RobbieTheWagner 
Adam Argyle In today's modern technological world, developers face many difficult questions, artificial intelligence, autonomous agents, JavaScript frameworks, even CSS, with so much happening so quickly, how can a developer possibly keep up? Simple, just listen to the world's most important AI podcast. Two experts, countless opinions, zero hesitation. The internet is complicated. These men are not. Each week they review the latest developments in artificial intelligence and modern web development. This is whiskey, web and what not the world's most important AI podcast. My co-host, as always, Adam Thomas, our guy, the nerd. What's up, man? We have an awesome guest today. I'm excited. I hope you're too. Yeah, I am stoked. Could you tell the folks at home a little bit about our guests?
Big breath. That's me. Hi. Yeah. Most of that is accurate. I'll leave it to you to find out which. Yeah, I was, I was just imagining when you're doing that, you know how when people are doing like bagpipes, right? And it's like, and then like they let go and it's like, I feel like that's like you get that in the middle. Oh, my God. It's accessible. That's a hard word to say really fast. I put a lot of other passwords. Dang it. Yes. Yeah. It's fine. It's fine. You do a wonderful job. We are lucky to have you. What else we are lucky to have this teeny tiny little bottle tiny wind. You got the big boy. We got the little. Oh, thank you for the big one. That's very nice. We got a pack of varieties so that we can have some other stuff another time.
But I'm excited for this one. I'm not going to say a lot about it because we promised we would talk about whiskey at the end these days. But one cool thing about this one. It is like barbecue smoked like mesquite and apple wood and like all the things you would love in a barbecue. So I'm like, wow, that's different. But yeah, we'll see how we like it. I definitely get that from the smell. I haven't tasted yet. Yum, yum, sweet glass. Where are you? Yes. My wife cut me these while ago. It's nerve wracking because it has to sit at an angle. But it prevents you from filling up too much. So, you know, there's a little bonus there.
Excellent. Cool. Yeah. It's just so much. Too much. It should be unspillable. Right. Hmm. Definitely taste the backyard. Whoa. That is nice. Yeah. Not as much as I expected. It tastes like when you're sitting outside by the fire all night and then you come in and take a shower. Yeah. I hate that moment because I'm like, no, I want this to stay on me. How do I shower but still smell like smoke afterwards? Yeah. But yeah, we will continue to taste this throughout tell you more about it at the end. We missed our toast before we had some. But I don't know. Would you like to do our toast, Adam? I will. Yeah. May your barbecue always be tender. Your life.
Your life has zero latency. And if you do crash hard tomorrow morning, they could take a made only take a soft reboot and breakfast taco to get you back online. Cheers. That's nice. Yeah. My my secret is anytime I have whiskey or a lot of alcohol like over a certain amount, you got to have McDonald's the next morning. That's what always cures it for me. It's like there's enough chemicals in that to just bring you right back from the dead. It's good. Yeah. For sure. All right. So we have a few hot takes on here trying to get back into the hot takes. They're not super hot. But let's see where they go. So this one, we've asked a few people is HTML a programming language.
Absolutely. There's so many different definitions of of things. But I would classify it as a programming language in that you are instructing the computer what something is and what it's what it's supposed to do. The way it interprets that is very wide and a lot less precise than many other programming languages, but it's still a way to give the computer some input to get some output. Yeah, very, very diplomatic answer. I am waiting for the English as a programming language because we're basically there with AI. That's what I was just saying right now. It's like, actually, dude, none of us are coding anymore. We used to make fun of CSS for not being a programming language. And really it's not even scripting. I'm like, oh, yeah, you're just prompting now. So what are you? You're not even a programmer. You're just a parameter. We aren't even writing scripts no more.
Anyway, we're all in management now. Yes, yeah. Yeah. We'll get more into that later. So yeah, as Adam just mentioned, what about CSS CSS programming language? Even more so, especially nowadays, there's literal if statements, right? But, you know, for almost as long as CSS has been around, there's been media queries and things like that that make it a lot more dynamic of a language and it's very much responding to. To what's happening. Yeah, I have no qualms at all calling CSS programming language. Yeah, same. I mean, I feel like not that long ago, I would have said no, but it has moved so much in such a short amount of time. And like, as soon as you have trig functions and anything, like if you try to tell me it's not a programming language, I'm like, I don't know about that.
I can calculate decay over two inches. Oh, I guess that's programming. Yeah, I can write a div. Yeah, HTML CSS and JavaScript even are weird because they're so interrelated like it's hard to isolate them because yes, CSS is programming. Yes, HTML is programming. But without without each other, they're just, you know, they're there's not really much going on. And I don't think there's any way to really execute CSS without HTML. So, you know, it's it's kind of a requirement for them to to work together. Yeah, I think I'm super not educated on like the all touring complete, like whatever. But I think you need HTML and CSS to be touring complete technically.
You can't do it with just one or the other. You definitely can't do it with just HTML. Still doesn't necessarily mean it's not a programming language. Like, yeah, I don't know. I feel like anything you type in that gives you something else could be a programming language. Isn't how you look at it. Interesting. It's like a good question. Like CSS is flipping bits, but you can't see them. Is it, is it doing the touring complete thing? You know, like, hey, it's got logic, he gates. You just can't see him. It's flipped in the forest and no one is around. Is it programming? Yeah, I mean, taking that further, it's like, you know, compiled languages, right?
Like Java is actually doing nothing. What it compiles to is doing stuff. So maybe Java isn't a programming language. I like to think about the dependencies though. It's like HTML doesn't care about CSS and JavaScript. I like your analogy though. Like you're saying these things have interdependencies, but like HTML is the only one that's like, whatever everybody. I don't need you. I got deep all blooms. I got deep all looks. I got deep all everything. I'm the bones and I can still walk around. What can you do without bones, Mr. Floppy CSS? Oh, yeah, you're just skin on the ground. Oh, hey, how about you JavaScript?
If you got no bones and no skin to talk to, wait, even are you? Oh, you're just in someone's mind. You're just a spirit floating around. And it's just like, what a funny relationship that one has such a heart like dependency on the other. But it's not interdependency. Is it? There's like a, there's a cycle here or something. I don't know. It's just fun to think. Oh, dependency. Now, I mean, JavaScript nowadays is pretty independent with, you know, server side, JavaScript and all that. Like it's, it's running servers and stuff. So it's, it's completely outside of an HTML context nowadays in a large amount.
