Nick Taylor: Open Source, Live Streaming, and Structured YOLO

Show Notes:

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Transcript:

Bekah: 00:14

Hey, this is season one episode, one of the Virtual Coffee podcast. I'm Bekah and this is a podcast that features members of the community. Virtual Coffee is an intimate group of developers at all stages of their coding journey. And they're here on this podcast to share their stories and talk about what they've learned. And we're here to share that with you here with me today as my co-host Dan, how's it going, Dan? It's going

Dan: 00:39

pretty good. Thanks. Bekah. Um, today we have a really great episode. We're gonna hear from Nick Taylor. Uh, Nick is a senior software engineer at forum. Uh, the company behind dev. He's a big fan of type script, JavaScript, uh, react and pre-ACT and node. Um, once upon a time he was into C sharp and esp.net. Aside from programming, he enjoys hitting the gym snowboarding and a long, long time ago. Rugby Nick is also one of our first members. He is. Been in Virtual Coffee since nearly the beginning, he has helped us out in, uh, many ways. He's been a note taker and a room leader, a mentor, an open source maintainer, and an all around awesome human being. So Nick is gonna talk about live streaming and open source, and he will share with us his approach to life, which he calls structured. Yo.

Bekah: 01:30

We start every episode of the podcast. Like we start every Virtual Coffee. We introduce ourselves with our name where we're from, what we do and a random check-in question. Today's question is what is one thing you are afraid

Dan: 01:45

of? We hope you'll enjoy this episode of the Virtual Coffee

Nick: 01:48

podcast.

Bekah: 01:59

Hey, I'm Bekah, I'm a front end developer from a small town in Ohio. And one of my biggest fears is waffle bridges.

Dan: 02:08

Hi, I am Dan. I am a front end developer from Cleveland, Ohio, and one of my biggest fears is Hornets. Don't

Nick: 02:18

like 'em. Ah, yeah. My name is Nick Taylor. I'm a senior software engineer at forum and. I'd say my, one of my biggest fears is Heights. I am not a big fan of Heights. Uh, I remember in grade six, I cried at the bottom of the scene tower because I had a hard time going up and it was traumatic. Oh no. So you wanna know how I ended up

Bekah: 02:49

yeah. Yeah. Let's start with your origin story. How'd you get into programming.

Nick: 02:53

Uh, it's I don't know. I feel like it's a classic story of, uh, somebody who has no idea what they wanna do. Um, I, I had a computer. Like we had computers when I was younger, like, uh, had a V 20 I'm a little older. So that's like bef I think that was before the Commodor 64 or after I can't remember the order, but, you know, so it was, that was fun as a kid, just doing stuff like printing your name multiple times over the screen. And, uh, we eventually got like a, a clone PC, which was, seemed to be the, the big thing in the day in the eighties. Uh, The actual, like, I guess, I guess it would've been IBM machines were a lot more expensive and, uh, Didn't really do too much on there. Like my, my dad's an accountant and financial planner, so he he's always like working in spreadsheets and stuff and we didn't really have any games. So like I was making pie charts in Lotus 1, 2, 3, and I just thought that was cool on a monochrome, uh, monitor. But, uh, and then eventually got a, a couple, couple games there and like a clone pack, man, a lot of stuff. But that was, that was kind of like my early introduction to computers. Uh, but I honestly was never like a diehard programmer. Um, it was only a really, once I got to C J, C E is like, it's like the last two years of high school in the states, I guess. It's we don't have like a grade 12 grade 13. So you, you go to grade 11. And you can either go straight to university. Like if you go out of province or out of country, but if you're in Quebec, you, you typically need to do these, um, which is where I'm from, I'm from Montreal. Um, but I. Basically, I ended up bombing my first semester cuz uh, I was dating somebody and I was just doing that and playing rugby pretty much. Um, and then after failing my first semester, I just kinda got back on track a bit and I was in creative arts, which at the time there was like, literally take any courses you want. And I was always. Pretty pretty good at math. So I ended up taking, uh, Cal one and Cal two courses and I took a C plus plus course. And, uh, literally the only reason why I ended up going into computer science, the only reason why I did was like I did okay. In that C plus plus course. And. but it wasn't anything special. It's like, I think I remember one of the final exercises was like making a Christmas tree outta stars, you know, and it's, you're just basically repeating it, but, uh, yeah, that's, that's really kind of how I got into programming, I guess, which I know that doesn't sound that exciting. Um, I. but the exciting part for me was there was the, there was no web courses at the time. Like I was in university when it was always just like, learn about databases, data structures, uh, operating systems and. There was everything web. I literally learnt on my own. I remember opening no joke, notepad dot exc in a, in a cracked version of, uh, windows, uh, server 2000 I think, or something. And I just started learning HTML, JavaScript, and CSS through there. And you know, the computer. Background helped, but, uh, I probably could have done a lot better in school, but I, I was doing a lot of sports and stuff too. I, I was pretty active playing rugby, so, um, but yeah, that's, that's, that's my boring origin story for getting into programming. It's not like, yeah. I was like hacking the matrix when I was two or something. but, uh, but the funny thing is once I finished school, I felt like I was learning more outside of school. Like I was actually motivated to learn outta school when I was in school. I wasn't as motivated. So it's, uh, it's kind of funny, uh, in that respect. And then it's pretty much just gone from there. Uh, I've been mostly, I'd say about two thirds of my career has been in the.net ecosystem. So, uh, well, even before.net, before.net, there was something called ASSP. So active server pages and you. They even had JS script, which was like Microsoft's version of JavaScript and there was VB script. So you could program pages. It's, it's kind of like PHP kind of, and then.net came out and then you ended up with asp.net, which, uh, and then, so that's the whole.net ecosystem. And I basically was in the area up until about 2016. But I was, was a big fan of JavaScript and I like the web stuff and I just happened to be in the.net ecosystem cuz that's just where jobs ended up coming from. Like somebody I knew and say, oh, why don't you come work here now? And um, but yeah, when I, when I hit 2016, I had this opportunity to I'd already. Been doing, uh, kind of more full stack at that point, uh, and, uh, had an opportunity to take a, a role as a front end dev doing react and type script for this FinTech startup. And I haven't looked back since then. Like, I mean, uh, everything pretty much is front end for me. Now I can, I mean, I have no problem working in back end if I need to, but for now, at least. Super stoked about working in the front end and like, like anything, always lots to learn there still, even if I've been around for a while. So

