26: Machine Learning in JavaScript, Remix Plus Netlify, and Why DX Engineers Matter with Charlie Gerard

Robbie Wagner: [00:09] Hey, everybody. This is Whiskey Web and Whatnot with myself, Robbie Wagner, and my co-host, as always, Charles William Carpenter III, with our guest today, Charlie Gerard. Hey, how's it going?

Charlie Gerard: [00:23] Good. How are you? It's very nice to be here.

Chuck Carpenter: [00:26] Yeah. Thanks for taking the time to join us.

Robbie Wagner: [00:29] Yeah. For those that don't know who you are, haven't seen you on Twitter, maybe just tell people real quick kind of who you are, what you've been up to.

Charlie Gerard: [00:37] Sure. So at the moment, I'm a staff DX engineer at Netlify. But most of the time, I mean, on the side, at least, I love to build experiences using JavaScript in weird ways. So Netlify will come on the Jamstack, and sometimes I'm able to kind of mix my experiment with experimenting with the Jamstack as well.

Robbie Wagner: [00:58] Nice. Very cool. Yeah. We'll get some more into some of those things later, but Chuck always gets on me for not getting to the whiskey soon enough, so we'll start on that.

Chuck Carpenter: [01:10] Yeah. That's how we have good conversations. Also, I just want to point out that oftentimes we have so many Robbies around me and on here. It's nice to have at least like Charlie can be a derivative of Charles. We have a similar name. That's actually what we call my daughter, short for Charlie. I'm fond of Charlie's.

Robbie Wagner: [01:34] All right. So, yeah, we have Balvenie. Is that how you say it?

Chuck Carpenter: [01:40] Sure. All right. Nobody seems to be the expert here. I'm not an expert at scotches.

Charlie Gerard: [01:46] I drink. So, yeah, I just drink it. I don't know how to say it.

Chuck Carpenter: [01:50] So today we have the Balvenie Caribbean Cask, 14 years. So basically, it just means finished in rum casks. Extra matured, as it says, since it's scotch, it's got 100% malt mash bill. 86 proof, no? Yeah, 86 proof. 43%. I have no other information.

Robbie Wagner: [02:16] All right, let's see.

Chuck Carpenter: [02:18] Smells sweet.

Robbie Wagner: [02:19] Oh, yeah, it does.

Chuck Carpenter: [02:22] It's kind of a syrupy feel on the tongue. I was encouraged by the side of the bottle that I would have a nose with toffee and fruits, and it probably influenced me in some way. But I definitely smelled toffee.

Robbie Wagner: [02:34] Yeah. I mean, I think you could write anything there, and I would smell it.

Charlie Gerard: [02:39] Same.

Chuck Carpenter: [02:41] Yeah. All around. I'm supposed to taste vanilla, sweet oak. Okay. And fruitiness. I'm getting a little apricot. That's my fruit that I'm catching out of this.

Robbie Wagner: [02:52] I feel like on the nose, I get a little bit of my fruit is almost like a strawberry fruit roll pp. I don't know why, but.

Chuck Carpenter: [03:03] Is that because you had one today?

Robbie Wagner: [03:05] No.

Chuck Carpenter: [03:06] It could be. I always say all these things are pretty arbitrary. Anyway, it tastes like whatever it tastes like to you, and we're trying to come up with words to match. It's like a match game amongst ourselves. I don't know if you have any differences, Charlie, that you smell or taste.

Charlie Gerard: [03:22] I'm very new to whiskey, so I actually don't even.

Chuck Carpenter: [03:25] Oh, yeah.

Charlie Gerard: [03:28] I need more practice.

Chuck Carpenter: [03:29] I'm not new to whiskey at all, and I'm still making it up, so don't worry about that.

Charlie Gerard: [03:34] Yeah, okay.

Chuck Carpenter: [03:36] For sure. 100%.

Charlie Gerard: [03:37] I don't feel bad then.

Chuck Carpenter: [03:39] But yeah. This feels a little like a dessert to me. Not like, overwhelmingly sweet, but it's light, it's easy to drink. I don't typically like scotches that much when they tend to be in the peaty or heavy, smoky. I don't like too much of those kinds of things. This doesn't really seem to have either, but a little burn and a little sweet. So it's good.

Robbie Wagner: [04:00] Yeah, I would agree. I think it's different than most scotches, or at least I haven't had a lot of scotches. You can probably count on two hands the number of scotches I've had. But I think this is very good to me because I don't typically like the super peaty smoky scotches. So this is pretty tasty, pretty middle of the road, I would say easy to drink. I don't know. I think it I would give it maybe six tentacles.

Charlie Gerard: [04:25] Oh. How do you rate that?

Chuck Carpenter: [04:26] Oh, yes.

Charlie Gerard: [04:27] Yeah, I need to know.

Chuck Carpenter: [04:28] We have to explain our system. Robbie, come.

Robbie Wagner: [04:32] So we do one to eight tentacles just because our octopus mascot thing. So yeah, like, a one is the worst thing ever, and eight is, like, perfect whiskey. So I think it's pretty high up there.

Charlie Gerard: [04:46] Have you ever rated one? Is there one that's really bad?

Chuck Carpenter: [04:50] I think I did. We had one that was supposed to be like maple pancakes or something, but I don't know. It was really musty tasting with maple. I didn't like it at all. Really bad. I immediately gave that bottle away. So I think I did that one.

Robbie Wagner: [05:07] Yeah, I don't know. I think I gave that one, like a three. I think that's kind of the lowest I've gone. One would have to be like, I take a sip and just go, no, I can't drink it.

Chuck Carpenter: [05:16] It's true. I didn't spit it out, but still, I was like, no. For me, I think I'm going to go five. So it is easy to drink. It's got some interesting flavor to it. Yeah. Again, scotch isn't always my favorite, but this is. I could easily have this with someone. I just don't know if I'd, like, have two. I don't know. Maybe. I think because scotches tend to be on the lower proof side, and I like a little punch at the end. I want to feel it a little burn there like, oh, yes, I'm having alcohol, but that just could be my drinking problem speaking again

Robbie Wagner: [05:51] What do you think, Charlie?

