0:00

It doesn't take a rocket scientist

0:02

to do this. So you can

0:04

learn. It's going to take you

0:06

time to get the fundamentals down.

0:08

But just the dedication is

0:10

what's needed. Consistency is what's

0:12

needed. If you have an hour

0:15

a day to learn something, go

0:17

to free code camp, go to

0:19

YouTube, go wherever, and learn something

0:22

for an hour every day. and

0:24

just keep learning. That is my

0:27

advice. Keep learning. Welcome back to

0:29

the Free Code Camp Podcast, your

0:31

source for raw, unedited interviews with

0:34

developers. This week we're talking with

0:36

Jesse Hall, aka Code Stacker. He's

0:39

a software engineer and a developer

0:41

advocate at MongolDB. He taught himself

0:43

how to code using Free Code

0:46

Camp while he was raising his

0:48

kids and working on the best

0:50

buy. geek squad fixing people's computers.

0:52

Support for this podcast comes

0:54

from a grant from Wix.

0:56

Studio. Wick Studio provides developers

0:59

with tools to rapidly build

1:01

websites with everything out of

1:03

the box, then extend, replace,

1:05

and break boundaries with code.

1:07

Learn more at wicksstudio.com. Support

1:09

also comes from the 11,384

1:11

kind folks who support FreeCo

1:13

Camp through a monthly donation.

1:15

You can join these chill

1:18

human beings and help our

1:20

mission by going to FreeCo

1:22

camp.org/Donate. For this week's

1:24

musical intro... With

1:27

yours truly,

1:30

on drums,

1:34

guitar, bass,

1:37

and keys,

1:40

we're going

1:43

back to

1:46

1983 with

1:49

elevator action.

2:26

Great to have you on the podcast

2:28

man. How's everything going with you? It's

2:31

going great. Thank you for having me.

2:33

I really appreciate it Yeah, and I'm

2:35

hyped to have you here because you're

2:37

somebody whom I've known and admired for

2:40

many years I've enjoyed reading your tutorials

2:42

and watching your videos on YouTube and

2:44

You are pretty emblematic of somebody who

2:46

has taught themselves how to code while

2:49

juggling realistic like everyday problems like how

2:51

do I keep the kids fed? It's

2:53

hard sometimes, yeah, for sure. Yeah, well,

2:56

before we get into your backstory, which

2:58

we are going to go deep into

3:00

because you've got a really interesting one,

3:02

I am excited to hear a little

3:05

bit about what kind of tools you're

3:07

working with these days. Yeah, so, um,

3:09

uh, I really love all of the

3:11

AI stuff, honestly. So that has really

3:14

helped me in my everyday job. But

3:16

like, you know, cursor, windsurf, get up

3:18

copilot, etc. Like all the things, I

3:20

go back and forth between all of

3:23

them, new models come out, and those

3:25

are the really the tools that have

3:27

been helping me so much lately. Yeah,

3:29

so you have like fully embraced leveraging

3:32

AI to get more done? Exactly. Yeah,

3:34

yeah, we'll get into that later. I

3:36

don't think AI is really going to

3:39

take your job. Okay, so that is

3:41

the everyone can rest to sure. This

3:43

is like, you know, guest number 170

3:45

or something that has said, AI is

3:48

not going to take your job. For

3:50

those of you who are still freaking

3:52

out about that. I like to say,

3:54

AI is not going to take your

3:57

job, but that won't necessarily stop the...

3:59

AI salesperson from convincing your boss that

4:01

AI is going to take your job.

4:03

Yeah, that is very true. That is

4:06

very true. Yeah, so dust off those

4:08

communication skills and continue to advocate for

4:10

yourself within the organization and the value

4:12

you provide as a dev would be

4:15

my humble advice there. So Jesse you're

4:17

at Mongolia B. I just want to

4:19

say like Mongolia B frequently provides grants

4:22

to FreeCo Camp to develop courses around

4:24

some of their tools. This is not

4:26

like a sponsored video or anything like

4:28

that. The fact that you work at

4:31

Mongolia B is just a coincidence. You

4:33

and I have known one another for

4:35

many years. So yeah, you're working. as

4:37

a dev and as a developer advocate

4:40

at Munger-D-B, what is that like day-to-day

4:42

like? It's teaching developers, like that's the

4:44

basic. definition of developer advocacy is teaching

4:46

and helping developers and that's that's what

4:49

I love to do so I create

4:51

content to to you know help developers

4:53

understand how to use mongo DB along

4:55

with various technologies that's the key part

4:58

that I really like to focus on

5:00

is not necessarily mongo DB but how

5:02

do you use these other technologies alongside

5:05

it how do they how do they

5:07

work their way into the text act

5:09

that you use right so yeah yeah

5:11

well you are a little bit older

5:14

Even slightly older than me and I'm

5:16

44, but you look really young You

5:18

do have a little bit of gray

5:20

in the beard like I do Yeah

5:23

And and you came up like kind

5:25

of in a different time I want

5:27

to dive back into your past and

5:29

and talk about your journey into coding

5:32

because it's it's an interesting one and

5:34

I think it's one that a lot

5:36

of people can relate to You're a

5:38

self-taught dev you do not have a

5:41

four-year computer science degree You don't even

5:43

have a four-year degree you studied like

5:45

a kind of esoteric field that's outside

5:48

of software development, which you can talk

5:50

a little bit about. Maybe you can

5:52

tell me just a little bit about

5:54

your upbringing in Louisiana, which is a

5:57

state in the American South. Yeah, like

5:59

what was your childhood like? So I

6:01

grew up in a very small town.

6:03

It had one red light. I grew

6:06

up on a dirt road in a

6:08

trailer park. Very modest upbringing. And when

6:10

it came to like going to college,

6:12

there was no. No money to go

6:15

to college or anything like that. So

6:17

in my senior year of high school,

6:19

I actually got a grant to go

6:21

to a community college. And I really

6:24

wanted to take something computer, I always

6:26

knew growing up, I wanted to do

6:28

something with computers, I always knew growing

6:31

up, I wanted to do something with

6:33

computers, I'm always tinkering with things. We

6:35

had a Packard Bell when growing up.

6:37

Yeah. And so, you know, I was

6:40

always like, I remember I upgraded the

6:42

RAM. Anyway, so always tinkering with things.

6:44

I knew I wanted to do something

6:46

with computers, but at the community college

6:49

there was no computer course. There was

6:51

zero. There was one class that had

6:53

computers in it, but the only thing

6:55

closest to that was electronics technology. And

6:58

so that's what I went to community

7:00

college for. So I graduated high school

7:02

in 97 and graduated community college with

7:05

an associate's degree in 98. So did

7:07

that pretty quickly. and then did not

7:09

do anything with that with that degree

7:11

in electronics at all from there I

7:14

kind of got into computer hardware and

7:16

worked for some mom and pop shops

7:18

building clone computers so this is a

7:20

clone computer yeah This is basically, I

7:23

mean, the kids do it these days

7:25

as well, like they build computers from

7:27

scratch, right? Just build, just get a

7:29

blank case, build a computer from scratch.

7:32

That was kind of the thing back

7:34

then because there was no Dell. This

7:36

is before Dell. Like there is, there's

7:38

really no mainstream computers. And if you

7:41

really wanted it was actually cheaper to

7:43

build your own as well, because nobody

7:45

really knew how to do it. at

7:48

the time. There was a very, it

7:50

was a new niche, right? So there

7:52

was these mom and pop shops popping

7:54

up and they're building computers and they're

7:57

selling them. Clone computer is basically a

7:59

no-name computer. And so that's what I

8:01

started out doing, building clones. And

8:03

then I kind of got into

8:06

repair work, computer repair, and then

8:08

moving on into some business related,

8:10

like enterprise servers and networking, etc.

8:13

And that took me a few

8:15

years to go. I think that's

8:17

about a 10-year span. And so

8:20

when you say repairing computers, you're

8:22

talking like Best Buy, Geek squad

8:24

type software, somebody comes and like

8:26

fixes your computer. Exactly, I

8:28

actually did work for Best Buy for geek

8:31

squad. So, yeah. What was that like? I'm

8:33

curious because that's like a time capsule like

8:35

back before, you know, like everything is like

8:37

you have to take it to the genius

8:39

bar if you have a Mac and then

8:41

they send it in and you get it

8:43

back and like the whole thing is kind

8:45

of like an opaque experience. Whereas back in

8:47

the day, you'd be like, all right, well,

8:49

you're, you're, you're, um, sound. card is was

8:51

dislodged. And I don't know what kind of

8:53

stuff came up. But like, maybe you can

8:55

describe the difference in how like support is

8:57

handled today to the extent that it is.

8:59

I mean, like, it seems like people just

9:02

want you to buy a new computer at

9:04

some point and there's kind of like planned

9:06

obsolescence in the computers. And there's like an

9:08

active, you know, fight for right to repair

9:10

and stuff like that. But like, like, take

9:12

me back to. the 90s working

9:14

as a as a geek squad.

9:16

Yeah, so there's tons of so

9:19

like, you know, defef defragment your

9:21

hard drive like there's all these

9:23

these different terms and things that

9:25

you don't really think about today

9:27

that maybe the computers just have

9:29

it built in where it does

9:31

these self sustaining tasks by themselves.

9:33

But anyway, there was a lot

9:35

of. manual repair work being done.

9:37

And so, you know, I drove

9:39

the, the, the, the, the beetle,

9:41

the Volkswagen bug, right, with the, I

9:43

don't know if you've ever seen one

9:46

of those with the keeps on the

9:48

side. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Yep. So

9:50

I drove that around to people's houses

9:52

fixing their computers, fixing their Wi-Fi, etc.

9:54

And like, you would go in and

9:57

we had a disc where you put

9:59

the disc. and it would look for

10:01

viruses, it would analyze all the hardware,

10:03

see if there's any issues, etc. And

10:06

you'd have some parts back in the

10:08

bug and go fix it, pull it

10:10

apart, fix it, fix it, pull it

10:12

apart, fix it. We also did warranty

10:15

repair work. So if you had a

10:17

computer in a warranty, we would fix

10:19

it, and it would be all for

10:21

free. Yeah. So people would essentially subscribe

10:23

to the service of being able to

10:26

have the geek squad on tap. Exactly.