Bekah: 08:54

yeah. I love that. I think that's really great. And I like that, you know, you've been here for a while, but you've done a lot of different things and you have a good understanding of, um, you know, where you're going and what you're interested in. And I think that, you know, that's really, um, a fun and interesting thing to talk about.

Nick: 09:15

Yeah, I, I find, uh, I find I've been able slowly over time to figure out what I don't wanna do, which is good. So

Dan: 09:25

that's that's that sounds familiar. yeah, that, that's sort of how I've I, that sounds familiar to me, you know, I've, I've done end up doing the same thing. I make more decisions based on, yeah, I don't wanna do that then, then practical, like, okay, this is the thing that I'm going to do, you know? Yeah. Served me, served me pretty well too.

Nick: 09:45

Yeah, for sure. And, and the front end right now, I feel like, I mean, uh, I mean the tech space in general is, well, I guess, I guess it's a little different cuz of the pandemic, but I at least what I've seen, like excluding the pandemic for now, uh, like just front end jobs typically. Just like everywhere. Everybody's O I mean, a lot of 'em are always asking for react because that's like pretty much the dominant front end framework right now, I would say, but, uh, but still like just lots of opportunities. So I don't know. I feel like I transitioned to doing that. At, uh, at the right time. So,

Bekah: 10:24

yeah, and I love that idea. I know when I was learning, so, you know, I'm a newer programmer, but everybody's like, well, what do you want to do? Like, what do you really like? But nobody says like, what don't you like? Right. Um, and I think that could be a really great way to kind of narrow it down. It's a different approach to things, but, um, you know, ideally you find a job that you enjoy doing and that's what kind of creates longevity and helps you to avoid burnout. And that type of.

Nick: 10:52

Yeah, for sure. And it's yeah. It's but I feel like it, it it's honestly, only something you can really get with experience. I think, because like, cuz I've been working in at like my first real programming job was in 2002. So I've been in the space for like about 18 years now. So. You know, if you asked me as a junior, I wouldn't say, uh, you know, this is not what I wanna do. My first job. I just took it without asking any questions because I was just happy to get a job. So.

Bekah: 11:31

Yeah, I think that's great. I know that I really hated react when I was doing it. And that's pretty much all I've done. So I guess that there are times that you find things that you, you enjoy, even if you initially don't like them. Um, I would love to know how you found out about Virtual Coffee, because I, I, this is how I met you and I just wanna know, like, how did you end up here?

