23: Work-Life Balance, React, and Why Accessibility Is Everything with Melanie Sumner

Robbie Wagner: [00:09] Hey, everybody. Welcome to another Whiskey Web and Whatnot with myself, Robbie Wagner, and Charles William Carpenter III, as always. Today, we have a special guest with us, Melanie Sumner.

Melanie Sumner: [00:23] Hi.

Robbie Wagner: [00:23] Hey. Thanks for joining us.

Melanie Sumner: [00:25] Yeah, I'm happy to be here.

Robbie Wagner: [00:26] Melanie is super active in lots of different things. You may have seen her around the Ember community. She's on the Ember core team, does a ton of accessibility stuff, or A11Y, whatever your flavor is there. Is that actually shorter to say? Like, I guess the type is shorter, right?

Chuck Carpenter: [00:48] Yeah. The typing. It's not shorter to say, but it's good for hashtags.

Robbie Wagner: [00:52] Right, true. And fun fact, Melanie is my only sponsor on GitHub.

Melanie Sumner: [00:58] Oh, you should get more sponsors.

Robbie Wagner: [01:00] Yeah, I know.

Chuck Carpenter: [01:02] I'm not going to pay him any money.

Robbie Wagner: [01:05] True.

Melanie Sumner: [01:06] It's my philosophy to at least buy a coffee for people who work on open-source projects that I use. I think if we all did that, the world would be a better place.

Robbie Wagner: [01:19] 100%.

Chuck Carpenter: [01:19] Yeah, I agree with that. Do we think that, that much effort might have saved Faker JS? Talk a little about that catastrophe.

Melanie Sumner: [01:30] Could have. Yeah, we could dive right in and go there.

Chuck Carpenter: [01:33] It was really more mad at Microsoft, I think.

Melanie Sumner: [01:35] Yeah.

Chuck Carpenter: [01:37] We can go anywhere. We should probably pour a little whiskey as part of that, though.

Robbie Wagner: [01:40] True, true.

Chuck Carpenter: [01:41] Yes.

Melanie Sumner: [01:42] Okay.

Chuck Carpenter: [01:43] All right. We don't follow many rules here but start with whiskey as one of them.

Robbie Wagner: [01:47] Yeah, we forget that sometimes and we're like, ten minutes in and haven't had whiskey yet.

Melanie Sumner: [01:51] I have been waiting to open this bottle, and it's hard to be good when you really want to try it.

Chuck Carpenter: [01:57] Yeah.

Robbie Wagner: [01:58] Chuck is usually just not good. Chuck just tries, like, half the bottle before the episode.

Chuck Carpenter: [02:03] No one knows the difference. It's audio. So I'd actually been to this. It's not a distillery, but because they source other stuff. But I've been to the place in DC early on when I used to live there, and I just learned today in Googling that they're in Michigan now.

Melanie Sumner: [02:21] I could go visit them.

Chuck Carpenter: [02:23] Yeah. So Joseph A. Magnus was from Cincinnati originally, or that's where he established the distillery and the Murray Hill Club brand, which I'm from that area. All kinds of fun facts.

Melanie Sumner: [02:36] Oh, it's fiery? Oh, I need a drop of water for this.

Chuck Carpenter: [02:41] Hopefully not like fiery in like a Fireball kind of way.

Robbie Wagner: [02:46] No. Yeah, it does have a good bit of kick to it. What proof is this? 103.

Chuck Carpenter: [02:52] 103. Do we all have the same one? Because Mel, I think you got yours from Binnie's, which sometimes they do, like, these picks and all that fun stuff. It looks the same.

Robbie Wagner: [03:00] Yeah.

Chuck Carpenter: [03:01] Yeah.

Robbie Wagner: [03:01] I think we did it right.

Chuck Carpenter: [03:03] Perfect. Yeah. We often go astray in that just because we're in different places, having to try to get the same things.

Melanie Sumner: [03:10] Yeah, the bottle is pretty.

