WEBVTT 1 00:00:22.260 --> 00:00:23.200 Hey, Ben. 2 00:00:23.200 --> 00:00:24.240 Hey, Matt. 3 00:00:24.240 --> 00:00:34.620 We are reaching new levels of complacency when it comes to recording an episode here because we haven't got a clue at all about what we're doing today. 4 00:00:34.620 --> 00:00:34.960 No. No. 5 00:00:34.960 --> 00:00:38.020 But that's never really stopped us before. 6 00:00:38.020 --> 00:00:38.740 No, it hasn't. 7 00:00:38.740 --> 00:00:46.680 And it's not stopping us today. I'm going to ask, how are you doing, my friend? It's been a little while. 8 00:00:46.680 --> 00:00:56.280 It's been, it's been a busy few weeks. It's been a busy few years. 9 00:00:56.280 --> 00:01:05.820 Last week was a busy year. Uh, the, uh, just, just lots of new things happening, new stuff happening, new things being built. 10 00:01:05.820 --> 00:01:09.540 Hopefully exciting and interesting new things. 11 00:01:09.540 --> 00:01:10.180 Yeah. 12 00:01:10.180 --> 00:01:26.500 Yeah. It, it, um, you know, I have the privileged position of working in new projects, which most programmers will tell you is a much better alternative than many other things. 13 00:01:26.500 --> 00:01:26.800 Right. 14 00:01:26.800 --> 00:01:38.020 And as the listeners of this podcast are well aware, I have many strong opinions on the right way to do things. And, uh, being, ah working in a new project allows me to... 15 00:01:38.020 --> 00:02:06.180 ..work in the manner and to which I am accustomed, which means i am being very productive, right? Like I'm able to get a lot of things done because, I don't have to relitigate all of the development practices and tools and things. It's just like, Nope, we're just gonna do the stuff and we're going to do it right. And we know how it all works and it's all pretty straightforward and simple. And and the whole point here is just to do it as fast as you responsibly can. 16 00:02:06.180 --> 00:02:12.540 And so that ah is fun and rewarding, but it's also a bit tiring. 17 00:02:12.540 --> 00:02:22.070 Right. Right. But that's, as you say, having the ability to set a project up the way that you would like it to be is powerful. 18 00:02:22.070 --> 00:02:23.160 huh 19 00:02:23.160 --> 00:02:31.850 And potentially as you say, potentially gets you to go very fast, lets you go fast. You're not limited by... 20 00:02:31.850 --> 00:02:33.000 Yeah. 21 00:02:33.000 --> 00:02:45.140 ..I mean, I guess other people, other people and their choices that maybe you disagree with, or what do you think is it? Is it, is it, I mean, obviously I don't think you are so big headed to say that your way is perfect and everyone should do your way. 22 00:02:45.140 --> 00:02:51.780 Although, you know, I agree with most of the things that you say, so maybe it is, but what, what is the, is it monoculture? 23 00:02:51.780 --> 00:02:52.030 Yeah. 24 00:02:52.030 --> 00:02:52.270 Yeah. 25 00:02:52.270 --> 00:02:53.760 Is that the... 26 00:02:53.760 --> 00:03:01.060 You know, i I really like the exploration versus exploitation and dichotomy that some people talk about. 27 00:03:01.060 --> 00:03:01.260 Yeah. Yeah. 28 00:03:01.260 --> 00:03:11.280 you know It's like, should we continue evaluating options or should we move forward with the option, the best option of the set of options that we've considered so far? right 29 00:03:11.280 --> 00:03:12.100 Right. 30 00:03:12.100 --> 00:03:24.320 And you know I think one of the advantages of experience is that you have made a lot of mistakes and you have evaluated a lot of options and you have determined which ones tend to pan out and which ones don't. 31 00:03:24.320 --> 00:03:42.680 And therefore, ah you you wind up with ah some thing. There's sort of like the old bit of like, if an old engineer tells you that something can't be done, you can look at them with a little bit of skepticism, right? 32 00:03:42.680 --> 00:03:49.640 They probably know some things, but you can look at them with a little bit of skepticism and kind of ask the question like, are you sure? 33 00:03:49.640 --> 00:03:50.160 Yep. 34 00:03:50.160 --> 00:03:58.560 But if an old engineer tells you something *can* be done, because they've done it before. Well, that's a very different claim, right? 35 00:03:58.560 --> 00:04:06.180 Yeah. that's That's a really interesting difference, actually. Yeah, I see that.. 36 00:04:06.180 --> 00:04:06.920 Yeah. 37 00:04:06.920 --> 00:04:07.040 yeah 38 00:04:07.040 --> 00:04:07.160 Yeah. 39 00:04:07.160 --> 00:04:21.590 But yeah, so you're you're sort of sort of drawing from experience and saying that these things have worked for me. I have explored the space because I've been doing this for 30 years and I have a pretty good idea. Doesn't mean to say that it's a perfect idea or there aren't better ideas, but these ones have been shown to work. 40 00:04:21.590 --> 00:04:21.620 Right. 41 00:04:21.620 --> 00:04:32.940 And now I am choosing in the sort of 80-20 theory of ah ah explore 20% of the time and 80% of time take advantage of the things that have proven to be well. 42 00:04:32.940 --> 00:04:35.420 You're in that 80% section at the moment. 43 00:04:35.420 --> 00:04:36.160 Yeah. 44 00:04:36.160 --> 00:04:39.890 Which, yeah, the restaurant ordering dilemma is how I think of this, right? 