Nick: 11:57

Yeah, well, uh, you know, I think, uh, as we all know, 2020 is a dumpster fire, uh, for, for many, many reasons, but predominantly the pandemic. Um, and I actually remember, I didn't know you at the time, but, uh, I'm generally pretty active on Twitter. And because I work at forum, which was previously dev I'm, I'm usually interacting a lot with, I, I tend to interact with the community a lot and I remember. I only saw this in hindsight, but I, I, I realized that, uh, I was actually responding to some of your questions on code newbie at one point. Uh, and then I, I forget when you posted it, but you had your initial. Uh, tweet that was like, Hey, Virtual Coffee, come check it out. And I said yes to the first one, but then something came up, I think, at a, something for work or something had a appointment or something. And so I couldn't make it. And then I, I think the next one you had, I said, Hey, I'm free again. And I, I just basically contacted you out of the blue. I, I think I sent you a DM or I responded directly in the tweak cause. Because we weren't following each other at the time, but, um, it was pretty much that, you know, uh, I. I'm a, I'm a pretty sociable person. And like outside of, I mean, I'm working full remote now, even pre pandemic, but you know, I'll go out for drinks, grab coffee with friends, or, you know, do stuff. Um, and. Obviously cuz of the pandemic, not a lot of that is happening or none of it is happening. So I was just like, I dunno, I was just like, Yolo, you know, Hey, whatever, let's go check it out. And, uh, it was one of the best things that happened to me in 2020, honestly, uh, met a lot of great. Folks like your both view and just, I really enjoy the community and it's, it's kind of really cool to see how it's grown and because we know each other a lot better now, too, you know, it's because those initial conversations in a, in the Virtual Coffee, or like the slack chat, you know, people don't really know how people are, so it's, uh, but you can tell. People people know who's who now. So it's. Yeah, no, I just love it.

Bekah: 14:16

Yeah. I, I love it too. And who knew, who knew that, you know, in, in April I would, um, lose my job because Dan would fire me and then

Nick: 14:31

I didn't fire you.

Bekah: 14:35

I mean, it's, it's semantics, right? Like I work for Dan's important semantics. Dan was like, Hey, we don't have work anymore. So call it what you want. Um, Uh, but yeah, like it started there and it was like, okay, well I need to be around people. And now we're recording a podcast. Right? Like nowhere in my mind. Did I ever think that this was gonna be where we would be, you know, eight months later? Yeah,

Nick: 15:04

yeah. No, a lot of stuff. I mean, the podcast is amazing. Uh, we we've been doing brown bags. Uh, we just did, the lightning talks was last Thursday, right? Yeah. Friday. I think yeah. Friday. Yeah. Um, yeah, so just lots of stuff going on and it's, uh, you know, people are always like, Hey, let's try this or let's do this. Or, you know, or if somebody brings up something like, oh, that'd be a good brown bag. You know? So, uh, I think it's, it's just been a, just a really cool experience for everybody, you know, like, because it's kind of like a. Almost like a mini Twitter or it's, it's a, it's a mini commun basically. So, uh, it's kind of nice. Yeah. You know?

Dan: 15:45

Yeah. That like size of it is, is one of my, I don't know one of the things I like too, that sort of what everybody kind of knows each other, like you were saying. Yeah, it's been cool. It's been cool. Kind of being around, you know, since, since it, like, since it started, you know, seeing kind of everybody become close, but you know, grow a little bit too.

Nick: 16:03

Yeah. Yeah, for sure.

Bekah: 16:04

Yeah. And I think, you know, being able to meet developers, you know, I'm a new developer and I'm a mom of four kids, so it is not like I get out that much. Right. Like my kids are young, so people are like go to meetups and meet people or conferences. And, you know, it's only doable for, um, so many people. Right. And that was not something that was doable for me. And so I missed that community, a. I learned online in a like self-paced program and there wasn't that community. And so like finding people here at all stages has been such a great way to learn and grow.

Dan: 16:45

Yeah. Yeah. The other thing about going to, uh, like events and stuff is they're, they're just like they come and go, you know, and then it's. I don't know. Yeah. But sometimes you make friends, you know, but most of the time not Right. Uh, so they, even if it's a great event and then when you go home, it's, I don't know, then you're back to your job and stuff. Um, that's one of the like, nice things about this, this sort of ongoing community. Yeah.

Nick: 17:08

Yeah, I find it's consistent, cuz like we meet, I mean, for those who don't know, we, we have two Virtual Coffees, uh, one on Tuesdays and Thursdays and I typically try to go to both of them. I usually I miss a Tuesday one if I have an all hands meeting for work, cuz I, I work in a distributed company. So like cuz the time zones we alternate. The time of the all hands on the Tuesday and sometimes it's on Wednesday, but, uh, so I think like once every three weeks I have to miss a Virtual Coffee, but, uh, I look forward to them and I, and I feel kind of down when I miss one it sounds kind of funny. It's like, uh, I dunno. Like crack cocaine. I don't know.

Bekah: 17:51

um, there have been a couple of times where I, I thought I was gonna miss and it was like, I'm, I'm gonna miss. And then I would like log in from my phone or rush home or whatever. Um, so I've been super excited to make all of them except this week is Thanksgiving. So I think I will be missing my first one, American Thanksgiving. Um, oh yeah, yeah, yeah. But, but don't worry. The show will go on and we will have a, a host for everybody. Um, Nick, I wanna dig into a little bit of some of the cool stuff that I think you're doing. Um, you have been really great with our community. We did the hack Tober Fest initiative where we. Um, worked with community members to, uh, work on HEC Tober Fest, where they're trying to get, uh, four pool requests into open source projects. And we set up mentorship and we worked with maintainers and, um, And the contributors as well, and you pretty much played a role in all three of those things. Um, you contributed to my open source project. And I wanna say like, I, that was really great to have somebody who has a good idea and understanding of what it's like to, um, be an open source maintainer. And so. You contributed to my project and at the same time, mentored me as a maintainer. um, and I just wanna say, first of all, thank you. And second of all, um, can you talk a little bit about your experience in open source and the things that you've learned and maybe some things that, um, contributors and maintainers can kind of learn.

