220: The Future of Front-End, Vim Wars, and Raising Gamer Kids w/ Nick Taylor

[00:00:00] Intro: Welcome to Syntax. Welcome to a brand new episode of the Front end Happy Hour podcast. Welcome to this week’s JS Party. Live from Ship Shape Studios. This is Whiskey Web and whatnot. With your hosts, Robbie, the Wagner, and me. Charles William Carpenter. Iii. That’s right, Charles. We drink whiskey and talk about web development. I mean, it’s all in the name. It’s not that deep. This is Whiskey web and whatnot. Do not adjust your set.

[00:00:36] Robbie Wagner: Welcome to another Prosecco Programming and Patter with your hosts, Robbie the Wagner and ta jure at ta Jure. Yeah, at TAs. We got Prosecco. We got a guest. Nick Taylor. What’s up Nick?

[00:00:50] Nick Taylor: Not too much. How you doing, man?

[00:00:51] Robbie Wagner: Good. How are you?

[00:00:53] Nick Taylor: Pretty good. It’s, uh, whoa. It’s been forever since we caught up. It was like, I think, uh, 9:00 PM last night. Yep. Um,

[00:00:59] Robbie Wagner: [00:01:00] yeah. What’s changed since then? Do we still have jobs? Is AI ruling the world yet?

[00:01:04] Nick Taylor: Yeah, I, uh, apparently chat. GPT laid me off. Ah. So, uh, okay. You know, that’s pretty fresh, like

[00:01:11] Robbie Wagner: ruthless, you know.

[00:01:14] Robbie Wagner: Do you wanna, uh, while I’m pouring, would you like to tell the folks at home who you are and what you do?

[00:01:17] Nick Taylor: Yeah, yeah, for sure. Yeah. So my name’s, uh, Nick Taylor. I’m currently developer advocate at a company called Erum.

[00:01:24] Jason Torres: Pomeranian of you? Taylor? Yeah, yeah,

[00:01:26] Nick Taylor: yeah. So there is a story there. It is Pomeranian.

[00:01:28] Nick Taylor: Yeah. So like nobody can ever pronounce it, including Jason, and you’re not alone, obviously. And then. It’s at work one day and it’s like somebody, somebody said they’ll, they call us Pomeranians. So I was like, I chat TD when they had the, you know, where you could generate images in it and I just created it.

[00:01:46] Nick Taylor: It kind of looked like Tasmanian Devil but a Pomeranian. And so I just showed that to like some of the crew on the marketing team. They’re like, yeah, maybe. And then I, we somebody else did another one and then we’re like, yeah, we’re doing this ‘cause like. [00:02:00] Let’s be honest. Nobody wants to put a sticker of just like a logo of a company necessarily.

[00:02:06] Nick Taylor: Sometimes they do.

[00:02:07] Robbie Wagner: But you really like that company. They do. Yeah.

[00:02:09] Nick Taylor: Yeah. I have it on my laptop because like I work there, but I was like, nobody takes these stickers. Like when we go somewhere, they take like we have squishy cubes and stuff, bags. They take that. So we’re like, yeah, we’re doing this. We’re doing the Pomeranian stickers and.

[00:02:22] Nick Taylor: Literally everywhere I go. Now when I bring ‘em, like they’re all gone. Yeah. They sent me a box of a thousand. They’re like gone.

[00:02:29] Jason Torres: So I would just like to point out when you guys were putting your booth, the table cl cover over it, your logo looks like the Monster Energy drink logo. So in all honesty, probably people would eat that shit up.

[00:02:40] Jason Torres: Yeah. Pardon my language. No, no.

[00:02:42] Robbie Wagner: If you would make energy drinks, I would take that. Yeah.

[00:02:45] Nick Taylor: Yeah. No, I mean like if your heart isn’t exploding, then uh, you’re not using Pomeranian. Yeah. Why are you even coding? Yeah. Yeah, no, I, I don’t know. Energy drinks. I think that, yeah, that could be the next, uh, the next phase.

[00:02:57] Nick Taylor: I’m

[00:02:57] Jason Torres: telling you. Talk about a swag [00:03:00] item.

[00:03:00] Robbie Wagner: Yeah. Could you imagine? Actually, there was LinkedIn Energy drink at Ember. Come on. There was, I have a picture of it. I’m gonna need to see that, but I’ll show you later. I think that’s a great idea.

[00:03:09] Jason Torres: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. And I, I mean, you’ll probably get sued literally the second you put a can with your logo on it.

[00:03:16] Jason Torres: Yeah. That’s an energy drink. But yeah. Talk about advertising. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:03:21] Robbie Wagner: Yeah. Oh yeah.

[00:03:22] Nick Taylor: Let’s do it. All

[00:03:23] Jason Torres: right. You’re welcome. Alright.

[00:03:26] Robbie Wagner: All right. So yeah, this is Prosecco. Yeah. Can confirm. It smells like Prosecco. Let’s taste it. I can confirm it’s tasty. Hold on. That’s better than the previous Prosecco. I forget who was here or what I was doing or what I’ve done today.

[00:03:37] Robbie Wagner: But did you have the first Prosecco? No, I, we just had Kirkland one.

[00:03:41] Jason Torres: No,

[00:03:41] Robbie Wagner: we didn’t. Oh, you did. You had those here, right? Right. Yeah. Okay. So yeah. What do you think, what, how does this compare to the first one?

[00:03:46] Jason Torres: Little sweeter? Mm-hmm. I feel like the first one was a little more carbonated. Which for me, the effervescence, the bubbles I like, like I like carbonated beverages.

[00:03:55] Jason Torres: Little sweeter, little drier. Mm-hmm. Is that a thing? Can I [00:04:00] have both of those things? I think you can. I think so, yeah. Yeah. Sweet and

[00:04:03] Robbie Wagner: dry. More tannic, I guess. Yeah, there you go.

[00:04:05] Nick Taylor: Yeah, I, I agree. Well, I didn’t have this morning’s Prosecco. This morning’s Prosecco. We sound

[00:04:11] Robbie Wagner: terrible.

[00:04:14] Nick Taylor: Breakfast drinks. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:04:16] Nick Taylor: You know. Yeah. Unite mimosa people. I guess. I don’t,

[00:04:19] Jason Torres: oh my God. So I went to Ric Con. Oh no, it was prior to that. I was out there for something and I found a place for $20. They do bottomless mimosas. What? Oh, that’s worth it. Jesus Christ. I drank I think, three bottles of champagne in the Mimosas ‘cause they give it to you in a car.

[00:04:38] Jason Torres: Okay.

[00:04:39] Nick Taylor: Okay. Okay.

[00:04:40] Jason Torres: Yeah, I was just drinking the carafe with a straw, yada, yada, yada. I was Did you, did you have a fancy though?

[00:04:46] Nick Taylor: Did you have a bendy straw?

[00:04:48] Jason Torres: No, I wish, I wish there was, but for $20, yeah. You can’t beat

[00:04:52] Robbie Wagner: that.

[00:04:52] Jason Torres: A challenge accepted. I am gonna make you kick me outta here for $20. Uh, yeah. I used to go to a place that had magnum bottles [00:05:00] of champagne.

[00:05:00] Jason Torres: Oh my God. And you would

[00:05:01] Robbie Wagner: get that with the orange juice and it’s like, oh, wow. Yeah. Yeah. It’s, uh, everyone was, uh. I’m feeling good after that

[00:05:07] Jason Torres: choice. I super regretted the next day, by the way, all that like sweet. The sugar from the orange juice. Yeah. Yeah. And the acidity. Yeah. That was bad, but oh yeah. In the moment.

[00:05:16] Jason Torres: I’m picturing how that

[00:05:17] Nick Taylor: morning was. Now just after that discussion. Don’t,

[00:05:19] Jason Torres: don’t picture it. Multiple showers were needed. I’m just, let’s leave it at that. Nick Taylor. Good to see you, by the way. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:05:27] Robbie Wagner: Alright, I forgot my toast. Let’s do the toast. All right. Here’s the Kubernetes, the reminder that no matter how senior you are, one wrong in, dent in YAML can still ruin your weekend.

