Speaker 1: Hey, folks, welcome back to another episode of JavaScript Jabber.
Speaker 1: This week on our panel, I guess it's just me
Speaker 1: Charles max Wood. We have a two special guests. We
Speaker 1: have totally and you've been on before. You want to
Speaker 1: remind people who you are?
Speaker 2: Sure? So, I'm a front end engineer. I think the
Speaker 2: last I might have done two episodes. One of them
Speaker 2: was about developer happiness and the other was about pickle JS,
Speaker 2: which is an integration test in my braid that I
Speaker 2: read awesome.
Speaker 1: We also have Jeff. Jeff, do you want to introduce yourself?
Speaker 1: I don't know who you've been on before.
Speaker 3: No, I haven't been on. I'm actually on a back
Speaker 3: end engineer in SRI. Yeah, my first time.
Speaker 1: Here is okay, now, are you a back end engineer
Speaker 1: or SRE on like note stuff or not recently?
Speaker 3: Okay, you're back in thence node but yeah, just uh
Speaker 3: more more of it's been my Python and go.
Speaker 1: Right m fun stuff. We also had Steve Edwards join us,
Speaker 1: So welcome Steve.
Speaker 4: How you doing? How you doing?
Speaker 5: All right? Well, we're gonna we're gonna get rolling.
Speaker 2: We okay, good, Yeah.
Speaker 5: We're live.
Speaker 4: Now MEMORYX We're live. Baby.
Speaker 1: That's right, So really quickly we brought you guys on
Speaker 1: to talk about the leak code meet up that you
Speaker 1: guys do.
Speaker 5: I guess it's in New York City.
Speaker 1: And I was looking at the website and it says
Speaker 1: that this so, so I guess we should probably start
Speaker 1: with what it is, but I want to get the
Speaker 1: story because it looks.
Speaker 5: Like you totally bothed.
Speaker 1: A both that kind of got things started.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So somewhere around March, I got fired from drop
Speaker 2: Box and I started looking for jobs. And unlike all
Speaker 2: these prior years I've been a software engineer for about
Speaker 2: thirteen years, front end engineers never really had to do
Speaker 2: leak code. We just had a little take home exercise
Speaker 2: or my Cota React opponent. And I started applying for jobs,
Speaker 2: and all of a sudden, there's just all these lead
Speaker 2: code questions. So I want on a few interviews, just
Speaker 2: completely vomiting. And I started studying for lead code at
Speaker 2: that point and it was just so arduous, so boring. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I was making no progress whatsoever. So I went on
Speaker 2: this tech forum called blind, which is basically where big
Speaker 2: tech people hang out, and I posted like, hey, you know,
Speaker 2: I'm looking for some lead code Buddies in New York City,
Speaker 2: and I had some overwhelming response, over one hundred comments
Speaker 2: to that post saying like, hey, you know, I'm interested,
Speaker 2: And from that, I just started a discord group to
Speaker 2: get everybody organized and we had our first meetup, which
Speaker 2: was probably about thirty people.
Speaker 5: Cool.
Speaker 1: So I have to admit I'm kind of in the
Speaker 1: same boat that you were talking about not necessarily seeing
Speaker 1: leak code questions come up, but I've never done anything
Speaker 1: in it.
Speaker 5: So what is leak code?
Speaker 2: Yeah, so basically it's algorithm data science questions, something that
Speaker 2: you would learn in computer science and college, and for
Speaker 2: the most part, it doesn't really come up in most
Speaker 2: engineers' lives on their day to day job, certainly not
Speaker 2: a front end engineers. But why do companies ask these
Speaker 2: kinds of questions? Because they do. And at first I
Speaker 2: just didn't really get it, like it seemed, you know,
Speaker 2: lazy and counterintuitive, But then I started to understand why.
Speaker 2: Ultimately they receive hundreds of applications for each position and
Speaker 2: they need some way to filter those candidates because they
Speaker 2: all come from good companies. Now they can say whatever
Speaker 2: they want on their resume, but ultimately, what leap code
Speaker 2: does is It gives a somewhat quantitative measure of can
Speaker 2: you at least use logic to solve a problem? And
Speaker 2: as I started doing more leap code, I started seeing like, okay, okay,
Speaker 2: I could see how you know, it links back to
Speaker 2: general problem solving, ability, communication skills, et cetera. I still
Speaker 2: don't like it, but I could see why it's useful.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I'm with you.
Speaker 6: I mean, I've done where I'm at in my company,
Speaker 6: been in charge of doing some hiring for hiring a
Speaker 6: number of developers, and we.
Speaker 4: It's sort of a two edge sword.
Speaker 6: And as in that as a developer, it's an applicant.
Speaker 4: I hate them. I hate them.
Speaker 6: They've cost me jobs before, you know, And unfortunately in
Speaker 6: the case, it was my issue was that it was
Speaker 6: so different doing it the way you do it during
Speaker 6: an application process, during an interview, versus how you would do.
Speaker 4: It in real life.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 6: So, for instance, you know, if I'm programming view or
Speaker 6: Lara Belle, some of the other tools I've got my
Speaker 6: ide I've got a debugger set up, I've got you know,
Speaker 6: I'm at for tools that I can use to help
Speaker 6: me work through a problem. Where if I'm doing a
Speaker 6: test online. In this case, it was like a task
Speaker 6: pad type of thing where somebody's sitting there watching.
Speaker 4: Me and m coding.
Speaker 6: I have no debugger, I've got nothing to help me
Speaker 6: that I don't normally have, and it's like, how is
Speaker 6: this applicable? You know, But at the same time, coming
Speaker 6: in front, coming at it from the other side, we
Speaker 6: use a different platform. We didn't use leak code. My
Speaker 6: boss had looked at lead code and we had gone
Speaker 6: with another one where we come up with our own
Speaker 6: tests and they have a pool of questions a week
Speaker 6: and assign them and we would use that and we
Speaker 6: have a minimum score, you know that they had to
Speaker 6: have nothing really high, but it would filter out a
Speaker 6: decent amount of people and then the ones that we've
Speaker 6: hired did really well on it.
Speaker 4: So there's pros and cons.
Speaker 6: I guess it just depends on what side of the
Speaker 6: equation you're on when you're when you're having to use this,
Speaker 6: it's I don't think it. You can certainly get people
Speaker 6: who could pass the tests and then don't do well.
Speaker 6: One thing we ran into this is so funny, was
Speaker 6: one of the things that the platform that we used.
Speaker 6: I think it's test dont tells you how long it
Speaker 6: took him to pass the test. And we looked at
Speaker 6: one guy and it was like, you know, thirty seconds.
Speaker 4: We're like.
Speaker 6: Okay, So we start hunting around and sure enough, you
Speaker 6: can find us on GitHub with the answers to test
Speaker 6: from this to this particular question from this particular platform.
Speaker 6: And so it's literally copy and paste. Now, if I
Speaker 6: was to do that, I would still type it in
Speaker 6: manually to take up the appropriate amount of times just
Speaker 6: copy paste, but this guy decided to, uh yeah, just
Speaker 6: copy paste and got.
Speaker 4: It that way. So anyway, sorry, my two cents there
Speaker 4: on on what you were just talking about.
Speaker 1: Yeah, before you respond to what Steve's talking about, Jeff,
Speaker 1: what how did you get involved in all this?
Speaker 3: Yeah? So yeah, I mean I maybe as a back
Speaker 3: end dev. I have done leek code problems earlier on
Speaker 3: in my career, but for interviews. But I do feel
Speaker 3: like it's shifted a little bit too, where you know,
Speaker 3: originally you could kind of see, okay, if you had
Speaker 3: sort of undergraduate level algorithms and data structures, you kind
Speaker 3: of just needed to know that stuff, and it was
Speaker 3: like a gate for that. But because there's more and
Speaker 3: more applicants and there's more and more of a need
Speaker 3: to filter. They've just they've just constrained the time that
Speaker 3: you have and you have to sort of do slightly
Speaker 3: more convoluted problems. It's still the same data structures, but
Speaker 3: more convluted, less time, more convluted, less time, and so
Speaker 3: it's just become this, yeah, this very time constrained performance
Speaker 3: you have to do where you really have to be
Speaker 3: fast and actually to your point, like I feel like
Speaker 3: you actually have to code a little differently because there
Speaker 3: really isn't time and in like an hour in some cases,
Speaker 3: you know, twenty minutes you have to solve some of
Speaker 3: these and so like you really have to you can't
Speaker 3: afford to need to debug your code. Really you have
Speaker 3: to be able to just have your answer be mostly
Speaker 3: right the first time you write it, which is so
Speaker 3: different from the normal process of how I would actually work,
Speaker 3: where you like you re write it, or you write it,
Speaker 3: you write an initial version, you kind of think through it.