Nick: 19:30

Yeah, for sure. Um, I got into open source in, it was either 20. I think it was 2015, maybe 2016, but I, I think it was like late 2015. I, uh, It was, I'd never contributed to open source at all. At that point, I didn't know, get, because I was working in the.net ecosystem and@thetimelikemicrosoftisopensourcenowintermsofthe.net framework and all that. And, uh, they've. They've they used it heavily now, but prior to that, I was in other, uh, source control, um, systems like, uh, for those who are really old, there was one from Microsoft called visual source safe, which got corrupt all the time. And so like, your, your code base would sometimes just kind of go in the dumpster, but, um, worked in like SVN and then TFS, which is team foundation server from Microsoft. So. The first thing that was. The way it happened was I was like, this was kind of my, I wanna really just focus on front end. And I had started messing around with media. Media is like a, it's a universal JavaScript framework. It's, it's changed a bit over the years, uh, for those who are in the react ecosystem, Apollo like GraphQL that actually came from media. Um, um, and then some other projects. Uh, I was like, yeah, I'm gonna mess around with this. So it was like literally JavaScript everywhere. It was MongoDB for the database. You'd write code on the front end and JavaScript obviously, and note in the back end. And then you could also have certain parts of the code that you could share that could be used server side and client side. So maybe something, for example, like client side validation, you could do it on. Well, not just client side validation, validation, you could do it on both sides. So I, I just started messing around with that. And then, but I really didn't know anything about it. And. I forget where I saw this posted. It was on some message board. I, I really can't remember where I think it actually might have been. I think media at the time had job boards or like some kind of community board, maybe. I, I think that's where it came from. Somebody from San Francisco who I did not know, just said, uh, I have a paying gig for. Media and it's working in open source. And I just said yes, even though I didn't didn't know it really, uh, this, this is kind of where my journey of structured Yolo begins. Um, so yeah, I just said, yeah. And then I met up with him, uh, uh, we ended up being a team of five people. We were working on this really cool application that was called push pickup. So it. It was web tech, but the idea was to make it a mobile app. And it was like, if you wanna play basketball, you can just find friends around you and, and organize a game. Cuz there's, there's several sports platforms. Now I think to do this kind of thing, but this was like, it just seemed like a better way of doing it. And so that was the project. And then. I remember, like I got some code working and I'm like, okay, first poll request ever. Uh, I I'm like, I gotta make it perfect all this stuff. And of course it wasn't perfect. I messed something up. And then this is pre like prettier days and ES Lynn. So then there was a lot of, can you change this formatting and stuff too? So basically. It wasn't a disaster, but it was like not great. Um, but you know, uh, continuing on with the structured Yolo, I just kept going and just kept contributing and, and then I react was out at the time it came well, react came out in 2013, I believe at. The F eight conference or was it 2015? I can't remember. Um, anyways, uh, react was like the hot new thing and I was like, I need to learn react. So, uh, like I've mentioned to you before, I'm not really good at starting projects. I'm good at jumping onto projects. So I found this, uh, react boiler. Boiler plate project that used Redux, uh, it was called react. Slingshot still exists in a, uh, is by Cory house. Who's a react consultant. He's I would say he's. I mean, it depends whenever I think people are well known. Like a lot of people are like, I have no idea who you're talking about, but he seems to be, he's pretty active in the react ecosystem. He used to do a lot of.net. He's a plural site author, all that stuff. So I just started contribut. and I think after my 13th poll request, he's like, oh, Hey, uh, do you wanna become a maintainer and, and small world, this is also how I met Kyle Welch. He's actually a maintainer on there as well. So that's, that was my kind of first kind of deep dive into. I mean post post the media project. Um, and it was cool that I was asked to be a maintainer and I was just like, you know what, I'm just gonna say yes, cuz I just thought it was interesting. And there was three of us on the project. So, so this is like kind of one of the first points of like, if you're working in open source, uh, Ken Dodds does this very well. He will. He'll create really great projects, but Kent see, DODs does not scale. Nobody scales like at, at the level of when people are, are asking for fixing things and stuff. So typically at least from what I've seen, Kent will make like a great project, like his most recent one, like the whole testing library stuff. Um, and then he'll, I. Typically, what he'll do is kind of what I mentioned is people start contributing and he probably, he just asked him, Hey, do you wanna become a maintainer? And then all of a sudden you're scaling because you have all these other maintainers and they're people that are interested in the project, cuz they were most likely contributing to it. So, um, So that's kind of like story slash also first advice about if, if you wanna create a project, that's, you know, I, if it's your own personal project, you know, maybe that's not something you need right now, but as soon as your thing potentially gets popular or start, or you notice it's starting to pick up steam it's I would say it's definitely a good idea to at least. One of the folks that contribute to your project to become a maintainer. Um, and yeah, that was, there was that. And then there was. Little other bits, like, uh, I wrote a post about this, but like even documentation's important. And I remember in 2016, when I was working at this FinTech, uh, we were working in electron and I was trying to do something and it wasn't working. And then I realized there was an error in the documentation and electron. So mm-hmm, just, I started doing like little poll requests, stuff like that. I