10:28

Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. And that's kind of

10:30

where it evolved into the business side

10:32

of things because a little known fact,

10:35

Geek Squad actually has a business side

10:37

where they only deal with, instead of

10:39

consumers at their houses, they only deal

10:41

with businesses. Like corporate internet and stuff

10:44

like that? Yeah, exactly, exactly. So I

10:46

would do, like for instance, I'd go

10:48

to a hotel and I'd install Wi-Fi

10:50

throughout the entire hotel. or I would

10:52

go to to a building that had

10:55

a hundred like a law firm and

10:57

they had like a hundred employees there

10:59

and so we'd go set up all

11:01

the all the computers and the servers

11:04

for them and the networking equipment and

11:06

all of that yeah so yeah that

11:08

and and I don't know if that's

11:10

around the time when I transitioned into

11:13

software because there was there was like

11:15

I said there was tons of software

11:17

that we used to kind of keep

11:19

track of things on the back end

11:22

internal pieces of software and there was

11:24

this a lot of manual effort a

11:26

lot of manual entry of things and

11:28

pieces of software that we had here

11:30

and there that didn't communicate together and

11:33

I'm like man I'm wasting so much

11:35

time doing all this paperwork and this

11:37

mundane these mundane tasks and how can

11:39

I like automate this and I always

11:42

thought that software development was like rocket

11:44

science. You had to be like super

11:46

smart for this kind of thing. But

11:48

of course, you know, I just went

11:51

to Google and did a quick search

11:53

and found Python and this like I

11:55

could write this little script and it

11:57

would do these things for me. And

12:00

anyway, I wrote this little this little

12:02

script that like shaved like an hour

12:04

off my day every day. It just

12:06

did all these things for me. And

12:08

that's kind of what hooked me into

12:11

software. development. Yeah and my journey is

12:13

very similar in the sense that like

12:15

I also that you know presuppose that

12:17

programming was beyond my mere mortal mind

12:20

and it turns out that it's actually

12:22

totally learnable and that you know just

12:24

like building any skill like You get

12:26

like some incremental values. Like it's incredible

12:29

actually how much incremental you get from

12:31

just learning a little bit of programming.

12:33

And there are diminishing returns as you

12:35

become more and more of an expert.

12:37

But you're still gaining gains as long

12:40

as you invest the time and energy

12:42

and learning and be intrepid and don't

12:44

be daunted and let technology intimidate you.

12:46

So it sounds like you kind of

12:49

overcame your apprehension and just dug in

12:51

and were able to make your life.

12:53

measurely better not doing an hour paperwork

12:55

every day that sounds fantastic exactly exactly

12:58

and even before that like i always

13:00

knew What was it Adobe Dream Weaver?

13:02

Yes. So like I had played around

13:04

with Dream Weaver for a while and

13:07

and did some what was it called

13:09

before was it flash or just before

13:11

flash it was called something else anyway

13:13

these animations and stuff like that yeah

13:15

yeah so I was like playing around

13:18

with these animations and stuff like this

13:20

is so cool but you know I

13:22

could never get a job doing this

13:24

as a little way this is like

13:27

I'm this is just hobby just like

13:29

playing around kind of thing you know

13:31

but yeah it's really turned into the

13:33

opposite Yeah, and so the backdrop for

13:36

all this is you've got kids at

13:38

this point like you had kids pretty

13:40

early in life You had two of

13:42

them and You were focused on trying

13:45

to provide for your family. You talk

13:47

about like home life during this period.

13:49

Yeah, so so I had my daughter

13:51

when I think I was 24 Somewhere

13:53

around there trying to think Yeah, yeah

13:56

somewhere around there and that was right

13:58

around the time when I was working

14:00

for geek squad and And then the

14:02

transition into saw That was a bit

14:05

of an interesting thing because I had

14:07

no formal background. And at that time,

14:09

they really did want formal backgrounds. Self-taught

14:11

developers at that time were very minimal

14:14

in the industry. Like all the other

14:16

developers that I was working with, they

14:18

had all gone to college. They all

14:20

had degrees. And so that was an

14:23

interesting experience because a

14:25

lot of imposter syndrome happened then.

14:27

But, you know, it was interesting

14:29

transition, just trying to keep up

14:31

with technology, but it's something that

14:33

everyone has to do, even after

14:35

college, you constantly have to keep

14:37

up with technology. So I didn't

14:40

really find myself at a detriment

14:42

because of not having that college background,

14:44

because the things that I'm doing that

14:46

I was doing it every day as

14:48

an everyday developer were the things that

14:50

I had already taught myself. There weren't

14:53

things that... The other developers were also,

14:55

I found out that the other

14:57

developers were also teaching themselves these

14:59

certain things because there were a

15:01

lot of things that they didn't

15:03

get taught in in college. So

15:05

I found out that, you know, college

15:07

maybe gives you like a fundamental,

15:10

like the fundamentals, right?

15:12

But when it comes to like the

15:14

on the job. kind of training that's

15:16

like the more the more important thing

15:18

like what are you actually going to

15:20

do in your job those are the

15:22

things that you kind of learn on

15:24

the go and that most people learn

15:26

on the go yeah yeah that's

15:28

certainly what I've experienced like I yeah

15:31

Often I'm envious of people that when

15:33

he got a computer science degree and

15:35

were able to go straight into industry

15:37

and learn. And I've got lots of

15:39

friends who have CS degrees and work

15:42

at like, you know, hardcore engineering firms

15:44

and stuff doing like software to like,

15:46

you know, make sure trucks don't like

15:48

have like problems with their engines and

15:51

stuff while they're hauling all this weight

15:53

on like a highway mission critical stuff.

15:55

Code is one on satellites, code that's,

15:57

you know, controlling, you know, military stuff.

16:02

But I definitely think that, oh,

16:04

go ahead. No, no, I think

16:06

I got off topic because you're

16:09

asking me about my kids. Yeah.

16:11

Well, I just want to close

16:13

out this thought real quick that

16:15

it is certainly beneficial to have

16:17

that foundation. And it's not anything

16:19

you can't. I mean, these are

16:21

just books you can grab off

16:23

the bookshelf and get some computer

16:25

science textbooks. Free Code Camp has

16:27

plenty of free courses, including from

16:29

places like Harvard, from the University

16:31

of Michigan, Professor Dr. Chuck. You

16:34

can learn computer science. You can

16:36

learn everything you would learn at

16:38

a CS degree, but you won't

16:40

necessarily have the structure and the

16:42

camaraderie and all the extrinsic pressure

16:44

to perform and to turn in

16:46

your assignments and pass the exams

16:48

and, you know, all that stuff.

16:50

So to some extent, like you

16:52

don't get the exact same experience,

16:54

self -teaching that you would get if

16:56

you went through a formal education

16:59

system. Yeah, for sure, for sure.

17:01

And then so my, I had

17:03

my daughter around 24, and then

17:05

I married, when I married my

17:07

wife, she also had a son,

17:09

and they happened to be two

17:11

months apart. So they're both the

17:13

same age. And so then again,

17:15

like going through this whole transition

17:17

between hardware to software, and then

17:19

I guess I was an engineer

17:22

for close to 12 years, 12

17:24

years. So I was still working

17:26

for Best Buy. I transitioned from

17:28

Geek Squad to Best Buy Corporate

17:30

as an engineer. And so did

17:32

that for 12 years, and then

17:34

just kind of got bored, I

17:36

guess, and started creating content and

17:38

found out, really found out that

17:40

I like to teach developers, like

17:42

to help developers. I did that

17:44

there, you know, with colleagues, like

17:47

helping them, but like how can

17:49

I do this on a larger

17:51

scale? How can I like transition

17:53

into another, another,

17:55

I guess career within

17:57

tech, right? And so

17:59

that was another, like a

18:02

scary moment because you know another transition at

18:04

that point I guess my kids were like

18:06

mid teens and and that was a scary

18:08

moment because you know it's just

18:10

something new obviously yeah is this point

18:12

you have like should I change did

18:14

you have money save for college like

18:16

could you pay it off the house

18:18

it was everything like just gravy over

18:20

there or was there still a lot

18:22

of uncertainty in your life? Yeah no

18:25

no of course not nobody plans ahead

18:27

like that who does that. No, you

18:29

just jump. You just you just leap.

18:31

So yeah, so so I had so

18:33

I created a Decided well actually let

18:35

me let me let me back up.

18:37

Let me tell the actual story. So

18:39

so my kids are in their teens

18:41

at summertime and and and they're like

18:43

you know playing video games and they're

18:46

they're You know just watching TV. Just

18:48

wasting time. All right, so I'm like

18:50

how What can I do to get

18:52

them to at least be somewhat productive

18:55

even during the summertime? And so I

18:57

had them come up with like what

18:59

is something that like a business idea

19:01

like something that you could do to

19:04

like create something over the course of

19:06

the summer. And so they both actually

19:08

came up with the idea of creating

19:10

YouTube channels. Now this is before I

19:12

created my YouTube channel. This is this

19:14

is you know before all that. And

19:17

I'm still an engineer at Best Buy

19:19

at this time. And so my

19:21

son wanted to create a YouTube

19:23

channel for gaming, of course, and

19:25

then my daughter, some like, you

19:27

know, makeup fashion sort of channel.

19:30

And I said, okay, let's do

19:32

it. And my son, he never

19:34

recorded anything. My daughter recorded a

19:36

video, but she never posted it.

19:38

And so I decided, okay, let

19:40

me, like, prove a point here. Like,

19:42

if you set your mind to it,

19:44

you can do anything. So I decided,

19:47

okay, I'm gonna create a YouTube channel.

19:49

Getting like being here on the podcast

19:51

with you like this is not something

19:53

I ever dreamed that I would ever

19:55

do So created a video put it

19:57

on YouTube and it did really well

19:59

like okay this is kind of weird.

20:01

I created another video and did really

20:03

well and I said I'm not going

20:06

to even tell my family about this

20:08

and I'm just going to wait and

20:10

see what happens and if I get

20:13

to like 300 subscribers maybe I'll tell

20:15

them and you know so within a

20:17

month I got 300 subscribers I'm like

20:19

what is what is how is this

20:22

you know anyway so I tell them

20:24

and they laugh at me like they

20:26

like what no you're you cannot be

20:28

a YouTube or you're my dad you

20:31

can't do that yeah But the point

20:33

is like you set your mind to

20:35

it. You can do anything and I

20:38

just continued I continued the consistency I

20:40

really at that that's the really the

20:42

point where I found out I really

20:44

like to teach I really like to

20:47

help developers and so The the channel

20:49

took off and then wrote some stuff

20:51

for free code camp and then Oh,

20:53

and then I met James Q quick

20:56

Very, very good friend of ours. Yeah.

20:58

And he told me about developer advocacy.

21:00

And I said, what is this? This

21:03

is the thing, this is like basically

21:05

what I'm doing now for, but somebody's

21:07

gonna pay me to do that? That's

21:09

kind of strange. Anyway, that's like the,

21:12

maybe the condensed version of that portion

21:14

of the journey. So going, transitioning from

21:16

an engineer to a developer advocate and

21:18

teaching developers. Yeah, and James Kew Quick,

21:21

episode number 153, if you want to

21:23

learn more about him. There you go.

21:25

I had no idea that he had

21:28

such a profound influence on your decision

21:30

to go into developer advocacy, which is

21:32

really just, you know, developer teaching Devs,

21:34

how to use different tools and creating

21:37

tools around that to like, make it

21:39

easier for people to adopt a company's

21:41

technology such as manga to be as

21:44

like a back in his service or

21:46

a database. So, did your kids... Find

21:48

inspiration and what you did and start

21:50

posting their own videos. Do that work?

21:53

Of course not. And they're they're pretty

21:55

old. They're 22 Yeah, I mean like

21:57

my kids are like really young comparison.

21:59

So I'm trying to imagine like how

22:02

far out like like extrapolate out like

22:04

all the different like life experiences stuff

22:06

you've had that I haven't had yet.

