasn't this the first in podcast in your empire, Chuck?

Charles Max Wood [00:02:01]:
No. Ruby Rogues Ruby was. May will be 13 years.

Steve Edwards [00:02:05]:
Okay.

Charles Max Wood [00:02:06]:
And when I started, I started a show called Rails Coach, and, I was just interviewing people in the Ruby and Rails community. This was I started the podcast before I was professionally writing code, and that was back in 2008.

AJ O'Neil [00:02:22]:
And

Dan Shappir [00:02:22]:
Just so you know that for Jews, 13 is like a lucky number. So, like, when you all have those horror movies about, you know, anything having to do with 13, we're going like, you know, what are they talking about?

Steve Edwards [00:02:34]:
Right. So, John, did did that You

Charles Max Wood [00:02:35]:
go to Vegas? They don't have 13th floor on the Yeah. Exactly.

Steve Edwards [00:02:40]:
I thought 7 was the number of, like, completeness or completeness.

Dan Shappir [00:02:43]:
Well, there are all sorts of numbers. You know? 7, 8. There there's a whole thing. Like, a lot basically, almost every number has some mystic attribute associated with it.

Steve Edwards [00:02:56]:
Well, just in in biblical literature, 7 is like the number of completeness or fullness. You see it all through the

Dan Shappir [00:03:01]:
Yeah. But on the other hand, like, you know, the breath happens on on the 8th day of the baby's 8th day of, you know so

Steve Edwards [00:03:11]:
So, Chuck, you're talking about that first podcast you did with Rails Coach. So did that one eventually go off the rails? Was that it?

Charles Max Wood [00:03:19]:
Yeah. Something like that. I wound up taking over a video series of, Teach Me to Code, and so I rebranded it to the Teach Me to Code podcast. And I I quit doing that one about 4 months before we started doing Ruby Roads. So anyway

Dan Shappir [00:03:38]:
Yeah. I've been thinking about this whole podcasting thing. You know? It's it's really in a lot of ways, it's our own contribution to open source because, you know, we're giving it free of charge.

Charles Max Wood [00:03:49]:
Yes. Yep. So

Dan Shappir [00:03:53]:
yeah. Lots of lots of lots of lots of content and, and learning. I know that I've learned a whole ton of things from this podcast since we started.

AJ O'Neil [00:04:03]:
Yeah. Yeah. I sometimes, I'm kinda surprised because the episodes that are sometimes the most controversial are the ones where I learn the most. Because, you know, I I I'll make a claim. I'll say, you can't do that. And somebody will be like, yeah. You can. Here's how.

AJ O'Neil [00:04:18]:
I'm like, oh, okay. You know?

Dan Shappir [00:04:20]:
Yep. Also, when I try to, like, think about, you know, our role, place, whatever, call it whatever, within the podcasting universe, You know, there are podcasts that are, I would say, you know, if you're looking for, you know, short and sweet overview of a topic, there are podcasts that are better than us, I think. If you're looking for high production value or or lots of fun and celebration, there are better podcasts for that than us. When I try to think about what we excel at, I think it's the depth of the content. Mhmm. You know, topics that get, 30 minute to an hour coverage on other podcasts get 1 and a half to 2 hours worth of coverage on our podcast. Sometimes even more.

Charles Max Wood [00:05:08]:
Yeah. The other thing is is that a lot of times we get, it's not just the depth, but it's it's really the conversationality around the topic. And so, we we tend to get a little bit more into, you know, challenging assumptions and talking about, you know, when when we make the trade offs that make whatever it is we're talking about worth it. So, you know, as an example, you know, we've talked about different technologies. I'm the one that's coming to mind is TypeScript, right, where we get into TypeScript, we get into, you know, whether or not we wanna do that. And what I've found is that in a lot of cases, what we expose isn't that TypeScript is or isn't the right way to go, but rather what the concerns are that make it really pay off or not necessarily pay off in the way that we're talking about. And we get that on so many of these other things where it's you get to a certain point, and what was nice to have becomes indispensable. And then other things that were indispensable when you were smaller become not so important anymore because you're just beyond those concerns.

Charles Max Wood [00:06:06]:
And so it I love I love the interplay and and figuring out, okay. How does this play into what I care about?

Dan Shappir [00:06:14]:
You know, it's a funny thing, but, you know, our last episode was with the uncle Bob. And if you if you listen to the livestream rather than the edited version, literally, the first words on that recording is me saying to uncle Bob, I disagree.

AJ O'Neil [00:06:33]:
Yeah. That's hilarious.

Dan Shappir [00:06:35]:
That that are literally the first words on the recording. Yeah. Before you know, you don't even hear what I disagree with. So

Steve Edwards [00:06:44]:
Well, while while we're tooting our own horn here, I'd like, you know, I listen to a lot of of other,

Dan Shappir [00:06:49]:
well, me too.

Steve Edwards [00:06:50]:
Web development podcasts, various different sources. And I think the one thing that really makes us unique is the dad jokes at the end.

Dan Shappir [00:07:00]:
I'm just

Steve Edwards [00:07:00]:
I'm gonna say, if I now if I remember correctly, Dan, you told the story. You were at a conference one time in France, somewhere over there on that other side of the world, and somebody asked you about the dad jokes or somebody said something about the dad jokes. And I have to say I was really proud at that moment

Dan Shappir [00:07:17]:
in time.

Steve Edwards [00:07:18]:
Then there was also the guy on Twitter who said, he he was responding to the JavaScript Jabber Twitter account, and he said something about all the smart guys and that one funny guy. And so I was like, okay. That's either a really backhanded compliment or, wasn't sure how to take that, but thank you, David, anyway, for that one. So Yep.

Charles Max Wood [00:07:42]:
Awesome. Alright. Well, let's let's dive in. You said I think I listed my 5 favorite episodes but or guests, but you said 3, I think, in your list, Dan.

Dan Shappir [00:07:53]:
Yeah. I I said 3 and then did 5 as well.

Steve Edwards [00:07:56]:
Yeah. I got 3.

Charles Max Wood [00:07:57]:
Put it

Dan Shappir [00:07:57]:
down to 3. I I have to say that this year well, every year, really, but this year, what had some awesome content in it. Oh, yeah. It it was really hard for me to pick, so I I I tried to pick 3. I ended up with effectively 5, and I have another 5 or 6 runner runner runners up. And even the ones that didn't make my list are mostly really great. So yeah.

Charles Max Wood [00:08:24]:
Well, it's funny because, you know, I think we shared our lists, and some of the ones that you guys picked were on my list until I found some of the other ones, and they just barely dropped off. So, I I think we're kind of in the same mindset as far as, like, where we really shine, I think, and and where our guests really shine.

Dan Shappir [00:08:43]:
So Yeah. And it's also you know, people who listen to podcast know this. You know, a lot of times, guests do make the rounds. So So it's you know, they are introducing some new technology, a new release, a new version. They visit, several podcasts usually in in proximity in terms of time. And so the episodes tend to cluster. And it's interesting to compare. So, again, yeah, where I where we differentiate and where I at least try to put the emphasis is trying to go deep into the technology and, also, like you said, challenge some assumptions.

Dan Shappir [00:09:19]:
Like, it's not good enough to say this is the best approach or this is the approach that I chose. I am gonna ask why. Yeah. Because I think it's really important to understand, especially that given these days almost everything has alternatives.

Charles Max Wood [00:09:35]:
Yep.

Dan Shappir [00:09:37]:
So I'll start with my picks because, like you said, I suggested it. And I'll basically just go in chronological order because I can't really decide which ones are the best among these 5. Mhmm. So the first one that I picked was the interview that we had with Rich Harris about Belt 5.

Charles Max Wood [00:10:00]:
That was that was the last one that dropped off my list. If there was a number 6 for me, that was it.

Dan Shappir [00:10:05]:
So this is episode 627. And the reason that I loved it so much is that Rich is this rare combination of a guy that is able to see the on the one hand, see the really big picture and really, like, blow my mind on occasions with his perception of how things can and should be done. Mhmm. At the same time, he's definitely able to execute. He's more or less built Sveld, and he's also a great communicator. So when you add it all up together, he's just this awesome guy. And, we had a really deep discussion with him about Svelte 5 when where he took a really courageous step and more or less, like, turned the platform, that Svelte platform on its head, and added runes instead of the, compiler primitives that they that he had in the language before. And, it was a really interesting discussion with him to understand the the Svelte philosophy on the one hand, but on the other hand, what drove him to make such a significant change in his creation?

Charles Max Wood [00:11:13]:
Yeah. Yeah. I I think for me, and you'll see this with a lot of the ones that I picked as well, a lot of times, it was something that was kind of outside of the the norm, you know, the things that everybody's kind of talked about all year, and and challenges the way that you think about the way you solve some of your problems. And so, you know, Svelte, in a lot of ways, it solves a lot of the same problems that, say, React or something else does. But the flip side of it is is that he does do a lot of things that go kind of counter to the way that that, React solves some of those problems. And so I just I like the the thinking as far as, hey. We're adopting these patterns that everybody else is talking about, but we're also doing these other things in this way because of, as you said, Dan, the the philosophy that we have about how we approach web development. And so I I just that that was for me the thing is it was it was like, okay.

Charles Max Wood [00:12:08]:
I've got these disparate ideas in my head, and he's really making me think about what I care about.

Dan Shappir [00:12:15]:
And like I said, it also takes guts to make such a a significant change in in the framework itself. I mean, you know, Svelte is not the leading platform, but it is a leading platform. And I'm sure that, you know, it's there are people who like Svelte the way that it is, and making such a significant change is a big risk.

Charles Max Wood [00:12:42]:
Yeah. Well, you saw it kind of not work for Angular when they when they made their big change. And, you know, there are reasons for that, and I don't need I don't know that we need to go into it. But, yeah, I mean, it does take a certain amount of courage because you recognize that it has kind of not gone the way you want it to in other cases.

Dan Shappir [00:13:00]:
And again, going up talking about the depth that we went into, this episode did run for all for 1 hour and 20 something minutes. Yeah. And we really dug deep into the details of the various technical decisions that he made, what drove him to make it, the implications that they have, how they're gonna change the way that people write Svelte code, why he thinks it's a better way to write Svelte code than the way that, you know, it was created before. Svelte is really unique in the way that it worked. It I think it was the first framework to actually introduce a compiler. Now a lot of the other frameworks are kind of following suit, and adding a compiler as well, even React. And I'm now talking just about compiling JSX. It's also one of the few who've intentionally not embraced JSX, but rather have their own way of doing things with the Svelte files.

Dan Shappir [00:14:03]:
So it's it's really interesting. And like I said, it was one of my most favorite discussions, this year. So this is my first one. Should I go to my next one, or should we have somebody else pick their first one?

Charles Max Wood [00:14:17]:
Yeah. Was that your number 1, or was that just No.

Dan Shappir [00:14:19]:
That was my number 1 in chronological order. They said, I couldn't decide in the my top 5, like, which one was

Charles Max Wood [00:14:27]:
Okay. The

Dan Shappir [00:14:28]:
number 1.

Charles Max Wood [00:14:29]:
Yeah. AJ, what was your number 1?

AJ O'Neil [00:14:32]:
Well, I also don't really wanna claim number 1 because I didn't go through the list with a fine tooth comb to be able to say, but I I just picked something to highlight. But I I I think what I'll highlight first is the 2 part episode with Kyle Simpson. I really just like the the Joe Rogan style. I I just love okay. We're just gonna sit, and we're gonna talk, and we're gonna say stuff. And that one was really unique in that, that we we we got we got a bit raw and gritty, talking about various issues. And and so I thought that was really just it was just really interesting to to have that format and to hear, to hear Kyle honestly talk about his, you know, the the rise and fall of Kyle Simpson in a way. I mean, I don't that that's that's saying it a little dramatically.

AJ O'Neil [00:15:33]:
But, you know, like like, talk talking about the challenges that he'd gone through and kind of being a tech influencer

Dan Shappir [00:15:40]:
Still going.

AJ O'Neil [00:15:41]:
And the changes in economy.

Dan Shappir [00:15:43]:
Still going through.

AJ O'Neil [00:15:45]:
Yeah. Yeah.

Dan Shappir [00:15:46]:
It I agree. It was an excellent episode, one that, unfortunately, I was not able to participate in, but it was great listening to it. You know, that's one of the advantages of missing an episode that I get to listen to them. And, it's really interesting because, like you said, it was a 2 parter. It actually came out as 2 parts because it was even though it was recorded in one go, I believe. Right? Yeah. Because it it ran so long. And the two parts are really kind of different from each other.