45 00:04:39.890 --> 00:04:39.920 Yeah. 46 00:04:39.920 --> 00:04:45.140 I go to my favorite restaurant and I look down the menu and there's that thing I like. 47 00:04:45.140 --> 00:04:51.050 And I'm like, I really like this thing on the menu and I will enjoy it every time I come here. 48 00:04:51.050 --> 00:04:51.350 huh Yeah. 49 00:04:51.350 --> 00:04:51.500 Yep. 50 00:04:51.500 --> 00:04:58.660 But there are some other things on this menu too. Should I take the risk that it's not as good as the thing I know I like? 51 00:04:58.660 --> 00:05:16.820 Yeah, yeah, yeah. And think another interesting dimension to this problem is that, um you know, I'm being paid to do this and I'm being paid to deliver results. And what I'm not being paid to do necessarily is learn a bunch of cool stuff, right? 52 00:05:16.820 --> 00:05:24.200 Like, you know, it's fun to learn a bunch of cool stuff and it is sometimes very productive and useful to your employers to learn a bunch of cool stuff. And then yeah, right. 53 00:05:24.200 --> 00:05:30.350 Indirectly through you and through your proselytization and sharing of experiences and setting the... Yeah, right. 54 00:05:30.350 --> 00:05:30.740 Yeah, yeah. 55 00:05:30.740 --> 00:05:40.200 But ultimately, it's an investment in your yourself, independent of your employer. And sometimes that can be purely for yourself. Like, you know, we've all we've all seen this. 56 00:05:40.200 --> 00:05:40.260 Right. 57 00:05:40.260 --> 00:05:52.300 I think we've talked about it before. It's like, hey, some cool new programming language has come out and some programmer goes off in a corner and says, I'm just going to write this new little tool that we needed. And we're going to write it in Haskell because I've just read a book on Haskell. 58 00:05:52.300 --> 00:05:52.500 Right. 59 00:05:52.500 --> 00:05:56.760 And you're like, that's, I don't know that this is in the best interest of the business. 60 00:05:56.760 --> 00:05:57.840 Right. Mm-hmm. 61 00:05:57.840 --> 00:06:13.840 Uh, there's a, I guess, you know, you roll your D20 and if it's a 20, somehow now Haskell is the best thing in the world and everyone moves to Haskell and the whole company levels up, right? That's a possibility. But very often what happens is that that piece of code gets orphaned and becomes the haunted graveyard of "we don't use that tool anymore." 62 00:06:13.840 --> 00:06:14.040 Yeah. 63 00:06:14.040 --> 00:06:15.170 Right. 64 00:06:15.170 --> 00:06:19.060 But you know, your friend has been and learned Haskell and has gone off to do something else or whatever. 65 00:06:19.060 --> 00:06:19.340 right Right. 66 00:06:19.340 --> 00:06:21.940 Right. They got that job in Haskell that they wanted to get, right? 67 00:06:21.940 --> 00:06:31.670 But, you know, you have to have an understanding employer to let you do those kinds of things or, you know, or be in-between jobs. 68 00:06:31.670 --> 00:06:32.420 that 69 00:06:32.420 --> 00:06:34.800 And then you get the choice of doing it any way you like. 70 00:06:34.800 --> 00:06:36.700 I was just going to say, this is like your every day right now, isn't it? 71 00:06:36.700 --> 00:06:43.860 At the moment, I get to choose pretty much what I want to do. Yeah. And yeah, that that's a whole different story. That's perhaps one for later. 72 00:06:43.860 --> 00:06:43.880 Yeah. 73 00:06:43.880 --> 00:06:48.960 But yeah, so where were we? We were talking, you were you were saying, yeah, I've distracted myself. 74 00:06:48.960 --> 00:07:01.180 Oh, yeah. No, I mean, I just sort of like, I really like the model of sort of exploration versus exploitation and being, ah you know, or exploration versus execution. 75 00:07:01.180 --> 00:07:03.680 I don't know what the better way is to describe that, but 76 00:07:03.680 --> 00:07:03.780 Yeah. 77 00:07:03.780 --> 00:07:20.900 But it's either like, you know, are we are we evaluating different ways to do things or are we doing things, right? And I think being responsible with that gives you, um you know, sort of like the freedom that comes with authority, right? 78 00:07:20.900 --> 00:07:31.840 Like, I'm going to be responsible for making this decision and doing it in the best interest of the company and ah because of that, I'm going to expect people to trust me to make the right decisions. 79 00:07:31.840 --> 00:07:49.040 And then that means when I decide like, yep, we're doing this in Java and with tests and we're going to do continuous deployment and we're going to do all these things. Like, it so long as the result of that is that I deliver working software that benefits the people who are paying me, then no one's gonna ask any questions. They're gonna like, great, thanks for doing that. 80 00:07:49.040 --> 00:08:04.360 And if it's like, you know, why is this taking so long? Or why do you continue to have problems? And my answer is, well, our continuous deployment system has some bugs and I haven't quite worked out all the ways in which this integrates with Google Cloud yet. And like, they're gonna be like, okay, but why? 81 00:08:04.360 --> 00:08:05.740 Why are we doing this, right? 82 00:08:05.740 --> 00:08:10.450 Why didn't we just do this in Python like everything else is or whatever the equivalent is? 83 00:08:10.450 --> 00:08:10.730 Yes, exactly. Right. 84 00:08:10.730 --> 00:08:11.000 Right. Yeah. 85 00:08:11.000 --> 00:08:12.000 Or whatever it is, right? 86 00:08:12.000 --> 00:08:27.040 So this is absolutely the kind of thing where, yeah, you have chosen to sort of stake and spend some of your "reputation points", ah your goodwill budget with the rest of the organization say, "I believe this strongly is the right way to do something." 87 00:08:27.040 --> 00:08:28.960 And you know you've got your evidence to back it up. 88 00:08:28.960 --> 00:08:39.720 Yeah, but I'm doing that I'm doing that anyway, though. it Just by embarking on this ah this ah responsibility to build this thing, I am staking my reputation. And the only question is, what outcome am I going to get, right? 