98: Tech Careers, Hot Takes, and Wix with Emmy Cao and Yoav Abrahami

Robbie Wagner: [0:00:10] What’s going on everybody? Welcome to another Whiskey Web and Whatnot, with myself, RobbieTheWagner and my co-host as always, Charles William Carpenter III.

Chuck Carpenter: [0:00:19] My friends call me Chuck. that’s why I don’t let Robbie do it.

Robbie Wagner: [0:00:23] Yeah, yeah, that’s fair. We have two special guests today from Wix. You guys want to quickly introduce yourselves and tell everyone a little bit about what you do.

Emmy Cao: [0:00:34] Yeah, I’m Emmy. I am a developer advocate at Wix and I’ve been here for about a year and a half.

Yoav Abrahami: [0:00:41] Yeah, I’m Joav from Wix. I’m with the company for, let’s say, a short period of time. I hired the first backend developer for Wix 16 years ago.

Chuck Carpenter: [0:00:50] Oh, wow.

Yoav Abrahami: [0:00:51] And kind of built off of things that works.

Emmy Cao: [0:00:54] Yeah, so he created my job, so thank you.

Robbie Wagner [0:00:58] Nice, nice.

Chuck Carpenter: [0:00:59] He’s made many things for Wix.

Emmy Cao: [0:00:54] Yes.

Yoav Abrahami: [0:01:02] There’s one or two things.

Chuck Carpenter: [0:01:04] Excellent, All right. Well, we’ll start with a little whiskey today, as we often do. Today we have selected the Restoration Rye from Castle & Key. It is their single barrel, also barrel proof, So it’s going to be a hot one. At 121.3 proof. It is aged four years in charred oak barrels, they say. The mash bill is 17% corn, 63% rye and 20% malted barley. Cool thing about this place it’s a newer distillery, but it’s actually in one of the oldest distilleries in Kentucky. It’s the old Colonel Taylor distillery in Frankfurt. They restored it some years ago, started distilling their own stuff, I think in 2018, and here’s one of their products. I’m going to do a little pop there and then I’m going to do a little pour and then we can get into it Some.

Emmy Cao: [0:01:58] Some ASMR.

Robbie Wagner: [0:01:59] Yeah.

Chuck Carpenter: [0:02:00] All-righty.

Robbie Wagner: [0:02:01] It smells like some black pepper and bergamot to me.

Chuck Carpenter: [0:02:07] Bergamot? Bergamot’s a very specific descriptor.

Yoav Abrahami: [0:02:10] I can feel the black pepper and also there’s a feel of honey and some flowers.

Emmy Cao: [0:02:16] I don’t have the vocabulary yet to describe what I’m experiencing.

Chuck Carpenter: [0:02:22] Yeah, you just try to associate it as closely as you can to something else that is tangible to other people. But it’s all kind of random.

Emmy Cao: [0:02:28] I’m trying to separate the alcohol.

Chuck Carpenter: [0:02:30] Yeah, I’m getting a little like musty mossy too. In mine, but maybe I just have some allergies. I think it’s some of that. Yeah, okay, oh.

Emmy Cao: [0:02:42] No.

Chuck Carpenter: [0:02:45] No apricot whatsoever in that.

Robbie Wagner: [0:02:47] I would agree Yeah.

Chuck Carpenter: [0:02:49] I get. I get a little bit of that peppery like black pepper, like you said, and a little bit of like banana peel.

Robbie Wagner: [0:02:56] Really? Let me try that again.

Emmy Cao: [0:02:58] I kind of understand the banana peel.

Chuck Carpenter: [0:03:00] Right, okay, I’m not, let’s see here.

Yoav Abrahami: [0:03:04] The first thing is that it’s super smooth, It doesn’t fight you back and it’s really nice to drink this whiskey.

Chuck Carpenter: [0:03:12] Nice Yeah for 121 proof. I actually don’t think it’s that painful really. Yeah, I’m used to a lot of burning on the way down for that kind of stuff.

Yoav Abrahami: [0:03:21] No burn at all. Yeah, it feels like you know. You said it’s four years old. Yeah, it feels like something like 20 years old. Right, there’s no burn. A lot of flavor. It is developing in the mouth long aftertaste. I really like it.

Chuck Carpenter: [0:03:34] Yeah, okay, cool. You were saying that you were going down the rye path of things. What would you say is your favorite rye right now?

Yoav Abrahami: [0:03:43] Oh, there’s no I can’t remember the name.

Chuck Carpenter: [0:03:46] Okay.

Yoav Abrahami: [0:03:47] I think there’s one from actually Douglas Slang. That was a rye one, yeah, but that’s from Scotch, that’s not Bourbon.

Chuck Carpenter: [0:03:58] Okay, okay.

Yoav Abrahami: [0:04:01] I have to confess I’m more into Scotch, simply because I worked in a company from the UK.

Chuck Carpenter: [0:04:05] Oh, okay. Yes.

Yoav Abrahami: [0:04:05] By the way, tech Company.

Chuck Carpenter: [0:04:07] Yes.

Yoav Abrahami: [0:04:08] And this is how I got into whiskey.

Chuck Carpenter: [0:04:10] You know, one does run into the other sometimes, you know

Yoav Abrahami: [0:04:14] It does, it does.

Chuck Carpenter: [0:04:15] It’s been about 20 years for me in Tech and gosh, I don’t know. I’ve been drinking for all of those 20 years.

Robbie Wagner: [0:04:21] Yeah, you liked whiskey beforehand though.

Chuck Carpenter: [0:04:24] Yeah, that’s true, I’m from Kentucky originally. So, that’s kind of part of it, so on the other side of the spectrum then, Emmy, what do you think?

Emmy Cao: [0:04:32] I am at the stage where I am just a couple years into. Well, I turned 21 the fall before the pandemic.

Chuck Carpenter: [0:04:41] Okay.

Emmy Cao: [0:04:42] So my friends always had birthdays later than me, and so I never drank outside that much, and most of my experience with alcohol has just been. Will this get me drunk? And if so, then okay.

Chuck Carpenter: [0:05:02] Right, right.

Emmy Cao: [0:05:03] That’s good. But yeah, since I started work and the folks at Wix they’re all very knowledgeable about different drinks and have been trying to get me to understand a little more.

Chuck Carpenter: [0:05:16] Yeah, I think the more things you try, you kind of develop that vocabulary over time. And also, like, you kind of figure out what you like, yeah, so this will be an interesting aspect of it then, because we usually do a rating thing. It’s one to eight tentacles because of the octopus thing. One being like terrible, never give this to me again. Eight being like this is amazing, I want to drink this all the time. And then sort of anything in between there. So in context, you don’t have to necessarily compare that to other whiskeys either. It’s just like do I enjoy having this thing? and compared to I don’t know, maybe you’ve had Fireball like, compared to Fireball, would you rather have this or that? And then we also, like tend to segment it out based on the kinds of whiskeys we’ve tried. So, like we’ll compare this to other rice. We’ll have like a bourbon or a Scotch and kind of like keep those. But we’re also, like every week doing new whiskeys. So it’s just a little easier to contextualize. But the scale isn’t that serious anyway. And so I just like to say frame it however it works for you, right, like, if you’re like would I rather have this or a beer, or is the beer, a Miller Lite or a nice, you know, IPA or something, so totally arbitrary, and you can kind of set it in that way. I’ll kick it off, just so you guys kind of know how we do it. So yeah, again for rice, I agree with you.