Charlie Gerard: [05:52] Well, I don't really have much experience to be able to rate it. I wouldn't give it a one because I actually like it, so it's like, I'm not like, ew, but I wouldn't know what an eight would be. So I feel like I want to give it a six, but maybe I'm going to start there, and then I'm going to try more, and maybe I'll just have a better idea of how to rate them.

Chuck Carpenter: [06:13] Yeah, well, here's the thing. It's not permanent, either. Maybe this is the best one you've had so far, and so it is an eight right now. And then, as you get experience, it kind of changes over time. This is all pretty arbitrary anyway, but we're just trying to rate them as opposed to the stuff we've had thus far or maybe how much we'd come back to it. And that stuff changes, too. I feel like I get older, and stuff I liked five years ago is like, oh, well, I think it happens.

Charlie Gerard: [06:44] Yeah.

Robbie Wagner: [06:45] So you tweeted earlier that I guess it was yesterday, maybe, that you had barely started the week and.

Charlie Gerard: [06:51] Oh, yeah.

Robbie Wagner: [06:53] And that you already have exciting news and fun plans. Is this part of your fun plans being on here?

Charlie Gerard: [06:59] Yeah, no, I have a week of good things, and I'm excited to chat. So that is part of it. Yes.

Robbie Wagner: [07:05] Nice.

Charlie Gerard: [07:06] The really exciting thing is that I'm going to Alaska. I was definitely excited for that.

Robbie Wagner: [07:11] Oh, nice.

Chuck Carpenter: [07:12] All right. That's cool.

Charlie Gerard: [07:13] Yeah. Some holidays. Yeah.

Chuck Carpenter: [07:15] Yes. So a lot of outdoorsy-like things.

Charlie Gerard: [07:19] Yeah, I'm going to try. I've been checking the Aurora forecast to see, like, the northern lights, and I should be arriving on a day where it's really active, so I'm hoping to see that when I get there. But it's still winter, so I think there's still a lot of snow on the road, so I'm supposed to do a road trip, but I'm open to changing my plans depending on how it is when I actually get there.

Chuck Carpenter: [07:45] Got to be flexible.

Charlie Gerard: [07:46] Yeah, definitely.

Robbie Wagner: [07:48] Yeah, I hear it snows some there.

Chuck Carpenter: [07:52] Cool. So it's really interesting. So you wrote a book about machine learning and JavaScript, which I didn't even know was a thing, so I found that very interesting to like. Yeah, no, I had no idea. So seeing some of your JavaScript experiments. So how did that come about, the book?

Charlie Gerard: [08:10] So I had been experimenting with TensorFlow.js for, like, a couple of years before I was asked to write a book. So for me, I've been in that space for a while, so when I hear that people don't know about it, it always pulls me back. So, like, yeah, you know what you're exposed to, but you forget that other people don't know. So, yeah, I had been building experiments, and I had started looking into machine learning when TensorFlow was, like, just in Python. And that's why when they released TensorFlow.js, it was super exciting because all of a sudden, I'm mostly a JavaScript dev, so I could give up the Python part, and it was like there was less barrier to entry in learning about machine learning. So, yeah, I started looking into this, and then I got asked to write a book, and I was like, sure, why not? And it was definitely more work than I could have ever imagined, but it was a good experience. I don't think that's the type of stuff that you don't get to do all the time. And now I know that if I ever do it again, I will have to be much more prepared.

Chuck Carpenter: [09:15] Yeah, so it's called Practical Machine Learning in JavaScript for anyone who is interested and wants to look it up. I think I'm going to actually pick it up because I'm really curious. We so often end up talking about the web output of things and frameworks and SaaS applications and all of that kind of stuff. It's not always top of mind that this language is really you can do so much with it now.

Charlie Gerard: [09:43] That's my favorite thing about it because I feel like I spend my job like 8 hours a day doing more practical things. So if I decide to do some coding on the side, then I wanted to be a bit more fun or exposed me to things I don't know or that I have never done before. And I really like when usually, if you talk about creative coding, you have more languages like processing or things that are done in C++. And I love when people work on libraries and frameworks that allow you to do that in JavaScript as well. So you get exposed to different ways or different things that coding can do, but in the language that you already know. And I'm all for being able to explore without having to spend too much time on it because, I mean like, free time is limited.

Chuck Carpenter: [10:32] Yeah, I can empathize, but yeah, taking away the barrier to entry, that is what you know in syntax, right? Like being able to experiment and go down a rabbit hole in a whole other way with it. That's really cool.

Charlie Gerard: [10:44] Yeah, I mean, that's why most of my projects actually I start with vanilla JavaScript. I never start with Create React app, or I never start with a new framework because I actually find it. It slows me down. So, in general, I just have like a simple indexed JS file, and then I focus on learning the new exciting thing that I'm interested in. Sometimes when I try to start with React, and then I get in like WebPack hell, I'm just like it makes me want to give up on this side project altogether. So it's a bit of a shame, but it depends on what you like. Some people are much more comfortable with React, and they can start right away with that.

Robbie Wagner: [11:23] So, how do you come up with all these projects that you want to work on? Is it just random in your brain, or do you get the hardware and stuff first? You have that brain sensor thing where you are controlling the Chrome Dino game and stuff.

Charlie Gerard: [11:38] Yeah.

Robbie Wagner: [11:39] What's the process?

Charlie Gerard: [11:40] It depends. I think it's a bit of both. I think I definitely add up on all of my ideas. So every time that I build something, I start thinking about how to tweak it to add another tool or another piece of hardware. So for the brain sensor, it didn't start with just that. I started with like smaller pieces of hardware that were taking different inputs. So it was either an infrared camera for movement or sensors that were EMG sensors, I think, for, like, muscle movement. And from there, I started exploring what was commercially available and what dev tooling was available with that as well. And by looking into this space, I realized that you can buy a brand sensor, but there's also open-source ones that you can make your own. Takes a lot more time as well, but there's a lot like a big world out there of things that you can do. And then if I get a piece of hardware, the idea, either I buy it after having the idea or either I buy the hardware, and I'm like, what can I do with it? Because sometimes I'm not sure I can make it work when I buy it. I mean, luckily, if you just buy a little component, it's not too expensive. So if in the end, it doesn't work, you wasted maybe like $5. But usually, I try to make it work, and then I'm like, okay, so I have like a little template in JavaScript, okay, I get input, or I get output, and then I'm like, what do I want to do with it? I think that was what I did when I built the project to play Street Fighter with body movement. It's like, okay, I have a sensor that has an accelerator and JavaScript, so I know that it tracks movement, but then, okay, if I can track movement and it works, I get my data. What in the world do I do with movement? And this is where I build upon my ideas like that. And then I was like, oh, my God, what if I play Street Fighter but in real life? And I start from there? And once I got that, then I was, okay, it works with a motion sensor, but what about a brain sensor? And every time I have an idea, I kind of tweak it to push it as far as I can or until I get bored, and then I move on to another one. But usually, yeah, it never comes up. Like, I wake up, and I have a great idea. I wish it was like that, but most of the time, it's more an evolution of ideas or inspiration that I find online, like other people sharing their stuff, and it generates an idea in my head.

