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+WEBVTT
+
+00:00.000 --> 00:02.400
+ The following is a conversation with Jeff Atwood.
+
+00:02.400 --> 00:05.840
+ He is the cofounder of Stack Overflow and Stack Exchange,
+
+00:05.840 --> 00:08.240
+ websites that are visited by millions of people
+
+00:08.240 --> 00:09.560
+ every single day.
+
+00:09.560 --> 00:13.880
+ Much like with Wikipedia, it is difficult to understate
+
+00:13.880 --> 00:16.680
+ the impact on global knowledge and productivity
+
+00:16.680 --> 00:19.520
+ that these networks of sites have created.
+
+00:19.520 --> 00:24.000
+ Jeff is also the author of the famed blog, Coding Horror,
+
+00:24.000 --> 00:27.640
+ and the founder of Discourse, an open source software project
+
+00:27.640 --> 00:31.600
+ that seeks to improve the quality of our online community
+
+00:31.600 --> 00:33.440
+ discussions.
+
+00:33.440 --> 00:36.640
+ This conversation is part of the MIT course
+
+00:36.640 --> 00:38.480
+ on artificial journal intelligence
+
+00:38.480 --> 00:40.840
+ and the artificial intelligence podcast.
+
+00:40.840 --> 00:43.680
+ If you enjoy it, subscribe on YouTube, iTunes,
+
+00:43.680 --> 00:45.640
+ or your podcast provider of choice,
+
+00:45.640 --> 00:47.480
+ or simply connect with me on Twitter
+
+00:47.480 --> 00:51.000
+ at Lex Friedman, spelled FRID.
+
+00:51.000 --> 00:56.200
+ And now, here's my conversation with Jeff Atwood.
+
+00:56.200 --> 00:59.560
+ Having cocreated and managed for a few years the world's
+
+00:59.560 --> 01:02.960
+ largest community of programmers in Stack Overflow
+
+01:02.960 --> 01:08.600
+ 10 years ago, what do you think motivates most programmers?
+
+01:08.600 --> 01:13.320
+ Is it fame, fortune, glory, process of programming itself,
+
+01:13.320 --> 01:16.360
+ or is it the sense of belonging to a community?
+
+01:16.360 --> 01:18.000
+ It's puzzles, really.
+
+01:18.000 --> 01:22.280
+ I think it's this idea of working on puzzles
+
+01:22.280 --> 01:25.800
+ independently of other people and just solving a problem,
+
+01:25.800 --> 01:29.720
+ sort of on your own, almost, although nobody really
+
+01:29.720 --> 01:32.240
+ works alone in programming anymore.
+
+01:32.240 --> 01:36.520
+ But I will say there's an aspect of hiding yourself away
+
+01:36.520 --> 01:39.600
+ and just beating on a problem until you solve it.
+
+01:39.600 --> 01:41.040
+ Like, brute force, basically, to me,
+
+01:41.040 --> 01:42.200
+ is what a lot of programming is.
+
+01:42.200 --> 01:45.040
+ It's like, the computer's so fast that you can do things
+
+01:45.040 --> 01:46.560
+ that would take forever for a human,
+
+01:46.560 --> 01:49.240
+ but you can just do them so many times and so often
+
+01:49.240 --> 01:52.000
+ that you get the answer.
+
+01:52.000 --> 01:55.520
+ You're saying just the pure act of tinkering with the code
+
+01:55.520 --> 01:59.600
+ is the thing that drives most probably the joy, the struggle
+
+01:59.600 --> 02:03.880
+ balance within the joy of overcoming the brute force
+
+02:03.880 --> 02:06.760
+ process of pain and suffering that eventually leads
+
+02:06.760 --> 02:09.040
+ to something that actually works?
+
+02:09.040 --> 02:10.080
+ Well, data's fun, too.
+
+02:10.080 --> 02:12.240
+ Like, there's this thing called the shuffling problem.
+
+02:12.240 --> 02:14.960
+ Like, the naive shuffle that most programmers write
+
+02:14.960 --> 02:15.800
+ has a huge flaw.
