vtt/episode_007_small.vtt

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 The following is a conversation with Jeff Atwood.

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 He is the cofounder of Stack Overflow and Stack Exchange,

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 websites that are visited by millions of people

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 every single day.

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 Much like with Wikipedia, it is difficult to understate

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 the impact on global knowledge and productivity

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 that these networks of sites have created.

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 Jeff is also the author of the famed blog, Coding Horror,

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 and the founder of Discourse, an open source software project

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 that seeks to improve the quality of our online community

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 discussions.

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 This conversation is part of the MIT course

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 on artificial journal intelligence

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 and the artificial intelligence podcast.

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 If you enjoy it, subscribe on YouTube, iTunes,

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 or your podcast provider of choice,

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 or simply connect with me on Twitter

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 at Lex Friedman, spelled FRID.

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 And now, here's my conversation with Jeff Atwood.

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 Having cocreated and managed for a few years the world's

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 largest community of programmers in Stack Overflow

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 10 years ago, what do you think motivates most programmers?

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 Is it fame, fortune, glory, process of programming itself,

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 or is it the sense of belonging to a community?

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 It's puzzles, really.

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 I think it's this idea of working on puzzles

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 independently of other people and just solving a problem,

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 sort of on your own, almost, although nobody really

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 works alone in programming anymore.

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 But I will say there's an aspect of hiding yourself away

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 and just beating on a problem until you solve it.

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 Like, brute force, basically, to me,

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 is what a lot of programming is.

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 It's like, the computer's so fast that you can do things

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 that would take forever for a human,

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 but you can just do them so many times and so often

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 that you get the answer.

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 You're saying just the pure act of tinkering with the code

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 is the thing that drives most probably the joy, the struggle

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 balance within the joy of overcoming the brute force

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 process of pain and suffering that eventually leads

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 to something that actually works?

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 Well, data's fun, too.

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 Like, there's this thing called the shuffling problem.

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 Like, the naive shuffle that most programmers write

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 has a huge flaw.

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 And there's a lot of articles online about this

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 because it can be really bad if you're like a casino

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 and you have an unsophisticated programmer writing

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 your shuffle algorithm.

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 There's surprising ways to get this wrong.

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 But the neat thing is, the way to figure that out

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 is just to run your shuffle a bunch of times

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 and see how many orientations of cards you get.

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 You should get an equal distribution of all the cards.

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 And with the naive method of shuffling,

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 if you just look at the data, if you just brute force it

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 and say, OK, I don't know what's going to happen.

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 You just write a program that does it a billion times

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 and then see what the buckets look like of the data.

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 And the money haul problem is another example of that,

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 where you have three doors and somebody gives you

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 information about another door.

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 So the correct answer is you should always switch.

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 The money haul problem, which is not intuitive.

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 It freaks people out all the time.

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 But you can solve it with data.

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 If you write a program that does the money haul game

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 and then never switches, then always switches, just compare,

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 you would immediately see that you don't have to be smart.

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 You don't have to figure out the answer algorithmically.

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 You can just brute force it out with data

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 and say, well, I know the answer is this

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 because I ran the program a billion times

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 and these are the data buckets that I got from it.

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 So empirically, you find it.

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 But what's the joy of that?

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 So for you, for you personally, outside of family,

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 what motivates you in this process?

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 Well, to be honest, I don't really

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 write a lot of code anymore.

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 What I do at discourse is like, managerry stuff, which

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 I always kind of despise as a programmer.

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 You think of managers as people who don't really

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 do anything themselves.

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 But the weird thing about code is you

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 realize that language is code.

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 The ability to direct other people

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 lets you get more stuff done than you could by yourself

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 anyway.

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 You said language is code?

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 Language is code.

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 Meaning communication with other humans?

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 Yes, it is.

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 You can think of it as a systematic.

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 So what does it like to be?

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 What makes, before we get into programming,

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 what makes a good manager?

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 What makes a good leader?

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 Well, I think a leader, it's all about leading by example,

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 first of all, like sort of doing and being the things

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 that you want to be.

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 Now, this can be kind of exhausting.

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 Particularly if you have kids because you realize

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 that your kids are watching you all the time,

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 like even in ways that you've stopped seeing yourself.

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 Like the hardest person to see on the planet

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 is really yourself.

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 It's a lot of you see other people and make judgments

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 about them, but yourself, like you're super biased.

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 You don't actually see yourself the way other people see you.

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 Often, you're very, very hard on yourself in a way

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 that other people really aren't going to be.

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 So that's one of the insights is you've

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 got to be really diligent about thinking,

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 like, am I behaving in a way that

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 represents how I want other people to behave?

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 Like leading through example.

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 There's a lot of examples of leaders

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 that really mess this up.

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 Like they make decisions that are like, wow, that's why.

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 It's just it's a bad example for other people.

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 So I think leading by example is one.

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 The other one, I believe it is working really hard.

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 I don't mean like working exhaustively,

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 but like showing a real passion for the problem.

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 Like not necessarily your solution to the problem,

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 but the problem itself is just one that you really believe in.

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 With discourse, for example, the problem

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 that we're looking at, which is my current project,

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 is how do you get people in groups

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 to communicate in a way that doesn't like break down

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 into the howling of wolves, right?

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 Like how do you deal with trolling?

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 Not like technical problems of how

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 do I get people to post paragraphs?

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 How do I get people to use bold?

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 How do I get people to use complete sentences?

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 Although those are problems as well.

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 But how do I get people to get along with each other, right?

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 And then solve whatever problem it is they set out to solve,

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 or reach some consensus on discussion,

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 or just not hurt each other, even, right?

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 Like maybe it's a discussion that doesn't really matter,

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 but are people yelling at each other, right?

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 And why, right?

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 Like that's not the purpose of this kind of communication.

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 So I would say leadership is about setting an example,

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 doing the things that represent what you want to be,

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 and making sure that you're actually doing those things.

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 And there's a trick to that too, because the things you don't

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 do also say a lot about what you are.

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 Yeah, so let's pause on that one.

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 So those two things are fascinating.

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 So how do you have as a leader that self awareness?

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 So you just said it's really hard to be self aware.

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 So for you personally, or maybe for other leaders

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 you've seen or look up to, how do you

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 know both that the things you're doing

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 are the wrong things to be doing, the way you speak

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 to others, the way you behave, and the things you're not doing?

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 How do you get that signal?

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 There's two aspects to that.

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 One is like processing feedback that you're getting.

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 So how do you get feedback?

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 Well, right.

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 So are you getting feedback, right?

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 Like so one way we do it, for example,

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 at discourse we have three cofounders,

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 and we periodically talk about decisions before we make them.

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 So it's not like one person can make a mistake, or like,

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 wow, they're going to be misunderstanding things.

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 So it's part of group consensus of leadership

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 is like it's good to have, I think, systems

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 where there's one leader, and that leader has the rule

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 of absolute law, are just really dangerous in my experience.

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 For communities, for example, if you have a community that's

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 run by one person, that one person makes all decisions,

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 that person's going to have a bad day.

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 Something can happen to that person.

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 There's a lot of variables.

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 So first, when you think about leadership,

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 have multiple people doing leadership,

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 and have them talk amongst each other.

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 So you're giving each other feedback about the decisions

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 that they're making.

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 And then when you do get feedback,

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 I think there's that little voice in your head, right?

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 Or your gut, or wherever you want to put it in your body.

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 I think that voice is really important.

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 I think most people who have any kind of moral compass

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 or want to do, most people want to do the right thing.

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 I do believe that.

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 I mean, there might be a handful of sociopaths out there

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 that don't, but most people, they

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 want other people to think of them as a good person.

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 Why wouldn't you, right?

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 Do you want people to despise you?

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 I mean, that's just weird, right?

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 So you have that little voice that the angel and devil

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 on your shoulder talking to you about what you're doing,

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 how you're doing, how does it make you feel

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 to make these decisions, right?

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 And I think having some attunement to that voice

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 is important.

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 But you said that voice also for,

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 I think it's a programmer situation, too,

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 where sometimes the devil on the shoulder

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 is a little too loud.

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 So you're a little too self critical for a lot of developers,

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 especially when you have introverted personality.

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 How do you struggle with the self criticism

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 or the criticism of others?

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 One of the things of leadership is

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 to do something that's potentially unpopular

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 or what people doubt you and you still

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 go through with the decision.

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 So what's that balance like?

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 I think you have to walk people through your decision

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 making, right?

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 This is where blogging is really important in communication.

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 It's so important.

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 Again, code language is just another kind of code.

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 It's like, here is the program by which

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 I arrived at the conclusion that I'm going to reach, right?

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 It's one thing to say, this is a decision.

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 It's final.

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 Deal with it, right?

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 That's not usually satisfying to people.

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 But if you say, look, we've been thinking

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 on this problem for a while.

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 Here's some stuff that's happened.

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 Here's what we think is right.

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 Here's our goals.

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 Here's what we want to achieve.

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 And we've looked at these options.

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 And we think this of the available options is the best option.

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 People will be like, oh, OK.

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 Maybe I don't totally agree with you,

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 but I can kind of see where you're coming from.

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 And I see it's not just arbitrary decision delivered

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 from a cloud of flames in the sky.

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 It's like a human trying to reach some kind of consensus

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 about goals.

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 And their goals might be different than yours.

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 That's completely legit, right?

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 But if you're making that clear, it's like, oh, well,

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 the reason we don't agree is because we have totally

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 different goals, right?

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 How could we agree?

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 It's not that you're a bad person.

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 It's that we have radically different goals in mind

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 when we started looking at this problem.

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 And the other one you said is passion or hard work, sorry.

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 Well, those are tied together in my mind.

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 Let's say hard work and passion.

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 For me, I just really love the problem discourse

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 is setting out to solve because, in a way,

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 it's like there's a vision of the world where it all devolves

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 into Facebook basically owning everything

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 in every aspect of human communication, right?

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 And this has always been kind of a scary world for me.

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 First, because I think Facebook is really good at execution.

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 I got to compliment them.

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 They're very competent in terms of what they're doing.

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 But Facebook has not much of a moral compass

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 in terms of Facebook cares about Facebook, really.

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 They don't really care about you and your problems.

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 What they care about is how big they can make Facebook, right?

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 Is that you talking about the company or just the mechanism

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 of how Facebook works?

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 Kind of both, really, right?

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 And the idea with discourse, the reason I'm so passionate

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 about it is because I believe every community should have

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 the right to own themselves, right?

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 Like they should have their own software that they can run

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 that belongs to them.

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 That's their space where they can set the rules.

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 And if they don't like it, they can move to different hosting

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 or whatever they need to happen can happen.

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 But this idea of a company town where all human communication

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 is implicitly owned by WhatsApp, Instagram, and Facebook.

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 And it's really disturbing, too, because Facebook

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 is really smart.

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 Like I said, they're great at execution.

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 Buying in WhatsApp and buying Instagram

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 were incredibly smart decisions.

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 And they also do this thing on, if you know,

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 but they have this VPN software that they give away

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 for free on smartphones.

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 And it indirectly feeds all the data about the traffic

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 back to Facebook.

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 So they can see what's actually getting popular

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 through the VPNs, right?

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 They have low level access to the network data

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 because users have let them have that.

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 So let's take a small pause here.

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 First of all, discourse, can you talk about,

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 can you lay out the land of all the different ways

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 you can have communities?

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 So there's Stack Overflow that you've built.

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 There's discourse.

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 So Stack Overflow is kind of like a Wiki.

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 Wikipedia you talk about.

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 And it's a very specific scalpel, very focused.

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 So what is the purpose of discourse?

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 And maybe contrast that with Facebook.

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 First of all, say what is discourse?

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 Yeah.

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 Start from the beginning.

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 Well, let me start from the very beginning.

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 So Stack Overflow is very structured,

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 Wiki style Q&A for programmers, right?

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 And that was the problem we first worked on.

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 And when we started, we thought it was discussions

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 because we looked at like programming forums and other things,

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 but we quickly realized we were doing Q&A,

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 which is a very narrow subset of human communication, right?

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 So when you started Stack Overflow,

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 you thought you didn't even know the Q&A.

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 You didn't know it would be Q&A.

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 Well, we didn't know.

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 We had an idea of like, okay,

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 these are things that we see working online.

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 We had a goal, right?

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 Our goal was there was this site,

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 Experts Exchange with a very unfortunate name.

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 Thank you for killing that site.

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 Yeah, I know, right?

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 Like a lot of people don't remember it anymore,

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 which is great.

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 Like that's the measure of success.

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 If people don't remember the thing

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 that you were trying to replace, then you've totally won.

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 So it was a place to get answers to programming questions,

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 but it wasn't clear if it was like focused Q&A,

12:07.520 --> 12:08.840
 if it was a discussion,

12:08.840 --> 12:10.400
 there were plenty of programming forums.

12:10.400 --> 12:11.400
 So we weren't really sure.

12:11.400 --> 12:13.520
 We were like, okay, we'll take aspects of dig and Reddit,

12:13.520 --> 12:15.800
 like voting were very important,

12:15.800 --> 12:17.480
 reordering answers based on votes,

12:17.480 --> 12:19.640
 Wiki style stuff of like being able to edit posts,

12:19.640 --> 12:21.320
 not just your posts, but other people's posts

12:21.320 --> 12:23.920
 to make them better and keep them more up to date.

12:23.920 --> 12:26.240
 Ownership of blogging of like, okay, this is me.

12:26.240 --> 12:28.120
 I'm saying this in my voice, you know,

12:28.120 --> 12:29.840
 this is the stuff that I know.

12:29.840 --> 12:33.360
 And you know, you get your reputation accrues to you

12:33.360 --> 12:34.880
 and it's pure recognition.

12:34.880 --> 12:37.080
 So you asked earlier, like what motivates programmers?

12:37.080 --> 12:40.080
 I think pure recognition motivates them a lot.

12:40.080 --> 12:41.880
 That was one of the key insights of Stack Overflow

12:41.880 --> 12:43.720
 was like recognition from your peers

12:43.720 --> 12:44.960
 is why things get done.

12:44.960 --> 12:46.400
 Initially money, not necessarily your boss,

12:46.400 --> 12:47.880
 but like your peers saying, wow,

12:47.880 --> 12:50.400
 this person really knows their stuff has a lot of value.

12:50.400 --> 12:53.280
 So the reputation system came from that.

12:53.280 --> 12:56.320
 So we were sort of Frankensteining a bunch of stuff together

12:56.320 --> 12:58.680
 in Stack Overflow, like stuff we had seen working

12:58.680 --> 13:03.680
 and we knew worked and that became Stack Overflow.

13:03.760 --> 13:06.520
 And over time we realized it wasn't really discussion.

13:06.520 --> 13:08.760
 It was very focused questions and answers.

13:08.760 --> 13:10.840
 There wasn't a lot of room on the page for,

13:10.840 --> 13:12.560
 let me talk about this tangential thing.

13:12.560 --> 13:14.800
 It was more like, okay, is it answering the question?

13:14.800 --> 13:16.160
 Is it clarifying the question

13:16.160 --> 13:18.720
 or could it be an alternative answer to the same question?

13:18.720 --> 13:21.040
 Cause there's usually more than one way to do it in program.

13:21.040 --> 13:22.680
 There's like, say five to 10 ways.

13:22.680 --> 13:24.360
 And one of the patterns we got into early on

13:24.360 --> 13:26.440
 in Stack Overflow was there were questions

13:26.440 --> 13:28.440
 where there would be like hundreds of answers.

13:28.440 --> 13:30.160
 And we're like, well,

13:30.160 --> 13:31.840
 how can there be a programming question

13:31.840 --> 13:34.760
 with 100, 200, 500 answers?

13:34.760 --> 13:36.160
 And we looked at those and we realized

13:36.160 --> 13:38.840
 those were not really questions in the traditional sense.

13:38.840 --> 13:39.800
 They were discussions.

13:39.800 --> 13:42.280
 It was stuff that we allowed early on

13:42.280 --> 13:43.840
 that we eventually decided wasn't allowed,

13:43.840 --> 13:46.760
 such as what's your favorite programming food?

13:46.760 --> 13:49.280
 What's the funniest programming cartoon you've seen?

13:49.280 --> 13:51.320
 And we had to sort of backfill a bunch of rules

13:51.320 --> 13:53.080
 about like, why isn't this allowed?

13:53.080 --> 13:55.160
 Such as, is this a real problem you're facing?

13:55.160 --> 13:56.000
 Like nobody goes to work

13:56.000 --> 13:57.200
 and says, wow, I can't work

13:57.200 --> 13:59.080
 cause I don't know what the funniest programming cartoon is.

13:59.080 --> 14:02.040
 So sorry, can't compile this code now, right?

14:02.040 --> 14:04.600
 It's not a real problem you're facing in your job.

14:04.600 --> 14:05.440
 So that was Run Rule.

14:05.440 --> 14:07.320
 And the second, like, what can you really learn from that?

14:07.320 --> 14:08.760
 It's like what I call accidental learning

14:08.760 --> 14:10.200
 or Reddit style learning

14:10.200 --> 14:11.640
 where you're just like, oh, I'll just browse some things

14:11.640 --> 14:12.720
 and oh, wow, you know,

14:12.720 --> 14:14.920
 did you know tree frogs only live three years?

14:14.920 --> 14:16.000
 I mean, I just made that up.

14:16.000 --> 14:16.920
 I don't know if that's true,

14:16.920 --> 14:18.920
 but I didn't really set out to learn that.

14:18.920 --> 14:20.280
 I don't need to know that, right?

14:20.280 --> 14:21.720
 It's accidental learning.

14:21.720 --> 14:23.440
 It was more intentional learning

14:23.440 --> 14:24.600
 where you're like, okay, I have a problem

14:24.600 --> 14:26.880
 and I wanna learn about stuff around this problem having,

14:26.880 --> 14:27.720
 right?

14:27.720 --> 14:29.160
 And it could be theory, it could be compiler theory,

14:29.160 --> 14:29.960
 it could be other stuff,

14:29.960 --> 14:31.800
 but I'm having a compiler problem,

14:31.800 --> 14:34.280
 hence I need to know the compiler theory,

14:34.280 --> 14:38.120
 that aspect of it that gets me to my answer, right?

14:38.120 --> 14:39.360
 So kind of a directed learning.

14:39.360 --> 14:40.920
 So we had to backfill all these rules

14:40.920 --> 14:43.640
 as we sort of figured out what the heck it was we were doing.

14:43.640 --> 14:45.360
 And the system came very strict over time

14:45.360 --> 14:46.840
 and a lot of people still complain about that.

14:46.840 --> 14:49.080
 And I wrote my latest blog entry,

14:49.080 --> 14:51.000
 what does Stack Overflow want to be?

14:51.000 --> 14:52.400
 What does it want to be when it grows up?

14:52.400 --> 14:54.240
 Celebrating the 10 year anniversary, yeah.

14:54.240 --> 14:56.320
 Yeah, so 10 years and the system

14:56.320 --> 14:57.760
 has trended towards strictness.

14:57.760 --> 14:58.960
 There's a variety of reasons for this.

14:58.960 --> 15:01.400
 One is people don't like to see other people

15:01.400 --> 15:04.040
 get reputation for stuff as they view as frivolous,

15:04.040 --> 15:05.160
 which I can actually understand

15:05.160 --> 15:07.920
 because if you saw a programmer got like 500 upvotes

15:07.920 --> 15:10.440
 for funniest programming cartoon

15:10.440 --> 15:11.840
 or funniest comment they had seen in code.

15:11.840 --> 15:13.880
 It's like, well, why do they have that reputation?

15:13.880 --> 15:15.120
 Is it because they wrote the joke?

15:15.120 --> 15:15.960
 Probably not.

15:15.960 --> 15:18.320
 I mean, if they did, maybe, or the cartoon, right?

15:18.320 --> 15:19.520
 They're getting a bunch of reputation

15:19.520 --> 15:20.800
 based on someone else's work.

15:20.800 --> 15:22.720
 It's not even like programming.

15:22.720 --> 15:23.640
 It's just a joke, right?

15:23.640 --> 15:24.840
 It's a related program.

15:24.840 --> 15:26.480
 So you begin to resent that.

15:26.480 --> 15:27.560
 You're like, well, that's not fair.

15:27.560 --> 15:28.400
 And it isn't.

15:28.400 --> 15:29.240
 At some level, they're correct.

15:29.240 --> 15:31.280
 I empathize because it's not correct

15:31.280 --> 15:32.120
 to get reputation for that.