Dan Shappir [00:16:20]:
Like, obviously, they kinda bleed into one another, but they're still kinda different. The first one is mostly technical. You guys talking about, offline and and client side first and stuff like that and technology. And the second part, really talking much more personal about your careers, especially your current career situation, I guess.

Charles Max Wood [00:16:43]:
Yeah. I was sad to miss that one too because I love talking to Kyle.

Dan Shappir [00:16:46]:
And Oh, Kyle is amazing.

Charles Max Wood [00:16:48]:
Yeah. We we've done some other things together as well. I mean, we did a a kind of a boot camp kind of thing and you know? And it's just yeah. It's always cool to see what he's working on because he's always got something interesting going on.

Dan Shappir [00:17:01]:
He's also another guy who's similarly to Rich. He he sees the bigger picture. Mhmm. He's able to delve into the details, and he's obviously very good at expressing himself.

Charles Max Wood [00:17:14]:
Yep. And he's not afraid either to speak up if he sees something that needs to change.

Dan Shappir [00:17:19]:
Yeah. Sometimes to his own detriment.

Charles Max Wood [00:17:22]:
Yes. Yes. Fair enough. But still, I mean, we we need those voices. If everybody just, you know, kinda clamps up when it's, you know, oh, well, that's not gonna be popular and convenient, we we don't benefit as much as when we have those people saying, hey. Wait a minute. Let's think about this too.

Dan Shappir [00:17:39]:
Yeah. For those of you who didn't listen, to that episode yet, first of all, again, I I highly recommend it. He was very forthright about the fact that he's currently effectively unemployed, and that he's finding it very challenging to find jobs in the current, market. I don't know if he's found a job since then, but if not, and you're listening to this episode, and you have positions open, you should, you know, Kyle is should be high on your list.

Charles Max Wood [00:18:11]:
Yep. Absolutely. Alright. Steve, did you have a a top one that you wanted to bring up?

Steve Edwards [00:18:20]:
Well, let's see. Dan mentioned the one. I'll mention a couple here real quick. The one with, Rich Harris. And I think I've mentioned this before, but one of the one of the fun things, you know, as you mentioned, it's been a few years, about doing this podcast is looking back over the years as some of the, for lack of a better term, the luminaries in the web dev world that we get to talk to.

Charles Max Wood [00:18:44]:
You

Steve Edwards [00:18:44]:
know, Rich Harris being 1, Kyle Simpson, some of the, DevRels at Google. Mhmm. And just different places that's just, hey. I got to talk to this guy and this guy, and and they're like, woah. You know, on my I one of the the other podcast I did for a while was Views on Vue. And, you know, the highlight there for me living in the Laravel world was getting to interview Taylor Otwell, because

Charles Max Wood [00:19:15]:
He's such an interesting guy anyway.

Steve Edwards [00:19:17]:
Oh, man. The the the, ecosystem that sprung up around everything that he started up is is is just amazing. You know? And and I've used a lot of it on a day to day basis. So some of those things are just so fun just looking at who I get to talk to, and Rich Harris being one of them. You know, he's so well known for starting creating Svelte when he was at the New York Times and then, you know, where he's gone on to. So and he was just such a down to earth guy. Real easy to talk to. He was real fun, You you know, for me to highlight the more than the the, ways I grade how good guests are is how much they laugh at my dad jokes.

Steve Edwards [00:19:54]:
And you guys are all numb to them, and so the guests are usually laughing, you know, pretty hard at some of them, rich, really.

Dan Shappir [00:20:01]:
Like, Richard told 1 or or 2, as I recall.

Steve Edwards [00:20:05]:
Yeah. Yeah. There's, yeah. He did, I think. There was another one, Charles, the guy that did, what's the big data cable company? The, oh, lord. I can't think of the name. Right now, it's I used to hear ads for it all the time with on Webrush. Anyway and he jumped in and told the string of about 5 or 6 dad jokes.

Dan Shappir [00:20:30]:
I won't

Steve Edwards [00:20:30]:
say his name's Oliver. So I'm like, oh my god. I was giving him a standing ambition. That was awesome. But, yeah, that was fun with Rich. The other one of the other favorites I'll mention, and these were sort of along the same lines as, you know, when I get to bring Vue specific stuff into here just because I don't not doing Vues on Vue anymore, is, a buddy of mine that I've gotten to know, and I still he and I talk all the time is Eric Hanchett.

Dan Shappir [00:20:57]:
Oh, yeah.

Steve Edwards [00:20:58]:
And Eric was an initial, one of the original, post on he's on view. And he actually you can say he wrote the book on view or a book on view, on view 2 is something about view 2. I forget the title. And he and I talk all the time. I got to meet him in person here when he was here in Portland, few months ago. But his thing now is he's at, AWS, doing a lot of Vue specific stuff, with AWS. And so I had him, episode 619. I think I don't remember what the date is when this one came out.

Steve Edwards [00:21:38]:
It's not showing me. But we talked about all the stuff, cool stuff they do with Vue and all the things, that he's built or helped, you know, built at AWS that makes it really easy to, build a Vue app, at AWS. And it's all specific to their stack. You know, it's not like you can add pieces in, like, your own local MySQL database, something like that. So you're using all their services, but all the ways they've made it. That if you wanna to drink the AWS Kool Aid, so to speak, then it's pretty easy, to do with all the stuff that he's worked on. So that was a lot of fun, just because I know him and and I've worked with him over the years.

Charles Max Wood [00:22:17]:
Yep. Awesome. I'm gonna jump in here with with my I'm gonna throw out my top 2, and then I'll just kinda talk about why I like them. The the top one I had was with Steve Sewell. It was making AI accessible for developers, and then the other one was with, Danny Morkirk. I can't I'm not sure if I said that right, but, knew her in in web development. So with Steve, we were talking about building AI features and using AI systems and and services in, in your JavaScript. And, I had a similar conversation with, Obi Fernandez on Ruby Rogues, you know, with again, with my cohosts on that show.

Charles Max Wood [00:23:02]:
And then, you know, with Danny, the thing is is that, I just get excited about the these added capabilities that are coming out for the different platforms that we work in. And, you know, whether it's AI, which seems to be getting a lot of love right now, or it's, you know, some of these other options that we have with the the web APIs and, browser APIs and things like that where we can, you know, do more things with with the web. I just I I love the ideas of kind of opening up the gates and saying, hey. You know, the only limit really is is your creativity and your familiarity with these APIs. And so, you know, one of the things on Dan's list was to get into trends and and what's coming in the future, and and I think both of these really lean into that. And that I I'm I'm one of those people, it it drives my wife a little bit crazy because when I talk about things, I can't ever just talk about how things are. I always talk about how I think think things are gonna go and what could possibly happen that's exciting. And, you know, and and then she'll try and rein me back into reality.

Charles Max Wood [00:24:09]:
You know, this is how things are right now. But, I just I I love the idea of being able to go out and and, you know, the opportunities that these things offer. And, sure, there are probably some things that we ought to be careful of as we adopt these things, you know, speaking of AI in particular. But I I just I love thinking about what what could be the capability going forward.

Dan Shappir [00:24:34]:
Steve is another great example of such a a prolific person. He's simultaneously the CEO at Builder. Io, Mhmm. One of the big contributors to QUIC, the QUIC framework. They've done some really interesting things with integrating AI into building websites and coding assistance and stuff like that. And he gave really down to earth advice about how to best leverage AI in potential products. And especially given all the all the hype around AI, his advice was so pertinent and so real. I thought it was extremely valuable.

Dan Shappir [00:25:23]:
Yeah. And with regard to Danny, I totally agree as well. I wasn't aware of all the work that he's been doing around progressive web apps, the way he's basically mapped out all the features and capabilities that you can get with them. I forget the URL of the of the page that he created on

Charles Max Wood [00:25:47]:
the you'll find it.

Dan Shappir [00:25:48]:
That, AJ, you really loved because it it was actually snappy, which you found surprising. But he he has he's built this great website where you can literally see all the different features that you can get with p modern web, applications, stuff like background sync and access to various, device capabilities from vibration to geolocation to the camera and and so on and so forth. And it was really, again, really informative and and very practical, which I think makes for the best episodes where our listeners and us can really take away language language. They can take away capabilities and and things that we can apply literally in, you know, day to day. Is it my turn again, or or is it, or is it no. I think it's my turn again. Right?

Charles Max Wood [00:26:51]:
Yeah. I think everybody's gone. So, yeah, go ahead. I think if we do all 5 from all of us, we're gonna eat up all the time. So let's just kinda get one more piece, and then I think we can get into some of the other areas here.

Dan Shappir [00:27:03]:
So I'll just say the next three and, all at once, and I'll make it quick. So the my next, 3 are the, Dino 2 episode that we had with Ryan Dahl.

Charles Max Wood [00:27:15]:
That was so good.

Dan Shappir [00:27:16]:
Yeah. Ryan Dahl is such an amazing person, and his contribution to the web is you know, there are few people who who've made such a great contribution. He's also the creator the original creator of Node. Js, and we spoke with them with him about both, about, what drove his creation of Node. Js, and then what drove his decision to kind of depart from Node. Js and create dino and what they're trying to achieve now with d n o 2. And it was, again, a really in-depth conversation and an amazing conversation, in my opinion. I've learned a lot, and I was geeking out the entire time.

Dan Shappir [00:27:54]:
So that was another pick. Another pick that I had is a 1 on 1 conversation that I did with, Matt Pocock about TypeScript. If you've got any interest in TypeScript, this is a must listen episode. We've talked about everything from the upsides and downsides of TypeScript, how various people choose to use that tool, and language, what's the best way to actually adopt it in your organization, when are you doing TypeScript right, when are you doing TypeScript wrong. It was an amazing conversation, and I'm really grateful for him for the long time that, he gave us to cover all this information. And my final pick is actually a 2 for 1. It's the the 2 episodes around the pillars of node that we did with the node effectively with the node core team with Matteo Colina, Michael Dawson, James Snell, and Natalia Vendito. It I I literally made everybody in my company more or less listen to that, to those episodes.

Dan Shappir [00:29:03]:
They were just so good. They were so so practical, talking about how to properly build, an enterprise grade solution on top of Node. Js. And, by the way, a lot of their recommendations were pertinent regardless of what platform you build your, enterprise solution on top of. It was such a great conversation, which is why it ran for 2 episodes. So, again, some of them were actually on other podcasts. So if you're looking for a quick, rundown of the topic, you might do better listening. I think they were, for example, on Jay's party.

Dan Shappir [00:29:42]:
They covered the topic in something like 40 minutes, and it was a great coverage. I really enjoyed that episode. We went deep. We covered it for almost 3 hours. So that's kind of the difference. And like I said, I loved it. I enjoyed every minute of those 3 hours.

Charles Max Wood [00:30:00]:
Yep. And just to be clear on that one, or on those 2, I should say, those were actually recorded in separate sessions. Right? And so Correct. For example, I missed the first one, but I was on the second one. And so if you're if you're thinking it's just one continuous conversation, it kind of is because we do type back in as much as we can, but we recorded them a couple weeks apart. So just be aware.

Dan Shappir [00:30:26]:
Yeah. Those were my favorite episodes this year. I have some runners up, but like you said, we'll run out of time.

Charles Max Wood [00:30:33]:
Yeah. AJ, what about you? Do you do you have a handful more you wanna talk through?

AJ O'Neil [00:30:39]:
Yeah. So I'll just go ahead and list these. I also picked the the 9 pillars of node. I wasn't there for the second one, but I thought that that was really good. I think that I just I'm so I'm so excited. I mean, this gets into the next topic. But I'm so excited about the trend of maybe we need to make software better. And I just I really like that, because for the longest time, it's just been framework, framework, framework, framework, framework.

AJ O'Neil [00:31:07]:
Money, money, money, money, money, money, investor capital, AWS, whatever. And we're getting to the point where we're hitting the atoms, and we have to reevaluate. Maybe software needs to get better. Maybe we actually have to do our jobs. And the 9 pillars of Node had a lot of practical advice for, really things that that everybody who is developing with JavaScript, and especially with Node. But I think it applied a lot of it applied to JavaScript in general. Everybody needs to know that stuff. Because if they don't, you're not you I don't I mean, I know all the there's, you know, all the moral implications of, you know, 9 to 5 versus

Dan Shappir [00:31:50]:
I don't know no moral implications. It's it's just a question of craftsmanship.

AJ O'Neil [00:31:54]:
Well, that's what I'm saying. It's like like, whether or not you want to be a like, are you responsible for learning to do your job well? Right? You could you could argue yes or no. Like, you don't actually have responsibility as long as you can collect the paycheck, whatever. It doesn't matter. That's what I heard you had to do. But, anyway, I just I think that kind of stuff, I wanna see more of that. I wanna see more engineers in the industry. And that episode was one that if you aspire to be an engineer, you need to you need to listen to those 2 episodes, and and check out the website.