I think this is extremely smooth, for the proof of it. I love the presentation. I like kind of the story behind it and everything else. Albeit, I always tend to kind of like use Sagamore Rye as kind of our baseline And that’s a Rye that is price-wise. I think it’s great. You can get a plain like normal 90-proof Sagamore Rye for like $35. Super good, super tasty, you can sip it all the time. This one, I think, was $70, but again, it’s a barrel proof, a single barrel of like little limited I think. Twice a year they released this one And for that smoothness and stuff I think I’m gonna give it a seven. I love the presentation. I think the price was like $70. That’s also on DoorDash, so it might be a little skewed And at this proof it’s gonna get me drunk Emmy.

Emmy Cao: [0:07:17] Oh, it’s not, don’t ask me about how I’m feeling.

Chuck Carpenter: [0:07:22] So, yeah, I’m gonna kick it to you first, and then we’re gonna come back.

Emmy Cao: [0:07:25] All right, all right, you know, I think I would also give it about a seven.

Chuck Carpenter: [0:07:30] Yeah?

Emmy Cao: [0:07:31] Now, I wouldn’t drink it like a juice.

Chuck Carpenter: [0:07:34] Yeah, no, that’s not recommended.

Emmy Cao: [0:07:36] I do understand that that’s not what alcohol is for And I took literally a sip and I’m warming up a little bit. Granted, I am Asian, so it’s always, you know, like I already have a bit of like a lower tolerance than most people. But I do feel like if I finish what I have left, which is not very much, I’m gonna walk out of here looking a little redder than usual. But compared to you know, the basis for comparison I have is like Fireball.

Chuck Carpenter: [0:08:11] Right, yeah, no.

Emmy Cao: [0:08:13] But that stays with you after you drink It like lingers and it burns.

Chuck Carpenter: [0:08:18] Yeah.

Emmy Cao: [0:08:19] Yeah.

Chuck Carpenter: [0:08:20] It’s intended to hang around for a while.

Robbie Wagner: [0:08:21] So, yeah, the next morning it hangs around, yeah, yeah.

Emmy Cao: [0:08:26] No, for real. But if I were to, you know, enjoy having a drink. I think I actually prefer being a lightweight and not having to drink as much. The efficiency.

Chuck Carpenter: [0:08:36] There you go.

Emmy Cao: [0:08:37] It’s very efficient.

Robbie Wagner: [0:08:38] Yeah.

Emmy Cao: [0:08:40] And it for what was it 120?

Chuck Carpenter: [0:08:41] 121 proof.

Emmy Cao: [0:08:42] 121 proof. That’s not bad at all, I think.

Chuck Carpenter: [0:08:47] Yeah, excellent, I think you’re lucky. I think we got you on a good one, yeah.

Emmy Cao: [0:08:52] Have you tried bad ones on podcasts?

Robbie Wagner: [0:08:54] Oh yeah, oh yeah.

Chuck Carpenter: [0:08:55] Bad ones?

Emmy Cao: [0:08:56] That must be a blast.

Robbie Wagner: [0:08:57] Yeah, we’ve had bad, bad whiskeys. Yeah.

Chuck Carpenter: [0:08:58] Oh yeah, yeah, like bad whiskeys, bad ones, that’s bad. That’s bad branding. Oh yeah, we’ve had a few that have been.

Emmy Cao: [0:09:06] But the bottle is very nice, it’s very hefty, it feels luxurious.

Chuck Carpenter: [0:09:10] Yeah.

Emmy Cao: [0:09:11] And I will judge a book by its cover.

Robbie Wagner: [0:09:14] Oh yeah.

Emmy Cao: [0:09:14] Sometimes that’s how you.

Robbie Wagner: [0:09:15] It’s true Sometimes. It’s usually accurate, yeah.

Emmy Cao: [0:09:18] When you get it on DoorDash. That’s just how you have to judge things. It’s not like you can taste it.

Robbie Wagner: [0:09:22] Right, yeah.

Chuck Carpenter: [0:09:25] Yoav?

Yoav Abrahami: [0:09:26] So for me, I have to say I have a little bit of debate between six and seven. Okay, because when I taste the whiskey as-is, it could have been more complex, it could have been a little more deep, so with that in mind, that would be a six.

Chuck Carpenter: [0:09:41] Okay.

Yoav Abrahami: [0:09:42] But when I factor in the age, which is just four years old which is amazing for whiskey, four years old, to be that good, I would say it’s definitely a seven.

Chuck Carpenter: [0:09:52] Nice, yeah. I like that.

Robbie Wagner: [0:09:54] Yeah, I think I would agree, and I do judge everything by how it looks. So the bottle is nice and, yeah, the taste is good. I think compared to Sagamore, which is kind of our baseline, it’s still pretty good. I would say seven, I think.

Chuck Carpenter: [0:10:08] Yeah, so uniform sevens across the board. It’s too bad we weren’t in Vegas right now.

Yoav Abrahami: [0:10:14] I love the way that the bottle looks like. It’s really, really nice-looking bottle.

Chuck Carpenter: [0:10:20] Yeah, I think they’ve done a great job on that.

Emmy Cao: [0:10:23] She’s got some curves.

Chuck Carpenter: [0:10:25] Yes, nice indentation, you could tell, because there are certain newer distilleries where they’re just buying the generic either squat or tall bottle. Yeah, and it’s just like. Everything looks like that.

Robbie Wagner: [0:10:35] It’s very hard to get a custom bottle. You have to order like 500,000 at least, so you have to be committed to that bottle.

Chuck Carpenter: [0:10:41] Well, I haven’t said this yet today, so maybe it’s perhaps time. But yeah, like the Chicken Cock bottle from yesterday.

Robbie Wagner: [0:10:47] You want to see how many times you can say that?

Chuck Carpenter: [0:10:48] It had like kind of like a chicken wire kind of thing around the bottle. It was like it was kind of honeycomb if you want to be classy, but I think it was just chicken wire.

Robbie Wagner: [0:10:57] It’s definitely chicken wire because of the name.

Chuck Carpenter: [0:10:58] Yeah, Chicken Cock, Yes.

Robbie Wagner: [0:11:00] What’s the name again?

Chuck Carpenter: [0:11:04] One small aside here and then we’ll get into hot takes. But like I saw this on Twitter or something the other day and it’s like HBO Max has cut their name. Now to just Max. It’s your move, Peacock.

Emmy Cao: [0:11:16] I saw that.

Robbie Wagner: [0:11:19] That’s a good joke. Yeah, I thought that was pretty funny.

Chuck Carpenter: [0:11:21] So I feel like it was like an official channel or something too, which made it even funnier. Oh yeah, yeah, anyway. So technology things And we have certain hot takes, questions that like do kind of askew some to like front-endy things.

Robbie Wagner: [0:11:36] So yeah, we might need to, may or may not apply, but if they don’t, we’ll skip it.

Chuck Carpenter: [0:11:40] Yes, but obviously you’ve been in code for quite some time. I feel like you have some of your opinions, some of your own opinions, some of like 30 years. Yeah, something like that, And then I mean your in code sometimes still anyway, right, Yeah, that’s the connector.

Emmy Cao: [0:11:55] Yeah, that’s how I started. I didn’t know Dev. No one knows DevRel exists, but they all know like software.

Chuck Carpenter: [0:12:02] I feel like it’s one of those things like Platform Engineer Well, that the details of it are very subjective to the company.

