Hey everybody, and welcome to another episode of my JavaScript Story. This week
we're talking to ro Jimenez. Hi, Charles, if you want to just
introduce yourself real quick, tell us why you're important, where you're from,
and what you do and all that stuff. Oh yeah, sure, So
I'm Rowdy Minnet. I'm from Barcelona, Spain, and I'm basically running a
small company called by Default where we are doing you know, these consultancy specializing
in Anglo mustling, and that's pretty much it. I enjoy staying with my
friends doing you know, programming, playing some tabletop games. When I'm building
a new product. G two I is the company that I call to help
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to learn more about G two I. Yeah, you and Frosty and Joe
would have gotten along real well talking about tabletop games. Yeah, I think
that we can talk about that for hours. Yeah I have. I have
been to Joe's house and played D and D with Frosty and Joe and a
bunch of other folks. So yeah, it is. It's a blast.
So yeah, so we had you on episode two hundred and thirty five Adventures
in Angular talking about functional programming with Anguler and in GRX and a bunch of
other stuff. But yeah, it's always interesting to me, at least to
see where people come from and what the background is and and and stuff like
that, and so yeah, I just wanted to dive in here real quick,
and yeah, discuss with you your background. So let's start with how
you got into programming. So I started programming in in high school. Mostly
it's just something that there's it's something different than high school. It's something cold
here in Spain, something like associate degree. I think it's right. It's
something called like that, so it's not you know, it's not university,
but it's not high school. It's something in the middle, right, And
yeah, I started doing programming there. But you know, my first computer
was a Spectrum forty eight KS when I was five, and I remember,
you know, doing this copy based from magazines to run small programs in the
spectrum and it was fun. So I always been very interested into that since
I was very little. But my first line of code it was probably with
sixteen. Wow, so what did you write? What was that first programming
project? Yeah, well I remember that we started with Tobobasco and you know,
doing some small stuff. Then we moved to assembler. I remember that
I wrote there slash p like like the like the MS DOS with assembler.
That wasn't nymor I just don't want to do as sembler ever in my life
after that experience. And I also did some COB and some C plus plus
and DBAs that kind of stuff, very old stuff. And and after that
I started working mostly as a as a teacher for a small kits and and
people that want to get introduced to programming and that that kind of stuff.
And and and then I discovered Flash, Flash four and and then I started
doing more object oriented programming from there, from Flash four, Flash five and
yeah, and I in my background is basically Flush, So I expect I
spent a lot of years working with Flush. I started with action Script one,
then two, then three, probably I worked with Flash for about ten
years to session eleven. Yeah, it's it's funny because I've talked to a
number of people for either the show or my JavaScript story, and a lot
of people were really in the Flash. Yeah, they were doing a lot
of work there, and then Steve Jobs came out. Yeah, yeah,
all their dreams. Yeah. Well, you know the good thing about Flush
is that it was atmoscript like JavaScript, so all the knowledge that you had
in in in the action script was very easy to top port, you know,
to to I had to JavaScript, and I just I really enjoyed the
time I missed. Sometimes I missed some parts of Flush because it was very
fun, very easy to create with the UI, you know, prototypes,
that kind of stuff. But it is true that I think that Jelloscript today
it's more you know, robust. It really grows that that feeling is not
I can tell you when I just moved from from a Flash to jeoscript.
It wasn't twenty eleven, twenty ten, two thousand eleven, and back then
work with Joskoy was not good at all. But today it's I really enjoy
working with script. I really enjoy because there is a lot of good tooling.
The languages and the frame words are you know, have have evolved a
lot, and right now it's a very good experience. Not on two thousand
eleven though, Right, so you get you get out of Flash and I'm
assuming you get into JavaScript around twenty eleven. So so what was that transition,
like, I mean you mentioned that, Yeah, they're both based on
acmascript. So it was too terribly difficult as far as like linguistic structure and
things like that go. But I'm assuming there was still a learning curve.
Yeah. You know. The thing is that I started doing mostly uh you
know, full no framework JavaScript mostly for a couple of projects, and everything
was like going back to the back to the past because I just was there
coding with prototype of the prototype and that of stuff, and it it was
like for me going back to two thousand and two, two thousand and three
with Flash, where you can do some programming with Flash five and Prototype.