Bekah: 26:25

wanna like, just pause for a second because I think that. Gave us so much great information. And I like wanna make sure that that all of this stuff gets highlighted. One of the things that I find like super inspirational, I love your, um, Structured Yolo.

Nick: 26:43

Yeah. Structured. Yeah. Yeah. I coined that last week. I forget what way, but

Bekah: 26:48

yeah. And that's great. Like, I, I think that's wonderful because I think for a lot of new developers or probably like just lots of developers in general, like there's this fear of trying something out and failing right. Or of, you know, not doing it right. Or like, I remember when I. Started working like my husband is a developer too, and I would. Type out a message. And then I'd be like, can I read this to you? Does it make sense at all? Like, am I saying the things in the right ways? Right. You know, cause you're learning an entirely new vocabulary, but I think that getting over that hump and that fear of not. Saying it right or not doing the poor request, right. Is like half of the battle to becoming more confident as a developer and like that attitude of structured Yolo, um, I think really would benefit. I like, I want your structured Yolo course. So when you drop that, can you let us know? And we'll put it out there for everybody.

Nick: 27:53

yeah, my, uh, masterclass along with, uh, Tom Morelo from rag gain some machines, guitar class. Yep, sure.

Bekah: 28:00

No problem. Yep. Right there. I want it. Um, but I think that that's great. And I think that's really helpful to hear your story about that and to hear like, Hey, like you might not have gotten it. Perfect. And, but also like you're talking about. You're you're using, um, this open source project and they didn't get it right in the documentation or something changed. Right. And I think that also as a new developer, there's this tendency to believe that everything that you see on the screen is the right way of doing things. But sometimes things change. Or sometimes it's, it's not documented, right. Or, you know, a better way of doing things. And so, you know, realizing that you have value in where you are at your stage is really important too. And I think that you captured that a lot.

Nick: 28:49

Oh, thanks. Thanks. Yeah. That's the other thing, because all these things are open source. It's like, it, it, the software is not perfect. Like there there's tons of great projects. I don't, I'm not, I I'm not, I don't mean that in a negative way, but like I've. I've ran into issues like, uh, with Webpack, for example, it ended up being my fault, but because the code was open source, I, I was able to literally debug in the Webpack code because when you install Webpack, it goes in your node models and it's, it's literally all the source code. So you can actually. Debugging in that cause like I was, I had this Webpac loader for anybody that's familiar with Webpac. Um, and it wasn't doing what it was supposed to. And then, because I was able to go in the code and step through, I, I actually figured out that the, the configuration options for that loader were wrong. Like I had done something wrong and I, I probably didn't read the documentation probably. So that's probably my bad too. But, um, I, I think that's the cool thing about open source, uh, you know, uh, It just helping, you know, there's, there's another side to it. There's the whole burnout thing, which is a whole other topic. Uh, I personally haven't experienced it because. One where I am now. It's like, my job is to work in opensource. Like I'm paid to work in opensource. So it's, it's not like, like, you know, when like Sebastian McKenzie who created babble, uh, used to be, uh, six to five, the project, but like, it was literally just him initially. And then he abandoned the project because he, he literally got so burnt out because it's babble is like, literally in probably any modern front end project. Like it, like it's everywhere, you know? And so, but that, that ties into getting more maintainers into your project as well, you know? Um, but at the end of the day, too, you know, and I talk about this in my talk, getting the most outta open source that I did for Octoberfest is, you know, a lot of people it's, you know, Take take take, or just like, you know, this doesn't work, fix it, or why isn't this merged yet, yet? It's like people sometimes forget that there's people behind the projects, you know? So you have to, like, one of the things they talk about is like, like, don't forget, you know, like somebody might be on vacation, they might be sick, you know, like they're doing it on their own time, you know, unless it's a. Project or like some kind of Patreon or like it's your actual job to be paid to work in open source. So, you know, it's just stuff. I think that folks forget sometimes, you know, and like, and one of my favorite. Things to do is if anybody's ever snarky is you can just say, oh, thanks. You know, would you like to create a poll request or , you know, so you're not, it, it's kind of like a, a nice, a funny way to sh to kind of shut down an asshole. Yeah. I look forward to your poll request. yeah, yeah, exactly. So, uh, you know, But yeah, no,