Speaker 3: Oftentimes the first version I write of something is is
Speaker 3: just a it's just like a rough draft and like
Speaker 3: I'll rewrite it. That's like part of the process. But
Speaker 3: I feel like in some of these interviews. Yeah, you
Speaker 3: have to approach it differently because there isn't time for
Speaker 3: you to fit in and rewrite in the middle of it.
Speaker 3: So it's just a very different it's a very different
Speaker 3: approach to just coding in general. I feel like, and
Speaker 3: I don't know, I guess I kind of take the
Speaker 3: respect of like, well, I'm gonna have to do these
Speaker 3: It's like every field has their arbitrary gatekeeping that they do.
Speaker 3: If you're like a doctor, you're there's like almost hazing
Speaker 3: that people have to put up with, so like enter that. Yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 3: our own form of hazing sort of arise. Is like
Speaker 3: they've just made these problems like arbitrarily more difficult because
Speaker 3: they just need to filter people basically.
Speaker 5: So yeah, yeah, So did.
Speaker 1: Jeff, I'm curious, did you see the I'm gonna kind
Speaker 1: of ask it a different way.
Speaker 5: So did you see Totally's post? Is that how you
Speaker 5: got involved in the group?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Or so, I'm I'm somewhat new to New York.
Speaker 3: I moved here on January and I was kind of
Speaker 3: looking for I was both sort of looking for starting
Speaker 3: to you know, have my eyes up for new work
Speaker 3: out here, and then also just wanted to meet people.
Speaker 3: So I went on meetup dot com and so totally
Speaker 3: had kind of put it on all the platforms and
Speaker 3: so that was that was the way I got in
Speaker 3: is saw it on meetup and then started attending, and yeah,
Speaker 3: I met a bunch of like very people who are
Speaker 3: really willing to grind I guess, you know, like willing
Speaker 3: to just like come in and do the just come
Speaker 3: in every week, do the work, which is like, I, yeah,
Speaker 3: I agree, it's sort of not fun work. But it's
Speaker 3: like I realized, like I'm going to get more and
Speaker 3: more of these as things as time goes on, so yeah,
Speaker 3: I gotta get good at it. So yeah, it's good.
Speaker 1: So so yeah, so going back to the original discussion,
Speaker 1: Yeah I can.
Speaker 5: I don't know.
Speaker 1: I've I've been given all kinds of sample problems, you know,
Speaker 1: for interviews, and.
Speaker 5: Some of them are helpful and some of them are not.
Speaker 1: But yeah, it sounds like the platform is a little
Speaker 1: bit hard to work with because I've always just been
Speaker 1: able to do it with my own ide I.
Speaker 2: Guess there's like a few things that are hard to
Speaker 2: work with, not just missing an ID, but the whole style, Like, yeah,
Speaker 2: you don't get to use a debugger. You know, you
Speaker 2: don't get to use a lot of the tools that
Speaker 2: you usually have out there. You don't really get the
Speaker 2: whole type script support in most of these platforms, so
Speaker 2: you know, you don't know the data structure without manually
Speaker 2: having to analyze what's going on. The time constraint. It's
Speaker 2: not doing you any favor. It's rated for speed, not
Speaker 2: for readability, which I think is my main problem with
Speaker 2: this kind of style of coding. Usually as an engineer,
Speaker 2: I want to make sure that everybody is going to
Speaker 2: understand my work, So I'm going to use very descriptive
Speaker 2: variable names. I'm going to split it up into different functions,
Speaker 2: probably different files. But that's just not really a luxury
Speaker 2: that you get in weak code. People use like one
Speaker 2: letter of variable names, and you know there's the whole
Speaker 2: like code golf, where you try to write everything on
Speaker 2: one line, like all sorts of different like hacks and
Speaker 2: cheets together like a few milliseconds. It's just solving a
Speaker 2: very different kind of problem than I'm used to.
Speaker 6: Well, you know one thing that I've noticed before, and
Speaker 6: you hear this joke I heard on you know, whether
Speaker 6: it's syntax FM or any other podcast. Some people will say,
Speaker 6: you know, twitch streaming is sort of a popular thing,
Speaker 6: you know, where coders will get on and live stream
Speaker 6: and other people can watch them. And I heard one
Speaker 6: guy say, yeah, the reason I don't do that is
Speaker 6: they might see that, you know, seventy five percent of
Speaker 6: the time, I'm googling how do I do this in PHP?
Speaker 4: Or how do I do this in JavaScript?
Speaker 6: You know, just like you know, you know, I come up,
Speaker 6: I start coming up with a little shortcuts from my
Speaker 6: forget my little online tool here in like Alfred, you
Speaker 6: know that, you know, look up this in PHP real quick,
Speaker 6: or you know, look at this, and I'm not always
Speaker 6: typing everything. And just because that's how your member stuff is,
Speaker 6: how you look up stuff, you know, you got to
Speaker 6: look for it half the time instead of just being
Speaker 6: able to do it from memory right away.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I agree. It's I feel like one of the
Speaker 3: biggest complaints about it is it's it's becomes less and
Speaker 3: less about like creative problem solving or like like diffuse
Speaker 3: mode thinking, where you know your your your brains are
Speaker 3: more of the diffuse mode where you're you're accessing different
Speaker 3: parts of your brain. You really have to turn turn
Speaker 3: your your coding into like a fast twitch thinking, like
Speaker 3: kind of focus mode where you're not you're not you're
Speaker 3: not doing as much creative problem solving as much as
Speaker 3: just executing unknown patterns and you have to like know
Speaker 3: the patterns, memorize the patterns, and then just rip them
Speaker 3: out real fast without making mistakes. And it kind of yeah,
Speaker 3: it's sort of is a difference. I feel like the
Speaker 3: interviews are are searching for different qualities in people because
Speaker 3: of that, it's like much more about, uh, I don't know,
Speaker 3: being like a code soldier, you know that just sort
Speaker 3: of executes on the patterns that are in front of you,
Speaker 3: versus like a creative problem solver. But yeah, especially as
Speaker 3: like I have ADHD too, so it's like, not, that's
Speaker 3: not the kind of things that I naturally excel at.
Speaker 3: So I feel like I have to put in more
Speaker 3: time than a normal person would and like in those
Speaker 3: types of interviews.
Speaker 4: But yeah, what do you know?
Speaker 6: What do you It was a discussion about standardized testing
Speaker 6: in schools, where you get to the point where the
Speaker 6: standardized test scores are so important for you know, getting
Speaker 6: money for schools or whatever, that pretty soon teachers are
Speaker 6: teaching for the test instead of the content and teaching
Speaker 6: how to creatively think, how to problem solve. You know,
Speaker 6: insteady are teaching, Okay, the test is looking for this
Speaker 6: or we're going to teach everything so that you can
Speaker 6: pass this test. Okay, great, you get past the test.
Speaker 6: What has that done for you? You know, how to
Speaker 6: pass that test, But has it taught you anything really
Speaker 6: useful outside of that?
Speaker 5: But yeah, I'm kind of curious.
Speaker 1: Does your group do some of that where it's more
Speaker 1: strategies to pass the leak codes as opposed to you know,
Speaker 1: specific I don't know, algorithms or something a little.
Speaker 3: Bit yeah, I mean it will like for specific types
Speaker 3: of problems, but it's like strategies to move quickly within.
Speaker 5: That's what I mean. It's so, yeah, I start teaching
Speaker 5: to the tests, so to speak a little bit.
Speaker 3: Right, And so it's like, okay, so you know the
Speaker 3: types of problems where you have like a two D
Speaker 3: matrix and you need to do breath re search on
Speaker 3: cells in the matrix or something. Then like you know,
Speaker 3: there's like little like a generator Like a lot of
Speaker 3: us have taken to just writing this little generator function
Speaker 3: that just checks to see if the neighbors are on
Speaker 3: the edge or not, and then like that's the pattern
Speaker 3: we use every time we do that. Now is just
Speaker 3: this little and it's just like it's a it is
Speaker 3: useful to kind of learn those little subcoding patterns to
Speaker 3: like be able to like rip those answers out really fast.