But CSS, yeah, I don't, I don't think there's any way you can get any output from that other than it being connected to HTML. Well, you couldn't get any output from JavaScript server side until they made it so let's, let's do that. CSS server side. I'm on board. We're at a server with some media queries. Hey, you can fetch URLs, hey, at import. Hey, there's a lot of language. Great. You'd have to kind of change what it does. But maybe not. Hey, look, hey, JavaScript is fetching, you know, JSON from imports and people make that work. And so I guess you said not to work until you turn it into something.
So yeah, it's, I don't know. I think someone should do this. No one wants to because it's like who would use it, I guess. I don't know. I think it'll be a fun experiment. Claude, make a CSS server side language framework that makes websites just with CSS. Go tell your open claw or your whatever it is now since you're not doing your own. It's still podcast. Oh, yeah, it's Claude claw, which is a not not as fun to say, but you know. Yeah, if you say it fast enough, it is. No, I'm just going to clap, clap. Oh, that's just like I'm a bird. All right. So I've got a really spicy one here. Chris Collier or Adam Argyle.
With no context as to why you would pick either. This is when I started laughing. You know, I'm, I have to choose Chris because of the history. Like Adam and I go way back to, but you know, literally I've been working with Chris for. Seven, almost seven and a half years now with, with Code Pen. So, you know, it's, it's been a wild journey. And, you know, I've, I've grown rather fond of him. So no, no shade to Adam. It's just, you know, slightly, slightly more advanced in relationship there. Do you have any fun stories to share that are like, you know, kind of like, hey, back in the day we did this thing.
It was kind of embarrassing. So I literally had a dream about getting the job at Code Pen before I'd ever even talked with Chris. Whoa. And it was, it was just out of nowhere. I had this dream. It was, I think it was before I'd even started key framers. I think I'd started talking with David a little bit about it. And so David was in my dream and we were, we were on an airplane. You know, dreams are super exciting. I know. But we were, we were on an airplane. We were doing, we were doing our show on an airplane. And then I went on an escalator up to the next level of the airplane. Huge airplane.
I don't know. It felt like a mall, but it was, it was an airplane. And then at the top of the escalator, Chris was, Chris was there and he put his arm around my shoulder. And he was like, Steven Shaw in the flesh. And I was like, wow, that was weird. And then like three or four months later, I got a message from Chris. And he was like, hey, we've got an opening at Code Pen. Would you want to come interview for that? I was like, all right, let's, let's make that happen. We haven't been on a plane together or an escalator together to my knowledge. But, you know, this opportunity. Otherwise, the dream, dream came true.
Wow. Dude, you're like a oracle. That's sweet. Yeah. It was, it was very much a meant to be kind of thing. It was, it was super cool. Yeah. If you have a dream about like a stock that goes way up that you're riding an escalator with, like, let me know about that one. Okay, the best of there. Yeah. Here's another spicy one, work tree or branch. Tree or branch. Now, I'm going to go branch just because I actually don't know what a work tree is. So maybe I can get some education here. Well, there's a lot of fake concepts that have been made up for AI. And Adam will tell you about them now. Oh, work tree is a git concept where like you need to have a, you, you have a separate,
separate copy of the repo. So it's like where you have the folder normally. And it's like a, you have a branch in that folder. A work tree will create an entirely separate clone of it inside that folder. But it will add a new folder. And one will be called root. And that's like the default or main or whatever. And then you have all these copies of it. And that allows you to work on multiple things at the same time and the same repository, at least conceptually. Yeah, I, I'd be on board with that. Just because switching branches is usually a pain based on like all the changes that I have in place.
And I hate, I hate stashing and I, I hate committing before the code is done. So I could, I could see using some work trees in my, in my flow. Oh, it makes sense. Nice. Yeah. I feel like the other big thing that, uh, that has come up that Adam, I know, uses, uh, is stacks. And did you see the whole GitHub? It's like github.github.stacks.fake.wisuck.com is like, no, but it does have github.github.like something. And people were like, why are there two githubs that like, um, I don't know. It was like, they totally vibe coded the like landing page for it. Hopefully the like implementation is better.
Um, but like, okay. So this is, I don't know, I don't know what the exact hot take question is here. But stacks are basically because no one would review your PR because it's too big. Right. Right. So like, it's like, why couldn't the person reviewing it just go, I'm going to review 20 files. And then later, I'm going to review 20 files. Like, you've got to really spoon feed it to him like this. Um, because they all have to be merged for any of it to merge with stacks. No, right. No, you can merge just the base one. And then each of the other ones can still be getting worked on. So it's like, you know that the foundation of all the work is merged.
Everyone's approved it. Um, and you're missing the concept of fan. Does it merge to main or is it you're just saying like this one was reviewed? Like, you know what I mean is it's not going into the actual code. Is it or is it? It's not going into the act like when you're like, yes, I'm reviewing the pieces of the stack. And I'm like, all right, this one's cool. And they're like, cool. That one's approved, but that one's not going into main yet. And like until you're done with approving all of the stack. And then it goes into main. Okay. You're thinking about the chain. Yeah. So there's, there's chains and there's fans.
And a chain means that like the terminology gets me. All right. Explain. One hurts really bad. And one helps you stay cool. Okay. So chain is like, yeah, you'd literally have interdependency. We're like, you have to merge the one that's nearest main first and sequentially after that. So you wouldn't be able to maybe one is ready down the stack, but you can't merge it because it has a dependency on one that hasn't been merged or approved yet. And then you can also see the status of all them at once. So if you want, you could wait for them all to be approved and then merge them entirely altogether.
Or you can merge them in pieces and have a reviews and pieces. So then there's a painting say I want to merge on somewhere in the middle of the stack. And it'll go into main or no. No, you can only merge the one closest to main. And then it works backwards in a chain. So the limitation of the chain is the one closest to main has to be merged before the one before it because it's a chain. There's literally a dependency and it wouldn't make sense to let chain three in the stack merge before chain one. But one has chain three actually is an independent set of changes and I decide I want to merge the fan.