89 00:08:39.720 --> 00:08:48.220 So like you know if I say equally, if I say... There's not really a nobody got fired for buying IBM effect. 90 00:08:48.220 --> 00:08:48.800 Right. 91 00:08:48.800 --> 00:09:13.450 Really? Right. It's like, ultimately, ah in some ways it's worse. It's sort of like, okay, well, if you're going to do, if you're not going to have any strong opinions about how to do things and you're just going to do things the way that, you know, the more senior people around you maybe say to do, or sort of like the, you know, the, the, the sort of default path of the, of the company, like, you know, people going to also still... 92 00:09:13.450 --> 00:09:19.180 ...correctly expect you to get things done. And if you aren't effective at getting things done that way, it doesn't really matter. 93 00:09:19.180 --> 00:09:19.300 true 94 00:09:19.300 --> 00:09:34.900 Right? So like the thing that really matters is like actual running, working software and production and how you get there can be a matter of opinion and can be, you know, a matter of even experience, but the, the proof is in the pudding. 95 00:09:34.900 --> 00:09:41.540 So like just doing it this the standard way does not absolve you of the responsibility of doing it. Right? 96 00:09:41.540 --> 00:10:01.540 Right, but it does meaningfully change the way that it's perceived, I think. Like if you were just to do it the "obvious" way that everything else is being done, then as you say, it's like the IBM, no one that got fired for it, right? You could, there's a defense in not delivering that it was just like, okay, this was just a difficult thing to do. 97 00:10:01.540 --> 00:10:29.020 And there's not like an approach that I pulled out of left field that might be scapegoated, perhaps, as to why it wasn't, the software wasn't achieved, right? I could imagine, for example, you know, like the Haskell thing here is like, you know, if you succeed and you did it in Haskell, maybe you get the free pass and then everything's better. But if you if you screw up because it wasn't possible to achieve it, people will latch onto the fact that you wrote it all in Haskell rather than you did it the same way that everyone everyone else is doing. Is that... 98 00:10:29.020 --> 00:10:29.800 Yeah, I mean, I can. 99 00:10:29.800 --> 00:10:40.660 Am I too pessimistic? I suppose I am seeing here, and I'll be honest with you, some parallels with decisions that I made a few years back in in the way that I chose to develop some software. 100 00:10:40.660 --> 00:10:54.570 And they that did come back to sort of sort of haunt me in terms of like I staked quite a lot on something. And that was ultimately not the right way to go forward. And I agree with that. But it did I did have to bear those consequences, as you do when you take responsibility. 101 00:10:54.570 --> 00:10:54.690 Right. 102 00:10:54.690 --> 00:10:56.370 That's that's just what happens, right? 103 00:10:56.370 --> 00:10:56.440 Yeah. 104 00:10:56.440 --> 00:10:59.020 So I suppose I'm a little bit like, "ooh". 105 00:10:59.020 --> 00:11:16.820 Yeah. I mean, if if things don't work out for the best, there's you're definitely going to be able to find a reason why. Right. and that And that reason why can easily be because you decided to do things your own way and not the standard way. I'm not saying that's not possible. 106 00:11:16.820 --> 00:11:17.740 Of course, yeah. 107 00:11:17.740 --> 00:11:26.040 But the i feel you know i've I've used the metaphor many times of running across a lake. And, you know, software development is like... 108 00:11:26.040 --> 00:11:30.740 but Like the Jesus lizard, yeah? Have you seen this that lizard? 109 00:11:30.740 --> 00:11:33.820 i I don't know that I've seen that particular lizard, but I know that there are lizards that run across... 110 00:11:33.820 --> 00:11:35.880 It's called the Jesus lizard. (Editor's note: it's really called the "Common basilisk" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_basilisk) 111 00:11:35.880 --> 00:11:35.980 Really? 112 00:11:35.980 --> 00:11:46.420 It's amazing. It runs across water. And I just... I love that someone was so blasphemously naming things that they were like, this is... this is I mean, it's like, as soon as I said it, you knew what it was. 113 00:11:46.420 --> 00:11:49.260 Yeah, right. That paints a picture, I'll tell you. um 114 00:11:49.260 --> 00:11:54.960 But anyway, yeah, so you're a software engineer, you're running fast and you're not falling into the lake because you're just keeping going. 115 00:11:54.960 --> 00:12:13.650 yeah Right. Right. And, and there's, I think, I think there's a lot of value in kind of, um, and this was a ah lesson that I, I learned, uh, relatively like halfway through my career when I was, we have an episode about, you know, bad business models and starting a ah company. 116 00:12:13.650 --> 00:12:14.020 Yeah. 117 00:12:14.020 --> 00:12:26.580 And you, you may, I may be told the story in that podcast, but for, forgive me, listener, if you've heard this before, But I remember having a conversation. We had formed a small company within the consulting organization I was working at. 118 00:12:26.580 --> 00:12:44.360 And i um we had all these plans for taking this open source project that we have and closing it and then selling it. And I had come to like the first or maybe the second board meeting with a long list of things to do if it doesn't all work out. And it's like, OK, well, we can reopen the software and then we can do this and we can you know release this thing. We do this. 119 00:12:44.360 --> 00:12:56.950 And the a person that that was the CEO of the consulting firm and was on the board of this little internal company was like, Ben, stop. Whoa, whoa, whoa. If you figure out all the ways in which this is going to fail, you're never going to have time to succeed, right? 