Dan: 31:57

it's, uh, I think that what, what you're saying about remembering people are behind, you know, is, is important. And I, I feel like, um, another thing that I have like been, I don't know, trying to figure out how to sort of communicate to people is remembering that like, just because somebody has been a developer for a long time doesn't mean that they. Know everything or are better or, you know, like experts or anything, you know what I mean? And so, like, it's sort of what Bekah was saying before. Like, you know, just like learning to trust yourself, um, and your judgment, you know, as you, as you and your abilities as you, uh, become a more experienced developer, you know, I, I feel like is one of those like big steps, big, important steps, um, and something that I've been trying to figure out how to help people with, you know, As they start out, you know, as they start out their career.

Nick: 32:44

Um, for sure. Cuz like a lot of it could just be like from experience you like you, you know, certain things because they've happened to you, but like you. I'm, I'm not really good at animations, but it's because I haven't really had to ever really do them. It's not because I'm horrible at them. It's just, I haven't had enough time to really dedicate it to it. But I think, I think what you get better at too is Scott. I'm dropping like names here, but like Scott Hanson gave a, a great talk. Code land this year. And he's just talking about cuz he's, he's been in the space for like a long, long time. And he was just saying like, you get better, you know, he wasn't saying why I'm better than you, but I, I can't remember exactly how he said, but he's, he's basically said I'm older now I have experience, but I know how to Google better than you, you know? So like, cuz it's true. Like half the time, like you'll get an error. It's like you're gonna paste in that error. You're gonna go see almost always. Somebody's had that error. You get the occasional, like, you know, Russian site with one hit where it's like that error and you have no idea but uh, nothing get Russia. It's just it's happening yet. So many times that it's like one, one hit on a Russian site. I don't know why, but, um, but yeah, no, that's, that's the thing. And nobody's ever gonna know everything. Like, you know, it'd be kind of. Well, you know, it'd be kind of a little presumptuous that, you know, everything too, you know, like, like the whole know it all thing it's like, I think your brain would probably explode if you did know everything anyway. So

Bekah: 34:21

I think that's why, you know, it's so important to have this community of people that are at. All stages of the journey, right. Um, because you learn a lot from seeing other people talk about how they don't know something or, you know, Molly STR I think tweeted once about, um, bringing new people on board. And one of the things she does is talk about like, okay, this is a thing that I messed up last week or something like that. And that just kind of, yeah. Yeah. You know, if you're allowed to admit your failures, I think, and well, okay, so maybe it's not called failure, right? Like you're yeah. If you're allowed to admit things that didn't go right the first time, then, then you're better able to learn and grow from that experience. And I think also like your live streaming goals in line with that too. Right. Because there's kind of a lot at stake, but I feel like you make things very accessible and you make it friendly to a lot of different people because you're willing to put yourself out there and live stream. So, um, can you talk about that a little bit?