Robbie Wagner: [14:16] Nice. Yeah. That makes me wonder, will all games eventually be you just sit on the couch and use your brain, and you don't have to do anything?

Charlie Gerard: [14:26] But technically, you already do. But do we want to play like this? I think it's also a question of, like, is it something that we would want to do to sit there and completely not move? But I'm thinking we kind of already do it. When we sit in front of the keyboard, you don't move much.

Chuck Carpenter: [14:40] Right. At least we have some hand-eye coordination association there. If you remove that and just go right, it's hard to say.

Charlie Gerard: [14:46] I think you could have a mix. So maybe there are some things that could be taken from brain input. How you're feeling, for example, like if you're stressed, then maybe the game either comes down or even like there's more intensity or something. Or if you get scared, or you know, maybe you could get that input that you wouldn't get from a joystick. So instead of replacing, I think it could be augmenting. But people are probably looking at doing things like that. But it's like mixing a brain sensor. Plus already like a VR headset or something. There's a lot of things to wear.

Chuck Carpenter: [15:22] Right. Just integrate it in. It's fine. I can definitely see that. Like enhancing a VR experience, taking in some brain sensors. There's a lot of stuff I hadn't really considered a whole other world that's out there.

Charlie Gerard: [15:37] I mean, there's battery life problems, but they already started fixing that with VR. Like the Oculus Quest is like, you don't have any wire, but I'm sure people are doing some research. I think it's not really out there yet, but every time that I've been talking about brain sensor stuff, it's the first question that people ask me, like, what about gaming? And I'm like, yeah, I wonder what other applications there would be. But then we go into questions of, like, it can be uncomfortable to wear it, and the problem doesn't even become like the tech anymore. But it's more of a people problem.

Chuck Carpenter: [16:13] Right. I think the gaming is just basically like a great sandbox that's low risk, and we can do things there. If this becomes like a medical thing, well, the risk is a lot higher, so you better have tested a lot over somewhere else.

Charlie Gerard: [16:29] And the devices you use are different as well. The ones that you can buy online definitely are not the ones. I mean. I hope they're not the ones that use it in hospitals and stuff because they're a lot less reliable.

Chuck Carpenter: [16:39] Yeah, this whole interesting commercial space. So you're going out beyond Arduino kind of stuff, like those kinds of sensors?

Charlie Gerard: [16:47] Yeah, I do both.

Chuck Carpenter: [16:48] Okay.

Charlie Gerard: [16:49] I do both because sometimes I'm interested in more. Like if I make my own, then I also don't have to rely on an API built by somebody else. I can make their own hardware and make their own software as well. And at some point, I was even considering making my own boards from scratch. But that's like a step that I'm less familiar with. I know it's possible, I've seen people do it, but sometimes there are components you can buy and mix with an Arduino that are things that are not actually commercially available. So you can make your own stuff. I'm a big fan of having ownership of what you're building so that your data doesn't get given to somebody else. So when you build your own stuff, you keep everything.

Chuck Carpenter: [17:34] Yeah, right. Yeah. I gave up and got all Amazon devices, but I was for a little while trying to do home automation with open source and was like, yeah, this is great. But then, when you're constantly maintaining it, it also became kind of a hindrance.

Charlie Gerard: [17:49] And there's times where if you want to make your own Amazon Echo or something, in the end, you still have to subscribe to a service that does the machine learning for you. I mean, you can try to be on your own model, but you need so much data. So at some point, you have to either give up or just pay Amazon.

Chuck Carpenter: [18:08] Exactly.

Robbie Wagner: [18:09] We all pay Amazon.

Chuck Carpenter: [18:11] As soon as I got Global Entry and gave my fingerprints to the government, is it really pretty much over for me? Probably.

Charlie Gerard: [18:19] Yes. I'm laughing, but it's so sad.

Chuck Carpenter: [18:22] Exactly. So it's interesting because this is, like, I think, quite a step different from what I would imagine your day-to-day is with Netlify and the Jamstack and all of that.

Charlie Gerard: [18:33] Definitely.

Chuck Carpenter: [18:33] So I guess we could talk a little bit more about what you do there and what is a Google developer expert. I found that very interesting too. So love to hear more about what that is.

Charlie Gerard: [18:45] Sure. At Netlify, so we have a platform that we can deploy your sites and manage a lot of things without it being as horrible as AWS, for example. But it's like an easier way to manage your I hope you don't work you don't work at AWS.

Chuck Carpenter: [19:03] No, exactly. I've used it some. I know it's horrible. It's fine.