120 00:12:56.950 --> 00:12:57.680 Ha ha ha ha ha! 121 00:12:57.680 --> 00:13:01.680 Like you you have to focus on how you're going to make this work, right? 122 00:13:01.680 --> 00:13:13.440 And so the kind of analogy that I have in software development is like – Like planning for like as engineers, we think about failure all the time. and We think about failure modes all the time. 123 00:13:13.440 --> 00:13:33.160 But I don't think that that type of mentality works as well when you sort of go up a level and you're like, OK, how am I going to organize this effort? Right. um You have to think about like, how are we going to succeed? And so, like, you know, the analogy of running across a lake is the way you run across a lake is you go real fast. 124 00:13:33.160 --> 00:13:33.560 That's how you do it. 125 00:13:33.560 --> 00:13:34.820 And you don't stop for anyone. 126 00:13:34.820 --> 00:13:46.260 You don't stop for doing it. So you don't want the life preserver and the signal flare and the tool belt. Like all you really need is shoes - maybe - right? 127 00:13:46.260 --> 00:13:48.900 Like just go real fast. 128 00:13:48.900 --> 00:13:49.100 Right. 129 00:13:49.100 --> 00:13:57.660 And so I grant you that in those situations where you fall in the lake and things have not gone well, if you should, you're right. 130 00:13:57.660 --> 00:14:05.480 Everyone says, well, you should have had ah life preserver. You should have been where, why the hell did you not have your tool belt with you? 131 00:14:05.480 --> 00:14:06.530 Exactly, exactly. 132 00:14:06.530 --> 00:14:06.900 And your, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. 133 00:14:06.900 --> 00:14:16.740 It's like this didn't work because you used Haskell. It's like, no, this didn't work because we didn't go fast enough because apparently I didn't understand this as well as I thought I did. Right. 134 00:14:16.740 --> 00:14:16.740 Right. 135 00:14:16.740 --> 00:14:24.020 So I don't know. And that I grant that that is a very that in itself is kind of like an opinionated view on how to do these things. 136 00:14:24.020 --> 00:14:24.480 It, it certainly is. 137 00:14:24.480 --> 00:14:53.960 Right. Like and and there are lots of situations in which even I would not apply those principles. But those are sort of my default principles. Right. So, you know, i I don't know. I, I can, I can see a world in which, uh, I don't want to call playing it safe. Cause I really don't think that it's playing it safe, but sort of like playing it safe and just doing what everyone else is doing around you is not a wrong strategy. 138 00:14:53.960 --> 00:15:09.820 Um, but I think, you know, at the end of the day, so long as you build things that, that people want and you build them at a reasonable pace and you like, think a lot of this also is just not, uh, putting yourself in a situation where you're just slowing yourself down. 139 00:15:09.820 --> 00:15:22.640 Right? Like creating a lot of mess and cruft and cruft actually literally cruft that, that is borrowing from your future productivity in the name of, of doing something today. 140 00:15:22.640 --> 00:15:22.760 Literally. 141 00:15:22.760 --> 00:15:28.500 I think a lot of it is also, also that and knowing when you need to fight for that. So I don't know, i'm kind of off on a tangent here, but. 142 00:15:28.500 --> 00:15:42.100 No, that's good. No, I mean, certainly, Cruft is top of mind for me as I've been spending the last few weeks you know doing Compiler Explorer things and spending a lot of time regretting decisions that were made 10 years ago that were made... 143 00:15:42.100 --> 00:15:52.240 ...And some of those decisions, are it was it seemed like the best idea at the time, and they're fine. It's just you know they need to be updated. That's cool. but many, many of them are like, I didn't really, it wasn't thought through. 144 00:15:52.240 --> 00:16:03.860 And, you know, you regret them. But then some of the other things are like, well, if this had never scaled to four terabytes of compilers, then we wouldn't have this. 145 00:16:03.860 --> 00:16:10.740 This is a new problem, right? No one would have thought this, you know, who yeah who I mean, when I speak to people about some of the issues we face, 146 00:16:10.740 --> 00:16:10.740 Right. right 147 00:16:10.740 --> 00:16:17.720 Oftentimes they're like, oh gosh, I'd never even considered that would be a problem. And you're like, yeah, no, neither did we. 148 00:16:17.720 --> 00:16:27.860 And now it's a big focal point for us. It's like, how do you deploy this? Oh, well, you just copy the bits around. Well, there's four terabytes of it and nothing in Amazon works like that. Oh, yeah. 149 00:16:27.860 --> 00:16:28.220 Yeah. 150 00:16:28.220 --> 00:16:28.710 Yeah. Yeah. yeah 151 00:16:28.710 --> 00:16:28.870 Yeah. 152 00:16:28.870 --> 00:16:40.360 I don't know that I would argue that those decisions that you made 10 years ago were wrong. I think, I think the cruft comes in when you are, you don't feel ah safe changing them. 153 00:16:40.360 --> 00:16:41.020 Right. Like, 154 00:16:41.020 --> 00:16:45.390 Yeah. And that that is also true. You know, a lot of this stuff is specifically for Compiler Explorer. 155 00:16:45.390 --> 00:16:45.480 Yeah. 156 00:16:45.480 --> 00:16:47.180 you know, we're a shoestring budget thing. 