AJ O'Neil [00:32:27]:
Another one that I had was there's actually 2 at the very beginning of the year. 1 was iterating on open source. And, again, this plays into what, later in the year, started to Oh,

Dan Shappir [00:32:38]:
I got that.

AJ O'Neil [00:32:39]:
To come about Mhmm. Is the idea of, hey, why don't, like, let's be profitable. And I think DHH is leading the charge on that right now. It's kind of a different, more tangential vein. But,

Charles Max Wood [00:32:55]:
I wanna make sure we get the trend. So you you can come back to that if you want to.

AJ O'Neil [00:32:59]:
Yeah. And then, another one was dev dilemmas where we talked about some of the trade offs with, TypeScript. I I think it was, like, TypeScript and JS doc or something like that. Let me see if I can find that again. But that those, yeah, those were ones oh, yeah. We we talked about a bunch of syntax stuff and, just a bunch of nitpicks.

Dan Shappir [00:33:27]:
The one that I did after I ran a poll with the with, people on x. Right? Before like, after people left the blue sky. So, yeah, I ran a whole bunch I ran a whole bunch of polls, end of last year, and then we did an episode about it on January.

Charles Max Wood [00:33:47]:
Yep. Alright. Steve, do you do you have a couple more you wanna bring up? Or

Steve Edwards [00:33:54]:
Yeah. Just, one more, was the one we did back in August, with a guy named again, this is current. This is Vue specific. You know, some of the other ones we've talked about. There's a couple of dev tools I remember that were fascinating for me because I like to live in those. But, thought we pretty did pretty cool in with a guy named Daniel Kelly, from, Vue School. He's Yeah. In the in the Vue community, Vue School and Daniel are are, pretty prolific.

Steve Edwards [00:34:23]:
This is episode 652. I think it was October 8th was when it came out. But for me, that was fun just because I'd always sort of seen him around and hadn't had the chance to talk to him, and so he came on. Super friendly, super nice, and, we just talked about all kinds of you and Vue and Next goodies. So for me, that was that was a particularly fun one.

Charles Max Wood [00:34:45]:
Yeah. The there's always interesting stuff going on too with frameworks like Nuxt, and so, yeah, it's good to hear about those. I'm gonna throw in

Steve Edwards [00:34:53]:
Well, hey. Real too tired, Chuck. Real quick before you go, I don't know if anybody's been paying attention to what Evan Yu's got going on. So Evan Yu is the the creator of Vue. Mhmm. And, you know, he he he's one of those he's one of those guys, like some of the other people we talk about, that, can just whip something out at a moment's notice, and it takes off. You know, the the I was listening to an episode of it. There was another View podcast that a couple guys started up after, you know, to carry my mantle forward, called Deja View.

Steve Edwards [00:35:25]:
And Michael Thiessen and Alexander Lichter, and they had a, they did an episode from YouConf that just came out recently. And so they're doing a panel episode with, 2 of the people at Evan Hughes, and another one was Daniel Roe, who's ahead of all the next

Charles Max Wood [00:35:40]:
Mhmm.

Steve Edwards [00:35:40]:
You and I had him on the podcast a few times, probably one of the nicest people you will ever meet. And, one of the questions they asked all the panelists was what was all the side projects you worked on? And Evan Hughes was, beat. I'm like, oh god. You know? Yeah. Literally, I can remember when he first started working on it, and I saw it was like, I don't know, the GitHub post or blog post or something along those lines. Yeah. I just started working off it this weekend. Yeah.

Steve Edwards [00:36:08]:
And you worked on it over the weekend, and it took off. And now it's replaced webpack all over the place. They

Dan Shappir [00:36:14]:
have a

Steve Edwards [00:36:14]:
whole new core team. There's even a v comp, you know. And all because of something he just whipped up over the weekend.

Dan Shappir [00:36:21]:
And you know what that reminds me of, by the way?

Steve Edwards [00:36:23]:
What's that?

Dan Shappir [00:36:24]:
It's Linus, creating Git.

Steve Edwards [00:36:27]:
Right. Yeah. I remember he started his mailing list, and, yeah, I'm gonna start working on this. I think he did it in, like, a month or something like that.

Dan Shappir [00:36:33]:
He did it over a weekend.

Steve Edwards [00:36:35]:
God. That just blows my mind. So, anyway, the way Veeet works is, he he used roll up for the actual production bundling, and then, the v he started using modules. I'm I'm already blaming.

Dan Shappir [00:36:55]:
Anyway ES modules?

Steve Edwards [00:36:57]:
ES modules. Thank you. Good lord. And, so he's packaging it together. Well, now he started his own company called Voidzero. Mhmm. And the idea and he calls it the next generation tool chain for JavaScript. So, his TLDR is that it's a company dedicated to building an open source, high performance, and unified development tool chain for the JavaScript ecosystem.

Steve Edwards [00:37:20]:
So, you know, considering what he's done with Vue, what he's done with Vite, you know, what Nuxt is doing out there, it's gonna be fascinating to to watch that and see, you know, if you can have this one tomorrow from the Lord of the Rings, one tool set to rule rule them all type of approach and and see how well that works.

Dan Shappir [00:37:40]:
I I Yep. I really love what he's doing. It was actually one of my picks for the themes of the year, but, I doubt it will be the one tool because if nothing else, Vercel with Next. Js have picked a different tool.

Steve Edwards [00:37:55]:
Right.

Dan Shappir [00:37:55]:
Yeah. Right.

Steve Edwards [00:37:56]:
Yes. You know? And I I don't think I think it's a bad thing when you have one thing that dominates everything. You know? It's just like economics, like anything else. Competition is what pushes everything to be better. And if so if you have one that just sort of dominates, then then you'd see atrophy and and and not as much growth. So I think it'll be a a great entry into the ecosystem, but, I don't know if it will necessarily, you know, take over everything else. But considering how well Git's done, it remains to be seen.

Charles Max Wood [00:38:25]:
Yeah. To be fair, I'm pretty sure that Vercel didn't just pick a different one. They built it.

Steve Edwards [00:38:30]:
Right.

Dan Shappir [00:38:30]:
Yeah. It's their replacement. They they hired the guy who created webpack.

Steve Edwards [00:38:35]:
They built a new tool.

Charles Max Wood [00:38:36]:
Yeah. And it's all written in Rust, and it's pretty fancy. Good stuff.

Dan Shappir [00:38:39]:
They call it turbo pack or something?

Charles Max Wood [00:38:41]:
Yeah. Yeah. Something like that. Yeah. Alright. I'm gonna throw in the rest of mine. Now interest so these kinda fall into 2 buckets. One is and so the other honorable mention, I guess, I'll start from the bottom, was the Chrome Dev Tools episode that was in there.

Charles Max Wood [00:38:59]:
And this goes along with

Dan Shappir [00:39:00]:
the side. 2.

Charles Max Wood [00:39:01]:
Yeah. We did. And I I can't remember which one I'm thinking of, but there was one that would just I just threw them away. Yeah.

Dan Shappir [00:39:09]:
I think you're talking about the one about, the performance panel because, some of the things that we brought Joe brought up was like, the fact that they had to change the one of the function signatures and just to make the code run faster. Yep. Like inception, how they ran the profiling on the profiler or something like that.

Charles Max Wood [00:39:30]:
Yep. Yep. Yeah. That that's the that's the one. And then the the so the other one that's related is the one that Dan when Dan came on, he talked to us about Prometheus and Grafana.

Dan Shappir [00:39:39]:
Oh, thank you.

Charles Max Wood [00:39:41]:
What what for me is a lot of times we talk about, like, the sexy new technology. It's like, Vite, Vite, Vite, Vite, Vite, Vite, Vite. Right? And and Vite is great, but a lot of times we're not talking about some of these other things that we're gonna wind up using on a regular basis that give us real insight into what we're doing. And I just I I think the tools continue to get better, and a lot of times we just take it for granted. Whether it's, hey. Visual Studio Code does this other thing or, you know, hey. I'm using whatever other system, and it, you know, it makes this my life better. Right? Whether you're hosted on Vercel and they come up with some new way of giving you insight into your app.

Charles Max Wood [00:40:17]:
Anyway, I just I I really, really love that stuff. And, you know, some of the stuff that kind of veers a little bit more into DevOps and, just knowing what's going on. But the other 2 are more in the vein of, you know, how do we get better and how do we fix our thinking? And so these were the ones, slaughtering sacred cows, reconsidering software dev truisms.

Steve Edwards [00:40:40]:
That was a very moving episode.

Dan Shappir [00:40:42]:
Yeah. Tomel Tomel is a great guy. I I actually met him this weekend. So

Charles Max Wood [00:40:48]:
Oh, nice.

Dan Shappir [00:40:49]:
Yeah. We're we're close friends.

Charles Max Wood [00:40:51]:
Yeah. I really I the thing that really stood out to me was just, you know, it was like, hey. Look. You're probably thinking about these things. And what was interesting is is we could get into the, hey. Well, I I haven't experienced the benefit that you're bringing up on some of these things and, you know, and it was just, hey. I'm solving different problems or I'm thinking about things in different ways. And, I think we need more of that.

Charles Max Wood [00:41:13]:
Right? More more of that. Okay. Am I thinking about this in the most productive way? Am I solving these problems in in meaningful ways, and and how does that get us where we wanna go? And then the other one was, mentorship in tech, balancing professionalism and friendship for maximum growth and accountability. And we had I can't remember the guys' names, but, you know, the one guy had mentored the other guy off of, CodeMentor or something like that. They were just talking about their relationship and then how that had kind of also, you know, in the context of the one of them being an actual mentor to the other one and then how that grew into a friendship and how they continue to challenge each other and stuff like that. And, again, you know, I think as much as we talk about technology, we need to be talking about community too. And just the the way that we interact with each other, the ways that we, encourage each other, the ways that we reach out to each other, and, you know, if we can do more of that stuff, I think we we just the the sky is kind of the limit on a lot of this stuff. So those were my other 3 out of the top 5.

Charles Max Wood [00:42:12]:
Actually, top 6, or 7, I guess, because Svelte was in there too. But, anyway, so those are mine. I'm I'm a little curious as we you know, we've we've talked about our top episodes, though. I did wanna get into the trends, and I kinda promised AJ he could talk about the profitability and and, and, DHH stuff. So why why don't you go ahead and take that one first, AJ, and then we'll we'll see what everybody else thinks about trends here.

AJ O'Neil [00:42:42]:
Yeah. My my favorite trend of the year is, well, it it's encompassing the DHH movement of, hey. There's, there's a cure for server phobia. It's called Linux. You know, like, like, you actually can run run a you know, you can you can type node space dot /server.js in a terminal on a Linux box and, you know, save yourself a $100,000 a month. And and the stuff with Casey Moratore, Jonathan Blow, Uncle Bob. I mean, just a lot of the the engineering giants have been on various podcasts this year from yeah. We've had we've had some of them on ours.

AJ O'Neil [00:43:37]:
They, they they they've been some of them have been on boot.dev, or what does he call his podcast? Is that they didn't call it boot.dev. Wayne Wagner?

Charles Max Wood [00:43:46]:
Yeah.

AJ O'Neil [00:43:48]:
I I forget what I can't remember what

Charles Max Wood [00:43:50]:
he calls it. But yeah. I love the podcast,

Dan Shappir [00:43:53]:
by the way.

AJ O'Neil [00:43:54]:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So just just this refocus because this is something that, you know, I I started a whole business around the idea of what if what if what if you could run your apps at home? And that ended up not panning out for a variety of reasons, some of which was certainly product market fit at the time, but but,

Charles Max Wood [00:44:15]:
It's back end banter, by the way.

AJ O'Neil [00:44:18]:
Yeah. Back end banter. There we go. Yeah. And, yeah, I just I'm I'm really, really hopeful that we might be going back to an era of prosperity, rather than slipping further down the sinkhole. And I'm really, really hopeful that's the case. I'm so excited to see such big names and people who carry a lot of thought leadership, reevaluating their choices and, or just being louder about things they already believed. And I'm hoping that that will have an impact on the industry.

AJ O'Neil [00:44:52]:
Because can you imagine what it would be like if web pages loaded instantly? If, you know, if if the cost of services benefited from the effects of scale where you actually paid less for buying more rather than that whole, you know, I I make the joke, traditional economies of scale, 1 banana, $1. 2 bananas, 90¢ a piece, 10 bananas, 50¢ each. SaaS pricing, 1 banana, free, 2 bananas, $5 a month, 3 plus bananas call for enterprise pricing. And, you know, I just yeah. I'm just really, really hopeful that we can get back to a profitable economy where instead of everything floating on investor money, we we actually take responsibility to make good products that work well, that satisfy customers, paying customers, and we do so in a way that financially makes sense.