Charlie Gerard: [19:08] Yeah, they could do better in terms of UI. So as a developer advocate, my role is to look at a lot of different ways that people could use Netlify and provide people with resources so that our platform feels like easier to use. So, for example, if you wanted to deploy Remix site to Netlify, then my role would be to provide either like code samples or tutorials or being part of answering questions from the community. Like being the bridge between the developer community and our product team to provide ways to make it easier for you to integrate with our platform. So it's having both the product mindset and more of like being turned outwards towards the community to know, okay, what is the next thing that I think people are going to want to do? And even me as a developer, looking at our platform and being like, well, if I didn't understand how to use it, there's no way our customers are going to know how to use this. So it's like a mix of advocacy on behalf of Netlify, but also an advocate for users towards my team and being like, well, I think people are going to want this. Can we build something to help? So it's an interesting role. It's a mix of engineering and with a bit more communication as well. And for the Google developer expert, I've been a lot less active for the past couple of years because of the pandemic. I had less engagement. But it's a group supported by Google of non-Google engineers. So it's people from the community who are kind of sponsored by Google for events or resources. So to get into this group, there's like a mini interview where you have to explain, like, show what you've done for the community before. So if you've provided learning resources, if you've spoken at conferences and things like that, and then when you enter this group of like-minded people who want to share their interest in the web as a platform as a whole, I mean, there are different fields, let's say, in that program. So I'm more in the web technologies expert, but there's a thing for Angular or for Android, and there's different specialties. And what you get is a community of people that share resources. We get a preview of new things that are going to be launched in Chrome or new things that Google engineers are going to release so that we can get ready to kind of share the message in the community afterwards. And before, when there was conferences in person, you could get sponsor from Google to just pay for the flights and hotel if the conference couldn't pay for it. So you don't have to pay to advocate. And yeah, that gives you that. It gives you access to some new features that are going to be available soon, so you know in advance. And you can share in the community what you know once it's released. You're not allowed to share before, but right, yeah, it's a group of people you can ask questions to as well. So it's kind of like a community, but it's a bit closed off just because you have to go through an interview to get there.

Chuck Carpenter: [22:14] Yeah.

Charlie Gerard: [22:15] You have to be referred by an expert to go there. So if you know an expert and you're interested, you ask them, and then you have a couple of chats, and then they decide if yes or no, you're in.

Chuck Carpenter: [22:24] Okay. Interesting. Yeah. It's like unofficial evangelist, in a way.

Charlie Gerard: [22:30] Yeah.

Chuck Carpenter: [22:31] But then you're also an internal community, so it's like both bi-directional. Okay, there we go. Today I learned something. Hopefully, someone else listens to this also learns things. Very interesting.

Charlie Gerard: [22:42] Yeah.

Chuck Carpenter: [22:43] So there was like a slight trigger word there for me that I've been hearing about and thinking a lot about lately. And it's like you mentioned Remix specifically, and I've started to mentally align Remix with Netlify and, of course, Vercel Next.js. Yeah, so we had Kent C. Dodds on a few weeks ago or so, and he's now formally involved with and has been involved with Remix for a little while. And it seems that resources to simplify things for Remix within Netlify are occurring a lot. Vercel is making a bunch of moves. They are obviously continuing with Next.js, and their platform is very you can do other things there too, but obviously very geared towards Next.js. And then Remix released that article recently, like, comparing the two and sort of saying like, we are a lot better, and here's why. But they're just kind of challenging one another. So I don't know. I don't know if there's anything for us to talk about there specifically, but maybe do you find that people who are working on Remix applications are driven toward Netlify? Is Netlify making Remix applications easier for people?

Charlie Gerard: [23:57] I actually don't know. I think I mentioned Remix because I haven't looked into it yet. Maybe if I add it on my to do list. So it's like top of mind. I think for Netlify, the point is always just to be framework agnostic. And I know that we are talking internally about Remix because we know that there's interest in the community. So we're thinking about, okay, how can we help people get started with Netlify? I don't have more details because I haven't tried it myself. I mean, I was on a call with Ryan Florence about Remix, so I saw a little bit of a preview, but I haven't then I had the time to look into it myself, so I didn't even know that they were comparing Vercel with Netlify. I don't know. But yeah, for us, it's more if people are going to use Remix, then obviously we want to be the platform that people deploy their site on. So it's always as a DX engineer, my role is to be looking at what people are using. So I could have said Astro as well. Astro is something that we're looking at as well. At least we were looking at a lot a few months ago. So it changes as trends change.

Chuck Carpenter: [25:05] They seem to be changing so quickly.

Charlie Gerard: [25:08] Yeah, it's hard to keep up. I think even in engineering, when I was working in product, it was already hard to know. Okay, should we upgrade the tool we're using to this? Because it seems better, but now in DX engineering, it's even worse because it's like every few weeks, there's a new one. It's just like, I can't cover everything, but it's the point you're supposed to be. If we want to be a platform magnificent Netlify, we have to be covering everything. And yeah, that's intense.

Chuck Carpenter: [25:38] I can't wait to ask you about our RedwoodJS application if we make one.

Charlie Gerard: [25:44] It's been around for a while now. I remember hearing about Redwood a few years ago. That wasn't my two minutes, but then.

Chuck Carpenter: [25:50] It's just same, it got really hot and a lot of exposure, I would say, probably like two years ago. But I mean, they've been working towards 1.0, so I think that's why it's sort of bubbling up again, like trying to get into 1.0. And their use case is all about the app web app for startups.

Charlie Gerard: [26:09] Okay, that's interesting.

Chuck Carpenter: [26:10] Yeah, because authentication is built in and some other stuff.

Charlie Gerard: [26:15] Okay, yeah, there's definitely a market there.

Chuck Carpenter: [26:18] Yeah.

Charlie Gerard: [26:20] There's so much.

Chuck Carpenter: [26:22] DX. Yeah. And that's another thing that I feel like has really solidified and become important in the last year to two years is like this focus and effort around DX and Backstage as like a big corporation developer portal and DX as a whole finding ways to make things less painful, which is interesting.

Charlie Gerard: [26:48] I've seen more talk about it recently during the pandemic. I think it's a role that people are getting more interested in, but I think it's a role that sometimes I feel has a different definition between different companies. So even, sometimes, I'm a bit confused about what people mean or want. You have a part of sometimes people see it more as just advocacy in terms of just creating content, and some people are like a mix of both, and sometimes you can be it's more like internal tools. It really depends on the company. For me personally, it's been a mix of both, and that's what I like. It's a mix of improving our tools or features that we're launching and as well as then finding a way to communicate about it in a friendly way. But definitely, I think I realized more and more the need for it when sometimes I check a tool I want to try, like an API or something, and there's very poor documentation, or I don't understand how to even use it, or there's no examples. And then I realize, so maybe they built a cool product, but there's no way for me to know because I don't know how to use it. So definitely, it's a growing thing. Maybe it's because as startups want to ship very fast, then maybe they don't take the time to actually polish it, and then it's like, oh, the need for advocacy to kind of fix this. I don't know.