22:09

Oh well a new new one coming

22:11

up in two weeks one of my

22:13

daughters is getting married in two weeks

22:15

and the other one is planning a

22:18

marriage in like two months. So yeah

22:20

it's it's it's crazy times right now

22:22

at this household. And you mentioned like

22:24

your other daughter, so you have a

22:27

daughter and a son, but something happened,

22:29

like you mentioned this that I'd never

22:31

heard of before, but I thought it

22:34

was really cool and I thought it

22:36

was worth, you know, pointing out, sharing

22:38

and commending. Yeah, yes. So I have

22:40

another daughter, I call her my daughter.

22:43

We came into our life when she

22:45

was around 14 and she just didn't

22:47

have a really great upbringing, great family

22:50

life, and so we just kind of

22:52

took her in. We couldn't officially adopt

22:54

her, but we call her our daughter.

22:56

So yeah, so and again, like we're

22:59

we're planning her marriage coming up in

23:01

a couple of months as well, and

23:03

she's a part of the family. Yeah,

23:05

yeah, awesome. Yeah, and you all are

23:07

based here in Texas, where I'm

23:10

based, I moved to Texas from

23:12

San Francisco before the pandemic, and

23:14

you moved here like, uh, a

23:16

little earlier than that from

23:18

Louisiana, right? Yeah, yeah, so I've been

23:21

in Texas maybe close to 20 years,

23:23

18 to 20 years somewhere in there.

23:25

Yeah, yeah, and I'm curious

23:27

to see like here, kind of

23:29

like what life is like and

23:31

how it differs like living in,

23:33

you know, mid-sized Texas City as

23:35

opposed to, you know, what you

23:37

described as like a dirt road with

23:40

a single stop light town. Yeah, like

23:42

like a lot of people listening

23:44

might be in that proverbial dirt

23:46

road, single stop light town

23:49

and Would you encourage

23:51

them to try to make a break

23:53

for the city? Well, okay, so yeah

23:55

for sure. Yes, I'll say yes As

23:58

soon as I could get out of

24:00

that little town, I went. So

24:02

I was, let's see, it was

24:04

in 1998, as soon as I

24:06

graduated that community college, I moved

24:08

to Baton Rouge, Louisiana. I lived

24:10

there for a while, and then

24:12

I moved to Lafayette, Louisiana, and

24:15

then I moved to Houston. So

24:17

I did live in Houston for

24:19

about four or five years, and

24:21

then now I live in a

24:23

small. Yeah, very, very, very large

24:25

city. It's like the fourth largest

24:27

city in the US. Yes, for

24:29

sure. And the one thing that

24:31

I truly miss about Houston is

24:34

the food. Such a diversity of

24:36

food there. It's amazing. And then

24:38

we decided to move to a

24:40

smaller town. It's not a very

24:42

small, I mean, it's maybe 50,000,

24:44

60,000 is the population here. So

24:46

it's not, there's all the conveniences

24:48

here. So it's a nice town.

24:50

But Texas is like the size

24:52

of some countries. So it's like

24:55

twice the size of Japan. Yeah,

24:57

exactly. Just in terms of land

24:59

mass and population wise, it's not

25:01

nearly as high. So the population

25:03

density would probably be like a

25:05

quarter of Japan or something, an

25:07

eighth or something like that. Yeah,

25:09

it's crazy. Yeah. And so like,

25:11

you know, the west side of

25:13

Texas is all desert, the east

25:16

side is all forest. And that's

25:18

where I live in the forest.

25:20

Yeah. Awesome. talk a little bit

25:22

about how you think getting into

25:24

software development has changed because a

25:26

lot of people listening to this

25:28

are interested in becoming a developer.

25:30

I'd say our audience is like

25:32

one-third, working developers, one-third, university students,

25:35

high school students, and one-third people

25:37

trying to transition into software development.

25:39

And that describes me. I am

25:41

a career changer. Of course, you

25:43

can read my book. Just Google.

25:45

Learn to code book. And it'll

25:47

be the top non. promoted response

25:49

in Google probably and you can

25:51

read my journey of course and

25:53

you can also listen to many

25:56

episodes of the free cooking podcast

25:58

where we've talked with people like

26:00

Jesse who have transitioned into software

26:02

development through unconventional means that don't

26:04

involve necessarily going back to school

26:06

or going and getting a master's

26:08

degree in computer science or going

26:10

to some intensive program just teaching

26:12

themselves. Like what first I want

26:14

to dig into your methodology a

26:17

little bit more and then we'll

26:19

kind of like talk about how

26:21

things may have changed since you

26:23

taught yourself but like what were

26:25

the main tools that you used

26:27

to learn? early on. So, YouTube,

26:29

YouTube is the main tool and

26:31

and the main, honestly, I want

26:33

to say the main tool is

26:36

digging in and doing it. So

26:38

like, a lot of times, you

26:40

maybe probably heard this term tutorial

26:42

hell where you just like. tutorial

26:44

after tutorial after tutorial. You just

26:46

keep watching, consuming and consuming, but

26:48

you never actually do anything. So

26:50

really the way that I learned

26:52

was I had this thing again

26:54

back, this is the before I

26:57

transitioned from engineer to software developer,

26:59

had this thing that I wanted

27:01

to build, this idea, and I

27:03

just dove in and started building

27:05

it. And as I came across

27:07

an issue, I would Google, YouTube,

27:09

etc. Like figure this thing out,

27:11

right? So it was the learn

27:13

by doing experience that really got

27:16

me. I guess that's how I

27:18

got started anyway. I think that

27:20

answers your question. Yeah. And like,

27:22

when you say YouTube, like, how

27:24

were you approaching YouTube? Because obviously

27:26

YouTube is this vast library of...

27:28

Yeah, yeah. I mean, like, I

27:30

don't know where to start, like

27:32

Freco Camp alone has nearly 2,000

27:34

flowing courses on YouTube. So it

27:37

is a proverbial see that you

27:39

can absolutely drown in if you

27:41

don't like know how to swim

27:43

or know kind of which direction

27:45

you're heading and things like that.

27:47

Like, how, take us back to

27:49

that moment where you're like watching

27:51

technical tutorials on YouTube and you've

27:53

got a project that you're working

27:55

alongside. It's just the project that

27:58

drove the entire thing. the immediate

28:00

needs of the project and just

28:02

in time learning or yeah for sure for

28:04

sure yeah it was it is that simple seriously

28:06

like I come across I get this error

28:08

or whatever error this like maybe I'm like

28:10

trying to figure out how to set up

28:12

set up my environment for instance like how

28:15

do you even get started set up your

28:17

environment so I go find a video how

28:19

do you set up your environment for this

28:21

like what tools do I need to install

28:23

etc. like watch a video on how to

28:25

do all of that and then I guess the

28:27

other thing alongside that at the time

28:29

especially was stack overflow so you have

28:32

it in an error pops up whatever

28:34

okay go to stack overflow type in

28:36

the air somebody else had that error

28:38

and then here's the solution right so

28:40

just a lot of googling stack overflowing

28:42

you tubing etc. yeah and it's

28:44

interesting you mentioned like setting up a

28:47

development environment because one of your most

28:49

popular courses is how to like configure

28:51

VS code which is yeah I guess

28:54

like an open source editor maintained by

28:56

Microsoft, but it is essentially kind of

28:58

like an IDE in many respects, like

29:01

with all the extensibility in the libraries

29:03

and everything. I kind of consider that

29:05

an IDE in the realm of like

29:07

Eclipse or, you know, you know, Jet

29:10

Brain Schools or E Max or something

29:12

like that. Like, like, you can go

29:14

really deep and you can add a

29:17

bunch of functionality with VS code and

29:19

I'll just, like, this is not sponsored

29:21

by VS Code or Microsoft, but, like,

29:23

like, almost everybody on the FreeCo. and

29:26

it's a tool. So you wrote this

29:28

course and you learned early on like

29:30

how to like really hyper customize

29:32

VS code to do exactly what

29:34

you wanted to do and and

29:36

would you consider your like

29:38

kind of like that optimizer mindset

29:40

of like oh I need a

29:42

tool that handles this and where

29:45

you just constantly trying to refine

29:47

your workflow as you would learning

29:49

your code? Yeah, for sure. Like you're constantly

29:51

reaching for tools and a lot of times

29:53

they might be in other areas. So how

29:55

can you put all these tools together? So

29:58

VS code can be as lightweight as... you

30:00

want or it can go as heavy

30:02

as coding and Java like it could

30:04

be a full ID like you said

30:06

and so because there's so many extensions

30:09

some so much customization available there are

30:11

there's so many options out there so

30:13

it really depends on what is your

30:15

use case are you a web developer

30:18

are you a Python developer etc and

30:20

there's tools for everything for for for

30:22

testing for you know the whole range

30:24

of software development all of that can

30:27

be in vs code and it can

30:29

make your life so much simpler with

30:31

it just being there and easy to

30:33

to to to access and and ves

30:35

code like you said being open source

30:38

a lot of other tools are based

30:40

on ves code like cursor is a

30:42

ves code fork and and windsurf is

30:44

a ves code fork so like ves

30:47

code like ves code like most of

30:49

I would say the majority of developers

30:51

use ves code to some degree yeah

30:53

yeah just like you know you may

30:55

not use chrome but you may be

30:58

using some sort of a type browser

31:00

like Edge or something like that. Arc.

31:02

Arc. Yeah. So one question I have

31:04

for you is you talked about using

31:07

a lot of Stack Overflow, a lot

31:09

of Google, a lot of YouTube videos

31:11

to kind of fill conceptual gaps and

31:13

things like that. How has learning new

31:15

things changed for you now that we

31:18

have more AI power tools just over

31:20

the past two or three years? I

31:22

still think. you need to understand the

31:24

fundamentals. You still need the basis. And

31:27

really, the way to do that in

31:29

my, well, my approach to this is

31:31

the docs, especially if a tool that

31:33

you're trying to use whatever has really

31:35

good docs, that's where I learned the

31:38

most just by reading the docs, again,

31:40

by doing. So a lot of times

31:42

I'll have like a quick start tutorial

31:44

and like, here, let me just get

31:47

this going real quick and just. do

31:49

it like try it out and then

31:51

refer to the docs and then if

31:53

there's something like you know further down

31:55

that you need more explanation for that

31:58

that That's kind of when I reach

32:00

to YouTube now. And AI related things.

32:02

I use AI after I already know

32:04

the fundamentals because if AI is writing

32:07

my code, I need to be able

32:09

to read that code and understand what

32:11

that code is doing. So I don't

32:13

just allow AI to spit out some

32:15

codes that I don't know how it

32:18

works. So I still think that you

32:20

need those fundamentals. You need to understand

32:22

what the AI is doing for you.

32:24

And once you get to that point.