157 00:16:47.180 --> 00:16:47.400 yeah 158 00:16:47.400 --> 00:16:58.110 We don't have a copy. We don't have a second deploy that I can play around with, with the sort of big infrastructural changes, especially stuff like, you know, let's just copy all the compilers somewhere else and then poke around with them. 159 00:16:58.110 --> 00:16:58.660 Right. Right. 160 00:16:58.660 --> 00:17:14.760 I don't, even if I did have, I mean, we have some staging and stuff, but if, even if I did have like a full copy, I could run somewhere else... My confidence in being able to say this categorically still works, now I've you know moved everything around. I've changed the file systems. I've done whatever I choose to do. 161 00:17:14.760 --> 00:17:18.620 My confidence is not very high. You know I can curl a few things. 162 00:17:18.620 --> 00:17:18.900 right 163 00:17:18.900 --> 00:17:31.720 I can look at... Yeah, it's it's not straightforward. You know to and some extent, my own personal usage pattern of the site does not comprehensively enough... 164 00:17:31.720 --> 00:17:43.680 cover all the things it *can* do. And because we don't have the tests for most of the user interface or even most many of the compiler type things that we do, I'm not confident in making changes. 165 00:17:43.680 --> 00:17:46.820 We just kind of have to wing it and hope, which is not good, right? 166 00:17:46.820 --> 00:17:46.980 Yeah. 167 00:17:46.980 --> 00:17:51.260 you know I'm talking to Ben Rady here. 168 00:17:51.260 --> 00:17:52.960 Yeah. 169 00:17:52.960 --> 00:18:06.820 And it doesn't feel good. And so some of the things that I'm doing right now, you know like a lot the this with with this is going off on a tangent to your tangent now, but like the things that I'm trying to do now are set myself up for further success by... 170 00:18:06.820 --> 00:18:06.820 Yeah. 171 00:18:06.820 --> 00:18:21.680 Going back and adding types to a lot of the things that were untyped and have horrible casts in the TypeScript. You know, we moved from JavaScript to TypeScript and there was a ton of stuff along the way that just has, you know, `as any` or `as unknown` because we didn't know what type things were. 172 00:18:21.680 --> 00:18:29.710 And now I'm actually spending the time to go back and put the types in and uncovering all sorts of weird cases where it's like, hey, sometimes we return an object. Sometimes we return false. 173 00:18:29.710 --> 00:18:30.220 Right. 174 00:18:30.220 --> 00:18:33.320 That doesn't seem like anyone would choose to do that, but that's what happened. 175 00:18:33.320 --> 00:18:33.440 Yeah. yeah 176 00:18:33.440 --> 00:18:55.740 And then you go and, you know, you pull on the threads. And so I feel like that helps to make it easier to make changes. And while I'm doing it, I'm adding tests and even adding test frameworks. I made a big change recently to move a whole bunch of stuff out of the front end into a place where I can run the test for it, independent of a browser being involved, because most of the code is like, doesn't care about the DOM. 177 00:18:55.740 --> 00:19:11.960 So, you know, you want to test whether this string is a valid descriptor or an identifier, well, then that can be tested outside... stuff like that. All of these things, like well ah hopefully, en masse will make it faster for us to go forward in the future. 178 00:19:11.960 --> 00:19:13.780 Oh, yeah. 179 00:19:13.780 --> 00:19:16.210 Yeah, so that is a very tangent to your tangent. 180 00:19:16.210 --> 00:19:16.340 Yeah, yeah. 181 00:19:16.340 --> 00:19:35.060 But yeah, that's top of mind for me is how do I make myself more productive? How do I get myself into the world where the the the environment gives me the protections I want? And I think to circle all the way back to the beginning, the thing that you said at the beginning of this was like you're in a greenfield environment where you set it up the way that you think it should be done. 182 00:19:35.060 --> 00:19:42.830 And I think you and I both like that. You know, I have a C++ template project, which is like, this is all my rules or my Lint rules are set up or my pre-commit hooks are done this way. 183 00:19:42.830 --> 00:19:42.900 Mm-hmm. 184 00:19:42.900 --> 00:19:52.920 You can't, if you make a change to my project and you get it past CI and you get it past the PR, then it should be a good change, right? There should be no way that you can get it past. 185 00:19:52.920 --> 00:19:52.980 Yeah. 186 00:19:52.980 --> 00:19:59.800 And if it's not, that's on on me. That's a bug in the infrastructure that let you put a bad code into my project. 187 00:19:59.800 --> 00:20:00.640 Yeah. 188 00:20:00.640 --> 00:20:03.150 Compile Explorer is not there yet, but it will be, I hope, 189 00:20:03.150 --> 00:20:04.080 Right. Yeah. Yeah. 190 00:20:04.080 --> 00:20:08.580 And it's sort of getting there. Yeah. Yeah. 191 00:20:08.580 --> 00:20:31.980 Yeah, no... cars have brakes you can drive faster. Those kinds of things that reduce fear, reduce risk, and let you you know take a run across the lake because you know you're a good swimmer will absolutely speed you up, right? And I feel like the unfortunate truth is that a lot of those things kind of have to be built in from the beginning. 192 00:20:31.980 --> 00:20:35.740 I actually remembered the thing that I was thinking about earlier with the topic that I wanted to talk about 193 00:20:35.740 --> 00:20:39.380 Oh, good. I was able to talk long enough for your brain to recover. 194 00:20:39.380 --> 00:20:43.640 Yes. All that actually, no, you're, but you actually reminded me of it with all the automation stuff. 