Speaker 3: But but yeah, it's like little micro strategies to avoid
Speaker 3: getting tripped up in the implementation during an interview and
Speaker 3: just being able to like bang out, bang out like
Speaker 3: code like that basically have mentally saved code snippets of
Speaker 3: things that you can just bang out. Honestly, yeah, it
Speaker 3: would be nice to have those saved in an editor
Speaker 3: where you could just like put the snippet in. But yeah,
Speaker 3: I mean.
Speaker 2: I've got to say, though, you know, as much as
Speaker 2: I want to take that moral high ground of well
Speaker 2: this has nothing to do with our jobs, I am
Speaker 2: starting to get a bit more appreciation. So I actually
Speaker 2: interviewed for a few jobs and I failed on the
Speaker 2: practical coding skills, which well no excuse there really, and
Speaker 2: the reason being the last two years I actually probably
Speaker 2: coded thirty percent of the time, and what I coded
Speaker 2: was pocs and the rest of the time I was
Speaker 2: basically project management and architecture, and I completely forgot like
Speaker 2: how do you code a basic component and react? You know,
Speaker 2: like that that is something I should know. And then
Speaker 2: I started, you know, working on my own like little
Speaker 2: app just for fun, and I realized like, huh, like
Speaker 2: I really should know these different patterns, but like I don't,
Speaker 2: and I start like going through and it feels very
Speaker 2: much like leap code, where Okay, I kind of see
Speaker 2: like these common patterns, like when I'm dealing with inputs,
Speaker 2: this is generally the code that I would use if
Speaker 2: I'm trying to like pass in filters. How do I
Speaker 2: pass in filters? How do I pass them back? It's
Speaker 2: like a pretty common problem, but you kind of have
Speaker 2: to think through it a little bit the first time,
Speaker 2: and then you know the pattern. So is it exactly
Speaker 2: the same kind of problems that I'll be solving. No,
Speaker 2: but believe it or not, I think this strategy's sort
Speaker 2: of started helping me in the part of coding which
Speaker 2: I do value for my job.
Speaker 4: Yeah, just more proof of the addedy use it or
Speaker 4: lose it.
Speaker 5: Right yep.
Speaker 1: So I'm a little curious then, since this was focused
Speaker 1: on I guess mastering leak codes so you could get
Speaker 1: a job.
Speaker 5: Did help you get a job?
Speaker 2: Not yet. I actually took a break from lead code
Speaker 2: and job searching for about I want to say, two months,
Speaker 2: probably something like that, and yeah, a lot of it.
Speaker 2: I realized I have some savings and right now it's
Speaker 2: just not a great market for engineers. My biggest problem
Speaker 2: at work has always been, you know, a lack of
Speaker 2: a personal life, lack of community. Like all my self
Speaker 2: worth was pretty much invested in my job, and that
Speaker 2: caused a whole bunch of different problems. So I basically
Speaker 2: decided to take a few months to like build up
Speaker 2: you know, some community, build up some friends, some hobbies,
Speaker 2: and now I'm like sort of passively searching. Like I've
Speaker 2: got an interview with Uber, Airbnb, and Stripe.
Speaker 4: Coming up, the small companies on them all and pop shops.
Speaker 7: Yeah yeah, but yeah, like I think at this point,
Speaker 7: you know, I'm more in passive search mode because I rather,
Speaker 7: you know, have that really stable personal base for when
Speaker 7: I go back to work.
Speaker 2: And you know, I think a lot of that blind
Speaker 2: culture is like you have to have a job now,
Speaker 2: you have to maximize your TC and that's not necessarily.
Speaker 5: The only path your TC.
Speaker 2: Oh, so blind, How did you describe Blind? Jeff?
Speaker 3: Yeah, in my opinion, blind's kind of a toxic environment.
Speaker 3: But TC just means total compensation, and it's yeah, it's
Speaker 3: very like a lot of the people on Blind are
Speaker 3: all big tech workers. I mean that's sort of the
Speaker 3: intention of it is. It's like you get the inside
Speaker 3: scoop on some of these companies I guess as people
Speaker 3: anonymously joined Blind and then talk about the company. But
Speaker 3: it's sort of become this, yeah, this culture of like
Speaker 3: everyone's obsessed with the fang income and basically it's Yeah.
Speaker 2: So.
Speaker 3: I don't know if I always feel like Blind is
Speaker 3: the healthiest place to go on a little bit of
Speaker 3: like a I mean, I'm sure there's like I don't
Speaker 3: you never really know how many people are lying about
Speaker 3: what their TC is or what they're doing. But yeah,
Speaker 3: it's a pretty like just compensation obsessed getting the highest
Speaker 3: paing job no matter what kind of thing. But and
Speaker 3: then also just like very negative about the industry in general.
Speaker 3: But it's very like kind of nihilistic kind of culture. Yep,
Speaker 3: like everything sucks. Money is the only thing that matters.
Speaker 3: But I don't know, I mean, like it's still is
Speaker 3: useful in some ways to like just get yeah, get
Speaker 3: some of that information a little bit if you're willing
Speaker 3: to wade through kind of the toxicity that is common
Speaker 3: with all of social media at this point.
Speaker 8: But but yeah, yeah, so and like yeah, I think
Speaker 8: like that is sort of there is a little bit
Speaker 8: of an aspect of that with like lead code is
Speaker 8: associated most with like the fang or like the big
Speaker 8: company type interviews, and so there is always going.
Speaker 3: To be like a portion of the population of people
Speaker 3: who are interested in granting leak code that are a
Speaker 3: little bit more just the sort of TC TC monsters
Speaker 3: or whatever. But I don't know, I feel like, yeah,
Speaker 3: emotionally it's hard to like sustain that attitude about life.
Speaker 3: So like I feel like for me and that I
Speaker 3: think for totally as well. It's like it's like you
Speaker 3: eventually want it to become like a game or that
Speaker 3: you start to get good, Like it's it's like a
Speaker 3: workout or something. You start to like value the improvement
Speaker 3: or the progress that you're making, and it's sort of
Speaker 3: a game that you're getting better at, like like your
Speaker 3: crosswords or something, right word, And I don't know, i'd
Speaker 3: try to cultivate that attitude about it a little bit
Speaker 3: because it is a grind. But I like, I think,
Speaker 3: like totally said, I'm starting to sort of enjoy the
Speaker 3: problems a little bit, Like spend a little bit of
Speaker 3: time each day where I sit down with a fresh
Speaker 3: cup of coffee in the morning and just like work
Speaker 3: on one of the problems. And yeah, you try and
Speaker 3: be forgiving of yourself if you aren't getting that one
Speaker 3: right then, and yeah, just try to be organized. If
Speaker 3: you realize you're struggling with something, like write down what
Speaker 3: it is so you can kind of start to identify
Speaker 3: patterns and like what you're good at, what you're not
Speaker 3: good at. Like I'm a big fan of deliberate practice,
Speaker 3: that that whole concept you just like break down all
Speaker 3: the components of your implementation and your like algorithm you're
Speaker 3: problem solving like steps and then just are to identify
Speaker 3: like where you're strong, where you're weak, and then drill
Speaker 3: all the things. And I don't know, like in a
Speaker 3: way it's like I can recognize it's all it's all
Speaker 3: sort of bs. But in another way, I'm sort of
Speaker 3: enjoying the progress that I'm making. So it's not like
Speaker 3: I'm not totally nihilistic about it. I guess yeah, actually.
Speaker 9: Funny, what what is TC monster? I missed that, like just.
Speaker 3: Somebody who it's like just being obsessed with compensation and
Speaker 3: nothing else.
Speaker 4: Compensation aging, Yeah.
Speaker 3: Because yeah, once you get to the like certain thing,
Speaker 3: like they compensate more and more in terms of stock,
Speaker 3: so like they always talking to TC versus just salary.
Speaker 3: Because yeah, like as you as you go to get
Speaker 3: to Fang, it's it'll be like more than half of
Speaker 3: your compill start to come from from like stock and stuff.
Speaker 5: So what were you going to say?
Speaker 2: Totally Yeah, So interesting thing happened. I took a break
Speaker 2: from leak code for about two months, and after that
Speaker 2: I went back to a leak code problem and it
Speaker 2: became so much easier. And I noticed that I didn't
Speaker 2: really have that whole stressful mindset when approaching the problem.
Speaker 2: It was more like, all right, if I solve it, great,
Speaker 2: if I don't solve it whatever, And like once all
Speaker 2: those like voices just started moving away. It really is
Speaker 2: about problem solving. You just kind of lay out a
Speaker 2: plan and you follow that plan versus I think that
Speaker 2: blind does have that sort of hectic culture of like,
Speaker 2: I've got to solve these problems. It has to happen
Speaker 2: right now. If I'm unemployed for one more month, it's
Speaker 2: going to be terrible. So I think, you know, even
Speaker 2: for people in big tech on blind, it would be
Speaker 2: really useful to step away from that kind of culture
Speaker 2: for a bit and then come back.