Nick: 35:26

Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Uh, I started live streaming in April this year. Once again, pandemic 2020 is a dumpster fire. And I was like, uh, I don't know. It kind of ties into, uh, SWS. Uh, Sean Wang's like learn in public and, um, It's kind of cool. Actually, I got to interview him a couple weeks ago, which was kind of nice too, but, um, but yeah, it just started live streaming mainly. And I was literally doing like my real work. It wasn't like, this is my side project. I was doing my actual work, live streaming and my own account on Twitch. I don't have a lot of followers. I've got like a hundred something, but I was. Talking to myself. Like I, I found the live streaming helped me articulate either like rubber ducking, the, the screen basically. And so I'd be talking about my whole thought process and stuff. And, and then, then I got the idea, which I don't think is, uh, like a, a new idea or anything, but I was like, why don't I. Tried pairing with folks in the community to pair on issues in the forum code base. And so I just sent out a tweet and then spoke to my work and they said like, yeah, yeah. That's yeah. That's that's cool. Go ahead. Um, and this was initially all on my Twitch account. Um, I had done one with Sophia Lee. Uh, who's in the community. I did one with Chuck Smith. Who's in our Virtual Coffee, Nia Jackson as well. And, um, I think those were the first three I did. And that was still on my own stream. And then this was getting close to Octoberfest. And I was actually running, not running. I was like my, my main job for the month of hack Octoberfest was to work on hack Octoberfest for dev slash forum. So me and Christina Gordon, my other coworker, who's our community manager. Um, I, I pitched the idea to Jess. One of the co-founders they said, well, why don't we do pairing for Octoberfest fast and. then we got some other ideas too. Like, uh, it was, I think, uh, I just thought walk through Wednesdays sounded cool. So then I, I was like, we'll just start interviewing people. And so like, it started off with some of our team members and I'm still interviewing some of our team members, but also just people in the dev community. Uh, and this kind of ties into my structured Joel. I'm just like, I have nothing to lose. I'm just gonna. People who I would like to interview if they wanna come on. And they, they said yes. So that's kind of cool. So it's. Had like Sean w like I said, uh, recently, uh, spoke with somebody from the MPM GitHub team last week. RUO Eve Portello of GraphQL fame react. She's coming on. Uh, I don't know if I'm saying her name correctly, but Vinny Che, she runs diversified tech she's coming on and GA coming on. Jerome Hardaway from, uh, SSU code. I dunno. It's just kind of cool, like, uh, and just to be able to do that's kind of fun, but, uh, yeah, we did more live, live coding. Uh, and like you said, it's, it's not set up to succeed. Like it's set up to succeed in the sense, like, yes, we're gonna have fun and stuff, but like the whole, the whole goal of the, the live pairings is. It's not that I'm trying to make it as realistic as possible, but like in real life, like you get an issue. You're gonna start looking up stuff. You're gonna start trying to figure things out and you're not necessarily. Gonna figure it out in like an hour and a half, which is typically what we do for the stream. So, you know, uh, I always tell folks at the beginning, you know, like, uh, they introduce themselves and stuff, but I, I stress that we're here to have fun. Just get you introduced to the code base, uh, you know, uh, Before or after help them, if they're new to open source to, you know, create a branch, create a poll request, follow up after as well. You know, and, and there's some prep too, like, uh, getting them set up with the code base and we have some talks as well. Uh, um, so yeah, I've, I've just really been enjoying it for many reasons. One it's I. Engaging with the community. And I also like the element of, I don't know if this is gonna work or not and like I've been even doing some Ruby live code pairing, which I don't really have a lot of experience in, so that's kind of fun too. So, uh, yeah, it's, uh, that's, that's my structured Yolo kind of in a nutshell. So. That's awesome.

Bekah: 40:18

Yeah. I love that. And I think that that's great for, for everybody to hear. And I do love how you use, like this person centered approach. I think like when you're doing this, right, like you're meeting people as human beings where they're at and it's not this high pressure thing. Right. It gives everybody the ability to learn and to grow. And I think that's really.

Nick: 40:41

Yeah. And it's, it's interesting too, because like on the live stream, there's, uh, there's chat in Twitch. Like we put 'em on YouTube after, but uh, so people from the community will actually interact too. Oh, did you try this? Like do this, you know, so there's, it's, it's pair programming, but kind of like slightly mob programming, a bit to the certain degree, depending on the, the stream, I guess, but, uh, yeah. Yeah,

Bekah: 41:09

that's great. Um, we've got a couple of questions from the Virtual Coffee community that I wanna make sure that I ask. Uh, the first one is, can you talk about your funniest bug or your biggest whoops moment, or maybe that's a time you took down

Nick: 41:22

prod? Uh, yeah, I, I didn't. Take down. Well, I guess I somewhat took down pride. Um, I was doing my first deployment at a smaller company in like 2009. And it was my, like I said, my first deployment, this is like pre, there was no real like CI cd@thetimeiwasusingsomethingcalledcruisecontrol.net, which is. It's like a task runner, but like a lot of the stuff I'd done custom, like stuff, but, um, I was getting ready. I had my checklist. I go, okay, let's upgrade the database. And like, I don't remember what happened, but like I literally locked the database. Like the first thing I did. So like basically the entire deploy was botched at that point. And. The DBA, the database administrator that I worked with, we'd worked in other places before, too. She just kinda laughed and kind of did a disk, but she's like, she's kind of like, yeah, move out of the way. Let me start this out for you. So, uh, so that, there's that, um, another place which was. It, it wasn't my fault, but it was still a very interesting scenario. Um, I was working at, uh, the eCommerce company and we had a client, a fairly large company. So like, I think about 40,000, maybe 60,000 folks with single sign on. And I was working on the project, which was the single sign-on project. And we had this custom single sign-on, uh, Thing initially. And then we migrated to a out of the, off the shelf, uh, solution, cuz it just made sense. Let people who know, you know, authentication authorizing, let you know, let, let them handle that. So we had our development environment, our tests and staging environment and then production. So got tested it through every part of the process, get to production and uh, I run. And all of a sudden, the sign on is in infinite loop. Um, and this is like for, for, it's not, it wasn't OWA for anybody that's familiar with SAML. So it's like Ws Federation. It's just a little more complicated, but basically, yeah, the thing was spinning like crazy and I'm like, We're deploying. These are like, this was a large SharePoint application and this takes like the deploys were like a long time. Uh, we, we typically did it from like 5:00 PM to like two in the morning or three in the morning. And. It's like one in the morning, this thing's happening. I'm like, oh my God, you know, checked everything. And like I said, every stage of the process was fine. Dev tests, staging, no issues whatsoever. I get on the phone with their technical support. We're trying to figure it out, you know? And in the end it turned out that the software had. You can do in, in, in, in, uh, C sharp, you can kind of have conditional stuff. Like if I'm in debug mode, do something. And, uh, there was something that was in one of those, like, If debug, uh, it was, it was, I think it was logging something and it was preventing this infinite loop from happening. So when we were in development test and staging, no issues at all, but production, it wa I, I think it was like a log or something. And it's because it didn't do that step. Like maybe it was like, just to prevent like a, uh, you know, like a. What's the, I'm drawing a blank here, uh, like a race condition. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. So I think it was preventing a race condition, even though they didn't realize. So we figured that out. So then we had to redeploy and we redeployed it in debug mode so that the deploy could finish. And then after that, you know, we've filed an issue with the company and then they fixed it and then everything was fine on the next deploy, but it was just like high stakes at like, you know, and it's. One or two in the morning, you know, like you just want to go to bed. It was, it was, it was pretty stressful. Um, but that sorted out, so yeah. So those are kind of the two, those are probably the two notable ones I can think of.