+
+02:15.800 --> 02:17.520
+ And there's a lot of articles online about this
+
+02:17.520 --> 02:20.040
+ because it can be really bad if you're like a casino
+
+02:20.040 --> 02:22.240
+ and you have an unsophisticated programmer writing
+
+02:22.240 --> 02:23.480
+ your shuffle algorithm.
+
+02:23.480 --> 02:25.120
+ There's surprising ways to get this wrong.
+
+02:25.120 --> 02:27.240
+ But the neat thing is, the way to figure that out
+
+02:27.240 --> 02:29.040
+ is just to run your shuffle a bunch of times
+
+02:29.040 --> 02:32.200
+ and see how many orientations of cards you get.
+
+02:32.200 --> 02:34.680
+ You should get an equal distribution of all the cards.
+
+02:34.680 --> 02:36.480
+ And with the naive method of shuffling,
+
+02:36.480 --> 02:38.400
+ if you just look at the data, if you just brute force it
+
+02:38.400 --> 02:40.880
+ and say, OK, I don't know what's going to happen.
+
+02:40.880 --> 02:43.320
+ You just write a program that does it a billion times
+
+02:43.320 --> 02:46.080
+ and then see what the buckets look like of the data.
+
+02:46.080 --> 02:48.200
+ And the money haul problem is another example of that,
+
+02:48.200 --> 02:50.640
+ where you have three doors and somebody gives you
+
+02:50.640 --> 02:52.720
+ information about another door.
+
+02:52.720 --> 02:55.000
+ So the correct answer is you should always switch.
+
+02:55.000 --> 02:56.720
+ The money haul problem, which is not intuitive.
+
+02:56.720 --> 02:58.080
+ It freaks people out all the time.
+
+02:58.080 --> 02:59.800
+ But you can solve it with data.
+
+02:59.800 --> 03:04.400
+ If you write a program that does the money haul game
+
+03:04.400 --> 03:06.880
+ and then never switches, then always switches, just compare,
+
+03:06.880 --> 03:09.680
+ you would immediately see that you don't have to be smart.
+
+03:09.680 --> 03:11.600
+ You don't have to figure out the answer algorithmically.
+
+03:11.600 --> 03:13.000
+ You can just brute force it out with data
+
+03:13.000 --> 03:14.400
+ and say, well, I know the answer is this
+
+03:14.400 --> 03:16.160
+ because I ran the program a billion times
+
+03:16.160 --> 03:18.960
+ and these are the data buckets that I got from it.
+
+03:18.960 --> 03:20.280
+ So empirically, you find it.
+
+03:20.280 --> 03:22.320
+ But what's the joy of that?
+
+03:22.320 --> 03:26.320
+ So for you, for you personally, outside of family,
+
+03:26.320 --> 03:29.440
+ what motivates you in this process?
+
+03:29.440 --> 03:31.000
+ Well, to be honest, I don't really
+
+03:31.000 --> 03:32.520
+ write a lot of code anymore.
+
+03:32.520 --> 03:35.240
+ What I do at discourse is like, managerry stuff, which
+
+03:35.240 --> 03:38.240
+ I always kind of despise as a programmer.
+
+03:38.240 --> 03:40.000
+ You think of managers as people who don't really
+
+03:40.000 --> 03:42.320
+ do anything themselves.
+
+03:42.320 --> 03:44.000
+ But the weird thing about code is you
+
+03:44.000 --> 03:45.880
+ realize that language is code.
+
+03:45.880 --> 03:48.320
+ The ability to direct other people
+
+03:48.320 --> 03:51.480
+ lets you get more stuff done than you could by yourself
+
+03:51.480 --> 03:52.280
+ anyway.
+
+03:52.280 --> 03:53.680
+ You said language is code?
+
+03:53.680 --> 03:54.200
+ Language is code.
+
+03:54.200 --> 03:56.040
+ Meaning communication with other humans?
+
+03:56.040 --> 03:56.640
+ Yes, it is.