15:32.120 --> 15:36.080
 Versus here's a really gnarly, regular expression problem.

15:36.080 --> 15:40.520
 And here's a really clever, insightful, detailed answer

15:40.520 --> 15:42.240
 laying out, oh, here's why you're seeing the behavior

15:42.240 --> 15:43.080
 that you're seeing.

15:43.080 --> 15:43.920
 And here, let me teach you some things

15:43.920 --> 15:44.760
 about how to avoid that in the future.

15:44.760 --> 15:46.560
 That's great, that's gold, right?

15:46.560 --> 15:48.000
 You want people to get reputation for that,

15:48.000 --> 15:51.040
 not so much for, wow, look at this funny thing I saw, right?

15:51.040 --> 15:54.400
 Great, so there's this very specific Q&A format,

15:54.400 --> 15:56.680
 and then take me through the journey

15:56.680 --> 15:58.680
 towards discourse in Facebook and Twitter.

15:58.680 --> 16:00.520
 So you start at the beginning,

16:00.520 --> 16:03.040
 that Stack Overflow evolved to have a purpose.

16:03.040 --> 16:06.800
 So what is discourse, this passion you have

16:06.800 --> 16:09.840
 for creating community for discussion?

16:09.840 --> 16:12.200
 What is that, when was that born?

16:12.200 --> 16:13.680
 Well, part of it is based on the realization

16:13.680 --> 16:15.040
 that Stack Overflow is only good

16:15.040 --> 16:17.680
 for very specific subjects where there's sort of,

16:17.680 --> 16:19.760
 it's based on data, facts, and science,

16:19.760 --> 16:22.560
 where answers can be kind of verified to be true.

16:22.560 --> 16:24.920
 Another form of that is there's the book of knowledge,

16:24.920 --> 16:28.760
 like the tome of knowledge that defines like whatever it is,

16:28.760 --> 16:30.920
 you can refer to that book and it'll give you the answer.

16:30.920 --> 16:33.160
 There has to be, it only works on subjects

16:33.160 --> 16:35.400
 where there's like semi clear answers to things

16:35.400 --> 16:37.880
 that can be verified in some form.

16:37.880 --> 16:39.840
 Now again, there's always more than one way to do it.

16:39.840 --> 16:42.000
 There's complete flexibility and system around that.

16:42.000 --> 16:45.360
 But where it falls down is stuff like poker and Lego.

16:45.360 --> 16:48.800
 Like we had, if you go to stackexchange.com,

16:48.800 --> 16:50.480
 we have an engine that tries to launch

16:50.480 --> 16:52.360
 different Q&A topics, right?

16:52.360 --> 16:57.040
 And people can propose Q&A topics, sample questions,

16:57.040 --> 16:59.120
 and if it gets enough support within the network,

16:59.120 --> 17:00.160
 we launch that Q&A site.

17:00.160 --> 17:02.360
 So some of the ones we launched were poker and Lego,

17:02.360 --> 17:03.440
 and they did horribly, right?

17:03.440 --> 17:05.720
 Because, I mean, they might still be there

17:05.720 --> 17:07.880
 lingering on in some form, but it was an experiment.

17:07.880 --> 17:09.080
 This is like a test, right?

17:09.080 --> 17:11.720
 And some subjects work super well in the stack engine,

17:11.720 --> 17:12.840
 and some don't.

17:12.840 --> 17:14.680
 But the reason Lego and poker don't work

17:14.680 --> 17:16.080
 is because they're so social, really.

17:16.080 --> 17:19.120
 It's not about what's the rule here in poker.

17:19.120 --> 17:21.480
 It's like, well, what kind of cigars

17:21.480 --> 17:23.520
 do we like to smoke while playing poker?

17:23.520 --> 17:26.960
 Or what's a cool set of cards to use when I'm playing poker?

17:26.960 --> 17:28.760
 Or what's some strategies?

17:28.760 --> 17:30.120
 Like say I have this hand come up,

17:30.120 --> 17:31.280
 what's some strategies I could use?

17:31.280 --> 17:33.120
 It's more of a discussion around what's happening.

17:33.120 --> 17:34.960
 Like with Lego, same thing, like here's

17:34.960 --> 17:36.040
 this cool Lego set I found.

17:36.040 --> 17:36.920
 Look how awesome this is.

17:36.920 --> 17:38.600
 And I'm like, yeah, that's freaking awesome, right?

17:38.600 --> 17:39.920
 It's not a question, right?

17:39.920 --> 17:41.840
 There's all these social components to the discussions

17:41.840 --> 17:43.080
 that don't fit at all.

17:43.080 --> 17:45.400
 Like we literally have to disallow those in Stack Overflow

17:45.400 --> 17:46.560
 because it's not about being social.

17:46.560 --> 17:49.440
 It's about problems that you're facing in your work

17:49.440 --> 17:51.400
 that you need concrete answers for, right?

17:51.400 --> 17:52.840
 Like you have a real demonstrated problem

17:52.840 --> 17:54.000
 that's sort of blocking you and something.

17:54.000 --> 17:56.520
 Nobody's blocked by what should I do

17:56.520 --> 17:58.040
 when I have a straight flush, right?

17:58.040 --> 18:00.520
 Like it's not a blocking problem in the world.

18:00.520 --> 18:02.400
 It's just an opportunity to hang out and discuss.

18:02.400 --> 18:05.920
 So discourse was a way to address that and say, look,

18:05.920 --> 18:10.800
 you know, discussion form software was very, very bad.

18:10.800 --> 18:13.560
 And when I came out of Stack Overflow in late 20,

18:13.560 --> 18:18.480
 early 20, early 2013, early 2012,

18:18.480 --> 18:19.880
 it was still very, very bad.

18:19.880 --> 18:22.120
 I expected it improved in the four years

18:22.120 --> 18:24.600
 since I last looked, but it had not improved at all.

18:24.600 --> 18:26.000
 And I was like, well, that's kind of terrible

18:26.000 --> 18:29.040
 because I love these communities of people

18:29.040 --> 18:30.920
 talking about things that they love, you know,

18:30.920 --> 18:32.920
 that there's just communities of interest, right?

18:32.920 --> 18:34.600
 And there's no good software for them.

18:34.600 --> 18:37.440
 Like startups would come to me and say, hey, Jeff,

18:37.440 --> 18:39.760
 I wanna, you know, I have this startup.

18:39.760 --> 18:41.080
 Here's my idea.

18:41.080 --> 18:42.960
 And the first thing I would say to them is like, well,

18:42.960 --> 18:44.000
 first, why are you asking me?

18:44.000 --> 18:46.440
 Like I don't really know your field, right?

18:46.440 --> 18:48.320
 Linus, sincerely, like, why aren't you asking

18:48.320 --> 18:49.760
 like the community, like the people

18:49.760 --> 18:51.280
 that are interested in this problem,

18:51.280 --> 18:52.480
 the people that are using your product,

18:52.480 --> 18:53.840
 why aren't you talking to them?

18:53.840 --> 18:55.200
 And then they'd say, oh, great idea.

18:55.200 --> 18:56.120
 Like how do I do that?

18:56.120 --> 18:58.120
 And then that's when I started playing sad trombone

18:58.120 --> 19:00.080
 because I realized all the software involving

19:00.080 --> 19:03.320
 talking to your users, customers, audience, patrons,

19:03.320 --> 19:05.200
 whatever it is, it was all really bad.

19:05.200 --> 19:06.680
 You know, it was like stuff that I would be embarrassed

19:06.680 --> 19:08.240
 to recommend to other people.

19:08.240 --> 19:09.960
 And yet that's where I felt they could get

19:09.960 --> 19:12.800
 the biggest and strongest, most effective input

19:12.800 --> 19:15.600
 for what they should be doing with their product, right?

19:15.600 --> 19:17.520
 It's from their users, from their community, right?

19:17.520 --> 19:18.880
 That's what we did on Stack Overflow.

19:18.880 --> 19:21.360
 So what we're talking about with forums,

19:21.360 --> 19:25.480
 the, what is it, the dark matter of the internet,

19:25.480 --> 19:26.840
 it's still, I don't know if it's still,

19:26.840 --> 19:30.920
 but for the longest time, it has some of the most

19:30.920 --> 19:32.800
 passionate and fascinating discussions.

19:32.800 --> 19:34.640
 And what's the usual structure?

19:34.640 --> 19:37.000
 There's usually what, it's linear.

19:37.000 --> 19:39.640
 So it's sequential, so you're posting one after the other

19:39.640 --> 19:42.800
 and there's Paging Nation, so it's every,

19:42.800 --> 19:45.040
 there's a 10 posts and you go to the next page

19:45.040 --> 19:49.080
 and that format still is used by, like I'm,

19:49.080 --> 19:51.480
 we're doing a lot of research with Tesla of vehicles

19:51.480 --> 19:53.600
 and there's a Tesla Motors Club forum,

19:53.600 --> 19:54.440
 which is extremely,

19:54.440 --> 19:56.280
 We really wanted to run that actually.

19:56.280 --> 19:57.720
 They pinged us about it, I don't think we got it,

19:57.720 --> 19:59.240
 but I really would have liked to gotten that one.

19:59.240 --> 20:02.640
 But they've started before even 2012, I believe.

20:02.640 --> 20:04.200
 I mean, they've been running for a long time.

20:04.200 --> 20:06.840
 It's still an extremely rich source of information.

20:06.840 --> 20:09.760
 So what's broken about that system

20:09.760 --> 20:12.160
 and how are you trying to fix it?

20:12.160 --> 20:15.920
 I think there's a lot of power in connecting people

20:15.920 --> 20:19.240
 that love the same stuff around that specific topic,

20:19.240 --> 20:22.800
 meaning Facebook's idea of connection is just any human

20:22.800 --> 20:24.560
 that's related to another human, right?

20:24.560 --> 20:27.520
 Like through friendship or any other reason.

20:27.520 --> 20:30.280
 Facebook's idea of the world is sort of the status update,

20:30.280 --> 20:31.120
 right?

20:31.120 --> 20:35.040
 Like a friend of yours did something at a restaurant, right?

20:35.040 --> 20:37.280
 Whereas discussion forums were traditionally

20:37.280 --> 20:38.320
 around the interest graph.

20:38.320 --> 20:42.000
 Like I love electric cars, specifically I love Tesla, right?

20:42.000 --> 20:44.320
 Like I love the way they approach the problem.

20:44.320 --> 20:45.920
 I love the style of the founder.

20:45.920 --> 20:48.200
 I just love the design ethic.

20:48.200 --> 20:49.280
 There's a lot to like about Tesla.

20:49.280 --> 20:50.280
 I don't know if you saw the oatmeal,

20:50.280 --> 20:53.120
 he did a whole love comic to Tesla.

20:53.120 --> 20:53.960
 And it was actually kind of cool

20:53.960 --> 20:54.800
 because I learned some stuff.

20:54.800 --> 20:57.000
 He was talking about how great Tesla cars were specifically,

20:57.000 --> 20:58.360
 like how they were built differently.

20:58.360 --> 20:59.880
 And he went into a lot of great detail

20:59.880 --> 21:00.720
 that was really interesting.

21:00.720 --> 21:02.640
 And to me, that oatmeal post, if you read it,

21:02.640 --> 21:05.760
 is the genesis of pretty much all interest communities.

21:05.760 --> 21:07.000
 I just really love this stuff.

21:07.000 --> 21:08.400
 So for me, for example, there's yoyos, right?

21:08.400 --> 21:09.720
 Like I'm into the yoyo communities

21:09.720 --> 21:12.800
 and these interest communities are just really fascinating

21:12.800 --> 21:15.240
 to me and I feel more connected to the yoyo communities

21:15.240 --> 21:18.640
 than I do to friends that I don't see that often, right?

21:18.640 --> 21:21.760
 Like to me, the powerful thing is the interest graph

21:21.760 --> 21:25.040
 and Facebook kind of dabbles in the interest graph.

21:25.040 --> 21:26.720
 I mean, they have groups, you can sign up for groups

21:26.720 --> 21:29.480
 and stuff, but it's really about the relationship graph.

21:29.480 --> 21:32.080
 Like this is my coworker, this is my relative,

21:32.080 --> 21:35.280
 this is my friend, but not so much about the interest.

21:35.280 --> 21:36.920
 So I think that's the linchpin

21:36.920 --> 21:39.200
 of which forums and communities are built on

21:39.200 --> 21:40.320
 that I personally love.

21:40.320 --> 21:44.240
 Like I said, leadership is about passion, right?

21:44.240 --> 21:45.520
 And being passionate about stuff

21:45.520 --> 21:47.520
 is a really valid way to look at the world.

21:47.520 --> 21:48.680
 And I think it's a way,

21:49.800 --> 21:51.240
 a lot of stuff in the world gets done.

21:51.240 --> 21:52.960
 Like I once had someone describe me as,

21:52.960 --> 21:54.640
 he's like, Jeff, you're a guy who,

21:54.640 --> 21:57.560
 you just get super passionate about a few things at a time

21:57.560 --> 21:59.760
 and you just go super deep in those things.

21:59.760 --> 22:00.720
 And I was like, oh, that's kind of right.

22:00.720 --> 22:01.560
 That's kind of what I do.

22:01.560 --> 22:03.400
 I get into something and just be super into that

22:03.400 --> 22:04.560
 for a couple of years or whatever

22:04.560 --> 22:05.960
 and just learn all I can about it

22:05.960 --> 22:07.800
 and go super deep in it.

22:07.800 --> 22:11.000
 And that's how I enjoy experiencing the world, right?

22:11.000 --> 22:12.400
 Like not being shallow on a bunch of things,

22:12.400 --> 22:15.360
 but being really deep on a few things that I'm interested in.

22:15.360 --> 22:17.200
 So forums kind of unlock that, right?

22:17.200 --> 22:19.680
 And you don't want a world where everything belongs

22:19.680 --> 22:20.920
 to Facebook, at least I don't.

22:20.920 --> 22:22.760
 I want a world where communities can kind of own themselves,

22:22.760 --> 22:25.120
 set their own norms, set their own rules,

22:25.120 --> 22:26.320
 control the experience.

22:26.320 --> 22:28.720
 Because community is also about ownership, right?

22:28.720 --> 22:31.520
 Like if you're meeting at the Barnes & Noble

22:31.520 --> 22:33.000
 every Thursday and Barnes & Noble says,

22:33.000 --> 22:34.600
 get out of here, you guys don't buy enough books,

22:34.600 --> 22:36.640
 well, you're kind of hoes, right?

22:36.640 --> 22:37.880
 Barnes & Noble owns you, right?

22:37.880 --> 22:38.880
 Like you can't.

22:38.880 --> 22:40.320
 But if you have your own meeting space,

22:40.320 --> 22:41.440
 you know, your own clubhouse,

22:41.440 --> 22:43.040
 you can set your own rules,

22:43.040 --> 22:44.520
 decide what you want to talk about there

22:44.520 --> 22:47.800
 and just really generate a lot better information

22:47.800 --> 22:49.520
 than you could like hanging out at Barnes & Noble

22:49.520 --> 22:51.880
 every Thursday at 3 p.m., right?

22:51.880 --> 22:53.840
 So that's kind of the vision of Discourse,

22:53.840 --> 22:57.160
 is a place where it's fully open source.

22:57.160 --> 22:59.160
 You can take the software, you can install it anywhere.

22:59.160 --> 23:00.880
 And you know, you and a group of people

23:00.880 --> 23:02.840
 can go deep on whatever it is that you're into.

23:02.840 --> 23:04.440
 And this works for startups, right?

23:04.440 --> 23:05.920
 Startups are a group of people

23:05.920 --> 23:08.400
 who go super deep on a specific problem, right?

23:08.400 --> 23:09.600
 And they want to talk to their communities

23:09.600 --> 23:11.040
 like, well, install Discourse, right?

23:11.040 --> 23:12.040
 That's what we do at Discourse.

23:12.040 --> 23:13.560
 That's what I did at Stack Overflow.

23:13.560 --> 23:15.520
 I spent a lot of time on MetaStack Overflow,

23:15.520 --> 23:17.920
 which is our internal, well,

23:17.920 --> 23:20.200
 public community feedback site.

23:20.200 --> 23:24.160
 And just experiencing what the users were experiencing, right?

23:24.160 --> 23:26.040
 Because they're the ones doing all the work in the system.

23:26.040 --> 23:27.600
 And they had a lot of interesting feedback.

23:27.600 --> 23:30.200
 And there's that 90, 10 rule of like 90% of the feedback

23:30.200 --> 23:32.360
 you get is not really actionable for a variety of reasons.

23:32.360 --> 23:33.560
 It might be bad feedback.

23:33.560 --> 23:34.600
 It might be crazy feedback.

23:34.600 --> 23:36.400
 It might be feedback you just can't act on right now.

23:36.400 --> 23:38.320
 But there's 10% of it that's like gold.

23:38.320 --> 23:39.760
 It's like literally gold and diamonds,

23:39.760 --> 23:42.440
 where it's like feedback of really good improvements

23:42.440 --> 23:44.800
 to your core product that are not super hard to get to

23:44.800 --> 23:45.800
 and actually make a lot of sense.

23:45.800 --> 23:47.800
 And my favorite is about 5% of those stuff

23:47.800 --> 23:48.720
 I didn't even see coming.

23:48.720 --> 23:50.480
 It's like, oh my God, I never even thought of that.

23:50.480 --> 23:52.560
 But that's a brilliant idea, right?

23:52.560 --> 23:54.560
 And I can point to so many features of Stack Overflow

23:54.560 --> 23:56.720
 that we drive from MetaStack Overflow feedback

23:56.720 --> 24:00.280
 and MetaDiscourse, right, same exact principle of discourse.

24:00.280 --> 24:02.280
 You know, we're getting ideas from the community.

24:02.280 --> 24:03.480
 I was like, oh my God, I never thought of that.

24:03.480 --> 24:04.680
 But that's fantastic, right?

24:04.680 --> 24:06.920
 Like I love that relationship with the community.

24:06.920 --> 24:10.200
 From having built these communities, what have you,

24:10.200 --> 24:11.120
 what have you learned about?

24:11.120 --> 24:12.880
 What's the process of getting a critical mass

24:12.880 --> 24:14.160
 of members in a community?

24:14.160 --> 24:17.040
 Is it luck, skill, timing, persistence?

24:17.040 --> 24:20.400
 What is, is it the tools, like discourse

24:20.400 --> 24:21.880
 that empower that community?

24:21.880 --> 24:25.880
 What's the key aspect of starting for one guy or gal

24:25.880 --> 24:27.760
 and then building it to two, one and 10

24:27.760 --> 24:30.000
 and a hundred and a thousand and so on?

24:30.000 --> 24:32.320
 I think we're starting with an end of one.

24:32.320 --> 24:33.920
 I mean, I think it's persistence

24:33.920 --> 24:37.040
 and also you have to be interesting.

24:37.040 --> 24:38.520
 Like somebody I really admire

24:38.520 --> 24:40.200
 once said something that I always liked about blogging.

24:40.200 --> 24:41.880
 He's like, here's how you blog.

24:41.880 --> 24:44.440
 You have to have something interesting to say

24:44.440 --> 24:46.960
 and have an interesting way of saying it, right?

24:46.960 --> 24:49.000
 And then do that for like 10 years.

24:49.920 --> 24:52.360
 So that's the genesis is like you have to have

24:52.360 --> 24:53.560
 sort of something interesting to say

24:53.560 --> 24:55.280
 that's not exactly what everybody else is saying.

24:55.280 --> 24:56.440
 And an interesting way of saying it,

24:56.440 --> 24:57.920
 which is another way of saying kind of entertaining

24:57.920 --> 24:59.280
 way of saying it.

24:59.280 --> 25:02.200
 And then as far as growing it, it's like ritual, you know,

25:02.200 --> 25:04.280
 like you have to like say you're starting a blog,

25:04.280 --> 25:06.720
 you have to say, look, I'm gonna blog every week,

25:06.720 --> 25:09.320
 three times a week and you have to stick to that schedule,

25:09.320 --> 25:10.160
 right?

25:10.160 --> 25:12.880
 Because until you do that for like several years,

25:12.880 --> 25:14.400
 you're never gonna get anywhere.

25:14.400 --> 25:16.720
 Like it just takes years to get to where you need to get to.

25:16.720 --> 25:18.720
 And part of that is having the discipline

25:18.720 --> 25:19.760
 to stick with the schedule.