Speaker 1: I kind of have two directions I want to go.
Speaker 1: I guess we're still talking about leak code. Let's do
Speaker 1: this one first, and it is effectively like what strategies
Speaker 1: are there like it. So let's say somebody is listening
Speaker 1: to this and they're going, Okay, you've talked about this
Speaker 1: leak code meet up and how these guys got together,
Speaker 1: But how do I solve the leak codes?
Speaker 5: Right?
Speaker 1: How do I get better at them?
Speaker 3: Speak a little bit to it, I guess. I mean,
Speaker 3: I think like one thing that's important is like, even
Speaker 3: if you're familiar with algorithms or data and data structures,
Speaker 3: maybe you have like a CS degree or something, that
Speaker 3: doesn't mean you're familiar with like all the intricacies of
Speaker 3: the different ways to implement that algorithm. It's like binary search,
Speaker 3: for instance, there's like I think a lot of people
Speaker 3: are comfortable with binary search, maybe even to the point
Speaker 3: of being like, oh, this is really basic, Like I
Speaker 3: shouldn't have to drill on this. But it's different to
Speaker 3: implement binary search. For instance, if you're looking for a
Speaker 3: specific element in an array versus you're looking for a
Speaker 3: boundary point between, like where you would insert an element
Speaker 3: that doesn't yet exist in an array, and there's like
Speaker 3: slightly different ways to do that, and like, depending on
Speaker 3: some of the more complicatedly code problems may involve something
Speaker 3: where you're looking for a position in a sort of
Speaker 3: array that isn't an element, but you need to like
Speaker 3: find that position and then do something, or another one
Speaker 3: is where you need to search for an element, and
Speaker 3: they both have slightly different ways that you implement the
Speaker 3: wile loop, and like they both start with like a
Speaker 3: left pointer and a right pointer, and one of them
Speaker 3: may be like less than an equal to or you
Speaker 3: wait until they're basically overlapping, and the other one it
Speaker 3: will be less than or something. So there's slightly different
Speaker 3: implementations depending on which flavor of binary search you're trying
Speaker 3: to do. And I think like the process of trying
Speaker 3: to get good at it is sort of identifying, like oh, Okay,
Speaker 3: so this is probably going to be this type of algorithm,
Speaker 3: but then there's like four different ways implemented, and I
Speaker 3: should drill on all of those so that way, like
Speaker 3: you're not getting tripped up in that part of the
Speaker 3: implementation as you're trying to bang out the algorithm that
Speaker 3: maybe like that and then a few other steps or something,
Speaker 3: or like another example is like I was actually just
Speaker 3: sort of realizing I needed to work on this the
Speaker 3: other day. It was like I've done a lot of
Speaker 3: breath for search or depth for search problems, and not
Speaker 3: a lot of like multi source breath for search or
Speaker 3: death for a search, where you like you don't just
Speaker 3: start from one point and then search outwards, but you
Speaker 3: put like several points in there at once and then
Speaker 3: you look at like layers and then that could like
Speaker 3: so just as an example, if you well, I don't
Speaker 3: know if we want to dive into a whole problem,
Speaker 3: I guess, but like there's there's differently like there's little
Speaker 3: in implementation flavorings of every algorithm, and just like being
Speaker 3: patient with yourself, like trying some problems and then you're
Speaker 3: inevitably not going to get all of them, but like
Speaker 3: try and rack your brain to get something working, and
Speaker 3: then after a while and once you realize you're not
Speaker 3: making any progress, Like check the editorial. I really recommend
Speaker 3: paying for leak code Pro so you can see their
Speaker 3: editorials because they do a really good job of breaking
Speaker 3: down how to solve the problem. And then and then
Speaker 3: kind of identify like, oh, okay, so like I was
Speaker 3: able to identify that yeah, breath first search was the
Speaker 3: right algorithm here, but I got tripped up in this
Speaker 3: part of the implementation. And then just try to like
Speaker 3: I keep a lot of notes off to the side
Speaker 3: of like this type of problem, like multi So I've
Speaker 3: started like taking notes a bunch about like multi source bfs,
Speaker 3: and I put that off to the side, and I
Speaker 3: put some of the problems that were related in the
Speaker 3: related section and then have the stored off to those
Speaker 3: sides so I can drill them. And it's a lot
Speaker 3: of like yeah, I just like like understanding the little
Speaker 3: nuances and then just sticking with it. And I honestly
Speaker 3: think that's like one of the best benefits of the
Speaker 3: group is that like it's a grind, and it's like
Speaker 3: it's better to like suffer with other people. I guess company, right,
Speaker 3: It's like it becomes like a little bit of a
Speaker 3: social outlet. It's not so isolating and like we kind
Speaker 3: of are going through it together and teaching each other
Speaker 3: and that kind of thing. So it becomes a lot
Speaker 3: less like this like despair of all this work that
Speaker 3: you have to do and how hard it is and
Speaker 3: all of that, and more about like us helping each other.
Speaker 4: So yeah, at risk, at risk.
Speaker 6: It's sounding like the stereotype that everybody says about crossfitters.
Speaker 6: That's part of the reason I love CrossFit is that
Speaker 6: you're sharing the misery with other people and it makes
Speaker 6: the heck a lot better than when you're just in there,
Speaker 6: you know, working out by yourself in a home gym
Speaker 6: or doing your own workout at a standard gym. It
Speaker 6: just makes it so much more enjoyable. And who knows,
Speaker 6: you're gonna learn from other people as well.
Speaker 3: Yeah, totally.
Speaker 1: You see them walking in like they're busted the same
Speaker 1: way you're busted.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah.
Speaker 6: Oh, there's so many good memes on Instagram about like that.
Speaker 6: That CrossFit is so funny.
Speaker 1: So I got another question, and that is more along
Speaker 1: the lines of the meetup. So it's so funny because
Speaker 1: COVID totally screwed up meetups, and I mean there used
Speaker 1: to be a whole bunch of tech meetups here in Utah.
Speaker 1: I think there are a couple that have kind of
Speaker 1: come back, and by comeback, I mean they're running.
Speaker 5: I don't know how many people are going.
Speaker 9: It's like one third the attendance that most of them have.
Speaker 1: That right, So my question is, so let's say that
Speaker 1: I want to start a meetup, not necessarily even a
Speaker 1: leak code meetup, but let's say that I'm thinking, Okay,
Speaker 1: you know, it'd be really great. There's all this new
Speaker 1: stuff coming down with AI or with you know, maybe
Speaker 1: it is leak code, or maybe it's just hey, look,
Speaker 1: you know, I want to be better at JavaScript or
Speaker 1: better react or you know, you name it. What what
Speaker 1: do you recommend for people who want to get something
Speaker 1: like that started.
Speaker 2: I think a lot of it is there has to
Speaker 2: be a real need. The reason why leak could worked
Speaker 2: was it kind of needed to get a job. We
Speaker 2: were targeting people who really wanted jobs. So I think
Speaker 2: if you find that then it's relatively straightforward. But yeah,
Speaker 2: like I think the second one, I also started another
Speaker 2: kind of community and a lot of that has to
Speaker 2: do with identity, like how do you identify yourself? Yes,
Speaker 2: if you can link to identity, that does a lot.
Speaker 1: Right now, is that is that partially just hey I
Speaker 1: do react, or hey I do view or I want
Speaker 1: to do better JavaScript? Or is there more identity than
Speaker 1: that that you want to dive into.
Speaker 2: Well, for the other community I sort of started, it
Speaker 2: has absolutely nothing to do with computers, but well, let's
Speaker 2: say part of it is something about like how do
Speaker 2: I communicate with the world? How am I honest with myself?
Speaker 2: So if you start seeing yourself as a certain type
Speaker 2: of person when you say I am blank, then it's
Speaker 2: much easier to form community of people around you that
Speaker 2: are dedicated to that costs. And I think that does
Speaker 2: have in leak code because people identify as like I
Speaker 2: am someone who works in big tech, I am someone
Speaker 2: who gets the leaked code, So it works. Ultimately, the
Speaker 2: more close you are to somebody's identity.
Speaker 5: The better gotcha. You know.