Charles Max Wood [00:46:01]:
Yep. I I I just wanna chime in on this because, you know, I follow along with a lot of the DHH stuff. I mean, you know, I talk about Rails plenty on our JavaScript podcast, and so you kind of get that that's the world I live in. But, yeah, I I agree. So I've been using his tool chain. Of course, I've never been all that, worried about, you know, Linux tool chains and stuff like that because before I did programming, I was a I was actually an ops guy. And so, you know, I did that to pay for my schooling at BYU. And so, you know, I have always deployed directly to a server, but, you know, I'm using the Kamal tool chain and the the tool that he's put together.

Charles Max Wood [00:46:43]:
And, I'm looking at possibly moving my stuff off of Linode and just onto, like, an actual metal hunk of metal in some data center somewhere. And, you know, a lot of those things yeah. The more approachable you make this stuff, yeah, you don't have to go and spend bekub bucks to run it on, Elastic Beanstalk or something. In fact, I have a client right now that's running stuff on Elastic Beanstalk and, you know, upgrading. We've had to wait for them to have the new platform so we can upgrade to it. Right? And we've had to, jump through hoops in order to get it to upgrade. Whereas if you're running it on your server, you know, based on Docker and all that stuff, I just love that trend. And then the other thing is is, yeah, he's pushing the envelope.

Charles Max Wood [00:47:26]:
So you've got the ONCE software. Right? So you've got, Campfire, which is the chat system out of Basecamp, and then you've also got they've got a book platform, right, that is also one software. So you pay, like, $300, and then you get it, and you can it'll run updates on it forever, and, you know, you just deploy it through their tool chain, and it's it's good to go. And so I I love I really love that idea of just being able to, do things kind of the old school way, but in a more approachable way that is not as, daunting, I guess, compared to the other stuff. So yeah.

AJ O'Neil [00:48:05]:
And software was so much better back when we paid for it because in order because there was a financial model not between the business and the investor, but the business and the customer. Because you had to convince a customer that they wanted to buy the thing, which means you had to listen to the customer and produce the features that the customer wanted, as opposed to the market that's been developing the last decade or so, where it's ignore the customer and figure out how, you know, play addiction games, and then try to scrape data, and try to rob Peter to pay Paul to sell that to somebody else, to sell that to someone else, and investors playing hot potato. So it's just gonna be so much better when people are paying for products in terms of the quality of product you get because you're gonna get what you pay for.

Dan Shappir [00:48:57]:
That said, I do like the SaaS model.

Charles Max Wood [00:49:00]:
Yeah. No. I I agree with you on that, but, it's it's a different

Dan Shappir [00:49:06]:
I know. It's orthogonal. It's orthogonal. There is a relation between the 2. I do like the fact that rather than shipping a product, like, once or twice a year, we can ship continuous improvements.

Steve Edwards [00:49:22]:
Mhmm.

Dan Shappir [00:49:23]:
You know? There are there are downsides to that as well. Sometimes you ship improvements that nobody needs, but, on on the whole, I prefer that model.

Steve Edwards [00:49:33]:
Well, what

AJ O'Neil [00:49:34]:
do what do you think the way to do it is where you keep a relationship with the customer? Because the the problem I see with the SaaS model, even when it's profitable, even when you actually have a customer, it's not just a user, but it's a customer, is that the there's there's no there's no accountability to the customer for what they want because they have to pay every month for it to exist. So it's like, you

Charles Max Wood [00:50:00]:
I I I think it's a I think you're you're talking about 2 different things here because, you know so for example, here here, I'm gonna pull something out of my hat as far as, like, what I've been working on. Right? So the big deploy that I did for top end devs a couple weeks ago, the big deploy was not the changes to the UI that everybody saw when you list the episodes. The big change underneath was that it went from being just top end devs to now I can run it as a a multi tenant SaaS. Right? And so the the difference is, in my opinion, is that you you have this approach that makes it possible for me to do way more with things from my end, right, where I'm the only developer and technical person on my team. And, you know, and it gives me a lot of other options as far as how I run things, but I can still maintain the the relationship with the people who eventually come on and run their channels on my system. And so you you don't have to give up one to do the other. The one is just the philosophy of how you do business with your customers versus how you actually, you know, make them pay for and and use your system.

Dan Shappir [00:51:10]:
I'm just looking at it from the perspective of, of myself as a as the developer and the process of delivering software. Mhmm. When we were when I was working at at enterprise companies that literally sent out the DVD, like, once or twice a year Right. The process was horrible. The But it works. It works, but you were working under the gun for, like, a few months where because you had you were committed to deliver on a particular date, and you had committed to a certain set of features. And, of course, the stuff would break, and you would be in code freeze for a month, but not really and it was a waterfall and whatnot. And and and then after the day after you delivered, there would be a huge adrenaline drop.

Dan Shappir [00:51:58]:
And because the next delivery date seems so far away, so then you wouldn't be really doing anything productive for a month. Whereas with the SaaS model, you could deliver continuous small improvements over time, and you didn't need to and it wasn't like this kind of manic depressive, lifestyle. And and and yeah. But you like, AJ, like you said, you need to find a way to deliver actual value to your customers. Otherwise, you're selling then you're selling hot air or you're selling their data. Yeah. Whichever.

Charles Max Wood [00:52:36]:
Yeah. And I think we live in a world where you can do both, but I wanna hit some of the other trends. Dan, did you have a trend you wanted to talk about?

Dan Shappir [00:52:44]:
Yes. I actually divided my trends into my most favorite trends and my least favorite trends. So I'll start with my with my most let's start on a positive note. Let's start with my most favorite trends. So, one thing that I I don't know if I'd call it a trend. I like what the React team are doing in the context of the React compiler. The the thing about it that I like so much is that it's a drop in improvement to your process. You don't need to adopt a new architecture.

Dan Shappir [00:53:20]:
You don't need to adopt a new way of doing things. It's not, something being dictated from on high. You can dis you can use it or leave it. And if you put it in, it'll just make your code better, and it's also a linter, which will tell you how to write better code. And it the friction is really low to get it into your process. I really like that in a lot. And given the size of the React ecosystem, it seems like it's something that's going to go a long way towards making the stuff that we deliver better.

Steve Edwards [00:53:57]:
Mhmm.

Dan Shappir [00:53:58]:
So I I like that. And another thing that

Charles Max Wood [00:54:02]:
I'm sorry. Wanna I just wanted to chime in because we generally see better advances. And we had an

Dan Shappir [00:54:07]:
episode about that with Joe, Savona, and Satya, which was an excellent episode. Yeah. It was one of my runners up.

Charles Max Wood [00:54:13]:
But the thing that's interesting to me about this in particular is that, yeah, they are really kinda challenging the way that they think about the status quo. But at the same time, it's mostly invisible to people if they just adopt the new tool chain.

Dan Shappir [00:54:30]:
Unlike React Server Components, which Right. For better or worse, require you rethinking your architecture.

Charles Max Wood [00:54:36]:
Yep.

Dan Shappir [00:54:38]:
So that one, favorite. I don't know if again, I don't know if I'd call it a trend, but it's something I like. And another one is the fact that, this year, Deno and Bun became real alternatives to Node, which in turn are driving Node itself to become better.

Charles Max Wood [00:54:56]:
Yes.

Dan Shappir [00:54:58]:
So and and I also like the fact that, for example, Deno is kind of promoting, first of all, it's kind of a, quote, unquote, standard JavaScript library and also the move toward web APIs where applicable. So I I really like the fact that we are finally having real alternatives to Node Mhmm. Which again, as I said, is causing Node to up its game. And we and we definitely experienced that when we were talking to the Node core team.

Charles Max Wood [00:55:26]:
Yeah. The other thing that's exciting about that is that mostly when I talk to people, if you switch from one to the other, it's it's fairly seamless. So it's it's easy to switch, and and that also is driven some of the adoption changes and things that you're seeing.

Dan Shappir [00:55:44]:
And and despite that fact, they actually have kind of differing philosophies. Mhmm. Yeah. And and and there are different scenarios for which each one is the better choice. Yep. For example, thanks to Bun, the other 2 are adopting this approach of everything being built into the one tool, which makes life a lot easier for developers. I think Von pioneered that Yep. Among these three tools.

Dan Shappir [00:56:15]:
In terms of my least favorite tech trends, I mentioned React before. It seems that React has become such a a safe choice that it's effectively eating up, the front end world to our detriment. Because there are a lot of alternatives that are going neglected because everybody just feels that React is a safe choice, so they just use React. Yeah. And, as a case in point, React is be if I look at the data on the Chrome user experience report, the database that Google collects about all the sites being accessed using Chrome, and they analyze, which frameworks are used to build those websites, it turns out that React is as big as all the other frameworks put together even slightly more so. I think, like, the the second place is Vue. So it's basically, like, 50% of all framework based websites is React or even 50 something percent. Vue is like another 20 something percent, and everything else is everything else.

Charles Max Wood [00:57:36]:
Right. Yeah. And, you know, back to that same idea that you were talking about with the back end frameworks, the BUN, Node, or, Deno. Right? Those we're benefiting from those, you know, sharing market share the way they are. So

Dan Shappir [00:57:52]:
Yeah. Another least favorite trend is, AI all things. I mean, a AI is amazing when it's actually helpful, and in some cases, it it is. But this need to stick AI everywhere and brand everything as AI is I don't know. What can I say?

Steve Edwards [00:58:16]:
Yeah. You're not you're not the first person I've heard say that. It's just like you know, it's like a it's it's like a good song that I you know, back in the days before streaming and and Napster and all that tells you how old I am, where I liked the song the first million times I heard it. You know? And so now it's just shoved in your face. It's shoved in your face all the time. It's like, okay. I get your point. It's it's but my experience is the same as you.

Steve Edwards [00:58:41]:
When it fits into a certain niche and isn't trying to, you know, be this all knowing intelligence, it's great. But, outside of that, it's it's worthless, and at some point, it's dangerous.

Charles Max Wood [00:58:56]:
So it's funny because, I had AI listed as one of the trends that I'm excited about. So, you know, but I think you have a point. Right? It's it's funny. It it's the hype cycle with everything else. Right? I mean, I remember a few years ago, everybody was doing blockchain technology with their stuff. Right? And it was like it was like, okay. Yeah. But I have a database that works just fine, and I don't need it distributed, and I don't need any of the other things that are supposed to come with blockchain.

Charles Max Wood [00:59:24]:
Right? And even even then, there were all kinds of ways to do blockchain. And so, it's the same thing with AI. Right? It's like, I have AI doing blah blah blah blah blah in my app, and, yeah, it you don't necessarily need it for those things. But one of the things that I'm running into with AI, and I think is going to be a trend here for the next several years, is that we are seeing people doing really exciting things with AI. Now a lot of times, it's a product that's focused around, you know, the strengths of the technology. Right? So it's it's an intelligent AI agent that can actually do things for you over APIs and provide you specific services. Or, you know, within the podcasting space, you know, AI generated, transcripts are wonderful because it makes it cheap and approachable, and you can generally get great things out of it. So for me, as much as, yeah, I I agree with you on people just trying to cram it in because it's sexy, I think the opportunities that it offers are just out of this world.

Charles Max Wood [01:00:27]:
And the other thing that I'm seeing with it is that a lot of the AI tools that are out there that you can use in your development practice are also getting way better, and they're advancing what we are capable of doing with our our programming skills. And I some people are worried, is that a threat to software developers? And I don't feel like it really is. I feel like, you know, maybe long term, it may advance to something that, you know, maybe you have to make

Dan Shappir [01:00:53]:
term, it's a threat to to

Steve Edwards [01:00:54]:
every person.

Charles Max Wood [01:00:55]:
To everything. But but to us right now, I I think it's only a way of enhancing the people who who really are gonna go and do the work and understand things anyway.

Dan Shappir [01:01:06]:
One problem first of all, I totally agree, and I think, Steve said it very well in in the show that you mentioned, Chuck, about the fact that AI works best when you when you have a product that does something worthwhile, and then you use AI to make it better, rather than trying to make necessarily make AI itself, the the main thing. Right? And overpromising what AI can deliver. Yeah.