32:27

That's when the AI can really help

32:29

you because it's writing code faster than

32:31

you can write code. But you're also

32:33

able to read it and understand what

32:35

it's doing. Yeah, let's say hypothetically that

32:38

you were teaching yourself, but you were

32:40

teaching yourself with the hindsight of somebody

32:42

like yourself mentoring. Yeah. So let's say

32:44

hypothetically we've got like some, you know,

32:47

I don't know if you've ever seen

32:49

like primer or any weird time travel

32:51

movies, but basically you can send like

32:53

messages back to yourself and you can

32:56

say like, like, like, like, like, like,

32:58

like, Don't do this. You know, like,

33:00

how would you coach yourself if, let's

33:02

say, hypothetically, we had like Jesse Jr.,

33:04

which was like, you know, a multiplicity

33:07

style clone of Jesse and you had

33:09

to help your clone, be able to

33:11

like, pay the bills and raise the

33:13

family and stuff like that in like

33:16

some parallel universe. The other Jesse is

33:18

in jeopardy and we need to take

33:20

the successful Jeff. Just for this. put

33:22

him in touch with like the less

33:24

successful Jesse help him get on his

33:27

feet right like how would you advise

33:29

that Jesse if that Jesse were you

33:31

know learning to code in 2025 so

33:33

very similar at one point my son

33:36

asked like how can I learn how

33:38

to code I want to do what

33:40

you do and I'm not just saying

33:42

this like literally what the thing that

33:44

I told him to do was go

33:47

to free code camp And I said

33:49

start here. I'm not just saying that

33:51

honestly that is what I told him

33:53

Because again you need those fundamentals. And

33:56

so I said start here HTL like

33:58

do this and then go over here

34:00

to a little bit CSS and learn

34:02

this job stuff. That's what I told

34:04

him. And that is what, I think,

34:07

even today, that is what I would

34:09

say would be a great start for

34:11

everyone to learn those at least fundamentals.

34:13

And then you could also, again, you

34:16

know, use cursor or, you know, some

34:18

sort of AI to then help you

34:20

write things. And if you don't understand

34:22

something that it wrote, you can highlight

34:24

that and ask you the questions. What

34:27

is this doing? Why is it doing

34:29

this? something like free code

34:31

camp that gives you those fundamentals

34:33

and then the docs of the

34:35

tools that you're using use those

34:38

docs and then Google or or

34:40

or asking AI questions etc. I

34:42

don't think it has changed that

34:44

much I think AI is is

34:46

helping us it's maybe it's becoming

34:48

the new like let me ask

34:50

a question etc but we do

34:53

we still have to be careful

34:55

we can't let it do too

34:57

much Too many things that we

34:59

don't understand. You still have to

35:01

have that basic knowledge Yeah, and this

35:04

isn't really anything new if you

35:06

think about like the the old

35:08

copy paste keyboard for Sacroflow. I

35:10

met with Jill Spolsky Sacroflow co-founder

35:12

in New York and he had

35:14

like that little copy like control

35:16

C control v Sacroflow keyboard And

35:19

like this is always been a

35:21

problem for people like including code

35:23

that they themselves don't really understand

35:25

into a code base like please

35:27

The love of all that is

35:29

totally do not open full requests

35:31

with code that you just copy

35:34

pasted from Stack Overflow or from

35:36

an LM that you yourself do

35:38

not understand. How much time do

35:40

you think it really saves using

35:42

a tool like cursor when you

35:44

already know what it's doing? And

35:46

what are the kind of example

35:48

tasks where it really shines as

35:50

opposed to where it's not like super

35:52

useful? You know honestly it has changed so

35:54

much even in just like the past six

35:56

months every new model that comes out is

35:58

getting better and better. So my answer

36:01

to this would have been different

36:03

six months ago, but right now

36:05

Especially like the boilerplate code of

36:07

like setting up a basic crud

36:09

or or like especially now that

36:11

it can really understand your entire

36:13

code base In the repo that

36:15

you have open. It has really

36:17

gotten significantly better You still have

36:19

to tell it specific things like

36:21

if you're using a certain version

36:23

of React or or

36:26

felt or whatever the case might be it

36:28

might try to use an older version So you

36:30

still have to like be on top of

36:32

it Make sure it's using the the version that

36:34

you want and and it's writing it in

36:36

the way that you want like for instance If

36:38

it's using react if it's using next j

36:40

s pages router versus app router and sometimes it

36:42

might go back and forth using two different

36:44

things So you kind of have to stay on

36:46

top of it again You have to know

36:48

what code it's writing to make sure it's doing

36:50

it the proper way Sometimes it'll pull in

36:52

extra packages that you don't need like it'll pull

36:54

axios in for instance and like I don't

36:56

want axios So I'll have to like specifically this

36:58

kind of comes back to prompt engineering. That

37:00

is another thing to get really good at I

37:03

would say just before this googling like

37:06

that googling was an art to find the

37:08

find your answers Now prompt engineering is

37:10

an art to find your answers and to

37:12

make sure that it's you know Giving

37:14

you the proper output the proper code etc.

37:16

So like I have to say don't

37:18

use axios just use fetch Yeah,

37:22

so a lot of just like

37:24

Specifying and like reigning in the

37:26

kind of tendencies of these olives

37:28

just grab stuff willy -nilly And

37:30

just like okay, this does the

37:32

trick right like a lot of

37:34

times They're based on like the

37:36

frequency with which they observe like

37:38

a certain you know Data structure

37:40

or a approach to it like

37:42

a design pattern or the use

37:44

of a tool So they might

37:46

just gravitate toward like the the

37:48

most common types of tools and

37:50

libraries that may not Necessarily be

37:52

best practice because there are a

37:54

lot of lazy developers That are

37:57

just using tools for stuff that

37:59

they don't necessarily need to use

38:01

and introducing a lot of additional complexity

38:03

and potentially you know future breakage and stuff like that into their

38:05

code base. Exactly and these LLLMs

38:07

they've been trained on who knows what

38:09

repository is out there right and so

38:11

some of these repos are old and

38:13

are using older technologies outdated technology so

38:16

again you just kind of have to

38:18

prompt engineer give it some guidelines give

38:20

it some you know just details of

38:22

how you want it to build and

38:24

then once you do that It really

38:26

does speed up the process. But it

38:28

does say it takes some good use

38:31

to. Yeah, and like how much faster

38:33

would you say like let's say hypothetically

38:35

you got a new project at work

38:37

and you have to sit down and

38:39

you have to build like some new

38:41

tool that demonstrates some new aspect of

38:43

manga to be like a practice

38:45

project or something like that. How

38:47

much I guess additional like like. multiplier

38:50

do you get to your velocity as

38:52

a dev when you incorporate these tools

38:54

when you incorporate when you also include

38:56

like the time you have to spend

38:58

kind of like babysitting the AI and

39:00

crafting a prompt and doing stuff like

39:02

that like how much more productive I

39:04

guess if you had to assign a

39:06

percentage. So with these tools. Yeah this

39:08

is something that I do all the

39:10

time we have to build small demos

39:12

right and then from those demos we

39:14

create tutorials and videos etc etc etc.

39:16

And so building these demos. It could take

39:19

depending on the you know what we're trying

39:21

to demonstrate it could take anywhere from

39:23

one to two days maybe to build this

39:25

small demo out But with AI I could

39:28

do it like I could just pull up

39:30

v0 and and do it in like two hours

39:32

Okay, so assuming a day is like

39:34

eight hours. Oh, yes eight hours to

39:36

two hours in terms of being able

39:38

to build this demo product which again

39:40

is not designed to like withstand the

39:42

riggers right of the real world. It's

39:44

a demo but That is work that you would

39:47

have had to do that is now much faster. Much

39:49

faster. Okay. Awesome. And like, let's say,

39:51

hypothetically, that you're working on some code

39:53

that's actually going to go into production.

39:55

Like, what are the limits of this

39:57

kind of like gain when you really need to...

40:00

consider like readability testability and like all

40:02

like all the people in QA are

40:04

gonna come back all the people from

40:06

security who are gonna say hey what's

40:08

this you can't include this like all

40:11

that stuff when you really have to

40:13

like put it in the context of

40:15

a code base where you've got a

40:17

lot of different competing interests yeah that

40:20

are like trying to ensure that that

40:22

code is as objectively good as possible

40:24

I guess but like meets the central

40:26

kind of tendency of teams code I

40:29

guess. Yeah I mean again if you've

40:31

got the right prompt engineering and the

40:33

right constraints on the AI and it's

40:35

writing you know the way that you

40:38

would normally write using all the you

40:40

know that the syntax then it's just

40:42

going to require that extra bit of

40:44

reading over it again you have to

40:47

know what it's doing you have to

40:49

make sure that you know what this

40:51

code is doing, right? And then within

40:53

a production environment, you've got your code

40:56

testing, you've got all these other things

40:58

that you're going to run it through,

41:00

especially through CI, to make sure that

41:02

everything meets all those requirements for production.

41:05

So if it wrote something that is

41:07

not quite right, it should come up

41:09

in your testing. And then you've got

41:11

your format or etc. to make sure

41:14

it's all, you know. meets all the

41:16

production guidelines. So it definitely still speeds

41:18

it up. And especially when you have

41:20

all those constraints in line, again, back

41:23

to AI is not going to take

41:25

your job. AI is going to help

41:27

you with your job. It's just you

41:29

have to learn how to, and that's

41:32

another course right there. You could take

41:34

a course on how to use AI

41:36

to help you be more productive, but

41:38

that is, I think, what the ultimate

41:41

goal of AI is to make us

41:43

all more productive. Awesome and yeah free

41:45

code campaigns lots of courses on topics

41:47

similar to that and several people have

41:50

been asking if I would be interested

41:52

in creating like a course I personally

41:54

on how I use AI because I

41:56

do use it a lot but again

41:59

like it's just an accelerant it doesn't

42:01

necessarily help me do anything novel. Have

42:03

you found instances where it has like

42:05

done something novel where it like taught

42:08

you something without you specifically prompting like

42:10

hey what does this mean or something?

42:12

Where you saw some pattern and you're

42:14

like oh wow I never even knew

42:17

that this existed. Had there been surprises

42:19

like that? I can't think of any

42:21

honestly. If you were

42:23

learning to code, let's go back to

42:25

you've got the parallel universe Jesse who's

42:28

you know in his 40s and he's

42:30

got the kids and he's just been

42:32

working as a you know a technician

42:34

like an engineer fixing people's hardware for

42:37

the past 20 years and he never

42:39

like deviated and went on the the

42:41

fork in the road where you went

42:44

where you like learn like software engineering

42:46

and stuff like that and started creating

42:48

tutorials and all that. Let's say hypothetically

42:50

you're communicating with that Jesse and he

42:53

still suck working at geek squad if

42:55

it's still I might I think I

42:57

don't know. Yeah, yeah, like it's probably

42:59

a diminished, you know, what it used

43:02

to be but but like he's going

43:04

in and he's he's setting up corporate

43:06

networks and you know configuring machines for

43:08

like local offices and stuff like that

43:11

and he wants to get into software

43:13

engineering. How would you advise him to

43:15

approach that endeavor? considering that now there

43:18

are AI tools that can dramatically speed

43:20

up software development. And at what point

43:22

would you encourage that Jesse to start

43:24

incorporating AI tools to his workflows? So

43:27

people learn differently. I'm a very visual

43:29

learning. That's why I kind of default

43:31

to videos. So like watch, watch one

43:33

of the eight hour long. videos on

43:36

free code camp that gives you like

43:38

the fundamentals right that's that's the visual

43:40

learning that I am you can learn

43:43

from AI like you could say you

43:45

know AI you know teach teach me

43:47

HDML and it will like you can

43:49

spend your time going back and forth

43:52

with AI and asking it questions and

43:54

like you could learn that way if

43:56

that's how you want to learn sure

43:58

I would just be very hesitant of

44:01

writing code with AI when you don't

44:03

understand the code that it's writing.