Yoav Abrahami: [0:12:11] Sometimes I mean even.

Chuck Carpenter: [0:12:12] DevOps is kind of like this way, right, Like DevOps. I mean, are you dev-ing or not? And it depends on the company, Even though they call it DevOps. Are you just supporting Dev or are you doing the Dev, Or I don’t know. And I feel like developer relations are like are you doing, oh, are you doing docs and talks and intake and support, Or are you? you know?

Emmy Cao: [0:12:30] It’s super different everywhere, but no one goes into tech like knowing that they want to be in developer advocacy Well, maybe some more often now that it’s becoming more popular. But I hadn’t heard of the role until I was looking for jobs really, and even then it just felt like something out of reach, because typically they ask for, like you’ve had a past life as an engineer and now you’re looking for something different is the audience for recruiting for that role. And I actually got very lucky because this is my first adult job out of college And I had some engineering experience before, but it was internship, so very small, small segments glimpses into what that was like.

Chuck Carpenter: [0:13:18] Yeah, but I think for any team, right even just an engineering team, having a diversity of experience is important. Totally So, you want to kind of balance that And I can see like in a developer advocacy role you’re part of a team And not only just the people that were like I got burnt out here and I’m going to move over here to help connect people And maybe like a change is probably good for some people. But only having that perspective might be a little shallow.

Yoav Abrahami: [0:13:44] For sure. I think advocacy is a little bit of a different skill than development. It’s a lot about connecting to people. It’s a lot about conveying a message, about a lot about packaging the product and figuring out what’s the right way to make it connect with the people that you’re talking with, whereas development is at the end. It’s about your sprints, getting some things done, getting software shipped fixes problems. It’s something very different And although both of them are the kind of same field, both are kind of on the same aspects of software engineering.

It’s a very different role. Yeah, if that also means very different people, you can only do it the same way with DevOps. A lot of times the people that are behind DevOps are very different people than developers And simply because it’s again, it’s a very different responsibility, very different challenge. So people, when they come to that, they look for something very different. They’re not looking. Developer looks to build stuff and DevOps they’re looking for their responsibility to make things function over time and be stable. So I think one thing that happens to us as an industry and I’m looking at it a lot from 30 years in the industry is that we’re growing. We’re understanding that if 30 years ago it was just a developer sitting alone somewhere behind the computer and coding and not talking to anyone. Right Today, we understand there is. We need a diversity. We need those different people, different roles, because it just completes everything that we’re doing.

Chuck Carpenter: [0:15:17] Yeah, and that scales more. So I know the joke is, does it scale? But I mean, like you said, one person with some funyons and a hoodie down just going heads down on something that doesn’t really scale over time, right, and so that becomes a big black box and a challenge. So I’m going to start with you then on the first hot take, because I feel like this is something you probably have an opinion around Get rebase or get merge.

Yoav Abrahami: [0:15:42] Rebase or merge.

Chuck Carpenter: [0:15:44] Yes.

Yoav Abrahami: [0:15:45] I find myself using rebase all the time not merge And the reason is that it keeps the history. I have all the change history Now, although it might take a little bit more time because you might have a few merge occurrences drawn down the line. at the end of the day I really like to see the granular changes and see the granular effects. And also it helps me when I get to that merge of some one of those applications of rebase. I know what the change was. So now, what was the intent? That helps me a lot in doing the merge. When talking about merges, I’m from an age before Git. I used Git but it was CVS.

Chuck Carpenter: [0:16:27] Yeah, I was going to say Subversion And I used something before that and I used something before before that. And then you used the FTP files up too.

Yoav Abrahami: [0:16:34] Well, I actually didn’t use FTP, but I used something called Ada. Don’t know if you know about it.

Chuck Carpenter: [0:16:38] No, I don’t.

Yoav Abrahami: [0:16:39] Actually, it’s a programming language that was created by the American Army. It creates real-time systems like in the 80s.

Chuck Carpenter: [0:16:45] Oh, wow, okay.

Yoav Abrahami: [0:16:46] It basically looks like Pascal, but really really worse.

Chuck Carpenter: [0:16:49] Mm-hmm, And that’s an objective opinion, right?

Yoav Abrahami: [0:16:53] Of course Yes it is And I’ve done stuff that looks like pull requests done. really bad on Ada.

Chuck Carpenter: [0:17:00] Mm-hmm.

Yoav Abrahami: [0:17:01] And I have to say that then you got to those huge merges. They have no idea what’s going on and just trying to make something compile, but normally that does work afterwards.

Chuck Carpenter: [0:17:13] Okay.

Yoav Abrahami: [0:17:14] So that’s the reason why I don’t like merges. I prefer to rebase, ultimately, the context of what someone was trying to do, and you can just fix it.

Chuck Carpenter: [0:17:23] So you don’t like a PR, then that ends up in a squash merge, because then No No. So then you need to make sure that people have the additional skill of squash, merging locally, or basically interactive rebases, and clean up your stuff and then make sure it’s readable there.

Yoav Abrahami: [0:17:42] Ah, but we need to keep in mind something more. Okay, there’s a joke that people are saying about me, about you specifically. When I was coding.

Chuck Carpenter: [0:17:48] Okay.

Yoav Abrahami: [0:17:48] I’m not really coding production anymore. I’m actually manager today. Right, They were always saying that when I’m coding they need to have two very strong developers to come and clean up after me.

Chuck Carpenter: [0:18:00] And that’s when you know you’re meant for management.

Yoav Abrahami: [0:18:02] Yeah, that’s when you’re doing lots of damage.

Chuck Carpenter: [0:18:04] Yeah, and that’s a fair place to be in. You know, I think like you understand where your value lies Later on, but we do like kind of this sometimes. Yeah, I can appreciate that.

Emmy Cao: [0:18:14] So yeah, emmy, from your I hope I don’t get fired for saying this, but I also don’t work on the product team, so it’s okay, but I always well, I don’t know which one I like better.

I feel like rebasing is more efficient longer term. But I always merge because that’s how I learned. That’s just how I learned, and I didn’t learn working with lots of people. I learned mostly just by myself And so for a very long time actually, I didn’t run into any problems with like extreme merge conflicts, because I was just me And if anything was wrong it was just very minor and squashing with something I learned like very, very later on when other people had to read my code and see what I did. So I don’t have a preference for which one I think is better, but there is definitely a clear one that I do more often, just out of habit really, and I’m not, as you know, in practice as an engineer anymore, in my role as a dev role like we have a separate platform that we work on and you don’t really have to use, get for it, but now you can. But I typically work by myself. So whatever works for me, I just tend to use.

Chuck Carpenter: [0:19:42] That’s fair, and so I was going to say I don’t. first of all, none of these questions have a right answer, right? Yeah, they’re highly subjective and there’s arguments and opinions infinitely for all of those things.

Robbie Wagner: [0:19:54] Whatever you choose, it’s wrong, it doesn’t matter.

Emmy Cao: [0:19:57] There will always be someone.

Chuck Carpenter: [0:19:59] Right. So I think that so chance was saying yesterday we were talking to him depends Kind of the right answer, and I think it’s subjective to what is the working environment. Is it just you? What do you prefer? I think that’s part of it. Who’s going to have to read it in the future? And if it’s just, it’s a thing for me and it’s going to on go for me, it’s going to on go for my small team And this is how we’ve agreed to work. That’s also the right answer to a degree. Oh, now we’re in a larger product team. Now the organization is going to like kind of start to talk about like the way that we need to deal with this so that we have a strategy for understanding and maintaining it, you know, for perpetuity. So I think all of those are right answers.