[00:05:36] Robbie Wagner: Cheers to containers, clusters, and crippling self-doubt. Boom. Cheers. Don’t you cheers though. You’re like actually cool.

[00:05:43] Nick Taylor: Yeah, I can attest to that because like, I’m still pretty green to Kubernetes where I work at the Pomeranian. Be just owning it now. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just take it. I’ll take the W not the L no definite dub.

[00:05:56] Nick Taylor: Um, we secure software in general and we secure Kubernetes, so like. [00:06:00] You know, I did a bit of ramp up on it, like it was kind of baptism by fire. I ended up at CubeCon in London, which was great. Met a lot of cool people there. I somehow ended up on the Kubernetes podcast, like I was, it was the last day and I know one of the podcasts, uh, hosts, like kind of, we met at All Things Open last year actually in the 4 0 4 room.

[00:06:20] Nick Taylor: Oh, very good. From, uh, shout out to so you could find it. Yeah. This is a side note, but real quick, I have a picture of I. Was in line at airport security yesterday. People can’t, won’t be able to see this. Even if I put it to the camera probably. But there was a guy with a 4 0 4 shirt on a hoodie on, uh, where is it?

[00:06:38] Nick Taylor: Go ahead and roll the tape. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:06:40] Robbie Wagner: There was a, I think it was a Mustang, maybe, I dunno, some kind of like fast ish car. Had A-H-T-T-P 4 0 4 license plate. I was like, was hilarious. I love that. That’s good. I

[00:06:50] Nick Taylor: deleted, no, here it is. Here’s the dude.

[00:06:54] Robbie Wagner: What does the rest of it say?

[00:06:55] Nick Taylor: Oh, I like that. Yeah. It said human not found.

[00:06:56] Nick Taylor: I’ll put it here. I don’t know if they can see that, but it [00:07:00] just made me laugh. ‘cause like if he’s not in tech, I’m like, bro,

[00:07:02] Jason Torres: you’re owning it.

[00:07:03] Nick Taylor: This isn’t

[00:07:04] Jason Torres: live. So we’ll

[00:07:05] Nick Taylor: just edit right here. Go ahead. It

[00:07:07] Jason Torres: is live. Drop the picture right here. Yeah, yeah. And we’re back.

[00:07:11] Robbie Wagner: All right. Sorry, I’m, since we were looking at pictures, I was gonna find that LinkedIn energy drink real quick.

[00:07:15] Robbie Wagner: Okay. Oh yeah. I gotta get it. Oh, it doesn’t find it. I can’t just search LinkedIn

[00:07:19] Nick Taylor: while he is looking for that. I, I’ve had cupcake wine before. It’s, it’s American. I, I’ve had like, like red and I think maybe a white, I didn’t know they did Prosecco and that’s probably why it might be slightly sweeter or they all cupcake.

[00:07:31] Nick Taylor: I don’t know. Oh, here

[00:07:32] Jason Torres: we go. It’s got real bits of cupcake in it. Oh, oh wow. That is real.

[00:07:36] Robbie Wagner: Yeah. I’ll show it too.

[00:07:37] Jason Torres: It’s so American to like tie two things, like sweets and alcohol, like, oh yeah. Cupcake. It’s drinks,

[00:07:47] Nick Taylor: sweetened alcohol that like, I don’t know, when I was playing a rugby, we like, because we were sponsored by like pretty much the big Irish bar downtown and like, so you go out on St.

[00:07:57] Nick Taylor: Patrick’s Day? Mm-hmm. ‘cause we were in the parade [00:08:00] and have you ever had a black velvet? Uh, it’s, it’s cider and Guinness basically. Oh. It might be called something different in I would try it. That sounds good. I would try that. Yeah. It is good. But like cider, well at least for me is like instant headache.

[00:08:13] Nick Taylor: And you know when you’re having these at like nine in the morning anyways, needless to say, it is tasty, but I think yeah, the sugar is what kills you.

[00:08:22] Robbie Wagner: Yeah. I do miss when they could have the four Locos and stuff with like insane amounts of sugar and caffeine and alcohol. Yeah. It’s like, this is awesome. I love this.

[00:08:31] Jason Torres: It’s super, it’s super funny ‘cause it’s like, like this one can has way too much, we need to cut it down. So then the person just drinks three cans. Yeah. Well, no, what

[00:08:40] Robbie Wagner: I would do, I would get a. Did you ever have the jolt Colas that were like a huge thing and you could like Jolt

[00:08:45] Jason Torres: was actually invented in my city.

[00:08:47] Jason Torres: Yeah. Rochester can’t, can’t find it

[00:08:48] Robbie Wagner: anymore. No. No. But I would get those and you open, it goes, and then you like just pour a ton of vodka in the top and then you got in like basically your own four loco. Wow. Oh, Molly. And you’re dead [00:09:00] after a couple hours. Yeah. This sounds

[00:09:01] Jason Torres: terrible.

[00:09:02] Nick Taylor: That’s like, it was Canadian beer.

[00:09:04] Nick Taylor: I don’t know if I feel like they probably had in the States, but like you have Molson even though it’s Canadian beer. Oh yeah. Yeah. We have Molson. But do you remember Molson Kick? No, it was, it was beer with caffeine in it and like Jesus Christ. I remember Molson

[00:09:17] Jason Torres: Triple X.

[00:09:18] Nick Taylor: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I had that too.

[00:09:20] Nick Taylor: But the funny thing is it’s like, okay, these people are like, ‘cause bars back home, they close at like 2:33 AM so it’s like, yeah, here’s a great idea. Like these people are still drinking. Let’s make sure they’re super wired now at like two 30 in the morning.

[00:09:35] Robbie Wagner: So, uh, what a weird combo. Yeah. It’s like, well, it lets you drink longer.

[00:09:39] Robbie Wagner: That’s the whole point.

[00:09:40] Nick Taylor: Yeah, yeah.

[00:09:41] Robbie Wagner: Yeah. I guess that’s like being in a casino. They pump the oxygen in so you can keep gambling till 3:00 AM

[00:09:47] Jason Torres: I don’t feel like the casinos I go to are pumping oxygen in. Well, they have to counteract the 100,000

[00:09:54] Nick Taylor: cigarettes. Right. That, that’s what I mean. It’s, it’s BYOT.

[00:09:58] Nick Taylor: Bring your own oxygen tank. [00:10:00]

[00:10:00] Robbie Wagner: Yeah. That’s fair. Um, but that’s how you know it’s a good casino. If you walk in and there aren’t a bunch of old ladies smoking, you don’t wanna be there. It’s gonna be too expensive.

[00:10:07] Jason Torres: Yeah, that’s true. I think so I went to, what is it called? De Lago, that’s a casino heading towards Syracuse in New York.

[00:10:17] Jason Torres: I was playing the slots and my brother such a prick, like he’s the luckiest asshole. Like he’s the guy that wins all the time. Okay, okay. The guy, oh yeah. When like. I don’t know, it was like 800 bucks or something like that. And he downplays it and I’m like, Keith, what? I put a hundred dollars onto this card and I went up like I was like three 50 or something.

[00:10:36] Jason Torres: Oh my God. I’m like living the dream right now. Yeah. Went back down to a hundred and he throws it in, he does the double and a triple and it’s getting all these multipliers and like $1,200 up. What was he doing? Slots. Yeah, the, the virtual slot machines. Oh, okay, okay, okay. Just a computer program. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:10:55] Jason Torres: Well, he figured ‘em out, so yeah. But he’ll do quick draw. He will do any of [00:11:00] that stuff and he’s always winning. Probably built with React. He’s a piece of, yeah,

[00:11:04] Robbie Wagner: yeah. Probably always built with React.

[00:11:06] Jason Torres: I’d be interested to see what, what softwares are.

[00:11:08] Robbie Wagner: We were at a arcade with my son and we walked by this game and it was a Windows.

