Hey, everyone, welcome to the Unhandled Exception podcast. I'm Blanc Clarke and this is episode
number 48. So, getting very close to 50 episodes, which is quite exciting. And today I'm joined
by Isaac Levin. And rather than talk about a particular topic, we've decided we're just
going to chat and geek out and see where the conversation takes us. So, welcome to the show,
Isaac. It's great to have you on. Thank you so much for having me, Dan. I'm quite thrilled to be
speaking with you. I think it's going to be quite a fun conversation. So, could you just give the
listeners a quick introduction to who you are and what you do and what you enjoy doing?
Sure. I'll give the abridged version. So, I'm Isaac Levin. Most people probably know me on the web
social tech space in the .NET community. So, I've been a developer for my entire professional
career and I've kind of wore a bunch of different hats. You know, I've been a typical back office
line of business application developer in ranks, things in .NET C sharp. And I've been a consultant
and I've been in product marketing and now my list foray is into developer advocacy, where I currently
am a .NET developer advocate at AWS. That's cool. I'm really looking forward to digging into that
in a bit. But before we do and start chatting code, technology and stuff, I'm just going to quickly
do this episodes list and mention. And this one goes to Siraj Kanchura, who tweeted the screenshot
of his Spotify wrapped top three podcasts this year. And the three were Hanselman, it's by Scott
Hanselman. The Waveform podcast, which I've not actually listened to, but looking at their list,
it looks pretty good. And this podcast, so he said, these are the only podcasts I listened to
and I suggest others do too. So, thanks Waveform, Scott and Dan for sharing such
interesting, varied and valuable content this whole year. That actually really made my day
and it was an honor to be included alongside Mr. Scott Hanselman, which was quite amazing.
I believe you've actually spoken to me recently, I was listening to that episode on your podcast.
Yeah, no. So, we can talk about my podcast in a second, but I just want to just call out
like the fact that you're mentioned at the same level as Marcus Brownlee, who's like probably
the most influential tech person on the planet. And then Scott Hanselman, who obviously in the .NET
and the technology base in general is a pioneer as well. Like,
that's quite good company Dan. So, I think you need to be a bit more braggatory as it pertain to that.
Like, you should definitely be leaning on that. Put on your website, put it everywhere that you see.
Top three podcasts for this individual along with Scott Hanselman and Marcus Brownlee. So,
that's great. Kudos for you. Thank you. I can't do bugging. I'm not very good at that. So,
it was quite an honor. Is that because you're from the UK? You're so modest because you're
from the UK. Yeah.
Maybe. I've not got my tea here, actually, my cup of tea. Oh,
actually speaking about beverages, I know the logo on your podcast is like quite a big coffee
machine. So, we definitely need to talk about that. I saw a Cressain tea, he does a lot on Blazer,
he probably know him. He tweeted a week or so ago, like he'd done some coffee art.
He made a coffee with his coffee machine, does some coffee art. And he'd taken a photo of his
coffee he'd made. And in the thread, he'd said what coffee machine he had.
So, I googled it and I definitely got coffee envy. I think when I next remockage my house,
I might buy it.
Yeah, so, I've never gone the route of having like the proper coffee machine with the espresso
and the fra thing. I've never done that. I'm a pretty boring, just drip coffee,
coffee machine sort of person. If I can just be completely honest, I'm not a huge fan of all the
different iterations of coffee. I like coffee because only iced coffee though, for whatever reason,
I don't like hot drinks. But I just like, it's not the energetic part of it, it's just like
there is some things soothing about drinking a cup of coffee. And obviously, you know, that kind
of leads into like the podcast thing. Like, I just think the phrase, so my podcast is called
coffee and open source. And I think that the name just goes very well together. I used to at least
try to like talk a little bit about coffee at the beginning, but I realized like,
some guests don't drink coffee. Like, you mentioned like Scott Hansman has been on my show. Scott
Hansman is very much a diet coke only person. So, like that he's like, you should have changed
it to diet coke and open source. I'm like, oh, I missed an opportunity to do that. But yeah,
it's quite funny. Like, some people are very serious about their coffee. I'm not quite that serious.
Yeah, I did like on that episode. I think, because I was listening to it in the audio,
I think you do video as well, which we can talk about. So, I wasn't actually seeing the visual.
But I think you were talking about a green screen and he was suggesting changing the
background to be diet coke or something. Yeah, so that particular episode is funny because I had
so for the folks who haven't seen or listened to my podcast, I live stream it on Twitch.
So, and this will have a video recording of it. And then I obviously do some audio processing
for the audio version that goes out to all the different podcast clients. But for the video,
so I was having an issue with my lighting in my office. So I tip, I used to have a green screen
behind me. And the green screen was just basically, you know, allowed me to put a logo
or whatever. And I was having issues. So the green screen just completely got messed up. And Scott,
thinking that hilarious, you know, mentioned a couple of things, he brought out his green screen,
he set it up and change his background. It looked great because Scott has a great setup.
And it was just, it was just quite funny. So if folks do like listening to Scott Hanselman
make fun of people, definitely take a look at that podcast. It's available on YouTube at
Coffee and Open Source, you can search for that on YouTube. Yeah, it was fun. Like always talking
to Scott is a good time talking to people in general about tech is great. And I don't know
if you have a similar feeling as somebody who does a podcast, but I do it solely for myself,
just getting to have conversation with people that I typically wouldn't get a chance to tattoo,
right? Like, I've interviewed Kelsey Hightower, I interviewed Liz Fong-Jones,
who works at Honeycomb, I've interviewed, obviously Scott Hanselman, Martin Woodward,
I've interviewed people that I would literally never have a chance to talk to,
unless I convinced them to do a podcast interview, right? So it's just a great opportunity for me to
really build my own thoughts about things. Like, I don't know if you feel the same way,
like I have a huge bias for a lot of things. And how I see it is the more people I talk to
that have different backgrounds as me, I have an opportunity to change as an individual,
whether it be professionally or personally. And that's the reason why I do the podcast.
I don't do it for money, I don't do it for fame. I literally do it for myself.
And the only thing that I tell people is, at the end of the show,
if when I say it's been an hour, and their response is, oh, that was quick, I had a lot of fun.
That's the only thing that I hope for, right? Because, again,
I'm not in it for anything other than me having a great time and the person
that I'm interviewing have a great time.
Yeah, absolutely. I'm kind of exactly the same. I do it because I love
geeking out with people and just chatting technology. And I enjoy that.
I've been really looking forward to this because I just enjoy chatting.
And it's why not record it? I think I've, for many, many years, I've been an avid podcast listener.
I think hearing the passion that hosts and guests have on podcasts
over the years is what's made me more passionate about software development now
because it's kind of contagious, isn't it? And I've been thinking about starting a podcast
for quite a while. And then when COVID hit, so there was lockdown, I knew I'd be working
from home for quite a long time to come. And I'd be talking with work all day long.
I invested in a decent kit. And I thought, well, this is the perfect opportunity to do so.
It was the end of lockdown where I started it. But I'd add that year of working from home
where my job was just talking tech as part of work over teams and screen sharing.
So I've kind of got a bit of practice just through work naturally by talking tech.
And then I decided to go for it. And yeah, it's been fantastic. And as you say,
I've spoken to people I would never have spoken to.
Yeah, it's funny, isn't it? And this isn't in any way to kind of
talk about the pandemic in a positive light. But the one thing that it did do
is it forced a lot of people to think a bit differently about working from home.
That includes having at times a good video and audio setup. So you feel even more connected
to the person that you're talking to. Because we can't physically see each other,
physically touch each other, whatever, right? So having the most high fidelity camera
or a high fidelity camera and a high fidelity microphone, it helps that experience.
And I think, and this is kind of what you were saying, like the outcome of that
is that now everybody has like a setup that you can definitely do a podcast.
Because I have thought about doing podcasts or other things like a few years ago too.
And it's like, oh, I don't want to invest in a really nice microphone,
like cause I'm working out of the office. I don't want to invest in a good webcam.
But now, like I have those things because I needed them.
So now I might as well make use of them in another way, which I think is really valuable.
Yeah, I think before I got used to working from home, the idea of talking into a microphone
would have, I don't want to say terrified me, but I just got used to it because
everyone did. So going back to this Scott Hansman episode again,
one thing that I found quite interesting is where you asked Scott,
how much things had changed like working remotely?
And he had said, he's done it forever anyway.
And I guess when I heard that the thing I thought was,
well, it must have, the fact that everyone else was remote as well,
must have made a massive difference.
And as you say, everyone's getting the gear or maybe not to this level,
but actually getting used to talking through microphones and webcams.
And it just changes our whole industry, really.
Yeah, I think that there's one thing to call out to that's really important.
I don't know if it was Scott who mentioned this first or somebody else,
but there's a huge difference between remote work and pandemic work, right?
So when March of 2020 came around and everybody started to have to work from home,
their experience is a bit differently than folks that have been working remotely for a long time.
I used to work remote too.
And funny enough, I took a job that required me to be in an office.
And I literally had that job in an office for three or four months.
And then I was working remotely again.
So I understood what it meant to work from home.
But I think the biggest thing is being forced to work from home
and choosing to work from home are two completely different ways of experiencing things.
In tech in general, we have a bit of bias because
usually we enjoy buying tech things.
So we want to go and research the best webcam or the best audio
or find the mixer that we want or a green screen.
Or maybe we have enough money that we can have a house that we have a dedicated space.
And then one of the things that I've tried to do,
especially in the last few years, is build empathy for folks that don't want that.
Right?