Yoav Abrahami: [0:20:40] I think what you’re saying is actually something very important. I think the top level of developer, the best, best, best developer, are the ones who can go into a project and code in that project using that project guidelines.

Chuck Carpenter: [0:20:53] Exactly.

Yoav Abrahami: [0:20:54] And work with the same coding behavior coding patterns, rebase, merge, be that you know TDD or not TDD, whatever is in that project. But let’s continue with the same line in that project and not bring their own opinions and try to change it.

Chuck Carpenter: [0:21:08] And that’s what it is. There’s another Twitter thing that’s funny. You know that people like to do all the time The blah, blah, blah blah makes you a senior. You’re not a senior unless you’ve done this. You’re not a senior unless you’ve done this.

I think you’re not really a senior unless you’re able to emotionally detach yourself from your opinions in that way and be able to go into a project and appreciate the work that’s been done preceding you and just help that be better and help input into that whole collective. It’s as simple as that. And so there’s and that’s what always makes that really difficult in a career ladder because there’s just not the bullet points. You can’t say, well, in three or five years you’ve blah blah, blah, blah. It really just comes over time of understanding a bit of maturity about your work, being able to let go of some of that and being able to be productive wherever you’re at and help that be better and have some experience to draw from in it, and that’s essentially is kind of what makes you senior.

It’s not even just like 10 year in time sometimes, because people do stagnate over 10 years or so into a career and they’re not able to sort of bring that to a team as a lead or a senior, then are you senior because you’ve been here 10 years. Not always so, but yeah. So I would say that that’s why all of these never have like the perfect answer, because, like one of our questions is it’s kind of a funny one’s like Tailwind CSS or Vanilla CSS, right, and people get very worked up about this. No, there’s the right answer to that one. That’s why Robbie’s not senior. I have lots of opinions, so anyway. So yeah, I mean, and feel free to, if you have an opinion on Tailwind, yay or nay.

Emmy Cao: [0:22:44] I just don’t like looking at it. I am sure it works for a lot of people, but I’ve done a lot of like CSS and SaaS, so I’m not annoyed at it anymore. There’s certain parts where like, yeah, it could be better, but it’s also come a long way And I’m just. Everything that’s wrong with it I’ve adapted to it.

So now I’m used to it and people are like, oh, there’s just new thing now. And I’m like, no, I hate change, but also I just like that separation of like. it’s actually easier for me to find things if I have, you know, like separate CSS files and places, like if it’s a code base I’m familiar with, especially. But if you’re trying to whip something up really quickly, I think Tailwind is great. Or if you’re not so much of like, if styling in your use case isn’t the most important thing, then I think Tailwind is also very great. But yeah just visually.

I also just don’t like looking at it, So I haven’t tried it too much, but I’m happy where I am. I feel like old man yelling at cloud where I’m like. I don’t want the new tools.

Chuck Carpenter: [0:23:55] Not everyone, in early stages of their career, is deciding to take things at face value and say, oh well, this is popular, everybody’s doing it.

Emmy Cao: [0:24:04] Totally, I’m going to jump onto it.

Chuck Carpenter: [0:24:06] Yeah, and you shouldn’t do that. You should do the parts that you enjoy doing, and I think that’s part of the like feedback. I just have some. Initially working with it. I had terrible flashbacks around inline styles and slicing up Photoshop files and putting them into tables for layout and this kind of thing, and it’s like it was like that. But then, conversely, I don’t really want to write CSS anymore And this takes out a bunch of that work for me when I have to be in that space, and so it’s like, yeah, okay, I’ll get over that. I want to go back over here and work on this serverless API or whatever instead. So then it’s just to me like, where are my concerns? And I would always just default to someone who does have a greater opinion on that and let them lead the way.

Robbie Wagner: [0:24:48] Yeah, so Yeah, I think team size matters for that too, because, like, it’s very easy to do super messy, you know 40 classes for an element in Tailwind. That’s cool if it’s just me, but if someone has to come read that and figure out what the styles are, it’s a little hard. So, yeah, whiskey Web and whatnot is brought to you by EmberConf. Emberconf is back in person this year in Portland for a special celebration of 10 years since the 1.0 release of Ember. It’s been a long time. There are lots of great talks, as always, but I’m particularly excited about one Walk the Line convention in country music and development. That just sounds like a really interesting talk linking those two things together. And I’m, of course, excited for whatever magic Ed Faulkner drops in his keynote Always fun stuff there.

This year the workshops are a little different and they’ll be included at no extra cost in a two hour block during the second day of the conference. There’s a lot of cool options there. There’s a deep dive into building V2 add-ons, an intro to animations in Ember and, of course, a live recording of this podcast. That’s right. Whiskey Web and whatnot will be live at EmberConf recording an episode in person. So if you’re a fan. We would love to see you there. Space is limited for all of the workshops, so register soon to make sure you get space in your preferred one. I’m definitely excited to be back in person this year and hope to see Ember Friends, new and old, in Portland July 20th to 21st for one of the best conferences in the business. Get your tickets now at EmberConfcom.

Yoav Abrahami: [0:26:14] I have to say Yon Tellment is an obstruction, and when you do an obstruction, you’re doing two things You’re making things simpler for anything that obstruction does and you’re making things much harder for anything that falls outside of that obstruction. And CSS, as you said, 10, 20 years ago, css was really bad. You would have needed to slice images, you needed to have all of those reset stuff, all kinds of workarounds, different browsers. Today it’s much better, and so the question that comes to mind is how much do you gain versus how much you lose from Tailwind?

Chuck Carpenter: [0:26:56] Right.

Yoav Abrahami: [0:26:57] Now, to be honest, I’m at the point where I don’t care.

Chuck Carpenter: [0:27:01] We’re in a similar boat for the last part.

Yoav Abrahami: [0:27:03] The reason why I’m saying that I’m coming from Wix. We’re working on a product like Velo, where we let our designer draw the user interface and do everything on Wix, just in a drag and drop environment. Just some screens, they have all of the capabilities And then, as the developer, just write the code. Why should I, as the developer, even write CSS, telling you or not, I don’t care.

Robbie Wagner: [0:27:27] Why should I even do that? You can chuck language right here. He hates CSS. I’ve done my time, that’s how it went.

Yoav Abrahami: [0:27:33] I have a good friend in that is saying like I don’t understand, why should I use React? Does it make any sense? Why, as the developer, should even write React?

Chuck Carpenter: [0:27:42] code Wait, now you’re speaking Robbie’s language.

Yoav Abrahami: [0:27:44] Yeah, I let my designer draw the user interface and I just write the logic, and that’s it.

Robbie Wagner: [0:27:51] Yeah, yeah.

Emmy Cao: [0:27:53] I think, in general, though, there’s like a very big culture of polarity and like strong opinions. Maybe this is just a tech Twitter thing.

Chuck Carpenter: [0:28:06] It possibly is Yeah, yeah.

Emmy Cao: [0:28:09] People love being like very extreme, taking a side. But then there’s also, like, if you’re on the side where you’re more or like less experienced and you’re thinking like, oh no, if I don’t know this thing that everyone is looking for, does that make me less employable or anything like that? And on the other end as well, like I think that’s why people don’t like abstractions, they don’t like low code, no code tools, they don’t like certain things with.

Chuck Carpenter: [0:28:37] AI. We’re going to get back there. I’ve got some questions around.