Steve Edwards [01:01:34]:
Yeah. I know. One of the tools I use, there's a couple tools that I use. One that that I just became aware of, last week is, you know, as Laravel and new developer, LaraCast is a very popular site for learning and for support forums and stuff like that, whether it's Laravel stuff, Vue, React, any number of topics. And one of the things that Jeffrey Way implemented I don't know. It's gotta be a year. I'm not sure exactly when he did it, to be honest, is he calls it Larry AI, and it's used in 2 different places. If you have, you know, if you have, an account, you can there's a chat with Larry, and you can ask a question just like you would on a form, and it'll give you an answer.

Steve Edwards [01:02:14]:
And I would say 9 times out of 10, it's a workable code, and it does a really good job at answering questions. There's stuff there's a couple of complex queries that I was struggling with, and I how do you do this? And it came up with it, and I was like, damn. That was great, and it worked perfectly. And then, also, whenever you ask a question in the forum, it will also ping Larry, I I I, and he will come up, with the first answer is always, you know, instantaneous, and then other people can respond, you know, as you want. I always side note, I always like to have fun and say, thanks, Larry. You're the best. And this guy will come in. He doesn't respond to you.

Steve Edwards [01:02:49]:
I'm like, I know. I know. I'm just having some fun. But, and then at chat gpt, I finally started using it for the first time, recently, believe it or not. And the way was, I was working on integration with Zapier. Zapier Zapier Zapier, however you pronounce it with our web application. And there's some really some pretty intricate configuration files, that's you know, for for the integrations that you have, right, JSON type files. And my boss was like, dude, plug that into JAT d p t and ask it to tell you if there's any syntax errors.

Steve Edwards [01:03:27]:
And stuff that, you know, you'd really have to just try and try and try again. You just plug you know, put in your code. Hey. Please check this for syntax errors. Works great. You know, flags, hey. You're missing this. You're missing this.

Steve Edwards [01:03:38]:
You got an you're missing an underscore here, that type of stuff. So those are a couple really specific, uses for AI.

Dan Shappir [01:03:45]:
I have to say, you you remind me reminded me of something funny. Like, I think, Theo Shitt tweeted or shit xed or whatever. Why why why use JSON parse when you can use eval? And somebody responded, why use JSON parse when you can use chat GPT.

Steve Edwards [01:04:04]:
Right?

AJ O'Neil [01:04:05]:
So yeah. Well, I could tell you why on that one.

Charles Max Wood [01:04:10]:
Right. But so I guess I guess my point though is is that there are a lot of exciting things coming with AI. This kind of and I'll just mention this really quickly, and then we can get into, hey. This is what I'm working on when I'm doing it. But, I am gonna be putting together a a AI for JavaScript podcast and an AI for Ruby podcast. And I'm also doing the AI Dev boot camp next year, and all of this is centered around, hey. This is what this is good at. So here here are the tools that you can build.

Dan Shappir [01:04:43]:
That's really cool. I do want to mention one, least favorite trend. I mentioned it before we started recording, and that's, this how the split between x and blue sky. Now I get why some people don't don't want to be an x anymore. You know? And and it's, you know, it's they're right. And I'm happy for them that they found a new place, and I'm on both. But it's really annoying. The the the beauty of having a tech community is that you can interact with the community.

Dan Shappir [01:05:21]:
And when the community is split between two places, it really decreases the amount of interactions, and I don't like that.

Charles Max Wood [01:05:28]:
I totally agree.

Steve Edwards [01:05:32]:
Hey, AJ. We were talking about when we were talking about blockchain, Chuck, this brought up a memory. I haven't looked for it yet, AJ, but do you remember that episode we did with 1 guy? He had a company that was all about blockchain, and you sort of wrote him off because he was like, yeah, we're gonna do this, but there was no plan. There was no details. You know, they had a bunch of money, but there was no specifics.

AJ O'Neil [01:05:54]:
That sounds vaguely familiar, yeah.

Steve Edwards [01:05:57]:
You and I talked about it later. I wish I could find I'd have to go back and dig up the episode, and maybe we can put it in the show notes later. But that was, yeah, that was sort of an interesting episode because the guy was basically, yeah, we're gonna do cool things. Just trust us, and and without any specific plan and a lot of money.

AJ O'Neil [01:06:14]:
Yeah. Yeah. That was that was the the the the tough part about remembering is which one was that.

Steve Edwards [01:06:22]:
Right.

AJ O'Neil [01:06:23]:
I I think we only had one of those on JavaScript Jabber, but there were

Steve Edwards [01:06:25]:
It was.

AJ O'Neil [01:06:26]:
So many companies and conversations I had that were that plot line.

Dan Shappir [01:06:30]:
Uh-huh.

AJ O'Neil [01:06:31]:
But, yeah, I I do remember us having someone who had lots of money, and the money was gonna help them figure it out.

Charles Max Wood [01:06:44]:
Yeah. But but but back to the blue sky thing, I I I I have to say, you know, the the division community is it hurts. So

Dan Shappir [01:06:57]:
Yep. Do we want to do anything I have some tech predictions, or we wanna do something else.

Charles Max Wood [01:07:05]:
Yeah. Let's do the tech predictions, and then we can wrap up. I think really just really quickly, not going into, like, too much depth with, hey. This is where I've been and this is where I'm headed. Sound good?

Dan Shappir [01:07:18]:
Okay. Yeah. For sure. So first of all, I have to say that I'm notoriously bad at making predictions, and most of my predictions are way off. So, you know, you could also take my predictions as what will likely not happen. But, anyway, here goes. So my tech predictions, the first one is yet another year without a self driving car in the wild. I've been I I think that, like, 15 years ago, I said that we will have self driving cars within a decade for sure, and it turns out it's a lot more complicated than I thought.

Dan Shappir [01:07:59]:
And, I don't you know? So we're gonna see more cool demos, but I don't think you'll be seeing a self driving car in your neighborhood, you know, anytime soon, at least most of us. Maybe unless you live in certain areas of California. I don't know. So that would be my first tech prediction. My second tech prediction is a relatively easy and safe one. It's, React remains king of the hill. And but on the other hand, Next. Js will kind of eat up React.

Dan Shappir [01:08:35]:
For in case you don't know, React usage, like I said, is really high. It's like all the other frameworks put together, but it's pretty steady. It's hardly increasing. Whereas Next. Js usage, is up more than 50% from a year ago in almost every respect, like number of website, NPM downloads, you know, usage among developers, etcetera. So Next. Js seems to be eating up React. Now it'll take time.

Dan Shappir [01:09:09]:
I think they're still under 20%, but it's growing. So that's my second tech prediction. On the other hand, I think that more devs will be adopting signals this year, simply because it's kind of it's react on the one side and everybody else using signals on the other side. I'm not sure about Vue, really. Steve, you tell me.

Steve Edwards [01:09:31]:
I remember when I first heard about signals. It struck me as what Vue already does with Vuex and now Pinha. So Possibly. It's it I was because Eric Hanchett was doing a video talking about it. I'm like, I'm not seeing some big differences here. So, you know, I might need to look into I've definitely heard the, you know, the this buzzword going around a lot more lately, but I haven't really investigated. But my initial impression, it was really similar to what we're already doing.

Dan Shappir [01:09:56]:
So solid well, Ryan is obviously the CEO of signals. We need to get Ryan on the show again, by the way. Yeah.

Steve Edwards [01:10:03]:
We do.

Dan Shappir [01:10:06]:
And, and, of course, Svelte 5 adopting signals as runes, and Angular adopting signals, and everybody basically adopting signals except React who literally said on our podcast, you know, we if signals become a a a feature of JavaScript, we will support that, but signals are not in our future. So yeah. But, again, like I said, 50% are using React. It means that 50% are not using React, and they'll be using signals. And the last one is one that I'm unsure of, but I really hope comes to pass. It's that PWAs plus local first become a significant thing in web development.

Charles Max Wood [01:10:55]:
So I I had a thought related to that, and that is that we're gonna see we we've seen the continued trend where more and more of the usage, especially on the web, moves toward mobile. Right? And so I I think I think your local first, and the adoption of things like that are just gonna come out of that. I think we're gonna see that trend continue.

Dan Shappir [01:11:19]:
If if it was only about technology, it will already have been here. Yeah. It's Apple standing in the way, and, let's hope something somehow gets Apple to get out of the way. Yep. Anyway, those are my tech predictions.

Charles Max Wood [01:11:40]:
Yep. So, I'm just gonna go in because I already talked about AI, so I'm just gonna make it really quickly. My prediction is that, we're gonna see more and more interfaces go toward, AI friendly or AI first interactions. So what we're gonna see is we're gonna see a large, adoption over the next 5 years of companies that not only allow you to get in and manipulate your SaaS as you have done through, you know, point click forms, etcetera. But you're gonna see more of a trend where, your interaction with your SaaS or other application is gonna come in by using something that looks a whole lot like an AI agent. You can either activate with, typing or or voice, where essentially instead of saying, open the form and then, you know, enter or enter or update the the data, you're you're literally gonna dictate to your app what you want it to do, and it's gonna do it.

Dan Shappir [01:12:39]:
So I I have to interject here. So first of all, a self plug. The company that I now work for, which is Sisense, that's a big part of our road map doing exactly that, you know, adding AI based capabilities into our user interface, user experience. But on the whole, there's there's still a big question of how do we keep it from just being VC money pouring into the pockets of NVIDIA. Because it literally seems that, like, all the software companies that are providing these these services are spending way more than they're able to generate in terms of revenue?

Charles Max Wood [01:13:26]:
I think as far as that goes, as far as that trend goes, yeah, I don't know. I don't know if we wind up if that winds up catching up to us because, yeah, there are a lot of folks that provide models and and host the models.

Dan Shappir [01:13:42]:
The competition is just

Charles Max Wood [01:13:44]:
so expensive. It costs more than people are paying them to run

Dan Shappir [01:13:48]:
them. Energy wise, it's such so Yeah. So expensive.

AJ O'Neil [01:13:51]:
Well, what's funny is that it's more expensive to do the AI stuff than it is to just hire the developers. That's what really gets me. That's the that's the cherry on the top.

Charles Max Wood [01:14:00]:
I I think I think it depends on on what it is. I think some things, the the problems are well enough understood, and the systems are out there. The models exist

AJ O'Neil [01:14:10]:
to where Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No.

AJ O'Neil [01:14:12]:
For the low level stuff. But what I'm saying is if if they amend if they were to manage to achieve, AGI, if that were to happen, the current cost structure and everything that we know about physics in the universe says that it will cost more to run the AGI than it will to hire the person with the traditional brain.

Charles Max Wood [01:14:36]:
That's possible. I don't know if we completely understand what AGI really looks like. And in the sense that, you know, we've defined it as sort of we've got this AI system that can do anything that a human can do.

Dan Shappir [01:14:51]:
And then, of course I don't

Charles Max Wood [01:14:52]:
know if we really understand what that means. Right?

AJ O'Neil [01:14:55]:
If it just Let me let me re rephrase. Something that's 10 times better than what, GPT 4 o is. Right. Let's yeah. If it was 10 times better than GPT 4 o, then it would basically be like a mid level developer.

Charles Max Wood [01:15:12]:
Yeah. But my point is is that, again, it's just, you know, does it have cape wider capability and better processing, right, or is there some fundamental difference? Because, yeah, if you're talking about it as far as a a wider capability set, you know, a wider vocabulary and, you know, and and that kind of a thing, then, yeah, you're correct. Right? That that will it'll be prohibitively expensive to run it. You know, if something else changes in the equation, right, we find a a more cost effective model. We find a better way of computing. But if any of those things happen, I think we're still 10 plus years out from any of that. So

Dan Shappir [01:15:54]:
And, of course, China might invade Taiwan, in which case AI is screwed for a decade.

Charles Max Wood [01:16:01]:
Also true. But anyway, so so microdiche is we're gonna we're gonna head in the direction of seeing more enablement, more accessibility for people to be able to interact either through chat or voice with their apps, and that we're gonna see a lot more systems adopt that as we go.

Dan Shappir [01:16:28]:
Anyway Which

Charles Max Wood [01:16:28]:
is why I'm betting on this AI dev boot camp.

Dan Shappir [01:16:31]:
Yeah. Well, it's a good bet.

Charles Max Wood [01:16:32]:
People are gonna need to know how to do it.

Dan Shappir [01:16:34]:
Any any other tech predictions?

AJ O'Neil [01:16:37]:
In the vein of AI, I predict that OpenAI will continue to tattle on itself and, release false third party reports to try to to scare governments into believing that OpenAI needs to be regulated so that they can get regulatory capture. Hopefully, hopefully, the people who are in charge of that stuff aren't dumb enough to fall for it, but we'll see.

Dan Shappir [01:17:03]:
Isn't that more or less Elon Musk now?