+
+03:56.640 --> 03:58.480
+ You can think of it as a systematic.
+
+03:58.480 --> 04:01.320
+ So what does it like to be?
+
+04:01.320 --> 04:03.160
+ What makes, before we get into programming,
+
+04:03.160 --> 04:04.320
+ what makes a good manager?
+
+04:04.320 --> 04:05.800
+ What makes a good leader?
+
+04:05.800 --> 04:08.320
+ Well, I think a leader, it's all about leading by example,
+
+04:08.320 --> 04:11.440
+ first of all, like sort of doing and being the things
+
+04:11.440 --> 04:12.480
+ that you want to be.
+
+04:12.480 --> 04:13.640
+ Now, this can be kind of exhausting.
+
+04:13.640 --> 04:15.120
+ Particularly if you have kids because you realize
+
+04:15.120 --> 04:17.600
+ that your kids are watching you all the time,
+
+04:17.600 --> 04:20.600
+ like even in ways that you've stopped seeing yourself.
+
+04:20.600 --> 04:22.160
+ Like the hardest person to see on the planet
+
+04:22.160 --> 04:23.640
+ is really yourself.
+
+04:23.640 --> 04:25.960
+ It's a lot of you see other people and make judgments
+
+04:25.960 --> 04:28.520
+ about them, but yourself, like you're super biased.
+
+04:28.520 --> 04:30.840
+ You don't actually see yourself the way other people see you.
+
+04:30.840 --> 04:33.040
+ Often, you're very, very hard on yourself in a way
+
+04:33.040 --> 04:34.760
+ that other people really aren't going to be.
+
+04:34.760 --> 04:37.880
+ So that's one of the insights is you've
+
+04:37.880 --> 04:39.560
+ got to be really diligent about thinking,
+
+04:39.560 --> 04:41.480
+ like, am I behaving in a way that
+
+04:41.480 --> 04:44.720
+ represents how I want other people to behave?
+
+04:44.720 --> 04:46.120
+ Like leading through example.
+
+04:46.120 --> 04:47.960
+ There's a lot of examples of leaders
+
+04:47.960 --> 04:49.320
+ that really mess this up.
+
+04:49.320 --> 04:52.080
+ Like they make decisions that are like, wow, that's why.
+
+04:52.080 --> 04:55.000
+ It's just it's a bad example for other people.
+
+04:55.000 --> 04:57.440
+ So I think leading by example is one.
+
+04:57.440 --> 04:59.680
+ The other one, I believe it is working really hard.
+
+04:59.680 --> 05:01.560
+ I don't mean like working exhaustively,
+
+05:01.560 --> 05:06.760
+ but like showing a real passion for the problem.
+
+05:06.760 --> 05:09.040
+ Like not necessarily your solution to the problem,
+
+05:09.040 --> 05:11.240
+ but the problem itself is just one that you really believe in.
+
+05:11.240 --> 05:13.120
+ With discourse, for example, the problem
+
+05:13.120 --> 05:15.040
+ that we're looking at, which is my current project,
+
+05:15.040 --> 05:17.920
+ is how do you get people in groups
+
+05:17.920 --> 05:20.080
+ to communicate in a way that doesn't like break down
+
+05:20.080 --> 05:21.800
+ into the howling of wolves, right?
+
+05:21.800 --> 05:23.600
+ Like how do you deal with trolling?
+
+05:23.600 --> 05:25.080
+ Not like technical problems of how
+
+05:25.080 --> 05:26.440
+ do I get people to post paragraphs?
+
+05:26.440 --> 05:27.520
+ How do I get people to use bold?
+
+05:27.520 --> 05:29.520
+ How do I get people to use complete sentences?
+
+05:29.520 --> 05:30.920
+ Although those are problems as well.
+
+05:30.920 --> 05:33.560
+ But how do I get people to get along with each other, right?
+
+05:33.560 --> 05:35.920
+ And then solve whatever problem it is they set out to solve,
+
+05:35.920 --> 05:38.280
+ or reach some consensus on discussion,
+
+05:38.280 --> 05:40.080
+ or just not hurt each other, even, right?