Bekah: 45:55

um, yeah, that sounds rough. Um, how about kind of the flip side of this? The other question we have is what is the most excited you've ever been about a piece of code working.

Nick: 46:08

Uh, I think it's working well. It was dev at the time, but forum, uh, my first, I don't know it was cool. Cuz I contributed to the, I was actually the first external contributor to the dev code base back in 2018. Uh, so I've been contributing to the project since 2018, but uh, or was it 27? No, it was 2018. Um, but. Uh, when I started working there in January, the first thing I did was we overhauled the feed and the, if you're logged in, uh, because you can personalize it to some degree. And it originally was all server side rendered, cuz for those who don't know the. The form code base, it's a primarily a Rubion rails app. And then we sprinkle pre-ACT wherever it makes sense to have interactions typically in the logged in experience. So I got to do that and then it just felt really cool knowing that once I ship like a feature that everybody sees, like every day, uh, was in production and, you know, like getting millions of views every month. So that, that just felt really good. You know, it's just been fun. Like anything new I do in there. It's it's just been a lot of fun. So

Dan: 47:26

seems like a pretty great organization, uh, to, to work with.

Nick: 47:30

I won't lie. It's it's pretty awesome.

Bekah: 47:34

that's great. Well, thanks so much, Nick, for being here with us. Um, can you tell, uh, folks what you're working on or where they can find.

Nick: 47:46

So, uh, I'm at Nicki T online pretty much everywhere. GitHub, Twitter, dev two and all that. Um, you can also check out my website. I am developer.com. I have no idea how I was able to snag that domain, but I did. Um, and also, uh, live coding. If you wanna check that out, you can go to. Live coding.ca I don't know how I got that one either, but, um, and Twitch TV slash the practical dev, um, for live coding as well. Um, and projects right now. Um, I guess I've been working on a few, well, I, for Octoberfest, like you said, I had contributed to yours. Uh, I've been working, uh, with someone who I contributed to last year. Her her, I don't remember her full name, but her first name's Ray and she, uh, they have a Gaby plugin for, uh, Owen beds. So I I'm a maintainer on there now. So, uh, I've been working on there too. So that's fun. And, you know, and then there's my day to day, which is an open source, uh, the form code base. So, so lots of fun stuff going on in there. That is awesome.

Bekah: 49:00

And we will link all of those things in the show notes. Um, is there any last advice you have for our listeners?

Nick: 49:08

Uh, spiders aren't bad. It's just, I, I have. Unnatural fear of them. I don't know why. Um, but they eat bugs. So I, I have some in the corners of my office and I know they're there and they're doing good work. So thanks buddy.

Bekah: 49:25

That is excellent. Thank you so much, Nick, for being here with us. Thank you, Nick. Uh,

Nick: 49:29

thanks for having me.

Bekah: 49:32

Thanks for hanging out with us. As we talked to Nick Taylor on this episode of the Virtual Coffee podcast, this episode was edited and produced by Dan OT. You can check out our show. For links to things we talked about in the episode. And how to contact us or Nick. I'd like to thank the Virtual Coffee community for being awesome. As always, we really enjoyed talking about Nick's journey into software, how he found Virtual Coffee and how open source live streaming and Yolo played an important role in his life as an awesome human being. If you have questions or comments for the podcast, you can email us@podcastvirtualcoffee.io. To find out more about Virtual Coffee, you can check out Virtual Coffee.io or come hang out with us on a Tuesday or Thursday. Hope to see you there soon.

The Virtual Coffee Podcast is produced by Dan Ott and Bekah Hawrot Weigel and edited by Dan Ott.