Chuck Carpenter: [28:17] Yeah, I think it's contextual in that way. Right. So for Netlify, you need DX because your customers are developers, and so that experience obviously is highly important for your customers to be able to utilize your tool effectively and consistently regardless throughout the entire lifecycle of their products. I think the companies have DX that some of it has to do with onboarding and new engineers, productivity, and then the ability to ship and the ability to clearly understand business objectives too. So I feel like, in a way, it's like modern-day DevOps because DevOps is applied differently every single place you go to.

Charlie Gerard: [29:02] So we're making roles up as we go in the industry. I mean, I'm fine with that as long as I love what I do. I don't really care how it's called. But it's difficult when a role means different things in different companies because then if I talk about my experience and then somebody thinks they're interested in being a DX Engineer, but they go to a company that doesn't do it the same way, then it's like a weird thing. So, yeah, it's been interesting.

Chuck Carpenter: [29:30] I blame HR.

Charlie Gerard: [29:33]Always.

Chuck Carpenter: [29:34] Yes. Because they're defining things so subjectively.

Charlie Gerard: [29:39] The thing is, if we don't know, they don't know neither.

Chuck Carpenter: [29:42] That's true. Yeah. Because you're, like, figuring it out as these things are being developed, and it's like, oh, well, this is the thing that works for us. Good luck. Here it is. You have to start the DX Foundation.

Charlie Gerard: [29:54] All right.

Chuck Carpenter: [29:55] Your next project.

Charlie Gerard: [29:56] Another role I've been thinking about. So at Netlify, we have a person who's in charge of more communities, so our Discord channel. So and I was thinking, so is the role Community Engineer now also a thing? Because it's a bit separate from DX, and I've seen more companies talk about their Discord channel, and it looks like it's a separate role. So maybe now there's also something called Community Engineer that's going to grow as well. And it's interesting because that definitely wasn't there. I mean, even at the beginning of the pandemic, I had never heard of a Community Engineer. So it's interesting how there is new roles, and maybe we get to shape what it is, which is kind of like a nice thing as well.

Robbie Wagner: [30:40] Yeah, I think everyone got super burned out in the pandemic, and you got an opportunity to learn new stuff, and you're like, I don't want to go to this community that doesn't have someone managing it and has terrible documentation. Everyone's had to step up on all sides of that, for sure.

Charlie Gerard: [30:56] Yeah. Opportunities to define your role. I mean, I think that's cool.

Chuck Carpenter: [31:01] Yeah. Well, we started this conversation, and I'd never heard of Community Engineer.

Charlie Gerard: [31:07] Maybe I just made it up. Right.

Charlie Gerard: [31:09] You did. Maybe. But I think it's valid. I think that especially, like, the number of people entering the field is growing and growing. The demand is continuing to grow. None of this is changing or going away. So the opportunities lie in support and tools for engineering across the board. Fun facts.

Robbie Wagner:[31:32] I went through a lot of your tweets and just wrote follow-up questions. Lots of cool things you're doing, I guess. To start, I saw you were learning calculus.

Charlie Gerard: [31:42] Oh, yes, I was.

Robbie Wagner: [31:44] What was that for?

Charlie Gerard: [31:45] And I haven't actually told many people it's because I am going to start Bachelors of Computer Science.

Robbie Wagner: [31:52] Oh, nice.

Charlie Gerard: [31:53] And to get enrolled in, I needed some credits, so I took calculus.

Chuck Carpenter: [31:58] Okay.

Charlie Gerard: [31:59] It's a bit random. There's a reason why I'm taking it. I know that there's always these threads on Twitter about you don't need a degree. And I'm not doing it for my current job. I'm doing it for my potential future career that will maybe require me to have a degree. So I'd rather just do it now.

Chuck Carpenter: [32:17] Nice.

Robbie Wagner: [32:17] Yeah, fair enough.

Chuck Carpenter: [32:19] Good for you.

Robbie Wagner: [32:20] I think you had said you couldn't write stuff down.

Charlie Gerard: [32:24] Yes.

Robbie Wagner: [32:25] How did that work? You can only write down the answer, none of the work or something.

Charlie Gerard: [32:29] Yeah, because when you do it remotely, it's a proctored exam you have to show in your camera. I was in this room, and I couldn't have anything on my desk, on the walls, like no pen, no paper or anything. So when I was doing the exam online, there was no paper to draft any ideas, so I had to look at the question and just visualize it in my head. Honestly, I was like, I can't believe they didn't tell me that. I could have shown the piece of paper, but it was like, no paper. So that was definitely one of the hardest exam that I did. But it was also fun in a weird way. As long as I passed, I'm fine. If I had failed, I would have been like. This is bullshit.

Robbie Wagner: [33:16] Yeah. I failed a lot of calculus and differential equations and various math exams with lots of paper and writing. So doing it all in my head sounds really hard.

Charlie Gerard: [33:26] Yeah, but it was weirdly. I remember in high school that I started hating math because the teacher wasn't really great. I don't think she actually wanted to be a teacher. And then, looking back into it now, I actually thought it was really interesting. I can't believe everything I missed out on. Just because wrong teaching.

Chuck Carpenter: [33:45] But yeah, better late than never, though.

Charlie Gerard: [33:48] Yeah.

Robbie Wagner: [33:50] So I saw that you had gotten at least one new plant sometime recently. You big into plants, or was that just a one-off thing?

Charlie Gerard: [33:59] Well, I wanted to be more into plants during the pandemic, like joining the plant trend, but I didn't have a long-term house. It was more in, like, Airbnb stuff, so I couldn't really buy plants. So now that I have a more permanent place, I'm buying more plants. But every time I try, they can't. I let them die. So I'm trying. It's not dead yet. It's still growing well. So I'm doing better than I did before.

Chuck Carpenter: [34:27] I was going to say my follow-up was going to be for some tips because I do have one plant that's five years old that has, I think, it's just very strong. Yes. I drug it cross country. I have lots of things. So they gave it to me at the hospital when my son was born, so I'm very intent on keeping it alive. I, in fact, call it the Aiden plant, but it does better sometimes than other times, but it keeps going. And we've had a couple of other plants, though, that don't fare so well. He's like, why. But I don't know. You read some basic books, and it's like yeah, it's usually one, two, three things. You check, do you change? They'll be fine. They don't get fine. And I'm like, what has happened? I want more of these, but not to kill.