Speaker 6: I haven't delved into leak code just yet, although side note,
Speaker 6: I was just talking to a buddy of mine that's
Speaker 6: a DevRel at Amazon, and he was telling me about
Speaker 6: their process and leak code and He was like, yeah,
Speaker 6: you probably want to go study up and get like
Speaker 6: the premium membership and do everything you can for three
Speaker 6: or four weeks before you can try How does it
Speaker 6: work from a language standpoint? Do you get to choose
Speaker 6: the languages that you're using to answer these questions?
Speaker 4: Is it like, you know, like if.
Speaker 6: You primarily view or you know, one of the JOBASCRIPT
Speaker 6: frameworks is like Vanilla JavaScript, do you get you stuff
Speaker 6: in view? Or if you're a back end guy like
Speaker 6: PHP or job or a node or Ruby, do you
Speaker 6: get to use the language of your choice frand sharing questions?
Speaker 4: How does that work?
Speaker 3: You do? I would say, like we could kind of
Speaker 3: start it out as like mostly Java in Python, but
Speaker 3: since then they've really put a lot of effort into expanding.
Speaker 3: So most of the editorials now are in a bunch
Speaker 3: of different languages. I think they they have C plus
Speaker 3: plus and Java and Python, and they usually have a
Speaker 3: JavaScript the editor. You can do a lot of different languages,
Speaker 3: like typescript. If you want to do that, you can
Speaker 3: do JavaScript. They're actually maybe I'll hop over and fire
Speaker 3: it up really quick and just confirm, But yeah, there's
Speaker 3: a bunch of different languages that they support, and like
Speaker 3: most of the editorials have a bunch of languages as well.
Speaker 3: But every once in a while you may see a
Speaker 3: problem that like in the actual examples of how it
Speaker 3: solved in the editorials, like it'll only be two languages
Speaker 3: or something. But we've had a number of people that
Speaker 3: have attended the group that are coming from Gooding boot Cam's.
Speaker 3: It's actually the two places where we meet up is
Speaker 3: that one of two different cutting bood camps, And a
Speaker 3: lot of those folks have JavaScript as their main language.
Speaker 3: So like, I think JavaScript works just fine. I think
Speaker 3: like Python is like is what I recommend if people
Speaker 3: are sort of agnostic to language, just because it gives
Speaker 3: you again in terms of speed, Python has a lot
Speaker 3: of these little helper functions that just like you take
Speaker 3: a list and then you call sorted on it and
Speaker 3: now it's sorted, or like you call max on it
Speaker 3: and you get the maximum elements and it's just like
Speaker 3: you just like throw that function on there and then
Speaker 3: just keep going and it just there's a lot less
Speaker 3: stuff that you have to implement yourself. But but yes,
Speaker 3: you can do any language for the most part and
Speaker 3: actually have the editor open. Okay, so they have c
Speaker 3: plus plus, Java, Python, Python three, so Python two, Python three,
Speaker 3: c she sharp, javascriptpescript, Php, Swift, Cotlan, dark Go, Ruby, Scala, Rust,
Speaker 3: racket erline, analyxir. Is that all that's everything, that's what
Speaker 3: the editor supports. Yeah, Like so yeah, and I think
Speaker 3: like I think if if you're thinking jobscript, I think
Speaker 3: that has is going to have like pretty it's I
Speaker 3: would say, it's like a first class citizen at this
Speaker 3: point of we code. So like a lot of the
Speaker 3: edit editorials have job script implementations. So and it looks
Speaker 3: like typescript as well.
Speaker 9: So but why is it called an editorial, right? I
Speaker 9: guess newspapers, I guess like.
Speaker 3: They have a like there's there's like a solutions section,
Speaker 3: but that that I think was what they first implemented,
Speaker 3: and that's just like community solutions, and then the editorial
Speaker 3: is like a professionally done breakdown that like really describes
Speaker 3: the whole algorithm with like with diagrams and you know,
Speaker 3: even like maybe a litle bit of video or something.
Speaker 3: So like the solutions, I think I'm guessing it's like
Speaker 3: a legacy thing. It's like they called the the solutions
Speaker 3: was the name they gave the community solutions. I guess.
Speaker 9: So maybe maybe they were looking at the community stuff
Speaker 9: and like pulling out and saying, Okay, from all of
Speaker 9: what people are saying. As an editor of this content,
Speaker 9: this is these are the important pieces for people who
Speaker 9: were commonly missed concepts or whatever.
Speaker 3: That would make sense. Yeah, I guess. I don't know
Speaker 3: for sure that that was their thought process, but that
Speaker 3: would make sense.
Speaker 2: I personally don't find the editorials that useful. Whenever I
Speaker 2: want to understand something, I go to YouTube, I type
Speaker 2: the problem, and there's much much better visual explanations.
Speaker 6: Oh so people are doing videos on specific leak code
Speaker 6: questions and how to answer them and solve them.
Speaker 4: Okay.
Speaker 2: Also, there's a guy called neat Code who I think
Speaker 2: is one of the top YouTubers that he has a
Speaker 2: course essentially explaining all these concepts in visual ways, and
Speaker 2: they all do a much better job than the editorials
Speaker 2: in my opinion.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I agree. I also think like nea code is
Speaker 3: is if you're either new to algorithms or end data structures,
Speaker 3: or you're just kind of rusty, start with net code.
Speaker 3: That's another like paid thing though, but it's like it's
Speaker 3: like one hundred bucks for a year and then you
Speaker 3: go through their like his intro to algorithms, and it
Speaker 3: gives a bunch of tutorials and then links to specific
Speaker 3: weak code problems that are for those topics. And I
Speaker 3: think that is one of the better sort of on
Speaker 3: ramps into sort of weak code. And that's spelled n
Speaker 3: ee T code dot io. I guess we're we're basically
Speaker 3: advertising for that at this point. But yeah, I mean
Speaker 3: I do think like we've had a couple of people
Speaker 3: that come into the to the sessions that are, you know,
Speaker 3: pretty new, and we always recommend, like I always recommend
Speaker 3: new code as like, hey, this is how this is
Speaker 3: how you kind of un ramp.
Speaker 4: So totally.
Speaker 6: You had mentioned a little earlier about how you did
Speaker 6: this for a while and then you went away and
Speaker 6: then you came back. It's like, oh now I can
Speaker 6: understand it, which is so true. I mean, how many
Speaker 6: I can't count the number of times I've solved the
Speaker 6: problem in my head in the shower, you know, because
Speaker 6: I'm sitting there thinking about it or having a nightmare.
Speaker 6: Oh yeah, that's how I should do it.
Speaker 5: I get really stuck.
Speaker 4: I go for a walk, yeah exactly.
Speaker 6: My question is, you know, we were talking earlier about
Speaker 6: how this can sort of be like studying for the
Speaker 6: test instead of studying the material.
Speaker 4: I'm curious to see that after.
Speaker 6: Having studied for leak code and gone through this and
Speaker 6: studying these problems.
Speaker 4: What areas you felt it improved for you? If any?
Speaker 6: I mean, does it help you with just general problem solving,
Speaker 6: with maybe some you know, programming type problem solving. What
Speaker 6: is it that, if anything, that you feel you can
Speaker 6: do better having gone through and studied for leap code.
Speaker 2: Well, when I first started, I had so much emotional attachment,
Speaker 2: for lack of a better word, to leap code. You know,
Speaker 2: On one hand, it was I really hate doing this. This
Speaker 2: is so boring, this is so useless. I don't want
Speaker 2: to do this, Like I can't do this, Like I'm
Speaker 2: not the type of person who can do this. I'm
Speaker 2: a JavaScript engineer, I'm not like an algorithm's person. Just
Speaker 2: a whole laundry list of why I don't want to
Speaker 2: and can't do leap code. After starting the meetup up
Speaker 2: a little bit, you know, I started improving and seeing like,
Speaker 2: all right, so if I practiced this now I could
Speaker 2: get better. You know, I actually passed some first rounds
Speaker 2: of interviews which I did not think I would pass.
Speaker 2: Like in Meta, I passed like two out of three
Speaker 2: algorithm interviews, which I was very surprised at. And then
Speaker 2: like taking that big break, it probably did I wouldn't
Speaker 2: say the most good, but it did a huge chunk
Speaker 2: of good for me because it removed a lot of
Speaker 2: that I have to solve this or my life is sorry.
Speaker 4: With any friendly podcast.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, So basically that's what it did for me.