+
+05:40.080 --> 05:41.960
+ Like maybe it's a discussion that doesn't really matter,
+
+05:41.960 --> 05:43.600
+ but are people yelling at each other, right?
+
+05:43.600 --> 05:44.280
+ And why, right?
+
+05:44.280 --> 05:46.760
+ Like that's not the purpose of this kind of communication.
+
+05:46.760 --> 05:52.960
+ So I would say leadership is about setting an example,
+
+05:52.960 --> 05:54.920
+ doing the things that represent what you want to be,
+
+05:54.920 --> 05:57.000
+ and making sure that you're actually doing those things.
+
+05:57.000 --> 05:59.360
+ And there's a trick to that too, because the things you don't
+
+05:59.360 --> 06:02.400
+ do also say a lot about what you are.
+
+06:02.400 --> 06:03.960
+ Yeah, so let's pause on that one.
+
+06:03.960 --> 06:05.360
+ So those two things are fascinating.
+
+06:05.360 --> 06:08.080
+ So how do you have as a leader that self awareness?
+
+06:08.080 --> 06:10.280
+ So you just said it's really hard to be self aware.
+
+06:10.280 --> 06:12.920
+ So for you personally, or maybe for other leaders
+
+06:12.920 --> 06:14.760
+ you've seen or look up to, how do you
+
+06:14.760 --> 06:18.680
+ know both that the things you're doing
+
+06:18.680 --> 06:20.920
+ are the wrong things to be doing, the way you speak
+
+06:20.920 --> 06:23.640
+ to others, the way you behave, and the things you're not doing?
+
+06:23.640 --> 06:25.200
+ How do you get that signal?
+
+06:25.200 --> 06:26.440
+ There's two aspects to that.
+
+06:26.440 --> 06:28.760
+ One is like processing feedback that you're getting.
+
+06:28.760 --> 06:30.240
+ So how do you get feedback?
+
+06:30.240 --> 06:30.640
+ Well, right.
+
+06:30.640 --> 06:32.280
+ So are you getting feedback, right?
+
+06:32.280 --> 06:33.480
+ Like so one way we do it, for example,
+
+06:33.480 --> 06:34.840
+ at discourse we have three cofounders,
+
+06:34.840 --> 06:38.160
+ and we periodically talk about decisions before we make them.
+
+06:38.160 --> 06:41.080
+ So it's not like one person can make a mistake, or like,
+
+06:41.080 --> 06:43.240
+ wow, they're going to be misunderstanding things.
+
+06:43.240 --> 06:45.560
+ So it's part of group consensus of leadership
+
+06:45.560 --> 06:47.800
+ is like it's good to have, I think, systems
+
+06:47.800 --> 06:50.320
+ where there's one leader, and that leader has the rule
+
+06:50.320 --> 06:53.240
+ of absolute law, are just really dangerous in my experience.
+
+06:53.240 --> 06:55.400
+ For communities, for example, if you have a community that's
+
+06:55.400 --> 06:57.560
+ run by one person, that one person makes all decisions,
+
+06:57.560 --> 06:59.400
+ that person's going to have a bad day.
+
+06:59.400 --> 07:02.360
+ Something can happen to that person.
+
+07:02.360 --> 07:03.280
+ There's a lot of variables.
+
+07:03.280 --> 07:05.080
+ So first, when you think about leadership,
+
+07:05.080 --> 07:07.080
+ have multiple people doing leadership,
+
+07:07.080 --> 07:08.920
+ and have them talk amongst each other.
+
+07:08.920 --> 07:11.360
+ So you're giving each other feedback about the decisions
+
+07:11.360 --> 07:12.200
+ that they're making.
+
+07:12.200 --> 07:13.720
+ And then when you do get feedback,
+
+07:13.720 --> 07:16.320
+ I think there's that little voice in your head, right?
+
+07:16.320 --> 07:19.120
+ Or your gut, or wherever you want to put it in your body.
+
+07:19.120 --> 07:22.600
+ I think that voice is really important.