So it was like, oh my god, I'm in action Script three now,
where I have something very similar to what it's typescript today, like very
strongly typed, and you have a very good compiler that's telling you exactly on
each line what have you done wrong? And then I'm just the next day
I was just programming with Prototype and that kind of stuff without compilers, and
just putting console logs everywhere. And that was the most painful part. It
was not that bad to move from one language to the other because also because
I did Flash for ten years, but I also did some JavaScript on the
web, very simple JavaScript, but it was very similar, so it was
okay, it's I can do that. I just need to go there and
learn how the API works, and that's it. But the main problem was,
you know, it's like if today it's someone tells you no, you
can just you can't use anymore Typescript or Angler or any either any other super
new framework with lots of cool features, nor Redax, nothing like that.
You just have to type in their JavaScript prototype. So it was a pain
in that part, especially in that part, not that much in terms of
learning a new language or having a learning cure with that, but to lose
a lot of tooling that was a pain. Yeah, that makes sense.
And a lot of the flash tooling was effect. Yeah, there was a
lot of good tooling, especially for the bag online a website for example.
You yeah, I remember that you can give back a website, a live
website from from from your local host, you know, and that was very
cool. That kind of stuff that was really good. But on the other
hand, you know, I'm as I said right now, I'm not missing
it. Uh. It had very good things others that were not that good.
I'm very happy with how everything works right now with gelescript. I think
that it was a good movement, a good move of the whole industry,
and at the end, I think that it was good also for the users,
which is who who who have to enjoy your products? Right Yeah?
So so yes, you you're you're in, You're you're getting used to some
of the tooling and offerings for JavaScript. At what point did you run across
engither. I think that it was like two level and also or at the
end of two tens something like that. I don't remember exactly. I remember
the first time was I was working on a project and I was looking for
something similar to Flex, to Adobe Flex, and I just found Angler,
and I wanted to use inter on a project. And the guy who you
know, the owner of the company, told me, this is very nice,
that we can't use it because we have all the intellectual property of the
code, and we can't use any library, not even jQuery, not even
Angler whatever. We can't use any any jabscript library. You have to code
everything by your own. You say, okay, and I'm going to use
this thing then, but I'm going to keep an eye on it. And
then I like three or four months later, I started working for another company
everything as freelancer, and I think it was twenty eleven, and our guy
told me, yeah, there is this thing called Angular and I said,
oh, I remember this thing. I saw the website and I just completely
forget about it. And then I started. I did for that company a
small project which Angladas and I fell in love to completely because, as I
said, I was coding with Prototype and it was so painful. And then
the next day I had Anglage, with which it was very very similar to
me to work with that like in Flex, where I can just create an
attack or a component and put it on the edge themal and that was like
game changing for me. So was this angular JAS or was it angular Angli?
Yes? It was in twenty eleven, two thousand and eight, wasn't
Yeah? I think that it was like Paris zero zero nine or oh wow
you got it early? Yeah really? Yeah? Yeah really really? And
yeah and did you embrace it right away or was not completely the next The
next day I was studying the whole I p I. It was like,
yeah, I'm going to stay here forever. Yeah? Yeah? And what
was it? I mean, was it the two way binding? Was it
the API? Was the community? Was there something else that? Yeah?
Yeah it was. I mean I didn't know a lot of community back then,
but I really liked two things. One of the two way binding.
I didn't know anything about performance back then, so everything was two way binding
for me. Probably the the apps were not performance at all and horrible in
that in that sense that it was very easy to work with and also,
as I said, to create an attack an element that was very very easy
to me to get because in flex you can do exactly the same you know,
the reflects you can you can do exactly that and and to do that
in anger and putting on the age stema. It was like, oh my
god, this is this is perfect. I can't do anything with this thing.
And yeah, and I started working with that like since the nine years
nice. So I'm guessing then that you remember all of the angst and worry
over eng other two right when they came and they put up the tombstones.
We're not gonna have this anymore. We're not going to have that anymore.
You know. People, Okay, so what what is it? What?
What? You know? What's coming? And it took them a couple of
years to get it out. So yeah, what was your experience going through
that? Uh? Well, the thing is that we when Angler two was
out, I started working for a new company with my company, not just
as a finance now, but with the company. And that was like four
years ago or so four years and a little bit more, I think,
and I remember that we said, Okay, we have to do this very
big platform and and and then we have to do this other small thing very
quick. So we're going to do this this this small thing quick with Anglers
and the big perform that it's going to be worked for three years or whatever.