Charlie Gerard: [35:12] Yeah.

Robbie Wagner: [35:13] Maybe we need DX help in getting plants to grow.

Chuck Carpenter: [35:16] PX.

Robbie Wagner: [35:17] They're not documented well enough.

Chuck Carpenter: [35:19] Plant experience. My plant experience is fairly poor. It's about a 20% success rate.

Charlie Gerard: [35:24] I've had to watch YouTube videos, so I think I'm going to be doing that. I'm going to watch YouTube videos on how to keep your plants alive.

Chuck Carpenter: [35:32] Yeah, okay, that's fair. Do you have any other hobbies outside of building things, hardware things, and experiments, and then mediocre planting?

Charlie Gerard: [35:46] Well, I usually go. I mean, I like to go hiking, but the weather in Seattle has not been super great since I arrived here. But that's why I'm hoping that in Alaska if the weather is nice, I'm going to do lots of hiking. I've gotten back into reading books. I've found it very hard to sit down and focus on reading a book. So usually, what I try is to get into audiobooks because I feel like I need to do an activity while I'm reading, which is, I don't know, it's like maybe this attention span thing. So in audiobooks, I've been doing well, but I'm trying to get back into just like sitting down and reading a book. Which sounds silly, but I actually found it. I find it hard. It's like my mind is always like, oh, I need to do this, I need to do this. So I'm trying to get better organized so I can properly read a book.

Chuck Carpenter: [36:38] I empathize. I used to read a lot, and I'm very time constraint anymore. And so I keep buying books and creating a list and adding some artificial pressure. But I'm not giving myself 30 minutes to do that. And I agree it sounds easy. Like, oh, if it just did 30 minutes every single day, that would amount to something over time, right?

Charlie Gerard: [36:58] For some reason, you always find like, oh, but I could do this in this 30 minutes. And in the end, it's like, what's the best use of my time? Because if I don't read the thing I'm going to do in this, I mean, it's really easy to be like, I could watch Netflix, and it was just that in the end. It might be more of a waste of time than finishing a book.

Chuck Carpenter: [37:19] Yeah, but I'm tired at nights, and I want to watch Boba Fett or Peacemaker or The Witcher or one of the other random shows I watch.

Charlie Gerard: [37:28] It's how much space, like, mental energy you have. I find that it makes me more exhausted to read a book because I want to read it properly. Whereas sitting on my couch and watching Netflix definitely does not require much.

Chuck Carpenter: [37:42] Exactly.

Charlie Gerard: [37:44] Especially with what I watch. Reality TV is like not hard.

Chuck Carpenter: [37:49] Okay, so what you're saying is it's worse than the ones that I already mentioned. 90-Day fiance.

Charlie Gerard: [37:57] But that was great, though.

Chuck Carpenter: [38:00] No, that was a trap. That was a trap. I just set for you, and it worked.

Charlie Gerard: [38:04] Yeah, no, it's just I used to get caught up in, like watching other people have a life. Really. I think during the pandemic, I watched a lot of that, and I think I realized. I think all I'm watching is other people having a life. Well, I can't have one. I think there was definitely a pattern in what I was watching. I watch it less now, but yeah, there was definitely a lot of that.

Chuck Carpenter: [38:23] Yeah, it's very introspective. I haven't given myself that. I'm not sure why. I've been choosing a lot of fantasy shows lately, so it could be something.

Charlie Gerard: [38:32] To escape.

Chuck Carpenter: [38:33] Yeah.

Charlie Gerard: [38:36] What all the weird stuff have I tweeted? I was being like, oh my God, what are you going to dig up? But I don't think I tweeted weird stuff.

Robbie Wagner: [38:43] No, nothing weird necessarily.

Charlie Gerard: [38:46] Okay.

Robbie Wagner: [38:46] You definitely tweet several things that I want to buy. I saw the tweet about the analog pocket, like the Game Boy remake thing.

Charlie Gerard: [38:56] Yeah, but then I think I heard horrible stuff about the company, but after I bought it, I was like, damn, but too late. I pre-ordered it. I spent the money.

Robbie Wagner: [39:05] Yeah, I pre-ordered too.

Charlie Gerard: [39:07] You did?

Robbie Wagner: [39:08] Yeah.

Charlie Gerard: [39:09] So I did as well. But then I think the email I got about the date it will be delivered is like next year or the year after. And I was like, well that wasn't the deal. That wasn't what was written on the site. It said one day I'll receive a package, and I'm like, what's that? And it will be like.

Charlie Gerard: [39:28] Yeah, I mean, I really love playing Game Boy growing up, so I bought two, thinking I'm going to be having a son here soon. So like, when he's born, maybe when he's into that, we could link up and play or whatever. So I thought that would be cool. Yeah, but yeah, I haven't heard what the bad stuff about the company. I guess maybe I should look into that.

Charlie Gerard: [39:48] I forgot what it is, but I think there was some drama around there as well. I was like, dammit, because I said that before. We're like, can people just not be evil? So then I could just buy stuff without feeling bad?

Chuck Carpenter: [40:01] Yeah, no, not really.

Robbie Wagner: [40:03] No chance.

Chuck Carpenter: [40:05] Welcome to capitalism. But they keep deferring the release of that, right, too. Hasn't that been pushed some?

Charlie Gerard: [40:12] I don't know, it's that stuff with like products that seem shiny, and you're interested, and they say, oh, you'll receive in like six months, and then you buy, and it's actually no in two years.

Chuck Carpenter: [40:21] So yeah, six months, give or take. Six-month increments. We'll let you know what's going on.

Robbie Wagner: [40:27] Yeah, you can't get anything quick, right? Now, like, everything is on a boat in the middle of the ocean or something. You can't get anything.

Charlie Gerard: [40:35] I don't actually know the games that they're releasing with it, so I bought it because it was pretty, and then I'm like, wait, actually, what am I going to be able to play with it? I still don't know. Another four years until I get games.

Robbie Wagner: [40:49] Yeah, I'm going to try to find a bunch of old Game Boy games and just buy those, I think. I don't know what new might come out, but I know what Game Boy games I used to like, so just look for those somewhere.