44:05

So you really need those fundamentals.

44:07

So if you're a very, if

44:09

you like to learn by reading,

44:11

find a, you know, reading content

44:13

like on free code camp to

44:15

learn something. If you're a visual

44:17

learner, there's YouTube. Just, I would suggest

44:19

there's so much free content

44:21

out there. I hesitate

44:24

on telling people to buy a

44:26

course. Go buy this thing and

44:28

do, do, you know, this is

44:31

going to be the end-all, be-all,

44:33

you're going to learn everything you

44:35

need from this thing, right?

44:38

That's not my approach, really.

44:40

It would just be like, you

44:42

know, find the thing that you

44:44

want to build and build it.

44:47

When you come across hurdles,

44:49

find the answer to those

44:51

hurdles. Yeah. And I think

44:53

that that kind of project

44:55

oriented learning where your own kind

44:58

of like... adventure in terms of

45:00

building something that you want is steering

45:02

what you needed to do next and

45:04

you're really responding to the project itself

45:06

and the project kind of becomes your

45:08

boss. I love that kind of learning

45:10

and that's a big part of how

45:12

I learn different things too. Like I'll

45:14

bite off more than I can chew

45:17

with like some you know musical piece

45:19

that I'm I'm trying to you know

45:21

do I do these covers of video

45:23

and music and stuff like oh no

45:25

I have to learn like how to

45:27

reharmonize all this stuff because it was

45:29

only two voices but they do all this

45:31

weird skipping to make it sound like it's

45:33

six voices or something like that. Now I

45:36

gotta figure out how to like do that

45:38

on instruments instead of just programming like the

45:40

the sequence the step sequence music the way

45:42

that they do it for videos. Anyway I

45:45

digress but like I'll often let those types

45:47

of projects boss me around and it's like

45:49

okay this project that I started is now

45:51

my boss. I'm no longer the boss of

45:53

the project and now I have to go

45:56

and learn this thing because the project demands

45:58

it and I, you know, sit... this machine

46:00

in motion, but now I'm ultimately beholden to

46:02

it. And I kind of think that's a

46:04

cool thing because it's not like anybody else

46:06

is in charge of this machine. It's just

46:08

his own thing that you got going and

46:10

you started building a momentum. And to an

46:12

extent like a legacy code base can be

46:14

great similar boss in the sense that you've

46:16

got this giant legacy code base and the

46:18

software engineers operating on the best knowledge and

46:20

best practices of their time using the contemporary

46:22

tools. They built it this way and now

46:24

you need to figure out how to maintain

46:26

it. And at what point does it make

46:28

sense to like rip stuff out rather than

46:30

just maintain? Usually it makes sense to just

46:32

maintain the existing stuff. And you know, there's

46:34

this famous like a total rewrite of the

46:36

code base is usually the last thing a

46:38

company does before it goes out of business.

46:42

You know, like, uh, but the project

46:44

becomes your boss. And I love that.

46:46

Um, and, and do you find that

46:48

often happens, uh, when you're, when you're

46:50

building something that you're just still to

46:52

this day, like learning just in time,

46:55

based on the needs of the project?

46:57

Yeah, for sure. I think that's, that's

46:59

the tip. I mean, that's the norm

47:01

for me. I don't know if it's

47:03

the norm for everyone else, but for

47:05

me, it's, um, I like nobody knows

47:07

everything. And, and especially, um, a lot

47:09

of students will say, well, I don't

47:11

remember all of the JavaScript syntax. I

47:13

don't remember all of the commands. I

47:15

don't remember all the methods, et cetera.

47:17

Right. So like nobody knows everything. You

47:19

have to look stuff up. I have

47:22

to look stuff up every day. I

47:24

can't remember everything either. And that's kind

47:26

of where the AI comes in to

47:28

play. Like, especially as you're manually typing

47:30

out code, you've got the auto completion,

47:32

right? To help you there, especially if

47:34

you're using TypeScript, that's very helpful. Um,

47:36

I'm a web developer, developer obviously. So

47:38

that's why that's the tech I'm talking

47:40

about. TypeScript and un, unalloyed good. Oh,

47:43

uh, TypeScript, TypeScript is amazing.

47:45

I love TypeScript. Yeah. Um,

47:47

it's, it's so beneficial when,

47:50

when you're writing code, you

47:52

just, you know, it just,

47:54

it almost writes the code

47:56

for you without even the

47:58

AI. Um, but then that

48:00

does work the way it's

48:02

designed in the constraints that

48:04

are imposed there. like yeah you know

48:06

all the methods that you have on this you know

48:08

what you know it's gonna tell you if you did

48:11

something wrong right away so yeah and just a quick

48:13

note for anybody who's not familiar with typescript it's a

48:15

superset of JavaScript it's essentially if you already know JavaScript

48:17

you learn a little bit extra and you know some

48:19

typescript and it compiles into JavaScript transpiles into JavaScript and

48:21

then essentially you've got like the same performance and

48:23

everything you get with with with JavaScript

48:25

but you have less errors because it

48:27

turns out like duck typing or what

48:29

do they call it like dynamic typing

48:31

variables and things like that that's a

48:33

common source of errors like you create

48:35

an array and then you try to

48:37

use that array to do something you

48:39

would do with the string Boom, error

48:41

or worse than an error. It actually

48:43

does what it thinks you wanted to

48:45

do, but that's not what you want

48:47

to do. And you have some like

48:49

thing way down the stack that is

48:51

like failing and you don't know why.

48:54

It's like selling, selling, selling, failing,

48:56

right? Because you didn't use typescript.

48:58

So free code game has migrated

49:01

our code base almost entirely to

49:03

typescript from JavaScript. Yeah, it's just

49:05

type, type, safe, dot, JavaScript. Other

49:07

than typesc. blown over by,

49:10

bold over by over the past

49:12

few years, that you've like, you're

49:14

like, you're like really, anything you

49:16

want to hype up or advocate

49:19

for in terms of life easier.

49:21

So like, like Kevin Powell, I

49:23

am also love CSS, I love

49:26

writing CSS, CSS, and I have

49:28

kind of gone to the dark

49:30

side maybe, according to Kevin, is

49:32

I really loved Helen. Tailman is

49:35

amazing. It is really like like

49:37

writing regular just plain CSS. That's

49:39

totally fine. I still love doing

49:42

that, but Tailman just makes it

49:44

so much faster to me. And

49:46

then the other, you know, one

49:48

I want to call is V0.

49:50

Like V0. I've just been using

49:52

V0 a lot. It just really

49:54

helps just ideate and build things

49:56

really fast and it uses the

49:58

text that I like. Like it

50:00

uses all the technologies that I like.

50:02

So that also has sped things up

50:05

for me. Yeah, VZero, I'm not like

50:07

super familiar with this by Bursale who

50:09

developed NextGS and they've got like their

50:12

own kind of like hosting as a

50:14

service like serverless type platform. I guess

50:16

would be a way to describe it.

50:19

Good. Your own camera was last name.

50:21

Rauch, yeah Rauch, yeah Rauch, uh, chill

50:23

dude, innovator in the space. And Kevin

50:25

Powell, just, uh, the king of CSS,

50:28

episode 154, if you want to hear

50:30

me, talk with Kevin Powell about CSS

50:32

and why you need not fear it.

50:35

But you're a tailwind guy now, and

50:37

you're also, uh, using V0 to just,

50:39

it's just like a rapid prototyping tool.

50:42

What do you do with it? Yeah,

50:44

exactly. You just give it a prompt

50:46

and it builds an app for you.

50:48

And the first version, the V0 of

50:51

it, yeah, it's not going to be

50:53

perfect, but you just you keep iterating

50:55

and you can like select portions of

50:58

the of the app that you want

51:00

to change and do things and you

51:02

just iterate, iterate and then it gets

51:05

you like 90% there and then you

51:07

can pull it out and just, you

51:09

have the entire code base. So it's,

51:11

well, it writes in various different text

51:14

different text acts, but, Yeah, and I

51:16

think these tools are really exciting because...

51:18

Yeah, yeah, so Shatzian is just basically

51:21

like components, like pre-built components, and they're

51:23

based on tailwind as well, and you

51:25

can, you know, customize them however you

51:27

want. It's just very un-openinated. So I

51:30

just like building with that stack, and

51:32

then I can just pull it out

51:34

of these zero into my environment and

51:37

just keep iterating after that. Yeah, and

51:39

I think these tools are really exciting

51:41

because... You know developers like in the movie the

51:43

person just opens up the blank coded and just starts coding really quick

51:45

Everything comes together really quickly right in practice. You know if you look

51:47

at like architecture you look at music production you look at anything There's

51:49

like usually some sort of scaffold there Some sort of

51:52

extremely rough draft like a demo

51:54

and then you use that to like

51:56

think about more structurally like okay

51:58

I kind of like where this is

52:00

going or I don't like where

52:02

this is going this it needs more

52:04

this needs more cowbell X Y

52:06

Z And then next thing you know

52:08

you've got like an extremely rough

52:10

prototype And then you use that as

52:12

kind of like of a V

52:14

zero like a version zero of what

52:16

you're ultimately gonna build and then

52:18

so Like even in agile software development,

52:20

they have the notion of like

52:22

a spike Right, you're not trying to

52:24

write like robust code You're not

52:26

trying to adopt best practices You're just

52:28

trying to like feel your way

52:30

through the dark and figure out, okay

52:32

This direction we want to be

52:34

heading and we want to do you

52:36

doing something? Roughly this way and

52:38

then that saves so much time because

52:40

you otherwise you're gonna just develop

52:42

a whole bunch of software And you're

52:44

gonna be typing your HTML header

52:46

and stuff like that at the top

52:48

of the document It's spending so

52:51

much time doing stuff that ultimately you're

52:53

probably gonna throw out So so

52:55

that is the argument for using these

52:57

kind of like fast prototyping tools.

52:59

It's also an argument for using tools

53:01

like you know Figma

53:03

is one we use a lot with free

53:05

code camp so you can just kind of mock

53:07

things out and you can even mock the

53:09

functionality and stuff But it's just being able to

53:11

communicate and this is one of the things

53:13

that If I can get on my soapbox for

53:16

a little bit like people don't understand about

53:18

software development is they think like We're writing code

53:20

or something like that and like that's what

53:22

a dev does they turn coffee into code, right?

53:24

The code is the output usually but the

53:26

actual process of making those tiny decisions like sometimes

53:28

You know maybe millions of tiny little decisions

53:30

through the course of building You know a version

53:32

one of an app or a feature or

53:35

a library or something like that Those

53:37

decisions are essentially taking taking

53:39

all those decisions and codifying them

53:41

in code Similar to like

53:43

how you would make decisions about

53:45

how you want a society

53:47

to be and you'd write the

53:49

code For the society like

53:52

the code of Hammurabi, right the

53:54

giant, you know, Ponaglyf thing In

53:57

the middle of the

53:59

town square that everybody

54:01

I for the eye, you know, like, basically

54:03

the rules through which you expect the software

54:06

to operate and, you know, all that stuff.