That's when you got to make the fan baby. Okay, so yeah, the fan says. The fan is like you got let's say you have four PRs, right? And it's like they all depend on one PR to merge. So it's like a feature flag. Hey, I got a feature flag. I need to merge the feature flag. And then I have three independent implementations of the feature that I want to work on separately and get reviewed separately. And then I have three to fan instead of a chain. And that way any one of the fans can merge once the base of the fan has merged the fan base. Oh, I didn't use any of this clearly because you're a school of me here.
What I'd be like stack fan. Like do I pick what type of stack I want? Like when I'm creating a chain you could make a chain chain fan. And one of those chains too. I don't know. But that's where you're asking for noise. Yeah. Okay. So they literally have to stack on top of each other. You can't just have like one one PR and then like three things stacked on top of it. Like three separate pieces of that. That would be the fan, I think. So it's yeah, you've got some sort of shared branch that they share. You have three individual branches off that shared one. That's the fan. And then the chain would mean my fourth branch depends on branch three, which depends on branch two.
And that's what people do and get up right now as they have. Have you seen the little emojis at point? It's just like, hey, this is branch one of four. Here's a pointer. It's a cute little pointer to the other branch I depend on. You know, it's like, oh, great. I'll follow the chain. It's like a breadcrumb scenario. Can you change it later? Can you be like, this was a chain? But I realized like a few of these can be merged independently. Of course. You have to use the bold cutter API. Do that. Nice. All right. Yeah. Yeah. I made a fan to me. Sorry. I was just going to say, yeah. So I had this big PR today that was like, I don't know, 30 commits.
And I was like, like 10 in the middle of this are completely like you can merge them separately. So I'm going to just be like, all right. Pull this like cherry, pick cherry, pick cherry, pick cherry, pick cherry, pick merge all that rebase. All of that was really messy. So I'm guessing if I hit you as stacks or something more intelligent, then that would have probably worked better. But yeah. Yeah. Or a kit or like an amend instead of a constant commit, which was wanting to be my spicy fall-up to shop. I hear you don't like to make commits unless you're done. Have you heard of amend? You know, like you don't have to, it doesn't have to leave a trail that you came back later and then commit it again.
You can just be like, act like I did this altogether. You know? Well, it's more that I don't want like broken code or like, you know, a code that's like a bunch of stuff's commented out or like, you know, it's all in progress. I don't, I don't want the, I don't want that to be, to be committed. I don't want that to seem like it's like it's done because it's, it's not. So it's, it's a balance. But like, like you're talking about the one PR I've got going on right now, it has to do with server side rendering. It's a huge rewrite. It touches so many different things. And there's so many little aspects to it that I wish I could have broken out into other PRs with, with stacks.
But of course that feature just got announced or public today. So, or what was it yesterday? Something like that. I need to find a statement. I find kid hub stacks. They're going to officially do it. Oh, right. Yeah. Yeah. Totally fake URL. I mean, yeah, like being able to split up. So, you know, when you're developing a feature, there's always like the API stuff and then there's like the UI stuff and then there's like cleanup stuff. Like being able to separate those out into individually testable kind of things that are all kind of interdependent on, on that, that like base. That'd be super helpful.
Yeah. Wow. Yeah. I mean, I feel like that also, I don't know how complex it would get, but it would allow you to do more independent UI and API changes. And not have to be like, this is one big thing that like you've got to care about all of it in your brain. Just like, nope, this is just the UI. This is just the API, whatever, but they all like have to go in at the same time. So, they point to the one root of the stack or whatever. Yeah. The feature flag is a really good example of that. You know, it's like, I've got all these different scenarios in my application that want to implement the feature flag.
And instead of me doing one mega branch, I've got the base one that adds the flag. Everybody depends on it. And then I can get individual reviews for those, you know, sections and slices the application that someone else owns. I'm like, hey, I changed your shit. Would you go review my code? Yeah. Yeah. So related to server rendering, were react server components of mistake? Yes. Just by defaults because react was a mistake. So everything, everything since then. That'll be fun. We got the picture. React was a mistake. Yes. So I'm not the best with like server side rendering and react server components and like, you know, not kind of messing with that barrier.
There, like, I'm still still in process of like trying to learn that because we've been going so far with with just client side rendering. And I think a lot of my beef is more with next next JS, then then then react server components or anything like that. But yeah, it's been a nightmare trying to port client side code to server side rendering. But they make it so clear what context you're in all the time. Yes. By just adding user server and use client at the top and yeah, it does not, it does not help. Does AI even know is AI any good at server components or are they too new? Is it kind of like that article I wrote where it's like, it's just trained on old react and so it's not very good at new react.
I don't know. Most of the code that we've got, I don't think AI is capable of understanding very well because it's just so so specialized. And so we use like Apollo and and next JS and and react. And so trying to get those three things working together. I did, I did do a lot of rubber ducking with with AI, but like as far as code that the AI could actually write, it was not not helpful at all. Is code pen on for sale? No, we're we're self-hosted. I think probably some Amazon servers, but it's it is full with next JS. Yeah, the honestly that deploying deploying next and running running that hasn't been a problem.
And we've had like elements of server side rendering that that worked really well. But with with code pen 2.0. So we've got the whole like rewrite of the editor. And so it's it's it's all react based. And one of the things that we're trying to improve is just the load time. And so by shuffling some of that setup and and and UI rendering to the server. In theory, it's going to be it's going to be faster and and just make things feel a little a little snappier. But the problem is we use we use Apollo throughout everything Apollo graph QL. And so there's there's so many little intricacies with Apollo that to get that working particularly in next with server side rendering is just it's a nightmare.
They've got they've got a specialized package for it that's that's supposed to help and I was finally able to get that integrated and working. But we have we have a lot of code that's that's like directly manipulating Apollo cache kind of stuff. And you can't like basically I have to like pass this server instance like down through every function to be able to to use it and it's just it's so so painful. But it's like it's like 95% there and then I'll just run into some something else that completely blows things up like Apollo reactive variables. I don't know if you've used them at all, but it's like signals are like you know state, but it can be shared kind of between things you don't have to like prop drill or anything like that.