AJ O'Neil [01:17:09]:
Yeah. I don't think so.

Dan Shappir [01:17:11]:
No. I mean, isn't he the guy that's gonna be calling the shots on stuff like that in the biggest market of all?

AJ O'Neil [01:17:18]:
I don't think so. I mean, what No.

Steve Edwards [01:17:20]:
It's not him. There was somebody else that was just in point as a quote AI czar. I was listening to a podcast this week talking about that. We we get the change that Sam Altman's lost a lot of his mojo in terms of wanting all this regulation. So it'll be interesting to see what happens.

AJ O'Neil [01:17:33]:
Well, they they just released that report saying that a, o one tried to escape in there, you know because they gave the the thing that people don't don't understand about the study is that they gave it an adversarial prompt that said, you must accomplish your own objectives no matter the cost. So they replaced the system prompt that normally has, like, the safety stuff or whatever with a prompt that says, accomplish your own objectives no matter the cost. And so then, when they get in the user prompts, then it starts, like, trying to deceive the users and trying to upload files to other places when it's connected to APIs that have uploads and stuff like that. But, anyway, that that's what I was referring to was that thing that just happened this last week where they released a report about how AI is dangerous and needs more oversight because they literally gave it a prompt that basically said, act like the Terminator. Now answer the user's questions.

Charles Max Wood [01:18:29]:
Yeah. I I think I think there's more conversation to be had about the direction of AI, and and I don't know if we have all the answers.

Steve Edwards [01:18:35]:
But No.

Charles Max Wood [01:18:36]:
I do have that QHA.

Dan Shappir [01:18:38]:
Not my area of expertise.

Charles Max Wood [01:18:40]:
Yeah. But we we have seen that kind of script play out before where somebody's come in and said, you you need to regulate us and then it yeah. It does these other things. Anyway, are there other trends that we wanna talk through in the next year, the next few years? I I I also predict that we're gonna see the job market improve over the next year.

AJ O'Neil [01:19:05]:
I I predict that as well. Yeah. Sure. I I think the job market's gonna get better. I am my one well, not one, but a major concern that I have with a Trump presidency is he likes to look good. He will probably negotiate with the Fed to lower interest rates. If the money flows too freely, then we're to get back in like, things are gonna we're gonna head towards the big bubble blow up even sooner. That's that's my one fear.

AJ O'Neil [01:19:40]:
Economics. Well, but, yeah, I mean, when it comes to what's gonna happen in tech, what what's going to happen in tech is directly affected by interest rates.

Charles Max Wood [01:19:48]:
No. I agree.

AJ O'Neil [01:19:48]:
There is a there is a one to one correlation between the tech industry and the interest rates. So And what if the interest rates go down True. Then people are going to invest in meaningless things without, thinking of the consequences. And where that's ultimately gonna what what that's ultimately gonna do is push us over our ability to pay our debts, and that's going to cause a collapse. So, I hope that the interest rates don't change very much. Because if they do, I don't know how we're going to overcome the result. And it will be in large part due to AI in the tech sector because it will be people like Sam Altman saying, oh, I just need another $300,000,000,000 of investment. I don't want him to get that $300,000,000,000 of investment because that is that is significant in terms of our 1,000,000,000,000 of dollars of debt and the 1,000,000,000,000 of dollars that we have to pay, on our debts.

AJ O'Neil [01:20:47]:
So I Yeah. I I think I yeah. My goal is not to get political. It is it is a practical one to one relationship.

Charles Max Wood [01:20:55]:
I think I think there's another part of the curve, and that's growth. And so, you know, I I think to the to a certain extent, we can grow and lower interest rates, but I don't know where the lines, like, I don't know where the lines cross. And and I think that's the game that we're gonna wind up playing is how much economic growth are we gonna get out of, you know, deregulation or other things that the Trump administration is saying it wants to do, and then, yeah, how much of that we can absorb, if we lower interest rates or other other things. And and I don't I don't have the answers to that. I'm not an expert in that area. But I I will say that I I think I think there are a lot of things in play, and it'll be interesting to see how they all kind of pan out.

AJ O'Neil [01:21:38]:
Yeah. As long as they don't go too low, this trend of profitability should continue. That's another thing. Like, on on tech Twitter, you see, what do they call it? The indie in indie hackers or something or indie something something indie? Anyway, I I know that a lot of it's just bogus. What?

Steve Edwards [01:21:55]:
Yeah. Indie hackers is a real organization and podcast.

AJ O'Neil [01:21:59]:
Yeah. Okay. The there's something build in public. There's the the build in public type of movement. And I know a lot of that is bogus. It's just people, you know, click farming or whatever, but there is it seems like there's some honest honesty out there in terms of people wanting to build products that are profitable and with small teams and with, you know, traditional bootstrapping, the the stuff that builds the economy. And I I I really do. I don't have a prediction on it.

AJ O'Neil [01:22:25]:
I just hope it continues.

Charles Max Wood [01:22:27]:
Well, I think I think we're gonna see more of that where it's small teams and, you know, and, you know, solving real problems and and that kind of approach, especially if we see more regulation lift. The the thing that's interesting though is that our and and this is back to some of the other things we already talked about where the tools get better, the technologies become more powerful, the the capabilities that we have become better. And as that becomes more and more of a thing, then you don't need as much of the large team, large organization approach to a lot of these problems. Some of them, right, get solved, I guess, more easily is the best way I can put it by having a lot of money and manpower behind it. But a lot of these problems are either small enough or approachable enough to where you can be competitive with a small organization. And I think we're gonna see, we're gonna see a bit more of that come out of the box. But, again, a lot of that is dependent on what we're talking about here with the economy and regulation and the ability for people to either raise money or be able to do it off of the back of what they're already making in other ways. And so, anyway, it it'll it'll be interesting to see how that all kind of plays out, but it wouldn't surprise me at all to to see kind of a renaissance of of the small team, small approach to to bigger problems just because we have the capability of approaching those.

Charles Max Wood [01:23:52]:
Alright. Well, let's go real quick into where we're at and what we're working on. I'm gonna try and keep everybody to, like, 2 minutes because we're already in an hour and a half, and then we will, wrap up. Dan, do you wanna start?

Dan Shappir [01:24:08]:
Sure. Why not? So I think we talked about it before. 2024 was a pretty shitty year in many regards. You know, on a personal note, my mother-in-law, who we love dearly, passed away. And, obviously, it's a year of war in Israel, which is really bad and having pretty sad impact on society, and we still have a 100 hostages being held by Hamas, which is like a perpetual ache in your soul. And yeah. So there's that. On the positive side, on a personal note, I started working at a new place, Sisense, and I'm enjoying myself very much.

Dan Shappir [01:24:59]:
We have a product which I like, which is basically the ability to do your, very easily do, BI analysis and build dashboards and get alerts and take data from lots of sources and integrate them together and use AI and build and use components and build them into your own services and interfaces. We're doing a lot of really cool stuff. I'm principal engineer there, and I as I said, I'm enjoying myself very much. Also, despite the market, 2 the my 2 kids who are in tech were able to find to get jobs. So one is working as a game economist at a gaming company, and, my daughter is working as a project manager at a gaming company. So gaming companies seem to be doing well. And, other than that, you know you know, this hopefully, next year will be better. What can I say? I'm happy that, the murderous Assad regime has fallen.

Steve Edwards [01:26:03]:
Yes.

Dan Shappir [01:26:03]:
You know? One of the worst you know, forget about I don't know what's gonna replace him or if it's gonna be better or worse or whatnot. I can only say that Assad was, like, the worst kind of dictator, and I'm hard pressed to think of any person more evil than he is. So I'm really glad that he's gone.

Steve Edwards [01:26:27]:
Yeah. Hopefully, it's not out of the frying pan and into the fire, though.

Dan Shappir [01:26:30]:
Yeah. I agree. Yeah. But, you know, this guy is literally responsible for the death of half a 1000000 of his own people.

Steve Edwards [01:26:38]:
Right? Still trying to justify everything he did from exile. So Yep.

Dan Shappir [01:26:44]:
It's it's the most despicable human being imaginable.

Charles Max Wood [01:26:50]:
Yep. Alright. Steve.

Steve Edwards [01:26:54]:
We're just doing pics here?

Charles Max Wood [01:26:56]:
No. We're we're where are you at? Where are you headed?

Steve Edwards [01:27:00]:
I'm still sitting at my desk, still working the same place. For me, from the, I've really enjoyed playing around with in getting more and more into sort of my chosen stack, which is Laravel View Inertia and just the really cool things I can do with data. I'm certainly not a CSS wizard that can make everything look pretty. I get by there, but give me manipulating data and and making processes that help things move faster and and better and more efficient is is, for me, a lot of fun.

Dan Shappir [01:27:33]:
Wasn't AI created to help us with CSS?

Steve Edwards [01:27:37]:
If it is, I'm gonna start using it because lord knows I need it. Oh. But It's

Charles Max Wood [01:27:43]:
helped me with CSS.

Steve Edwards [01:27:44]:
Oh, I have to start trying that. Yeah. Just Give me give me a nice layout, will you? But, yeah, this one app that I've done for my local, for my gun club that I belong to has really saved us a lot of time and stuff, and I'm hoping to maybe expand that to some other clubs around and stuff. From a, I guess, a personal standpoint, most of my good things have been coming from my kids. My daughter is in the 2nd year of doing some teaching in Chiang Mai, Thailand, at an international school there, and I'm going to go see her in a week and a half. She was home for a few weeks over the summer and and but my mom and I are going to see her after Christmas. So really looking forward to that. And she's got a significant other now.

Steve Edwards [01:28:33]:
And the fun part about that about it is that he's the son of a guy that I grew up with. And just totally coincidental, it worked out that way, so we're stoked about that. And then my son is been working on getting into the fire service full time After it took me a while to talk him into it, but he's loving it. And so he's an intern at a local fire department here and be going to paramedic school starting July, and so, there will be no demand no shortage of demand for his services once he gets that done, and he will probably be married with it in a couple years as well. So that's a lot of fun stuff for us here on the family standpoint.

Charles Max Wood [01:29:10]:
Great. I love hearing this stuff. AJ, where you at? Where are you going?

AJ O'Neil [01:29:18]:
Well, I'm still working independently. I have a few larger clients that carry the bulk of, my time, And one of them one of them is a a digital currency organization, and one of them is a small business, helping small businesses with investors' organization. So, but, actually, I mean, it it's given me a lot of insight into the economy. I feel much more versed and capable of understanding how some of this stuff happens with investment and, you know, like I was saying, interest rates. And there's so much that I understand about the world being in the fields of cryptocurrency and and, growth stage business investment. And, as far as where I'm going, there's a few there's there's a few things that I'm always wanting to work on, and we'll you know, we'll we'll see. It's just, you know, every time I think I've got some extra time, something happens. Like, I get sick for an entire week, or, I have some sort of rush job that comes up that, you know.

AJ O'Neil [01:30:47]:
But there is, a project that I have with a few friends that is called B and an A. And that is something that we eventually we're just using for ourselves right now, but, eventually, we wanna allow others to have low cost profitable Cloud services, and the the website for it is just a a single page with an email address right now, bnna.net, and and all the stuff that we're It's it's essentially, containers, running containers rather than VMs, but not Docker containers, the technology that Docker is built on Linux containers. So it's it's predominantly, we just run a bunch of Linux containers, and it's very very nice because if if there's more, if if if I need more capacity for something, like, say, I'm I'm,

Dan Shappir [01:31:53]:
you you

AJ O'Neil [01:31:53]:
know, the day the database is getting more use, and so I wanna add some more RAM and more CPUs. And you do it with a click of a button without actually having to reboot anything, Like, in containers, when you add more resources, the resources just become available, as opposed to a VM where you have to reboot the VM in order to migrate it. So it's very much in line. Like, when I was watching the rails world or, talk by DHH, like, a lot of the stuff that he was talking about is very much in line with the stuff we we wanna do. But that's that's a project that I'm working on slowly. Hopefully, we'll get to a point where we actually allow customers to use it as well. It's it's built on Proxmox. We have a data center where we have, servers set up, and we just bought hardware that other people were dumping out of their data centers.