Like, there are a ton of people that were forced to work from home in their closet,
on their kitchen table, whatever.

And I think that experience isn't great.
So I could definitely understand why some people wouldn't want to work from home
because their home situation or for whatever reason,
they don't want to be there.
They'd rather go into an office and get that experience of being in office, which is great.
Me personally, I love working from home because I don't have a commute.
I can hang out with my family a little bit more.
I have a dedicated space where I can nest and build something that makes me comfortable.
But not everybody has that luxury.

And I think it's really, really important to think about that.
It's like, okay, well, working from home is really great,
but it's not for everybody.
It's funny enough because I used to do a talk,
like pre-pandemic at events where I think the name of the talk was
working from home is not for everybody or something like that.
And it was just an hour long conversation about the pros will work from home
and the cons will work it from home and things that you could,
I guess, do better from home in some scenarios
and some things that just don't work very well at all.
And it was always a great conversation and funny enough,
like the pandemic hit.
And then I think a lot of the things that I talked about in that talk
became quite relevant for a lot of people.
Yeah, definitely.
I think one of the key things you touched on there was not everyone can afford to.
And I think we're talking about having a dedicated room in the house
that we could then make an office.
That is a very privileged thing to say that I've got this room
that I can just have as my office moving forward
because I've decided I'm going to start working from home.
A lot of people will be on a laptop, on the sofa,
with the laptop on the knee.
And if you think about doing that all day,
like the backhakes, like head leading forward.
So we are very privileged and lucky.
And I think it's important that if you're in that situation,
you remember that.
Yeah, I think even in general,
like here's, here's something that I found quite interesting, right?
So I had a colleague.
Is this when I was working at Microsoft at the time?
So I used to work at Microsoft for a few years.
And like I had a colleague and both her and her husband worked from home.
And there was one office.
So I'm guessing some conversation they had about who got the office or whatever,
because she was always taking calls from the kitchen table
or calls from the office or whatever.
And I think that that just introduces a interesting wrinkle to a relationship, right?
Like, oh, I need the office.
My job is more important than yours is.
Not saying that specifically,
but it's hard to negotiate something like that.
Like as two people working from the same house
and they don't have enough space to do it.
You know, that could be taxing on a relationship, right?
So let's look at another additional wrinkle
that not a lot of people really thought about.
Because if you had a family where both people were from home
and there's not one office, like it's very weird.
And I don't know if you've experienced this,
but like being in a room and having somebody else
in another room on a call and you can hear it,
it's if it's at your house,
it's different than like in an office building, right?
So it is definitely very interesting,
but I'm glad that now people have options.
Like if they want to go back into an office,
if their employer is allowing it,
they have that flexibility, if they want it.
If they want to stay at home,
people can do that as well.
I think the worst thing that could happen
is everybody being forced to do something
they don't want to do,
or if they don't have the luxuries
of some of the things we talked about.
It's challenging,
but I'm glad that I'm not saying COVID is over,
but I'm glad that we've gone to a point
where the majority of people have vaccines,
the majority of people are being safe,
and we're coming back to some sense of normal.
So you don't think we'll ever actually be normal.
I think COVID is going to be around forever.
But now we have some mechanisms to, I guess,
return to some sense of what it was before this time.
Definitely.
I hate saying about COVID having a silver lining
because a lot of people,
it was absolutely awful.
And so I feel guilty saying this,
but it has for our industry.
And I guess there's other things as well,
like with the mRNA research that came out of that,
and now they're finding vaccines
for lots of other stuff as well.
So it's made a massive impact to medicine as well.
Oh yeah, I totally agree.
I think it is hard to say there's a silver lining in things,
but I think the worst thing that we can do
is always play the victim,
or always think about things from a negative light.
Like I'm a natural pessimist,
so I always think about things negatively.
So it's really,
one of the things that I'm looking to do in my life
is just try to be more optimistic about things.
And yeah, to your point,
like the amount of research that's been done in this space
to combat not just COVID
or those sort of respiratory illnesses,
but all illnesses using this mRNA concept.
If we can get to a point where we can solve
a lot of the overarching diseases
that really cause problems with the human population,
that's a good thing.
If we had the opportunity to do these things before,
we would have.
But I don't think we were given that opportunity.
We were forced to create this sort of,
I guess, I don't know if it's technology
or what you would phrase it, sort of medicine.
We were forced to do it
because literally people were,
quite frankly, people were dying at a clip
that was unsustainable.
So we had to do something like this.
And we got all of the funding
and the escalation of different things.
And now we've gone to a point
where we can take these learnings that we had
and put them to other things that we could tackle,
which is great.
And yeah, it is a silver lining.
I mean, it's a shitty thing,
like thinking about it, right?
But I think in general,
if we can do better
and have a better experience in the long term,
it's somewhat worth it, right?
Yeah, it's a difficult one
because it depends who hearing the conversation
would have different opinions
of what's worth.
Oh yeah.
Just like us, but...
Oh yeah.
So it's always a very tricky topic to approach.
So keeping with this people theme
going back to your podcast,
one thing I quite like about it is
that if you look at my list of episodes,
it's very topic, gRPC, Vim,
dotnet, 7.0,
or whatever the topics are.
So it's that with guest name.
Well, all yours are just guest name.
It's very much about the people.
And I quite like that actually, just...
It's not topic.
It's like each subject is just a person's name.
Yeah, I think...
And part of the reason why I do that is one,
I think the idea of interviewing people
with a list of questions
and you have a particular agenda from it,
I don't enjoy sort of conversations like that.
And that's why, you know,
not to plug your podcast on your podcast,
but like that's the reason why I like your podcast
is that there isn't like a,
hey, here's a list of 60 questions
that we're gonna ask, right?
And the reason why I tend to go towards
like the people side of things is
I've had conversations with people
that I literally know nothing
about what they work with, right?
So like I've interviewed people
who are on the language design team for Go.
I've interviewed people that,
you know, I interviewed Joe Beda,
who was one of the founders of Kubernetes, right?
Like I can't have a conversation
about Kubernetes with somebody like that
because I'm gonna sound like an idiot.
But what I can do is I can talk about the things that
they think about when they think about tech.
And my thing is like,
we all have passions, right?
Like if you're passionate enough
to spend a career in tech
and a career influencing tech
or the community of tech,
you're very passionate about
and your passion will shine through.
We could talk about literally anything.
And if any of your listeners
have listened to my show,
there's general themes
that we've have in every single episode.
And it's always about, you know,
how we can do better in tech,
how we could be more diverse in tech,
more inclusive in tech,
cause those sorts of things that I've interested in
because I think in general,
we create these echo chambers in tech
and good, bad or indifferent,
we don't get very many opportunities
to leave our echo chamber.
But the thing is,
is that even though outside of our echo chambers,
we still have a lot of things in common.
And that's the thing that's really interesting to me
is like building these relationships with people.
Because like, look,
you and I both love .NET, for instance, right?
But there's people who don't care about .NET.
There are some people that hate .NET.
That doesn't mean that I can't have a conversation with them.
It sometimes can be a bit harder.
But it doesn't mean that we can't find something
to talk about for an hour with no problems, right?
Yeah, definitely.
So if I actually think back in my career,
I can think of like various different things
that happened,
which kind of made me get a bit more
out of my comfort zone, but incrementally.
And without those things,
there's no way I would have had the confidence
to start a podcast.
Sure.
But obviously, you want a podcast as well.
And I'm quite interested to hear more about your background.
And if there was any of those key,
key things that you did,
which kind of helped grow your comfort zone
and get you to the point where you are now.
Yeah, I think there's a couple of like catalyst times
in my career that I think about a lot.
You know, I think one that comes to mind a lot,
especially recently,
and I have no idea why,
is earlier in my career,
I've always been a person that has,
I guess, learned things quickly, right?
Like, and that's, I mean, that's not,
I'm not the best developer,
but I pick things up pretty quickly
so I can solve problems pretty fast.
That's led me to be somewhat lazy, I think.
But regardless of that,
I think one of the things that I think about a lot
is that I was working at a job a long time ago now.
And I was the youngest person on my team,
but because of the fact that I could get stuff done,
I kind of had turned into like a somewhat of a,
okay, Isaac,
we can just give Isaac this work and Isaac will do it.
So I was given a,
a kind of a high profile task that I need to do.
And let's just say that it didn't go the way that I wanted.
And it basically involved me
deleting a bunch of records from a production database.
And, you know, I remember after it happened,
like we got all the data back,
there's backups and everything.
Nothing was really fine.
There was like an hour window
where things were not very great, right?
So afterwards, I had a conversation with my manager
and he was like,
look, you've had,
like this is a great learning experience for you,
like a very positive sort of conversation.
And it's like, you know,
I think we all can learn something from this, right?
And I was like, okay, cool, that's great.
And then two days later,
he brought me into his office and they fired me.
Oh, wow.
Yeah.
Because of that.
Because of that, yeah.
Because the CEO of the company found out about it.
It said somebody needs to get fired for this.
And I think what I took from that was,
oh, well, it really doesn't matter what we do.
There's always something that we have no control over.
And I remember, like at the time,
I was engaged to be married,
we were paying for the wedding ourselves.
And I texted my wife on my way home,
it's like, I just got fired.
And she's panicking, obviously,
because she's getting married in a few months
and I don't have a job now.
So I go home and the first thing I do
is I give her a hug and I say everything's gonna be okay.
And then I go and I start filling out job applications
like immediately.
And I had a job, like within a week, less than a week.
It wasn't like my ideal job,
but it made sure that we still had a stream of money
to be able to do things that we wanted to do.