Charlie Gerard: [41:00] Pokemon? No.

Robbie Wagner: [41:03] Oh, I love Pokemon. That was fun.

Chuck Carpenter: [41:06] Vintage gaming is, like, such a thing now, though. My brother has, like, a side business buying up old consoles and games from thrift stores and then reselling them on eBay.

Charlie Gerard: [41:16] Yeah, that would definitely make a lot of money.

Chuck Carpenter: [41:19] Yeah, he's definitely a thousandaire.

Robbie Wagner: [41:24] I don't know. I think that might have been all of the tweets. Let me think here.

Charlie Gerard: [41:29] Yeah, I don't tweet that much.

Robbie Wagner: [41:31] Well, a lot more than some people.

Chuck Carpenter: [41:35] More than me, less than Robbie. No. I don't know.

Robbie Wagner: [41:39] Yeah, I don't know. Are there any other developers or projects you're following or interested in right now?

Charlie Gerard: [41:45] Well, I know it's controversial, but I've been trying to educate myself in the whole Web3 stuff, but I have no real opinion because I don't know enough. So maybe I don't know if we want to go into this because it seems to be so on fire everywhere that it's hard to, if you just want to learn, it's hard to be able to find that. So I've just been trying to educate myself, so I can have my own opinion. But it's very early on, so I still don't actually have an opinion on it. But I'm looking at it because, as a DX engineer, is it going to be something I'm going to have to understand or not? But I guess it's like every new JavaScript program. I look at it, and then I decide. But when it comes to that topic, it's more like sometimes it feels like the first time I learned programming. It's kind of like, well, where do I look at? What can I do? What does it do? Because I think as a technology, if you just look at the tech, there's probably things to learn. The issue is always how people use it. So I've been looking a bit into that, and otherwise, there was a bit of, I think, at some point, a lot of people were talking about Rust still, so I've been trying to look into that a bit because you can build web applications in Rust. So in the Jamstack, I was like, okay, is it something that we can do? But it's always stuff that I add to my to-do list, and then I have actual neighboring stuff to do. And this back and forth between things I want to learn and things I have to do. So yeah, there's always so much going on. But what about you, actually? Is there something that spikes your interest at the moment?

Robbie Wagner: [43:29] I mean, we have the same problem of not having enough time to learn the new shiny things, but we have opinions on Web3 and NFTs and all the stuff we're super uneducated in how they actually work or how to implement it. But we've talked a lot about it even though we don't really know how.

Chuck Carpenter: [43:49] Yeah, I think there's a burgeoning potential. I think it's applied in a lot of different ways. I think that there's a bunch of ways it's going to get applied that we haven't thought of or talked about yet that maybe someone else is thinking about and experimenting with, and so I think it behooves us to learn more about it. Some people have strong opinions about the negative implementations occurring and some of the downsides, but I think it would be naive to completely write it off.

Charlie Gerard: [44:16] I think it's like everything.

Chuck Carpenter: [44:19] Yeah, and so. I find it in that respect very interesting, and I think there's potential opportunities to do some cool and legitimate things within those spaces. So why not learn more about that? Become educated to have a better conversation there.

Charlie Gerard: [44:34] Yeah, I think at some point, I don't know exactly, but I think I heard that in Australia or something, there was some stuff where people could own a part of the power grid, and you could, like, pay less in bills because the energy would then be, like, redistributed or whatever. And well, that I might be completely wrong, and I just, like, heard about it for like 5 seconds. But it made me think about ways outside of the NFT stuff. Like how can it be used for actually, like, good stuff? It's like when I've been looking in machine learning, a lot of people are kind of against machine learning because of the wrong things that you can do with it. And unfortunately, I think a lot of the times with computer vision, what is done is not so great, like surveillance in cities and whatever, but I still wanted to learn about the technology for what it could build and experimenting with it. And I think that with Web3, I would want to do the same. It's like, okay, I know that people will always do horrible things when they can, but there's also people who are interested in where it can actually help, and that's where I want to again educate myself before I have an opinion. I don't really want to have an opinion if I don't know what I'm talking about. So I'm like observing and trying to learn, but if there is good things that can be done, then I'd want to know what they are, and I feel like I don't find many resources talking about that. So I'm still like, okay, what does it mean? Like, decentralized and the blockchain, what could I actually build on this? I'm still very blurry to me because all people talk about is NFTs. Okay. Yeah, I get it. But the other thing, what can I actually build? Why would I want to build it with this?

Chuck Carpenter: [46:23] Regressing, like a couple of steps up. And not saying an output is an NFT, but what is the underlying technologies, and how does blockchain work, and then how can I apply that? Smart contracts. Essentially, I guess you have to learn to write and understand smart contracts as much as I think I know.

Charlie Gerard: [46:43] But when I've been reading articles, there's, like, so many terms that are very specifically for this way of building things that I'm just, I mean, honestly, I do think that this space needs a lot of DX. I'm like a senior engineer, and I read this stuff, and it almost looks like you're in a marketing meeting where you saw the acronyms, and you're supposed to know what it's about. And I'm just like, whoa, I'm new to this space, and there's this talk about, like, it's for everybody. Well, then maybe start with explaining what that means because that's obviously not for everybody. So I think it was one of my motivation when I thought maybe I should look into this. It's kind of like, well, as somebody who's I'm never fangirling anything, I'm always quite neutral. So if I can learn and then maybe create resources that are more neutral, than I'm never going to be the person who's being like, you should use this tool. I'm more like, use it if you want to. That's why I don't have my own business because you don't like my products, whatever.

Chuck Carpenter: [47:49] Use this or not. That's a great tagline. What do you mean?

Charlie Gerard: [47:52] It's fine, no worries.

Chuck Carpenter: [47:55] Yeah, it costs something. Or doesn't? I don't know.

Charlie Gerard: [47:58] Yeah, want it for free. Okay, so, yeah, I'm terrible at this, but I wish there was more of that neutral voice and less acronyms, but you would know we have our own terms in normal programming as well. So it's an interesting space. It's for everybody. But first, you have to learn what all of this means.

Chuck Carpenter: [48:23] Assuming that whatever is the right way, which isn't necessarily true, it's just the way they've been able to do it thus far. Yeah, all of that, all of those paths are being dreaded.