We're going to do that with Angler, even starting with the Alpha,
because we knew back then that the API looked very well and we want to
have something for the future. So the good thing and the bad thing is
that we started with the Angler Alpha and today we are, like almost four
years ago later, we are still maintaining the same app. And it was
interesting process because we started with the Angler Alpha and back then there was no
no web park or any other way to compile your assets or whatever, and
you had to do all that with you know, I remember that we started
using Golf, so we did something like web park it's doing today, but
with Golf, and then that in the alpha, and then I remember that
I think that it was it was like on September or so or October the
final release was out and we kind of started using web pack. But the
problem was that all that we did with Golf and Solon was not useful and
we had to start. We had to remove entirely or building process and start
using the new one. So all this processes of varieting, writing the build
processes, removing them, then moving to the new build process. That was
very very hard. I was gonna say, I mean, they made tools
to do a lot of this stuff. Oh, there was this other thing
I remember there was there was something like web pack before web back. I
don't remember the name. I don't even remember the name of that thing.
Gold Gold It was good. There was Grant, then gold we it was
better, and then appearing another one that I think that it just disappeared.
I don't remember that one. It could it compete for for some time with
golf, and it was better in the sense that it was better removing unneeded
assets and that stuff. But I don't know. I just remember that it
was very hard to write all the bill processes and so on, and and
then every you know, six months more or less you had to change your
bill process because the anger thing was changing that and so on. Uh So,
yeah, that that that was hard. But I think that today it
was quite decision because we were using Angler and and that that that was that
was nice. Yeah. Early in my career I figured out which jobs were
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Buy the book at devchat dot tv slash Job Book. That's devchat dot
tv slash job Book. Yeah, it's interesting, I mean, there's Yeah,
there was definitely a period of transition there and the tools got better for
transitioning people from Angular JS to Angular. But if you were going through it
and you wanted to be up on things, then yeah, you had to
you had to kind of fight the good fight. Yeah. For a while,
there lot of time, you know, working with reading gigab issues about
what is this what is this weird error that I'm seeing on the console,
putting on Google, going to gighab, reading long threads of people saying maybe
you can do this thing or that thing. Reading also the the code itself,
the of the the compilers, to see you can do something. Well,
it was it was very interesting and I learned a lot with that,
but I don't want to do it again. I think that I love people
that it's doing compilers because I don't want to spend time doing webpas. No,
I agree, you know, I just want to be focused on my
code. I mean, yeah, let me write code, let me make
problems go away, and yeah, make it go on the web somehow.
Yeah. So thank you to everybody behind web back, Typescript and all the
other compilersli yeah, everything, love your work, Thank you for everything.
Yeah. So you've been doing Angular for you know, nine years. What
kinds of things have you built with Angular? Oh? Well, I've done
interesting things. The first thing that I did it was like smart level for
uh, you know these cell phone companies that they have these booths with all
the cell phones, and they want to have below that cell phone a smart
label, and that a small level was done with Android and we build an
app that you can and with Cordoba and Angular, and in that in that
small label you can put videos and imagic galleries of the of the cell phone
and also the technical specifications and the price and how much will will that phone
cost to you depending on the you know, the the rate that you take
with the with the cell phone company mm hmm with a career. And that
was very interesting because in the booth they had like I don't remember, it
was like ten or so labels, small labels and they can put the old
information remotely from from a CMS and it was an interesting project. That was
my favorite anology spreader, but it was it was pretty nice. I don't
also a lot of video when angular. I actually have the open source project
called videogler. I'm not using it at all right now, and people is
complaining because it's not working with a I'm sorry for that, because you know,
the prind is that I don't have time to maintain that right now,
and I serve for any inconvenience to the community. I've done the last four
years or so, I've been working mostly in fintech, working in a platform
to do investments online very easily. It's a it's an alternative market. It's
not the main market like NASA and so on. It's an alternative market,
but it is very interesting and we are working a lot with forms and a
lot of work with bdfs too. I also remain were doing uh small city
app h that was a very long project to like two three years. They
are actually using it in Orlando right now. M hm. And it was
an app to track in a Google Maps trucks with the garbage trucks and then
they can they can see the roots that the trucks are doing and you know,
improve those routes depending on how much garbage they took on every on,
every on, every place, because we the trucks had a balance and they
can know how much kilos they took on every place, so we can improve
and the roots and until okay, this track this week will go through this
route here because we know that twice a week our truck has to pay to
pass here because they do a lot of a lot of garbage, but in
this other street it's only needed one so they can pass the next week or
whatever. Teknd of stuff. It was very nice and I don't know,
I I don't taking stuff. I did also a CMS like entirely the whole
CEMS back end, you know like wor press where you can drag and drop
the sections of the website, like I won't hear a main new and I
won't hear three columns with you know, this column is going to be when
new and this order is going to be a gallery or whatever, and this
order is going to be an extrack of another new type and stuff. It
was very nice to do that too. Pretty long project too, so mostly
probably I have not worked in that many projects, but it was long projects.