Speaker 2: And also just where I traveled. I went to Europe
Speaker 2: for a little while, and a lot of people who
Speaker 2: I met were nomads, so all they did was essentially
Speaker 2: travel the world and they you know, went to different
Speaker 2: akaryoga conventions and a lot of people there they earned
Speaker 2: like maybe ten fifteen thousand dollars a year and they
Speaker 2: were just having this much more fulfilling lifestyle. And then
Speaker 2: you have people on blind you know, making five hundred
Speaker 2: seven hundred k year and they're suicidal, they don't have relationships.
Speaker 2: So having that huge juxtaposition of these two different lifestyles,
Speaker 2: it really helped me let go of a lot of
Speaker 2: the emotional baggage around lead code. And then it's like
Speaker 2: this is just like any other problem, like it's not special,
Speaker 2: Like it removed that special factor from it.
Speaker 6: So it sounded like it wasn't emotional attachment you had.
Speaker 6: It was more like emotional repulsion.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, I really don't want to do that exactly.
Speaker 4: So how does that?
Speaker 9: You know?
Speaker 4: Going back to your meetups? So what do you do
Speaker 4: with the meetups?
Speaker 6: I mean, is it is it like do you have
Speaker 6: like a shared screen where somebody can share their screen
Speaker 6: and everybody can look at a problem and sort of
Speaker 6: work through how to do it? Do you just pair
Speaker 6: up and look at laptops? Is is there any sort
Speaker 6: of structure like Okay, how you doing We're going to
Speaker 6: talk about this and this where you go through problems
Speaker 6: as a group.
Speaker 4: Does it vary? I'm just curious to see how that works.
Speaker 9: It does vary.
Speaker 3: I would say it varies a little bit based on
Speaker 3: how many people show up to a specific one. So
Speaker 3: like we have one two like two weeks ago on
Speaker 3: Thursday at general Assembly, and that one was very large,
Speaker 3: so there's like sixty people there, so we really had
Speaker 3: to break it up into smaller groups. And in that case,
Speaker 3: we broke it up by just like level and the
Speaker 3: code like easy, medium, hard and then there was like
Speaker 3: a system design group. In that case, I think we
Speaker 3: may actually start to incorporate, like for the really large groups,
Speaker 3: start to incorporate like a pret easy group as well,
Speaker 3: because there's a few people who are just onboarding onto
Speaker 3: the code and we want to include those people, I
Speaker 3: think in the and when we're when they're smaller groups
Speaker 3: like some of our Saturday sessions. We I guess the
Speaker 3: pattern that we've fallen into that we sort of like
Speaker 3: is that we do we pick a solution type. It's
Speaker 3: like sliding window, where you like slide a window across
Speaker 3: an array to compute something and sort of will make
Speaker 3: a theme for the whole session around finding like identifying
Speaker 3: problems of that solution type and then solving a number
Speaker 3: of them to sort of get familiar with that type
Speaker 3: of solution, And that I think helps a lot with
Speaker 3: just sort of like taking one one type of solution
Speaker 3: and kind of embedding it in your mind so it
Speaker 3: becomes like a tool, like a tool in your toolkit
Speaker 3: that you can pull out if you see another type
Speaker 3: of problem that uses that. And that's I think if
Speaker 3: you're starting to get into leak code too, Like I
Speaker 3: think the thing that can make it a lot less
Speaker 3: intimidating is realizing that there's only like like there's like
Speaker 3: only like twenty five total types of solutions really for
Speaker 3: all leak code problems, more or less, and they're all
Speaker 3: like like every leak code problem is like a different
Speaker 3: variation on a solution type or maybe combines two of
Speaker 3: them together or something. But there's only like twenty five patterns,
Speaker 3: and then you just have to kind of like drill
Speaker 3: them all and there's like different flavors of the given pattern,
Speaker 3: Like binary searches a pattern, but there's different flavors of it.
Speaker 9: But this actually brings up something that I've been thinking
Speaker 9: about a lot lately, especially with this explosion of AI.
Speaker 9: It seems like we're wasting billions of dollars on these
Speaker 9: you know, general problems solvedving word games when really, because
Speaker 9: I was thinking, I was thinking'd be more in the
Speaker 9: order of ten thousand, like maybe less than that, but
Speaker 9: somewhere in the order of ten thousand things you do
Speaker 9: as a programmer, like think of every for loop you've
Speaker 9: ever written, Think of every set of if statements you've
Speaker 9: ever done, you know, think of every algorithm that you'd
Speaker 9: ever had to ever have had to use, which is
Speaker 9: probably less than twenty five you know, outside of leekode. Like,
Speaker 9: think of all those things if you just had some
Speaker 9: sort of assistant that could help identify like, ah, this
Speaker 9: is the pattern here, let me template this out. How
Speaker 9: much more valuable would that be than having some generic
Speaker 9: thing that's just trying to like guess and figure stuff
Speaker 9: out from you know, context clues and statistical analysis, And
Speaker 9: how much less expensive would be in processing power?
Speaker 3: Yeah, are you talking about like designing an AI like
Speaker 3: as a design for a coding assistance or.
Speaker 9: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, because because the whole idea of
Speaker 9: of most of this stuff seems to be based on
Speaker 9: open AI's work, whether it's open ai or not. Like
Speaker 9: the LM technology that they made public before they went
Speaker 9: back to being a private company or not went back
Speaker 9: but became a private company. You know, like like that
Speaker 9: that vein of technology is so good for what it
Speaker 9: was designed for, like creating ads right like you want
Speaker 9: to you want to put lots of ads on web
Speaker 9: pages with lots of keywords without you know that like
Speaker 9: that's that is the business model that that open ai
Speaker 9: had for like the last ten years until you know,
Speaker 9: two years ago they started doing code and stuff. But yeah,
Speaker 9: so if and it's like they took a really really
Speaker 9: general like word driven approach and then applied to programming
Speaker 9: and it does amazingly well. Like I I actually am
Speaker 9: now a paid subscriber for GPT four oh because with
Speaker 9: four oh, it's good enough that it's like gone from
Speaker 9: solving the problems I ask it, like, you know, a
Speaker 9: quarter of the time to seventy five percent of time,
Speaker 9: and some of that is I only ask it questions
Speaker 9: in a certain way now, but four oh is definitely
Speaker 9: better than three you know when when this thing started.
Speaker 9: But I just think so often if it could just
Speaker 9: temple it out, like what are the things that you
Speaker 9: do as a programmer, because there's not that many things
Speaker 9: that you really do. It's you do like you're saying,
Speaker 9: you take there's I think it's more than twenty five
Speaker 9: different patterns, but you know it's accountable number of patterns
Speaker 9: that you use as a programmer. What if you just
Speaker 9: created an AI that did those things and then templated
Speaker 9: them them out rather than what you know, the statistical
Speaker 9: analysis bit that that's kind of the the the thought experiment.
Speaker 2: I think CHET CHIPTI already can do a lot of that.
Speaker 2: I mean, I use chet GPT for all my coding. Now. Yeah, basically,
Speaker 2: I describe the problem that I'm trying to solve and
Speaker 2: it spits out a good like one hundred one hundred
Speaker 2: and fifty lines of code. Anything past that, that's where
Speaker 2: it starts having problems. It can't understand the context of
Speaker 2: my whole app. But if I say, like this is
Speaker 2: something very specific that I want this module to do,
Speaker 2: it does an incredible job. And there are many like
Speaker 2: little things that it's great at as well, like you know,
Speaker 2: create a type map for what I'm trying to do.
Speaker 2: Like that's just something that takes a long time to
Speaker 2: do by hand. But yeah, yeah it'll get it like
Speaker 2: ninety nine percent of the time.
Speaker 9: I definitely don't see ninety nine percent, but it's with Furrow.
Speaker 9: I think that it's above fifty percent.
Speaker 2: For just like a bunch of Jason, Like say I
Speaker 2: drop in a bunch of adjacent and it has like
Speaker 2: some text in it. I've basically never had it guess incorrectly,
Speaker 2: and I might have to change it around, like maybe
Speaker 2: like for this proper pretty instead of a string, it's
Speaker 2: this array of strings but that's really the only time
Speaker 2: that it gets it wrong, and you can't expect it
Speaker 2: to get it right. There.
Speaker 1: I was asking about how the meetup runs, and I
Speaker 1: think somebody mentioned that you guys do it at General
Speaker 1: Assembly in New York, So how do you find the
Speaker 1: space for your meet up?
Speaker 5: Somebody worked there or.