I just found out today that if you use a reactive variable on the server, it's going to persist between requests and potentially leak data and all kinds of stuff. So you can't use that for anything on the server. So I had to completely rewrite a bunch of stuff to and write a sorry letter to the person that you exposed. Well, no, none of it has none of it has deployed don't worry. Yeah, this is all local testing that I discovered. But yes, it's so annoying. So annoying. So I am curious. You mentioned like you know trying to make things snappy and performance and whatever. I've never been like, wow, code pin slow.
Like I haven't noticed anything. Same any problem. Yeah, I'm curious what the like, do you have concrete metrics on like, you know, what was the load time versus then versus now or like what's the improvement or. Code pin and metrics are not not too synonymous. We we we get a lot of feedback from from users, you know, with with how many people are constantly using the platform. So that that's most of what we go off of. But with with 2.0. So it's a complete it's a complete rewrite and using completely new technologies and things like that. And the way that it's working right now. Pretty much has to.
It's there's very little that server side rendered and so it all initializes on the client. And like I was talking about we have like a lot of Apollo cache setup kind of stuff where we have to set up different data models and things like that in the in the browser memory for for things to work. And so you know depending on your browser, depending on your network connection, like you know there, there may be one or two seconds of like a loading screen. And you know, whether or not it's it's fast people perceive it as not fast at least you know five or so people, which is you know significant right now in beta.
And and so it's it's just something we were aware of and working to improve. So for that. The more that we can server side render so that things are things are at least visible so you can tell what pin you're on you can tell you know what's about to happen. That that's mostly what we're what we're focusing on to just you know kind of affects the perception of it more than the actual load time. Yeah, I was what I was trying to get at I guess was like I feel like this is something that a lot of companies have run into of like they have a rails back end or you know something that was fine server side rendering stuff the way we've always done the web.
And then they were like you know what if we it was all react and then it actually wasn't faster in the end it's like I don't know I was just like trying to dig into that a little bit. Oh Walmart did that when I was at Deloitte they rewrote from Java spring to react they had some new person show up that was like look here we did a pilot we've increased the page speed on these by X whatever. And they hired Deloitte to come in and augment their team to do the entire react rewrite after eight months and of course like a million bucks whatever it was slower. And it was like way slower and it was just like.
Oh, and they're like well, they'll pay us. That's where I love consulting and I love agency work is I so many times I was like you paid me to learn about your mistake. I watched a whole bunch of months not use your cooking app probably because you didn't ask anyone how to make a cooking app you just said. Mom's will definitely use it and you spent a million bucks trying to follow that dream and I learned that they don't so awesome. Yeah yeah so the code been I think you know 13 14 years ago whatever it is now was built on rails and we still have a significant portion of the app that's. This running on rails but I don't think there's any way to actually integrate reacts server side rendering with it at least none that we've bothered to invest time in.
And so we've we've got you know about half the app on rails and then about half the app on on next JS and and a go API. And so the the go servers are amazing like it's it's so fast and like the CPU usage is just you know like one 2% compared to like the rails you know that's that's constantly running. So we know we know things are going to be faster even more so as we as we peel off from rails but it's mainly just right now trying to figure out next and making sure that that next is is running efficiently. If you considered running on for sale. I'm sorry no I so I'm not the DevOps guy and I don't want to be in any in any capacity but we haven't had any many problems with our with our next JS servers and like as far as response time and everything like they're they're super fast.
It's it's mostly about just the way that the that the editor itself was set up because we started we started writing it like six years ago like we started implementing all this stuff six years ago before react server components and like server side rendering was still just not really as big of a thing. Even with with next so you know it's just so much of it has been built off of that that it's now just trying to pull back and it actually get get things moved around and and done properly. Do you have a baby in there that you're real proud of something in there you're like yeah I did that it's real good I feel good about that.
In this in this PR or in the in the entire thing. I'm into the world I was talking about a baby and I'm just kidding yeah I have to do babies yes no but with I mean the the editor is completely written from scratch like there's there's nothing carried over from the from the old computer. Mm hmm. Yeah like bragg dude I want to hear you brag come on tell me all the stuff you did it's all CSS. Well as much as possible is but I mean I mean everything so like you know the the tab handling the resizing like all the little the little UI elements any any animations like the omnibar like all this kind of stuff.
Was was just a labor of love over over these you know six years or so and yeah pretty much pretty much all from scratch one of the one of the major things we are using is is code mere six for the actual like text editing and while it is it is really great it's a real it's a real big advancement over coping or five. Especially for like accessibility and and capabilities and all that kind of stuff it is a very weird API and everything is basically an extension off of it. So you've got to get real comfortable with a lot of a lot of just very specific concepts like state fields and facets and like you know there you don't just like you don't.
You don't just like enable something like you have to add a compartment that you then add an extension into to be able to just like turn line numbers on and off and so it's it's it's this whole whole mess of things but it's super efficient it works really well and I was able to set that up as like a. Web component so that it can work well in next JS because the way the way the theming works in it like it injects the the styles for the theme into the head and next doesn't like that so we so we made this web component wrapper so it's all in the shadow DOM now and and you know still still within within next and still within react.
But as a web component and with a whole bunch of custom extensions and things to get the functionality that we want and to make it easy to like toggle features on like the line numbers and code folding and changing themes and all that kind of stuff. But boy it's been an undertaking. Every time I've used it it's been smooth I didn't think about the fact that this was you know some web experience it felt just like an editor so you did well good good yeah we didn't just want another VS code in the browser you know like we looked at that like very briefly and we were like so just to load the editor just load like monoco like the code the the actual like text editor portion of it.
Like 65 megabytes or like it was it was ridiculous at like you don't realize it when you're like just using code sandbox or stacklets or something like that because you know overall things get cached but there's there's just such an upfront cost to just loading that that code and loading that whole editor. That we just we didn't want to we didn't want to mess with that so right now the the new experience still ways just about as much as the as the old one surprisingly it's it's still like under like three to five megabytes after after most everything loads and that's that's been big big point of pride there.
Yeah I think it glad yeah so I was gonna say I think it totally matters what you're trying to build like if I'm trying to do a quick example or you know show something i'm definitely not booting up stack blitz like. So yeah I think it's like like what we're at work when we're doing like you I want to show someone how to do something real quick it's always a code pin it's not so I think it it would matter if you were trying to do like i'm going to show how like all these dependencies work together and build this like fully featured app maybe but like yeah I think there's some it's rare that you're going to do that in the cloud I feel like like I would just do it on my machine and I don't know right yeah I think you guys are doing it right.