[00:11:15] Robbie Wagner: Desktop. Okay. Really? So they must run on Windows? A lot of them, I guess. I don’t know. Well,

[00:11:19] Jason Torres: was was that just like an emulator program though? Oh, I don’t know because a lot of ‘em, so what I’m noticing in a lot of the arcades now, if they don’t have like the retro, like actual games, they just put emulators into the machines into a display.

[00:11:31] Jason Torres: Oh yeah. And then it can play anything True. So it’s very possible if that was just a desktop running emulator. Yeah, it could be. Could be.

[00:11:37] Nick Taylor: Yeah. I had me or like mm-hmm. It’s a terrible name. Nestle. Like that was the NES. Not a terrible, it literally called anyways. Do you play a lot of video games?

[00:11:47] Jason Torres: I used to.

[00:11:48] Nick Taylor: I like video games and I don’t. But like I have a super old Xbox, but it’s like I never have the time to. Yeah. And so like, I still like the old school 2D game, so I do have an emulator with legally purchased [00:12:00] ROMs.

[00:12:00] Jason Torres: Bullshit. Keep going.

[00:12:02] Nick Taylor: But you know, like I love Super Mario still. Yeah. You know, it just old school or even, I don’t know, show my age here, but like I used to order when I had an NESI would order.

[00:12:12] Nick Taylor: Through the classifieds of a newspaper. You could get like 101 games, or I would get Japanese games, like I got Super Mario through the Japanese version.

[00:12:21] Nick Taylor: Ooh. And it’s

[00:12:21] Nick Taylor: like, I had no idea what it was saying, like, you know, when you go into the little toad house and stuff, but it was like the whole same game, like literally just the text.

[00:12:29] Nick Taylor: That’s

[00:12:29] Jason Torres: cool.

[00:12:30] Nick Taylor: And

[00:12:31] Jason Torres: yeah, I don’t play anymore. What? What’s this old Xbox you have? It’s like an Xbox. 360. The 360? Yeah. I mean that’s like 20, that’s pretty old. Years old or so almost. Yeah. My Is it really? I think so. Oh my God. My buddy gave

[00:12:44] Nick Taylor: it to me, uh, as, as a gif for something. And you know, nowadays my kids use it a lot, but like we have like just dance, like version like 20 15, 20 16, you know?

[00:12:54] Nick Taylor: So you hear a lot of Rihanna diamonds. Do

[00:12:56] Jason Torres: your kids play? Oh yeah. Do you have updated [00:13:00] consoles that they play on?

[00:13:01] Nick Taylor: Not really. I mean, they have like on their phones, they might play some stupid games. We try to minimize those on their phone just ‘cause No,

[00:13:07] Jason Torres: I, I respect that. That’s how we are too. So

[00:13:10] Nick Taylor: I think usually what they do is, it’s like if they have friends over for a sleepover, if they’re just, their friends are hanging, that’s when they’ll do like, it’s typically just dance.

[00:13:20] Nick Taylor: Sure. ‘cause like then there’s this mode like, I dunno if you’ve ever played it, but like you can do like lava floor mode and stuff and you can record it. Nice.

[00:13:29] Jason Torres: Yeah, Jack’s very restricted. Like we, we have a PS four upstairs and I like barely touch it, but we have Star Wars Battlefront Two. Oh, that sounds, which is super fun.

[00:13:38] Jason Torres: Badass and Lego Fortnite, which he also plays, but only with me. Like he doesn’t play games by himself. So it’s like maybe an hour a week. Yeah, yeah. If, if we’re lucky, like we went like a month and a half without touching it. Okay. Uh, but we also have Clone Hero. H, hr, any, if you familiar with that, heard of cl, is that like Star Wars, clone Wars or something?

[00:13:58] Jason Torres: It’s open source. Okay. [00:14:00] Like pc, guitar, hero. Oh, okay. Built to run on, on Windows or whatever. You can run on a Mac to, I think they have a Mac version, but all the songs, like there’s public forums just filled with songs and all of your peripherals, like for Xbox, if they’re USB hook right. To your, okay. Well Xbox is just a pc, so, right.

[00:14:19] Jason Torres: Yeah, so I’m, I’m running a laptop of Windows 11. We run that, got the drums, got the guitars

[00:14:26] Robbie Wagner: nice. And he really likes that shit. So yeah. Yeah. My whole plan, we’ll see if it works out. ‘cause my son’s three, so he’s like kind of playing some games, but he doesn’t really understand how to do stuff. Yeah, yeah.

[00:14:35] Robbie Wagner: But my plan is like. I bought the, uh, analog game Boys, like the analog analog pocket. Oh yeah. And I’m like, we’re gonna play that. And like, I bought the N 64 1 of that. Like I want all the things, like nothing will connect to the internet. Yeah, okay. Yeah. And you can play as many games as you want, but you’re not connecting to the internet.

[00:14:51] Robbie Wagner: Exactly. ‘cause like the internet is evil.

[00:14:53] Jason Torres: Yeah. Oh dude. Yeah. I totally agree. That’s how we are too. It’s like I do a private room. On Fortnite. [00:15:00] So it’s just me and him. That’s it.

[00:15:02] Nick Taylor: Okay. Yeah, yeah. Like

[00:15:02] Jason Torres: no online gaming. We do have the Oculus, or it’s called MedQuest now or something. Okay.

[00:15:08] Nick Taylor: We

[00:15:08] Jason Torres: got that a few years ago.

[00:15:09] Jason Torres: And uh, he plays, it’s like Gorilla Tag, but it’s like Minecraft.

[00:15:13] Nick Taylor: Okay.

[00:15:14] Jason Torres: So it’s like eight bitty, or 16 bit like very pixely. And he does interact with people in there. Only when we’re sitting in the living room so we can hear all of it. Okay, okay. And like hear, so it’s like we’re still watching and making sure like it’s okay, but that’s literally it.

[00:15:32] Jason Torres: And he only gets a couple hours and he lost it. Because he had some potty mouth behavior a couple weeks ago. Like, all right, well you just lost the games for the goggles for a week, bud. Sorry, hot down. But he was cool with it. It’s like they like it, but if you don’t allow them to be addicted or build those habits, it’s, it’s fine.

[00:15:49] Jason Torres: So I, it’s Robbie, I applaud you and it sounds like you don’t give ‘em much screen time either, so that’s cool.

[00:15:55] Nick Taylor: Uh, try not to, but like it’s hard. Yeah. Like they’re on like. [00:16:00] They need their phones now at this point for like mm-hmm. Communication. Yeah.

[00:16:03] Nick Taylor: Yeah.

[00:16:03] Nick Taylor: And it’s like I have ‘em kind of locked down, but then like they know the code to like increase the time and stuff and like Super

[00:16:10] Jason Torres: helpful passcode by the way.

[00:16:12] Jason Torres: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Exactly.

[00:16:13] Nick Taylor: So I probably should change it again, but, um, but no, like one of ‘em is getting a little older, so it’s like, I don’t know, there’s only so much I can do. Mm-hmm. You know,

[00:16:23] Robbie Wagner: so, but we know what my kids are really into. Get re rebates or get merged. What a segue

[00:16:34] Nick Taylor: Or just, just copy the repo and then paste your changes and then delete the old one. Update the remotes and get push.

[00:16:42] Jason Torres: How old’s your kid again? Robbie? Three. I was, yeah. Why doesn’t he fucking know that? Yeah. Hess

[00:16:47] Robbie Wagner: Amateur hour. Yeah, I bet he does. Interactive rebate squash. Yeah, nap

[00:16:53] Nick Taylor: time. In all seriousness, do you do interactive rebates?

[00:16:55] Nick Taylor: I never do. I end up like. I’m pretty comfortable in the terminal, [00:17:00] but like when it comes to doing diffs, when I’m doing a merge, like I do like VS code, so like I’ll use their UI to do it and then I’ll just, you know, say take this, take that. Then I’ll just do like, get rebase, continue. Um,

[00:17:11] Robbie Wagner: yeah, no, so that’s still an interactive rebate, like, and you get rebate dash I whatever, and then.