Speaker 3: The Yeah, I mean, so that was actually Ken's not here,
Speaker 3: but Ken and Stephen putting a lot of work into
Speaker 3: just reaching out to different coding boot camps and those
Speaker 3: have been the most successful. So there's one called Fractal
Speaker 3: there in like Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and then there's General Assembly,
Speaker 3: which is more in midtown Manhattan, and the General Assembly
Speaker 3: is more new Fractal we meet on Saturdays, and General
Speaker 3: assemblies like every other Thursday now or it's going to be.
Speaker 3: But yeah, I mean, there have been a number of
Speaker 3: different attempts to reach out. I think in the early stages,
Speaker 3: Totally was actually covering the cost of like trying to
Speaker 3: pay for these paid venues, and that wasn't super sustainable
Speaker 3: because we just have fluctuating numbers of people attending, and
Speaker 3: like it was also optional to pay for tickets, So
Speaker 3: at that time a lot of people opted not to
Speaker 3: and it was just wasn't really sustainable to do the
Speaker 3: paid venues. So but yeah, we've found that those the
Speaker 3: coding boot camps are definitely happy to have us there
Speaker 3: because it's like an interview prep group, which is sort
Speaker 3: of directly related to the value they're trying to provide
Speaker 3: their students. So that's gone, that's gone well so far,
Speaker 3: and we basically just get to use their space. For Fractal,
Speaker 3: we just get to kind of show up on Saturdays
Speaker 3: and use their space and then for GA they have
Speaker 3: to like organize an event around it because that's sort
Speaker 3: of their policy. But yeah, we're still kind of exploring
Speaker 3: a bit. I think Fractals like a further out, it's
Speaker 3: a less central location, so not as many people can
Speaker 3: attend that one. So yeah, we're always well, well, yeah,
Speaker 3: looking for a space that's going to be kind of
Speaker 3: central for people that is hopefully not expensive.
Speaker 4: So speaking of space, do you ever use MySpace? I'm
Speaker 4: not kidding.
Speaker 6: I just saw an article about MySpace celebrating its twenty
Speaker 6: first anniversary, so I brought that to mind.
Speaker 4: I'll give myself a rimshot for this.
Speaker 9: Wait is Mike, I'm going to go to the website didn't.
Speaker 9: I didn't know they were still around.
Speaker 6: Yeah, here's an article, I'll mention it and picks that
Speaker 6: I have something I just on Hacker news.
Speaker 5: So anyway, cool? Is there anything else we want to shoot?
Speaker 2: Dog?
Speaker 9: It does exist?
Speaker 1: Anything else we want to go into with the meetup
Speaker 1: or leak code before we do picks? Okay, well let's
Speaker 1: do the picks. Then we usually have our guests go last.
Speaker 1: But Jeff, if you've got to jump off soon, are
Speaker 1: you enjoying any TV shows, books, movie, these, technology?
Speaker 5: Anything else?
Speaker 3: Uh? I don't know.
Speaker 9: This is this is not super anything.
Speaker 3: Started playing Cyberpunk again, but but that's a that's an
Speaker 3: older game. I guess. Yeah, I don't know. Yeah, just
Speaker 3: I have nothing that's super exciting. It's like I've just
Speaker 3: played Cyberpunk and ballers Gate three and then I do
Speaker 3: Bartarya when I'm not not working and looking for work.
Speaker 3: It's hard to come up with these on the spot.
Speaker 3: Come back to me and I'll maybe have something.
Speaker 1: All right, Hopefully you don't get your call between now
Speaker 1: and then, aj do you want to start us off
Speaker 1: with the picks?
Speaker 5: Then?
Speaker 9: Yes, I do, Chuck, so one thing that I totally
Speaker 9: forgot last time. So my wife and I took a
Speaker 9: trip to to Colorado to see the Royal Gorge Bridge,
Speaker 9: and on the way we finally started listening to some
Speaker 9: of the Brandon Sanderson Secret Project books that we've had
Speaker 9: now for I guess about two years, but have not
Speaker 9: like listened taken the opportunity to enjoy listening to this.
Speaker 9: On the trip we did, and we listened to You
Speaker 9: Me and the Nightmare Painter and Sunlit Man, and she
Speaker 9: I think had already listened to Tress and I was
Speaker 9: in the last few chapters of The Frugal Wizard's Guide
Speaker 9: to Medieval England, and You Me and the Nightmare Painter
Speaker 9: is just an amazing story. I think that it is
Speaker 9: one of Brandon Sanderson's best works. It very much has
Speaker 9: an anime feel to it. He says that it was
Speaker 9: inspired by Final Fantasy X and a manga and then
Speaker 9: just you know, some of his own thoughts while sitting
Speaker 9: on the bus or in the park or something. But
Speaker 9: it is it's a world in which there are nightmare painters,
Speaker 9: and nightmare painters go out at at night and they're
Speaker 9: basically like cops, like not like cops, they're like like
Speaker 9: citizen did what did you call that back in the
Speaker 9: nineties with the signs up in the neighbor neighborhood Watch,
Speaker 9: they're like neighborhood watch, like paid neighborhood watch, except that
Speaker 9: they are watching out for nightmares, which are creatures that
Speaker 9: uh come out at at at night and become manifest
Speaker 9: from people's dreams. So very very much in that vein
Speaker 9: of you know, like Spirited Away or something that seems
Speaker 9: like a studio ghibli type of story, and you know
Speaker 9: that that in of itself may not appeal to you,
Speaker 9: but I like, yeah, I'd almost rather just give someone
Speaker 9: the book and say here, read this or listen to this,
Speaker 9: then try to describe it. But but I'll try to
Speaker 9: describe it anyway. So there's the nightmare Painters, and then
Speaker 9: there is you me, who I don't think that she's
Speaker 9: called a princess, but essentially she's a she's not a princess,
Speaker 9: she's a type of royalty. And then it kind of
Speaker 9: goes into a Freaky Friday scenario. So yes, it's like
Speaker 9: it's like Spirited Away meets Freaky Friday. That is what
Speaker 9: you mean the Nightmare Painter is. But there's also I
Speaker 9: don't know, I mean calling it that just makes it
Speaker 9: sound so not as great as it is, because Spreaky
Speaker 9: Friday is an okay movie and Spirited Away is a
Speaker 9: very weird cartoon. But You Me and the Nightmare Painter
Speaker 9: is just awesome. I loved it. I think it was
Speaker 9: around twelve hours long, and we listened to it on
Speaker 9: one point five and one setting on our trip out
Speaker 9: to the hotel, and then other quick picks the chosen.
Speaker 9: I think that season four is has been phenomenal. I
Speaker 9: think it's really interesting as as a fairly well. It's
Speaker 9: a non denominational portraying of the of Jesus' disciples. So
Speaker 9: there's a little bit of Catholicism in there, there's a
Speaker 9: little bit of Judaism in there, there's a little bit
Speaker 9: of Evangelists Christianity in there. There's a bit of the
Speaker 9: Church of jes Christ to the Latter day Saints in there.
Speaker 9: There's like, there's lots of different philosophies represented, not I
Speaker 9: think because the intent was to represent the different philosophies
Speaker 9: or different religions, but more because I think this person
Speaker 9: just has a really good reading of the Bible. By
Speaker 9: good reading, I mean is able to to see past
Speaker 9: the five thousand years of translations and idioms and you know,
Speaker 9: like to really pull out what I think was meant.
Speaker 9: And I imagine it must have made a lot of
Speaker 9: pastors and seminaries very angry to see Season four. I've
Speaker 9: heard of of last. But that's the whole thing is
Speaker 9: it's about the Pharisees and the Sadducees and Jesus being
Speaker 9: like a revolutionary and so I just yeah, season four
Speaker 9: was great. I can't wait for season five. They just
Speaker 9: finished filming it. But if you don't need to be
Speaker 9: a religious person to enjoy The Chosen, it is such
Speaker 9: a well produced show. Is it is family friendly, with
Speaker 9: the caveat that there are scenes with violence in them.
Speaker 9: There are topics that are hard to deal with, like miscarriage.
Speaker 9: You know, there are like real life topics in the show.
Speaker 9: So it's like I would give it a rage rating
Speaker 9: of PG thirteen thematically, but PG in terms of like
Speaker 9: it's a good family show and the first few episodes
Speaker 9: are hard to get into because it's not really clear
Speaker 9: where it's going. But once you get past the third
Speaker 9: or fourth episode, it's it's a pretty gripping show and
Speaker 9: I'd recommend it to anybody religious or not. And if
Speaker 9: you are religious and you watch it, you might have
Speaker 9: to just be okay with some of your beliefs being
Speaker 9: challenged or interpreted differently, but not in a bad way,
Speaker 9: not in a malicious way, just you know, taking different
Speaker 9: there's different beliefs represented, and I think that it's all biblical,
Speaker 9: but it may not be biblical in the way that
Speaker 9: your particular pastor or church group may have explained it before.