And I think at that point in time,
I use this phrase falling face up a lot.
Basically, like if you fall down,
like if you're buttering toast or making a sandwich,
and you drop the bread,
if it falls face up and the wet part isn't on the ground,
life's great, right?
If it lands face down,
like, oh, it's probably not the best thing to eat,
depending on where it lands, obviously.
But if it falls face up,
you have an opportunity to eat that sandwich
or eat that piece of bread
without feeling kind of gross about yourself.
So I use the phrase falling face up
because if we have the opportunity, if we fail,
that's an opportunity for us to learn from that failure.
And if we can fall face up and learn something from it
and then continue about our lives,
it gives us an opportunity to learn from our mistakes
and grows an individual.
So I think from my perspective,
like that's the biggest thing
that I've taken out of something like that, right?
Like I got fired,
and the first thing that I did
is I wouldn't got a new job immediately.
I didn't sit there and be sad or whatever.
So that's one thing that I think about a lot
about, oh, like,
if I would have just been a bit more negative
and just sit around the house or whatever,
like people get fired all the time
and they decide to kind of sit in their own sadness.
I didn't want to do that.
And I think the fact that I was able to just rebound
fairly quickly, looking back at it,
it's like, oh, that's a very adult thing to do.
And I wasn't very old at the time.
Like I was engaged to be married,
but I was in my mid-20s.
So it wasn't something that I looked back and like,
oh, that's a pretty adult thing for someone to do.
So that's one example of something
that's happened in my career or my life,
where I'm like, oh, like,
that's definitely a moment
where you learn a bit about yourself
and you kind of had an idea
about things that are interesting
or things that are important to you.
I have other origin stories too about other things,
but we can chat about that example
if you like a little bit.
Yeah, I found it quite interesting
when you said about they've fired you
because you deleted some records in the database.
And it reminded me of a recent episode
with Aris Klassen,
where we're talking about her book,
The Copy and Paste Developer.
We had a very similar conversation
about making mistakes as a developer.
And a point that was raised was that
you shouldn't be able to do that in production.
Sure.
Because they should have policies around.
You should have security policies
that especially it sounds like you were a junior developer
but that point shouldn't be able to accidentally delete records in production.
So it's like your fault or it's like the company's fault.
Yeah, I mean, there's a lot more nuance to this story
that I didn't really talk about.
But let's just say that we had gone through
multiple iterations of testing in other environments.
And let's just say that for whatever reason,
that the implementation that we created
that worked in a bunch of other environments
didn't work in production.
So it was something that literally
had multiple people sign off on,
was tested pretty thoroughly
and just didn't happen to work out the way we wanted to production.
And since I was kind of the main person on it,
I assumed that there was some decision to,
okay, we should have this person pay the tax for it.
But yeah, I totally agree with your point about like,
production data is specifically
is of the utmost importance to a business.
And if you introduce an opportunity
in any facility to tarnish or damage that asset that you have,
it's a flaw in the system, right?
Mistakes happen and that's why we do backups
and all these sort of things.
But at the end of the day,
there needs to be a pretty substantial level of investigation
into any change to production, right?
But at the same time, look, we're developers.
Moving things to production for us should be very easy.
Oh, it's just a publish command or whatever, right?
But it's not as simple as that.
And I know that things like DevOps tools
and other methods make things substantially easy,
like from a physical perspective to get things there.
But there's all these other topics that we need to consider.
Is this going to affect things?
Are we going to create regressions, whatever?
And I think from a technical standpoint,
we rush too much to...
Let's just use the tool to get it into production
without really thinking about what does that actually mean for the business.
Yeah, I guess also you mentioned about DevOps tools and things.
Back then, probably the standard was to drag and drop and copy and paste stuff.
I suppose that those are the binaries,
but then data is something else
because you've got to think about breaking changes.
So data is much, much harder.
It's one of those things where things like that do happen.
But the outcome of that should be,
how do we stop it from happening again?
Not who do we fire?
Yeah, I mean, I made out pretty well.
I always think about, oh, if that didn't happen
and I stayed there, what would my life be like right now?
I always kind of think about stuff like that.
And I think in general,
I'd still have gravitated towards what I'm doing right now.
One story that's also interesting is,
for a long time in my career,
people in tech say I was a dark matter developer.
I was a back office developer.
Like I was a consumer of technology,
not really somebody who was an advocate for it or a community member.
And I was totally fine with that.
Like I was making good money.
I was doing interesting things,
but I wasn't really giving anything back.
And I remember I was working at a company,
I had the opportunity to go to the build conference.
And I ran into a friend of mine
who had, they become a Microsoft MVP.
They were considering joining Microsoft.
And we used to work together
and we had gone two different ways.
And he had been gone more into the traditional
like, oh, I'm a dark developer,
community champion or less sort of stuff.
And I went kind of a different way.
And I remember him talking about
how much he was getting out of it
and how passionate he felt about tech.
And I kind of had this epiphany.
It's like, why can't I do that?
I love having conversation with people.
I love working with junior developers
and these sort of things.
I should do that.
So I started contributing to Microsoft docs
in the C Sharp space.
And that led me into wanting to do public speaking.
And then that led me into doing all sorts of other things.
And fast forward a few years.
And now I talk about .NET for a living.
Like that's pretty crazy to think about.
Like I don't write a lot of code.
I write a lot of demo code.
But I don't ship stuff.
It's only .NET.
It's very interesting to think about
because I could have just stayed building
back office, line of business applications
and been totally fine probably.
But I went down this career path instead
where now, I guess my brand,
not to say that I have a huge brand,
but my personality, my brand is also
a important part of what I do.
Not being able to write code.
Yeah, definitely.
Although I think I would,
if I wasn't writing code at all,
I would quite miss that.
Sure.
I've recently been doing some
Azure BTC stuff where it's been,
oh, the custom policy is there is XML.
So I've been coding in XML and that's horrible.
And then, so I was doing that for a chunk of time.
And then I went to doing,
actually write some .NET code.
And it was like, oh, this is amazing.
I feel like good again.
I can write some .NET code.
And I would also miss if I was just doing that
and not doing any kind of,
because I'm a consultant.
So I'm kind of doing,
I'm lucky that I'm doing coding,
but I also speak with a client,
like do mentoring and that kind of thing.
And I would miss that side of it too.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, I think that one of the things that,
you know, everybody has their own levels of interest, right?
Like I think me specifically,
like the thing that I enjoy the most
is speaking with other .NET developers,
developers in general.
That's why I do a podcast.
That's why I love to go speak at events.
That's why I like to do meetups.
That's the part of the job that I like.
The writing code part,
it fulfills a need for sure.
But it's very much a conduit
for this other thing that I have more interest in.

Like if I stopped writing .NET code
and then a few years,
like I'm still like showing on stage,
like how to do things in like,
you know, web forms.
No one would want to see my talks, right?
I have this responsibility to pay attention to what's new,
make sure that I understand it,
be able to write code that shows the new things.
And it's all to be able to,
I guess, be more accessible way for the developer community.
Because not everybody has the luxury to
go in and look at the ASP.NET Core repo
and like follow along what's going on.
Or be on Twitter and see like,
you know, what the .NET team,
like what they're tweeting out
and some of the cool concepts that they're building, right?
I could be a more accessible way
to get that content to folks.
Not to say that people should only pay attention to me
and not pay attention to other folks,
but like I have conversation with people all the time.
And this is something funny with,
you know, I currently work at AWS, right?
So I talk with AWS customers.
And not a lot of AWS customers
are aware that .NET runs on Linux, right?
And that's like been like around for five years,
five plus years, right?
And it's not that they're not,
like they don't care,
it's just that they have been paying attention
because they've been busy with their job.
So if I can get to folks
and help them with some of these
more foundational things,
like .NET is substantially different now, right?
Like I think that I can provide value in that space.
So that's why I do it.
Interesting.
You say a lot of AWS people don't know that .NET runs on Linux.
I would hazard a bet that a lot of .NET developers
don't know that .NET runs on Linux.
Oh yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
I'm just saying particularly
cause most of the people that I talk to
are either random people
that come to a .NET conference,
whatever,
or people that are AWS customers
and they build .NET apps.
But yeah, I mean,
it's always shocking to me.
It happens more than not.
Like you talk to somebody,
oh, you're a .NET developer,
like what's the coolest thing you're working on?
Oh, I mean, I just,
I maintain a .NET 3.5 application.
And I'm like, oh, well,
you know,
have you been paying attention to .NET?
No.
And that's fine.
Like if you want .NET to be your day job
and then you can go home and work on cars
or woodwork or whatever,
and that's where your interest lies,
cool.
Cool for it.
I'm not like that.
Technology is my hobby.
So it's hard for me to wrap my head around
the idea of somebody not paying attention.
Right.
But I understand that I'm a bit different
than a lot of other folks in that regard.
Yeah, I think you mentioned that,
what was the term you mentioned before
about being in a bubble?
Eco chamber.
Eco chamber, yeah.
And that's kind of,
I feel like we're almost in an echo chamber
where we're looking on Twitter,
social media,
we're reading up on the latest
what's new in .NET
or whatever technology it is,
we're keeping up to date.
So we kind of like just know
what's coming way before it's even come.
Especially now things are open source.
But most developers just don't do that,
as you said.
In fact, it's interesting just thinking about,
so I'm going back again to your chat
with Scott Hanselman,
but one thing I found quite interesting
is where he said that
you're talking about when he first
got into programming.
And at that point,
programming wasn't as lucrative as it is now.