54:08

And so, if I will start

54:10

to ease off my soapbox by

54:12

saying that, like, that is why

54:14

I don't think developers are going

54:17

anywhere, even if we have Star

54:19

Trek level, you know, tooling, which

54:21

we will hopefully have and maybe

54:23

much faster than the 24th

54:26

century. But, but yeah. So, I'm...

54:28

thrilled to hear that you're so hyped

54:30

about these new tools and that you're

54:32

quickly adopting these tools, you're not just

54:34

clinging to the comfortable and the familiar.

54:36

And that's something I've always liked about you

54:38

is that you never rest. You're never at like

54:40

the Apex of the Hill. You're like, you're like

54:43

the halfway up, you know, and then you're like

54:45

looking around to see like, am I actually going

54:47

up the right hill or should I climb a

54:49

different one? Right. Yeah, and that's really the,

54:51

I don't know, I feel like

54:53

that's the key to being a

54:55

developer is that love of learning

54:57

and that love of just like,

54:59

you know, continuing to find new

55:02

ways and not getting stuck in

55:04

old methods because you could be

55:06

stuck somewhere in a rut and

55:08

I was stuck in a rut

55:10

for a while just in life,

55:12

I guess, engineering. And then I

55:14

feel like I've kind of, uh...

55:16

I don't know, reborn, I don't

55:18

know. But just that love of

55:20

learning, that's what you can't lose.

55:22

You can't get stuck in a

55:24

lot. You have to just continue

55:26

to see what's out there, learn

55:28

new things, learn new methods,

55:30

learn from others around you,

55:32

etc. Like just continue consuming

55:35

and innovating. That's what we

55:37

need. We need innovation. We

55:39

don't need AI's boilerplate dullness.

55:41

We still need humans to

55:43

help it innovate innovate. I

55:45

want to go back to that, you know, stuck in

55:47

a rut, Jesse, and kind of like look

55:49

at what your life was likely then. Because

55:52

I imagine a lot of people listening to

55:54

this have been stuck in ruts. I've been

55:56

stuck in ruts before as a school director.

55:58

I just kind of let myself go. I

56:00

was just getting like checking out video

56:02

games from Blockbuster, if anybody remembers Blockbuster.

56:04

I was like Batman, you know, what

56:06

was the one, Arkham City or something

56:09

like that, that was a good one.

56:11

And I like just check out a

56:13

different game every weekend and I was,

56:15

all right, I'm double worker, I'm going

56:17

to go home and just game. And

56:19

that was like several years, I just

56:22

basically stopped moving and I stood still,

56:24

I mean, I was still making like

56:26

little incremental progress as a school director

56:28

and learning things. related to my job,

56:30

but like I feel like I started

56:32

to ride that kind of like diminishing

56:35

returns curve and I was gonna maybe

56:37

if I kept doing what I was

56:39

doing for 20 years, I'd be like

56:41

a 10% better, you know, school director

56:43

or 20% better school director or something

56:45

like that, right? Like most of the

56:48

gains that you get like the dramatic

56:50

gains you get at the beginning of

56:52

something like I already done that and

56:54

I hadn't forked off into a new

56:56

path. This is a software development, you

56:59

know, you know, there's no. There is

57:01

no like limit to like the different

57:03

frontiers. You can go explore the field

57:05

is so deep and rich Yeah But

57:07

let's talk about you When you when

57:09

you identified you were in a rut

57:12

like what that was like And how

57:14

you felt yeah, so that was so

57:16

initially learning to code and then transitioning

57:18

into the developer role That was exciting.

57:20

That was an exciting time learning tons

57:22

of things and then doing that for

57:25

several years, that's kind of when I

57:27

was in that same situation, same rut

57:29

of, okay, I'm just gonna do my

57:31

day job, go home, and the same

57:33

thing for me, it was gaming. I

57:35

was just like, wasted so much time

57:38

on games. And so, honestly, I didn't

57:40

know that I was in that rut

57:42

until... that story of creating the YouTube

57:44

channel. Like that really like reignited something

57:46

in me. So I was interrupt for

57:49

quite a while and didn't even know

57:51

it. And then just learning this just

57:53

this new thing and transitioning into a

57:55

new role etc. That that's really what

57:57

sparked it for me. How would you

57:59

compare the rate at which you're learning

58:02

now to the rate at which

58:04

you were learning when you

58:06

were you know fresh out

58:08

of community college working building

58:11

computers and things like

58:13

that I would say it's

58:15

like 100x more now because

58:18

I think mostly because of

58:20

the fact that it's so learning

58:22

material is so easy to gain like like back

58:24

then I'd have to go to Barnes and Nobles

58:26

to get a book and I'd have to sit

58:28

there and read the book right and now I

58:30

can see nobody wants to pay it you just

58:32

sit there and you're like maybe you pay for

58:34

a copy and then you just sit and read

58:36

the book in the bookshop because the book's like

58:38

50 bucks exactly you know like you have to

58:40

like imagine what's on the CD ROM that's glued

58:42

in the back of the book because you're never gonna

58:44

actually be able to afford to own the book right

58:46

to own the book right that's that's what it was

58:48

what it was what it was like when I was

58:50

like when I was like when I was learning Exactly.

58:53

And so now you could sit

58:55

on, I could pull up a

58:57

YouTube video and watch it at

58:59

2X and like I'm learning, I'm

59:02

just like constantly consuming new ideas,

59:04

new content, learning new things as

59:06

much as, as fast as my

59:08

brain can allow me to. Yeah. Does, I

59:10

mean, is that a good feeling? Like,

59:13

like, are you happy that you went

59:15

on this learning journey and you

59:17

didn't say in that rut? Yeah, for

59:19

sure, for sure. I love learning new

59:21

things. Technology has always been like the

59:23

thing that I enjoy. And so that's the

59:25

thing is you want, you need to be

59:28

able to enjoy what you do, enjoy your

59:30

job, etc. Enjoy the things that you're learning.

59:32

If you're just forcing yourself to learn something

59:34

that's not appealing to you, that's not going

59:37

to be fun at all. So I enjoy

59:39

these things. And one thing that I've always

59:41

told all of my bosses, when I stop

59:43

having fun at work, that's when I'm going

59:46

to start looking for another job. and I'm

59:48

having fun at what I'm doing, so

59:50

we're good right now. So you just

59:52

keep having fun. Just make sure that

59:54

the things that you're doing are enjoyable

59:56

to you. Like this is actually my

59:58

side, my side gig. and my hobby.

1:00:00

Everything that I do all day long

1:00:02

is enjoyable to me. Yeah. And I

1:00:05

want to talk about side gigs and

1:00:07

the evolution of your side gig. Obviously

1:00:09

you created this YouTube channel and you

1:00:11

had some like videos just completely blow

1:00:13

up like your VS code one. Like

1:00:15

how have you approached those side gigs

1:00:17

and I guess to an extent have

1:00:19

you explained to your significant other like

1:00:21

the amount of time and energy you're

1:00:23

splitting into those things that you could

1:00:25

in theory be spending with the kids

1:00:27

and all that stuff because I think

1:00:29

that that is a struggle that many

1:00:31

of us are dealing with like myself.

1:00:33

Yeah. Time management time management is definitely

1:00:36

a thing. You have to make sure

1:00:38

that that you take First of all,

1:00:40

you have to make sure you have

1:00:42

enough time for yourself and for your

1:00:44

family. Those have to come first. And

1:00:46

so I've always done that, like I

1:00:48

make sure that I'm not working too

1:00:50

late at night. I'm pretty good at

1:00:52

time management. So the majority of my

1:00:54

day obviously encompasses my day job and

1:00:56

then I'll spend an extra hour or

1:00:58

two on my side gigs. And so.

1:01:00

And then and that also includes some

1:01:02

time on the weekends when when when

1:01:04

I can But now that the kids

1:01:07

are out of the out of the

1:01:09

house It's a little bit easier. I

1:01:11

don't have you know as much to

1:01:13

deal with right now, but you know

1:01:15

at the time It was much harder

1:01:17

to find that time, but yeah, I

1:01:19

just did you have anything that you

1:01:21

tell yourself like when it was like

1:01:23

really late? And I know you said

1:01:25

like maybe you're waking up early to

1:01:27

work early to bro type thing that

1:01:29

like I genuinely just think that works

1:01:31

better because you've got the sun and

1:01:33

if you have kids your kids are

1:01:35

gonna wake up with you know we

1:01:37

call them little roosters I mean they're

1:01:40

basically up it like yeah before the

1:01:42

sun comes up and there's nothing you

1:01:44

can do about it you cannot change

1:01:46

your kids they're just gonna wake up

1:01:48

that early so it makes sense if

1:01:50

you have young kids to adapt your

1:01:52

schedule to go into sleep early but

1:01:54

like let's say you're waking up like

1:01:56

early and you're rising and you're grindinging

1:01:58

the coffee if you're drink coffee and

1:02:00

you're like trying to get some stuff

1:02:02

in before you have to go to

1:02:04

your day job. Like is there anything

1:02:06

you tell yourself when you feel like

1:02:09

oh man I could just I'd love to just

1:02:11

lie here for another hour and

1:02:13

the proverbial snooze button like is

1:02:15

there anything you tell yourself to

1:02:17

get yourself fired up or to keep yourself

1:02:19

pushing forward? I wish that was the case.

1:02:21

I wish I had something good to say

1:02:24

here this is but generally I just I

1:02:26

think about my goals in life, I

1:02:28

guess. My family, like, etc. like, I

1:02:30

have to have a lot of mouths

1:02:32

to feed, a lot of people to

1:02:34

take care of, a lot of people

1:02:36

depend on me, and so, yeah, I

1:02:39

just, I just get up and do

1:02:41

it. But it also, again, kind of

1:02:43

goes back to, I'm not, this is not

1:02:45

a grind for me. This is not something

1:02:47

that is, that is like, something I have

1:02:49

to do. Like, I could literally. just stop

1:02:51

the side stuff if I wanted to. I

1:02:53

could just do the day job. I could

1:02:55

just go about my life, you know, as

1:02:58

a zombie in my day job and not

1:03:00

worry about any of this stuff. I could

1:03:02

stop learning if I wanted to, but I

1:03:04

enjoy doing this stuff. So I just get

1:03:06

up and do it. Let me ask, like,

1:03:08

how long do you realistically think you could

1:03:10

stop learning and just coast? You know, before

1:03:12

it comes back to really start

1:03:15

to bite you and build this

1:03:17

competitive software engineering? Yeah, and in

1:03:19

Philadelphia, yeah, I mean you do have

1:03:21

to you do have to adapt but

1:03:23

when it comes down to like if

1:03:25

you're a software engineer and you're at

1:03:28

a Corporation of some sort most like

1:03:30

you like you mentioned earlier most companies

1:03:32

are Might might have legacy technology they

1:03:35

most companies are not keeping up with

1:03:37

the with the new updates the new

1:03:39

tech that's coming out every day, right?

1:03:42

They have a set technology and they

1:03:44

might upgrade once every five years, right?