Charlie Gerard: [48:31] Yeah, we do that in programming as well. Best practices. But, like, for who? Best practices for you? But yeah, it's funny. I mean, we all talk like that.

Chuck Carpenter: [48:42] Yeah. It's just someone else's opinion.

Charlie Gerard: [48:44] Yeah.

Chuck Carpenter: [48:45] The cloud is someone else's computer.

Robbie Wagner: [48:49] Yeah, I'm just waiting for someone to, like whenever the first iterations of things come out, they're usually not the best. So I'm waiting for the second round of Web3 when there's easy-to-use documentation and frameworks and cool things you can do. And that's when I'll get in. I don't need the headache of learning it all backwards and forwards right now.

Charlie Gerard: [49:11] Yeah. I hope that people looking into it are asking themselves the right question as well. It's like the whole Jurassic Park thing. It's not because you could that you should. I'm hoping that people who are heavily involved in that space think about the impact that it has, like, at a broader level. If you know how it can be used for bad, then how do you put in place the right stuff so that it doesn't get used for bad? But I feel like it's like that for everything. It's like personal responsibility as well.

Chuck Carpenter: [49:46] Right?

Charlie Gerard: [49:47] Yeah. It's interesting to watch.

Robbie Wagner: [49:49] Yeah, it's true. There's stuff that's happened that I would have never thought of. People make an NFT that's like an SVG that has, like, JavaScript code in it that executes when you pull it down, and then you're screwed.

Charlie Gerard: [50:05] But that's also fascinating because I think more on the engineer. Again, it's again, like, looking at the tech rather than how it's used, just as an engineer, thinking about, oh, that's smart. I would love to know how to actually do that. But for me, as a person, I wouldn't do it in a malicious way. But it's like, I would love to know, what can you do with hiding some executable code in SVG? And it's kind of like a hacker mindset, but like ethical hacking, actually, basically.

Chuck Carpenter: [50:35] Yes.

Charlie Gerard: [50:35] I'm more on that side, and that's why I always love educating myself about the tech itself rather than going into the hype of how it's used.

Robbie Wagner: [50:47] Yeah, I think that would be a fun. This may already exist, but, like, events where they kind of teach you stuff like that, and you just learn how to hack stuff. Like, you know, I mean, obviously, they wouldn't want to teach you stuff that's super dangerous, but cool little things like that would be fun to learn.

Charlie Gerard: [51:01] I mean if you learn I've had, like, ethical hacking on my to-do list for, like, five years, but again but I think if you start learning ethical hacking, you're given the tools to do bad stuff, but you use your own responsibility, like, not to do it. There are things you can do with what you learn that you could go to jail for, but then it's like your own responsibility. You're not supposed to do that. And I feel like that could be definitely something as well. It's like, here's the knowledge, and then it's your responsibility to decide how you use it. I usually learn that way.

Chuck Carpenter: [51:37] And you're creating things, knowing what the vulnerabilities are.

Charlie Gerard: [51:41] Yeah.

Chuck Carpenter: [51:42] And so you're smarter maybe about some of those decisions.

Charlie Gerard: [51:45] We probably would be building better even web apps, like normal Jamstack web apps, if people knew how to hack them. I think they will probably build better security. To me, honestly, I don't know that much about web security. So, I mean, I probably build stuff that were very vulnerable, and I have no idea because I didn't look into it. So I think that's why I'm getting back into ethical hacking and learning about networks and stuff just because it's like, well, I can't protect myself if I don't know how it actually works. And I can't I can't rely on my internet provider to have built something robust because, I mean, they're like any other company that just need to ship. Right. So I think when I started looking to IoT, there was a lot of that where it's like, oh, a lot of new devices on the market. And then they actually didn't make the security of it really good because, again, they just wanted a product to be shipped and bought. They just wanted to make money. So you had a lot of bridges from IoT devices, which is bad because if you have a camera at home, I don't want people to be able to watch what's going on in my house. And so it's learning how to build a thing, but also learning how to break it is nice, but so much to learn its priorities.

Chuck Carpenter: [52:57] Yeah. That's like with anything in life.

Robbie Wagner: [53:01] Yeah, there was definitely a lot of stuff that wasn't done well. I forget exactly what it was that didn't PlayStation have the root password for every PlayStation was like 1234 or something, so their entire network was compromised in like a second.

Charlie Gerard: [53:18] Amazing how many people still have the password, password. You know.

Robbie Wagner: [53:22] Yeah.

Charlie Gerard: [53:23] Sometimes I'm thinking I think about it as an engineer, but the majority of the population is not an engineer. And I think a lot of people don't know that having 12345 is not secure. I'm sure that there's still a lot of people who don't know, and it's about educating people outside of tech as well or just actually just building products that are just building products that are robust enough, so people don't have to care. But the whole thing about when you have to ship fast, you're cutting corners that you shouldn't cut, but everybody does it.

Chuck Carpenter: [54:00] Yeah.

Robbie Wagner: [54:01] All right, well, we're about at time here. Is there anything we didn't cover? Like, anything you'd like to plug? Anything you're working on causes you care about? Anything you want to mention?

Charlie Gerard: [54:13] On the spot right now.

Robbie Wagner: [54:15] You don't have to.

Chuck Carpenter: [54:17] Yeah or nothing.

Charlie Gerard: [54:18] Yeah, nothing.

Chuck Carpenter: [54:19] Okay. Save a plant. Buyaplant.org

Charlie Gerard: [54:22] Yeah, exactly.

Chuck Carpenter: [54:24] I don't know if that's a thing. All right, thanks again for coming on.

Charlie Gerard: [54:29] Thank you so much.

Chuck Carpenter: [54:30] Yeah. All right.

Robbie Wagner: [54:31] Thanks, everybody, for listening. If you liked it, please subscribe, and we'll catch you next time.

Chuck Carpenter: [54:37] Thanks for listening to Whiskey Web and Whatnot. This podcast is brought to you by Ship Shape and produced by Podcast Royale. If you like this episode, consider sharing it with a friend or two and leave us a rating, maybe a review. As long as it's good.

Robbie Wagner: [54:53] You can subscribe to future episodes on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. For more info about Ship Shape and this show, check out our website at shipshape.io.