Yeah.
And so it's kind of,
where so a lot of people now are getting
into it because of the money,
where back then,
people were getting into it
because they love tech and programming
and that kind of stuff.
So the ratio now of developers
that are passionate
is probably a lot less out of everyone.
Obviously, there's a lot more developers though.
Yeah.
No, I think it's a really good point.
There was a point in time
where tech wasn't a way to make money.
I think obviously in the late 90s,
that probably changed substantially.
I think one thing that's also very interesting
in general about this whole idea
of why people get into tech,
it's interesting because you talk,
and I don't know if you talk to a lot of people
that aren't in tech
and they're trying to get into tech,
but I do it occasionally
just because it's an area of interest for me.
And the first thing I tell people
is it's not an easy job.
It might seem easy
if you pay attention to the people
that are very good at it,
good being a very arbitrary word.
There's a lot of pain in technology.
I jokingly tell people
it's worth 95% of pain,
it's worth 5% of pleasure.
You're rigging app and it's build errors,
compile errors,
and random things not working.
And then when it works,
you literally, it's a euphoric moment.
And I tell people,
you have to be a little bit of a masochist
to enjoy being in tech
because it's not easy.
And you have to be patient
and you have to be willing to deal with obstacles
all the time.
Not even just technical things,
like business related things.
To go back to our conversation
about not being able to use
the latest technologies.
You have a lot of things
that could be challenging.
And I think that's one of the things
that I try to tell people.
Don't be discouraged
if you get started in tech
and you're not enjoying it.
Because I've been in tech for 15 years
and there's days where I can't stand it.
I jokingly tell my wife,
like maybe I should quit
and do something else.
And then she's like,
no, you'd be miserable.
I'm like, yeah, you're probably right.
But I would be so frustrated at the time.
Because I had a colleague,
Reverend, I got out of college
and it was my first job.
And this person,
they've been polished by O'Reilly,
brilliant.net developer.
And I remember them looking at one line of code
for like five days.
And they couldn't figure out
why they couldn't get this little section of code
to work the way they wanted to.
And I remember when they finally figured it out,
they literally just screamed really loud.
Like, and I wish that I would have had
some understanding of why that was so important
at the time.
But I was new and I didn't really get it.
But now, thinking back about them,
I'm like, oh, that must have felt so good.
Must have felt so good.
I think it's important that newer developers realise
that this doesn't change
if people are trying to get into it.
If you've been doing it for 20 years,
this is still your day-to-day.
And just yesterday I was pairing with someone
and something worked first time.
And there was that euphoriotaque,
no way.
There's no way that worked first time.
And things don't.
And our industry,
you've got to know how to learn
that you mentioned your fast learner.
It's so important in our industry
to be able to teach yourself
and not rely on others.
There's so much stuff online
that you can do that.
But not everyone is willing to do that.
Oh, sure.
I think tools like Stack Overflow
or GitHub Co-Pilot,
or Code Whisperer,
or Intellicode or Intellicent,
like, these tools are great.
But they introduce a very interesting problem.
If I'm not writing the code myself,
do I trust whatever the code is
that's being run?
I'm very guilty of it myself.
Like, I'll go to Stack Overflow
or whatever,
and I'll just copy and paste
a huge chunk of code.
And then be pissed off
that it's not working the way I want it to.
And I think it's my responsibility
to know what that code is doing.
But, like I mentioned a bit earlier,
at times, I can be very lazy.
And it's funny that I want to
just do this thing that's lazy,
but then I want to complain
or be upset
when the lazy thing backfires
miserably.
Right?
So that's something too.
The tools are helpful,
but the tools also introduce
a whole new set of problems.
I mean, I jokingly say,
like, I have to Google
how to do a group buy
with Link every time I do it.
Like, my brain goes in there,
it goes out the other ear.

There's some things
that I'll never be able to remember.
Like, the fact that
I don't know very many people
that don't use these tools.
I remember I had a professor in college
they gave us a programming assignment.
I think they gave us a week
to do the assignment.
And I asked him,
like, how long would it take
for you to write this?
And he's like,
as long as it took me to type it.
And I was like,
okay,
that seems very sus to me.
You mean you're not gonna like
look up how to do anything?
Like, how do you reference
a tail pointer for something?
Like this was in,
like Ada, the programming language.
You mean to tell me
you know how to do all this stuff
without looking at one thing?
And he said, yeah, I'm like,
okay, well, you're,
I guess you're brilliant, I guess.
I mean,
that is something that my brain,
I can't even fathom
being able to do something like that.
I guess times have changed as well
because if you are just,
if you're working with one programming language
and you're doing something like
pointer or something,
like something like that,
that I can understand that being.
But nowadays,
we use that many different libraries
and tools and frameworks and stuff.
I don't think anyone could remember
all of those things.
So you've always got to resort to
Google and Stack Overflow
and that kind of thing at some point.
One thing I'm quite looking forward to,
which I'll include a link to the show notes,
is in January,
you're actually joining us to do a talk
at Donald Oxford in person,
which is quite exciting.
Yeah, I am quite excited.
Yeah, I think I mentioned this a bit earlier.
Like one of the things that I love to do
is I love to just hobnob it
with the developer community, right?
And talk about tech and these sort of things.
And like you mentioned,
I'm going to be in the UK
because AWS,
we're sponsoring NDC London.
So I'm going there and I'm going to work at the booth
and have conversation with Donald developers.
And I presented at another meetup
and I was having a conversation
with the organizer for that meetup
and I said,
would you be interested
or know anybody that may be interested
in having me present while I'm in town?
And they connected me with you
and you were thrilled.
And I'm thrilled too.
And it's going to be great.
Like I really enjoy speaking to developers,
especially in person.
And the chance of me speaking
at Donald Oxford
are like 0%, right?
And I think that this is like a rounding error
being able to do this.
Like I happen to be there
at a particular point in time
where you have an opening in your schedule.
Like this is great.
Like so looking forward to it.
So I mean, if you're in the south of England,
come to Donald Oxford
at the end of January
because I'll be there.
I'm so looking forward to that
because we're going back
to the lockdown and COVID and stuff.
We've been mostly virtual since then.
Had monthly meetups,
but they've been virtual.
And we've had one in person
on a thing.
And that was like a lightning talk event.
And it was just amazing.
Everyone being in person again.
And because obviously we're a community,
we've been going for like five, six years now.
So the group of people
where they don't have the people always go
and then we always go to the pub afterwards.
So just reconnecting with those people
was amazing.
So I'm so looking forward to
the January as well.
And you're doing a talk on
updating old.net framework apps,
which is kind of relevant
to what we're talking about before.
It's quite interesting.

I think you were going to,
that one of your potential talks
was you mentioned AWS was do,
but I think you've recently done it somewhere else.
So we said to do this other talk.
But going back to AWS
cause I've done a lot of Azure stuff.
And I really should,
I need to play with AWS,
but I've just happened to have not done much with AWS.
Yeah.
Yeah. So I think, you know,
especially if you're somebody
who's built apps on Azure, right?
You understand how the Azure portal works.
You understand a lot of the concepts of Azure.
There are similar concepts in AWS,
but AWS does things a bit differently.
And that's okay.
Like AWS very much
goes by this least privilege model
as it pertains to like
having access to databases
or access to S3 buckets.
You can configure them at the app level,
sort of like,
if you were to use like an Azure,
like, you know, our back,
like role-based access,
that is the way to do things at AWS.
Like you don't have other alternatives
unless you work really hard.
Also, there's this idea
in the AWS world of
we want to always be coupling infrastructure
with our apps.
So like we have things
like the cloud developer kit or CDK,
which is like, hey,
define my entire infrastructure
and my app and deploy them up at the same time.
So like those are sort of things,
some of the things that are different.
But like from nuts and bolts,
like, hey, I want to host my app in a VM
or I want to host my app in a container
or in a serverless offering.
Like it's the same between all of the clouds, right?
I think the one thing
that's the most interesting to me
is like the developer tooling, right?
Like I talked to people and it's like,
oh, like we have a really great
Visual Studio extension for AWS
and a VS Code extension for AWS
and a JetBrange Rider one for AWS.
And we have command line tools
that allow you to deploy stuff.
And nobody,
and if you talk to .NET developers,
mostly they aren't aware of these things.
And I try not to like say,
oh, this is a better experience than this
because I don't think it's valid.
Like there's not a reason to compare offerings
between all the different providers
because I think at the end of the day,
the experience is very similar between all of them.
The cloud is a commodity.
I tell the people this all the time.
Like if you're looking for a VM,
here's all the different VM offerings.
You're looking for a container offering.
Here's all the container offerings, right?
The real differentiator between all the clouds
is how good the developer tooling is.
And I think AWS has great developer tooling.
And we should be looking at opportunities
to show them for folks.
That's why that's part of the reasons
why I was so interested when I joined AWS
is like, look, this is kind of an area
that is un tapped.
There's lots of opportunity to talk with folks
that aren't aware of these things.
And if we can make their lives a little bit easier
or a little bit simpler
or make their company,
their company's experience a little bit better.
Like that's ideal, right?
I'm enjoying it a lot.
Having conversation with folks
that don't know anything about AWS is very interesting
because I didn't have a lot of experience with AWS.
But now it's like, I tell people,
I show people demos and they're like, oh,
that doesn't seem too hard.
Like, no, it's not hard.
It's just you weren't aware of it.
It's an awareness thing.
Yeah, it's kind of everything's complicated
until you know it and then it becomes simple.
This is very true, yeah.
Yeah.