1:03:46

so You really could coast for quite a

1:03:49

while in a day job like that in

1:03:51

a day job like like I have no

1:03:53

I'm I have to learn new stuff every

1:03:55

day I have to keep up with technology

1:03:57

and I have to make sure that I

1:03:59

understand anything that updates with the products

1:04:02

that I'm working with in my

1:04:04

day job etc right so with

1:04:06

the job that I have right

1:04:08

now I guess yeah you're right

1:04:10

I would have to keep learning

1:04:12

yeah well I have some fast

1:04:14

questions for you I want to

1:04:16

be mindful of your time because

1:04:18

you're a busy dad and juggling

1:04:20

some side projects which we've talked

1:04:22

about along with a rich day

1:04:24

job in terms of responsibility and

1:04:26

diversity of tasks that need to

1:04:28

be tackled one thing that you

1:04:30

did early on, my understanding is

1:04:32

you, when you were learning the

1:04:34

code, you did seek some professional

1:04:36

certifications. Can you talk about like

1:04:38

those certifications? Did you get like

1:04:40

Linux certifications, CompTia, like anything like

1:04:42

that? Yeah, it was more along

1:04:44

the lines of like CompTia and

1:04:46

most of the certifications were like

1:04:48

around actually the hardware side of

1:04:50

things like networking and servers. So

1:04:52

like I had Microsoft certifications, etc.

1:04:54

But actually have no like software

1:04:56

certifications besides the ones I've gotten

1:04:58

for free code camp. Okay well

1:05:00

I'm thrilled that you own that

1:05:02

you have some free code camp

1:05:04

certifications and I will encourage everybody

1:05:06

to check out the new certification,

1:05:08

the certified full stack developer certification,

1:05:10

which is essentially all the old

1:05:12

certifications combined, and it's much more

1:05:14

rigorous. You may have like an

1:05:16

older certification, you may be like,

1:05:18

oh yeah, I got like the

1:05:20

responsive web design from like six

1:05:22

years ago or something like that.

1:05:24

Believe me, it's working very hard

1:05:26

to continue to renew and refresh

1:05:28

that. And Jesse, I would love

1:05:30

it if you ever have time

1:05:32

and you drop in there and

1:05:34

you shoot me some thoughts on

1:05:36

how we're introducing different concepts, because

1:05:38

I love to hear from engineers

1:05:40

in the engineers in the field.

1:05:42

So those certifications that you got

1:05:44

would you say that they were

1:05:46

worthwhile like at the time? And

1:05:48

would you encourage people to consider

1:05:50

getting those types of certifications? Yeah,

1:05:52

I think so at the time

1:05:54

the the employer that I worked

1:05:56

for they would actually give me

1:05:58

a raise based on how many

1:06:00

certifications. I got like every time

1:06:02

I got a certification I got

1:06:04

a raise. And so I'm not

1:06:06

saying that's going to happen everywhere,

1:06:08

but that's just that was the

1:06:10

case that I had right. And

1:06:12

it definitely is beneficial because you're

1:06:14

again learning specific things that you

1:06:16

need for your day job or

1:06:18

you know whatever it is you're

1:06:20

trying to learn etc. It really

1:06:22

gives you also a little bit

1:06:24

of validity to your knowledge right

1:06:26

you've you've you've completed this thing

1:06:29

you've got the certification so you

1:06:31

have this thing to prove that

1:06:33

you you know x y z

1:06:35

yeah absolutely and i think that's

1:06:37

one of the biggest roles of

1:06:39

certifications is proof of learning exactly

1:06:41

not only have you learned it

1:06:43

but you've met the evaluation criteria

1:06:45

whether that's a certification exam that's

1:06:47

building a bunch of projects that

1:06:49

qualified you to hold that certification

1:06:51

and thus An employer can kind

1:06:53

of check that box. Like, they

1:06:55

probably know a little bit about

1:06:57

networking because they've got the network

1:06:59

plus plus, right? So, network plus

1:07:01

or plus plus? Wait, it was

1:07:03

in plus, yeah, in plus plus,

1:07:05

I think. Okay, yeah. So, so

1:07:07

it's. That was so long ago.

1:07:09

Yeah. But, okay, so, so using

1:07:11

those as a tool to proof

1:07:13

of learning. Just shout out to

1:07:15

Andrew Brown from, you know, exam

1:07:17

pro, Frico Camp. publishes a ton

1:07:19

of his courses, it'll help you

1:07:21

pursue any of those certification exams

1:07:23

if you want to get like

1:07:25

some vendor-specific search and things like

1:07:27

that. So another question I have

1:07:29

for you is just in terms

1:07:31

of consistency, like you've done such

1:07:33

a good job of not kind

1:07:35

of falling back into the kind

1:07:37

of lull that you talked about

1:07:39

earlier where you're like, ah, it's

1:07:41

good enough, I can take it

1:07:43

easy, I can play video games

1:07:45

at all. Um, just candy crush.

1:07:47

I'm telling myself. Well, only the

1:07:49

S to your top shelf, like,

1:07:51

hardcore gamer approved games. Yeah, exactly.

1:07:53

Okay, but like, um, like, let's

1:07:55

say, have the, you had some

1:07:57

downtime and your kids were like,

1:07:59

yeah. and like grown kid stuff

1:08:01

and you what would you do with

1:08:03

that time? I would probably read

1:08:06

an article I would like like

1:08:08

probably something tech related honestly.

1:08:10

That is literally that is

1:08:13

my hobby that is my

1:08:15

it's just everything like I'm

1:08:17

just constantly consuming. Yeah. So everybody

1:08:19

who's like not as passionate about technology,

1:08:21

this is what you have to compete

1:08:23

with. Jesse Hall, who's like, well, I

1:08:26

could be doing anything. I could go

1:08:28

like on a hike or something. Let's

1:08:30

read some technology articles. And if I'm

1:08:32

going on a hike, I'm probably listening

1:08:34

to a tech podcast. I mean, tuche.

1:08:37

Like I listen to the permits about

1:08:39

a podcast. And when I'm in Asia

1:08:41

over the summer, I like to go

1:08:43

to Asia because my family is based,

1:08:46

like a lot of my in- they

1:08:48

you know I'll listen to like tons

1:08:50

of tech podcast while I'm exercising and stuff

1:08:52

like that. I can't listen to a podcast

1:08:54

while I swim but I can listen to

1:08:56

a lot of run or jog or something

1:08:59

like that's all I'm like constantly taking that

1:09:01

stuff yeah but maintaining my body and doing

1:09:03

the important obligatory physical activity you know like

1:09:05

there's the old joke that like a program

1:09:08

what is a body to a program where

1:09:10

it's the thing that keeps your brain from

1:09:12

falling on the ground exactly yeah take care

1:09:14

of yourself please drink lots of water get

1:09:16

up every you know Hour at least etc. Yeah,

1:09:19

yeah, oh yeah, but don't stop

1:09:21

listening to the podcast Regardless what

1:09:23

you're doing those things you can

1:09:25

multitask, right? So it's only part

1:09:27

partially ingest so yeah What I

1:09:29

want to talk to you about

1:09:31

now, and for everybody who's listening,

1:09:33

who's like, Jesse's a great guy,

1:09:35

I love this guy, like, I

1:09:37

can't wait to check out this

1:09:39

channel. We're going to talk about

1:09:41

the dark side of getting extremely

1:09:43

popular in a field that becomes

1:09:45

controversial after you get extremely popular

1:09:47

at it. We're going to talk about Web

1:09:50

3. So, caveat, like, free co-camp. You know,

1:09:52

I have a very measured approach on this.

1:09:54

We're not going to be trying to be

1:09:56

trying to. Fascinating story of how you got

1:09:58

really interested in web. during like a

1:10:01

more innocent era. And how you

1:10:03

became like one of the most

1:10:05

prolific teachers of these tools. Yeah,

1:10:07

like are you ready to dive

1:10:09

into that? Let's do it, I

1:10:11

guess. As far as I can

1:10:13

tell, you've never talked about this

1:10:15

anywhere. So this is like legit,

1:10:17

brand new Jesse Hall, the new

1:10:19

mix tape dropping. Jesse Hall's web

1:10:22

three, excursion. Excursion. Excursion. Okay. We'll

1:10:24

go with that. So set the

1:10:26

scene. Web 3 is getting really

1:10:28

big. There's tons of VC money

1:10:30

flowing into it. And you are,

1:10:32

you know, a dev working. I

1:10:34

think you are probably already working

1:10:36

at manga to be at this

1:10:38

point, like doing a lot. It

1:10:40

was actually, yeah, it was actually

1:10:43

just before I transitioned to manga

1:10:45

to be. Okay. So I was

1:10:47

still an engineer. And I was

1:10:49

working on my YouTube channel on

1:10:51

the side. So I started the

1:10:53

YouTube channel when I was working

1:10:55

for Best Buy as an engineer.

1:10:57

And then, so yeah, Web3 is

1:10:59

getting popular, blockchain, etc. So I'm

1:11:01

like, again, I love learning. I

1:11:04

love consuming content. So I'm like,

1:11:06

okay, what is this thing about?

1:11:08

And so the underlying technology, great,

1:11:10

fantastic, great, use cases, etc. So

1:11:12

learning about it, okay, so let's,

1:11:14

like, I'm creating content at the

1:11:16

time. So let's create some content

1:11:18

around this. Let's see what it

1:11:20

does. And so I wanted to

1:11:22

like go through the process of

1:11:25

like, explaining the blockchain explaining web

1:11:27

3 and doing that through creating

1:11:29

NFTs and and it was very

1:11:31

just educational like here's here's the

1:11:33

technology here's how you can go

1:11:35

about it etc and that video

1:11:37

ended up doing really well and

1:11:39

like millions of views and like

1:11:41

exponentially better than all of the

1:11:43

other videos on my channel and

1:11:46

so Very quickly my channel grew

1:11:48

and from that specifically and I

1:11:50

kind of became known as like

1:11:52

the NFT guy like I'm getting

1:11:54

these pings on Twitter and I'm

1:11:56

getting like every like it's just

1:11:58

it got over like way out

1:12:00

control and then so after that

1:12:02

it took me almost a year

1:12:05

to kind of dig myself

1:12:07

out of that grave of

1:12:09

being known as that that

1:12:11

that persona and very negative

1:12:13

connotations comes with that especially

1:12:16

going from that innocent phase of just

1:12:18

learning and like trying to understand the

1:12:20

technology and it's really great. It is

1:12:22

really great technology to okay now there's

1:12:24

these rug pools and these scams and

1:12:26

all these other things going on and

1:12:28

having all that negative connotation then associated

1:12:30

with me and my channel. So that

1:12:32

was not good. Yeah, yeah, and just to

1:12:34

be clear, there is a lot of technological

1:12:36

innovation. in blockchain distributed ledgers

1:12:38

and stuff like that you read

1:12:40

the original like white paper or

1:12:42

the yellow paper like like the

1:12:45

actual innovations that make Bitcoin possible

1:12:47

and stuff like that innocently enough

1:12:49

if it hadn't gotten swirled up and

1:12:51

everything it might have been like a

1:12:53

super useful technology and maybe it would

1:12:56

be useful in the future. But what

1:12:58

is useful right now for I don't

1:13:00

think this is a controversial take is

1:13:02

mostly for money laundering and defrauding people.