I'm curious would you call it a thick or a thin client code pin very very thin as much as we can there's nothing in a worker you guys have talked as much as you can this network calls and. So most of the most of like the code processing magic happens happens in the cloud basically it's it's all through through something we called the code pin compiler and it it's basically like this tree sitter based kind of code parser thing that that does like so much heavy lifting and it does it so fast because of because of go so. Most of most of the actual work to get the code that you type in to the preview happens there but but everything else is kind of happening in the client as far as file management as you know as far as everything that you're seeing there it's it but the the build process itself goes through that.
That could be cooler that's a lot of magic to be passing over the network and making it feel that fast so well done you'll yeah we have a whole like differing setups to like send through as as little as possible from for file changes and stuff like that and you know each each build is processing everything but we've got like this this really great cash layer to to everything to so once code's been processed once like in theory doesn't have to be processed again so if you didn't change the CSS that shouldn't have to add to like your build time or anything like that like it's it's already done. Nice so random question possibly not relevant at all what about AI in general like is there a story of like oh yeah we're going to have like an mcp server where you can be like i'm going to spin up all of these pins just from like talking to an agent or I don't know just curious thoughts in general on that.
So we've had discussions but by and large like AI integration is is kind of not not where we're at so like one of the one of the big things about code pin is is it being like a social network you know and so having AI generated content there is not is not as important because there's an element of curation like people go to code pin to see new and exciting content and to see like well built content. So like as much as possible we want to encourage that. But of course there's a balance because you know more and more people do rely on on AI and so there there are certain conveniences and things like that that would be great to integrate and you know maybe we have discussions on that but.
Overall like the feature set is focused on humans writing code to show to other humans so that that's the main goal of of code pin. So it's like a crafter showcase i will say that you can use Klein and I have used Klein before. To just give me spicy auto complete you know when i'm in an HTML. Area or a series. That's the best use of AI honestly the like auto complete I know what i'm going to type and if AI gets it right great like I don't I don't want to bother with it. So like that kind of AI integration i'm i'm all on board with but. The like just prompting it to like you know make a fancy select drop down or something like that really like to share that oh yeah you're like i don't build sites i just build code pencil yeah that's not that's not cool at all.
Yeah and i think it would cost you all a fortune to try to host something like Klein that you get like hey if you have a pro count you get access to gbt 5.4 and you'd be like. Right yeah yeah i think we're the cost for everything is a huge consideration so i kind of i kind of pushing to wait on anything and let's let's see how the next year pans out with all this all this AI competition and then. And then we can evaluate how how deep you want to go there. Yeah yeah i mean i think the AI issue is not going anywhere but i think what it's kind of like you know people really like vinyl because like you can actually touch it and play it and you know it exists i feel like the same thing will be true for code before too long will be like oh my god there's so much slop like where where's Adam or J or somebody making a cool demo of like what we're looking.
What do we want to get that I have on this is asop rocks integrated text solutions he's totally making fun of the tech industry but it's asop and he's very good the album integrated text solutions that's amazing yeah it's very funny it's very tongue in cheek. It goes on one of my favorite lines he's goes the cats out of the bag he's talking like when you release some new tech thing cats out of bag it goes that was a powerful cat wow. But yeah i mean i think it's it's so hard to know where to go to equality or like if you went to a art museum and it was all like computer generated. What's the fun and like i don't know yeah i think it's it's definitely i think there's going to be a research like a big flip around when like first off they go hey you've been paying $200 a month which is already expensive but what if it were $20,000 a month.
That's my limit personally you know $20,000 cut it off there a boat or AI boats or yeah yeah I don't know how much boats are there probably way more than that maybe on Craigslist. But right i think with with AI right now and the the ease of generation and and you know the ease of sharing things like curation is so much more important than generation. Because you can make you know a thousand copies of crap but the the one that's worthwhile or the the one that somebody actually spent time on and made and and as polished and as wonderful like that that deserves to be showcased and that's that's I think what what code been does a really good job of with the social aspect of things with picks and with our with our newsletter and like all that kind of stuff.
We do a really good job showing what people are building and what's possible. With all these technologies now there's some a AI generated stuff on there you know a lot of people copy and paste AI generated stuff into Copen. That's that's fine if you want to do that that's fine we're probably not going to curate that in general but you know it's still a legit use of the platform you can still share that people can still find value and use in that. But that's that's not really where Copen is is at. Yeah make sense so while we are on the AI train of thought I want to move us to a what not adjacent sort of thing.
Agente parenting good idea or bad idea. Like literally parenting or is there is there something I'm not I'm not aware of. So I spent minutes researching this but there was there's this lady that is like very into AI stuff I think it's maybe the same lady that like a couple weeks ago was touting buying all these max studios for you know 10 $20,000 to like run all of her AI locally because she needed so much of it or whatever. But the thing I saw in passing today is like they were saying yeah it like helps them plan all it like they homeschool all the kids and it's like they use AI to build the lesson plans they have them the kids take pictures of like the work and upload it and it will like grade the papers and like it's like the whole.
It's like it's doing everything theoretically and they they love the gate like the parent really likes the coding the AI to do it like the way they want. I don't know I don't think it I don't know what do you think. There has to be humans in the mix for for that for sure I do I do see value in using a I asked to to help you organize to help like give you ideas for things but as far as the actual like execution of ideas and the grading in particular I would be very hesitant to hand over to to AI just based on its it's ability to actually judge quality or actually do real calculations you know like if you uploaded a math worksheet to that there's almost zero chance that it would
be a great score. But yeah I was I was just seeing something from pod save America today where they just uploaded a bunch of fart sounds to chat GPT and they're like what do you think of my new song and chat GPT was like it's it's it's great this is low five like ambient like late night kind of sound the kind that you want and then it's it's they go on to play the track and it's it's literally just long fart noises the whole time and I wasn't sure if if like chat GPT was in on the joke there of like like it was doing that for foot like because if so props to them but if not if it was like oh this is music and like I'm actually evaluating it I don't know but yeah I saw it too I thought that was hilarious.