25:19.760 --> 25:21.720
 And it helps again, if it's something you're passionate about,

25:21.720 --> 25:22.760
 this won't feel like work.

25:22.760 --> 25:23.600
 Like, I love this.

25:23.600 --> 25:25.640
 I can talk about this all day, every day, right?

25:26.840 --> 25:28.000
 You just have to do it in a way that's interesting

25:28.000 --> 25:28.840
 to other people.

25:28.840 --> 25:30.640
 And then as you're growing the community,

25:30.640 --> 25:32.480
 that pattern of participation within the community

25:32.480 --> 25:34.320
 of like generating these artifacts

25:34.320 --> 25:35.720
 and inviting other people to help you

25:35.720 --> 25:36.960
 like collaborate on these artifacts.

25:36.960 --> 25:38.280
 Like even in the case of blogging,

25:38.280 --> 25:40.880
 like I felt in the early days of my blog,

25:40.880 --> 25:41.960
 which I started in 2004,

25:41.960 --> 25:43.760
 which is really the genesis of Stack Overflow.

25:43.760 --> 25:46.280
 If you look at all my blog, it leads up to Stack Overflow,

25:46.280 --> 25:48.440
 which was, I have all this energy in my blog,

25:48.440 --> 25:51.320
 but I don't like 40,000 people were subscribing to me.

25:51.320 --> 25:52.440
 And I was like, I wanna do something.

25:52.440 --> 25:54.160
 And then I met Joel and said, hey, Joel,

25:54.160 --> 25:56.240
 I wanna do something, take this ball of energy

25:56.240 --> 25:57.360
 from my blog and do something.

25:57.360 --> 25:58.800
 And all the people who read my blog saw that,

25:58.800 --> 26:00.560
 it's like, oh, cool, you're involving us.

26:00.560 --> 26:03.360
 You're saying, look, you're part of this community,

26:03.360 --> 26:04.520
 let's build this thing together.

26:04.520 --> 26:05.520
 Like they pick the name.

26:05.520 --> 26:08.040
 Like we voted on the name for Stack Overflow on my blog.

26:08.040 --> 26:09.960
 Like we came up and naming is super hard.

26:09.960 --> 26:12.240
 First of all, the hardest problem in computer science

26:12.240 --> 26:14.480
 is coming with a good name for stuff, right?

26:14.480 --> 26:15.880
 But you can go back to my blog.

26:15.880 --> 26:17.600
 There's the poll where we voted

26:17.600 --> 26:19.240
 and Stack Overflow became the name of the site.

26:19.240 --> 26:21.160
 And all the early beta users of Stack Overflow

26:21.160 --> 26:24.560
 were audience of my blog plus Joel's blog, right?

26:24.560 --> 26:26.480
 So we started from like, if you look at the Genesis,

26:26.480 --> 26:28.120
 okay, I was just a programmer who said,

26:28.120 --> 26:30.400
 hey, I love programming, but I have no outlet

26:30.400 --> 26:31.240
 to talk about it.

26:31.240 --> 26:32.080
 So I'm just gonna blog about it

26:32.080 --> 26:33.320
 because I don't have enough people to work

26:33.320 --> 26:34.320
 to talk to about it.

26:34.320 --> 26:36.480
 Cause at the time I worked place where,

26:36.480 --> 26:38.880
 you know, programming wasn't the core output of the company.

26:38.880 --> 26:40.800
 It was a pharmaceutical company.

26:40.800 --> 26:43.520
 And I just love this stuff, you know, to an absurd degree.

26:43.520 --> 26:44.920
 So I was like, I'll just blog about it

26:44.920 --> 26:45.920
 and then I'll find an audience

26:45.920 --> 26:47.680
 and eventually found an audience,

26:47.680 --> 26:50.440
 eventually found Joel and eventually built Stack Overflow

26:50.440 --> 26:52.840
 from that one core of activity, right?

26:52.840 --> 26:55.400
 But it was that repetition of feeding back in,

26:55.400 --> 26:58.040
 feedback from my blog comments, feedback from Joel,

26:58.040 --> 27:01.440
 feedback from the early Stack Overflow community.

27:01.440 --> 27:02.840
 When people see that you're doing that,

27:02.840 --> 27:04.120
 they will follow along with you, right?

27:04.120 --> 27:05.480
 They say, cool, you're here in good faith.

27:05.480 --> 27:07.240
 You're actually, you know, not listening to everything

27:07.240 --> 27:09.280
 because that's impossible, that's impossible,

27:09.280 --> 27:13.000
 but you're actually, you know, waiting our feedback

27:13.000 --> 27:14.720
 in what you're doing because, and why wouldn't I?

27:14.720 --> 27:16.680
 Because who does all the work on Stack Overflow?

27:16.680 --> 27:17.920
 Me, Joel?

27:17.920 --> 27:19.600
 No, it's the other programmers

27:19.600 --> 27:20.480
 that are doing all the work.

27:20.480 --> 27:22.480
 So you gotta have some respect for that.

27:22.480 --> 27:25.080
 And then, you know, discipline around, look,

27:25.080 --> 27:26.400
 you know, we're trying to do a very specific thing

27:26.400 --> 27:27.240
 here on Stack Overflow.

27:27.240 --> 27:29.080
 We're not trying to solve all the world's problems.

27:29.080 --> 27:30.920
 We're trying to solve this very specific Q&A problem

27:30.920 --> 27:32.320
 in a very specific way.

27:32.320 --> 27:33.560
 Not because we're jerks about it,

27:33.560 --> 27:35.960
 but because these strict set of rules

27:35.960 --> 27:39.360
 help us get really good results, right?

27:39.360 --> 27:41.440
 And programmers, that's an easy sell for the most part

27:41.440 --> 27:42.520
 because programmers are used to dealing

27:42.520 --> 27:45.080
 with ridiculous systems of rules like constantly.

27:45.080 --> 27:46.760
 That's basically their job.

27:46.760 --> 27:49.480
 So they're very, oh yeah, super strict system of rules

27:49.480 --> 27:50.400
 that lets me get what I want.

27:50.400 --> 27:51.560
 That's programming, right?

27:51.560 --> 27:53.640
 That's what Stack Overflow is, so.

27:53.640 --> 27:54.880
 So you're making it sound easy,

27:54.880 --> 27:58.000
 but in 2004, let's go back there.

27:58.000 --> 28:01.520
 In 2004, you started the blog, Coding Horror.

28:01.520 --> 28:03.520
 Was it called that at the very beginning?

28:03.520 --> 28:04.360
 It was.

28:04.360 --> 28:05.200
 One of the smart things I did,

28:05.200 --> 28:06.680
 it's from a book by Steve McConnell, Code Complete,

28:06.680 --> 28:08.200
 which is one of my favorite programming books,

28:08.200 --> 28:09.760
 still probably my number one programming book

28:09.760 --> 28:10.760
 for anyone to read.

28:12.080 --> 28:13.800
 One of the smart things I did back then,

28:13.800 --> 28:16.040
 I don't always do smart things when I start stuff.

28:16.040 --> 28:18.360
 I contacted Steve and said, hey, I really like this.

28:18.360 --> 28:19.600
 It was a sidebar illustration,

28:19.600 --> 28:21.800
 indicating danger in code, right?

28:21.800 --> 28:23.880
 Coding Horror was like, watch out.

28:25.280 --> 28:27.400
 And I love that illustration because it spoke to me.

28:27.400 --> 28:28.840
 Because I saw that illustration go, oh my God,

28:28.840 --> 28:31.040
 that's me, like I'm always my own worst enemy.

28:31.040 --> 28:33.320
 Like that's the key insight in programming is,

28:33.320 --> 28:34.280
 every time you write something,

28:34.280 --> 28:36.560
 think how am I gonna screw myself?

28:36.560 --> 28:39.240
 Because you will, constantly, right?

28:39.240 --> 28:41.240
 So that icon was like, oh yeah,

28:41.240 --> 28:43.160
 I need to constantly hold that mirror up and look

28:43.160 --> 28:45.400
 and say, look, you're very fallible.

28:45.400 --> 28:46.360
 You're gonna screw this up.

28:46.360 --> 28:48.000
 Like how can you build this in such a way

28:48.000 --> 28:50.320
 that you're not gonna screw it up later?

28:50.320 --> 28:52.960
 Like how can you get that discipline around

28:52.960 --> 28:54.280
 making sure at every step,

28:54.280 --> 28:56.160
 I'm thinking through all the things that I could do wrong

28:56.160 --> 28:57.200
 or that other people could do wrong.

28:57.200 --> 28:59.520
 Cause that is actually how you get to be a better programmer

28:59.520 --> 29:00.560
 a lot of times, right?

29:00.560 --> 29:03.360
 So that sidebar illustration, I loved it so much.

29:03.360 --> 29:05.440
 And I wrote Steve before I started my blog,

29:05.440 --> 29:06.760
 and said, hey, can I have permission to use this?

29:06.760 --> 29:08.400
 Cause I just really like this illustration.

29:08.400 --> 29:11.240
 And Steve was kind enough to let me permission to do that

29:11.240 --> 29:12.640
 and just continues to give me permission.

29:12.640 --> 29:13.480
 So yeah.

29:13.480 --> 29:15.040
 Really, that's awesome.

29:15.040 --> 29:18.840
 But in 2004, you started this blog.

29:18.840 --> 29:22.560
 You know, you look at Stephen King's book on writing

29:22.560 --> 29:26.400
 or Stephen Pressfield's War of Art book.

29:26.400 --> 29:30.000
 I mean, it seems like writers suffer.

29:30.000 --> 29:32.480
 I mean, it's a hard process of writing, right?

29:32.480 --> 29:34.160
 There's a lot of, there's gonna be suffering.

29:34.160 --> 29:35.160
 I mean, I won't kid you like,

29:35.160 --> 29:36.360
 well, the work is suffering, right?

29:36.360 --> 29:38.680
 Like doing the work, like even when you're every week,

29:38.680 --> 29:40.240
 you're like, okay, that blog post wasn't very good

29:40.240 --> 29:41.440
 or you know, people didn't like it

29:41.440 --> 29:44.040
 or people said disparaging things about it.

29:44.040 --> 29:47.400
 You have to like have the attitude is like, you know,

29:47.400 --> 29:49.440
 no matter what happens, I want to do this for me, right?

29:49.440 --> 29:51.200
 It's not about you, it's about me.

29:51.200 --> 29:53.280
 I mean, in the end, it is about everyone

29:53.280 --> 29:55.800
 because this is how good work gets out into the world.

29:55.800 --> 29:59.760
 But you have to be pretty strict about saying like,

29:59.760 --> 30:01.600
 you know, I'm selfish in the sense

30:01.600 --> 30:03.240
 that I have to do this for me.

30:03.240 --> 30:04.320
 You know, you mentioned Stephen King,

30:04.320 --> 30:05.440
 like his book on writing,

30:05.440 --> 30:06.800
 but like one of the things I do, for example,

30:06.800 --> 30:08.640
 when writing is like, I read it out loud,

30:08.640 --> 30:10.600
 one of the best pieces of advice for writing anything

30:10.600 --> 30:13.840
 is read it out loud, like multiple times.

30:13.840 --> 30:15.800
 And make it sound like you're talking

30:15.800 --> 30:17.840
 because that is the goal of good writing.

30:17.840 --> 30:19.520
 It should sound like you said it with,

30:19.520 --> 30:20.840
 with slightly better phrasing

30:20.840 --> 30:22.080
 because you have more time to think about what you're saying,

30:22.080 --> 30:24.360
 but like, it should sound natural when you say it.

30:24.360 --> 30:27.120
 And I think that's probably the single best writing advice

30:27.120 --> 30:27.960
 I can give anyone.

30:27.960 --> 30:29.760
 It's just, just read it over and over out loud,

30:29.760 --> 30:32.600
 make sure it sounds like something you would normally say

30:32.600 --> 30:33.680
 and it sounds good.

30:33.680 --> 30:35.600
 And what's your process of writing?

30:35.600 --> 30:39.360
 So there's usually a pretty good idea behind the blog post.

30:39.360 --> 30:40.200
 So ideas, right.

30:40.200 --> 30:44.480
 So I think you gotta have the concept that

30:44.480 --> 30:46.160
 there's so many interesting things in the world.

30:46.160 --> 30:48.760
 Like, I mean, my God, the world is amazing, right?

30:48.760 --> 30:51.920
 Like you could never write about everything that's going on

30:51.920 --> 30:52.760
 because it's so incredible.

30:52.760 --> 30:54.160
 But if you can't come up with like,

30:54.160 --> 30:57.080
 let's say one interesting thing per day to talk about,

30:57.080 --> 30:58.320
 then you're not trying hard enough

30:58.320 --> 31:00.600
 because the world is full of just super interesting stuff.

31:00.600 --> 31:03.080
 And one great way to like mine stuff

31:03.080 --> 31:04.240
 is go back to old books

31:04.240 --> 31:07.160
 because they bring up old stuff that's still super relevant.

31:07.160 --> 31:08.120
 And I did that a lot

31:08.120 --> 31:09.840
 because I was like reading classic programming books

31:09.840 --> 31:11.240
 and a lot of the early blog posts were like,

31:11.240 --> 31:12.240
 oh, I was reading this programming book

31:12.240 --> 31:13.720
 and they brought this really cool concept

31:13.720 --> 31:14.960
 and I want to talk about it some more.

31:14.960 --> 31:16.960
 And you get the, I mean, you're not claiming credit

31:16.960 --> 31:18.080
 for the idea, but it gives you something interesting

31:18.080 --> 31:19.840
 to talk about that's kind of evergreen, right?

31:19.840 --> 31:21.920
 Like you don't have to go, what should I talk about?

31:21.920 --> 31:24.560
 So we'll just go dig up some old classic programming books

31:24.560 --> 31:26.960
 and find something that, oh, wow, that's interesting.

31:26.960 --> 31:28.120
 Or how does that apply today?

31:28.120 --> 31:30.920
 Or what about X and Y or compare these two concepts?

31:30.920 --> 31:32.720
 So pull a couple of sentences from that book

31:32.720 --> 31:35.960
 and then sort of play off of it, almost agree or disagree.

31:35.960 --> 31:40.960
 That so in 2007, you wrote that you were offered

31:41.880 --> 31:44.480
 a significant amount of money to sell the blog.

31:44.480 --> 31:46.000
 You chose not to.

31:46.000 --> 31:49.000
 What were all the elements you were thinking about?

31:49.000 --> 31:50.560
 Because I'd like to take you back.

31:50.560 --> 31:52.560
 It seems like there's a lot of nonlinear decisions

31:52.560 --> 31:54.600
 you made through life.

31:54.600 --> 31:56.080
 So what was that decision like?

31:56.080 --> 31:57.880
 Right, so one of the things I love

31:57.880 --> 31:59.400
 is the Choose Your Own Adventure books,

31:59.400 --> 32:00.320
 which I loved as a kid.

32:00.320 --> 32:01.760
 And I feel like they're early programmer books

32:01.760 --> 32:04.080
 because they're all about if then statements, right?

32:04.080 --> 32:07.280
 If this then this, and they're also very, very unforgiving.

32:07.280 --> 32:08.960
 Like there's all these sites that map

32:08.960 --> 32:11.080
 the classic Choose Your Own Adventure books

32:11.080 --> 32:13.960
 and how many outcomes are bad, a lot of bad outcomes.

32:13.960 --> 32:16.120
 So part of the game is like, oh, I got an outcome.

32:16.120 --> 32:17.840
 Go back one step, go back one further step.

32:17.840 --> 32:19.640
 It's like, how did I get here, right?

32:19.640 --> 32:21.920
 It's a sequence of decisions.

32:21.920 --> 32:23.200
 And this is true of life, right?

32:23.200 --> 32:25.600
 Like every decision is a sequence, right?

32:25.600 --> 32:28.360
 Individually, any individual decision

32:28.360 --> 32:29.280
 is not actually right or wrong,

32:29.280 --> 32:31.080
 but they lead you down a path, right?

32:31.080 --> 32:32.800
 So I do think there's some truth there.

32:32.800 --> 32:34.800
 So this particular decision,

32:34.800 --> 32:36.360
 the blogging I'm fairly popular.

32:36.360 --> 32:39.120
 There's a lot of RSS readers that I discovered.

32:39.120 --> 32:41.040
 And this guy contacted me out of the blue

32:41.040 --> 32:42.480
 from this like bug tracking company.

32:42.480 --> 32:44.480
 He's like, oh, I really want to buy your blog for like,

32:44.480 --> 32:47.040
 I think it was around, it was $100,000,

32:47.040 --> 32:49.280
 might've been like 80,000, but it was a lot, right?

32:49.280 --> 32:51.160
 Like, and that's, you know, at the time,

32:51.160 --> 32:54.480
 like I would have a year's worth of salary all at once.

32:54.480 --> 32:57.760
 So I really think about like, well, you know,

32:57.760 --> 32:58.920
 and I remember talking to people at the time,

32:58.920 --> 32:59.880
 I was like, wow, that's a lot of money.

32:59.880 --> 33:02.040
 But then the other thing, like I really like my blog, right?

33:02.040 --> 33:03.760
 Like, do I want to sell my blog?

33:03.760 --> 33:05.320
 Because it wouldn't really belong to me anymore

33:05.320 --> 33:06.160
 at that point.

33:06.160 --> 33:09.400
 And one of the guidelines that I like to,

33:09.400 --> 33:11.080
 I don't like to give advice to people a lot,

33:11.080 --> 33:12.560
 but one of the pieces of advice I do give,

33:12.560 --> 33:13.760
 because I do think it's really true

33:13.760 --> 33:15.600
 and it's generally helpful,

33:15.600 --> 33:17.640
 is whenever you're looking at a set of decisions,

33:17.640 --> 33:19.920
 like, oh gosh, should I do A, B or C?

33:19.920 --> 33:22.560
 You got to pick the thing that's a little scarier

33:22.560 --> 33:24.560
 in that list, because not, you know,

33:24.560 --> 33:25.720
 not like jump off a cliff scary,

33:25.720 --> 33:27.040
 but the thing that makes you nervous.

33:27.040 --> 33:29.000
 Because if you pick the safe choice,

33:29.000 --> 33:30.360
 it's usually you're not really pushing.

33:30.360 --> 33:31.400
 You're not pushing yourself.

33:31.400 --> 33:33.960
 You're not choosing the thing that's going to help you grow.

33:33.960 --> 33:36.160
 So for me, the scarier choice was to say no.

33:36.160 --> 33:38.360
 I was like, well, no, let's just see where this is going, right?

33:38.360 --> 33:39.520
 Because then I own it.

33:39.520 --> 33:40.520
 I mean, it belongs to me.

33:40.520 --> 33:41.760
 It's my thing.

33:41.760 --> 33:43.160
 And I can just take it

33:43.160 --> 33:45.360
 and tell some other logical conclusion, right?

33:45.360 --> 33:46.840
 Because imagine how different the world would have been

33:46.840 --> 33:49.080
 had I said yes and sold the blog.

33:49.080 --> 33:51.560
 It's like there probably wouldn't be Stack Overflow.

33:51.560 --> 33:53.640
 You know, a lot of other stuff would have changed.

33:53.640 --> 33:55.360
 So for that particular decision,

33:55.360 --> 33:56.320
 I think it was that same rule,

33:56.320 --> 33:57.960
 like what scares me a little bit more?

33:57.960 --> 33:59.240
 Do the thing that scares you.

33:59.240 --> 34:00.080
 Yeah.

34:00.080 --> 34:01.760
 Which startups?

34:01.760 --> 34:03.280
 I think there's a specific,

34:03.280 --> 34:05.000
 some more general questions

34:05.000 --> 34:07.560
 that a lot of people would be interested in.

34:07.560 --> 34:10.320
 You've started Stack Overflow.

34:10.320 --> 34:12.080
 You've started Discourse.

34:12.080 --> 34:15.320
 So what's the, you know, one, two, three guys,

34:15.320 --> 34:17.200
 whatever it is in the beginning.

34:17.200 --> 34:19.360
 What was that process like?

34:19.360 --> 34:20.720
 Do you start talking about it?

34:20.720 --> 34:21.800
 Do you start programming?

34:21.800 --> 34:24.520
 Do you start, like where is the birth

34:24.520 --> 34:25.840
 and the catalyst that actually exists?