1:13:04

pretty much but let's talk about the

1:13:07

process of digging out of the grave

1:13:09

because like I genuinely believe you're an

1:13:11

innocent party here like you did launch like

1:13:13

an NFT collection that yeah I think like

1:13:16

did like three eith in volume which is

1:13:18

I don't know like you know six or

1:13:20

seven thousand dollars or something like that according

1:13:23

to yeah I don't know how much it was at the

1:13:25

time you talk about that yeah for sure so

1:13:27

like the whole process was like how do you

1:13:29

like How do you create digital

1:13:31

art? And this also came

1:13:33

from, like I have an

1:13:35

artistic background as well, like

1:13:37

my brothers and artists, like we,

1:13:39

I love to create things and

1:13:41

draw, etc. So like, how do

1:13:44

you create digital art and sell

1:13:46

it, etc. And so the point was, like,

1:13:48

how do you build this this app and the

1:13:50

app, like, You can buy it and then you

1:13:52

and then it like you don't know exactly which

1:13:54

which one you're going to get It's like this

1:13:56

whole like open the gift and see what you

1:13:59

get kind of thing So anyway, so the

1:14:01

whole video was how do you

1:14:03

build this thing and and then

1:14:05

when I put it on and

1:14:07

like actually deploying it to the

1:14:09

blockchain everything right so so I

1:14:11

deployed a collection to the blockchain

1:14:13

throughout this video and and when

1:14:15

I put it up for like

1:14:17

something very very cheap like I'm

1:14:19

not trying to again not trying

1:14:21

to rug pull not trying to

1:14:24

make money off of this it's

1:14:26

just like here's how you do

1:14:28

the thing and it did end

1:14:30

up selling I think I only

1:14:32

released I can't even remember how

1:14:34

many I think I only released

1:14:36

like a thousand it's like coder

1:14:38

cats or something like that yeah

1:14:40

you did the art and then

1:14:42

you just yeah software to like

1:14:44

basically take this original art and

1:14:46

like swap out colors swap out

1:14:48

textures yeah and essentially create like

1:14:50

different layers 28 different versions of

1:14:52

this or something like that yeah

1:14:54

so there's different layers and so

1:14:57

it would just randomize and put

1:14:59

different layers with with different things

1:15:01

and it creates unique. Exactly exactly

1:15:03

yeah. That's what it did. I

1:15:05

mean, the video is still up.

1:15:07

It's very educational. Shows you a

1:15:09

lot of great concepts, but the

1:15:11

intent behind it was educated, but

1:15:13

the outcome of it was a

1:15:15

bunch of people learning how to

1:15:17

do this thing and then trying

1:15:19

to scam people and just get

1:15:21

rich quick. sort of things as

1:15:23

well, right? And to this day,

1:15:25

there's still comments of like these

1:15:27

we get these spam comments on

1:15:29

YouTube all the time of just

1:15:32

random things and they're just like

1:15:34

trying to get you to trying

1:15:36

to get information out of you

1:15:38

like like get into your wallet

1:15:40

and etc. Right. So yeah. And

1:15:42

that's one of the big problems

1:15:44

with owning NFTs is if it's

1:15:46

stored in a wallet like that's

1:15:48

in your browser extension or something

1:15:50

like that. One malicious link clicked

1:15:52

and suddenly. you know, the condensier

1:15:54

wallet can be lost in, you

1:15:56

know, a lot of times people

1:15:58

like, it's like the showed and

1:16:00

Freud thing like, oh, the rich,

1:16:02

you know, tech pro lost his,

1:16:04

you know, crypto kitty or something

1:16:07

like that. Let's have a laugh

1:16:09

at that. But I mean, that

1:16:11

is a usability issue with the

1:16:13

technology if it's so easy to

1:16:15

get the tool stolen, whatever the

1:16:17

asset is that is of value.

1:16:19

But again, like we had the

1:16:21

benefit of hindsight, like a lot

1:16:23

of the hype has died down.

1:16:25

over the past couple years, and

1:16:27

now all the people that were

1:16:29

pitching NFTs are pitching AI or

1:16:31

pitching AI. But, and, you know,

1:16:33

like I would argue that AI

1:16:35

has a lot more, I guess,

1:16:37

immediate utility than being able to

1:16:40

create a whole bunch of programmatically

1:16:42

created art and then, you know,

1:16:44

have people have like a unique

1:16:46

identifier of owning such art. Yeah.

1:16:48

and that's kind of the innovation

1:16:50

that was there and you could

1:16:52

argue it was kind of like

1:16:54

a solution in search for a

1:16:56

problem and NFTs have always been

1:16:58

that way but you know there

1:17:00

may be some legit use cases

1:17:02

that emerge so again I don't

1:17:04

want to paint us as like

1:17:06

total true crypto skeptics here but

1:17:08

would you say on a balance

1:17:10

that like how would you weigh

1:17:12

like being infamous for creating something

1:17:15

that was well-intentioned yeah as like

1:17:17

was it a net positive or

1:17:19

net negative or like for you

1:17:21

personally Well for me personally I

1:17:23

still I still think that the

1:17:25

technology is great I think that

1:17:27

because well for instance an NFT

1:17:29

does not have to be Art

1:17:31

it doesn't have to be that

1:17:33

it could be anything like for

1:17:35

instance an NFT could be your

1:17:37

driver's license driver's license could be

1:17:39

an NFT and that is something

1:17:41

like on the blockchain that nobody

1:17:43

can well I mean I guess

1:17:45

they could steal it from you

1:17:47

we talked about yeah how it

1:17:50

could yeah but anyway it's it's

1:17:52

like it's a unique thing on

1:17:54

the blockchain that is personal to

1:17:56

you right so it could be

1:17:58

anything so the technology behind it

1:18:00

is is amazing so like I

1:18:02

don't regret like learning the technology

1:18:04

and like trying to

1:18:06

bury this

1:18:09

NFT stuff.

1:18:11

Yeah. Like,

1:18:14

Spatula City,

1:18:16

we don't

1:18:19

just sell

1:18:22

Spatulus. Exactly.

1:18:24

Exactly. So

1:18:27

I think

1:18:29

I'm back

1:18:32

to the point where it's all

1:18:34

back to WebDev and, you know,

1:18:36

not doing any blockchain content again.

1:18:39

Yeah, okay, cool. And then, like,

1:18:41

what advice would you have for

1:18:43

people who are like trying to

1:18:45

chase, like, the Promethian Fire, this is

1:18:47

the latest greatest thing, like, Do you

1:18:50

have any words of caution or difference

1:18:52

for people that are creating tutorials on

1:18:54

like things that might they might be

1:18:57

you know teaching people how to you

1:18:59

know harness like you know enrich

1:19:01

nuclear fossil material or something like that

1:19:03

just inadvertently not realizing how much harm

1:19:06

can come from it? Like is there

1:19:08

some responsibility that people bear or how

1:19:10

much of this do you think you

1:19:13

can be even anticipated? Yeah no a

1:19:15

lot of it can't be anticipated

1:19:17

I don't think but obviously If you

1:19:19

know something is going to,

1:19:22

could be, you know, possibly,

1:19:24

potentially misused. Be very careful

1:19:26

with teaching that, obviously. But

1:19:29

yeah, some of it just don't

1:19:31

constantly chase the hype train. Like

1:19:33

just learn, again, I like learning

1:19:36

new things. You know, the hype

1:19:38

wave comes on AI and there's

1:19:40

all kinds of things involved there.

1:19:43

Like I like learning about them,

1:19:45

but I'm not going to then

1:19:48

teach everything. when I learn something

1:19:50

new that is going to benefit me

1:19:52

in my everyday life, that's when I

1:19:54

teach it. And that's kind of the

1:19:56

concept that I have had throughout

1:19:58

my education. teaching journey I guess

1:20:01

if you want to call it that is

1:20:03

is I like to learn something and

1:20:05

then teach it so I'm not necessarily like

1:20:07

a lot of the things that I am

1:20:10

that I teach are things that I

1:20:12

have known for a long time but then

1:20:14

there's also brand new things and it's

1:20:16

it's very it's much easier to teach something

1:20:18

when you have just learned it so

1:20:20

that's kind of my things like I'm constantly

1:20:22

consuming content and as I come across something

1:20:25

that's really beneficial to me that's when

1:20:27

I teach it. Well, I just want to

1:20:29

close by asking, what is one piece

1:20:31

of advice that you have for people who

1:20:33

are mid-career? Maybe they're, you know, in

1:20:35

their mid-20s or early 30s. They have kids,

1:20:38

lots of other responsibilities, maybe aging parents. They

1:20:40

want to get into software engineering and

1:20:42

they want to have the kind of career

1:20:44

that you have where you've got lots

1:20:46

of optionality and you get to do fun,

1:20:49

exciting stuff. And if you don't find

1:20:51

it fun, you have the luxury, the privilege

1:20:53

of going and doing something... you know, tangentially

1:20:55

related to that at a different company,

1:20:57

potentially or even changing within the company to

1:20:59

a different department or something. Like, what

1:21:01

is the one big piece of advice that

1:21:04

you would give to help people get

1:21:06

to where you are today? It doesn't take

1:21:08

a rocket scientist to do this. So you

1:21:10

can learn, it's going to take you

1:21:12

time to get the fundamentals down, but just

1:21:15

the dedication is what's needed. If you

1:21:17

have an hour a day to learn something,

1:21:19

go to free code camp, go to

1:21:21

YouTube, go wherever, and learn something for an

1:21:23

hour every day, and just keep learning. That

1:21:25

is my advice. Keep learning as much

1:21:27

as you can. Analyze your day, and I'm

1:21:30

sure you can find an hour, 30

1:21:32

minutes maybe, but try to find an hour

1:21:34

every day to consume some content that will

1:21:36

help you continue your career. One other

1:21:38

thing that I have found is that a

1:21:41

lot of people are kind of stuck

1:21:43

in in a rut as far as They

1:21:45

think that they don't know enough to

1:21:47

go to that next level When you're

1:21:49

looking at job when you're

1:21:52

looking at job postings, you

1:21:54

meet at least least 50% of

1:21:56

the things that of the

1:21:58

things that they're asking

1:22:00

Apply apply that that that

1:22:02

that up level position

1:22:04

or new position or

1:22:07

whatever. or If you

1:22:09

have at least or because

1:22:11

they're never going

1:22:13

to find somebody that

1:22:15

knows 100 % going of

1:22:17

what they're asking for.

1:22:20

that knows 100% of if you

1:22:22

are willing to

1:22:24

learn and you've got

1:22:26

that desire got motivation, You

1:22:29

you know what will happen. Just apply. apply wonderful advice and

1:22:31

I advice. thank you again want to thank you

1:22:33

again, Jesse, us for joining us. to I've got

1:22:35

links to writing of Jesse's writing, some of

1:22:37

Jesse's courses, his his VS code course It's three years old,

1:22:39

years old, but I don't think it's

1:22:41

fundamentally out of date. Like a lot of

1:22:43

the stuff is still the same. is I

1:22:45

encourage you all to check it out. you

1:22:47

all to And check it out and been an absolute

1:22:49

pleasure, man. Thanks for coming on the show.

1:22:51

Thanks I appreciate it. Thank you. show. I Until

1:22:54

next week, everybody. you. Until

1:22:56

coding. week everybody. Bye. coding