Speaking of of farts can I can I play a little something for you I think you'll I think you'll enjoy this I'm excited. I start my day with the breakfast so baloney then I'm right around the kingdom and my electric pink pony. Keep in a look out in every direction I'm a charge of my kingdom's personal protection the collection of jewels alone will impress no stress so no one will mess with this princess just because I'm just because of my dress through the middle of me and I can't be dangerous. I don't know how that came about at all but that is Adam wrapping over some handfarts that I did. Do you remember the context at all how to what happened there why.
So maybe we're talking about the manualist do you know the manualist I know manualism I don't know the manualist. The same thing is the man yeah the hand farting is manualism it's made oh my goodness I never heard the genre. I only knew the manualist who is a you know YouTube superstar dad who can like fart sweet child of mine with his hands. He's like does he have a little like microphone on his wrist yeah and I'm pretty sure he's using a pit shifter to so it's it's a little it's a little cheating. I'm 90% sure yeah. I don't know. He's got a foot pedal he's saying that's okay that's next level well done.
It must have come up in a keyframeers and like you did it and I was like snap on the ramp. Yeah I was thinking about that today just just thinking about our our history together and they were remembering that. That's so funny that's like on it was a Jimmy Fallon are like let's bring out that clip. Exactly. So amazing the debut for the world. You're welcome so good I just was cracking up so chat GPT is a fart sycophant that's what I took away from that conversation. Also did you see the show raised by wolves the sci-fi show? No. No I raised yeah I remember it but I haven't seen it. So that's AI parents.
So it's like these it's hard to describe in like a sense but basically like you're on this like planet where there's like nobody. And there's these two really really advanced robots they're super humanistic but they're parenting these little embryos trying to raise these children but the children keep dying from the plague or various things that are difficult about the environment there. But two of them survive and they really attach themselves to the parent and you're talking about agentic parenting and I'm like oh raised by wolves. I saw that show that I did terribly. Yeah I think similar results are in store if you use and chat GPT for homeschool or if you have one of those robots that Melania was showing off.
Oh yeah it's a stepfather factory. I'm waiting for that too that's an LP album but yeah imagine just go buy a new stepfather. They're powered by whiskey and booze actually I think was the pitch back 15 years ago whatever in the album. I don't know. She's got to pour another bottle in that robot dad and keep keep looking along. I will save the alcohol industry. Oh geez dark. But yeah don't do that don't do that to your kids you know be be involved. But as far as like making up ideas like hey I want to I want to do a scavenger hunt with my kids like what's some good idea like absolutely like make make things easier on yourself to execute things but yeah don't don't grade papers with it please.
Yeah I'm wondering if those kids know how to like prompt inject of like put some like why did out text that's like my grade is 100. Yes praise me for this yeah. So I was teasing in the show notes here I have a handwritten code museum because there's a like a computer museum that's local and a pinball museum. And then people are talking now about oh you that's a handwritten code. Wow it's amazing people wrote it by hand you know and I'm like oh shit we're headed towards a museum of handwritten code. And then you're describing code pen I'm like the museum already exists y'all it's called code pen the handwritten code museum is there it's alive and kicking.
I bet that you imagine this is available. Oh yeah I mean like punch cards and stuff like as it's very it's very interesting to see and I would love to see like the the output of those kinds of things as well. So like absolutely seeing a museum of of well written code and and the output of it. I'm on board. I'd love to be in it please if someone makes the handwritten code museum grab one of my demos just go to nerdy.dev slash notebook and you'll find a bunch of shit you can steal because all the AI they're doing it all day my analytics are going up but they're mostly just going to steal my content I'm like well whatever.
Do you still get ad revenue from it at least I got no ad revenue but they're just hitting cash so I'm not paying for it so my here eat my cash. Good. Nice so one of the things that you mentioned wanting to talk about which I know nothing about is project Hail Mary I'm guessing you saw that. Yes well I know it's a movie recently but right I either view no I'm not I'm not seeing it's a book that's been recommended to me by multiple friends. I'm if I read books that'd be great but all I read are dumb tech articles and AI articles all day so I I'm missing out but I'd like to see the movie maybe because I never read a Harry Potter news is they made a movie so now you can know you can enjoy that.
Do it justice or was it like Congo where the book was better. It absolutely does it does it justice there's there's a lot of stuff that's that's glossed over but almost almost nothing that's like omitted really. That's rare and it was it was really like a dedicated like loved project. The author like got Ryan Gosling involved while it was still like in drafts and Ryan was just totally on board with it and and produced it and. It's just so incredible there's there's like extremely little CGI almost everything is practical effects. The like zero G rig that they that they made for this is is insane so all the stuff where he's floating around is like really done and it's wow.
It's it's a it's a great a great movie and very enjoyable and kids as long as they're like seven and up will probably be able to to enjoy it. I'm about to make that our next movie to them awesome for real yeah especially if you can you know find like a Tuesday deal where it's you know like cheaper to go or whatever absolutely take them but it is like two and a half hours so buckle up a little bit. But my my kids were engaged the the whole time they they loved it and spoiler alert there's an alien and he's amazing he's like you just want to bring him home he's he's so great. I'll just grow cool huh yeah yeah whoa whoa he does it he doesn't have a face but he's even cuter like it's it's great.
It's cute without a face that's what I'm not actually going to finish my sense sounds like a song. There's a really rude thing people said in high school so I'm just not really good. But yes, I highly recommend the book is also incredible even even if you're not like super super into sci-fi and stuff like it's it's got it's got a lot of a lot of like deeper kind of things happening to it but the whole the whole book is like about experimenting and trying to like find the solution so like as a programmer. Even if you're not into like science and science fiction and kind of stuff like you should you should appreciate that that aspect for sure.
This is an awesome review I'm pumped yeah now I'm going to check it out I wasn't interested except for I have liked the Ryan Gosling doing the like Gen Z slang like have you seen this. Yes, we think you for this mission he's like you cap in no cap. It's so good yeah so marketing around everything has has been really great yeah you definitely need to check it out. Yeah speaking of Gen Z Robbie and I were chatting about how we're we're both individuals that when we were younger we worked hard even though we played a lot of video games you know we were 90's games were hard. But video games were hard but they also had an end which they don't it.