[00:17:17] Robbie Wagner: I use the gooey NVS code to say what I want to drop or pick or, oh, you

[00:17:21] Nick Taylor: can even do it in VS. Code there. Yeah. Okay. Mm-hmm. I thought it was straight into like vim mode when you react. No, I

[00:17:26] Robbie Wagner: don’t, I don’t use Vim. Yeah. Okay.

[00:17:28] Jason Torres: Oh, I feel like that’s a little bit of a skill issue. Hot take. Yeah. Yeah. That’s, uh, that’s like a curse where that’s a very polarizing topic.

[00:17:36] Jason Torres: Let’s talk about it. Yeah,

[00:17:38] Nick Taylor: yeah, yeah, yeah. Nothing wrong there. No, I honestly don’t care, to be honest. It’s like, it’s the kind of thing, it’s like. I, I always say that, and I don’t, I’m not saying it to be diplomatic, but like, people are productive with different things. Okay, cool. You don’t know how to do a interactive rebase, then re-log this thing and blah, blah, blah.

[00:17:57] Nick Taylor: It’s like, okay, no biggie. Like [00:18:00] you, you did the same thing with, I don’t know, like get Kraken or you went in VS code and didn’t instead it’s like, that said, I still think it’s important to learn some of those tools. ‘cause like where I’m at now, it’s more infra security. So like I’m in. I’m SSHing into things a lot now.

[00:18:14] Nick Taylor: Sure. So, yeah, you know, I kind of had to ramp up a little bit on some things that I’m a little soft on. But I, I think in general, yeah, just everybody has different workflows. As long as it’s up to you, obviously, but just do whatever makes you efficient.

[00:18:27] Jason Torres: I’m sorry for my friend’s diplomacy here, folks. He’s Canadian, so Yeah, I knew you were gonna do that.

[00:18:32] Jason Torres: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:18:33] Nick Taylor: Why

[00:18:35] Jason Torres: this, this brings up an interesting point though. It was like, why is everyone in text? So, but hurt if you don’t like what they’re telling you to like. This I don’t, this whole, this whole, again, like this whole vim thing. Literally anything, everybody’s opinions are so valid. Yeah. It’s

[00:18:49] Robbie Wagner: because the people that use Vim and use it well are like, I’m so efficient.

[00:18:55] Robbie Wagner: Why does everyone not see how efficient this is? You should spend the time to learn it. You could be so efficient. [00:19:00] That doesn’t mean though, that there isn’t someone using VS. Code that is just as efficient with hotkey and stuff.

[00:19:05] Nick Taylor: Yeah.

[00:19:05] Robbie Wagner: Yeah. But you’re just like not seeing that side. You’re just like, oh, well my way is efficient.

[00:19:10] Robbie Wagner: Yeah, so you should do that. Yeah, but also I don’t need to be that fast that like, my brain doesn’t work that fast. Mm-hmm. I’m, I like to be slow. Yeah. And like use the gooey and whatever, right. Like, it’s fine.

[00:19:20] Nick Taylor: Yeah. If you’re doing like 20 commits in like 10 seconds, there’s, there’s a, there’s a different skill issue there, right?

[00:19:25] Promo: Yeah. This. Just in Whiskey Fund is now open for all your merch needs. That’s right, Robbie. We’re hearing reports of hats, sweaters, and t-shirts, as well as a link to join our Discord server. What’s a Discord server? Just read the prompter man. Hit subscribe. Leave us a review on your favorite podcast app and tell your friends about our broadcast.

[00:19:49] Promo: It really does help us reach more people. Keeps the show growing. Alright, back to your regularly scheduled programming.

[00:19:58] Jason Torres: I feel like I [00:20:00] saw Prime’s, doppelganger, but the Indian version today, and I’ve been trying to get a picture with him in the most non-creepy way possible. Any tips, guys?

[00:20:11] Robbie Wagner: Just say Love, love your live

[00:20:13] Nick Taylor: stream.

[00:20:14] Robbie Wagner: Yeah. Ask him if he likes Vim or not.

[00:20:16] Nick Taylor: Yeah.

[00:20:17] Robbie Wagner: If he says yes, yeah. Then be like, I don’t know. What’s something else that Prime does?

[00:20:21] Robbie Wagner: I dunno. Just ask him like a few things that Prime likes. Yeah. And if he says yes, be like, I need to take a picture with you. Yeah. I need to, I need to take a picture. Ask him

[00:20:27] Nick Taylor: if he, uh, buys his coffee through SSH.

[00:20:30] Jason Torres: Yeah. Mm. Do you buy your coffee through SSH? Either you’re so familiar with it.

[00:20:33] Nick Taylor: Uh, our last release, the head of engineering’s like.

[00:20:37] Nick Taylor: Yeah, everybody just grabs some coffee. So like it for folks that don’t know the, you can SSH into, uh, terminal coffee. Mm-hmm.

[00:20:44] Robbie Wagner: Terminal shop. Yeah. Yeah. Terminal

[00:20:46] Nick Taylor: shop. You’re welcome. Dax. And Crip.

[00:20:47] Robbie Wagner: We’ll bill you later. Yeah.

[00:20:49] Nick Taylor: But uh, the funny thing there was Yeah, I was like, they don’t ship to Canada. So like, I was going San Francisco for work.

[00:20:54] Nick Taylor: Got it. Shipped to the hotel.

[00:20:55] Nick Taylor: Mm. Cool. That’s smart. Brought

[00:20:56] Nick Taylor: it home. I didn’t realize that. I’m pretty [00:21:00] sure I didn’t pick it, or maybe it was automatic, but it started a subscription. Mm. And so get you, I had another Get you one delivered to the hotel. Oh. That I’m no longer at. I’m going to GitHub Universe in a couple weeks, so I’m just gonna pick it up.

[00:21:12] Nick Taylor: I canceled the subscription, but gonna go get, get my, uh, second coffee, I guess. Shout

[00:21:16] Jason Torres: out to Dax for the. Subscription for subscription thing, it’s called kron. Yes.

[00:21:22] Nick Taylor: I have a feeling it was probably me, but like I think I got thrown off initially when they couldn’t order from Canada. So then I vpd in and then did it and then it wor and it’s, I’m sure it was probably something I pressed, but

[00:21:35] Jason Torres: yeah, you pressed order and then didn’t read the fine print like literally everybody else.

[00:21:39] Jason Torres: Yeah. Eh, and they’re like, got him. I can see Dak saying that too.

[00:21:44] Nick Taylor: Yeah.

[00:21:44] Jason Torres: Like, got him.

[00:21:45] Nick Taylor: He’s funny. I, I enjoy listening to their podcast too. Him and Adam. I didn’t know that that their podcast, I forget what it’s called,

[00:21:52] Robbie Wagner: tomorrow fm. Yeah, that’s, oh, that’s them. It’s the official name is like, how about tomorrow?

[00:21:57] Robbie Wagner: Or something like that. That’s stupid. Or what about tomorrow? I don’t [00:22:00] know. I don’t like that. But they’re, I was like, I like tomorrow everyone calls it Tomorrow fm. I think they’re gonna drop it to just tomorrow. So much better title.

[00:22:06] Nick Taylor: Yeah. Yeah. It’s just fun to listen to. It’s just them just. Literally just chatting like we’re doing right now.

[00:22:10] Nick Taylor: Yeah. But uh, it’s, yeah, I dunno. I just enjoy it.

[00:22:14] Jason Torres: I really don’t listen to any podcasts. I’ll watch these guys when they stream. Yeah, but that’s like podcasts, which is weird ‘cause I make a podcast or I Yeah, I think you of them,

[00:22:26] Robbie Wagner: for me, you have to either be commuting or like, uh, doing a really long, mindless task.

[00:22:31] Robbie Wagner: Mm-hmm. Like mowing. Yeah. Yeah. It’s like a time to like listen to a podcast. No, that’s

[00:22:35] Jason Torres: fair. I think just after creating so much content, it’s like I don’t really want to ingest it in any way.