195 00:20:43.640 --> 00:20:43.640 Oh, good. 196 00:20:43.640 --> 00:21:05.040 So just this week working with a new intern on my team, I figured out how we figured out how to completely automate in user mode or in user space Docker building and running. 197 00:21:05.040 --> 00:21:26.970 So for the longest time, one of the big, bugaboos for me has been, if I want to build a Docker container, I can't use my, you know, `make download` the the tools that I want and stick them into the tools folder approach because you have to have some `sudo` installed or some, yeah, all of these terrible, terrible, terrible things. 198 00:21:26.970 --> 00:21:28.360 setuid root thing, yeah.. 199 00:21:28.360 --> 00:21:40.760 I using a combination of the standard Docker client, which is cool and and actually pretty easy to install that way, a library called Colima. 200 00:21:40.760 --> 00:21:55.580 And another thing that it depends on called Lima, which also can be installed this way. I was able to build a Docker container and run it and have all of the tools entirely installed just in the home directory of the user with no special permissions. 201 00:21:55.580 --> 00:22:15.520 So some, yeah, just magical, I could `git clone` your repo and type `make`, and as long as I'm on ah ah but an a supported operating system, should we say, which should be, you know, ah it will get the tools that it needs to do this and build this stuff without some deus ex machina kind of like process that you're like, ah, first you must `sudo apt install` all this stuff, the stuff that you and I dislike. 202 00:22:15.520 --> 00:22:16.120 A supported operating system, yes, exactly. 203 00:22:16.120 --> 00:22:20.500 Yes, you have to download this DMG file and double click on it and do all these other terrible things. 204 00:22:20.500 --> 00:22:22.040 Oh, that's awesome. 205 00:22:22.040 --> 00:22:36.340 Yes, yes. and and And that kind of automation, I think, to an outside person would seem like, why are you spending all of this time to do this? Because I think it took us about a day to do it. 206 00:22:36.340 --> 00:22:49.740 Why are you spending all of this time to do it? And it is so that, and this is especially true of this particular type of project that we're working on because it sort of gets worked on in fits and starts, right? Like you work on it for a while and then you come back to it and then you just think. 207 00:22:49.740 --> 00:23:08.020 So it's like, it is so that six months from now when something is broken and I need to fix it right now, the way that I set up that development environment is I `git clone`, `make`, done, figure out what's going on, push it and not like `git clone`...oh... 208 00:23:08.020 --> 00:23:09.180 Right. 209 00:23:09.180 --> 00:23:22.700 None of this works and, and it will take me six hours to make it work because these versions are no longer up to date and this package doesn't exist anymore. And I can't find the download link for that. And these docs are wrong. 210 00:23:22.700 --> 00:23:36.120 And that is, that is like a classic example of like the kind of thing where I feel like you get very opinionated about it. You have strong... 211 00:23:36.120 --> 00:23:51.500 Well-reasoned arguments for for why you do it. And so long as you can successfully achieve the outcomes that you think you're supposed to be able to achieve while using these approaches, no one's going to care because it just works. 212 00:23:51.500 --> 00:24:02.000 If it doesn't work, then all the blame comes out. And then all of the second guessing and the Monday morning quarterbacking comes out and says like, okay, why did you do it like this? 213 00:24:02.000 --> 00:24:14.500 Yeah. Yeah. But, but also to your point, you know, like the whole, you know, we, you and I have, have talked about this before. We, we both love this idea of like a sort of more hermetic build or whatever you need environment. 214 00:24:14.500 --> 00:24:14.600 Yeah. 215 00:24:14.600 --> 00:24:23.620 And I think that, you know, there are stuff more modern things along have come along since then, you know, dev containers and some stuff that uses Docker trickery to actually like make that. I don't, you know, 216 00:24:23.620 --> 00:24:24.100 Mm-hmm. 217 00:24:24.100 --> 00:24:36.620 I have opinions about that. But the reason that *I* went for this from my previous point of view was that some people at Google had set up their development environment like this, and I saw that it was possible. 218 00:24:36.620 --> 00:24:38.800 So that does dovetail back into your original thing. 219 00:24:38.800 --> 00:24:38.820 yeah 220 00:24:38.820 --> 00:24:45.740 This is like a senior developer telling you, oh, yeah, you can do this. It is possible to make it so that you can just have a directory... 221 00:24:45.740 --> 00:25:01.580 There's nothing magic about compilers. They aren't system software. they they They like to masquerade and pretend they are. But if you need GCC 1.2.3 to run your code, you can download and install it, or you can build it so that it can be downloaded and installed, or you can do all this stuff. You can spend a bunch of time. 222 00:25:01.580 --> 00:25:23.010 You now learn how to do that, and now you can take that on to the next thing. And then, you know... The frustration specifically in this case was like ah the very first company you and I both worked at together, where we were stuck for a very long time on the version of GCC that came with the operating system that our production machines had, which was also you know an ancient version of Red Hat. 223 00:25:23.010 --> 00:25:23.080 Yeah. 224 00:25:23.080 --> 00:25:27.920 You're like, why are we using a 10-year-old GCC 10 years ago? 225 00:25:27.920 --> 00:25:28.480 Right. Yeah. 226 00:25:28.480 --> 00:25:34.680 oh because of this. Oh, it's hard do. No, no. We can make it. We can solve this problem. 