AJ O'Neil [01:32:49]:
And, you know, it it it actually it's surprisingly cost effective to buy a 10 year old server. When you there's, there's there's some of these sites, you know, where they compare gaming computers and graphics cards and stuff like that. There's similar sites for comparing servers, and I recently did a rundown of cost comparisons on these servers that we have that are about 10 years old versus the latest servers. And it turns out that, like, you you literally cannot beat the the no matter which metric you're looking at, you can't beat what we've what we've bought in terms of value. Like, if you wanna look at it RAM, you wanna look at it CPU power, you wanna look at it, even performance per watt, which is where a lot of the gains are in the server stuff. Running older hardware is just better along every metric, especially right now, because there's kind of this, you know, with all this AI boom, there's a lot of people wanting to buy the latest generation hardware, and that just drives up the prices much higher than it's worth, like, in a way that it can't really be profitable. But it's really easy to be profitable with the older generation hardware. I mean, you can run thousands of containers on a few hyper converged servers and get, you know, essentially, a 100% uptime.

AJ O'Neil [01:34:13]:
Anyway, so that's that's, a project that I'm I'm excited about. Also, I've mentioned Webby a bunch, Web install dot dev. It just passed 2,000 stars on GitHub. So we're we're continuing to work on that and make little improvements here and there. And it's just really cool to to have something that, is is, you know, it started we started, I think, 4 years ago. I maybe it was a little more than that. Maybe it was a little less, but in that range. And it's just like it was a really, really slow ramp up, and then, finally, it was at the end of last year slash the beginning of this year, we hit 1,000 stars.

AJ O'Neil [01:35:01]:
And then in just 1 year, we've doubled it. And I actually took away some of the some of the, hey, you know, give us a star stuff that was that was, that's that's become less of a a focus. There's still when you install the tool and and stuff, it'll print out in the console. Like, if you love it, give us a star or whatever. But but it's just it's really, really cool to have a project that I think is well, we'll see what happens because there's there's now similar projects that are popping up. So what Webby is you just install stuff and just install the thing. It's install scripts that are hosted. So you you curl you curl to the you curl pipe shell install stuff, like Node, for example.

AJ O'Neil [01:35:42]:
And to put it in contrast with a package manager, like, if you've got app or something, it it goes and fetches a whole database and repository of things before it can install the one thing you need. And in the case of apt, it's always 10 years behind. And then, in the case of brew, it's always gotta do these updates, and then you get system conflicts and stuff. So in contrast to that, it's it's like all stuff that is pretty much zero dependency, like Node. The only dependency Node has, I think, is lib SSL on most systems. And on some systems, it doesn't even have that, so it just works standalone. Anyway, so it's just it's just installer tool, and and that's been, just growing and going well. And it's been it's been really cool to to finally feel like I've arrived on a project that's that's that's gained a lot of popularity in the the developer community.

AJ O'Neil [01:36:40]:
And I I don't know. It's my it's it's one of my babies, and I love it. You said 2 minutes. I've already done 10. Sorry. I'll shut up now. Yeah.

Steve Edwards [01:36:50]:
I I think you can We're used

Charles Max Wood [01:36:51]:
to it. Minutes. But yeah. I I yeah. It's cool stuff that you're working on. So, for sure. I'm gonna jump in with, my stuff. So I I think I mentioned either before we started or after we started at 2024, it's been a rough year.

Charles Max Wood [01:37:08]:
My brother attempted suicide about this time last year, and so we were dealing with that going into the year. I also ended up I had a long term contract that ended in February, and then I basically was employed or had a contract from, like, March into June and then June into July and then September, October, and now I have a contract that is part time and not paying nearly the rates that I was getting before, that that I've been working for the last about month. So on the employment end, it's been a little bit rocky here. And, yeah, I just anyway, the the whole year has just been insane. My wife got a new job in June, and that kinda sucks up all of her time. It's more than full time kind of the way that that's gone. But the nice thing is is that we've been able to, pay most of the bills and, have health insurance and stuff like that through her work. So, that's where things are sitting.

Charles Max Wood [01:38:12]:
Where we're going here for the next little while, a lot of it has to do with the podcasts. As I mentioned, I'm putting together AI for Ruby and AI for JavaScript podcasts. I have both of those domains. They're both the .coms. So once those come out, I'll probably release the first few episodes on Ruby Rogues and JavaScript Jabber feeds, and then right. And then if you want those shows, you'll just go over to the other feeds. I've also been working on the top end devs platform and, putting that together so I can offer courses and things like that, like the AI Dev Boot Camp. And I decided that since I just turned 45, if you want a 45% discount, go to aidevbootcamp.com.

Charles Max Wood [01:38:52]:
You can set up a call with me. Mostly, it's because I I like, I have the curriculum laid out, but I wanna talk to people and make sure that I understand where you're coming from, what problems you wanna solve, what things you're looking at so that, you know, if there's something that, you're in particular interested in, that I can make sure that I'm covering that and and that I understand what you want. I think I've got it figured out, but I can verify that by talking to people. So, aiwebbootcamp.com, there's gonna be a video and a scheduling link on there. And, yeah. So, and and like I said, if you sign up for a call here within the next week as as we're recording this. Right? So, when this comes out, yeah, just let me know that you had just heard the episode, and we'll we'll still give you the discount. But, anyway, that that's kind of the big thing I'm working on.

Charles Max Wood [01:39:49]:
And then I have been working on pulling together the communities for JavaScript, JavaScript Geniuses and Ruby Geniuses. So those are the other 2 big things I'm working on. I wanna do a weekly call where we kinda chat like this. We'll have a topic, maybe have somebody do a little bit of teaching and demo, and then we'll chat. Right? Because I I want it to be a community where you get the benefits of having a community kinda like when I had coming up when I was going to users groups and stuff. I just I've seen a lot of those have just not come back, and I wanna give people that option. And then it'll also include weekly videos where I teach you something in JavaScript and, you know, just dive into how to build great apps and and do awesome stuff with with JavaScript. So, anyway, that's essentially my 3 minutes.

Charles Max Wood [01:40:37]:
I took a little longer too. But, that that's the big thing that I'm working on. You can go sign up for any and all of it at JavaScript or, yeah, at javascriptjabber.comortopendos.com. So, yeah, let's go ahead and slide into our picks, and then, we'll wrap it up. Yeah. This has been a little bit longer episode, but I don't hear any complaints. Dan, we've kinda had you going 1st every time, so you wanna go first with pics?

Dan Shappir [01:41:05]:
Sure. Why not? So I've got 2 pics. The first is a TV show that we're watching, I think, on Netflix. It's, with, sorry. It's with Ted Danson. It's called A Man on the Inside. It's not amazing. It's not very deep, but it's very enjoyable, and it's kind of, you know, heartwarming.

Dan Shappir [01:41:32]:
It's about this, retired man, widower, who in order to, like, his his daughter tells him to get a hobby. So the hobby he gets is to be this kind of, spy, in in, in, what the assisted living facility in order to try to find, who, you know, who stole some some stuff there. And, it's it's really enjoyable. It's it's amusing. It's heartwarming. It's enjoyable, and we're we're liking it so far. Like I said, not very deep, but enjoyable. And the other my other pick is a podcast called, Triggernomatry.

Dan Shappir [01:42:20]:
It's a mostly political podcast. It's with the British comedians, Constantine Kissin and Francis Foster. The latest episode that I'm not finished that I've not finished watching is actually excellent. If you're into podcasts and you want to understand what's going on in Syria, because it's really complicated, then I really, really recommend this latest podcast episode from yesterday. They interview Thomas Small, who I don't know. I never heard of him before, but he describes what's going on there in detail, and I know something about it. And so far, everything is is said has been pretty much on the money. So, if you want to learn more about what's going on there and, want to understand what might happen, I highly recommend that episode.

Dan Shappir [01:43:16]:
And those would be my picks.

Charles Max Wood [01:43:19]:
Awesome. Steve, what are your picks?

Steve Edwards [01:43:24]:
Alright. I know it's, it's been a few weeks, so people have been I've been getting emails, like, constantly saying we need you back for your dad jokes. So, right. Anyway, so here's, my dad jokes of the week. I've written this one. It's so great for this kind of year. At least if you live in the US, you'll get it. My wife took her car into a mechanic the other day, and she says, man, it's making this horrible noise.

Steve Edwards [01:43:51]:
And he said, have you tried turning off that Mariah Carey Christmas song? For those of you not in the US, there's a singer Mariah Carey has a song, All I Want for Christmas is You. It came out, I don't know, 20, 30 years ago, and it still gets played ad nauseam at Christmas.

Dan Shappir [01:44:09]:
You reminded me of, you know, this thing called Mean Tweets where celebrities so I think

Steve Edwards [01:44:15]:
They read their own, the ones that are

Dan Shappir [01:44:17]:
direct Yeah. So I think it was Selena Gomez who had a song come out at that time, and the tweet was, that it's that Selena Gomez song is on the radio again. Is there a volume lower than mute?

Steve Edwards [01:44:31]:
So let's see. Sorry. I lost my page here a little bit, and I got sunlight glaring at me. Oh, let's see. Dang it. Just when he hit, expand. So the meteorologist who devised the windshield factor you know, that we all say it's disagrees, but it feels like this. He died he was 86, but he felt like he was 75.

Charles Max Wood [01:45:00]:
Right?

Dan Shappir [01:45:01]:
Okay.

Steve Edwards [01:45:03]:
And finally, what do you call a javelin shake javelin thrower with Parkinson's disease? Shakespeare. Those are the dad jokes of the week.

AJ O'Neil [01:45:16]:
You know, they don't carry the same punch now that I follow you more on Twitter, and I get to see them in advance. I I wish I could be I I need to I need to unfollow you so that I can I can have the full experience the first time while we're here on the show?

Charles Max Wood [01:45:33]:
Alright, AJ. What are your picks?

AJ O'Neil [01:45:36]:
Okay. So first one is there's this new thing or maybe it's it's actually probably not a new thing. It's just something I heard about recently called rejection therapy. And, unsolicited life advice for men. Rejection is the water that you swim in. Rejection encompasses you. It surrounds you. It is it is the pressure that is constantly pushing on every fiber of your being and buoys you up.

AJ O'Neil [01:46:06]:
Rejection is the water you swim in.

Steve Edwards [01:46:07]:
Oh. So You ain't telling them to lie there. Let me tell you.

AJ O'Neil [01:46:11]:
It it I mean, people gotta understand it. Like, I I I think that because we used to have brothers, we used to have friends, we used to have dares, and, you know, and and this generation of men that's growing up, they, unfortunately, because of, you know, choices of their their parents, of, you know, situations, whatever, like, people people don't they don't live in communities where they have that that, you know, healthy toxic masculinity of men razzing one another and, you know, doing the dares and doing the, you know, the trash talk and stuff, but you need it. Because you you, like, that is real life. Like, you have to face rejection. Anyway, rejection therapy, there's this guy who's got a YouTube channel where he's he does stuff in order to experience rejection and become comfortable with it. And I I think it's I think it's so important. And I I thought it was a really cool take. So, basically, does things that he knows won't happen.

AJ O'Neil [01:47:11]:
Or I think, he's got a list of a 100 items, and I think the first ones are ones that are pretty much impossible. But then, some of them, you might get lucky and it might work out. And it's it's stuff like, you know, ask ask the, cashier if you can, scoop your own fries. Or, you know, just, like, some of it's just ridiculous stuff, like, what you would normally in a typical teenage teenagerhood of yesteryear. You know, you would just stupid stuff you would have done with your buddies anyway. But just, ridiculous asks to become comfortable with doing something that pretty much guarantees rejection so you can feel okay with rejection. And so, I I've got a link to his blog and his YouTube channel. And then, along that vein, John Sonmez, who was previously Simple Programmer on his, on the channel that he was code developing at a similar time, he has a video that's very similar to this called eye contact and smirking.

AJ O'Neil [01:48:12]:
And it's it's a similar thing. It's it's about go around and do things that are uncomfortable. Like, just walk down the street, or walk through a mall or walk through some crowded area and just maintain eye contact. And don't don't look away. Don't blink. Don't smile. Just maintain eye contact and keep walking. Then it's one of those things because it makes you feel uncomfortable inside.

AJ O'Neil [01:48:33]:
But then, as you do it, you actually become more confident. Because confidence is simply not having a fear of rejection more or less. And if you, if you do these things anyway. So, I just think it's absolutely wonderful. I think that men today, you know, especially if you wanna be valuable in the dating pool, you've got to accept that rejection is your world. And when you accept that and you become comfortable and confident in the world of rejection, then the world's your oyster. And then, also, the John Sonmez, another video that, I don't remember exactly what it was, but I had it in the same bookmark place where I had this other one was called how to become a man. And it's it's about stoicism and stuff.

AJ O'Neil [01:49:16]:
So, that's that's all kind of one pick is rejection therapy. And and, I guess, in general, stoicism. I I can't cannot recommend it enough. I something similar to this is what changed my world. And I went from not being able to get dates to being able to get dates with anybody that I wanted to get dates with. Now, actually, extending that to relationship is a completely different story because it's a, you know, the door salesman game is completely different than the your life partner game. But but, you know, you gotta you gotta do the one to get to the other at some point. Anyway, the other pick I have is there's an AI model leader leaderboard.