[00:22:41] Robbie Wagner: I consume no content. Yeah, definitely. I listen to like a couple podcasts, but my wife will like watch YouTube or whatever.

[00:22:46] Robbie Wagner: I’m like. I don’t, yeah, no. Law and order’s got me on lock. That’s all we need. We don’t need any, like,

[00:22:52] Jason Torres: and, uh, remind me where Elliot Stabler is now.

[00:22:55] Robbie Wagner: I still don’t know. Oh God. Downtown. I keep wanting to say [00:23:00] criminal intent, but that was the old one. Uh, yeah, there was crime organized crime. Crime organized crime.

[00:23:06] Robbie Wagner: How many are there now? ‘cause

[00:23:07] Nick Taylor: I just remember SVU,

[00:23:08] Robbie Wagner: there’s three SVU is still going strong, like 27 and the original one, two. That’s wild. The original one came back. Yeah. That’s wild.

[00:23:15] Nick Taylor: It was good. When did you watch it? When Vincent spinoff was on it. Kingpin in, uh, Daredevil.

[00:23:20] Robbie Wagner: Oh yes, yes, yes, yes.

[00:23:22] Nick Taylor: That guy is like, so good, man.

[00:23:24] Nick Taylor: Yeah. Anyways,

[00:23:26] Jason Torres: Robbie, may I have a little bit more? You sure? Because then I have to leave. And you can get to your hot Takes list That I see is just burning a hole in your laptop there. Well, it’s, it’s fine. Yeah.

[00:23:35] Nick Taylor: It’s uh, thanks buddy. Yeah. Won’t say no. It’s cool hanging man. Like I’ve seen Jason Was this three times now?

[00:23:41] Jason Torres: Yeah. Oh yeah. No, I think we met here last year, the first time. Yeah. So it’s cool to like be back. It. This was cool for me to come back because this was the first conference I went to, like employed.

[00:23:54] Nick Taylor: Okay. Yeah, yeah, that’s right. Yeah. Last year.

[00:23:55] Jason Torres: So that was cool. And then again like coming back and like doing, doing a talk.

[00:23:59] Jason Torres: That [00:24:00] was fun.

[00:24:00] Nick Taylor: Yeah.

[00:24:01] Robbie Wagner: Did you go to a lot of conferences?

[00:24:02] Jason Torres: Unemployed Render?

[00:24:05] Nick Taylor: Yeah.

[00:24:06] Jason Torres: Render was my first tech conference like ever. That’s really dropping you in the deep end. Yeah, yeah. Trial by fireman, like the, the overstimulation. But again, it’s like, it conditions you where you go to a conference like this and you’re like, this is kind of, kind of boring.

[00:24:20] Jason Torres: Not like in a bad way though. But like we were wise, we were

[00:24:22] Robbie Wagner: doing this at render. You’re in mid podcast and there’s like a rap concert the next door down and you’re like, yeah, this is a little bit distracting. Yeah. Oh yeah. No, it’s wild.

[00:24:30] Jason Torres: And like they’ve already sold out the presale tickets for this. Okay.

[00:24:34] Jason Torres: Coming 1 20 26 is gonna be, well,

[00:24:37] Robbie Wagner: nuts. I’m gonna say it publicly. Justin’s got tickets for all of us. He’s gonna give them to us for free. Nice. There you go, Justin. You have to

[00:24:44] Jason Torres: will it into fruition. So Justin is giving all of us.

[00:24:49] Robbie Wagner: Yeah. And in return we’ll talk about the commits. Did you see about the commits?

[00:24:52] Jason Torres: Oh, good segue. I saw that

[00:24:54] Robbie Wagner: somewhere.

[00:24:55] Jason Torres: Yeah. Good segue. It’s like the Oscars for nerds.

[00:24:57] Robbie Wagner: Yes. Well, for devs you don’t have to be a nerd. That’s what I [00:25:00] meant.

[00:25:00] Jason Torres: Yeah, same difference. They’re interchangeable terms, but

[00:25:03] Robbie Wagner: yeah. But it’s gonna be cool. I mean, I’m, I’m excited to see what they do with that. ‘cause I think it’s, uh.

[00:25:08] Robbie Wagner: Like, there’s not enough notoriety and there’s a lot of thankless open source Sure. Work. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

[00:25:13] Jason Torres: Um, I think it’s a great idea. Yeah. I mean, I’m glad he did it. Now it’s like, where has it been? So I’m glad that they’re in a place now where they can do that and get that out there and make sure it’s done right.

[00:25:23] Jason Torres: ‘cause I think that’s another thing too, is like everybody thinks that they’re really not acknowledging certain things, but you don’t want to do it the wrong way, where it just doesn’t get enough value for people. So

[00:25:35] Robbie Wagner: Yeah, if it, if it feels like. Yeah. Cheap or weird or like, then it’s, it’s just gonna fly.

[00:25:41] Robbie Wagner: Exactly. So it has to be really good. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:25:42] Jason Torres: And he’ll, they’ll crush it. The render team does. Great. Shout out to Justin and, and Brianna, my coworker, who runs a lot of the marketing for them. So I’m gonna go do another podcast now. Okay. All

[00:25:52] Nick Taylor: right. Look at patch us in. Do you feel Yeah, I was going, you going into the a TO one?

[00:25:56] Jason Torres: Yeah.

[00:25:56] Nick Taylor: Yeah. I was there just before this. There you go. See we’re swapping. [00:26:00]

[00:26:00] Jason Torres: All right. I’ll, uh, catch you guys later. All right. All

[00:26:03] Nick Taylor: right. See you. I feel like for the, that that commits thing, you know how like. DJs will be like remix. I feel like somebody could go rebase.

[00:26:13] Robbie Wagner: Okay. So is H-T-M-L-A programming language?

[00:26:17] Nick Taylor: I’d say so. It’s hyper tax market. It’s got literally language in the name, so I would say yes. And it’s like, I don’t know. It’s CSSA language I, I would say. So that’s the

[00:26:27] Robbie Wagner: follow up question. Oh, okay. Yeah.

[00:26:29] Nick Taylor: Yeah. CSS is like, I mean, I know you’ve done a lot of web dev too, but it’s like. It’s wild how good CSS is now.

[00:26:36] Nick Taylor: Like Yeah. There’s even like functions in there now. Yeah. There’s like,

[00:26:40] Robbie Wagner: there’s trigonometry stuff and like Yeah, like

[00:26:42] Nick Taylor: it’s wild. Like, I don’t know if you’ve ever seen stuff that like, it’s like my, my buddy Jay Tompkins Oh yeah. Who, I don’t know him super well, but like he, he’s

[00:26:49] Robbie Wagner: been on the show. We know him.

[00:26:50] Robbie Wagner: Yeah.

[00:26:50] Nick Taylor: He’s been on, he, I did a few live streams with him. That guy is so talented, man. And even when we were doing the live stream, he is like, yeah, let’s just do this and this. And it’s like. [00:27:00] It’s insane what he builds and it’s like, for it, it’s a different kind

[00:27:02] Robbie Wagner: of mind. Like to even think about how I would implement some of that is like, oh yeah, my brain never goes there.

[00:27:08] Robbie Wagner: So

[00:27:09] Nick Taylor: yeah, and it’s like, like same thing with Adam Arle. I got to hang with him and, uh, shout out Adam. Yeah. Oh yeah, it’s right. He’s on your show now, right? I forgot about that. Yeah, I, I got to hang with Adam in Portland in, it was March or April. I was on Jason Lang store’s Code tv. Yeah. Yeah. For the web dev challenge.

[00:27:26] Nick Taylor: And it was, those are

[00:27:26] Robbie Wagner: fun.

[00:27:27] Nick Taylor: Yeah. Like, and actually Adam and Jay both work at Shopify now.