227 00:25:34.680 --> 00:25:34.880 Yeah. 228 00:25:34.880 --> 00:25:45.280 We can build our own compilers. We can make them work. And then we can make it so that that is an easy thing to do. And it's part of, was it "Fig"? I think was the name of the funny little thing that we started installing stuff in. 229 00:25:45.280 --> 00:25:45.410 Oh, yeah. 230 00:25:45.410 --> 00:25:45.660 And i you know. 231 00:25:45.660 --> 00:25:46.220 I think that sounds about right. 232 00:25:46.220 --> 00:25:50.860 There was a package management system, whatever. Anyway, and it was a lot of effort and lot of work, but we got it working. 233 00:25:50.860 --> 00:25:50.860 Yes. 234 00:25:50.860 --> 00:26:01.980 And it was so beneficial because then we could upgrade our compiler, upgrade everything. And it just worked. And it was. Anyway, we didn't do it because of that. That just is side effect. 235 00:26:01.980 --> 00:26:13.220 Yeah. You know, the funny thing about these practices is I feel like they spread like viruses, but that is they only spread through contact. Right. It's like it's it's like because there's a lot of things. 236 00:26:13.220 --> 00:26:13.220 Ha ha ha. 237 00:26:13.220 --> 00:26:30.880 There's a lot of things that I've seen like this where it's like I have explained these things till I'm blue in the face. And I made the arguments that I'm making on this podcast right now about why they're beneficial. Right. do And I get a lot of people with like blank stares and it's like, okay, sure, fine, whatever, and nodding heads and whatever. And they just walk away and they ignore it. 238 00:26:30.880 --> 00:26:47.000 But the second that I work with somebody for like, you know, it's not a second, but when I work with somebody for like a reasonable period of time and they actually see how this stuff works, it would becomes impossible for me to convince them *not* to do it. 239 00:26:47.000 --> 00:26:47.920 Right, right. 240 00:26:47.920 --> 00:26:57.200 Right? Like they see the value of it firsthand and they sort of experience it like viscerally. And it just like, now they can't imagine doing it any other way. Right? 241 00:26:57.200 --> 00:26:58.440 Why would you do it any other way? 242 00:26:58.440 --> 00:26:58.800 Right. 243 00:26:58.800 --> 00:27:00.700 Yeah, just it's like, yeah, you have to get over the hump there. 244 00:27:00.700 --> 00:27:00.860 Right. 245 00:27:00.860 --> 00:27:06.600 There's some kind of... ah function where the, you know, you got to get over the hump or quantum tunnel through the hump. 246 00:27:06.600 --> 00:27:07.150 Yeah. Right. I was going to say like, 247 00:27:07.150 --> 00:27:16.590 I guess, you know, you, you either, you go up the, up the, ah you know, you spend the 30 years climbing the hill, you know, and then falling down into a, into a better place, the other side of the hill. 248 00:27:16.590 --> 00:27:16.720 yeah 249 00:27:16.720 --> 00:27:29.860 And you go Hey, this is better than than it was the other side of the hill or through contact with someone, you allow them to quantum tunnel through experience hill and come to the better place without actually having to make all the mistakes along the way. 250 00:27:29.860 --> 00:27:30.000 Yeah. 251 00:27:30.000 --> 00:27:33.640 Right, right. Yes. Wow, that's ah I love that. 252 00:27:33.640 --> 00:27:33.740 There's an image. 253 00:27:33.740 --> 00:27:38.480 That is a great analogy. I love that, quantum tunneling through the hill. 254 00:27:38.480 --> 00:27:38.480 There's an image. 255 00:27:38.480 --> 00:27:51.090 Experience. Yeah. ah that's what That's what mentorship is, is letting other people quantum tunnel to a better place without having to go through as much of the pain that you did. 256 00:27:51.090 --> 00:27:51.300 Yeah. 257 00:27:51.300 --> 00:27:55.160 Right. Let me show you the secret passage through the mountain. Yeah. 258 00:27:55.160 --> 00:27:58.540 Yeah. 259 00:27:58.540 --> 00:27:59.680 I don't know. 260 00:27:59.680 --> 00:28:04.460 Well, that was, that was a surprising amount of talking for no idea at all. 261 00:28:04.460 --> 00:28:11.140 No idea. i mean, I guess I did eventually remember the thing that I was talking about before, but, and maybe that would have led us to this topic anyway, but yeah. 262 00:28:11.140 --> 00:28:12.940 um suppose I suppose so. 263 00:28:12.940 --> 00:28:13.900 Yeah. 264 00:28:13.900 --> 00:28:26.230 Yeah, but no, I think your your your starting point of like having ah a good project and a nice setup and whatever is certainly top of mind for me now as I'm sort of retrofitting it into Compiler Explorer at some level. 265 00:28:26.230 --> 00:28:26.280 Yeah. 266 00:28:26.280 --> 00:28:30.160 I mean, we've always had some level of this, but it's improving it and shoring it up. 267 00:28:30.160 --> 00:28:31.300 Yeah. 268 00:28:31.300 --> 00:28:54.990 And then, you know, you and I have been discussing, ah this seems like a complete left tack and late on in the podcast, but it's worth mentioning, I think, is that like um the things that make it easy to dip in and dip out of projects like this, or be it because it's easy to set up, be it because there's clear documentation, there's no surprises, be it because the lint rules make it obvious when you're doing something the way that you're not supposed to be doing it or whatever. 