Speaker 9: And I don't you know, some people might think, well,
Speaker 9: that makes it wrong, but I think that they stick
Speaker 9: to the biblical story. It's just not Yeah, I don't
Speaker 9: know how to say it.
Speaker 4: That.
Speaker 9: And the last thing, super quick I found this. This
Speaker 9: came up again, Beauty and the Beat of a YouTube video
Speaker 9: that just couldn't be made today. But it's so amazing.
Speaker 9: It's a belle in the hood and it's so funny.
Speaker 9: It's a yeah, that's that's basically how to describe it.
Speaker 9: Fun fun little video that's a parody of Beauty and
Speaker 9: the Beast the morning song when it's you know, hello,
Speaker 9: how's your bread?
Speaker 2: Oh?
Speaker 9: You know, I'm just reading a story but but but
Speaker 9: instead it's just oh, it's it's so hilarious and it
Speaker 9: has some of the early you know, YouTube comedians and
Speaker 9: stuff in it, back when when YouTube was a little
Speaker 9: bit more grassroots and raw, you know. So anyway, those
Speaker 9: those are my picks, all right, Steve?
Speaker 5: What are your picks?
Speaker 4: Oh? Is aj Dunn? Sorry? I was taking a nap
Speaker 4: there for a second. Good.
Speaker 9: I wanted to give you time, Steve.
Speaker 4: You gave me plenty of trust me. Okay.
Speaker 6: So, as I mentioned earlier, the little article I saw
Speaker 6: about in MySpace, it's on trib live dot com. It
Speaker 6: says MySpace celebrates his twenty first birthday? Do we still
Speaker 6: need it? So I didn't even know what existed either.
Speaker 6: I used it in a while. I can remember when
Speaker 6: it first came out, and one of the from a
Speaker 6: coding standpoint, if you want to look at it from
Speaker 6: that standpoint, it was, if I remember, the big thing
Speaker 6: was it allowed you to customize like CSS, and so
Speaker 6: you had people doing whole businesses off of creating customized
Speaker 6: MySpace themes for people to have for their own profile.
Speaker 6: I know I've heard some people say that was how
Speaker 6: they really started to learn about front end styling and
Speaker 6: theming with CSS and HTML. So maybe from a security standpoint,
Speaker 6: it wasn't the best thing, but in terms of being
Speaker 6: a tool to allow people to learn how to use
Speaker 6: the web and make the web look good, it seems
Speaker 6: to have its own space encoding history.
Speaker 4: Now for the.
Speaker 6: Totally in Oh we Lost Jeff there might not know
Speaker 6: that the dad jokes are the high point of any
Speaker 6: of these podcasts, So.
Speaker 4: Here they are.
Speaker 6: So the other day I saw a microbiologist. He was
Speaker 6: a lot bigger than I expected, right. And then over
Speaker 6: the weekend I was working on my house, doing some
Speaker 6: you know, work around the house, and I fell off
Speaker 6: a fifty foot ladder. Fortunately I was only on the
Speaker 6: bottom step. And then here's a thought on Disney and
Speaker 6: Pinocchio was reading some about him lately, probably on TMS
Speaker 6: or something, and heard that he hasn't had much luck
Speaker 6: on dating apps. But I mean, what do you expect
Speaker 6: from a guy who's looking for relationship with no strings attached?
Speaker 4: Those are my picks, all.
Speaker 1: Right, I'm gonna jump in do my picks real fast.
Speaker 1: So the first pick is I usually totally. I usually
Speaker 1: do a board game pick. Of course, you've been on before,
Speaker 1: you probably know that I'm going to pick a game Challengers.
Speaker 5: It's kind of a mix of Capture the Flag and war.
Speaker 5: So you start out with your base set, you build your.
Speaker 1: Deck, and then you play one on one against somebody
Speaker 1: else that's playing, and you flip over cards until you've
Speaker 1: beat their top card.
Speaker 5: Then you get the flag. I mean that's more or
Speaker 5: less it.
Speaker 1: I mean the deck building gets a little involved, but
Speaker 1: that's effectively the game. It'll play up to eight people,
Speaker 1: and so you play seven rounds and you just rotate chairs, right,
Speaker 1: so each of you get a little schedule, right, So
Speaker 1: you're on the red and then you're on the green,
Speaker 1: and then you're on the yellow, and then you're back
Speaker 1: to the red, and then whoever has the most points
Speaker 1: at the end of the round or at the end
Speaker 1: of the seventh round, the two top two go head
Speaker 1: to head and.
Speaker 5: Whoever wins wins. That's the game, really really fun game.
Speaker 1: I tried to teach it to my family last night,
Speaker 1: and I have to admit my wife was tired and
Speaker 1: didn't want to play more than two rounds. But let
Speaker 1: me get the board game wait for you, Here we
Speaker 1: go Challengers. It is waited at one point seven to eight,
Speaker 1: so that's that's pretty approachable for most casual gamers. The
Speaker 1: first time you play it, it takes a little bit
Speaker 1: to kind of figure some of it out, but then
Speaker 1: after that you're kind of good to go. A couple
Speaker 1: of other picks here real quick, I've been reading Obi
Speaker 1: Fernandez's book on AI and I am really enjoying getting
Speaker 1: into AI. So I'm gonna put a link to that
Speaker 1: in the chat and then it'll show up his comments on.
Speaker 5: Facebook, Twitch, and YouTube.
Speaker 1: But the last thing is, and I'm just going to
Speaker 1: put it out there, I am working on getting AI
Speaker 1: for JavaScript dot com launched. You'll get emails from me
Speaker 1: about how to do AI and JavaScript. I'm putting together
Speaker 1: an AI summit at the end of September, and just
Speaker 1: to give you a little bit of context, it's not
Speaker 1: focused on JavaScript or Ruby or any other language per se.
Speaker 1: It is primarily focused on how do you add AI
Speaker 1: features to your apps, So we're also not getting into
Speaker 1: PyTorch or anything like that. And then I'm going to
Speaker 1: do a boot camp starting in late October early November,
Speaker 1: and we'll go through Okay, here's how you use some
Speaker 1: of the transcription services. Here's how you use some of
Speaker 1: the the services like chat or GPT four, or you
Speaker 1: know some of the other ones that are out there.
Speaker 1: If you need a more custom model, here's how you
Speaker 1: use LAMA three or something like that. So we're just
Speaker 1: going to go into all of that, some of the
Speaker 1: other computer vision and image generation, video generation.
Speaker 5: So we'll get into all of that in the boot camp.
Speaker 1: And so I don't have a website for it yet,
Speaker 1: but that's coming. So if you sign up for the
Speaker 1: summit or sign it for the email list, you'll definitely
Speaker 1: get notified when.
Speaker 5: That comes out. So those are my picks totally. What
Speaker 5: are your picks?
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I've got three. The first one is a
Speaker 2: hobby you might want to try if you want to
Speaker 2: get better at communication. The general umbrella is called authentic relating,
Speaker 2: and then there are a few sub communities. There's NBC
Speaker 2: Nonviolent Communication and circling. And I forgot the third one. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's a really great group of people. You build type ons,
Speaker 2: you get to know yourself more, and I've noticed my
Speaker 2: ability to communicate with my coworkers really increased since I
Speaker 2: started doing it. The second one is akuryoga or partner acrobatics.
Speaker 2: Essentially you do acrobatics with somebody else, but it has
Speaker 2: a more smooth kind of feel to it rather than cheerleading.
Speaker 2: And it's also a really great way to get to
Speaker 2: know other people and learn more of that somatic communication.
Speaker 2: And the third thing is a resource that I've been writing.
Speaker 2: It's called The Neurodivergent Guide to the Workplace. So if
Speaker 2: you identify as neurodivergent, or if you simply want to
Speaker 2: learn some cool tricks on how to navigate the workplace,
Speaker 2: better check it out. It's on os dot, totally dot.
Speaker 5: Me awesome, all right. If people want to follow you online,
Speaker 5: where do they find you?
Speaker 2: Totally dot me.
Speaker 1: Last thing, it's lcsquad dot com for the lead Code
Speaker 1: meet up if you're in New.
Speaker 4: York and totally is t o l I right, all.
Speaker 1: Right, Well, thanks for coming. Tell Jeff thanks for us.
Speaker 1: We'll wrap it up until next time.
Speaker 5: Max Al