[00:27:31] Robbie Wagner: Yeah. At like, he told the, did you hear the story about that? No, he was like, they were talking to like the guy. Some guy at Shopify that was like posting those posts. Okay. And they were like, should we just dual apply at the same time?

[00:27:42] Robbie Wagner: And they did. He’s like, like Jay applied, I don’t apply. They didn’t know what to do with themselves. They got all of the CSS talent Right. In one go.

[00:27:51] Nick Taylor: Yeah. Like if those guys did not get hired there, that 100% confirms like hiring process is

[00:27:56] Robbie Wagner: fucked up. Yeah. Well Adam, had he, he said he had a [00:28:00] hard time like, ‘cause he interviewed a bunch of places, obviously.

[00:28:02] Robbie Wagner: Yeah. But like, I’m like for me. If I’m in charge of any amount of hiring, we need any amount of JavaScript or CSS or web stuff. Yeah. And Adam Argyle shows up. I’m not gonna be like, we need to put him through all the interviews. Yeah, this guy’s hired, but like for whatever reason that notoriety doesn’t follow you everywhere, so it’s like, even if they’ve heard of you, it’s like no, he still gotta like do all the stuff.

[00:28:24] Robbie Wagner: And then he was saying he did like, I forget, I don’t know what company it was, but like they would frequently be like, do it in React. And he’s like, what if I do it in vanilla js? He would get like dinged for doing it all in vanilla, CSS and JavaScript. And I’m like, I would be impressed if you did that.

[00:28:40] Robbie Wagner: Like I don’t understand the the problem. Oh, totally. But

[00:28:43] Nick Taylor: yeah, sure. Maybe their notoriety doesn’t follow him, but like they both have a laundry list of like, I’ve got the receipts here. Like Jay’s code pen is insane. Yeah. Did you ever see his like optimist prime? Yes, I did. Oh my God. Like not only did he just.

[00:28:58] Nick Taylor: Make optimist Prime, he made ‘em [00:29:00] transform it. Literally just C-S-S-H-L. Yeah. There’s probably some JavaScript in there, but like that’s the kind of stuff like, you see that you’re like, Insta hire. Yeah. Like

[00:29:06] Robbie Wagner: seriously, I make boxes. I don’t do that. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah. So

[00:29:11] Nick Taylor: I’m gonna put a, a display none over here and, uh, yeah, maybe I’ll animate, rotate 360, you know, kind of, yeah.

[00:29:18] Nick Taylor: And it’s like, but it’s, yeah. I think this is kind of like tangent a bit, I guess maybe, but like, like in terms of ai, like. A lot of stuff’s getting, you know, like people fearing for their jobs or whatever. But like, yeah, I think you do have to adapt, but like, I think front end, like I’m not doing front end right now professionally, I still love it, but it’s the kind of thing that’s getting commoditized really fast in ai.

[00:29:40] Nick Taylor: Sure.

[00:29:40] Robbie Wagner: Yeah.

[00:29:40] Nick Taylor: And, and it’s not to say you’re gonna lose your job, that it’s not what I mean, but I think there’s definitely categories of front end jobs are gonna disappear and it’s people like obviously like. Jay and Adam are like next level, but like, those are the kind of people that, like, you can have like two of those guys give them some AI and [00:30:00] like they’re just gonna like, you know?

[00:30:02] Nick Taylor: Yeah.

[00:30:02] Robbie Wagner: And like, I think AI’s pretty bad at CSS though.

[00:30:05] Nick Taylor: Yeah. It had trouble with Tailwind three to four, I remember. Yeah. Somebody saying like, didn’t matter what they said, like literally used Tailwind for, here’s the URL and it finally reset, I think. But I just think like, those guys can move fast. I, I forget who was saying it, but like.

[00:30:19] Nick Taylor: Jay was working out, Elle somebody I know, I can’t remember who it was, but they basically said Jay had like a million tabs open with just like ideas and stuff. It was just going, going, oh, like, yeah, like multiple quads or chatt open. So it’s one thing to just sling code, but if you have some design chops and you have a good eye for product, like they, people always talk about product engineer.

[00:30:40] Nick Taylor: Now it’s, it’s really like front end engineer on steroids, I think. Really? Yeah. So like I think that’s, yeah, like that’s

[00:30:46] Robbie Wagner: one thing that AI. It isn’t gonna replace for a while, I think is like your taste. Yeah. Like if you can know this UI looks good. Yeah. That’s a skill. ‘cause over half of people wouldn’t notice the little things and know that it [00:31:00] looks good.

[00:31:00] Robbie Wagner: They’d be like, ah, it looks fine.

[00:31:01] Nick Taylor: Yeah. But it’s not

[00:31:02] Robbie Wagner: good.

[00:31:03] Nick Taylor: Yeah. It’s like I, I don’t know how you are with art, like, I’m not like some big art fiend or anything, but like if I’m in a museum and I see a picture or something like. I just know that looks good. I can’t tell you why. Mm-hmm. I can draw, you know, but like, I know, like even though my mom said, oh, you’re amazing, or like, I, I, I’m, I’m pretty realistic, like I get it.

[00:31:20] Nick Taylor: Like you can definitely learn things, but there’s some innate creativity that you can’t really learn. Like you can step. You can definitely learn the ropes and stuff, but yeah, there’s still that extra bit, you know? And then like Jay and Adam are two of those guys that just have that, you know? Yeah. Same with Andy Bell.

[00:31:37] Nick Taylor: I dunno if you ever, I had him on my podcast or live stream a while ago. He’s like, just great designer too. And that’s like, those are the skills that are gonna keep people with front end. Keeping them with jobs pretty much. Yeah.

[00:31:49] Robbie Wagner: You gotta find some niche that you can specialize a little bit. Yeah. Because just slinging a page that has like a diviv with some styles and a form is like.

[00:31:58] Robbie Wagner: AI’s got that covered. Oh, yeah. Like [00:32:00]

[00:32:00] Nick Taylor: you throw in a Shad CN and just like,

[00:32:02] Robbie Wagner: oh yeah,

[00:32:03] Nick Taylor: yeah, I can do that all day. Yeah, no, for sure. For sure.

[00:32:06] Robbie Wagner: Yeah. So you mentioned a little bit about your transition from front end to Kubernetes and

[00:32:12] Nick Taylor: Yeah.

[00:32:12] Robbie Wagner: Which, which is what many people do. Tell me about that journey. Like how, how did that come about?

[00:32:17] Robbie Wagner: What made you decide to do that?

[00:32:18] Nick Taylor: Yeah, so it’s not a weird story, but like, so I was working at a place before called Open Sauce. If you go to Opens Sauce Pizza, it’s still up. B Dougie, who is my CEO there, he used to work at GitHub. Super cool dude. He created this company and like the whole purpose is started off as a side project for him and he just wanted to make better insights for GitHub.

[00:32:37] Nick Taylor: That was kind of what we were doing and that was going great. And then we got acquired by the Linux Foundation, which. It is, you know, I guess a good thing. But they didn’t really take the engineering team, so I didn’t go along for the ride. And how do

[00:32:51] Robbie Wagner: you acquire something though? And acquire not any of the people?

[00:32:54] Nick Taylor: Yeah. Well they, they took one of the engineers, so my buddy, just the IP, I

[00:32:57] Robbie Wagner: guess.

[00:32:58] Nick Taylor: Well, a bit of the [00:33:00] ip but also like, I dunno if you know John McBride, he’s my old coworker, but he’s pretty solid in the Kubernetes space. He worked at AWS for a while and Super Talent, one of the best engineers I worked with.

[00:33:10] Nick Taylor: But they took him basically, ‘cause he did most of the infra and then the rest of us didn’t go along for the ride. So I was a little bummed out initially and then I was, it was actually around all things opened last year when I kind of got the news. So I ended up meeting somebody here. I knew who was at the, the pre a TO party last night that I knew from working on open source.

[00:33:30] Nick Taylor: And he hooked me up with a bit of contract work. And then I was just trying to figure out what I was gonna do and I was actually talking to John, my coworker I just mentioned. And because I had some options, like I could have gone back into front end doing IC role. And John’s like, you know, like, maybe give this security thing a go.