When you mentioned you had done a talk somewhere
else recently on .NET on AWS,
was that recorded?
Because if it was, I can include it in the show notes.
Yeah, so it was at .NET
Southwest.
So I did a talk on,
I think the name of the talk is .NET
and AWS Choose Your Own Adventure.
And it basically just talks about
all the different ways that you can host apps
in AWS, right?
Like if you want flexibility and control
and you want to be able to manage
the entire experience,
there's VM offerings,
there's a few VM offerings.
There's managed services offerings.
There's a whole slew of container based offerings.
There's serverless offerings
where if you just have a chunk of code
and you want to run it.
And I think showing just plainly,
like look at all these things,
like a lot of people were like, oh, okay.
Like I literally thought Amazon and AWS
is just VMs, like literally,
because look, EC2 is very, very popular
because it's been around the longest.
But there's all these different offerings
that exist that folks can really
get some great experiences from.
And any of the listeners that have listened
to this podcast for a while
are going to be able to guess my next question.
Kubernetes offerings.
There's a knowing question.
But yeah, yeah.
Well, there it's so,
just like in every cloud provider,
there's a managed Kubernetes offering
in AWS called EKS,
Elastic Kubernetes Service.
What's interesting about EKS
is that you have the opportunity to
run it the way you want, right?
You can obviously do your own managed Kubernetes
and you can do all the work yourself.
Or you can use something called AWS Fargate,
which is kind of like an orchestrator for Kubernetes.
I'll make sure we put a link in the show notes.
But the idea that you have managed Kubernetes,
but then you have another thing
that helps out with the managing of your nodes,
managing of your pods,
managing of all these other concepts in Kubernetes
and running in a somewhat serverless way,
which is pretty cool.
I think to be in general
about containers and microservices
is that depending on what's your,
I guess, comfort level
from a control standpoint,
like we have offerings from,
you have a lot of the control yourself
to we have something called AWS AppRunner,
which is basically like,
hey, I pointed at a GitHub repo,
or I pointed at a image file,
a Docker image file,
or a container image file,
and it just does everything else for you.
It spins up the container,
it manages the container,
it manages all the resources for the container,
and you don't need to know any container infrastructure concepts.
It just does it all for you.
And it gives you CloudWatch,
which is kind of like our monitor tool inside of AWS.
You have logs available for you right there.
You can configure scale right there inside the tool.
And it's like completely turnkey.
Like I do a demo of this
where it's like, hey, I have a command line tool.
I run dotnet deploy,
and I choose AppRunner,
and it just does everything for me.
Takes the code,
containerizes it for me
so it creates a Docker image
without me having to do it myself,
and it just publishes it up to AppRunner.
So, again,
people aren't aware of a tool like that,
and they see it.
They are immediately like, oh, wow.
Like it does everything.
It even containerizes my app for me,
which is pretty crazy to think about.
Again, it's just about bringing value
and interesting ways to folks.
Yeah, definitely.
So, this is a bit of a tangent,
but it made me think
when you're saying about automatically containerizing stuff,
I've used in the new .NET 7 thing.
I think Nick Chaps has recently done a video on it as well,
but without using a Dockerfile,
it can .NET publish or build
or whatever, just output to a container.
Everything's going that way, isn't it?
It's containers.
I think that there's one thing,
and I've been thinking about this a lot recently,
because, especially with the .NET 7 announcement,
that container support inside the .NET SDK,
I think that there is maybe some concern
about Docker having a bit too much control
over the container space.
And there's other containerization technologies.
Like there's Podman, there's ContainerD,
or ContainerD, I don't know how it's actually pronounced.
I apologize.
People in your show notes and your comments
will be like, oh, you said it wrong.
But I mean, if you have like an OCI,
like an open container spec,
compatible image file,
it doesn't matter if you're using Docker or something else.
So the ability to build a container
without having a dependency on Docker,
I think is very interesting.
Because I think the last thing that anybody wants
is for one technology to kind of rule them all.
We kind of have that a little bit
in the container orchestration space.
Even though there are things like Docker Swarm
and there's other tools,
like Kubernetes has kind of taken the mantle.
And I think with Docker, for instance,
I think the last thing that we want
is to kind of be locked into one technology.
Because when you're locked into one technology,
you become hyper dependent on it
and that's not good for your business.
So being able to do things
that are container platform agnostic
is very, very interesting.
So I mean, I went off on a bit of tangent there too,
but like the idea that now you can literally
create a container from the.net CLI
without having Docker installed
like is pretty interesting.
I mean, it'll be interesting to see
like what the next step is.
Like, because I think this is obviously
the first step into something else.
So it'll be interesting to see
what those next steps are.
I didn't actually realize that.
I didn't realize that I kind of assumed
that when you did that.net,
Bill command, it was using Docker
under the hood and creating a Docker file
you didn't see.
I didn't realize you didn't have to have Docker installed.
Yeah, no.
I mean, so it supports like podman,
for instance, so podman is a container
containerization technology
that's not Docker, right?
So I think it's a agnostic way
to publish and build and deploy containers,
which is kind of interesting
because I think when I talk about
containers in general with folks,
when I speak at events,
like people don't understand
that Docker is just one way to do containers.
They think it's the way.
And like, that's great for Docker,
but it's not great for everybody else.
Yeah, I guess on the other side of that,
where the .net SDK or CLI is outputting containers
and you're not using Dockerfiles,
well, I don't want to say problem,
but it feels like it encourages people
not to understand or learn how it works
in general, like with the whole.
And I'm going to talk about Docker now,
but with the Dockerfile where you've got the layers
and you can add other commands
and just just how a Dockerfile works.
And it feels like if that's being automated,
so people just very rarely have to use that Dockerfile.
Are people just going to like
not actually understand containers
on layers and that kind of thing?
Yeah, I think the biggest,
I guess wrinkle solve this
is that there's a file that has the word Docker in it.
Yeah, yeah, it doesn't have to be called Dockerfile.
Right.
It's called Dockerfile
because it's created by Docker
and it's used by Docker.
But all the Dockerfiles
are all open container initiative
spec files that allow you to define a container.
So like podman supports OCI,
container supports OCI.
It's just that
because Docker has such a large market share
and the file name is Dockerfile,
people immediately assume like,
okay, that's the only way that you can do containers.
So it is very interesting.
And I'm guessing that at some point in time,
that's going to be demystified.
I don't know when,
but I think I think the worst thing that we can do
is not look at other options for things.
And maybe this goes into kind of a holistic idea
that I have when it comes to dotnet on AWS, for instance, right?
Like,
we're only doing ourselves a disservice
by not looking at all of our options.
So, you know, whether that's
where you host your dotnet apps
or how you containerize your dotnet apps,
make sure that you're understanding
like what the pros and cons are for each of the options.
And don't just choose the one
that is the most quote-un-quote popular.
I think the thing is,
this goes back to our conversation
about being passionate about this stuff.
There's so many cool toys to play with.
Yes.
I just love it.
All these different things.
And I've said before that I've not really done anything
with AWS.
That's a bit bad really.
And I'm going to watch that video
if it was recorded of your talk
and have a play
because I've done an awful lot in Azure
and it feels like I'm doing myself a disservice
to just do that
without actually knowing its major competitor.
Or one of its major competitors.
Yeah, I think, you know, it's interesting.
Like, I mean, I was a similar way, right?
Like before I joined AWS,
like I worked at Microsoft.
I had a bunch of Azure certifications.
I talked about Azure events.
Like, but now, like,
I see things a bit differently
because now, like, I have a good amount of experience
in a different way of doing things.
And I think if you're working at a company
and all of a sudden your company makes a shift,
it's like, oh, we're going to start putting applications
on Azure or applications on AWS or whatever, right?
And you don't have knowledge in that space.
What do you do?
You have two options, right?
You can either vote with your feet.
You can leave
because I don't want to learn this new technology.
I want to be Azure or AWS forever.
I don't want to learn this new cloud.
I'm going to leave and go to a different company.
Or you can learn.
And I think the only thing that you lose
in staying and learning,
you lose this opinion
that there's only one way to do things.
Because I think in tech,
and this doesn't go from just cloud providers too,
this goes for technologies,
they're all commodities.
Like, if you were to explain
Node.js or Python or .NET or Java or whatever,
like, they all solve the same purpose.
They're just opinionated ways to do things.
So, and this is kind of where I was having a conversation
with somebody the other day about
how we kind of get into these religious conversations
about like our technologies,
like the technologies that we care about.
Like, I'm very guilty of it.
I love .NET.
I've tried to learn Go 40 times.
I can't learn Go because it's not .NET.
But I think that we have an opportunity
as technologists to be a bit more open-minded about things.
And that's only going to positively benefit ourselves,
our businesses, the tech community at large, right?
Because I think the last thing that anybody wants
is there to be like one choice.
And I know this is getting a bit preachy,
so I apologize.
But I think that the biggest thing from here is like,
what is stopping you?
If it's interest, that's cool.
But if it's, I just didn't have the time,
I think there's always time to learn new things,
at least me personally.
I've a topic I'm quite fascinated about is mindset.
And it really comes down to that, really.
Because your example before,
where you said if you've got to learn something new,
do you leave or do you learn it?
And this mindset thing applies to so many different things.
You can either say, oh, I've got to learn this thing.
Or I can be like, yes, I'm going to learn this thing.
I'm excited.
I've got new toy to play with.
And other things, like if you're debugging,
if you hit a bug and something's not working,
it's like, oh, I've got to work out how to solve this problem.
It's just a nightmare.