Emmy Cao: [0:28:40] Yeah, because it’s like, is my job obsolete now? But no, not really, because I guess, if you think about it, everything is some kind of abstraction. We’re not all coding in assembly anymore and people used to talk about how, like front end isn’t, like you’re not a real software engineer, you’re just doing front end. And now there’s like it’s one of the more popular parts of software engineering.

Chuck Carpenter: [0:29:05] I’m pretty sure that’s basically why like meta frameworks in the front end started to happen. Because when everybody was building websites that were jQuery powered in the interactivity side and back end engineers to be like, well, you’re not really an engineer, you’re not really. And they were like hold my beer, I’m going to bring you MVC to the front end. Yeah.

Yoav Abrahami: [0:29:27] There’s just something about it. Actually, it was saying that the real engineers, the people that are doing the most work, are actually the PHP developers, but we’re actually they’re doing the most websites, but we know that they’re not really developers. The real developers are the ones that actually write JavaScript, that they are using React and Angular, but, let’s be honest, they don’t really know how to code. The people that really code is Scala and Java. Those are the real developers. Know those people that are just writing scripts for the browser.

Robbie Wagner: [0:29:56] Yeah, what’s your Twitter handle? Let’s get people to weigh in on that.

Emmy Cao: [0:30:01] With the pitchforks.

Yoav Abrahami: [0:30:02] We have all those people that just write some code for those virtual machines. They don’t know that that stuff works. They don’t know how to deploy stuff. The real, developers are the Vgenis or are doing the system stuff. Those are the real developers of the world. There is a ladder of between that every part of that ladder thinks that the other part, they’re not real developer. Yeah, and they’re all wrong. They’re all developers. They’re all doing super impressive stuff. They’re all doing super impressive challenges, simply just using different tools.

Chuck Carpenter: [0:30:34] Right, Yeah, exactly, You know, we have a different syntax and a different outlet and a different process. Of that Amy you were mentioning, I just think it’s worth touching on exactly, like are we listening to the loudest voices? Are we listening to the majority? And I think we probably hear a lot from the loudest voices, Because when you think about simple things like I don’t know the last time I saw the stat and I don’t remember how recently it was, but right on the point that you were making, Joff, is that was it? 64% of the internet is powered by WordPress, which is PHP and which everyone’s like oh cool, yeah, but it’s like what, and most of the time, you know are customized and powered by people that are, you know, not full-time developers.

A lot of times, you know they’re in a marketing agency and they’re focused right on that, or you know they do this extra on the side and they’re powering their small business and they figure out a template and they hack around a couple of plugins that let them do their thing. So you know, is that you know people who are like arguing about tailwind or TypeScript inferences and whatever else. Are they really speaking for the majority of what is actually out there on the internet? Like, yeah, probably not. I mean, it’s a really like siloed specific experience. Basically VC money going into SaaS products for the last 10 years. That’s really what we’re talking about, but that’s not what everyone is doing on the internet all the time, necessarily.

Emmy Cao: [0:31:56] Yeah, and I think it’s this culture, kind of culture of gatekeeping, so you feel like you’re still the most relevant one, like I think that people who make WordPress sites and like Wix sites they’re all still valid. I think we should democratize making like the knowledge you need to make websites, but that doesn’t make it less of a site, and I think the speed at which we’re moving with like technology and stuff, there’s also that like capitalist motive of like we’re going to be the ones who can have this power of like the digital world and everyone else is like you’re not up to par if your website is like slower or built on a certain thing or looks a certain way, and I think that’s not like the greatest way to go, but that’s part of what we’re trying to solve at Wix.

Robbie Wagner: [0:32:48] Yeah, yeah, the same people that shit on all that stuff are like oh, I also wrote my entire website with chat GPT. So it’s like, well, what does?

Chuck Carpenter: [0:32:55] it mean You didn’t write any code anyway.

Emmy Cao: [0:32:57] So like yeah, you don’t really know where you’re coming from Or people build stuff with open AI and it’s not like they were the people who actually did like the AI and ML part. You’re just using their library and I don’t know.

Yoav Abrahami: [0:33:10] That’s the only if I can use a tool and I create stuff that that’s amazing Yeah.

Chuck Carpenter: [0:33:16] It’s lower the barrier and entry, yeah Right. And so I think that is a great dovetail into like Wix, because I would say, as a longtime engineer, I look at products like that in the way that I would look at WordPress traditionally, as in like okay, this is Squarespace, wix, whatever. Somebody needs to go do a brochure site real quick, and that’s fine that they capture that market. It doesn’t really apply to me. I don’t really know, like what I would do for you. I don’t make custom templates or any of those things.

So that space is over here and we’re doing web apps, so we’re doing something else. But I know that Wix is actually like really trying to dive more into that space and maybe like solve the paradigm difference between folks who want to do content in a more whizzy wig sort of way, but headless. I actually did, I think this morning I read that you’re doing like a headless option and things like that, to like say you can sort of have that over here and sort of have that power, potentially like more powerful applications outside of that context.

Yoav Abrahami: [0:34:14] So basically what we’re doing? we’re doing two things at the same time. One, we have our Velo platform, which is a full stack platform, no JS. you get the database. you can connect your own database if you want, and you just draw the UI using Wix. So you got a full platform. It all fully configured. You get an on an ID, so five minutes from starting you can deploy a production ready application. Then we’re breaking Wix With headless. you can get any of our business applications, be that stores, booking restaurants, sitting plans, pricing plans, global coverage of payments. It’s very easy to get payments in the US and Europe. Just use Stripe. Try to get payments in Brazil.

That’s a challenge And we have that covered for you So you can get all of that using just regular REST APIs. And then we have Codex, which is trying to get the same Wix experience of letting you draw the user interface for React application. Take your own React project, whatever that may be. You might be using CSS modules, you might be using SAS, you might be using something different. Take your own components, whatever they may be. Open that project in Codex and you get a visual environment for that project And then you can go and visually change the CSS, add components, change the DOM and it will update your JSX, your CSS source files.

So that means that it works your way. There is no Eden JSON files. There is no Dreamweaver, for instance. We all probably have tried Dreamweaver that creates that HTML that you don’t want to look at. That doesn’t exist with Codex. It works your way. So again, we’re trying That’s the way we’re embarking on that challenge to try to make developers’ lives to be much easier and to break Wix and open it and let anyone basically use whichever part you need from Wix.

Chuck Carpenter: [0:36:15] So you talk about the payment aspect of that as one of the advantages, and that makes a lot of sense to me. I think the other massive problem that a lot of like early applications deal with is the authentication and the access story. So authentication is kind of like straightforward Are you who you said you are but like role-based access kind of stuff, do you have that kind of complexity? Yeah, yes, oh, okay. So the you can have a full-on application where it’s like I’m an admin or not an admin and I I have a whole different experience and I can see that solving a lot.

Emmy Cao: [0:36:46] Yeah, and that kind of thing would be really really Expensive for a lot of tools, like they primarily cater to enterprise level use cases or they’re too technical for Someone who’s just like trying to get their business or nonprofit up and running and that’s right a problem that we’re trying to solve.

Chuck Carpenter: [0:37:05] Yes, and so I think, yeah, good, like the Bridging the gap there on kind of like users that might have to fall into like a WordPress situation And then have a very complex set of things if they’re trying the low code or no code things. Yeah, I think that that I think that part of the issue for engineers is that they hear no code or low code And they’re like, well then you’re trying to take something for me and I don’t.