+
+07:22.600 --> 07:25.200
+ I think most people who have any kind of moral compass
+
+07:25.200 --> 07:27.360
+ or want to do, most people want to do the right thing.
+
+07:27.360 --> 07:28.440
+ I do believe that.
+
+07:28.440 --> 07:30.920
+ I mean, there might be a handful of sociopaths out there
+
+07:30.920 --> 07:32.760
+ that don't, but most people, they
+
+07:32.760 --> 07:34.960
+ want other people to think of them as a good person.
+
+07:34.960 --> 07:35.720
+ Why wouldn't you, right?
+
+07:35.720 --> 07:36.920
+ Do you want people to despise you?
+
+07:36.920 --> 07:38.120
+ I mean, that's just weird, right?
+
+07:38.120 --> 07:40.520
+ So you have that little voice that the angel and devil
+
+07:40.520 --> 07:43.040
+ on your shoulder talking to you about what you're doing,
+
+07:43.040 --> 07:44.600
+ how you're doing, how does it make you feel
+
+07:44.600 --> 07:46.320
+ to make these decisions, right?
+
+07:46.320 --> 07:49.280
+ And I think having some attunement to that voice
+
+07:49.280 --> 07:50.240
+ is important.
+
+07:50.240 --> 07:52.400
+ But you said that voice also for,
+
+07:52.400 --> 07:55.160
+ I think it's a programmer situation, too,
+
+07:55.160 --> 07:57.120
+ where sometimes the devil on the shoulder
+
+07:57.120 --> 07:59.800
+ is a little too loud.
+
+07:59.800 --> 08:03.480
+ So you're a little too self critical for a lot of developers,
+
+08:03.480 --> 08:05.600
+ especially when you have introverted personality.
+
+08:05.600 --> 08:07.600
+ How do you struggle with the self criticism
+
+08:07.600 --> 08:10.680
+ or the criticism of others?
+
+08:10.680 --> 08:11.920
+ One of the things of leadership is
+
+08:11.920 --> 08:14.480
+ to do something that's potentially unpopular
+
+08:14.480 --> 08:16.240
+ or what people doubt you and you still
+
+08:16.240 --> 08:18.320
+ go through with the decision.
+
+08:18.320 --> 08:20.720
+ So what's that balance like?
+
+08:20.720 --> 08:22.760
+ I think you have to walk people through your decision
+
+08:22.760 --> 08:23.640
+ making, right?
+
+08:23.640 --> 08:25.600
+ This is where blogging is really important in communication.
+
+08:25.600 --> 08:26.080
+ It's so important.
+
+08:26.080 --> 08:27.960
+ Again, code language is just another kind of code.
+
+08:27.960 --> 08:30.240
+ It's like, here is the program by which
+
+08:30.240 --> 08:32.960
+ I arrived at the conclusion that I'm going to reach, right?
+
+08:32.960 --> 08:34.720
+ It's one thing to say, this is a decision.
+
+08:34.720 --> 08:35.680
+ It's final.
+
+08:35.680 --> 08:36.760
+ Deal with it, right?
+
+08:36.760 --> 08:38.760
+ That's not usually satisfying to people.
+
+08:38.760 --> 08:40.360
+ But if you say, look, we've been thinking
+
+08:40.360 --> 08:41.360
+ on this problem for a while.
+
+08:41.360 --> 08:42.720
+ Here's some stuff that's happened.
+
+08:42.720 --> 08:44.080
+ Here's what we think is right.
+
+08:44.080 --> 08:44.920
+ Here's our goals.
+
+08:44.920 --> 08:46.120
+ Here's what we want to achieve.
+
+08:46.120 --> 08:47.920
+ And we've looked at these options.
+
+08:47.920 --> 08:50.560
+ And we think this of the available options is the best option.
+
+08:50.560 --> 08:51.800
+ People will be like, oh, OK.
+
+08:51.800 --> 08:53.080
+ Maybe I don't totally agree with you,
+
+08:53.080 --> 08:54.840
+ but I can kind of see where you're coming from.