34:25.840 --> 34:27.000
 Well, I can talk about it in the context

34:27.000 --> 34:28.080
 of both Stack Overflow and Discourse.

34:28.080 --> 34:31.040
 So I think the key thing initially is there is a problem.

34:31.040 --> 34:32.400
 Something, there's some state of the world

34:32.400 --> 34:33.920
 that's unsatisfactory to the point

34:33.920 --> 34:35.960
 that like you're upset about it, right?

34:35.960 --> 34:37.800
 Like in that case, it was experts exchange.

34:37.800 --> 34:38.920
 I mean, Joel's original idea,

34:38.920 --> 34:40.560
 cause I approached Joel's like, look, Joel,

34:40.560 --> 34:41.720
 I have all this energy behind my blog.

34:41.720 --> 34:42.560
 I want to do something.

34:42.560 --> 34:43.880
 I want to build something, but I don't know what it is.

34:43.880 --> 34:45.680
 Cause I'm not, I'm honestly not a good idea person.

34:45.680 --> 34:46.520
 I'm really not.

34:46.520 --> 34:47.720
 I'm like the execution guy.

34:47.720 --> 34:48.640
 I'm really good at execution,

34:48.640 --> 34:51.000
 but I'm not good at like blue skying ideas.

34:51.000 --> 34:52.040
 Not my forte.

34:52.040 --> 34:54.040
 Which is another reason why I like the community feedback.

34:54.040 --> 34:56.320
 Cause they blue sky all day long for you, right?

34:56.320 --> 34:58.400
 So when I can just go in and cherry pick a blue sky idea

34:58.400 --> 35:00.800
 from community, even if I have to spend three hours reading

35:00.800 --> 35:02.720
 to get one good idea, it's worth it, man.

35:02.720 --> 35:04.680
 But anyway, so the idea from Joel was,

35:04.680 --> 35:07.400
 hey, experts exchange, it's got great data,

35:07.400 --> 35:08.880
 but the experience is hideous, right?

35:08.880 --> 35:09.920
 It's, it's trying to trick you.

35:09.920 --> 35:12.040
 It feels like you use car sales, but it's just bad.

35:12.040 --> 35:13.080
 So I was like, oh, that's awesome.

35:13.080 --> 35:14.280
 It feeds into community.

35:14.280 --> 35:15.120
 It feeds into like, you know,

35:15.120 --> 35:16.680
 we can make a creative commons.

35:16.680 --> 35:18.520
 So I think the core is to have a really good idea

35:18.520 --> 35:20.280
 that you feel very strongly about in the beginning,

35:20.280 --> 35:22.680
 that like there's a wrong in the world that we will,

35:22.680 --> 35:24.280
 an injustice that we will write

35:24.280 --> 35:26.120
 through the process of building this thing.

35:26.120 --> 35:27.520
 For discourse, it was like, look,

35:27.520 --> 35:30.200
 there's no good software for communities

35:30.200 --> 35:32.960
 to just hang out and like do stuff, right?

35:32.960 --> 35:35.480
 Like whether it's problem solving, startup, whatever.

35:35.480 --> 35:37.640
 Forms are such a great building block of online community

35:37.640 --> 35:38.600
 and they're hideous.

35:38.600 --> 35:39.760
 They were so bad, right?

35:39.760 --> 35:40.760
 It was embarrassing.

35:40.760 --> 35:43.000
 Like I literally was embarrassed to be associated

35:43.000 --> 35:43.960
 with this software, right?

35:43.960 --> 35:45.720
 I was like, we have to have software that you can be proud of.

35:45.720 --> 35:47.120
 It's like, this is competitive with Reddit.

35:47.120 --> 35:48.360
 This is competitive with Twitter.

35:48.360 --> 35:50.360
 This is competitive with Facebook, right?

35:50.360 --> 35:53.520
 I would be proud to have the software on my site.

35:53.520 --> 35:54.920
 So that was the genesis of discourse,

35:54.920 --> 35:59.920
 was feeling very strongly about their needs to be

35:59.920 --> 36:01.760
 a good solution for communities.

36:01.760 --> 36:03.280
 So that's step one, genesis funny idea

36:03.280 --> 36:04.600
 you feel super strongly about, right?

36:04.600 --> 36:06.680
 And then people galvanize around the idea.

36:06.680 --> 36:08.520
 Like Joel was already super excited about the idea.

36:08.520 --> 36:10.000
 I was excited about the idea.

36:10.000 --> 36:13.280
 So with the forum software, I was posting on Twitter,

36:13.280 --> 36:15.040
 I had researched, as part of my research,

36:15.040 --> 36:16.640
 I start researching the problem, right?

36:16.640 --> 36:19.520
 And I found a game called forum wars,

36:19.520 --> 36:21.480
 which was a parody of forum.

36:21.480 --> 36:23.640
 It's still very, very funny of like forum behavior

36:23.640 --> 36:26.120
 a circle, like I would say 2003.

36:26.120 --> 36:27.720
 It's age some, right?

36:27.720 --> 36:29.200
 Like the behavior is a little different

36:29.200 --> 36:30.880
 in the air of Twitter, but it was awesome.

36:30.880 --> 36:32.760
 It was very funny and it was like a game,

36:32.760 --> 36:34.840
 it was like an RPG and it had a forum attached to it.

36:34.840 --> 36:37.520
 So it was like a game about forums with a forum attached.

36:37.520 --> 36:38.520
 It was like, this is awesome, right?

36:38.520 --> 36:39.520
 This is so cool.

36:39.520 --> 36:41.920
 And the founder of that company or that project,

36:41.920 --> 36:43.040
 it wasn't really a company,

36:43.040 --> 36:45.680
 contacted me, this guy Robin Ward from Toronto.

36:45.680 --> 36:46.880
 It's like, hey, you know, I saw you've been talking

36:46.880 --> 36:49.320
 about forums and like, I really love that problem space.

36:49.320 --> 36:51.600
 It's like, I'd still love to build really good forum software

36:51.600 --> 36:53.360
 because I don't think anything out there is any good.

36:53.360 --> 36:54.200
 And I was like, awesome.

36:54.200 --> 36:55.880
 At that point, I was like, we're starting a company

36:55.880 --> 36:58.560
 because like, I couldn't have wished for a better person

36:58.560 --> 37:00.080
 to walk through the door and say,

37:00.080 --> 37:01.480
 I'm excited about this too.

37:01.480 --> 37:02.360
 Same thing with Joel, right?

37:02.360 --> 37:03.960
 I mean, Joel is a legend in the industry, right?

37:03.960 --> 37:04.800
 So when he walked through and said,

37:04.800 --> 37:05.640
 I'm excited about this problem,

37:05.640 --> 37:08.160
 I was like, me too, man, we can do this, right?

37:08.160 --> 37:10.600
 So that to me is the most important step.

37:10.600 --> 37:12.040
 It's like having an idea you're super excited about

37:12.040 --> 37:14.600
 and another person, a co founder, right?

37:14.600 --> 37:16.200
 Cause again, you get that dual leadership, right?

37:16.200 --> 37:18.080
 Of like, am I making a bad decision?

37:19.080 --> 37:21.480
 Sometimes it's nice to have checks of like,

37:21.480 --> 37:22.440
 is this a good idea?

37:22.440 --> 37:23.680
 I don't know, right?

37:23.680 --> 37:25.600
 So those are the crucial seeds,

37:25.600 --> 37:27.520
 but then starting to build stuff,

37:27.520 --> 37:28.360
 whether it's you programming or somebody else.

37:28.360 --> 37:29.360
 There is prototyping.

37:29.360 --> 37:30.600
 So there's tons of research.

37:30.600 --> 37:32.920
 There's tons of research, like what's out there that failed?

37:32.920 --> 37:34.360
 Cause a lot of people look at it with successes.

37:34.360 --> 37:36.040
 Oh, look at how successful X is.

37:36.040 --> 37:37.360
 Everybody looks at the successes.

37:37.360 --> 37:38.360
 Those are boring.

37:38.360 --> 37:39.560
 Show me the failures.

37:39.560 --> 37:40.880
 Cause that is what's interesting.

37:40.880 --> 37:42.080
 That's where people were experimenting.

37:42.080 --> 37:43.520
 That's where people were pushing,

37:43.520 --> 37:46.640
 but they failed, but they probably failed for reasons

37:46.640 --> 37:50.080
 that weren't directly about the quality of their idea, right?

37:50.080 --> 37:51.440
 So look at all the failures.

37:51.440 --> 37:52.720
 Don't just look what everybody looks at,

37:52.720 --> 37:53.560
 which is like, oh gosh,

37:53.560 --> 37:54.680
 look at all these successful people.

37:54.680 --> 37:55.960
 Look at the failures.

37:55.960 --> 37:57.280
 Look at the things that didn't work.

37:57.280 --> 37:59.080
 Research the entire field.

37:59.080 --> 38:01.480
 And so that's the research that I was doing

38:01.480 --> 38:02.760
 that led me to Robin, right?

38:02.760 --> 38:03.600
 Was that.

38:03.600 --> 38:04.800
 And then when we, for example,

38:04.800 --> 38:07.560
 when we did Stack Overflow,

38:07.560 --> 38:09.000
 we're like, okay, well I really like elements

38:09.000 --> 38:10.040
 of voting and digging Reddit.

38:10.040 --> 38:12.800
 I like the Wikipedia, everything's up to date.

38:12.800 --> 38:14.320
 Nothing is like an old tombstone

38:14.320 --> 38:16.980
 that like has horrible out of date information.

38:16.980 --> 38:17.820
 We know that works.

38:17.820 --> 38:19.400
 Wikipedia is an amazing resource.

38:19.400 --> 38:22.400
 Blogging the idea of ownership is so powerful, right?

38:22.400 --> 38:24.000
 Like, oh, I Joe wrote this

38:24.000 --> 38:25.520
 and look how good Joe's answer is, right?

38:25.520 --> 38:27.760
 Like all these concepts were rolling together,

38:27.760 --> 38:29.080
 researching all the things that were out there

38:29.080 --> 38:30.640
 that were working and why they were working

38:30.640 --> 38:32.240
 and trying to like fold them into that.

38:32.240 --> 38:34.040
 Again, that Frankenstein's monster

38:34.040 --> 38:35.280
 of what Stack Overflow is.

38:35.280 --> 38:37.080
 And by the way, that wasn't a free decision

38:37.080 --> 38:38.760
 because there's still a ton of tension

38:38.760 --> 38:40.040
 in the Stack Overflow system.

38:40.040 --> 38:42.600
 There's reasons people complain about Stack Overflow

38:42.600 --> 38:43.680
 because it's so strict, right?

38:43.680 --> 38:44.640
 Why is it so strict?

38:44.640 --> 38:46.480
 Why are you guys always closing my questions?

38:46.480 --> 38:47.880
 It's because there's so much tension

38:47.880 --> 38:49.120
 that we built into the system

38:49.120 --> 38:51.240
 around like trying to get good, good results

38:51.240 --> 38:56.000
 out of the system and, you know, it's not a free.

38:56.000 --> 38:57.480
 That stuff doesn't come for free, right?

38:57.480 --> 38:59.800
 It's not like we all have perfect answers

38:59.800 --> 39:02.280
 and nobody will have to get their feelings heard

39:02.280 --> 39:04.160
 or nobody will have to get downvoted.

39:04.160 --> 39:05.800
 Like it doesn't work that way, right?

39:05.800 --> 39:07.960
 Like, so this is an interesting point

39:07.960 --> 39:09.400
 and a small tangent.

39:09.400 --> 39:12.000
 Yeah, you're right about anxiety.

39:12.000 --> 39:14.040
 So I've posted a lot of questions

39:14.040 --> 39:16.040
 and written answers on Stack Overflow.

39:16.040 --> 39:19.800
 On the question side, usually go to something very specific

39:19.800 --> 39:21.200
 to something I'm working on.

39:21.200 --> 39:22.280
 This is something you talk about

39:22.280 --> 39:25.000
 that really the goal of Stack Overflow

39:25.000 --> 39:27.840
 isn't about, is to write a question not,

39:27.840 --> 39:31.800
 that's not about you, it's about the question

39:31.800 --> 39:35.800
 that will help the community in the future.

39:35.800 --> 39:37.520
 Right, that's a tough sell, right?

39:37.520 --> 39:39.160
 Because people are like, well, you know,

39:39.160 --> 39:40.280
 I don't really care about the community.

39:40.280 --> 39:41.520
 What I care about is my problem.

39:41.520 --> 39:42.400
 My problem.

39:42.400 --> 39:43.480
 And that's fair, right?

39:43.480 --> 39:44.960
 It's sort of that, again, that tension,

39:44.960 --> 39:45.800
 that balancing act.

39:45.800 --> 39:46.760
 I want to help you,

39:46.760 --> 39:48.480
 but we also want to help everybody that comes behind you.

39:48.480 --> 39:49.960
 Right, the long line of people are gonna come up and say,

39:49.960 --> 39:52.320
 oh, I kind of have that problem too, right?

39:52.320 --> 39:53.680
 And if nobody's ever gonna come up

39:53.680 --> 39:54.880
 and say I have this problem too,

39:54.880 --> 39:57.040
 then that question shouldn't exist on Stack Overflow

39:57.040 --> 39:58.920
 because the question is too specific.

39:58.920 --> 40:00.120
 And even that's tension, right?

40:00.120 --> 40:00.960
 How do you judge that?

40:00.960 --> 40:02.640
 How do you know that nobody's ever gonna have

40:02.640 --> 40:04.720
 this particular question again?

40:04.720 --> 40:06.840
 So there's a lot of tension in the system.

40:06.840 --> 40:09.640
 Do you think that anxiety of asking the question,

40:09.640 --> 40:12.680
 the anxiety of answering that tension

40:12.680 --> 40:14.240
 is inherent to programmers,

40:14.240 --> 40:16.920
 is inherent to this kind of process?

40:16.920 --> 40:20.320
 Or can it be improved?

40:20.320 --> 40:24.040
 Can it be happy land where that tension

40:24.040 --> 40:26.320
 is not quite so harsh?

40:26.320 --> 40:28.120
 I don't think Stack Overflow

40:28.120 --> 40:30.040
 can totally change the way it works.

40:30.040 --> 40:31.800
 One thing they are working on, finally,

40:31.800 --> 40:35.200
 is the ask page had not changed since 2011.

40:35.200 --> 40:36.760
 I'm still kind of bitter about this

40:36.760 --> 40:39.360
 because I feel like you have a Q&A system

40:39.360 --> 40:41.400
 and one of the core pages in a Q&A system.

40:41.400 --> 40:42.240
 Well, first of all, the question,

40:42.240 --> 40:43.760
 all the answers and also the ask page,

40:43.760 --> 40:45.160
 particularly when you're a new user

40:45.160 --> 40:46.520
 or someone trying to ask a question,

40:46.520 --> 40:48.440
 that's the point at which you need the most help.

40:48.440 --> 40:50.760
 And we just didn't adapt with the times.

40:50.760 --> 40:52.360
 But the good news is they're working on this

40:52.360 --> 40:53.240
 from what I understand,

40:53.240 --> 40:55.200
 and it's gonna be a more wizard based format.

40:55.200 --> 40:56.840
 And you could envision a world

40:56.840 --> 40:58.440
 where as part of this wizard based program,

40:58.440 --> 40:59.360
 when you're asking a question,

40:59.360 --> 41:01.120
 so okay, come up with a good title.

41:01.120 --> 41:02.560
 What are good words to put in the title?

41:02.560 --> 41:04.280
 One word that's not good to put in the title

41:04.280 --> 41:05.880
 is problem, for example.

41:05.880 --> 41:06.720
 I have a problem.

41:06.720 --> 41:07.800
 Oh, you have a problem.

41:07.800 --> 41:10.000
 Okay, a problem, that's great, right?

41:10.000 --> 41:11.240
 Like, you need specifics, right?

41:11.240 --> 41:12.200
 Like, so it's trying to help you

41:12.200 --> 41:14.240
 make a good question title, for example.

41:14.240 --> 41:17.280
 That step will be broken out, all that stuff.

41:17.280 --> 41:19.560
 But one of those steps in that wizard of asking

41:19.560 --> 41:21.480
 could say, hey, I'm a little nervous.

41:21.480 --> 41:22.680
 You know, I've never done this before.

41:22.680 --> 41:26.080
 Can you put me in a queue for like special mentoring, right?

41:26.080 --> 41:27.560
 You could opt in to a special mentor.

41:27.560 --> 41:28.800
 I think that would be fantastic.

41:28.800 --> 41:31.360
 Like, I don't have any objection to that at all

41:31.360 --> 41:32.600
 in terms of being an opt in system.

41:32.600 --> 41:33.880
 Cause there are people that are like, you know,

41:33.880 --> 41:35.480
 I just wanna help them.

41:35.480 --> 41:36.720
 I wanna help a person no matter what.

41:36.720 --> 41:37.920
 I wanna go above and beyond.

41:37.920 --> 41:40.160
 I wanna spend like hours with this person.

41:40.160 --> 41:42.920
 It depends what their goals are, right?

41:42.920 --> 41:43.760
 It's a great idea.

41:43.760 --> 41:44.600
 Who am I to judge, right?

41:44.600 --> 41:45.440
 So that's fine.

41:45.440 --> 41:47.320
 It's not precluded from happening.

41:47.320 --> 41:49.000
 But there's a certain big city ethos

41:49.000 --> 41:51.080
 that we started with of like, look, we're of New York City.

41:51.080 --> 41:52.800
 You don't come to New York City and expect them to be,

41:52.800 --> 41:54.360
 oh, welcome to the city, Joe.

41:54.360 --> 41:55.200
 How's it going?

41:55.200 --> 41:56.040
 Come on in.

41:56.040 --> 41:57.120
 Let me show you around.

41:57.120 --> 41:59.360
 That's not how New York City works, right?

41:59.360 --> 42:02.160
 I mean, and you know, again, New York City

42:02.160 --> 42:03.080
 is a reputation for being rude,

42:03.080 --> 42:04.080
 which I actually don't think it is

42:04.080 --> 42:05.240
 having been there fairly recently.

42:05.240 --> 42:06.080
 It's not rude.

42:06.080 --> 42:07.200
 People are just like going about their business, right?

42:07.200 --> 42:08.960
 Like, look, I have things to do.

42:08.960 --> 42:11.800
 I'm busy, I'm a busy professional, as are you.

42:11.800 --> 42:13.400
 And since you're a busy professional,

42:13.400 --> 42:14.640
 certainly when you ask a question,

42:14.640 --> 42:16.400
 you're gonna ask the best possible question, right?

42:16.400 --> 42:18.200
 Because you're a busy professional

42:18.200 --> 42:20.120
 and you would not accept anything less

42:20.120 --> 42:21.400
 than a very well went in question

42:21.400 --> 42:23.240
 with a lot of detail about why you're doing it,

42:23.240 --> 42:25.040
 what you're doing, what you researched,

42:25.040 --> 42:26.160
 what you found, right?

42:26.160 --> 42:28.560
 Cause you're a professional like me, right?

42:28.560 --> 42:30.960
 And this rubs people sometimes the wrong way.

42:30.960 --> 42:32.280
 And I don't think it's wrong to say,

42:32.280 --> 42:33.640
 look, I don't want that experience.

42:33.640 --> 42:37.600
 I want just a more chill place for beginners.

42:37.600 --> 42:39.160
 And I still think Stack Overflow

42:39.160 --> 42:41.960
 is not, was never designed for beginners, right?

42:41.960 --> 42:43.840
 There's this misconception that, you know,

42:43.840 --> 42:45.160
 even Joel says sometimes, oh yes,

42:45.160 --> 42:46.120
 Stack Overflow for beginners.

42:46.120 --> 42:48.840
 And I think if you're a prodigy, it can be.

42:48.840 --> 42:51.720
 But that's not really representative, right?

42:51.720 --> 42:53.080
 Like, I think as a beginner,

42:53.080 --> 42:55.120
 you want a totally different set of tools.

42:55.120 --> 42:58.040
 You want like live screen sharing, live chat.

42:58.040 --> 42:59.240
 You want access to resources.

42:59.240 --> 43:01.360
 You want a playground, like a playground

43:01.360 --> 43:03.280
 you can experiment in and like test

43:03.280 --> 43:05.640
 and all the stuff that we just don't give people

43:05.640 --> 43:07.760
 because that was never really the audience

43:07.760 --> 43:09.280
 that we were designing Stack Overflow for.