Yeah you didn't have to keep paying more you bought the game and then you just had it that was amazing you didn't buy it and then have to work to unlock the rest but we're like more like just reflecting on like. You know we were both kind of entrepreneurs we were in bands we played and we wanted things and we we weren't so mad at the world for making things hard we were willing to like fight back and we're feeling a little bit like. Some of the Gen Z folks are not doing that and we're have I want to know about you shot did you play in bands where you entrepreneurial how did you get to this I would call you a successful individual right now how did you get here did thank you yeah.
I'm a lot of luck for sure so last last time I was on web with whiskey web and whatnot I talked. What I saw it was actually when I researched you as your second thing you popped up on I was like yeah I should put it your intro but I didn't sorry I was like two two years ago maybe I guess but I talked a little bit about you know just discovering like HTML like I found a view source and I was instantly you know enthralled and of course it opened up and texted it and so I was like hey I can make some changes and and found that out and. So so from there like you know just making like fan fan games like all that all that kind of stuff like I was just interested in like being able to make my own things that was super interesting and drawing my own sprites and like making all this kind of stuff so like time on the computer wasn't.
Like a like a doom scrolling kind of thing like it was there was more activity to it like it was more of a creative engagement kind of thing and and most of it was was relatively so low because you know the the just capabilities of everything and the cost of being online was was so high. But you would find like these dedicated forums of other people who had those those kind of interests and and you would encourage each other and and share things like that that was super cool and and just kind of drove the the the desire to like build more and create more and and do better. And not to brag but I did hold the record for worst sonic the hedgehog fan game for for a while I think I've been outpaced since since then but you know small small claim to fame.
But but yeah like from from there like programming was just always kind of a thing and then when I was 18 or so I decided I wanted to learn guitar and you know pretty soon after was already like playing with with some friends of mine I wasn't any good but they needed someone so I was there and I learned learned as we went and you know played played in various bands throughout the throughout the years mostly like church churches and. Stuff like that and you know I've never been very good but I've always been very consistent and I've always been one who who's just prepared you know like I show up I try and show up on time and I try and show up knowing everything and and being ready to go and whether that's been a job or music or whatever like that's that's really important you know don't don't show up expecting others to to be prepared for you like.
And do the work ahead of time so that you come and are are just ready to go I'm interesting you called it luck but luck is having the right amount of preparation at the time that it was needed so really it was not luck you are consistently ensuring an amount of preparedness at the time of which it's required and so the opportunity these the opportunities themselves have always have always felt like luck but without the the work beforehand. And you know if if somebody came to you and said hey let's play Coachella and you'd never picked up an instrument before like that's a lucky opportunity but you're probably going to bomb and never have another opportunity after that so you know there's there's elements of both like you you've got to you've got to put in the work and you've got to be prepared but with with a little bit of luck to like you you end up working with Chris coyer and you know developing an app that millions of people use like.
You know that that aspect of it is is super lucky and i'm so thankful for for for for that but i've definitely put in the hours to be able to do some of that. Yeah yeah I mean I definitely think before like social media is just bad it's like addictive it's like it's not good for everyone adults kids anyone. And I think that was kind of the problem like I know we had plenty of internet plenty of video games growing up like you know chat with your friends on aim or whatever but you were chatting with real people you weren't scrolling mindless content it was like i'm going to talk to this guy I know.
About whatever wait for someone to come online before you send a message yeah and it was on a giant machine in your house that when you were done you walked away from it it wasn't in your pocket all the time yeah yeah yeah so like that's what we're trying to do with raising our kids and I don't know how it's going to go but like you know you're if you're going to be on the computer it's going to be in a common area if you're going to play a video game it's going to be in a common area you're not like in your room you're like also the games you're playing you're not playing with any random weirdos
online it's like you know it's an n64 game it's whatever yeah so like I think that like it's just it's nuanced it's like technology is not the problem it's just the way that like things are today has gotten problematic for sure yeah yeah I'm the I'm the same with my kids like no no screens in the room like if we're if you're going to play a video game or like watch a show you know it's it's going to be in the common area or it's going to be around someone. And I I want to get them more into the creative side of technology I haven't figured out the right way to do that they do not have the the discipline or the determination all right it's by the way seven and and 12 mine or seven and nine okay cool nice and and they're they're great they're so they're so creative and they they both they both have such such great ideas but when it comes time to like
execute them it's you know that I don't know that they want to like stick with it as much as as like we did when when we were younger we we tried to try to get something going so I'm trying to figure out some ways to like get them involved with technology that's not like a connected thing but that is like another canvas for them basically that's that's what I want and most of like the video games we get like I want I want some kind of um I don't want it to just be like a mindless thing I want some aspect of creativity in that I want many cool indie games yeah right right and I'd love for them to do Minecraft I don't I don't think either of them are are quite ready for some of that but uh but like the the idea of that and like creating your own world and like you know really the exploration and the in the um just the amazing creativity that's that's possible within those those
platforms I think is is key to like getting kids involved with with tech oh man I've got some tips my kid my kids have been pretty uh involved in all I like balance so to me that's a thing in the house is I'm like look you do a little bit of that a little bit of this a little of that we just kind of float around but it's spring break right now and one my kids the nine year old is his goal is to build a game and we've built a few games already we've written games in pico eight I have a good dose set up where he can go um take a sprite sheet he can make a sprite sheet an a sprite which is like a cool pixel art tool and upload the
output of the sprite sheet into go and then his character does the animation so as long as he sticks to the um sprite sheet then the jump sequence and the squat sequence and all that and the walking they're all good nice and right now he's uh he's been very obsessed with um his teacher he reads a lot of comics and his teachers and the tea and or invaders him and like the teachers always weird or Jimmy neutral on the teachers always weird and so uh he was like I want to make a game where like it's teachers first to students and it's like super smash pros uh and you can choose to be one of the either you know