Yoav Abrahami: [0:37:31] I don’t like that, I don’t appreciate that by the way the right right, right You know, because when you hear, normally you’re about a low code. It’s domestic, a tool that tries to make things without writing any code, sure, but then because there’s stuff that isn’t covered in the product, do you have some way to add some code there, but it’s always some kind of an afterthought, so that code is in some obscure dialogue, it is not managed by kids, right, and someone can write that. And then there is a problem or some change and you’re like Okay, my application stopped working. Why? So the right not to like low code now, wicks fellow is to some degree you can call it low code, but we are allowed to connect it to get right there. And when you give you a back end, it’s no JS, it’s just a regular, no JS.

So if you know, don’t just you can work on the platform. So it’s not really a low code in that sense. Yeah, we’re actually calling it code first, because what would? the rule that we’ve set is to try and solve problems by writing code and Then trying to create screens on top. That will just write that code for you. That will it try that code. But the first tool to solve a problem, you know, for instance, if let’s say we have we’re feature like a scheduler. It’s very tempting to create a dialogue that says run this function every day at 5 am.

Mm-hmm but the code first approach would be to write code that says write this function Every day at 5 am, yeah, and then just create a screen that would change that code. So we try in there. I Think that most of the local tools falls into that problem of gaining trust from developers. Yeah simply because they’re not geared to our developers. Yes, and this is a challenge to trying to bridge. It’s a not an easy challenge.

Chuck Carpenter: [0:39:23] Yeah, and it sounds like the community that you’re trying to invite into this too and you’re not saying come into our Highly specialized environment. So if you’re using things like oh, it’s an old server, I know how to deal with that. I can work there. I’m not working in special wix language, I’m working in languages I know in that context and so it’s a little easier to add, add and advocate for specialists in this zone, right?

Emmy Cao: [0:39:46] Yes, and I think this goes back to like who is an engineer or who is a developer? We actually have so our platform. It’s basically like you click a button, turn on dev mode and it’s the regular wix editor and a little ID comes up and you can add JavaScript to any of the elements that you drag and drop on. And a lot of people really just go and Implement like a simple, simple use case, like on click, show this or and hide this, and I think People tend to go like look at people who are using that and Go like you’re not writing real code and I’m like but it’s still JavaScript.

Chuck Carpenter: [0:40:31] So right like What is real, to find real for me first, and then we’ll kind of come back right.

Emmy Cao: [0:40:37] Right, and we have a lot of designers and people who are learning development Who otherwise would have been too intimidated to start like Looking at coding tutorials and taking coding classes. But since they have this environment where that it’s so easy and they can like see their changes happen It runs on node but you don’t have to install like node and figure out what version you’re on and Figure out like what libraries you need. It’s really accessible for them and for me, like I studied cognitive science and psychology in school, so Like I really like being able to visualize stuff. Learning computer science concepts is really hard for me.

When I first started git, I Didn’t really understand what was going on Until I tried github desktop and they had the visuals for like, oh, like Merging is like going this way and if you do this it goes to this branch. And having those like visuals helped me understand Concepts a lot better and I think that makes it a lot more accessible for more people to learn How to code, because honestly I don’t think it’s like as hard as everyone makes it out to be. People are always like Oh, you’re a developer, you must be so smart, but you really just need the patience. But I’m not a real developer according to you? Okay?

Chuck Carpenter: [0:42:15] okay, I don’t have to go His punchline was they’re all right, they’re all developers.

Emmy Cao: [0:42:21] Yes.

Chuck Carpenter: [0:42:22] And I think that’s even. It’s so funny, because what context really does? because you talk about, like in the sense of this small box, and you write your functions there, but like, how is that different than a AWS Lambda? That’s a very container, you know, compartmentalized, singular function with a singular Purpose, and yes, you can like add modules to it and whatever else, but essentially is just that you’re just writing one function and Parsing through that. I mean it’s no different. Really, the fact that you had AWS to that now makes me sound like I’m smarter, but, as we know, the dashboard is bad, so yeah.

Robbie Wagner: [0:42:57] Yeah.

Yoav Abrahami: [0:42:58] The most amazing thing for us on the on wix is We’re seeing the people that are learning to program on wix on our product, yeah, and you’re starting by just some small interactions And then they need some another need and they’re going to back and do some stuff and then you might be stuff like integrating with some fulfillment system to write in some rest API’s and some stuff like that and Before long you end up with a real developer. I actually I don’t. I want to go back. I don’t want to say a real developer, because I want to give that to you. I think that anyone tries code is a developer, right? I think you’re getting people to come become more and more proficient and more and more confident in their ability to do stuff And that’s the most amazing thing for me see that happening. On on product proof creative.

Chuck Carpenter: [0:43:46] Getting to deliver real product and have like your learning journey, be a part of that Right. Like getting real wins and not just going through tutorials with a randomized to-do list output and that stuff. Like I’ve actually pushed something That people actually use. That’s a real motivator too, I think, like in that because, as we’re seeing now recently it’s a little harder to break into our industry and Having these other outlets where you can apply your knowledge and skills in a way that still ends up in being like a real website, a real web app, I think that’s a great bridge.

Yoav Abrahami: [0:44:20] So I want to say something that’s going to be Probably a lot of people are going to complain about.

Emmy Cao: [0:44:26] You said a lot of those.

Yoav Abrahami: [0:44:29] The difference between what we call a professional developer and And just the developer is that the professional developer would spend two days to configure something Like you know local environment with language you know right and emulator for lambda and some can. Local database and all kinds of different configurations and Docker files and deployment.

Chuck Carpenter: [0:44:50] That’s because I have. I know how to make a Docker compose file. I earned that.

Yoav Abrahami: [0:44:53] Yeah, it’s amazing, you know you ought to be loved that environment. But at the end of the day, that Regular developer and that super-poefficient developer who will still write the same 10 lines of code, that has the logic And the only difference is that this one spent two days to configure stuff And this one just use a SAS product that does for them. You know, like lambda, for instance, why would they create a container and build container for injustice? lambda.

Chuck Carpenter: [0:45:18] Well, you’ll have pros and cons, arguments against that, like add an infinitum right, like, well, cost isn’t the only thing. What do you care about warming? Oh, now you got to run a cron job to like fix your warming issues, and you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Yoav Abrahami: [0:45:32] So if you get to those Situation those are the questions you really care about. Then yeah, one you have a working product To. It’s starting to scale that really care about price? Yeah so you’re into very different point at that point. At that time Most people would start in that upfront, before even any product which doesn’t make any sense right.

Chuck Carpenter: [0:45:53] No, that’s true when you have a greenfield thing and you’re, you know, early stage and you need a POC to validate some assumptions, and I know that’s often times the argument for no code, low code, is like we’re just trying to get the POC And we understand it might be throw away and we’re fine with that, so that isn’t. That’s a interesting bridge right there. Let’s say it’s someone is working on an application that they intend to scale pretty largely. They approach the Wix platform with it and say like this is the way that I’m gonna solve like some early things, like our back and Payments and stuff like that, and I want to really like test some assumptions and put out a POC product Like really pre seed round. Okay and it does well, starts to do. Well, thinking about scaling, think about like I might need to rewrite or redo. What is that story for you guys?