+
+08:54.840 --> 08:57.320
+ And I see it's not just arbitrary decision delivered
+
+08:57.320 --> 09:00.240
+ from a cloud of flames in the sky.
+
+09:00.240 --> 09:03.400
+ It's like a human trying to reach some kind of consensus
+
+09:03.400 --> 09:04.320
+ about goals.
+
+09:04.320 --> 09:05.760
+ And their goals might be different than yours.
+
+09:05.760 --> 09:06.840
+ That's completely legit, right?
+
+09:06.840 --> 09:09.200
+ But if you're making that clear, it's like, oh, well,
+
+09:09.200 --> 09:11.080
+ the reason we don't agree is because we have totally
+
+09:11.080 --> 09:11.840
+ different goals, right?
+
+09:11.840 --> 09:12.840
+ How could we agree?
+
+09:12.840 --> 09:14.240
+ It's not that you're a bad person.
+
+09:14.240 --> 09:16.640
+ It's that we have radically different goals in mind
+
+09:16.640 --> 09:18.240
+ when we started looking at this problem.
+
+09:18.240 --> 09:22.040
+ And the other one you said is passion or hard work, sorry.
+
+09:22.040 --> 09:23.920
+ Well, those are tied together in my mind.
+
+09:23.920 --> 09:25.240
+ Let's say hard work and passion.
+
+09:25.240 --> 09:27.520
+ For me, I just really love the problem discourse
+
+09:27.520 --> 09:29.720
+ is setting out to solve because, in a way,
+
+09:29.720 --> 09:33.000
+ it's like there's a vision of the world where it all devolves
+
+09:33.000 --> 09:35.160
+ into Facebook basically owning everything
+
+09:35.160 --> 09:37.040
+ in every aspect of human communication, right?
+
+09:37.040 --> 09:39.920
+ And this has always been kind of a scary world for me.
+
+09:39.920 --> 09:42.400
+ First, because I think Facebook is really good at execution.
+
+09:42.400 --> 09:43.280
+ I got to compliment them.
+
+09:43.280 --> 09:45.400
+ They're very competent in terms of what they're doing.
+
+09:45.400 --> 09:48.160
+ But Facebook has not much of a moral compass
+
+09:48.160 --> 09:51.040
+ in terms of Facebook cares about Facebook, really.
+
+09:51.040 --> 09:53.560
+ They don't really care about you and your problems.
+
+09:53.560 --> 09:56.520
+ What they care about is how big they can make Facebook, right?
+
+09:56.520 --> 09:58.760
+ Is that you talking about the company or just the mechanism
+
+09:58.760 --> 09:59.960
+ of how Facebook works?
+
+09:59.960 --> 10:01.320
+ Kind of both, really, right?
+
+10:01.320 --> 10:03.640
+ And the idea with discourse, the reason I'm so passionate
+
+10:03.640 --> 10:05.600
+ about it is because I believe every community should have
+
+10:05.600 --> 10:07.120
+ the right to own themselves, right?
+
+10:07.120 --> 10:09.680
+ Like they should have their own software that they can run
+
+10:09.680 --> 10:11.080
+ that belongs to them.
+
+10:11.080 --> 10:12.920
+ That's their space where they can set the rules.
+
+10:12.920 --> 10:15.200
+ And if they don't like it, they can move to different hosting
+
+10:15.200 --> 10:18.120
+ or whatever they need to happen can happen.
+
+10:18.120 --> 10:21.880
+ But this idea of a company town where all human communication
+
+10:21.880 --> 10:25.000
+ is implicitly owned by WhatsApp, Instagram, and Facebook.
+
+10:25.000 --> 10:27.120
+ And it's really disturbing, too, because Facebook
+
+10:27.120 --> 10:27.840
+ is really smart.
+
+10:27.840 --> 10:29.360
+ Like I said, they're great at execution.
+
+10:29.360 --> 10:30.720
+ Buying in WhatsApp and buying Instagram
+
+10:30.720 --> 10:33.600
+ were incredibly smart decisions.