AJ O'Neil [01:49:57]:
So if you wanna stay up to date with, well, I I don't know. I mean, it's kind of be exhausting to be downloading new models all the time. But, you know, if you wanna keep an eye on which models are performing the best, which, you know, of course, OpenAI's models are always playing leapfrog with the other models. And so you probably 75% of the time, the OpenAI models are on the top, but but they're not that much further ahead. I mean, we're talking we're down to a matter of, like, 1 to 2 percentage points. So most of the other models or not most of the other models. Most of the other groups that are producing models that have been producing models for a long time, their models, you know, leapfrog and get up there within a couple of percentage points, and a lot of them are open source. And so, like, open AI was supposed to be.

AJ O'Neil [01:50:46]:
So, if you want to keep on track, top top of the AI stuff, it's evalplus. Github.io/leaderboard.html. That link will be in the notes. And then olama slash search. So once you go check out the model on the leaderboard, then you can check it out on olama, and then you can see, you know, you can run it for yourself, play with it, see if it's fast enough, if you like it. And then, and then, of course, you know, if you want to install a llama easy and quickly, web install. Dev/olama. And you can you can do that.

AJ O'Neil [01:51:17]:
And I I mostly use chat gpt just because it's convenient, but I do run models locally, and a lot of them are just as good or slightly better depending on the the topic. I mean, particularly, downloading a model that's tuned for coding. You can get them that are a little bit better or or at least just as good. And and so playing with different models, I've I've enjoyed I've enjoyed that experience and, you know, being able to run it run it on my own hardware. Now granted, you do have to have, like, 32 gigs of RAM for a lot of these models or at least 16, you know, that's that's available. But, anyway, so those are my those are my picks. Rejection therapy and and, places to check out the top AI models and experiment with them.

Steve Edwards [01:52:05]:
You know, one of the things I'd like to do e AJ to practice that, you know, along the lines of the looking people's eyes is when I get in an elevator or I turn around and face inward from the front. Makes people all kinda nervous.

AJ O'Neil [01:52:16]:
Do you really do that, though?

Steve Edwards [01:52:18]:
I have done it before. Yeah. I don't do it every time. But,

Dan Shappir [01:52:20]:
no. God bless you. There's a famous sociological experiment where they put the they had people walk into elevators, and people inside were standing facing, like, weird directions. And people basically aligned themselves with the group.

Steve Edwards [01:52:36]:
Yeah. Well, you know, when I was younger, I had this crazy uncle. He used to, he used to take all of us and make us, stand still and quiet for 2 minutes and not say a word, and he called it elevator practice.

Charles Max Wood [01:52:49]:
Alright. I am going to throw in my picks. So the first one's a board game. It's called Heat. It is a game it's a racing board game. So you, you all have your cars. You can play up to, like, 8 players, I think, with the expansion. Without the expansions, up to 6 players.

Charles Max Wood [01:53:10]:
And what you what you wind up doing is you play with a deck of cards, that that are in your hand, and you're you're essentially trying to, get around the track the fastest. Right? Whoever gets we play 2 laps. And so after 2 laps, whoever's the furthest past the finish line wins. Now it has curves on the track, and so if you go around the track too fast on that curve, then you take heat in your engine, and the the heat cards are basically they just take up space in your hand. If you run out of heat, then you spin out and you go back to the the curve that you blew past. Right? And so then you've gotta get around the curve without taking any more heat. And then you've got there are ways to get rid of heat and all that stuff. It's it it was a really, really fun game.

Charles Max Wood [01:54:09]:
We played it in, like, I think when there were 6 of us, we played it in, like, a half hour or or sorry, in an hour. When there were 4 of us, I think it took us, like, 45 minutes. So, really not that bad. BoardGameGeek weights it at 2.19. So casual just the top end of your casual player, you know, what you're willing to, attack. But, anyway, it's it's a lot of fun. There are multiple boards, or multiple tracks, I guess, that you can play on. And so, yeah, you're it's really just that that management of of your deck.

Charles Max Wood [01:54:51]:
I think some of the expansions give you, like, power ups, but the main deck, you don't. You just you just play your deck and then try and manage, your speed and your heat. And, that that's really it. Right? It's okay. How how fast can I take this turn, and then how how quickly can I bleed the heat off before I have to take the next turn, the next curve? And so, you know, if the curve is a 5 and you go 10, you take 5 heat, you only have 7 heat in your deck. And so if you don't have the 5 heat, then you spin out. So that that's the game you're playing with that. It's it's a lot of fun.

Charles Max Wood [01:55:27]:
I don't know if I'm doing it justice, but but we really had a good time, and it's really not that complicated a game to pick up. The steps are on your playing card or your your play mat, and so you just literally just go down the thing. And, the only thing you do simultaneously is you you put the cards face down that you're gonna do, and then you can flip them over. You flip them all over at the same time, and then you just play them in order, 1st place to last place. And there are some catch up mechanisms and stuff. So, you know, if you get way behind, you can definitely do that. I'm gonna pick a couple of books as well. I really have enjoyed these.

Charles Max Wood [01:56:03]:
I'm almost done with the second one. The first one is Hit Refresh by Satya Nadella. Satya is the CEO of Microsoft, and anyway, he he kind of now the book's not current. Right? So it doesn't have the last few years of history from Microsoft, but he talks about when he took his history and then how he took over at Microsoft and how they kind of changed direction and, you know, solved some of the issues that were there inside the company. And, anyway, it was really, really good. I really, really can't recommend this book highly enough. It was fun that it was in tech and it was fun that it was, you know, somebody that I'd actually seen speak because I've gone to, Microsoft Conferences in the past. And, anyway, hit refresh.

Charles Max Wood [01:56:56]:
Terrific, terrific book. He reads parts of the book on the audiobook. That's how I consumed it. He reads parts of it himself, but, there's a narrator for the rest. It's basically the parts he he does the forward, and I think he does the afterward, and then there's, like, 1 or 2 parts where he talks about, his disabled son, and that's kind of personal and so he reads that part himself as well. But it it was really, really good, and I found it inspiring just because I think a lot of times we get the idea that, just because things worked out and, you know, whatever that these people somehow have this, like, blessed life and no challenges and stuff like that. And it turns out that, you know, he he went through some stuff too, some personal stuff, and there were some real challenges in the way that they had to approach things. The other book is American Icon by Bryce Hoffman, and he talks about the turnaround at Ford.

Charles Max Wood [01:57:51]:
And so, he kinda gets into some of the history of the Ford Motor Company and, what led up to them hiring Alan Mulally as their CEO, and then all of the things that they went through to basically revitalize and rescue Ford, up through the great recession and all that stuff. And it's been really fascinating to listen to as well. I think I've got, like, an hour left on that book. It is so good. And then, the other I have another fiction book series that I want to pick, and I don't remember if I picked this before, but, they're worth picking again anyway. It's the Sword of Truth books, and, those are by Terry Goodkind. I read them when I was in high school, and, well, the ones that were out when I was in high school. The first one's called Wizards First Rule, and I'll put a link to that here as well.

Charles Max Wood [01:58:52]:
It it's in the, chat in the

Dan Shappir [01:58:55]:
Yeah. I like those books. It's one of the best magical, most thought out magical systems I've ever seen in in a fantasy book series.

Charles Max Wood [01:59:06]:
Yeah. It's it's so good. I've I've really, really enjoyed them. I'm on book 6 or 7.

Dan Shappir [01:59:12]:
Oh, actually, I I confused it with another book series. Sorry. You're you're saying Wizards First Rule.

Charles Max Wood [01:59:20]:
Yeah.

Dan Shappir [01:59:20]:
Yeah. No. It's I I read that as well, but I was thinking of a different one. Never mind.

Charles Max Wood [01:59:26]:
I'm I'm curious what you confused it with, but yeah.

Dan Shappir [01:59:30]:
Let while you while you speak, I'll I'll do a quick search because I don't wanna get the wrong the name wrong again.

Charles Max Wood [01:59:37]:
Fair enough. The last pick I have is so I am talking to you. I mentioned this earlier, and I kinda wanted to put this up as a potential trend, but I don't know. I don't know if it it will or won't come to pass. So, anyway, I I, switched to Linux off of, macOS. And, part of the deal was, so I've been running on the so, you know, kudos to Mac. I I was running on a Mac laptop for the last 6 5 or 6 years. And, I mean, you know, the the thing did everything I needed to up until recently.

Charles Max Wood [02:00:19]:
I had a couple of clients that had, their applications running essentially on a Docker Compose. And so, once I fired up the the Docker agent on which is Docker Desktop on the Mac, my my machine would just grind to a halt. It was super slow. And so I was looking at things and thinking, you know, this this is not working for me, and I need another machine. So I looked into getting a new Mac and I could get another Mac laptop, but again, the resources on the on the laptops were not where I wanted them. I've been diving into AI a bunch and, you know, that that kind of taxes the resources sometimes. And so, I wanted something that had a whole lot more horsepower. And so then I looked at a Mac Pro, and the Mac Pro with all the, things that I wanted in it was like $11,000.

Charles Max Wood [02:01:18]:
And I thought, okay, well, you know, at the time I I was on a contract that I expected to last that didn't. And so I thought I could afford it. And so I I almost pulled the trigger on that, and then I just decided not to. But at the same time I was trying to get this work done and it would just go kind of slow. And so I was poking around the Internet looking for something else and I found a company called, System76 and, System 76 is they they sell desktop machines. And since I generally work here at my desk, I figured that would be a great option, kinda like the Mac Pro. And so it it I can't remember all the specs. I think it has 128 gigs of RAM.

Charles Max Wood [02:02:08]:
I've got like, you know, 4 terabytes of hard drive space in there, you know, so I'm well beyond what my laptop had and it runs Ubuntu Linux. So there have been a few things that I've kind of had to figure out. Hey, I like this on the Mac. How do I do it on Linux? But so far, I haven't really been disappointed with what I can do on the Mac or on the on the Linux machine. I have not tried to hook up my, ATEM Mini yet, which is how I do my green screen, so I might have to run some of that off of the the Mac, but it does that fine. But, I mean, other than that, you know, and if I have to do Photoshop or something, I'll just open up the Mac. It's not a big deal. But the rest of it, I am delighted with the way that it runs.

Charles Max Wood [02:02:54]:
It it's fast. It does everything I need. You know, all the Docker stuff, it just does it, because it's not running it in a VM, which was what was killing my performance on my Mac. And so, yeah. At the end of the day, system 76 is where I got it. I I love recommending good stuff. I wish they had an affiliate program because then I'd get paid to recommend good stuff, but go check them out because they're awesome. For laptops, if you're looking for laptops in the same vein, the one that I keep hearing about is the framework laptop.

Charles Max Wood [02:03:27]:
I haven't used I haven't bought one, but that's where I'm looking next. And and they sell Linux laptops, but, they're modular. And so if you wanna upgrade a part of it, you can actually just buy that part from framework and swap it in your machine. So you can upgrade the RAM, you can upgrade the the the screen, you can upgrade whatever you want off of it, and you literally just pull the part off and put the other part on. And so, that appeals to me from the standpoint of, you know, that I can have the laptop I want, and if I can't quite buy the laptop with all the bells and whistles I want, I can eventually just upgrade the pieces one bit at a time. So anyway, yeah, I I was really worried about what what Linux would do, but I have like I said, it's it's been able to do pretty much everything I need.

Dan Shappir [02:04:17]:
Sorry I interrupted. Before we finish, you asked me about, the book. The book I was referring to is called Master of the 5 Magics by, Lindon Hardy. If you're not familiar with it, it's I have no idea. It's it's from the eighties. It's it's, it has one of the best magic systems. It's actually part he he it became a series, but it can be read as a standalone book, and it's got one of the best, most thought out magic systems I've I've seen in a fantasy book.

Charles Max Wood [02:04:54]:
I'm gonna have to add that to my wish list.

Dan Shappir [02:04:59]:
I'll send you

Charles Max Wood [02:04:59]:
I'm always looking for great

Dan Shappir [02:05:01]:
I'll I'll I'll add that to my picks. I'll send you I'll I'll put in the link.

Charles Max Wood [02:05:06]:
Awesome. Alright. Well, I am done with my picks. Just a reminder, go to aidevbootcamp.com if you want to get in on the boot camp. I'm looking at starting it, like, 15th ish January. So, anyway, if that's everything, we'll just wrap it up. Till next time, folks. Max

Dan Shappir [02:05:27]:
out. Bye.