Yoav Abrahami: [0:46:41] Okay. So we’ve seen quite a few startups coming to us at some point and saying, hey, we have a problem. You’re like, okay, what’s what’s the problem? We’re scared. Why? Because it’s working. But why are you scared because it’s working? because we don’t know when it’s going to break. Why should it break? Because we’re not sure it’s great for your product, is great for a prototype. But you know, we started. It’s worked so well that we’ve got, we’ve launched our product with it and it scales up and you don’t know when it’s going to break. Why should it break?

Today? we can, we can give anyone is. When you use our product. They can use any database they want, they can get as many containers as they want. Your regular packages. You know, the default one is one container and you can get up to five, but we can all very easily configure that to as many as you need. And you know, get to a point where there’s a problem and come on. If you have a business and gets to doing the problem, you’re in a great situation. That’s an amazing place to be.

Chuck Carpenter: [0:47:45] Yeah, totally. Now I’m gonna ask the next most controversial question. I’m actually gonna ask Emmy too. So you know, I’m a developer. We’ve been in your platforms a little bit. We are concerned about scale or whatever else, or we’re just like I don’t know. Maybe there’s a pivot, is there an eject button, or Or maybe I want to start something new with you, but I’m afraid of getting trapped.

Emmy Cao: [0:48:03] Oh, could you clarify your question one more time?

Chuck Carpenter: [0:48:07] Yeah, let’s just say that. Vendor Locken is what he’s worried about Vendor Locken is what.

Robbie Wagner: [0:48:13] I’m worried about?

Emmy Cao: [0:48:13] Oh, I see.

Yoav Abrahami: [0:48:14] Okay and I want to come in.

Chuck Carpenter: [0:48:16] I see the benefits of building early on, I see a lot of problem solved for me. Okay, we’ve got a small team, we’re a startup, whatever else And we want to be able to say, though, if I’m afraid of Vendor Locken before we start this, to go down that path.

Emmy Cao: [0:48:30] Well, I think that’s the case for anything that you use is like there’s always that risk that you’ll need something else and you can’t blame yourself for not choosing the right thing to go with in the very, very beginning. The nice thing about Wix is like pretty much all of our features are available to try out for free, so you can like the coding platform entirely free and you just have to like pay if you start, you know like taking business from that. But if you have your content and like a database, you can migrate that obviously. Now the elements themselves, like they’re obviously coded on our platform You can still migrate. Like if you wrote back-end code for it and you have functions that you used for your Wix site in your Wix back-end, then you can still reuse the logic for that.

You might have to change around, you know like the variable names, because you can’t reference like Wix elements anymore. But I think for any platform if you migrate or do anything at all, there’s kind of that overhead. But the biggest thing that you’ll probably have to redo is like styling, which honestly, in the grand scheme of things, isn’t that huge of a deal, and you might have to invest in other like external services, which is also like the trade-off of cost and performance and scale. And maybe you’re not like when you started your business, you’re not ever anticipating like it’ll be the biggest platform in America or something, but maybe it ends up there. But I think that’s always a problem people are going to have and you can’t ever like be sure what is going to happen.

Chuck Carpenter: [0:50:21] Yeah.

Emmy Cao: [0:50:22] But there are options. It’s not like super difficult to migrate out of it.

Chuck Carpenter: [0:50:26] I think that’s right there, what you said initially on too, and you’re just like reinforcing that, essentially, there’s no starting point that you’re ever going to have a fully free application from the infrastructure that you decide to build into.

Emmy Cao: [0:50:40] Yeah.

Chuck Carpenter: [0:50:41] And there’s no, like there’s no Wix version of changing platforms, right, there’s no Wix version of changing infrastructure. So there’s always some risk to that. But you know, you just need to decide what are the pros and cons for you And I think, like a lot of the problems solved, like authentication, is a stupid thing to ever try to build yourself in a startup situation And I’ll say that on. I think that’s not, you’re not wrong, yeah, that’s not what you’re trying to address with your product. So can you just pick something and move forward?

Emmy Cao: [0:51:11] Yeah, And maybe the money and time you saved from not having to deal with that and hire someone to deal with that, maybe that afforded you another opportunity to like develop your business better and other time to do out of their stuff Exactly.

Chuck Carpenter: [0:51:27] Yeah, it changed, like where you spend your money, where your runway, totally Yeah, yeah.

Yoav Abrahami: [0:51:31] I think also people, when talking about VendorLock people don’t really understand what VendorLock is. Vendorlock is when you have 100,000 lines of code in PLSQL for Oracle or one million lines of code at working in Mainframe, that will take you years to write. Yeah, Any product that you can get a result done in two weeks, you can replace in two weeks. Yeah, Yeah, maybe a month, but you can replace quite early. That isn’t a VendorLock.

Chuck Carpenter: [0:52:03] Yeah, that’s true. That’s a great point. Yeah, all right, I want to take it down a notch, a little bit, yeah. So, because I’m here in the music next door and probably our listeners can’t. But you know, we’re here at a conference and this is the nature of it.

Robbie Wagner: [0:52:15] Well, they may be able to hear some.

Chuck Carpenter: [0:52:17] Sorry if you can’t, but And I think this is a good kind of I want to rem because I’ll forget and these things happen. So two doors down from us is the community gaming room, and I read here that Emmy was a eSports coach. Oh no.

Emmy Cao: [0:52:30] I was avoiding having to write that for my fun fact, but I guess you saw from LinkedIn or something Definitely Yeah, yep, yep.

Chuck Carpenter: [0:52:37] And if you don’t want to talk about that, that’s totally fine. Yeah, yeah, it’s fine, I’ll talk about it.

Yoav Abrahami: [0:52:40] But I think it’s an interesting fact based on that.

Chuck Carpenter: [0:52:43] And I’m you know, I’m learning more about eSports all the time. I think it’s like Yeah, I mean the fact that you can get a full scholarship in eSports. I think it’s amazing. I think it’s a positive thing. Yes, so I’m like totally down for that. Gaming is a kid And you know, like mom’s, like you got an hour, it’s rotten your brain. And then, like, scientifically it’s proven not to rot your brain. In fact, there are a lot of positive benefits. Yeah, so what were the specific eSports that you were focused on?

Emmy Cao: [0:53:07] Mostly first person shooters and PC games. Okay, and obviously like that’s how I got into being really good with computers Like that was always my thing. I built my first PC when I was like 14 or something, which was Awesome, not common for a kid to do but also for me, but also not common for like a little girl to do, but that was kind of my entryway Computer was just like all I knew. But you can kind of see that with like the Roblox millionaire kid geniuses now. But I started like scripting for games that I was playing. I was really heavy into like the Valve ecosystem And that was really nice because they would give you all their access to all their stuff And then you got to play around with it And that kind of was my first you know, like door into how it felt to like go change some software and have stuff do the things you want.

Chuck Carpenter: [0:54:06] Yeah, yeah, I think that’s an excellent entryway.

Emmy Cao: [0:54:09] Yeah.

Chuck Carpenter: [0:54:09] I feel like there’s a lot of people that got into it through things like that or like editing my space pages, right.

Yoav Abrahami: [0:54:16] Yeah, totally.

Chuck Carpenter: [0:54:17] Like, oh, we all can sort of like.

Emmy Cao: [0:54:19] For me there were a GeoCity sites, yeah Yeah, stuff like that, and then I learned HTML there And then, oh, my space lets me do a bunch with CSS and just seeing the power of instant change, which is why I have a problem with when people say, like HTML, css isn’t like real programming or like it’s a scripting language and stuff, but it’s still the same feeling that you get when you make websites And that opens a lot of doors for you. Like, those are things that you still have to understand as any programmer, I think so And yeah.