[00:33:47] Nick Taylor: Good idea.

[00:33:48] Robbie Wagner: Yeah.

[00:33:48] Nick Taylor: And it’s not like I’m gonna lose my front end skills ‘cause like I’m a developer advocate over there and I’m, I’m basically using my front end skills to build demos. Sure. Yeah. So keeping ‘em fresh too. And I’m actually doing some product work too, but [00:34:00] that was kind of why I made the transition.

[00:34:01] Nick Taylor: And it’s like, I’ve always been full stack ish, but I like, I’ve. I’ve led front end in a couple places, but like I’ve always done stuff like CICD pipeline stuff, setting up like N 10 testing. It’s not like, I don’t know any of it, but this is like kind of first foray into really just infra and security. I worked briefly in, I, I worked at McAfee, it’s like 2017.

[00:34:23] Nick Taylor: I used to work on their password browser extension. Kinda like one password.

[00:34:26] Robbie Wagner: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:34:27] Nick Taylor: But that was kind of the main thing, but that, that’s pretty much how I ended up over there. The head of engineering, somebody I used to work with at Netlify and he reached out. And funnily enough, I have another coworker from Netlify that works there now too.

[00:34:39] Nick Taylor: So yeah, it was just, the connections

[00:34:41] Robbie Wagner: are helpful.

[00:34:43] Nick Taylor: Yeah, no, for sure. Like, I know we’re not talking job search here, but like you get your network over time. Like I’ve been in the industry for a long time and like also just building in public, working in open source definitely helps with that. You know, like I can literally write about my work I’m doing or show it, be on stream and show [00:35:00] it.

[00:35:00] Nick Taylor: So definitely helped. But yeah, I was just like. I was talking to Angie Jones who’s over at Block, and I was just saying like curious what you think about like going into Dev Rel. ‘cause a lot of Dev Rel got laid off over the past couple years. Yeah. And she’s like, you got solid engineering skills and if you can like talk about things that you’re working on at work.

[00:35:19] Nick Taylor: She said like, just go for it, kind of. And I was just like, I just decided to, so that’s how I kind of ended up there pretty much. So it’s fun.

[00:35:27] Robbie Wagner: Yeah. I don’t think I ever want to do Kubernetes. Like as soon as the word is uttered, I’m just like. Like I’ve completely stopped paying attention.

[00:35:34] Nick Taylor: Yes. It’s, it’s like, and I’m still pretty fresh.

[00:35:38] Nick Taylor: Like I’m literally giving a talk to more about Kubernetes and Zero Trust, like basically what we do, and I went to the CubeCon in March in London. Kelsey’s, Hightower has a really good repo called Kubernetes the Hard Way. So I just kind of went through that. I set up a cluster. A week ago, and then now I set up one for my talk I’m giving [00:36:00] tomorrow.

[00:36:00] Nick Taylor: Like that’s literally my experience so far. Like, I understand it from a high level, but it’s the kind of like, even like in front end, you just gotta get in there and like break things, you know? Like Yeah. What, you know, like you gotta learn by doing, it’s the index 2 million, you know, like, well, you know, you don’t even have to do that.

[00:36:14] Nick Taylor: Yeah. Just pretty much that and it’s, I’m finding it interesting, but it’s, yeah, I don’t know. It’s just different. But I’m having fun and as long as I’m having fun and getting paid. Yeah. You know?

[00:36:24] Robbie Wagner: And security and infra stuff is not going anywhere. Like Yeah, I think that is, it’s not AI immune, but it’s like, I think it’s even more necessary with ai.

[00:36:33] Robbie Wagner: Yeah. Because people will fuck everything up and then you’ll be like, Hey, you probably need some security checks. Yeah, there you go.

[00:36:40] Nick Taylor: Yeah. It’s wild. Like, I mean, if you think about it, like when you ask Chad GBD something, what’s happening under the hood there? You know, like ab,

[00:36:46] Robbie Wagner: nothing, like we were talking about this earlier.

[00:36:48] Robbie Wagner: It’s like it appears so intelligent. Yeah. But it is not at all. Adam said this on one of the. Podcast. He was like, yeah. It’s like I put a word here and I put a word here and I put a period here because it’s statistically [00:37:00] likely that a period should go there. Yeah. It’s like it doesn’t understand what it’s saying at all.

[00:37:03] Nick Taylor: But the funny thing is like, even though I know that sometimes I just start, you know, no, that’s not what I meant. You know, do this and then you’re talking to it like a human. Even though you, I insulted a lot. Yeah, yeah.

[00:37:12] Robbie Wagner: Like you idiot, like

[00:37:15] Nick Taylor: Jason was making fun of me for being Canadian, but like, I’ll say, yeah, and do this, please.

[00:37:19] Nick Taylor: And then like, and I remember somebody, I can’t remember if it was Sam Altman or somebody else in the AI space, like. Don’t do that. You’re wasting tokens. Yeah. You’re like burning coal or, and I think

[00:37:28] Robbie Wagner: after he said that, everyone’s like, I’m now gonna say please and thank you all the time. Yeah. Just to cost you more money.

[00:37:33] Nick Taylor: Or it’s like, just do that motherfucker. Yeah. You know, like, uh, I’ll be like,

[00:37:37] Robbie Wagner: bro, you’re going down the wrong path. I told you explicitly this is like, you’re right, you’re right, you’re right. Yeah, yeah,

[00:37:42] Nick Taylor: yeah. I dunno. Throw it some gen alpha stuff. Six, seven, blah, blah, blah, whatever. I dunno, the kids are saying, I dunno.

[00:37:49] Nick Taylor: Anyways.

[00:37:50] Robbie Wagner: Yeah. Oh man. Yeah. I cannot, cannot hang with the younger generation. I don’t know what they do, but yeah. What about you with ai? You’ve been using it, so I was very [00:38:00] bearish on AI for the longest time because like it could never code anything. Well, yeah, like it was good at maybe like a Reg X or a quick script, like a backendy task.

[00:38:11] Nick Taylor: Yeah. But

[00:38:12] Robbie Wagner: if I’m like build any kind of anything, do some TypeScript, do some front end, it’s like I’m gonna fail big time. Yeah. But. I’ve had a lot of success with Open Code. I don’t know what it is. I know it’s, uh, I always get the acronym wrong. It’s not DSL. Maybe you’ll know like, it, it knows TypeScript.

[00:38:28] Robbie Wagner: It connects to a like,

[00:38:29] Nick Taylor: yeah. Yeah. It’s, it, it, you know what the acronym I’m looking for is It’s trained on IT or,

[00:38:33] Robbie Wagner: um, yeah, it’s like it lsp, is that it?

[00:38:35] Nick Taylor: Oh, yeah. L Language Server Protocol. Yeah. So it

[00:38:37] Robbie Wagner: connects, it has like a type strip, one of those, and a. There’s two of ‘em. I don’t know what the other is. Oh, okay.

[00:38:42] Robbie Wagner: Okay. So when you, so it actually understands a little more about the like types and like how to fix it. Oh, okay. And I’m like, these types are broken. Can you fix it? And instead of just being like, ignore or like whatever, like chat GT does, it’s like, yeah, yes, I fix it. I’m like, oh my God, that’s awesome.

[00:38:56] Robbie Wagner: Like,

[00:38:56] Nick Taylor: okay. I didn’t realize they had like the LSP in there. Uh, [00:39:00] okay. Okay. That makes a lot of sense. Yeah, I gave it a go. I, I was mentioning this to you yesterday. I gave it a go when it first came out and it, I didn’t stop using it ‘cause it’s not good. It’s just at work. Like we have like keys for open ai and then we, we actually, I didn’t realize we had anthropic ones too now, so I might go back to open code and just give it a go again.

[00:39:19] Nick Taylor: Yeah, I can’t

[00:39:19] Robbie Wagner: use anything fun at work, so.