43:09.280 --> 43:10.680
 That doesn't mean it's wrong.

43:10.680 --> 43:11.760
 And I think it would be awesome

43:11.760 --> 43:13.240
 if there was a site like that on the internet

43:13.240 --> 43:14.280
 or if Stack Overflow said,

43:14.280 --> 43:15.800
 hey, you know, we're going to start doing this.

43:15.800 --> 43:16.960
 That's fine too.

43:16.960 --> 43:17.800
 You know, I'm not there.

43:17.800 --> 43:18.640
 I'm not making those decisions.

43:18.640 --> 43:21.040
 But I do think the pressure or the tension

43:21.040 --> 43:23.560
 that you described is there for people to be, look,

43:23.560 --> 43:24.440
 I'm a little nervous

43:24.440 --> 43:26.360
 cause I know I got to do my best work, right?

43:26.360 --> 43:28.000
 The other one is something you talk about

43:28.000 --> 43:30.280
 which is also really interesting to me

43:30.280 --> 43:32.040
 is duplicate questions.

43:32.040 --> 43:37.040
 Or it's a really difficult problem that you highlight.

43:38.080 --> 43:39.440
 It's super hard.

43:39.440 --> 43:41.680
 Like you could take one little topic

43:41.680 --> 43:44.920
 and you could probably write 10, 20, 30 ways

43:44.920 --> 43:48.160
 of asking about that topic and there will be all different.

43:48.160 --> 43:50.160
 I don't know if there should be one page

43:50.160 --> 43:51.840
 that answers all of it.

43:51.840 --> 43:56.680
 Is there a way that Stack Overflow can help

43:57.840 --> 44:01.120
 disambiguate, like separate these duplicate questions

44:01.120 --> 44:02.800
 or connect them together?

44:02.800 --> 44:06.200
 Or is it a totally hopeless, difficult, impossible task?

44:06.200 --> 44:08.440
 I think it's a very, very hard computer science problem.

44:08.440 --> 44:10.280
 And partly cause people are very good

44:10.280 --> 44:11.760
 at using completely different words.

44:11.760 --> 44:13.160
 It always amazed me on Stack Overflow,

44:13.160 --> 44:15.440
 you'd have two questions that were functionally identical.

44:15.440 --> 44:17.520
 And one question had like zero words in common

44:17.520 --> 44:18.360
 with the other question.

44:18.360 --> 44:20.920
 Like, oh my God, from a computer science perspective,

44:20.920 --> 44:22.880
 how do you even begin to solve that?

44:22.880 --> 44:24.480
 And it happens all the time.

44:24.480 --> 44:26.240
 People are super good at this, right?

44:26.240 --> 44:28.320
 Accidentally at asking the same thing

44:28.320 --> 44:31.200
 in like 10, 20 different ways.

44:31.200 --> 44:32.280
 And the other complexities,

44:32.280 --> 44:33.880
 we want some of those duplicates to exist

44:33.880 --> 44:35.960
 because if there's five versions with different words,

44:35.960 --> 44:37.280
 have those five versions point

44:37.280 --> 44:39.560
 to the one centralized answer, right?

44:39.560 --> 44:41.840
 It's like, okay, this is duplicate, no worries.

44:41.840 --> 44:43.440
 Here's the answer that you wanted over here

44:43.440 --> 44:47.960
 on this, the prime example that we wanna have,

44:47.960 --> 44:50.120
 rather than having 10 copies of the question

44:50.120 --> 44:50.960
 and the answer.

44:50.960 --> 44:52.360
 Because if you have 10 copies of the question answer,

44:52.360 --> 44:54.080
 this also devalues the reputation system,

44:54.080 --> 44:56.840
 which programmers hate, as I previously mentioned.

44:56.840 --> 44:58.280
 You're getting reputation for an answer

44:58.280 --> 44:59.280
 that somebody else already gave.

44:59.280 --> 45:00.400
 It's like, well, it's an answer,

45:00.400 --> 45:02.160
 but somebody else already gave that answer.

45:02.160 --> 45:04.520
 So why are you getting reputation for the same answer

45:04.520 --> 45:06.440
 as the other guy who gave it four years ago?

45:06.440 --> 45:07.720
 People get offended by that, right?

45:07.720 --> 45:11.880
 So the reputation system itself adds tension to the system.

45:11.880 --> 45:14.000
 In that the people who have a lot of reputation

45:14.000 --> 45:17.560
 become very incentivized to enforce the reputation system.

45:17.560 --> 45:18.880
 And for the most part, this good.

45:18.880 --> 45:20.640
 I know it sounds weird, but for most parts like,

45:20.640 --> 45:23.840
 look, strict systems, I think to use Stack Overflow,

45:23.840 --> 45:24.800
 you have to have the idea that, okay,

45:24.800 --> 45:26.600
 strict systems ultimately work better.

45:26.600 --> 45:28.880
 And I do think in programming, you're familiar

45:28.880 --> 45:31.280
 with loose typing versus strict typing, right?

45:31.280 --> 45:32.960
 The idea that you can declare a variable,

45:32.960 --> 45:34.000
 not declare a variable, rather,

45:34.000 --> 45:35.080
 just start using a variable and, okay,

45:35.080 --> 45:37.160
 I see it's implicitly an integer, bam, awesome.

45:37.160 --> 45:38.120
 Duck equals five.

45:38.120 --> 45:40.760
 Well, duck is now an integer of five, right?

45:40.760 --> 45:42.320
 And you're like, cool, awesome, simpler, right?

45:42.320 --> 45:43.800
 Why would I want to worry about typing?

45:43.800 --> 45:45.800
 And for a long time, like in the Ruby community,

45:45.800 --> 45:46.760
 they're like, yeah, this is awesome.

45:46.760 --> 45:48.160
 Like you just do a bunch of unit testing,

45:48.160 --> 45:50.920
 which is testing your program's validity after the fact

45:50.920 --> 45:54.160
 to catch any bugs that strict typing of variables

45:54.160 --> 45:55.000
 would have caught.

45:55.000 --> 45:56.680
 And now you have this thing called TypeScript

45:56.680 --> 45:59.560
 from Microsoft, from the guy who built C Sharp Anders,

45:59.560 --> 46:02.680
 who's one of the greatest minds in software development,

46:02.680 --> 46:04.200
 right, like in terms of language design,

46:04.200 --> 46:06.080
 and says, no, no, no, we want to bolt on

46:06.080 --> 46:07.320
 a strict type system to JavaScript

46:07.320 --> 46:08.160
 because it makes things better.

46:08.160 --> 46:10.000
 And now everybody's like, oh my God,

46:10.000 --> 46:13.200
 we deployed TypeScript and found 50 lane bugs

46:13.200 --> 46:14.480
 that we didn't know about, right?

46:14.480 --> 46:15.800
 Like this is super common.

46:15.800 --> 46:19.880
 So I think there is a truth in programming

46:19.880 --> 46:22.200
 that strictness, it's not the goal.

46:22.200 --> 46:23.480
 We're not saying be super strict

46:23.480 --> 46:25.680
 because strictness is correct.

46:25.680 --> 46:28.600
 No, it's no, no, strictness produces better results.

46:28.600 --> 46:29.840
 That's what I'm saying, right?

46:29.840 --> 46:31.720
 So strict typing of variables,

46:31.720 --> 46:33.880
 I would say you almost universally have consensus now

46:33.880 --> 46:35.400
 is basically correct.

46:35.400 --> 46:37.680
 Should be that way in every language, right?

46:37.680 --> 46:39.480
 Duck equals five should generate an error

46:39.480 --> 46:40.680
 because no, you didn't declare,

46:40.680 --> 46:42.920
 you didn't tell me that duck was an integer, right?

46:42.920 --> 46:43.840
 That's a bug, right?

46:43.840 --> 46:45.720
 Or maybe you mistyped, you typed duck, right?

46:45.720 --> 46:46.560
 Instead of duck, right?

46:46.560 --> 46:48.800
 You never know, this happens all the time, right?

46:48.800 --> 46:51.600
 So with that in mind, I will say that the strictness

46:51.600 --> 46:52.680
 of the system is correct.

46:52.680 --> 46:55.040
 Now, that doesn't mean cruel, that doesn't mean mean,

46:55.040 --> 46:57.800
 that doesn't mean angry, it just means strict, okay?

46:57.800 --> 46:59.280
 So I think where there's misunderstanding

46:59.280 --> 47:00.720
 is in people get cranky, right?

47:00.720 --> 47:02.280
 Like another question you asked is like,

47:02.280 --> 47:05.120
 why are programmers kind of mean sometimes?

47:05.120 --> 47:07.360
 Well, who do programmers work with all day long?

47:07.360 --> 47:10.040
 So I have a theory that if you're at a job

47:10.040 --> 47:12.400
 and you work with assholes all day long,

47:12.400 --> 47:14.320
 what do you eventually become?

47:14.320 --> 47:15.160
 An asshole.

47:15.160 --> 47:17.040
 An asshole, and what is the computer

47:17.040 --> 47:19.240
 except the world's biggest asshole?

47:19.240 --> 47:21.800
 Because the computer has no time for your bullshit.

47:21.800 --> 47:24.000
 The computer, the minute you make a mistake,

47:24.000 --> 47:25.240
 everything is crashing down, right?

47:25.240 --> 47:28.080
 One semicolon has crashed space missions, right?

47:28.080 --> 47:29.000
 So that's normal.

47:29.000 --> 47:30.600
 So you begin to internalize that.

47:30.600 --> 47:34.560
 You begin to think, oh, my coworker, the computer,

47:34.560 --> 47:37.440
 is super strict and kind of a jerk about everything.

47:37.440 --> 47:39.960
 So that's kind of how I'm gonna be

47:39.960 --> 47:41.800
 because I work with this computer

47:41.800 --> 47:44.520
 and I have to exceed to its terms on everything.

47:44.520 --> 47:46.360
 So therefore, you start to absorb that

47:46.360 --> 47:48.520
 and you start to think, oh, well, being really strict

47:48.520 --> 47:50.360
 arbitrarily is really good.

47:50.360 --> 47:54.120
 An error code 56249 is a completely good error message

47:54.120 --> 47:56.080
 because that's what the computer gave me, right?

47:56.080 --> 47:59.320
 So you kind of forget to be a person at some level.

47:59.320 --> 48:01.400
 And you know how they say great detectives

48:01.400 --> 48:04.200
 internalize criminals and kind of arc criminals themselves

48:04.200 --> 48:07.080
 like this trope of the master detective is good

48:07.080 --> 48:08.680
 because you can think like the criminal.

48:08.680 --> 48:10.400
 Well, I do think that's true of programmers.

48:10.400 --> 48:12.640
 Really good programmers think like the computer

48:12.640 --> 48:14.200
 because that's their job.

48:14.200 --> 48:17.080
 But if you internalize it too much, you become the computer

48:17.080 --> 48:19.480
 and you kind of become a jerk to everybody

48:19.480 --> 48:21.680
 because that's what you've internalized.

48:21.680 --> 48:22.640
 You're almost not a jerk,

48:22.640 --> 48:25.600
 but you have no patience for lack of strictness,

48:25.600 --> 48:26.440
 as you said.

48:26.440 --> 48:27.800
 It's not out of a sense of meanness.

48:27.800 --> 48:28.640
 It's accidental,

48:28.640 --> 48:30.360
 but I do believe it's an occupational hazard

48:30.360 --> 48:32.440
 or being a programmer is you start to behave

48:32.440 --> 48:33.680
 like the computer.

48:33.680 --> 48:35.840
 You're very unforgiving, you're very terse,

48:35.840 --> 48:38.400
 you're very, oh, wrong, incorrect, move on.

48:38.400 --> 48:39.720
 It's like, well, can you help me?

48:39.720 --> 48:41.200
 Like what could I do to fix?

48:41.200 --> 48:43.960
 No, wrong, next question, right?

48:43.960 --> 48:46.400
 Like that's normal for the computer, right?

48:46.400 --> 48:47.760
 Just fail next, right?

48:47.760 --> 48:51.240
 Like, I don't know if you remember in Saturday Night Live,

48:51.240 --> 48:53.080
 like in the nineties, they had this character

48:53.080 --> 48:56.720
 who was an IT guy, the move guy, move.

48:56.720 --> 48:58.120
 Was that Jimmy Fallon?

48:58.120 --> 49:01.160
 No, no, who played him?

49:01.160 --> 49:02.640
 Okay, yeah, I remember move.

49:02.640 --> 49:04.200
 Right, he had no patience for him.

49:04.200 --> 49:05.720
 Might have been mad TV actually.

49:05.720 --> 49:06.680
 Oh, was it mad TV?

49:06.680 --> 49:07.600
 Might have been, might have been.

49:07.600 --> 49:10.960
 But anyway, that's always been the perception, right?

49:10.960 --> 49:12.560
 You start to behave like the computer.

49:12.560 --> 49:14.920
 It's like, oh, you're wrong out of the way, you know?

49:14.920 --> 49:17.560
 You've written so many blog posts about programming,

49:17.560 --> 49:22.000
 about programs, programming, programmers.

49:22.640 --> 49:25.640
 What do you think makes a good,

49:25.640 --> 49:29.320
 let's start with, what makes a good solo programmer?

49:29.320 --> 49:31.560
 Well, I don't think you should be a solo programmer.

49:31.560 --> 49:33.320
 I think to be a good solo programmer,

49:33.320 --> 49:35.560
 it's kind of like what I talked about, well, not on mic,

49:35.560 --> 49:38.000
 but one of the things, John Carmack,

49:38.000 --> 49:40.080
 one of the best points he makes in the book,

49:40.080 --> 49:42.120
 Masters of Doom, which is a fantastic book,

49:42.120 --> 49:43.680
 and anybody listening to this who hasn't read it,

49:43.680 --> 49:45.800
 please read it, it's such a great book,

49:45.800 --> 49:48.520
 is that at the time they were working on stuff

49:48.520 --> 49:50.400
 like Wolfenstein and Doom,

49:50.400 --> 49:52.800
 like they didn't have the resources that we have today.

49:52.800 --> 49:53.960
 They didn't have Stack Overflow,

49:53.960 --> 49:54.880
 they didn't have Wikipedia,

49:54.880 --> 49:56.680
 they didn't have like discourse forums,

49:56.680 --> 49:58.720
 they didn't have places to go

49:58.720 --> 50:00.200
 to get people to help them, right?

50:00.200 --> 50:01.920
 They had to work on their own,

50:01.920 --> 50:04.720
 and that's why it took a genius like Carmack to do this stuff,

50:04.720 --> 50:05.560
 because you had to be a genius

50:05.560 --> 50:07.160
 to invent from First Pensibles,

50:07.160 --> 50:08.560
 a lot of the stuff he was like,

50:08.560 --> 50:11.040
 the hacks he was coming up with were genius, right?

50:11.040 --> 50:12.520
 Genius level stuff, but you don't need

50:12.520 --> 50:13.840
 to be a genius anymore,

50:13.840 --> 50:15.560
 and that means not working by yourself.

50:15.560 --> 50:17.400
 You have to be good at researching stuff online,

50:17.400 --> 50:19.240
 you have to be good at asking questions,

50:19.240 --> 50:21.040
 really good questions that are really well researched,

50:21.040 --> 50:22.400
 which implies, oh, I went out and researched

50:22.400 --> 50:24.120
 for three hours before I wrote these questions,

50:24.120 --> 50:25.680
 like that's what you should be doing,

50:25.680 --> 50:28.160
 because that's what's gonna make you good, right?

50:28.160 --> 50:29.920
 To me, this is the big difference between programming

50:29.920 --> 50:32.160
 in like the 80s versus programming today,

50:32.160 --> 50:34.920
 is like you kind of had to be by yourself back then,

50:34.920 --> 50:36.520
 like where would you go for answers?

50:36.520 --> 50:37.920
 I remember in the early days

50:37.920 --> 50:41.120
 when I was learning Visual Basic for Windows,

50:41.120 --> 50:44.600
 like I would call the Microsoft Helpline on the phone

50:44.600 --> 50:45.680
 when I had like program,

50:45.680 --> 50:47.040
 because I was like, I don't know what to do.

50:47.040 --> 50:48.560
 So I would like go and call,

50:48.560 --> 50:49.640
 and they had these huge phone banks,

50:49.640 --> 50:51.280
 and like, can you imagine how alien that is now?

50:51.280 --> 50:52.360
 Like who would do that, right?

50:52.360 --> 50:53.520
 Like that's crazy.

50:53.520 --> 50:57.000
 So there was just nowhere else to go when you got stuck,

50:57.000 --> 50:57.840
 right?

50:57.840 --> 50:59.520
 Like I had the books that came with it,

50:59.520 --> 51:01.320
 I read those, studied those religiously.

51:01.320 --> 51:03.680
 I just saw a post from Steve Sinovsky that said,

51:03.680 --> 51:08.680
 this C++ version seven came with like 10,000 pages

51:08.880 --> 51:10.600
 of written material,

51:10.600 --> 51:13.600
 because where else were you gonna figure that stuff out?

51:13.600 --> 51:14.880
 You didn't go to the library?

51:14.880 --> 51:15.800
 I mean, you didn't have Wikipedia,

51:15.800 --> 51:17.880
 you didn't have Reddit,

51:17.880 --> 51:20.760
 you didn't have anywhere to go to answer these questions.

51:20.760 --> 51:24.200
 So you've talked about through the years,

51:24.200 --> 51:25.560
 basically not having an ego

51:25.560 --> 51:28.840
 and not thinking that you're the best programmer

51:28.840 --> 51:29.840
 in the world,

51:29.840 --> 51:34.120
 and so always kind of just looking to improve,

51:34.120 --> 51:36.520
 to become a better programmer than you were yesterday.

51:36.520 --> 51:39.240
 So how have you changed as a programmer

51:39.240 --> 51:43.320
 and as a thinker designer around programming

51:43.320 --> 51:47.360
 over the past 15 years,

51:47.360 --> 51:49.000
 really of being a public figure?

51:49.000 --> 51:50.880
 I would say the big insight that I had

51:50.880 --> 51:52.680
 is eventually as a programmer,

51:52.680 --> 51:54.760
 you have to kind of stop writing code to be effective,

51:54.760 --> 51:57.000
 which is kind of disturbing,

51:57.000 --> 51:58.280
 because you really love it.

51:58.280 --> 52:02.160
 But you realize like being effective at programming

52:02.160 --> 52:05.160
 in the general sense doesn't mean writing code.

52:05.160 --> 52:06.620
 And a lot of times you can be much more successful

52:06.620 --> 52:08.840
 by not writing code and writing code

52:08.840 --> 52:10.400
 in terms of just solving the problems you have,

52:10.400 --> 52:12.400
 essentially hiring people that are really good

52:12.400 --> 52:13.800
 and like setting them free

52:13.800 --> 52:16.240
 and like giving them basic direction, right?

52:16.240 --> 52:18.040
 Like on strategy and stuff,

52:18.040 --> 52:19.680
 because a lot of the problems you encounter

52:19.680 --> 52:22.400
 aren't necessarily solved to like really gnarly code,

52:22.400 --> 52:25.080
 they're solved by conceptual solutions,

52:25.080 --> 52:26.560
 which can then be turned into code,

52:26.560 --> 52:28.680
 but are you even solving the right problem?

52:28.680 --> 52:31.920
 I mean, so I would say for me,

52:31.920 --> 52:35.320
 the main insight I have is to succeed as a programmer,

52:35.320 --> 52:37.560
 you eventually kind of stop writing code.

52:37.560 --> 52:38.720
 That's gonna sound discouraging,

52:38.720 --> 52:40.760
 probably to people hearing, but I don't mean it that way.

52:40.760 --> 52:43.320
 What I mean is that you're coding in a higher level language.

52:43.320 --> 52:44.280
 Eventually like, okay,

52:44.280 --> 52:45.600
 so we're coding in assembly language, right?

52:45.600 --> 52:46.640
 That's the beginning, right?

52:46.640 --> 52:48.960
 You're hard coded to the architecture.

52:48.960 --> 52:49.800
 Then you have stuff like C,

52:49.800 --> 52:51.000
 where it's like, wow, we can abstract

52:51.000 --> 52:52.600
 across the architecture, you can write code.

52:52.600 --> 52:56.320
 I can then compile that code for ARM or whatever,

52:56.320 --> 52:58.280
 XA6 or whatever else is out there.

52:58.280 --> 53:00.120
 And then even higher level NAT, right?