I think everyone should be able to play around with that and feel that It’s like how all kids have to like experience art classes or like music lessons, even if they don’t want to.

Chuck Carpenter: [0:55:03] I’m still trying to run into an eSports person that plays FIFA, because that’s mostly the game that I play.

Robbie Wagner: [0:55:09] I don’t know that. there’s a lot of market and people watching that, or Yeah, not in the States.

Chuck Carpenter: [0:55:14] There’s eSports teams, but I feel like they’re overseas a lot Yeah.

Yoav Abrahami: [0:55:18] Now that I think about it, I think I would find programming And something that creates something.

Chuck Carpenter: [0:55:24] Right.

Yoav Abrahami: [0:55:25] And without definition. Html and CSS definitely fall into that category.

Emmy Cao: [0:55:31] Yeah, it’s like an art and what’s your medium? You’re telling the browser.

Chuck Carpenter: [0:55:35] How to structure a document, yeah, and if you’re giving instructions to a computer, that to me is like the basic definition of programming.

Robbie Wagner: [0:55:44] Yeah, exactly. Yeah, like if you programmed a thing that created a PDF, would that be programming? Because that’s the same as like using HTML? Well, not really.

Yoav Abrahami: [0:55:54] I think the point is that having that interactive experience when you change something and you get the computer to do something, with you. And it doesn’t matter what’s the language you’re using, but the more you’re doing that, you’re starting to learn how to control the computer Right. And what we’re doing as developers is controlling that environment.

Chuck Carpenter: [0:56:16] There you go. Yeah, that machine.

Robbie Wagner: [0:56:17] Yeah.

Chuck Carpenter: [0:56:18] Yeah, we’re controlling something that the computer is outputting And I think, like we give it input, takes an output. That’s kind of programming.

Robbie Wagner: [0:56:25] Yeah, plus, it’s really fun to just say HTML is a programming language on Twitter and everyone goes Oh my God, you’re so wrong.

Chuck Carpenter: [0:56:32] We should make those t-shirts and just fuck with people.

Robbie Wagner: [0:56:34] We should. Yeah, I don’t care at all.

Chuck Carpenter: [0:56:36] I would be remiss if we did not ask you of this question, which is, you walked from Israel to the US. Yeah, I didn’t understand that. Yes, yeah, okay, so you’re Jesus.

Yoav Abrahami: [0:56:46] Well, no. So what happened? Walking on water? What happened was that I’m a carpenter. My father was working for a little Israeli airliner. Okay, so when we had a deal that you can go for standby for flights, oh yeah.

Chuck Carpenter: [0:57:02] You go to the runway and you’re like I worked for an airline at one point, so I don’t remember. You’re going on the US.

Yoav Abrahami: [0:57:07] You’re standing on the, on the, you know the time rock and you’re like, hey, can I get to ride? So they told the captain that there are two children of two employees that they can take, and it was full flight And it was like, oh, okay, we have a small seat in the cockpit so they can be there. So I was 26. The other child was 23. And we ended up flying without a seat Right, so we basically walked.

Chuck Carpenter: [0:57:32] Not even the jump seat We walked for 12 hours, all the time We’re back and forth

Yoav Abrahami: [0:57:37] in the in the airline. Yeah, So it was basically walking to the US.

Chuck Carpenter: [0:57:42] Oh, okay, that’s a good story. I love that Yeah.

Emmy Cao: [0:57:44] Yeah.

Chuck Carpenter: [0:57:45] I wasn’t sure where that was going to go, but that that makes more sense.

Emmy Cao: [0:57:48] I tried to give you as little context. Yeah, yeah.

Chuck Carpenter: [0:57:51] That helps us dive into as a whiskey aficionado. Apparently, you make your own wine.

Yoav Abrahami: [0:57:56] Yes, yeah, there is a small winery in Israel where it’s actually a school Wineries And you start by picking the grapes and doing all the process, still bottling. It is really, really cool stuff.

Chuck Carpenter: [0:58:09] What kind of grapes do you use?

Yoav Abrahami: [0:58:10] So I’ve done Cabernet, sauvignon and Chardonnay and Granache, and now we’re doing Syrah And we’re going to see what you’re going to do next year.

Chuck Carpenter: [0:58:19] Nice, super cool. You’re always kind of rotating through a few different things. Yeah, that’d be a neat thing.

Yoav Abrahami: [0:58:23] Yeah, we would make our own whiskey, but it’s a felony. So we don’t Really What is the felony?

Robbie Wagner: [0:58:29] Unless you get registered and approved.

Chuck Carpenter: [0:58:31] It’s really hard to become a distiller because apparently it’s very dangerous, like you can kill people easily, and you can blow yourself up as well, and you can blow yourself up, yeah, I know, but we’re going to take it up in the heels. Take our shoes off, yeah, and then we’ll start just dealing a little more, and then we’ll see what just happens, I don’t know.

Robbie Wagner: [0:58:49] Yeah, we are about at time here. Is there anything else you guys want to plug or anything we mentioned before we end?

Yoav Abrahami: [0:58:54] So I think our biggest challenge is to get Amy to drink more.

Emmy Cao: [0:58:58] I will finish my drop of drink.

Yoav Abrahami: [0:59:00] The thing to keep in mind about Wix, it’s early for her.

Chuck Carpenter: [0:59:03] Give her a break.

Yoav Abrahami: [0:59:04] Wix is a company driven by alcohol.

Chuck Carpenter: [0:59:07] Are you hiring Because I just I quit podcasts and whatever else because I found my home? Yeah, It’s.

Emmy Cao: [0:59:19] working for an Israeli company has been so chill And I don’t know how I’m going to go back to working for corporate America again.

Chuck Carpenter: [0:59:28] They’re not going to fire you, you’re fine. I’ve said it now on a podcast.

Emmy Cao: [0:59:32] Thank you, thank you, it’s on record Yeah. If I plug anything, it’s our discord community and Twitter devs on Wix, for both Twitter handle is devs on Wix And we do a lot of stuff with like community events. If you’re a local to certain cities, like a lot of events in New York, phoenix.

Robbie Wagner: [0:59:56] Maybe, maybe, if you’re willing to have us, maybe the fun way. Chuck has a house.

Chuck Carpenter: [1:00:00] Yeah, but we also have a coworking space where I can do a public thing. That’s true, wow.

Emmy Cao: [1:00:05] Okay, Maybe if we’re ever in Phoenix we’ll let you know. Sounds good. But yeah, we do a lot of work telling people about what we have to offer, helping people, general web dev stuff, And they’re just an incredible community and I love them And I have nothing bad to say about them. But I would love if people could follow them more and give them the recognition they deserve.

Chuck Carpenter: [1:00:28] Yeah, cool, awesome, love it.

Robbie Wagner: [1:00:30] Yeah, All right. Thanks for listening. If you liked it, please subscribe. leave us some ratings and reviews. We appreciate it and we will catch you next time. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.

Chuck Carpenter: [1:00:43] Thanks for listening to Whiskey Web and whatnot. This podcast is brought to you by Ship Shape and produced by podcast Royale. If you liked this episode, consider sharing it with a friend or two and leave us a rating and maybe a review, as long as it’s good.

Robbie Wagner: [1:00:57] You can subscribe to future episodes on Apple, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. For more info about Ship Shape and the show, check out our website at shipshapeio. Thanks for watching. Bye.