Most of them took me two years, one year this last one.
I've been working for this company for four years, so long products. Mostly
Yeah, what are you working on now? I'm working in this fintech the
fintech? Yeah, in this ininterproject. Basically, you can enter in the
platform and if you are an advisor for for for someone that for an investor,
and an advisor for an investor, then you enter in the platform.
You can you can create an investment in behalf of that investor and then when
you have you can fill up these forms and this where will will generate PDFs
like legal pds UH, and then you can present that electronically with docusine.
Three party companies can enter in docusine, make signatures to approve that that that
order and then UH and then this goes to a process where another company reviews
that everything is fine, so the advisory investor are in good place. They
put their signatures this three party company, it's in good place, they put
the signature whatever. Then this is approved and then the order is completed and
the investors can start with money, any money. And this is how how
the system works roughly and splaining it very very fast, but it is mostly
very complicated because we do a lot of stuff with with forms, so we
generate all the forms dynamically on the fly, so we don't have one form
for every order, so each order is different and can combine severe forms and
so on. So yeah, as I said, four years working with that,
it's that's a lot of cool. Yeah. Cool. Well, if
people want to connect with you online where they do that, uh yeah,
they can find me as al cash and every network you call that yeah E
L, E C A S H. And at Twitter I'm at ala cash.
On GitHub I'm al cash too, so yeah, you can find me
there. When the company name is by default dot com like bite uh like
like baits and bites, so bite default that's pretty much everything my my Gmail.
It's also like at gmail dot com. If anyone wants to make some
questions or whatever, they can cut that contact me there. Yeah, that's
it awesome, Let's go ahead and do some pics. Okay, you have
stuff you want to shout out about on the picks. In terms of notte
I'm going to recommend some a couple of libraries that a friend of mine is
doing. When it's ts dot data that Jason, I think, let me
find I'm finding it. I I don't have that good memory with This is
libraries that we are using right now at a project, and he made it
open source and I'm enjoying a lot working with this. It's all uh that
the data that Jason, it's a it's a library to decode Jason's I gave
a talk recently at Anti Pollen about that. But I'm not the creator.
I'm just consumer. But the creator works with me, and I think that
it's very interesting and it's taken a lot of ideas from ELM and we are
applying those ideas, those good ideas of ELM into our project and it's interesting.
I really like it. Actually, I've been studying a little bit of
ELM and they have very interesting ideas and concepts. It's it's nice to learn
new languages, always so. And this is one and Antix remote data.
Uh. This is also a library that joint here my friend and co worker,
and we are using also this one and I like it, especially if
you if you are working with you know, anngie x or any other functional
program in library like that. In terms of having fun, I can recommend,
for example, I'm I'm enjoying right now playing the a MS and it's
very nice table tape tabletop game. Uh, the New age, the AMS
and the New Age. It's interesting game. I like it. You can
play with your friends. Is operative against the monster. It's perfect to have
good effning with your friends. That's it. That's this is what I'm wanting
to be my pigs awesome. I'm gonna jump in with a few picks as
well. So one pick that I have and I'll go ahead and put the
link up is I've been working on a podcasting course. I think I mentioned
in the last episode. But the system that I've been working through to get
all that stuff together is a course on how to create courses. It's called
Course creator Pro. I'm going to drop an affiliate link in. It is
not cheap, just to make people aware, but it's basically a thousand dollars.
But the thing that's terrific about it is it walks you through the whole
process of creating the course. So they walk you through how to record them,
they walk you through how to put it together, they walk you through
the process of selling it and marketing it and all that stuff, and it's
it's it's awesome. So I'm gonna go ahead and pick of course creator pro
and yeah, definitely check it out and yeah that that's pretty much my pick
there. I don't think I have anything else. So thanks for coming and
talking to me, Raoul, Thanks to you to me. Yeah, no
problem, we'll go ahead and wrap this up. But this was really fun.
I had remember of my career. Alright, folks, Well until next
time, max out everybody. Bandwidth for this segment is provided by cash flive,
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