53:00.120 --> 53:01.920
 Like you're looking at like Python, Ruby,

53:01.920 --> 53:03.000
 interpreted languages.

53:03.000 --> 53:05.000
 And then to me as a programmer, like, okay,

53:05.000 --> 53:06.000
 I wanna go even higher.

53:06.000 --> 53:07.160
 I wanna go higher than that.

53:07.160 --> 53:08.560
 How do I abstract higher than language?

53:08.560 --> 53:11.120
 It's like, well, you abstract in spoken language

53:11.120 --> 53:12.120
 and written language, right?

53:12.120 --> 53:14.600
 Like you're sort of inspiring people to get things done,

53:14.600 --> 53:16.080
 giving them guidance, like, what if we did this?

53:16.080 --> 53:17.480
 What if we did this?

53:17.480 --> 53:19.800
 You're writing in the highest level language that there is,

53:19.800 --> 53:21.360
 which is for me English, right?

53:21.360 --> 53:23.040
 Whatever your spoken language is.

53:23.040 --> 53:25.840
 So it's all about being effective, right?

53:25.840 --> 53:29.360
 And I think Patrick McKenzie,

53:29.360 --> 53:32.000
 patio 11 on Hacker News and Works at Stripe,

53:32.000 --> 53:33.600
 has a great post about this,

53:33.600 --> 53:35.880
 of how calling yourself a programmer

53:35.880 --> 53:38.600
 is a career limiting move at some level.

53:38.600 --> 53:39.760
 Once you get far enough from your career.

53:39.760 --> 53:40.800
 And I really believe that.

53:40.800 --> 53:43.080
 And again, I apologize, this is sound discouraging.

53:43.080 --> 53:45.280
 I don't mean it to be, but he's so right.

53:45.280 --> 53:47.760
 Because all the stuff that goes on around the code,

53:47.760 --> 53:49.800
 like the people, like that's another thing.

53:49.800 --> 53:51.400
 If you look at my early blog interviews, it was about,

53:51.400 --> 53:55.280
 wow, programming is about people more than it's about code,

53:55.280 --> 53:56.720
 which doesn't really make sense, right?

53:56.720 --> 53:59.200
 But it's about, can these people even get along together?

53:59.200 --> 54:00.880
 Can they understand each other?

54:00.880 --> 54:03.000
 Can you even explain to me what it is you're working on?

54:03.000 --> 54:04.560
 Are you solving the right problem?

54:04.560 --> 54:06.600
 People wear it, right? Another classic programming book,

54:06.600 --> 54:08.520
 which again, up there with code complete,

54:08.520 --> 54:09.960
 please read people wear.

54:09.960 --> 54:11.600
 It's that software is people, right?

54:11.600 --> 54:13.520
 People are the software first and foremost.

54:13.520 --> 54:15.680
 So a lot of the skills that I was working on

54:15.680 --> 54:17.600
 early in the blog were about

54:17.600 --> 54:19.400
 figuring out the people parts of programming,

54:19.400 --> 54:20.680
 which was the harder parts.

54:20.680 --> 54:21.680
 The hard part of programming,

54:21.680 --> 54:23.080
 once you get to certain skill level programming,

54:23.080 --> 54:25.240
 you can pretty much solve any reasonable problem

54:25.240 --> 54:26.320
 that's put in front of you.

54:26.320 --> 54:28.120
 You're not writing algorithms from scratch, right?

54:28.120 --> 54:29.280
 That just doesn't happen.

54:29.280 --> 54:30.560
 So any sort of reasonable problem

54:30.560 --> 54:32.280
 put in front of you, you're gonna be able to solve.

54:32.280 --> 54:33.600
 But what you can't solve is,

54:33.600 --> 54:36.920
 our manager is a total jerk.

54:36.920 --> 54:38.600
 You cannot solve that with code.

54:38.600 --> 54:40.640
 That is not a code solvable problem.

54:40.640 --> 54:43.680
 And yet that will cripple you way more than,

54:43.680 --> 54:45.800
 oh, we had to use this stupid framework I don't like,

54:45.800 --> 54:49.320
 or Sam keeps writing bad code that I hate,

54:49.320 --> 54:52.160
 or Dave is off there in the wilderness,

54:52.160 --> 54:53.280
 writing God knows what, right?

54:53.280 --> 54:54.120
 These are not your problems.

54:54.120 --> 54:56.800
 Your problem is your manager or a coworker

54:56.800 --> 54:58.760
 is so toxic to everybody else in your team

54:58.760 --> 55:00.160
 that nobody can get anything done

55:00.160 --> 55:02.320
 because everybody's so stressed out and freaked out, right?

55:02.320 --> 55:04.480
 These are the problems that you have to attack.

55:04.480 --> 55:05.320
 Absolutely.

55:05.320 --> 55:07.360
 And so as you go to these higher level abstractions

55:07.360 --> 55:09.080
 as you've developed as a programmer

55:09.080 --> 55:10.600
 to higher, higher level abstractions

55:10.600 --> 55:12.240
 and go into natural language,

55:12.240 --> 55:15.680
 you're also the guy who kind of preached,

55:15.680 --> 55:18.640
 building it, diving in and doing it,

55:18.640 --> 55:21.760
 and like learn by doing.

55:21.760 --> 55:22.840
 Yes.

55:22.840 --> 55:27.840
 Do you worry that as you get to higher,

55:28.480 --> 55:30.040
 higher level abstractions,

55:30.040 --> 55:35.040
 that you lose track of the lower level of just building

55:35.440 --> 55:37.200
 is like, do you worry about that?

55:37.200 --> 55:41.600
 Not maybe now, but 10 years from now, 20 years from now?

55:41.600 --> 55:42.520
 Well, no.

55:42.520 --> 55:43.840
 I mean, there is always that paranoia

55:43.840 --> 55:45.400
 and oh gosh, I don't feel it's valuable

55:45.400 --> 55:46.240
 since I'm not writing code.

55:46.240 --> 55:48.280
 But for me, when we started the discourse project,

55:48.280 --> 55:50.280
 it was Ruby, which I didn't really know Ruby.

55:50.280 --> 55:51.600
 I mean, as you pointed out,

55:51.600 --> 55:53.840
 and this is another valuable abstract from Stack Overflow,

55:53.840 --> 55:56.040
 you can be super proficient at, for example, C Sharp,

55:56.040 --> 55:56.880
 which I was working in,

55:56.880 --> 55:57.880
 that's what we built Stack Overflow

55:57.880 --> 55:59.240
 and then still is written in.

55:59.240 --> 56:01.480
 And then switched to Ruby and you're a newbie again, right?

56:01.480 --> 56:03.200
 But you have the framework.

56:03.200 --> 56:04.400
 I know what a for loop is.

56:04.400 --> 56:05.760
 I know what recursion is.

56:05.760 --> 56:09.600
 I know what a stack trace is, right?

56:09.600 --> 56:11.360
 Like I have all the fundamental concepts

56:11.360 --> 56:12.760
 to be a programmer, I just don't know Ruby.

56:12.760 --> 56:14.760
 So I'm still on a higher level.

56:14.760 --> 56:16.560
 I'm not like a beginner beginner, like you're saying.

56:16.560 --> 56:18.560
 I'm just like, I need to apply my programming concepts

56:18.560 --> 56:20.280
 I already know to Ruby.

56:20.280 --> 56:23.160
 Well, so there's a question that's really interesting.

56:23.160 --> 56:26.840
 So looking at Ruby, how do you go about learning enough

56:26.840 --> 56:28.560
 that your intuition can be applied?

56:28.560 --> 56:30.320
 Well, that's the thing, that's what I was trying to get to

56:30.320 --> 56:31.160
 is like what I realized,

56:31.160 --> 56:32.360
 particularly when I started with just me and Robin,

56:32.360 --> 56:34.800
 I realized if I bother Robin,

56:34.800 --> 56:37.080
 I am now costing us productivity, right?

56:37.080 --> 56:39.640
 Every time I go to Robin, rather than building

56:39.640 --> 56:43.760
 the our first alpha version of discourse,

56:43.760 --> 56:46.040
 he's now answering my stupid questions about Ruby.

56:46.040 --> 56:47.600
 Is that a good use of his time?

56:47.600 --> 56:49.160
 Is that a good use of my time?

56:49.160 --> 56:52.320
 The answer to both of those was resoundingly no, right?

56:52.320 --> 56:54.320
 Like we were getting to an alpha

56:54.320 --> 56:55.320
 and it was pretty much like, okay,

56:55.320 --> 56:56.720
 we'll hire more programmers, right?

56:56.720 --> 56:59.000
 Like we eventually hired Neil

56:59.000 --> 57:01.760
 and then eventually Sam, who came in as a cofounder.

57:02.880 --> 57:05.040
 Actually it was Sam first, then Neil later.

57:05.040 --> 57:06.280
 But the answer to the problem

57:06.280 --> 57:07.560
 is just hire other competent programmers.

57:07.560 --> 57:10.360
 It's not like teach, now I shall pull myself up

57:10.360 --> 57:12.360
 by my bootstraps and learn Ruby.

57:12.360 --> 57:16.080
 But at some point writing code becomes a liability to you

57:16.080 --> 57:17.400
 in terms of getting things done.

57:17.400 --> 57:19.400
 There's so many other things that go on in the project,

57:19.400 --> 57:20.440
 like building the prototype.

57:20.440 --> 57:22.400
 Like you mentioned like, well, how do you,

57:22.400 --> 57:23.240
 if you're not writing code,

57:23.240 --> 57:25.720
 how does everybody keep focus on like what are we building?

57:25.720 --> 57:28.160
 Well, first basic mockups and research, right?

57:28.160 --> 57:30.160
 Like what do we even want to build?

57:30.160 --> 57:31.240
 There's a little bit of that that goes on.

57:31.240 --> 57:32.800
 But then very quickly you get to the prototype stage.

57:32.800 --> 57:33.800
 Like build a prototype,

57:33.800 --> 57:35.960
 let's iterate on the prototype really, really rapidly.

57:35.960 --> 57:36.880
 And that's what we do with discourse.

57:36.880 --> 57:38.960
 And that's what we demoed to get our seed funding

57:38.960 --> 57:42.360
 for discourse was the alpha version of discourse

57:42.360 --> 57:43.840
 that we had running and ready to go.

57:43.840 --> 57:45.160
 And it was very, it was bad.

57:45.160 --> 57:47.400
 I mean, it was, I'll just tell you it was bad.

57:47.400 --> 57:48.440
 I have, we have screenshots of it

57:48.440 --> 57:50.560
 and I'm just like embarrassed to look at it now.

57:50.560 --> 57:51.400
 But it was the prototype.

57:51.400 --> 57:52.640
 We were figuring out like what's working,

57:52.640 --> 57:53.560
 what's not working.

57:53.560 --> 57:56.360
 Cause there's such a broad gap between,

57:56.360 --> 57:59.440
 between the way you think things will work in your mind

57:59.440 --> 58:01.160
 or even on paper and the way they work

58:01.160 --> 58:03.080
 once you sit and live in the software,

58:03.080 --> 58:05.600
 like actually spend time living and breathing on software

58:05.600 --> 58:06.720
 so different.

58:06.720 --> 58:10.800
 So my philosophy is get to a prototype

58:10.800 --> 58:12.360
 and then what you're really optimizing

58:12.360 --> 58:13.240
 for a speed of iteration,

58:13.240 --> 58:14.800
 like how you can turn the crank,

58:14.800 --> 58:16.120
 how quickly can we iterate?

58:16.120 --> 58:18.000
 That's the absolutely critical metric

58:18.000 --> 58:19.000
 of any software project.

58:19.000 --> 58:20.920
 And I had a tweet recently that people liked

58:20.920 --> 58:23.120
 and I totally, this is so fundamental to what I do,

58:23.120 --> 58:25.960
 is like, if you want to measure the core competency

58:25.960 --> 58:27.600
 of any software tech company,

58:27.600 --> 58:29.120
 it's the speed at which somebody can say,

58:29.120 --> 58:30.760
 hey, we really need this word

58:30.760 --> 58:32.240
 and the product changed to this word, right?

58:32.240 --> 58:34.240
 Because it will be more clear to the users,

58:34.240 --> 58:36.400
 like what, like instead of respond, it's reply or something.

58:36.400 --> 58:39.760
 But there's some, from the conception of that idea

58:39.760 --> 58:42.160
 to how quickly that single word can be changed

58:42.160 --> 58:43.400
 in your software and rolled out to users,

58:43.400 --> 58:44.880
 that is your life cycle.

58:44.880 --> 58:47.240
 That's your health, your, your heartbeat.

58:47.240 --> 58:50.000
 If your heartbeat is like super slow,

58:50.000 --> 58:51.600
 you're basically dead.

58:51.600 --> 58:54.160
 No, seriously, like if it takes two weeks

58:54.160 --> 58:56.240
 or even a month to get that single word changed,

58:56.240 --> 58:57.720
 that was like, oh my God, this is a great idea.

58:57.720 --> 58:59.000
 That word is so much clearer.

58:59.000 --> 59:00.040
 I'm talking about like a super,

59:00.040 --> 59:01.640
 like everybody's on board for this change.

59:01.640 --> 59:03.440
 It's not like let's just change a word because we're bored.

59:03.440 --> 59:05.120
 It's like, this is an awesome change.

59:05.120 --> 59:07.000
 And then it takes a month to roll out.

59:07.000 --> 59:07.880
 It's like, well, you're dead.

59:07.880 --> 59:09.160
 Like you can't iterate.

59:09.160 --> 59:11.640
 You can't, how you can do anything, right?

59:11.640 --> 59:13.680
 Like, so anyway, about the heartbeat,

59:13.680 --> 59:15.960
 it's like get the prototype and then iterate on it.

59:15.960 --> 59:18.960
 That's what I view as like the central tenet

59:18.960 --> 59:20.440
 of some modern software development.

59:20.440 --> 59:22.000
 That's fascinating that you put it that way.

59:22.000 --> 59:24.440
 It's actually, so I work in, I build autonomous vehicles

59:24.440 --> 59:28.160
 and when you look at what maybe compare Tesla

59:28.160 --> 59:31.400
 to most other automakers, the psych,

59:31.400 --> 59:35.680
 the whatever the heartbeat for Tesla is literally days.

59:35.680 --> 59:38.120
 Now, in terms of they can over the air

59:38.120 --> 59:41.160
 deploy software updates to all their vehicles,

59:41.160 --> 59:44.760
 which is markedly different than every other automaker,

59:44.760 --> 59:49.080
 which takes years to update a piece of software.

59:49.080 --> 59:52.120
 And so, and that's reflected in everything

59:52.120 --> 59:55.520
 that's the final product that's reflected

59:55.520 --> 59:58.200
 in really how slowly they adapt to the times.

59:58.200 --> 59:59.920
 And to be clear, I'm not saying being a hummingbird

59:59.920 --> 1:00:00.760
 is the goal either.

1:00:00.760 --> 1:00:02.400
 It's like, you don't want a heartbeat that's like so fast.

1:00:02.400 --> 1:00:04.560
 It's like, you're just freaking out.

1:00:04.560 --> 1:00:05.680
 But like, it is a measure of health.

1:00:05.680 --> 1:00:07.280
 You should have a healthy heartbeat.

1:00:07.280 --> 1:00:09.560
 It's up to, for people listening to decide what that means,

1:00:09.560 --> 1:00:10.840
 but it has to be healthy.

1:00:10.840 --> 1:00:11.680
 It has to be reasonable

1:00:11.680 --> 1:00:13.360
 because otherwise you're just gonna be frustrated

1:00:13.360 --> 1:00:15.120
 because like that's how you build software.

1:00:15.120 --> 1:00:17.720
 You make mistakes, you roll it out, you live with it.

1:00:17.720 --> 1:00:18.760
 You see what it feels like and say,

1:00:18.760 --> 1:00:19.920
 oh God, that was a terrible idea.

1:00:19.920 --> 1:00:22.720
 Oh my gosh, this could be even better if we did why, right?

1:00:22.720 --> 1:00:25.000
 You turn the crank and then the more you do that,

1:00:25.000 --> 1:00:27.520
 the faster you get ahead of your competitors ultimately

1:00:27.520 --> 1:00:29.720
 because it's rate of change, right?

1:00:29.720 --> 1:00:30.920
 Delta V, right?

1:00:30.920 --> 1:00:32.680
 How fast are you moving?

1:00:32.680 --> 1:00:34.760
 Well, within a year, you're gonna be miles away

1:00:34.760 --> 1:00:36.560
 by the time they catch up with you, right?

1:00:36.560 --> 1:00:37.920
 Like that's the way it works.

1:00:37.920 --> 1:00:40.760
 And plus users, like as a software developer,

1:00:40.760 --> 1:00:42.800
 I love software that's constantly changing

1:00:42.800 --> 1:00:45.600
 because I don't understand people who get super pissed off

1:00:45.600 --> 1:00:47.200
 when like, oh, they changed the software on me.

1:00:47.200 --> 1:00:48.040
 How dare they?

1:00:48.040 --> 1:00:50.600
 Yes, change the software, change it all the time, man.

1:00:50.600 --> 1:00:52.520
 That's what makes this stuff great

1:00:52.520 --> 1:00:55.160
 is that it can be changed so rapidly

1:00:55.160 --> 1:00:58.240
 and become something that is greater than it is now.

1:00:58.240 --> 1:01:00.960
 Now granted, there's some changes that suck, I admit.

1:01:00.960 --> 1:01:02.040
 I've seen it many times.

1:01:02.040 --> 1:01:04.640
 But in general, it's like, that's what makes software cool,

1:01:04.640 --> 1:01:06.280
 right, is that it is so malleable.

1:01:06.280 --> 1:01:08.240
 Like fighting that is like weird to me

1:01:08.240 --> 1:01:09.880
 because it's like, well, you're fighting

1:01:09.880 --> 1:01:11.840
 the essence of the thing that you're building.

1:01:11.840 --> 1:01:12.800
 Like that doesn't make sense.

1:01:12.800 --> 1:01:15.240
 You wanna really embrace that, not to be a hummingbird,

1:01:15.240 --> 1:01:18.120
 but like embrace it to a healthy cycle of your heartbeat, right?

1:01:18.120 --> 1:01:20.880
 So you talk about that people really don't change.

1:01:20.880 --> 1:01:23.840
 It's true, that's why probably a lot of the stuff

1:01:23.840 --> 1:01:27.440
 you write about in your blog probably will remain true.

1:01:27.440 --> 1:01:29.200
 Well, there's a flip side of the coin, people don't change.

1:01:29.200 --> 1:01:31.440
 So investing and understanding people

1:01:31.440 --> 1:01:34.640
 is like learning Unix in 1970

1:01:34.640 --> 1:01:36.840
 because nothing has changed, right?

1:01:36.840 --> 1:01:38.680
 Like all those things you've learned about people

1:01:38.680 --> 1:01:40.480
 will still be valid 34 years from now.

1:01:40.480 --> 1:01:43.000
 Whereas if you learn the latest JavaScript framework,

1:01:43.000 --> 1:01:45.040
 that's gonna be good for like two years, right?

1:01:45.040 --> 1:01:46.200
 Exactly.

1:01:46.200 --> 1:01:49.640
 So, but if you look at the future of programming,

1:01:49.640 --> 1:01:51.000
 so there's a people component,

1:01:51.000 --> 1:01:54.200
 but there's also the technology itself.

1:01:54.200 --> 1:01:57.160
 Do you, what do you see as the future of programming?

1:01:57.160 --> 1:01:59.160
 Will it change significantly?

1:01:59.160 --> 1:02:00.760
 Or as far as you can tell,

1:02:01.680 --> 1:02:05.800
 people are ultimately programming and so it will not,

1:02:05.800 --> 1:02:08.520
 it's not something that you foresee changing

1:02:08.520 --> 1:02:09.840
 in any fundamental way.

1:02:09.840 --> 1:02:14.240
 Well, you gotta go look back on sort of the basics of programming.

1:02:14.240 --> 1:02:15.480
 And one of the things that always shocked me

1:02:15.480 --> 1:02:16.320
 is like source control.

1:02:16.320 --> 1:02:18.480
 Like I didn't learn anything about source control.

1:02:18.480 --> 1:02:22.360
 And I graduated from college in 1992,

1:02:22.360 --> 1:02:24.160
 but I remember hearing from people

1:02:24.160 --> 1:02:26.560
 like as late as like 1998, 1999,

1:02:26.560 --> 1:02:28.880
 like even maybe today they're not learning source control.