+
+10:33.600 --> 10:35.080
+ And they also do this thing on, if you know,
+
+10:35.080 --> 10:37.480
+ but they have this VPN software that they give away
+
+10:37.480 --> 10:38.840
+ for free on smartphones.
+
+10:38.840 --> 10:42.000
+ And it indirectly feeds all the data about the traffic
+
+10:42.000 --> 10:42.880
+ back to Facebook.
+
+10:42.880 --> 10:44.640
+ So they can see what's actually getting popular
+
+10:44.640 --> 10:46.000
+ through the VPNs, right?
+
+10:46.000 --> 10:48.400
+ They have low level access to the network data
+
+10:48.400 --> 10:50.480
+ because users have let them have that.
+
+10:50.480 --> 10:54.160
+ So let's take a small pause here.
+
+10:54.160 --> 10:56.760
+ First of all, discourse, can you talk about,
+
+10:56.760 --> 11:00.920
+ can you lay out the land of all the different ways
+
+11:00.920 --> 11:01.880
+ you can have communities?
+
+11:01.880 --> 11:03.880
+ So there's Stack Overflow that you've built.
+
+11:03.880 --> 11:05.320
+ There's discourse.
+
+11:05.320 --> 11:07.320
+ So Stack Overflow is kind of like a Wiki.
+
+11:07.320 --> 11:09.240
+ Wikipedia you talk about.
+
+11:09.240 --> 11:12.000
+ And it's a very specific scalpel, very focused.
+
+11:12.000 --> 11:13.560
+ So what is the purpose of discourse?
+
+11:13.560 --> 11:16.120
+ And maybe contrast that with Facebook.
+
+11:16.120 --> 11:18.120
+ First of all, say what is discourse?
+
+11:18.120 --> 11:18.960
+ Yeah.
+
+11:18.960 --> 11:19.800
+ Start from the beginning.
+
+11:19.800 --> 11:20.620
+ Well, let me start from the very beginning.
+
+11:20.620 --> 11:22.040
+ So Stack Overflow is very structured,
+
+11:22.040 --> 11:24.720
+ Wiki style Q&A for programmers, right?
+
+11:24.720 --> 11:26.800
+ And that was the problem we first worked on.
+
+11:26.800 --> 11:29.080
+ And when we started, we thought it was discussions
+
+11:29.080 --> 11:32.080
+ because we looked at like programming forums and other things,
+
+11:32.080 --> 11:33.520
+ but we quickly realized we were doing Q&A,
+
+11:33.520 --> 11:37.040
+ which is a very narrow subset of human communication, right?
+
+11:37.040 --> 11:38.920
+ So when you started Stack Overflow,
+
+11:38.920 --> 11:41.920
+ you thought you didn't even know the Q&A.
+
+11:41.920 --> 11:43.400
+ You didn't know it would be Q&A.
+
+11:43.400 --> 11:44.320
+ Well, we didn't know.
+
+11:44.320 --> 11:45.280
+ We had an idea of like, okay,
+
+11:45.280 --> 11:47.000
+ these are things that we see working online.
+
+11:47.000 --> 11:47.840
+ We had a goal, right?
+
+11:47.840 --> 11:50.120
+ Our goal was there was this site,
+
+11:50.120 --> 11:52.680
+ Experts Exchange with a very unfortunate name.
+
+11:52.680 --> 11:53.960
+ Thank you for killing that site.
+
+11:53.960 --> 11:54.840
+ Yeah, I know, right?
+
+11:54.840 --> 11:56.520
+ Like a lot of people don't remember it anymore,
+
+11:56.520 --> 11:57.360
+ which is great.
+
+11:57.360 --> 11:58.200
+ Like that's the measure of success.
+
+11:58.200 --> 11:59.360
+ If people don't remember the thing
+
+11:59.360 --> 12:02.680
+ that you were trying to replace, then you've totally won.
+
+12:02.680 --> 12:05.680
+ So it was a place to get answers to programming questions,
+
+12:05.680 --> 12:07.520
+ 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.
+