I just want to get on with stuff.
Or you can be like, oh, I've got a problem,
so I'm going to crack this.
And there's just so many different things,
even like playing with, that I've got two kids.
And sometimes it can be, I don't know.
It's like, I've got something to do,
and they want to play.
And it's like, go away, I'm doing this.
When actually change the mindset and thinking,
think how lucky I am.
And just enjoying the moment and spending that time.
I think it's just,
this mindset thing just applies to so many different things.
And if you can actually switch your mindset,
and if you intend to do that too,
lots of different things you do,
your life can be so much better.
It's funny that you say the word mindset.
And you mentioned kids specifically.
Like, my kid, at some point,
at school, heard the phrase growth mindset.
And so, and the way they interpret a growth mindset
is if you are negative about something,
you lack a growth mindset.
So, like, I'll say something,
like I mentioned, I'm a kind of a pessimist.
And, you know, something will come up.
And I'm like, oh, I don't want to do this, whatever.
And my kid will go, dad, you need a growth mindset.
You have a closed mindset right now.
And I'm just like, oh, my gosh,
I can't function in this space.
Like, you're too eager to try new things.
But I think, yeah, it's funny.
Growth mindset is totally spot on.
I think we're all very guilty of being very,
and I think this is a sociological thing with human beings.
Like, we fear change.
At our primitive level,
we really fear change or things that are different.
And the folks that are able to combat that
and have that growth mindset like you're talking about,
like, those are the ones that end up getting
more out of the experience.
If you are born, you grow up,
and then eventually you die,
and you don't really think about new ways to do things,
like, I don't want to say it's a life wasted,
but there's an opportunity wasted, right?
So, all I can do is try to be more open for things.
That's why I interview people
that I would never talk to on my podcast.
That's why I try to learn new technologies,
whether I'm successful at that
is a whole different story.
But I think there's an opportunity for all of us
to think about things and see, like, okay,
if I learn this new thing,
what's the worst that can happen?
The worst that can happen is I hate it,
and I just learn I don't like it,
and I just move on to something else, right?
But the positive, what could be good that happens?
I fall in love with this new tech,
like, they take my go example.
Let's say I learn go
because I've heard that I need to learn go,
and I'm curious about it, and I love it.
I love it more than I love .NET.
Like, what happens then?
Now I have this whole new community of people
that I can learn from,
all this other content that I can consume
to bring myself joy.
No one is losing in that experience, right?
That's what it is in a nutshell.
And technology comes and goes, right?
Like, we have the ability to change our tastes
as it pertains to technology, right?
I think that's it.
You mentioned about go.
A few episodes ago,
I had a guest on Joseph Woodward,
and we're talking about go, actually.
And he's an ex .NET developer,
and he's now moved over to go,
and he changed companies,
working with a company that did go,
and he now loves it.
And that entire company,
used Vim.
We had another episode on Vim, actually.
And so he's really got into that.
So he's seeing the whole,
all these other echo chambers of Vim users,
and there's a massive community there,
and then go, and all that kind of thing.
I've used Vim for quite a long time.
Well, the Vim way of editing,
but I'm now playing around with Vim,
the editor, which I've not used in a long time.
And I'm kind of enjoying,
but seeing other echo chambers with that as well.
Yeah, it is fun.
It did make me laugh your story
about your kid and the growth mindset.
It reminded me of one story of my kid.
When I started the podcast,
I was trying to stop myself from saying,
erm, all the time.
Sure, sure.
Because when I was listening back in editing,
I realised I said it a lot.
So I said to my kids,
I know we don't normally condone interrupting,
but if you hear me say it,
I'm interrupting,
just say don't say it, I'm or anything.
Both kids did it for a bit,
but my youngest carried on,
took it to the extreme.
Every time I mentioned it at all,
it was like, it was spot on,
it was like, don't say it,
and it was brilliant
because it really, really helped,
but it's kind of,
it's funny how they, like,
yeah, kids are brilliant, aren't they?
I've realised that if you give a kid a task
and the kid gets any enjoyment out of it,
they will run that task to the ground
until it's exhausting, right?
And I mean, I was there as a young child,
like I remember doing things all the time,
they were probably super annoying to my parents.
But I mean,
it's funny that you mentioned,
like that you have,
you say, um, and what,
and different filler words.
So I'm from Washington State,
in Washington State,
we use the word so a lot,
and I try really hard not to say the word so,
but what I've realised is that
whenever I start a sentence,
95% of the time,
the first word in that sentence is so.
Because I guess in my brain,
it's a transition into saying something.
So I will say something like,
so I'll say something like, right?
Instead of me just saying,
I'll say something.
It's very strange.
And I catch myself doing it,
but it's, I've tried many times.
I've just kind of given up on trying to stop that.
It's funny, like filler words or something that,
I don't know if they're harmful,
but they are completely distracting
if you're aware of yourself doing them.
Yeah, I think one thing,
because I know I edit,
when I'm editing, I'm listening out for them,
so I can chop them out as I'm editing.
Then I kind of like condition myself to overly hear it.
So in everyday conversations,
I'm just hearing it all the time,
and it's kind of like,
I never realised before doing this,
how many filler words there are.
And it's not just more so,
it's you know, zamins,
and even things like,
I didn't realise how often myself and just in general,
people say the first few words of a sentence
and then start the sentence again
in a slightly different way,
all the same way.
And I didn't realise how frequent that was
until I started intentionally listening during editing.
And it's quite fascinating really.
I learnt an awful lot about the way I speak myself.
Here's a question for you that I'd be curious.
When you talk to people that
have different backgrounds
or from different parts of the world,
have you kind of picked up on different things
that people from the UK do more than other people
or people from the States do?
Have you kind of picked up on those things?
So like you for instance,
you're interviewing somebody from the States today.
Okay, well these are probably
some of the things that they're going to do.
Like these are the filler words they use.
These are the nuances they have and the way they speak.
Have you picked up on some of those things
that after you've interviewed 50 people almost?
I guess for guests that maybe aren't native English speakers,
they probably do them less.
Sure.
Because they've learnt the language,
so it's less just as you've grown up,
you pick up various slangs and habits.
So that's kind of easier in a way.
You mentioned about you using the word so.
I've not heard that during this conversation at all.
In fact, to be honest,
this is probably going to be one of the easiest episodes
to edit because you're not on me now in at all.
So thank you for making this so easy.
We'll see.
Hi all, Isaac and I ended up having a very short break.
When we got back,
we started talking about back problems.
And there wasn't really a smooth transition
during editing to jump straight into that conversation.
Hence me leading into it now.
If you're not interested in listening to us talk
about our various disc issues,
then skip forward about five minutes.
Now it's all good.
It was just dinner's ready,
but it's in the oven, so it'll stay warm.
So it's fine.
Oh my goodness.
Well, I'm beeping you from eating.
Oh my goodness.
I don't know about all that.
Talking about mindsets before,
it's kind of if later I'm more hungry
because I've waited longer,
then I'll enjoy it more.
That's true.
That's true.
Nothing is better than eating when you're hungry.
I will say that nothing is better.
Well, nowadays I'm never hungry because I work from home,
especially the kitchen's just there.
So it's kind of it's a treat when I'm hungry.
It's very true.
Like and I have horrible eating habits.
And I think one of the things that I've recognized more
is that working from home probably isn't ideal
for somebody with really bad eating habits.
Like I tend to snack a lot.
Like I can eat a whole bag of chips or crisps.
I can eat a whole bag, no problem.
And feel disgusting afterwards.
But at the time it's like, oh, this is quite good.
That's why I try to be very active.
I try to exercise every day.
Because if I didn't, I would probably be in a different shape,
I guess you could say.
That's a nice way of saying it.
I used to be active, but I've been in all sorts of buck issues.
Oh, yeah.
So I think is it surgery jobby to be honest,
perform buck and twerk size?
Oh, yeah, I herniated a disc in my back last summer.
And it was yeah, I still have issues.
Like over a year later, like it's not fun at all.
Yeah, I found it fascinating that until you have the issue
and you start talking to people about it,
that it's amazing how common it is actually, isn't it?
Well, I was talking to a doctor,
so when I herniated a disc in my back,
like it was really bad, I couldn't walk around whatever.
And when I went to see a doctor and they diagnosed me,
he said congratulations, you've officially,
you've done the thing.
And I'm like, what do you mean?
Everybody hurts their back.
Like at a particular age,
like if you're in your mid 30s and on,
the chances of you having back issues is almost 100%.
Especially now that we all sit in shares,
we sit in cars,
like we haven't evolved from a human body standpoint
to be able to accommodate sitting down with our hips
in a constant state of contraction.
So we're going to have back issues unless you have a job
that involves you standing in a comfortable way
or walking in a comfortable way constantly.
I've never met anybody that stands comfortably
all day long for their work.
They might stand,
but they're not doing things that are comfortable.
So like it's interesting because
yeah, just the idea that like everybody's going to have
a bad back, a bad lower back
at some point in their life is kind of depressing, right?
Yeah, definitely.
When you're younger and you see all the good posture posters
and you like whatever, ignore them.
And actually it's when you get all the things,
oh, it's underdone.
But of similar, my two lower discs are both torn and herniated.
And one of them is catching my L5 nerve root,
which is causing all sorts of issues.
One of them, which weird, my hip,
when it gets aggravated,
my whole hip's just twist and contort.
Oh, yeah.
So I'm kind of like hobbling over.
I've got, you can probably can see in the background,
I've got walking stick.
Oh, wow.
So it's kind of yeah, I'm 44
and I've got a bloody walking stick.