1:02:28.880 --> 1:02:31.520
 And to me it's like, well, how can you not learn source control?

1:02:31.520 --> 1:02:34.560
 That is so fundamental to working with other programmers,

1:02:34.560 --> 1:02:35.920
 working in a way that you don't lose your work.

1:02:35.920 --> 1:02:38.120
 Like just basic soft, the bed,

1:02:38.120 --> 1:02:41.160
 literal bedrock software development is source control.

1:02:41.160 --> 1:02:42.760
 Now you compare today like GitHub, right?

1:02:42.760 --> 1:02:44.320
 Like Microsoft brought GitHub, which I think was

1:02:44.320 --> 1:02:46.920
 an incredibly smart acquisition move on their part.

1:02:46.920 --> 1:02:50.040
 Now they have anybody who wants like reasonable source controls

1:02:50.040 --> 1:02:52.360
 and go sign up on GitHub, it's all set up for you, right?

1:02:52.360 --> 1:02:55.280
 There's tons of walkthroughs, tons of tutorials.

1:02:55.280 --> 1:02:57.680
 So from the concept of like has programming advanced

1:02:57.680 --> 1:03:00.280
 from say 1999, it's like, well, hell, we have GitHub.

1:03:00.280 --> 1:03:01.560
 I mean, my God, yes, right?

1:03:01.560 --> 1:03:04.800
 Like it's massively advanced over what it was.

1:03:04.800 --> 1:03:08.840
 Now as to whether programming is significantly different,

1:03:08.840 --> 1:03:11.560
 I'm gonna say no, but I think the baseline of like

1:03:11.560 --> 1:03:14.480
 what we view as like fundamentals

1:03:14.480 --> 1:03:16.480
 will continue to go up and actually get better.

1:03:16.480 --> 1:03:17.480
 Like source control, for example,

1:03:17.480 --> 1:03:19.040
 that's one of the fundamentals that has gotten,

1:03:19.040 --> 1:03:22.000
 I mean, hundreds of orders of magnitude better

1:03:22.000 --> 1:03:23.760
 than it was 10, 20 years ago, right?

1:03:23.760 --> 1:03:24.920
 So those are the fundamentals.

1:03:24.920 --> 1:03:28.240
 Let me introduce two things that maybe you can comment on.

1:03:28.240 --> 1:03:31.000
 So one is mobile phones.

1:03:31.000 --> 1:03:36.000
 So that could fundamentally transform what programming is,

1:03:37.080 --> 1:03:39.080
 or maybe not, maybe you can comment on that.

1:03:39.080 --> 1:03:41.480
 And the other one is artificial intelligence.

1:03:41.480 --> 1:03:45.120
 Which promises to in some ways

1:03:45.120 --> 1:03:48.040
 to do some of the programming for you

1:03:48.040 --> 1:03:49.440
 is one way to think about it.

1:03:49.440 --> 1:03:52.280
 So it's really what a programmer is,

1:03:52.280 --> 1:03:55.680
 is using the intelligence that's inside your skull

1:03:55.680 --> 1:03:58.040
 to do something useful.

1:03:58.040 --> 1:03:59.920
 The hope with artificial intelligence is that

1:03:59.920 --> 1:04:02.040
 it does some of the useful parts for you

1:04:02.040 --> 1:04:03.560
 the way you don't have to think about it.

1:04:03.560 --> 1:04:06.000
 So do you see smartphones,

1:04:06.000 --> 1:04:07.680
 the fact that everybody has one

1:04:07.680 --> 1:04:09.320
 and they're getting more and more powerful

1:04:09.320 --> 1:04:11.600
 as potentially changing programming?

1:04:11.600 --> 1:04:14.280
 And do you see AI as potentially changing programming?

1:04:14.280 --> 1:04:15.600
 Oh, okay, so that's good.

1:04:15.600 --> 1:04:17.520
 So smartphones have definitely changed.

1:04:17.520 --> 1:04:19.360
 I mean, since, you know, I guess 2010

1:04:19.360 --> 1:04:21.800
 is when they really started getting super popular.

1:04:21.800 --> 1:04:24.120
 I mean, in the last eight years,

1:04:24.120 --> 1:04:25.680
 the world has literally changed, right?

1:04:25.680 --> 1:04:28.480
 Like everybody carries a computer around and that's normal.

1:04:28.480 --> 1:04:31.280
 I mean, that is such a huge change in society.

1:04:31.280 --> 1:04:32.120
 I think we're still dealing

1:04:32.120 --> 1:04:34.960
 with a lot of the positive negative ramifications of that,

1:04:34.960 --> 1:04:35.800
 right?

1:04:35.800 --> 1:04:36.620
 Like everybody's connected all the time.

1:04:36.620 --> 1:04:37.800
 Everybody's on the computer all the time.

1:04:37.800 --> 1:04:40.360
 That was my dream world as a geek, right?

1:04:40.360 --> 1:04:42.040
 But it's like, be careful what you ask for, right?

1:04:42.040 --> 1:04:44.120
 Like, wow, now everybody has a computer

1:04:44.120 --> 1:04:46.320
 and it's not quite the utopia that we thought it would be,

1:04:46.320 --> 1:04:47.160
 right?

1:04:47.160 --> 1:04:48.520
 Computers can be used for a lot of stuff

1:04:48.520 --> 1:04:51.200
 that's not necessarily great.

1:04:51.200 --> 1:04:53.160
 So to me, that's the central focus of the smartphone

1:04:53.160 --> 1:04:55.720
 is just that it puts a computer in front of everyone,

1:04:55.720 --> 1:04:57.200
 granted a small touch screen,

1:04:57.200 --> 1:04:59.120
 smallish touch screen computer.

1:04:59.120 --> 1:05:00.560
 But as for programming, like, I don't know,

1:05:00.560 --> 1:05:03.800
 I don't think that I've kind of over time come to subscribe

1:05:03.800 --> 1:05:06.120
 to the UNIX view of the world when it comes to programming.

1:05:06.120 --> 1:05:10.000
 It's like, you wanna teach these basic command line things

1:05:10.000 --> 1:05:12.160
 and that is just what programming is gonna be for,

1:05:12.160 --> 1:05:14.400
 I think a long, long time.

1:05:14.400 --> 1:05:17.080
 I don't think there's any magical, like visual programming

1:05:17.080 --> 1:05:18.160
 that's gonna happen.

1:05:19.480 --> 1:05:20.600
 I just, I don't know.

1:05:20.600 --> 1:05:22.720
 I've over time have become a believer

1:05:22.720 --> 1:05:24.280
 in that UNIX philosophy of just, you know,

1:05:24.280 --> 1:05:26.400
 they kind of had a right with UNIX.

1:05:26.400 --> 1:05:28.920
 That's gonna be the way it is for a long, long time.

1:05:28.920 --> 1:05:31.560
 And we'll continue to, like I said, raise the baseline.

1:05:31.560 --> 1:05:33.000
 The tools will get better, it'll get simpler,

1:05:33.000 --> 1:05:35.600
 but it's still fundamentally gonna be command line tools,

1:05:35.600 --> 1:05:37.160
 you know, fancy IDEs.

1:05:37.160 --> 1:05:39.200
 That's kind of it for the foreseeable future.

1:05:39.200 --> 1:05:42.240
 I'm not seeing any visual programming stuff on the horizon.

1:05:42.240 --> 1:05:43.080
 Cause you kind of think like,

1:05:43.080 --> 1:05:44.080
 what do you do on a smartphone

1:05:44.080 --> 1:05:46.400
 that will be directly analogous to programming?

1:05:46.400 --> 1:05:47.480
 Like I'm trying to think, right?

1:05:47.480 --> 1:05:49.600
 Like, and there's really not much.

1:05:52.160 --> 1:05:55.160
 So not necessarily analogous to programming,

1:05:55.160 --> 1:06:00.160
 but the kind of things that,

1:06:00.840 --> 1:06:02.680
 the kind of programs you need to write

1:06:02.680 --> 1:06:06.360
 might need to be very different.

1:06:07.360 --> 1:06:08.200
 Yeah.

1:06:08.200 --> 1:06:09.760
 And the kind of languages, I mean,

1:06:09.760 --> 1:06:12.400
 but I probably also subscribed to the same,

1:06:12.400 --> 1:06:14.280
 just because everything in this world

1:06:14.280 --> 1:06:16.520
 might be written in JavaScript.

1:06:16.520 --> 1:06:17.760
 Oh yeah, that's definitely, that's already happening.

1:06:17.760 --> 1:06:19.000
 I mean, discourse is a bet on,

1:06:19.000 --> 1:06:20.840
 discourse is itself, JavaScript is another bet

1:06:20.840 --> 1:06:21.680
 on that side of the table.

1:06:21.680 --> 1:06:23.680
 And I still try and believe in that.

1:06:23.680 --> 1:06:25.840
 So I would say smartphones have mostly a cultural shift,

1:06:25.840 --> 1:06:28.000
 more than a programming shift.

1:06:28.000 --> 1:06:30.080
 Now your other question was about artificial intelligence

1:06:30.080 --> 1:06:32.480
 and like, sort of advice is predicting

1:06:32.480 --> 1:06:33.320
 what you're gonna do.

1:06:33.320 --> 1:06:34.640
 And I do think there's some strength to that.

1:06:34.640 --> 1:06:36.040
 I think artificial intelligence

1:06:36.040 --> 1:06:37.680
 kind of overselling it in terms of what it's doing.

1:06:37.680 --> 1:06:39.240
 It's more like, people are predictable, right?

1:06:39.240 --> 1:06:40.760
 People do the same things.

1:06:40.760 --> 1:06:42.240
 Like, let me give you an example.

1:06:42.240 --> 1:06:44.600
 One check we put into a discourse

1:06:44.600 --> 1:06:48.280
 that's in a lot of big commercial websites is,

1:06:48.280 --> 1:06:51.160
 say you log in from New York City now,

1:06:51.160 --> 1:06:54.240
 and then an hour later, you log in from San Francisco.

1:06:54.240 --> 1:06:56.600
 It's like, well, hmm, that's interesting.

1:06:56.600 --> 1:06:59.840
 How did you get from New York to San Francisco in one hour?

1:06:59.840 --> 1:07:01.040
 So at that point, you're like, okay,

1:07:01.040 --> 1:07:02.640
 this is a suspicious login at that point.

1:07:02.640 --> 1:07:03.480
 So we would alert you.

1:07:03.480 --> 1:07:05.360
 It's like, okay, but that's not AI, right?

1:07:05.360 --> 1:07:07.280
 That's just heuristic of like,

1:07:07.280 --> 1:07:11.080
 how did you in one hour get 2,000 miles, right?

1:07:11.080 --> 1:07:12.680
 That doesn't mean, maybe you're on a VPN,

1:07:12.680 --> 1:07:13.520
 there's other ways to happen.

1:07:13.520 --> 1:07:16.000
 But that's just a basic prediction based on the idea

1:07:16.000 --> 1:07:19.280
 that people pretty much don't move around that much.

1:07:19.280 --> 1:07:20.920
 Like they may travel occasionally,

1:07:20.920 --> 1:07:22.960
 but like nobody, I mean, unless you're a traveling salesman

1:07:22.960 --> 1:07:25.520
 that's literally traveling the world every day,

1:07:25.520 --> 1:07:28.240
 like there's so much repetition and predictability

1:07:28.240 --> 1:07:29.600
 in terms of things you're going to do.

1:07:29.600 --> 1:07:31.880
 And I think good software anticipates your needs.

1:07:31.880 --> 1:07:34.160
 Like for example, Google, I think it's called Google Now

1:07:34.160 --> 1:07:36.160
 or whatever that Google thing is that predicts your commute

1:07:36.160 --> 1:07:37.720
 and predicts based on your phone location,

1:07:37.720 --> 1:07:39.160
 like where are you every day?

1:07:39.160 --> 1:07:42.080
 Well, that's probably where you work, that kind of stuff.

1:07:42.080 --> 1:07:43.760
 I do think computers can get a lot better at that,

1:07:43.760 --> 1:07:46.280
 but I hesitate to call it like full blown AI.

1:07:46.280 --> 1:07:48.480
 It's just computers getting better at like,

1:07:48.480 --> 1:07:49.480
 first of all, they have a ton of data

1:07:49.480 --> 1:07:50.520
 because everybody has a smartphone.

1:07:50.520 --> 1:07:52.000
 Now, all of a sudden we have all this data

1:07:52.000 --> 1:07:53.840
 that we didn't have before about location,

1:07:53.840 --> 1:07:56.160
 about like, you know, communication

1:07:56.160 --> 1:07:59.200
 and feeding that into some basic heuristics

1:07:59.200 --> 1:08:00.480
 and maybe some fancy algorithms

1:08:00.480 --> 1:08:03.120
 that turn it into predictions of anticipating your needs

1:08:03.120 --> 1:08:04.520
 like a friend would, right?

1:08:04.520 --> 1:08:06.560
 Like, oh, hey, I see your home,

1:08:06.560 --> 1:08:07.520
 would you like some dinner, right?

1:08:07.520 --> 1:08:08.640
 Like, let's go get some food

1:08:08.640 --> 1:08:10.760
 because that's usually what we do this time of day, right?

1:08:10.760 --> 1:08:13.640
 In the context of actually the active programming,

1:08:13.640 --> 1:08:15.360
 do you see IDEs improving

1:08:15.360 --> 1:08:17.480
 and making the life of programming is better?

1:08:17.480 --> 1:08:18.840
 I do think that is possible

1:08:18.840 --> 1:08:20.720
 because there's a lot of repetition in programming, right?

1:08:20.720 --> 1:08:23.200
 Oh, you know, Clippy would be the bad example of,

1:08:23.200 --> 1:08:25.960
 oh, I see, it looks like you're writing a for loop,

1:08:25.960 --> 1:08:27.840
 but there are patterns in code, right?

1:08:27.840 --> 1:08:30.360
 Like, and actually libraries are kind of like that, right?

1:08:30.360 --> 1:08:33.200
 Like, rather than go, you know,

1:08:33.200 --> 1:08:35.440
 code up your own HTTP request library,

1:08:35.440 --> 1:08:37.560
 it's like, well, you'd use one of the existing ones

1:08:37.560 --> 1:08:39.720
 that we have that's already a trouble shot, right?

1:08:39.720 --> 1:08:41.400
 Like, it's not AI per se,

1:08:41.400 --> 1:08:44.800
 it's just, you know, building better Lego bricks,

1:08:44.800 --> 1:08:47.720
 bigger Lego bricks that have more functionality in them

1:08:47.720 --> 1:08:48.880
 so people don't have to worry

1:08:48.880 --> 1:08:50.520
 about the low level stuff as much anymore.

1:08:50.520 --> 1:08:52.880
 Like WordPress, for example, to me is like,

1:08:52.880 --> 1:08:55.880
 a tool for somebody who isn't a programmer to do something,

1:08:55.880 --> 1:08:57.640
 I mean, you can turn WordPress into anything.

1:08:57.640 --> 1:08:59.480
 It's kind of crazy actually through plugins, right?

1:08:59.480 --> 1:09:01.320
 And that's not programming per se,

1:09:01.320 --> 1:09:04.520
 it's just Lego bricks stacking WordPress elements, right?

1:09:04.520 --> 1:09:06.560
 And a little bit of configuration glue.

1:09:06.560 --> 1:09:08.480
 So I would say maybe in a broader sense,

1:09:08.480 --> 1:09:11.320
 what I'm seeing like, there'll be more gluing

1:09:11.320 --> 1:09:14.120
 and less like actual programming.

1:09:14.120 --> 1:09:15.560
 And that's a good thing, right?

1:09:15.560 --> 1:09:17.920
 Cause most of the stuff you need is kind of out there already.

1:09:17.920 --> 1:09:20.040
 You said 1970s, Unix,

1:09:20.040 --> 1:09:30.680
 do you see PHP and these kind of old remnants of, of the early birth

1:09:30.680 --> 1:09:33.720
 of programming remaining with us for a long time?

1:09:33.720 --> 1:09:37.320
 Like you said, Unix in itself, do you see ultimately,

1:09:37.320 --> 1:09:42.840
 you know, this stuff's just being there out of momentum?

1:09:42.840 --> 1:09:44.080
 I kind of do.

1:09:44.080 --> 1:09:46.120
 I mean, I was a big believer in Windows early on

1:09:46.120 --> 1:09:47.320
 and I was a big, you know, I was like,

1:09:47.320 --> 1:09:48.720
 Unix, what a waste of time.

1:09:48.720 --> 1:09:50.080
 But over time, I've completely flipped on that

1:09:50.080 --> 1:09:51.680
 where I was like, okay, the Unix guys were right

1:09:51.680 --> 1:09:54.600
 and pretty much Microsoft and Windows were kind of wrong,

1:09:54.600 --> 1:09:55.720
 at least on the server side.

1:09:55.720 --> 1:09:57.400
 And on the desktop, right, you need a GUI,

1:09:57.400 --> 1:09:58.240
 you need a lot of stuff.

1:09:58.240 --> 1:09:59.160
 And you have the two philosophies,

1:09:59.160 --> 1:10:02.640
 like Apple built on Unix, effectively Darwin.

1:10:02.640 --> 1:10:04.560
 And on the desktop, it's a slightly different story,

1:10:04.560 --> 1:10:06.960
 but on the server side where you're going to be programming.

1:10:06.960 --> 1:10:08.440
 Now it's a question of where the programming is going to be.

1:10:08.440 --> 1:10:10.720
 There's going to be a lot more like client side programming

1:10:10.720 --> 1:10:13.600
 cause technically discourse is client side programming.

1:10:13.600 --> 1:10:14.480
 The way you get discourse,

1:10:14.480 --> 1:10:16.160
 we deliver a big ball of JavaScript,

1:10:16.160 --> 1:10:18.240
 which is then executed locally.

1:10:18.240 --> 1:10:20.960
 So we're really using a lot more local computing power.

1:10:20.960 --> 1:10:21.960
 We'll still retrieve the data.

1:10:21.960 --> 1:10:23.360
 Obviously, we have to display the posts

1:10:23.360 --> 1:10:24.280
 on the screen and so forth,

1:10:24.280 --> 1:10:27.000
 but in terms of like sorting and a lot of the basic stuff,

1:10:27.000 --> 1:10:29.400
 we're using the host processor.

1:10:29.400 --> 1:10:31.240
 But to the extent that a lot of programming

1:10:31.240 --> 1:10:33.000
 is still going to be server side,

1:10:33.000 --> 1:10:35.280
 I would say, yeah, the Unix philosophy definitely won.

1:10:35.280 --> 1:10:38.640
 And there'll be different veneers over the Unix,

1:10:38.640 --> 1:10:40.800
 but it's still, if you peel away one or two layers,

1:10:40.800 --> 1:10:44.320
 it's going to be Unix for a long, I think, Unix one,

1:10:44.320 --> 1:10:45.520
 I mean, so definitively.

1:10:45.520 --> 1:10:47.440
 It's interesting to hear you say that

1:10:47.440 --> 1:10:49.080
 because you've done so much excellent work

1:10:49.080 --> 1:10:52.840
 on the Microsoft side in terms of backend development.

1:10:52.840 --> 1:10:53.680
 Cool.

1:10:53.680 --> 1:10:56.960
 So what's the future hold for Jeff Atwood?

1:10:56.960 --> 1:10:59.120
 I mean, the discourse,

1:10:59.120 --> 1:11:02.560
 continuing the discourse in trying to improve

1:11:02.560 --> 1:11:03.840
 conversation on the web?

1:11:03.840 --> 1:11:05.640
 Well, discourse is what I believe is a,

1:11:05.640 --> 1:11:07.040
 and originally I called a five year project,

1:11:07.040 --> 1:11:08.800
 but then really quickly revised that to a 10 year project.

1:11:08.800 --> 1:11:12.280
 So we started in early 2013,

1:11:12.280 --> 1:11:13.640
 that's when we launched the first version.

1:11:13.640 --> 1:11:16.120
 So we're still, you know, five years in.

1:11:16.120 --> 1:11:17.400
 This is the part where it starts getting good,

1:11:17.400 --> 1:11:19.640
 like we have a good product on discourse.

1:11:19.640 --> 1:11:21.800
 There's any project you built in software,

1:11:21.800 --> 1:11:24.120
 it takes three years to build what you wanted to build anyway.