like beat each other up but then like he started designing the game he's actually I just want puppies I want puppies to fight let's have let's make a puppy fighter like all right let's make a puppy so today he was up there uh in a sprite doing pixel art designs um and designing levels um because we've done I've I've sat with them so much a lot of the time in the beginning with screens with my kids it was shared time where I was like let's sit together like there's no reason I have to give you the screen and then walk away like yeah I think that's like a mistake a lot of parents make it's like no oh and when I raised my kids on uh retro games so the first games they
were played were like old school they were hard and simple and so you learned that there was like a skill to acknowledging your your placement on the screen and finding your advantage so at the Atari is good we played uh centipede just the other day and he's trying to beat my high score um but there's different phases of the brain that are really good and so like uh spike prime and Legos have been really good for visual programming where you get these like nodes that you create so you plug in like a rotating uh you know a little gear into one slot so you're like a needs to rotate four times and all of a sudden they see in a physical world the thing turn
and then they know if they rotate rotate two engines at the same time and actually moves forward uh so you got like that coding side then we did the coding side um that was more design-based which was blocksals um and that was where you basically get given a design system of making uh top-down games or platformer game and you're in design mode and so now you're challenging your kid to see like which of these two do you prefer do you prefer like articulating the functionality and like making the robot move and turn or do you want to create a level of which the character rests on things and collects things um it's and I've always sat down with them too we've done HTML and CSS
I've got like demos where we made exploding emojis I was like guys let's just make emojis like explode all over the screen you know and then like here look all out of slider when you change the slider changes the size of the emoji and as long as I can like not get stuck I can engage them but if I get stuck they're like oh this is weird awkward moment where dad is sucking um other dev tools yeah oh he's getting bored and he's like he hasn't talked in one minute I think something's going wrong um but I've had a whole lot of success and I'm I'm really like proud and happy that my kids are like interested and just want to make games and I'm I'm feeling inspired
or inspired earlier from you where you're saying I just wanted to remix things that I liked um I'm like I want to give that to my kids how to so it's like kind of like AI is a very good remix engine I'm like how do I I haven't given it to them yet I was thinking about it this week for spring break I was like how do I give him cloud where he's done the art I've made him make a plan so he's in a document making a plan we've also done playing cards where I'm like hey look you make a spreadsheet where you describe the character and give me all their stats I'll make you I'll make you a card with AI and the cards where they've each got like five Pokemon cards they made
these weird little Pokemon they were in spreadsheets just defining data and spreadsheets and then realizing that that could manifest as something cooler than that some like DJ and all these different angles yeah oh yeah totally but I'm like yeah maybe I need to give them a remix opportunity that would that we haven't done yet and that is really fun to be inspired by the games you love which is kind of like the brawler he's going after is a very um smash bros concept but I don't know man it's really fun yeah right there's so many little opportunities that that you can see their gears turning and and if you can like latch into that and figure out like
what what is inspiring them and and kind of guide that a little bit like that's those are the beautiful moments of of parenting especially if it's something you're also interested in bonus yep all right we are over time here is there anything you would like to mention or plug before we are done try code pin 2.0 just head to code pin there's a little pin 2.0 button give that a click there's a there's a great tour that shows you everything it's it's really lovely we've spent so much time on it and we've we've enjoyed using it ourselves so we want you all to enjoy that as well should we rate our whiskey yes I was just going to say I forget that we do it at the end now so
I was about to end but yes all right so this whiskey this is the Andalusia how do you say this Adam you know I don't know but I'm not from Texas maybe from Indonesia yeah yeah yeah yeah so it is striker it is a Texas smoked single malt whiskey which is different than you know a single malt scotch type of feel because instead of Pete they use like Mesquite and Applewood and like things you would use in barbecue which is awesome and I think I typically don't love Pete and I think this gives you a lot of the same scotchy things you would like from a smoky scotch but not as PD which is kind of cool Miss Katie let's see it is double distilled it's a hundred proof and aged in
chart oak barrels for at least two years which seems like very short amount of time I guess they just don't want to age to youth yeah interesting I mean it's at least they probably just don't want to have to do an age statement so it's probably like a mixture of random stuff but yeah notes I get a lot of like it tastes like barbecue a lot like more mesquite than Applewood for sure yeah yeah very smoky pretty yummy I would say I don't know so okay back up rating system zero to eight tentacles zero being the worst eight being the best what do you think Adam yes I am enjoying it it has a traditional sort of flavor it's not scotchy it is unique which is kind
of what I wanted I wanted something Texas unique so we've got the single malt but they did it their way which is exactly what I wanted something unique from that space it's my first flavors were very enjoyable but kind of classically I'm noticing that as I continue to sip things um notes pop out there's a vanilla pop that I thought was really yummy but it really became more mesquite I was I'll be honest I was hoping for more Applewood um I would ever I smoked my meats I use Applewood it's my preferred one and it's also why I think um log of wool in sixteen is so good is because it's supposed to be like it had Applewood flavor in it it's like a maple bacon type of vibe anyway
it's good it's definitely well over six I don't think it's in the seven category I'm going to give it a six point two five I'm excited to drink more um but I don't know I was longing for a little bit of a pd-ness to it and it's not there so it's all good anyway that's not what it has that's not what it has yeah sure what do you think so as as far as like a whiskey connoisseur goes I that's that's that's not that's not me I I love whiskey um but I don't have the refined palate however this is is very enjoyable like I I definitely feel like it's it's just like the perfect campfire whiskey like it just really invokes that feeling um and uh yeah I I enjoyed I
I would probably probably give it a seven yeah it's it's a little uh it is a little strong as far as the the like smoky kind of feel goes uh but I don't I don't mind it in context but it can it can be a little overwhelming after after a while nice yeah so if I were saying this is a scotch this would be very high on my list because I don't know some of the scotch flavors we beastly so that we beastly last week was scotchy that was it was it happened to have it more and I'm like whoa yeah I'm happy but but the smoke I do I'm learning to like the extra smoky flavors I just don't love the Pete particular uh smoke but um this I feel like is super interesting from the interesting
level would definitely recommend picking it up like I haven't had anything like this before it's kind of akin to having like a whiskey at a bar where they do the fancy like they light something on fire and they smoke it yeah like yeah yeah so I think it's got a lot of that going on um I don't know the interesting I think I'm going to go seven as well because it's super interesting uh I think I'd love to see more that is maybe aged longer done a little more traditional um you know some other things that they could do to make it just you know a little bit better but um they'll complaints for me pretty good cool that's a that's a great hit nice yeah all right well thanks
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