It's like seriously.
Yeah, no.
So I had hip surgery when I was 30.
Oh, wow.
Because I, yeah, like I got a sports hernia.
And the surgery in general,
I had to find to people so they reattach
my hip adductors.
So the inside muscles of my hips to my pelvis
and they pull down my abdominals
and reattach those as well.
That was part of the surgery.
And like when I tell people,
like I had hip surgery,
they're like, how old are you?
What?
You had his surgery?
I'm like, yeah, I just, it is what it is.
I mean, the whole thing too with the lower back thing
is that it never, it will never go away.
It's like, you know,
one of the things I've tried to do a lot
is do like mobility exercises.
Right?
Like, you know, doing hip elongation stuff,
stuff to basic,
cause it's all connected, right?
Your back, your hips, your knees.
And if one thing is out of sequence,
like you're just gonna get hurt
over and over and over again.
They tell you this when you're like 20,
but you don't listen.
It's like, I can literally go run 10 miles
right now and then eat a hamburger afterwards.
But now it's like, you know,
when you're in your mid 30s
or your late 30s or your 40s,
you're like, oh, I wish I would have
paid attention at all to any of this.
Yeah, definitely.
I'm gonna say this year,
I'm learning so much about the anatomy
of like what you're talking about.
All that's so worse, QL.
Oh yeah.
And like, you also realize like,
the parts of your body that we injure the most
that stay injured the longest,
the reason why is because they don't get good blood flow.
Like the hernia disc thing.
The reason why you hurt your back
and it takes like a year for it to heal
is cause the discs get literally zero blood flow.
So like, they have to like heal
like the slowest possible way,
which like, if you hurt your bicep
or you hurt your shoulder or whatever,
right, like it hurts.
If it's not like a major injury,
like the pain will go away in a week or so, right?
But like some of these parts of your body,
like you'll literally hurt the rest of your life
cause they don't get any blood flow.
It's crazy.
I think also another thing
which I'm kind of guilty of,
which I'm trying to do more is water.
It's kind of like a lot of people dehydrated
and the disc can get very dehydrated.
So that might be one thing
that's made my issue worse
because I have coffee but not with water.
So I'm trying to have more now.
Yeah, drinking the water every day thing is just hard
cause there's an outcome.
Like if you drink a lot of water,
you guys go to the bathroom a lot.
Your brain only tells you to drink water
when you're thirsty, right?
I wish there was something in your brain
because I don't like apps
that tell you to drink water.
I find them quite annoying.
But like there's something in your brain
that's like, oh, like,
you're 75% of water.
Tap that up, right?
Similar to like being hungry.
Like I'm hungry constantly.
And that's just because I've been eating habits
so I eat all the time.
But like, it would be great if my body was like,
you should drink water instead of eat.
I also just don't get thirsty.
I'm sure if I didn't drink for days,
I would get thirsty,
but in general, I don't.
So I've got to be very intentional about it.
Sure.
So shall we move over to dev tips?
Yeah, while you went and checked in on stuff,
I just looked at a couple and I was like,
oh, I'm just going to shamelessly plug
something I've worked on.
So we'll just do that.
Why not?
Why not?
Yeah, why not?
Yeah, so I guess,
so my developer pick
or something that I think
your listeners might be interested in is,
so I built a tool called Presence Light.
So what Presence Light does,
it's a, so it's a,
it's a dominant application.
It runs on your desktop.
There's a web version as well.
So it can run in containers and things like that.
But what it does is it takes your team's presence.
So like whether you're available or away or busy
in Microsoft Teams,
and it broadcasts that status to different smart lights.
So Lifex or Philips Hue or E-Lite.
And basically the,
the origin for this is that obviously,
during the pandemic,
working from home,
wanted my family to be aware of if I was busy or not.
So I have a light outside of my office
that changes color if I'm busy.
So if it's green, you can come say hi.
If it's red, leave me alone.
If it's purple,
which means do not disturb,
it means like really leave me alone.
Yeah.
And it's been fun building that tool
and I've added some stuff to it.
And right now I'm actually redriding it
to be in.net Maui.
So it can run on phones and things like that.
So yeah, that's something cool
that I think folks might be interested in
and checking out.
I'll provide a link so that you can put it.
So it's available in like the window store
and chocolatey and Winn get and stuff like that.
But it's also free and open source on GitHub as well.
That's something I really want to be honest.
I think it was a few months ago I tweeted out
basically asking pretty much exactly that
for the same use case.
Oh cool.
So I'm definitely going to be looking at that.
As you say, it's kind of like just being able to...
And I like what you said then about the different levels of light.
So it's like really leave me alone versus...
Don't come in, but if you need to.
I like that.
Yeah.
And the way that I've written it is like
is you can configure the color of light you want.
It doesn't have to be green or purple or red.
That's what the default is.
But for instance, teams can detect whether or not you're presenting.
Or you're away, but you're also not idle.
So away and idle are two different things.
So you have a ton of flexibility as it pertains
to how you want the colors to be.
So I also have this concept of working hours
where it's like, okay, well I want Presence Light to run
and actually update lights during certain windows of the day if I want to.
So yeah, it's pretty cool.
And I've got a couple of diehard fans that love it.
I think the last time I checked, I think there's like,
I have like 300 to 400 active users of it, which is kind of cool.
But yeah, it's just something to help make our lives simpler
when working from home.
Does that link to recommended lights as well?
So the way I've written it is it supports a handful of branded lights
because they have different APIs and stuff.
I also created this idea of a custom endpoint.
So for instance, if you have Home Assistant at your house
or if you have some other mechanism
that you use to kind of manage your home automation,
you can provide like a URL into it and configure it that way as well.
So then like, okay, when I'm available,
I want this particular endpoint hit,
maybe that does some other workflow or whatever.
And I'm always interested if people,
if there are light recommendations for that people are interested in,
obviously can't buy every sort of smart light that exists.
But if enough people are like,
I would love to support this light,
like maybe I'll spend the 15 bucks on test on one button
or if you want to sponsor me on GitHub,
you can throw me a couple bucks
and I can buy the light myself, right?
But yeah, so the ones that they have support for
that are like it's branded lights are Phillips Hue,
Lifex, LIFX, a Yeelight and Wiz,
which are the four main ones.
Are these wireless or would you need to put a wire along?
No, so that's the whole point.
So it's that they're smart lights.
So they're lights that have some sort of API,
whether it's a SaaS service API
where you have to make an API call out to some service
or one that runs locally on an internal network,
like Phillips Hue, for instance,
the Phillips Hue lights have a bridge,
which is a device that runs on your network
that kind of intercepts traffic.
So I send a request to the Phillips Hue
and that updates my lights accordingly.
So yeah, some of them are requiring internet,
some of them don't require internet.
I guess all of them require internet
because you need to get the status from Microsoft Graph,
which is the mechanism that I use to get the presence.
Yeah, yeah.
I think it's more like,
well, you can see my office,
it's kind of where I've got the door behind
to actually have a light outside
and training cables and things.
But if it was a wireless,
it's just a thing with an IP address on my network,
then that's perfect.
Yeah, and I even have it one step up than that.
So like I mentioned,
you can run it on Windows, for instance.
But my personal implementation is I have a Raspberry Pi,
I have a bunch of Raspberry Pi's,
but I have a Raspberry Pi
that I have presence light running
in a Docker container on that Raspberry Pi.
So I have an endpoint,
a URL that I go to in my own network,
and then that spins up the UI for the app
and then I configure it there.
So I don't have to have presence light
running on my computer
and the lights are all wireless.
So it's literally,
there's a bunch of flexibility
that you have with this tool.
And I'm only looking to kind of make it more flexible.
That's why Maui,
maybe add phone support and stuff like that.
So it's kind of cool.
I enjoy it.
Magic.
I will definitely include a link to that
in the show notes.
Sure.
So my dev tip is,
I was watching some YouTube videos on Neil Vim,
as I mentioned earlier that I'm a Vimfong.
And I noticed that the person doing it was,
when they were moving up and down the code
with the cursor keys,
it was going much faster than my computer
moves up and down.
And not because it's Vim,
it's just like the cursor keys.
So I did a bit of Googling
and it turns out that the default,
by default in Windows
and other OSes,
as well as I believe,
adds a repeat delay
when you press the up and down arrow
and you hold it down.
It waits a bit before it actually
then starts going down.
So I changed the setting to move that repeat delay.
And just moving around the code base
was just way faster.
So I tweeted it out
and I can link in the show notes
how to change it.
But it just,
that little setting has made a big difference.
Interesting.
And is that added solely
to prevent people from
typing in things too fast
or hitting keys
that mess up the interpreter?
Like, what is the purpose for that?
It seems to me like it's
a safety feature, probably.
Yeah, I think so.
I think it's just,
if you think about the typical OS user,
isn't the power user
using Vim or flying around a code base.
So it's kind of,
I can understand the default,
but it's just,
it's useful to know that you can just
change it and it makes a big difference to
curse de speed.
That's great.
I mean,
I try to stay out of Vim
because I end up getting stuck in it all the time.
The old ones are the best aren't they?
Yeah,
but I mean, that's cool.
I think that a lot of people
would be interested in that.
Yeah, I find Vim fascinating
because we've spoken about learning before.
I've been using Vim,
the key bindings for like 20 years,
15, 20 years.
And I'm still learning key bindings.
It's so fun.
Oh yeah, yeah.
There's some different combinations
and the ways you can do things.
And two episodes back,
as I mentioned earlier,
an episode with Joseph Woodward.