1:11:24.120 --> 1:11:26.600
 Like V1 is going to be terrible, which it was,

1:11:26.600 --> 1:11:27.440
 but you ship it anyway,

1:11:27.440 --> 1:11:28.920
 because that's how you get better at stuff.

1:11:28.920 --> 1:11:29.960
 It's about turning the crank.

1:11:29.960 --> 1:11:31.440
 It's not about V1 being perfect,

1:11:31.440 --> 1:11:32.840
 because that's ridiculous.

1:11:32.840 --> 1:11:35.600
 It's about V1, then let's get really good at V1.1,

1:11:35.600 --> 1:11:38.040
 1.2, 1.3, like how fast can we iterate?

1:11:38.040 --> 1:11:40.160
 And I think we're iterating like crazy on discourse,

1:11:40.160 --> 1:11:41.960
 the point that like it's a really good product now,

1:11:41.960 --> 1:11:43.620
 we have serious momentum.

1:11:43.620 --> 1:11:46.300
 And my original vision was,

1:11:46.300 --> 1:11:48.180
 I want to be the WordPress of discussion,

1:11:48.180 --> 1:11:49.900
 meaning if someone came to you and said,

1:11:49.900 --> 1:11:50.820
 I want to start a blog,

1:11:50.820 --> 1:11:53.020
 although the very question is kind of archaic now,

1:11:53.020 --> 1:11:55.340
 it's like who actually blogs anymore.

1:11:55.340 --> 1:11:59.060
 But I wanted the answer to that to be,

1:11:59.060 --> 1:12:01.420
 it would be WordPress normally,

1:12:01.420 --> 1:12:04.220
 because that's the obvious choice for blogging most of the time.

1:12:04.220 --> 1:12:05.980
 But if someone said, hey, I want to,

1:12:05.980 --> 1:12:08.780
 I need a group of people to get together and do something,

1:12:08.780 --> 1:12:10.460
 the answer should be discourse, right?

1:12:10.460 --> 1:12:11.820
 That should be the default answer for people.

1:12:11.820 --> 1:12:13.420
 Cause it's open source, it's free,

1:12:13.420 --> 1:12:16.020
 doesn't cost you anything, you control it, you can run it.

1:12:16.020 --> 1:12:17.420
 Your minimum server cost for discourse

1:12:17.420 --> 1:12:19.620
 is five bucks a month at this point.

1:12:19.620 --> 1:12:21.580
 They actually got the VPS prices down,

1:12:21.580 --> 1:12:23.900
 it used to be $10 a month for one gigabyte of RAM,

1:12:23.900 --> 1:12:26.700
 which we are dependent,

1:12:26.700 --> 1:12:28.460
 we have a kind of heavy stack,

1:12:28.460 --> 1:12:30.340
 like there's a lot of stuff in discourse.

1:12:30.340 --> 1:12:31.820
 You need Postgres, you need Redis,

1:12:31.820 --> 1:12:33.900
 you need Ruby on Rails,

1:12:33.900 --> 1:12:35.800
 you need a sidekick for scheduling.

1:12:35.800 --> 1:12:36.980
 It's not a trivial amount of stuff,

1:12:36.980 --> 1:12:38.060
 cause we were architected for like,

1:12:38.060 --> 1:12:39.500
 look, we're building for the next 10 years.

1:12:39.500 --> 1:12:41.980
 I don't care about shared PHP hosting,

1:12:41.980 --> 1:12:44.180
 that's not my model.

1:12:44.180 --> 1:12:45.340
 My idea is like, hey, you know,

1:12:45.340 --> 1:12:47.540
 eventually this is going to be very cheap for everybody.

1:12:47.540 --> 1:12:49.140
 And I want to build it right,

1:12:49.140 --> 1:12:50.580
 using again, you know,

1:12:50.580 --> 1:12:53.500
 higher, bigger building block levels, right?

1:12:53.500 --> 1:12:54.460
 That have more requirements.

1:12:54.460 --> 1:12:56.620
 And there's a WordPress model of WordPress.org,

1:12:56.620 --> 1:12:57.700
 WordPress.com.

1:12:57.700 --> 1:13:01.020
 Is there a central hosting for discourse or no?

1:13:01.020 --> 1:13:02.740
 There is, we're not strictly segmenting

1:13:02.740 --> 1:13:05.140
 into the open source versus the commercial side.

1:13:05.140 --> 1:13:06.060
 We have a hosting business,

1:13:06.060 --> 1:13:07.140
 that's how discourse makes money,

1:13:07.140 --> 1:13:08.900
 as we host discourse instances,

1:13:08.900 --> 1:13:09.980
 and we have really close relationship

1:13:09.980 --> 1:13:12.860
 with our customers of the symbiosis

1:13:12.860 --> 1:13:14.700
 of them giving us feedback on the product.

1:13:14.700 --> 1:13:16.500
 We definitely weight feedback from customers,

1:13:16.500 --> 1:13:18.420
 a lot heavier than feedback from somebody

1:13:18.420 --> 1:13:20.940
 who just wanders by and gives feedback.

1:13:20.940 --> 1:13:22.500
 But that's where we make all our money,

1:13:22.500 --> 1:13:24.660
 but we don't have a strict division.

1:13:24.660 --> 1:13:26.660
 We encourage people to use discourse,

1:13:26.660 --> 1:13:29.060
 like the whole point is that it's free, right?

1:13:29.060 --> 1:13:29.980
 Anybody can set it up.

1:13:29.980 --> 1:13:32.620
 I don't want to be the only person that hosts discourse,

1:13:32.620 --> 1:13:34.220
 that's absolutely not the goal,

1:13:34.220 --> 1:13:36.300
 but it is a primary way for us to build a business.

1:13:36.300 --> 1:13:37.620
 And it's actually kind of a great business.

1:13:37.620 --> 1:13:40.300
 I mean, the business is going really, really well

1:13:40.300 --> 1:13:41.380
 in terms of hosting.

1:13:41.380 --> 1:13:44.340
 So I used to work at Google Research,

1:13:44.340 --> 1:13:47.060
 as a company that's basically funded on advertisements,

1:13:47.060 --> 1:13:50.420
 so it's Facebook, let me ask if you can comment on it.

1:13:50.420 --> 1:13:53.540
 I think advertisement at its best.

1:13:53.540 --> 1:13:56.620
 So you'd be extremely critical on what ads are,

1:13:56.620 --> 1:13:59.740
 but at its best, it's actually serving you,

1:13:59.740 --> 1:14:01.220
 in a sense, it's giving you,

1:14:01.220 --> 1:14:05.700
 it's connecting you to what you would want to explore.

1:14:05.700 --> 1:14:08.060
 So it's like related posts or related content,

1:14:08.060 --> 1:14:10.220
 it's the same, that's the best of advertisement.

1:14:10.220 --> 1:14:15.220
 So discourse is connecting people based on their interests.

1:14:16.100 --> 1:14:20.100
 It seems like a place where advertisement at its best

1:14:20.100 --> 1:14:21.780
 could actually serve the users.

1:14:21.780 --> 1:14:24.940
 Is that something that you're considering thinking about

1:14:24.940 --> 1:14:29.460
 as a way to bring, to financially support the platform?

1:14:29.460 --> 1:14:31.380
 That's interesting because I actually have

1:14:31.380 --> 1:14:32.620
 a contrarian view of advertising,

1:14:32.620 --> 1:14:33.820
 which I kind of agree with you.

1:14:33.820 --> 1:14:36.820
 I recently installed Ad Blocker reluctantly

1:14:36.820 --> 1:14:38.300
 because I don't like to do that,

1:14:38.300 --> 1:14:40.620
 but the performance of the ads, man,

1:14:40.620 --> 1:14:43.340
 they're so heavy now and it's just crazy.

1:14:43.340 --> 1:14:45.100
 So it's almost like a performance argument

1:14:45.100 --> 1:14:47.220
 more than I actually am pro ads,

1:14:47.220 --> 1:14:50.380
 and I have a contrarian view point, I agree with you.

1:14:50.380 --> 1:14:51.980
 If you do ads right, it's serving you stuff

1:14:51.980 --> 1:14:53.300
 you would be interested in anyway.

1:14:53.300 --> 1:14:56.540
 I don't mind that, that actually is kind of a good thing.

1:14:56.540 --> 1:15:00.020
 So plus, I think it's rational to want to support

1:15:00.020 --> 1:15:01.700
 the people that are doing this work,

1:15:01.700 --> 1:15:02.620
 through seeing their ads,

1:15:02.620 --> 1:15:04.060
 but that said, I run Ad Block now,

1:15:04.060 --> 1:15:06.220
 which I didn't want to do,

1:15:06.220 --> 1:15:08.220
 but I was convinced by all these articles,

1:15:08.220 --> 1:15:11.620
 like 30, 40 megabytes of stuff just to serve you ads.

1:15:12.500 --> 1:15:16.020
 Yeah, it feels like ads now are like the experts exchange

1:15:16.020 --> 1:15:18.260
 of whenever you start to stack overflows.

1:15:18.260 --> 1:15:19.540
 It's a little bit, it's overwhelming.

1:15:19.540 --> 1:15:21.060
 Oh, there's so many companies in Adtech

1:15:21.060 --> 1:15:22.340
 that what's embarrassing, like you can do that.

1:15:22.340 --> 1:15:24.300
 Have you seen those logo charts of like just the whole page?

1:15:24.300 --> 1:15:26.260
 It's like, you can't even see them, they're so small.

1:15:26.260 --> 1:15:27.820
 There's so many companies in the space,

1:15:27.820 --> 1:15:29.660
 but since you brought it up, I do want to point out

1:15:29.660 --> 1:15:31.900
 that very, very few Discord sites actually run

1:15:31.900 --> 1:15:33.100
 using an ad supported model.

1:15:33.100 --> 1:15:34.700
 It's not effective.

1:15:34.700 --> 1:15:37.620
 Like it's too diluted, it's too weird,

1:15:37.620 --> 1:15:40.540
 it doesn't pay well, and like users hate it.

1:15:40.540 --> 1:15:42.820
 So it's a combination of like users hate it,

1:15:42.820 --> 1:15:44.460
 it doesn't actually work that well in practice.

1:15:44.460 --> 1:15:46.260
 Like in theory, yes, I agree with you.

1:15:46.260 --> 1:15:48.740
 Clean, fast ads that were exactly the stuff

1:15:48.740 --> 1:15:50.300
 you would be interested in, awesome.

1:15:50.300 --> 1:15:52.460
 We're so far from that though, right?

1:15:52.460 --> 1:15:53.780
 Like, and Google does an okay job,

1:15:53.780 --> 1:15:55.380
 they do retargeting and stuff like that,

1:15:55.380 --> 1:15:58.060
 but in the real world,

1:15:58.060 --> 1:16:01.020
 Discord sites rarely can make ads work.

1:16:01.020 --> 1:16:03.060
 It just doesn't work for so many reasons.

1:16:03.060 --> 1:16:05.620
 But you know what does work is subscriptions,

1:16:05.620 --> 1:16:10.620
 Patreon, affiliate codes for like Amazon,

1:16:10.700 --> 1:16:13.140
 of like just, oh, here's a cool YoYo click,

1:16:13.140 --> 1:16:14.420
 and then you click and go to Amazon,

1:16:14.420 --> 1:16:15.700
 they get a small percentage of that,

1:16:15.700 --> 1:16:17.180
 which is fair, I think.

1:16:17.180 --> 1:16:19.140
 I mean, because you saw the YoYo on that site,

1:16:19.140 --> 1:16:21.140
 and you click through and you bought it, right?

1:16:21.140 --> 1:16:22.580
 That's fair for them to get 5% of that

1:16:22.580 --> 1:16:24.220
 or 2% of that, whatever it is.

1:16:24.220 --> 1:16:26.020
 Those things definitely work.

1:16:26.020 --> 1:16:28.620
 In fact, a site that I used to participate on a lot,

1:16:28.620 --> 1:16:29.900
 I helped the owner.

1:16:29.900 --> 1:16:32.460
 One of the things, I got them switched to Discord,

1:16:32.460 --> 1:16:34.220
 I basically paid them to switch to Discord,

1:16:34.220 --> 1:16:35.380
 because I was like, look, you guys gotta switch,

1:16:35.380 --> 1:16:38.540
 I can't come here anymore on this terrible software.

1:16:38.540 --> 1:16:40.180
 But I was like, look, and on top of that,

1:16:40.180 --> 1:16:42.300
 like you're serving people ads that they hate,

1:16:42.300 --> 1:16:43.980
 like you should just go full on Patreon,

1:16:43.980 --> 1:16:45.340
 because he had a little bit of Patreon,

1:16:45.340 --> 1:16:49.740
 go full on Patreon, do the Amazon affiliates thing

1:16:49.740 --> 1:16:51.140
 for any Amazon links that get posted,

1:16:51.140 --> 1:16:53.700
 and just do that, and just triple down on that stuff.

1:16:53.700 --> 1:16:55.340
 And that's worked really well for them,

1:16:55.340 --> 1:16:56.820
 and this creator in particular.

1:16:56.820 --> 1:16:59.500
 So that stuff works, but traditional ads,

1:16:59.500 --> 1:17:01.700
 I mean, definitely not working, at least on Discord.

1:17:01.700 --> 1:17:05.940
 So last question, you've created the code keyboard.

1:17:05.940 --> 1:17:07.820
 I've programmed most of my adult life

1:17:07.820 --> 1:17:09.860
 in a Kinesis keyboard.

1:17:09.860 --> 1:17:12.100
 I have one upstairs now.

1:17:12.100 --> 1:17:14.540
 Can you describe what a mechanical keyboard is,

1:17:14.540 --> 1:17:16.740
 and why is it something that makes you happy?

1:17:16.740 --> 1:17:18.780
 Well, you know, this is another fetish item, really.

1:17:18.780 --> 1:17:20.140
 Like, it's not required.

1:17:20.140 --> 1:17:22.260
 You can do programming on any kind of keyboard, right?

1:17:22.260 --> 1:17:24.420
 Even like an onscreen keyboard, oh God,

1:17:24.420 --> 1:17:25.940
 that's terrifying, right?

1:17:25.940 --> 1:17:28.500
 But you could, I mean, if you look back at the early days

1:17:28.500 --> 1:17:29.780
 of computing, there were chiclet keyboards,

1:17:29.780 --> 1:17:31.460
 which are, I mean, those are awful, right?

1:17:31.460 --> 1:17:32.540
 But what's a chiclet keyboard?

1:17:32.540 --> 1:17:34.180
 Oh God, okay, well, it's just like

1:17:34.180 --> 1:17:36.220
 thin rubber membranes.

1:17:36.220 --> 1:17:37.700
 Oh, the rubber ones, oh no.

1:17:37.700 --> 1:17:38.540
 Super bad, right?

1:17:38.540 --> 1:17:39.380
 Yeah.

1:17:39.380 --> 1:17:40.380
 So it's a fetish item.

1:17:40.380 --> 1:17:41.940
 All that really says is, look,

1:17:41.940 --> 1:17:43.340
 I care really about keyboards,

1:17:43.340 --> 1:17:44.620
 because the keyboard is the primary method

1:17:44.620 --> 1:17:46.260
 of communication with the computer, right?

1:17:46.260 --> 1:17:49.340
 So it's just like having a nice mic for this podcast.

1:17:49.340 --> 1:17:50.620
 You want a nice keyboard, right?

1:17:50.620 --> 1:17:52.180
 Because it has very tactile feel.

1:17:52.180 --> 1:17:53.980
 I can tell exactly when I press the key.

1:17:53.980 --> 1:17:56.900
 I get that little click, so oh, and it feels good.

1:17:56.900 --> 1:17:57.980
 And it's also kind of a fetish item.

1:17:57.980 --> 1:18:00.260
 It's like, wow, I care enough about programming

1:18:00.260 --> 1:18:02.380
 that I care about the tool, the primary tool,

1:18:02.380 --> 1:18:03.300
 that I use to communicate with the computer

1:18:03.300 --> 1:18:06.380
 and make sure it's as good as it feels good to use for me.

1:18:06.380 --> 1:18:08.300
 And like, I can be very productive with it.

1:18:08.300 --> 1:18:10.700
 So to be honest, it's a little bit of a fetish item,

1:18:10.700 --> 1:18:11.540
 but a good one.

1:18:11.540 --> 1:18:12.540
 It indicates that you're serious,

1:18:12.540 --> 1:18:13.580
 it indicates you're interested.

1:18:13.580 --> 1:18:15.260
 It indicates that you care about the fundamentals,

1:18:15.260 --> 1:18:17.500
 because you know what makes you a good programmer?

1:18:17.500 --> 1:18:18.900
 Being able to type really fast, right?

1:18:18.900 --> 1:18:20.580
 Like, this is true, right?

1:18:20.580 --> 1:18:23.500
 So a core skill is just being able to type fast enough

1:18:23.500 --> 1:18:26.140
 to get your ideas out of your head into the code base.

1:18:26.140 --> 1:18:29.740
 So just practicing your typing can make you a better programmer.

1:18:29.740 --> 1:18:33.740
 It is also something that makes you,

1:18:33.740 --> 1:18:36.660
 well, makes you enjoy typing, correct?

1:18:36.660 --> 1:18:39.940
 The actual act, something about the process,

1:18:39.940 --> 1:18:41.220
 like I play piano.

1:18:41.220 --> 1:18:42.060
 It's tactile.

1:18:42.060 --> 1:18:46.260
 There's a tactile feel that ultimately feeds the passion,

1:18:46.260 --> 1:18:47.100
 makes you happy.

1:18:47.100 --> 1:18:48.220
 Right, no, totally, that's it.

1:18:48.220 --> 1:18:49.060
 I mean, and it's funny,

1:18:49.060 --> 1:18:50.700
 because artisanal keyboards have exploded,

1:18:50.700 --> 1:18:53.460
 like Mastrop has gone ballistic with this stuff.

1:18:53.460 --> 1:18:56.900
 There's probably like 500 keyboard projects on Mastrop alone.

1:18:56.900 --> 1:18:58.180
 And there's some other guy I follow on Twitter.

1:18:58.180 --> 1:19:00.300
 I used to write for this, the site, the tech report,

1:19:00.300 --> 1:19:01.420
 way back in the day.

1:19:01.420 --> 1:19:02.940
 And he's like, every week he's just posting like,

1:19:02.940 --> 1:19:05.460
 what I call keyboard porn of like, just cool keyboards.

1:19:05.460 --> 1:19:06.620
 Oh my God, those look really cool, right?

1:19:06.620 --> 1:19:09.820
 Like, that's like, how many keyboards this guy have, right?

1:19:09.820 --> 1:19:10.740
 It's got like me with yoyos.

1:19:10.740 --> 1:19:11.580
 How many yoyos do you have?

1:19:11.580 --> 1:19:12.420
 How many do you need?

1:19:12.420 --> 1:19:14.900
 Well, technically one, but I like a lot.

1:19:14.900 --> 1:19:15.820
 I don't know why.

1:19:15.820 --> 1:19:17.260
 So same thing with keyboards.

1:19:17.260 --> 1:19:18.940
 So yeah, they're awesome.

1:19:18.940 --> 1:19:21.580
 Like I highly recommend anybody who doesn't have a mechanical

1:19:21.580 --> 1:19:23.100
 to research it, look into it,

1:19:23.100 --> 1:19:24.420
 and see what you like.

1:19:24.420 --> 1:19:26.300
 And you know, it's ultimately a fetish item,

1:19:26.300 --> 1:19:28.860
 but I think these sort of items,

1:19:28.860 --> 1:19:31.020
 these religious artifacts that we have

1:19:31.020 --> 1:19:32.220
 are part of what make us human.

1:19:32.220 --> 1:19:33.940
 Like that part's important, right?

1:19:33.940 --> 1:19:35.780
 It's kind of what makes life worth living.

1:19:35.780 --> 1:19:38.900
 Yeah, it's not necessary in the strictest sense,

1:19:38.900 --> 1:19:42.340
 but ain't nothing necessary if you think about it, right?

1:19:42.340 --> 1:19:44.300
 Like, so yeah, why not?

1:19:44.300 --> 1:19:45.420
 So sure.

1:19:45.420 --> 1:19:47.500
 Jeff, thank you so much for talking today.

1:19:47.500 --> 1:19:48.340
 Yeah, you're welcome.

1:19:48.340 --> 1:19:53.340
 Thanks for having me.