[00:39:22] Nick Taylor: Yeah, that’s true. Yeah, I was

[00:39:23] Robbie Wagner: at Amazon before and I’m at IBM now, and both of them are like, you know what? We have AI products, you should use those. I’m like, yeah. Is it

[00:39:29] Nick Taylor: Watson? What is it? Watson

[00:39:30] Robbie Wagner: X? Yeah. Okay. But they just announced a big thing, like they’re integrating with anthropic, like everything.

[00:39:36] Robbie Wagner: Oh, okay. So I’m like, does that mean we get those now? I don’t know. Okay. Okay.

[00:39:40] Nick Taylor: Okay.

[00:39:41] Robbie Wagner: I dunno if the guys down there might know IBM’s, like I can see the IBM logo right there. Somebody paid a lot of money for that.

[00:39:46] Nick Taylor: Yeah, well there, there’s like all kinds of partnerships going on. I dunno, just from headline skimming, like in open AI and like Nvidia do some deal to get the chips.

[00:39:56] Nick Taylor: And then they did

[00:39:56] Robbie Wagner: the, like I’m sure you’ve seen the graphic of like the infinite money glitch. It’s [00:40:00] like open AI, a hundred billion dollars to like Nvidia, Nvidia a hundred billion dollars to whatever the other one is. Yeah. Yeah. It’s just going in a circle.

[00:40:07] Nick Taylor: Yeah. It’s like plugging your Mac into Its USB port.

[00:40:09] Nick Taylor: Yeah, kinda.

[00:40:11] Robbie Wagner: Yeah. Yeah. I did. Have you tried that? Like we tried one time plugging two power cords in. Okay. Like will it charge faster? Yeah, it does not, but it does work. It also, you can daisy chain it. Like if I have mine plugged in and you plug one into another Mac, it’ll charge, I don’t know. USBC is cool.

[00:40:28] Robbie Wagner: Related. What happened to USBB? Did they just skip that because Yeah, they went

[00:40:32] Nick Taylor: A to C and like. And the funny thing too is like, yeah, I dunno what happened there, but like, because I’ve been like involved in a lot of MCP stuff and I’ve been to the two dev summits and like. The thing that like all the cool kids always say is like MCP, it’s the USBC for like tools and like, and I said that too in like one of my talks, but I’m like, I don’t feel comfortable saying that ‘cause I feel like they’re gonna release another port and then it’s just gonna be dongle gate again.

[00:40:57] Nick Taylor: And then that whole analogy is just gonna die. But like [00:41:00] how do you feel about USBC? Like, I get it, it’s thinner, so like you get thinner laptops. But I feel. I feel like it would just snap, if you like. Not that I’m like whacking my ports or anything, but I don’t

[00:41:10] Robbie Wagner: care. I just want them all to be the same.

[00:41:12] Robbie Wagner: Yeah. Because I hate having like a drawer full of cords because I don’t know which one I’ll need.

[00:41:16] Nick Taylor: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:41:17] Robbie Wagner: So the fact that most things are USBC now I’m happy with.

[00:41:21] Nick Taylor: Yeah, no, definitely. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:41:23] Robbie Wagner: But yeah, MCP, we were talking to Angie Jones a little bit about MCP and like, I wonder what your take is on, ‘cause to me it’s like, it’s a spec you should follow, but like.

[00:41:33] Robbie Wagner: Oftentimes as developers, we are given a spec and we wanna change it a little. So I’m, I’m wondering about like how often we will end up with, oh, well I could add this and that, or like, do this a little different and it’ll just work with my thing instead of being like, yeah. Or like not doing it. Totally.

[00:41:50] Robbie Wagner: Right. It’s like we had this a lot with like serializers for data, for like anything. It’s like, oh, well I followed the J-S-O-N-A-P-I spec, except when I don’t, I don’t know. Do you have any thoughts on like how that [00:42:00] should work?

[00:42:00] Nick Taylor: Yeah. Well, I think. You do have to follow the standards for that because there’s like, so there’s MCP servers, like the remote ones, but there’s also MCP clients.

[00:42:09] Nick Taylor: So you got like Claude, you’ve got like chat GPT, they have a dev mode now where you can bring in custom mcps. There’s Goose where Angie works and like VS code. And those are like, as far as I know, those are the only four that exist right now that are like MCP spec compliant. Okay. So like if you diverge from that spec, it’s not gonna actually work in those problems.

[00:42:32] Robbie Wagner: Okay.

[00:42:33] Nick Taylor: Because there’s like endpoints, it’s gotta hit. And now that they’ve got OAuth in there, there’s a whole OAuth flow. And so like if you diverge from that, you’ll probably get some cryptic error. So I think it’s important in that respect, but it’s also like the spec is changing still. Like they only added OAuth to it in May, I think late May.

[00:42:53] Nick Taylor: They announced it like. Just before the MCP Dev Summit in San Francisco. So I think standards in general are important. [00:43:00] Obviously, like, you know, if you’re not serving like HTML prop, well, HTML is pretty forgiving. That’s a bad example, but like, you know what I mean, like a web browser expects like a textual response to be able to render it, you know?

[00:43:12] Nick Taylor: Yeah. So if you diverted from. Whatever the HCTP spec is, you know, like it’s just not gonna render the page. Yeah. So, but it’s still early days for the Mt P stuff, I guess. So like, and I’m not sure what else they’re adding to it. Like they’ve done a lot of stuff with OAuth recently, like adding authorization servers and stuff.

[00:43:28] Nick Taylor: But it’s kind of wild times. Like it’s, it literally only came out last November. Like for philanthropic. I was mentioning this before in my talk, but like. There’s this meme, I, I’d have to Google it again or I’d have to chat you, Petit. I guess the meme is basically, there’s like two doors and it’s like MCP developers and there’s like millions of them, and there’s like MCP servers and there’s like five or something because like everybody’s excited about it, but like how many are really in production, you know, like there’s definitely some big ones.

[00:43:56] Nick Taylor: Like there’s the GitHub, MCP server playwright [00:44:00] Chrome has one for dev tools now. Like there’s definitely servers out there, but it, it just made me kind of chuck a little bit so.

[00:44:06] Robbie Wagner: Yeah, I mean with any new thing, everyone likes the hype, but then Yeah, it doesn’t necessarily

[00:44:11] Nick Taylor: Yeah.

[00:44:12] Robbie Wagner: Live up to the hype, so.

[00:44:13] Nick Taylor: Yeah, exactly.

[00:44:14] Nick Taylor: Exactly.

[00:44:15] Robbie Wagner: Alright, well we didn’t necessarily get to much of what I had here. Not that I had many notes, but, uh, before we end, one thing that I like to ask everyone, if you were not in tech Yeah. What would you do?

[00:44:26] Nick Taylor: I honestly. Don’t know. I mean, I like lifting and weights, so maybe a personal trainer, but like, I don’t know about that.

[00:44:32] Nick Taylor: I’m gonna go with what high school told me. So like back in the day we had, we had to literally fill out this form and I was told I was supposed to be a cheese maker. That was my literal job. Okay, so you’re gonna be a monk then? Yeah. See you in the monastery. Uh, I guess, you know, swing by for, uh, some guta and, uh, hazy.

[00:44:51] Nick Taylor: IPA, I guess so.

[00:44:54] Robbie Wagner: I think making cheese sounds fun. Yeah.

[00:44:56] Nick Taylor: I mean, like, I never heard anybody say, I hate making cheese. [00:45:00] Yeah, that’s true.

[00:45:01] Robbie Wagner: That is true. All right. So yeah, where can the people find you? Uh, what do you wanna plug before we end?

[00:45:07] Nick Taylor: Check out erum premar.com for finding me. Pretty much all my links are at.

[00:45:12] Nick Taylor: If you go to Nikki t online, you can find me everywhere. Yeah. Subscribe to everything.

[00:45:19] Robbie Wagner: All right, cool. Thanks for being on. Thanks everybody for listening. If you’d like it, please subscribe. Leave us some ratings and reviews. We appreciate it, and we will catch you next time.

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