So if any of the listeners
are interested in Vim,
we spent,
I don't know,
an hour geeking out on Vim.
So it's worth a listen.
Cool.
So I am aware of the time.
So before we do up,
where is the best place
for listeners to reach out to
if they have any questions?
Yeah, I mean,
I think the easiest way to find out
what I'm doing is on Twitter at the moment.
Who knows in the future, obviously.
But I'm also on GitHub and Twitch.
My handle there is IsaacR11,
I-S-A-A-C-R-L-E-V-I-N.
That's the best way to probably find me
if you want to follow along.
Also,
I have a podcast.
We talked about a podcast
a little bit, Coffee and Open Source.
Yeah, I mean,
if you're looking for me,
you'll probably find me.
I kind of hang out
where all the tech people hang out.
But yeah,
definitely enjoy the conversation.
And if anybody wants to learn more
about what I'm doing
in all aspects of things,
definitely would love to chat with you.
We'll include a link
to all of those social media places
and your podcast
and everything in the show notes as well.

Because then you were doing this.
That's when I discovered your podcast.
And as I said before,
listen to this.
Got a handsome one.
But I'll definitely be subscribing
and listening to more
because it was a really interesting listen.
So thank you.
Awesome, I appreciate.
And thank you for joining me here.
This has been such a fun conversation.
It's kind of,
my timer says,
after editing it,
it'll be a little bit shorter,
but one hour and 38 minutes.
I love conversations
where you just lose track of time.
It's been brilliant.
Thank you.
Yeah, no problem.
The only thing that I hope
was from this conversation
is that we both had a good time
and I definitely had a great time.
Definitely.
Oh, I was going to mention
the guitars in the background as well,
which might make this even longer.
Yeah, for the people who,
they can't see this obviously,
but yeah, I play guitar,
not very well.
That's my guitar are now art.
But yeah,
no, I have two Fender Stratocasters
and then I have a Martin acoustic guitar
that I will play occasionally,
not very well though.
Do you find it with your podcast
that it's amazing how many developers
you speak to that actually play guitars
or instruments
and have things in the background?
Yeah, I have a tangent on this.
Like we can definitely have that conversation.
I believe that
there is a lot of connectivity
between creative folk and technology.
Like I think there is this assumption
that if you are more technical,
you kind of have a more left side of brain approach
where you're more analytical,
mathematical, whatever.
But I have the belief
that technology is just right in the middle
because you need the analytical mind,
you need the math or whatever, right?
You need that problem solving skills.
But you also need to be very creative.
You need to be able to think outside
the box to solve problems.
Because this is how I see things.
If you try to follow the same process
over and over and over again
to solve different problems,
you're going to have a hard time.
So I think that there's a lot of people
that play music,
they draw,
they use other fine arts,
they sculpt.
I know a lot of people
that do stand up comedy
that are in technology.
I think it's just because
that there is some
that you say about
that there is more creativeness
required to be
a technologist
than a lot of people probably
are aware of.
So yeah, I think the summary to that is
there is very interesting,
like you'll talk to people in tech
and they all play guitar.
I don't know about,
like it seems to be guitar is the one
that I see the most.
But I know some other people
that play piano or they sing or whatever.
But guitar seems to be a thing.
I also think in general,
and this is probably not fair,
but predominantly there's males in tech.
And there's nothing really cooler
to a guy than playing guitar.
Like it's whatever it is,
I think that there's something to say
with that, right?
Not to say that women can't play guitar
or there's no women in tech,
but even if somebody I talk to
doesn't play music,
they always see my guitars behind me
and they're like, oh, you play guitar,
that's cool.
And I'm like, yeah, I do play.
And they're like, no,
I just like guitars.
I like looking at them.
Like, okay,
everybody likes looking at guitars, I think.
Yeah, definitely.
To touch on your point about gender as well,
like just off the top of my head,
to guess I've had on Jess White,
she had guitars in the background.
I was classin,
she had guitars and we were geeking out guitars.
So I don't think it's,
it's definitely a programmer thing.
And I completely agree with your
thing about creativity
cause programming is art.
Yes.
You can't say like writing software
and architecting software
isn't creative.
No.
I feel like I need to move my guitar
there cause I've got like a strut over there
in the other room,
I've got a mini Martin.
I need them in camera.
Did three quarter Martin?
Yeah, they had Sharon one.
Oh, that's,
I gotta get that.
Like I've played it a few times.
Like I have small hands,
so playing guitar is challenging sometimes,
but I picked up the Ed Sheeran guitar
when I was at the guitar center or something.
And I was like, oh, this,
my hand feels,
I feel,
my hand feels massive on this guitar.
So I need to definitely do that.
I end up playing the,
the electrics more cause the neck is so much thinner.
We have a hard time playing the Martin
cause it's got a wider neck and,
you know,
I'm not the best guitarist ever.
So like doing a lot of things that involve
like weird hand shapes is kind of challenging sometimes.
But yeah, I mean,
there's something about guitar too that
like you're allowed to kind of turn your brain off
when you play an instrument
or a different part of your brain is active.
So I think there is something to say is like,
oh, if you're a developer
and you're working and you need to,
to take a break,
you can have a different part of your brain active
and then,
at least from my experience,
I don't know if you have a similar feeling where
if you turn one part of your brain off
to focus on something else,
that part that you turned off,
it's working still.
So like there's been a couple of times
where I'm not thinking about something in tech
and I'm playing guitar.
I'm like, oh, maybe I should try this.
I got to put the guitar down
and run back to the computer and see, right?
So there is something to that as well, I think.
I find that with a guitar,
when I'm learning something new,
then it's like in code,
I'm learning something new.
It's kind of it's hard work.
You're working at it.
But then once you've got the muscle memory
of a song,
something you've learned,
then it becomes
meditational.
You can kind of close your eyes
and just play and you change.
What's the brain wave things like you change?
Oh, sure.
It's a meditative state, isn't it?
Yeah, they call it the flow state, right?
Like once you're in that flow.
Like the thing that I enjoy the most
is going to like a concert
and the musicians at a concert
just they literally,
they look like they're not even paying attention
to the guitar they're playing.
Like because they put in the 10,000 hours,
they've mastered the instrument
and they're having conversations
with other bandmates
while they're playing guitar.
They're talking to people in the crowd.
They're doing all the stuff.
And like the guitar,
even if it's really,
you know,
if there's really intricate movements,
they're able to do it without,
without any struggle.
And like I have so much envy
for people that can do that.
Like I, like I said,
I'm a very middle-end guitar player.
So like whenever I see somebody
who's mastered the instrument,
it can do normal things
while playing it
and it doesn't affect their playing.
I get very jealous.
Do you know how in software development
they say that naming things is hard?
Sure.
Naming things enough by one of us.
What are we going to call this episode
because we've spoken about so many different things.
We can call it naming things as hard.
How about that?
Yeah, maybe,
maybe if I can pitch your podcast name,
it can be like a coffee in open source with,
with that work.
Yeah, if that's what you want to do or,
you know, ramblings of an optimistic pessimist or,
I think, yeah, it's,
and that's in,
to go back,
we were kind of talking a while ago about
why I
only put the person
that I'm having a conversation with name
because what ends up happening
with my conversations on my podcast is,
we hit way too many topics.
And that's something that I think
that's a trait of mine.
I like to talk about lots and lots of things.
So I apologize that I've made this
a bit challenging for you
to figure that title,
but I have faith you'll figure it out.
They'll probably be like
when you're listening back to this,
you'll hear something like,
oh, that's quite brilliant.
Let's use that as a title.
And I'm looking forward
to what that title ends up being.
It's going to have coffee in the name
because obviously that relates to your podcast.
But I like the idea of like coffee in a chat.
So it's kind of, that's quite nice.
When this is quite a few episodes ago
I had Mark Rendall on,
and it was very similar
where we just went in all sorts of directions.
And we had the conversation about what should we call it
and the other suggestion of Mark Rendall's
stream of consciousness,
which was quite funny.
I've realized too,
there's a handful of folks out.
I'd like you mentioned Mark Rendall,
I think of Mark Rendall.
So whenever I've heard him
do an interview or even him talk,
it's just,
he's brilliant.
And I think that he needs to get everything out of his brain
at once,
which I kind of,
I relate to a little bit.
I'm nowhere near as brilliant as Mark is,
but it is quite fascinating
that there are some people,
like you mentioned,
that are a bit more challenging
to have a conversation with
for a long stream of time,
like an hour.
And there are some people,
like myself,
who talk for two hours.

It is interesting,
like the different types of personalities
that are in tech too.
Yeah, definitely.
Speaking of two hours,
we are not that far off.
So we probably should wrap up,
but yeah,
thank you so much for joining us.
It's been such great fun chatting with you.
No worries.
Thank you, Dan.
And thank you everybody for listening.
Cool.
And yeah,
thank you everyone for listening.
And I quick reminder
that this podcast is sponsored by Everstack,
which is my own company providing
software development
and consultation services.
For more information,
visit Everstack.com.
And if you're enjoying the podcast,
please do help me spread the word
on social media.
I normally use the hashtag
UnhandledException
and I can be found on Twitter
at Dracan,
which is D-R-A-C-A-N.
My DMs are open.
Now actually,
I'm on MasteredOn as well,
which is this new thing.
So,
and there's a link
on the podcast website
to all of these things anyway.
And my blog,
DanClot.com,
has links to all my social stuff too.
And as usual,
we include links to all the things
we've mentioned today
in the show notes,
which can be found on
UnhandledExceptionPodcast.com.