269 00:28:54.990 --> 00:28:55.140 Mm-hmm. 270 00:28:55.140 --> 00:29:02.670 So you kind of put people on the on the good path. Yeah. be it like decent documentation that says this is how we do stuff here. 271 00:29:02.670 --> 00:29:02.920 Yeah. 272 00:29:02.920 --> 00:29:11.340 All of this is useful for an intern coming onto to a project coming off. And that intern could be an LLM in today's climate. 273 00:29:11.340 --> 00:29:11.520 Right. 274 00:29:11.520 --> 00:29:15.050 And that seems to work fairly well too. 275 00:29:15.050 --> 00:29:16.320 Yeah, yeah. 276 00:29:16.320 --> 00:29:37.300 And so I'm sort of mindful that that is out there and, and it's certainly, um, a decent subset, like a good 80% of the things that are useful to make life easier for this amnesiac junior programmer to come in and try and make a small change so on ADD meds to come in and, uh, make a change. 277 00:29:37.300 --> 00:29:38.120 Yeah. 278 00:29:38.120 --> 00:29:51.300 to ah my project, but that also helps the actual intern that's going to come on and hopefully will mature into ah full featured junior developer and then a senior developer and go on to do great things, right? 279 00:29:51.300 --> 00:29:51.330 Yeah. 280 00:29:51.330 --> 00:29:51.400 Yeah. Yeah. 281 00:29:51.400 --> 00:29:53.070 But that's it's an on-ramp for everybody. 282 00:29:53.070 --> 00:29:53.900 yeah 283 00:29:53.900 --> 00:30:04.900 And so that's sort of like top of mind. And yeah, I don't think we have time to talk about the full ins and outs of that. But it's it was an interesting thought that like that this this nice setup is also conducive to that. 284 00:30:04.900 --> 00:30:31.160 Oh, it totally is. And then you know there's there's this some like industrial design and like tool design thing of like trying to design for the edges, right? like And and like a lot of um things that people started to discover when they started building um both like devices and also like buildings and sidewalks and things like that for disabled people is that it actually winds up helping everyone a lot more than they wouldn't have expected 285 00:30:31.160 --> 00:30:32.300 able bodied folk. Yeah. 286 00:30:32.300 --> 00:30:44.860 Because when you kind of design for those extremes of like, well, what happens when somebody is like 75 pounds and can't lift this? Or what happens when somebody is, you know, seven feet tall? Or what happens when somebody is in a wheelchair? What happens when somebody can't see? 287 00:30:44.860 --> 00:30:49.220 You wind up creating these things that are just easier for everyone, right? 288 00:30:49.220 --> 00:30:49.460 Right. 289 00:30:49.460 --> 00:31:01.740 And I think that there's a lot of that when it comes to both designing for, ah you know, junior developers and LLMs and me six months from now after I've slept a bunch of times and don't remember how this all works. 290 00:31:01.740 --> 00:31:10.530 Like all of those people kind of have the same problem. Right. Which is they don't understand what's going on and they need some guardrails to make sure that they don't make any stupid mistakes. 291 00:31:10.530 --> 00:31:10.920 Yeah. 292 00:31:10.920 --> 00:31:38.520 So like designing for this stuff has tons of value. And I think just like with some of the, you know, ADA accessible things, it's like you don't really discover that and maybe this is why I'm tying it back to the whole like it spreads like a virus and I can't seem to convince people maybe this is the problem it's like until you walked on the sidewalk that is like gently sloping up to the thing instead of like the stairs where you're huffing and puffing ah you're like yeah this is better like I didn't think about it but it really is better right 293 00:31:38.520 --> 00:31:48.820 Yeah, that is it. Yeah. No, I think so. Well, that seems like a decent place to park the conversation, because otherwise I think we're going to start off with the whole other thing. 294 00:31:48.820 --> 00:31:50.700 We're going to do a whole other second podcast on top of this podcast. 295 00:31:50.700 --> 00:31:52.700 Yeah, which we don't have time for today. 296 00:31:52.700 --> 00:31:53.620 Yes. Yeah, now that's true. 297 00:31:53.620 --> 00:31:55.730 But yeah, I mean... 298 00:31:55.730 --> 00:31:56.460 Yeah. 299 00:31:56.460 --> 00:32:10.630 I think that's a great analogy. Yeah. The, whole idea of helping one set of people helps everybody ah in the, in the context, both in the real world in, and you know, like screen readers and things like that, that's helps, you know, and and yeah, yeah but better documentation. 300 00:32:10.630 --> 00:32:10.760 Yeah. 301 00:32:10.760 --> 00:32:16.580 You're like, well why do you need documentation? It's like, well, helps new people, but it also helps you, you know, down the line. 302 00:32:16.580 --> 00:32:17.620 Yeah. Yes, it does. 303 00:32:17.620 --> 00:32:17.980 Yeah. Yeah. 304 00:32:17.980 --> 00:32:18.240 Yes, it does. 305 00:32:18.240 --> 00:32:22.660 Well, friend, I think we should probably leave it there for this week. 306 00:32:22.660 --> 00:32:23.440 Wonderful as always. 307 00:32:23.440 --> 00:32:24.350 This month, I suppose. Yeah. 308 00:32:24.350 --> 00:32:24.820 Yeah, true. 309 00:32:24.820 --> 00:32:35.170 As you know, you and I talk about this, but we, yeah, the timing these things come out on is different from the time we record them, which confuses both you and me and now the listeners as well. So nevermind. 310 00:32:35.170 --> 00:32:35.400 Right. 311 00:32:35.400 --> 00:32:43.630 But yeah, um have yourself a great summer. If I don't, so if we don't talk before then, as I think that will, will be the case. 312 00:32:43.630 --> 00:32:44.460 Mm-hmm. 313 00:32:44.460 --> 00:32:51.640 And until next time. 314 00:32:51.640 --> 00:32:54.640 Until next time.