Chuck Carpenter: [03:13] Yeah. So talking a little about this whiskey so Joseph A. Magnus company brand Murray Hill Club is the offering that we picked up. And this one is a blend of three different whiskeys. So 18 and eleven-year-old bourbons mixed with a nine-year-old light whiskey. I read a few different things and where they're finished in different kind of barrels sometimes, like cognac and some other stuff. Sounds pretty interesting. So with all those different whiskeys, you get no mash bill specific. This whole made in pre-Prohibition-style couldn't figure that out. The best guess they have on their vite is their story is the great great grandchild discovered a stash of 122-year-old Murray Hill and then had extracted some and broke that down, and then tried to replicate that. So it's in a style that was created pre-Prohibition. Like a lost recipe.

Melanie Sumner: [04:07] Oh, neat.

Robbie Wagner: [04:08] Interesting.

Chuck Carpenter: [04:08] So mine feels mild. Maybe this is just me, but mine is not burning.

Robbie Wagner: [04:13] I mean, it depends what you compare it to, but it's a little burnier than some. It's very good, though.

Melanie Sumner: [04:19] Yeah, it's got a nice flavor at the end. There's some caramel, vanilla something at the end. That's a nice finish.

Chuck Carpenter: [04:27] Yeah, I was trying to figure that. I was like, am I going to go butterscotch or caramel? I think caramel. Yeah.

Melanie Sumner: [04:33] I think caramel.

Chuck Carpenter: [04:34] I'm with you on that. This is pretty good.

Robbie Wagner: [04:36] Yeah. We can only speculate what's actually in it, so.

Chuck Carpenter: [04:41] Lots of things.

Robbie Wagner: [04:44] It tastes to me almost like there's some kind of wood or something that was used for something else, maybe before whiskey. It has a little bit of a finish that's different than your typical just plain oak.

Chuck Carpenter: [04:55] Yeah. And I think they're aging or at least finishing it in used barrels. So there's probably some of that. I get like a leafy kind of smell.

Robbie Wagner: [05:03] Leafy?

Chuck Carpenter: [05:04] Maybe. I have allergies, which I do.

Melanie Sumner: [05:07] Leafy?

Chuck Carpenter: [05:08] Yeah. What does that mean? I don't know. I make these things up every episode. Yeah. Okay. It could be that this is the only area on this podcast where I have any kind of expertise, so I just try to enforce it where I can.

Melanie Sumner: [05:23] What's your favorite?

Chuck Carpenter: [05:25] It tends to change a lot, so I don't know. I've got things that are easy to pick up. Like, I like just Buffalo Trace. I think that's easy to get and pretty good and consistent. Goes with the seasons, I think. Not a big scotch person. We had one recently that was an American malted whiskey that kind of tasted like a stout to me. So like those kind of heavy flavors.

Melanie Sumner: [05:48] That's kind of cool.

Chuck Carpenter: [05:49] I don't really jazz with yeah, I don't know. I'm starting to really align with Robbie and liking the Sagamore. The Sagamore Rye. It's like consistent, fairly priced. I can't believe I'm saying that about like a Baltimore spirit, but I like it.

Melanie Sumner: [06:05] Ryes always surprised me. I don't know what it is. I'm a Scotch drinker, and the older, the better. Honestly, I'm kind of a snob like if I'm going to do it, I'm going to do it. But rye's always just kind of surprised me. I'm like, oh, this is really good. What is it? And, oh, it's a rye. I'm like, oh, okay.

Chuck Carpenter: [06:24] Yeah, I'm finding my taste to lean more that way these days. And the sweetness of bourbon is good. It's still good, but I don't know, I think I like the spicy a bit more. Yeah. All right. Are we prepared to rate?

Robbie Wagner: [06:38] Yeah. So if you haven't listened to an episode, we do out of eight tentacles scale. So let's see. I would give this, I think, like a six for a bourbon. It's nice and spicy and not too sweet, and I like it.

Chuck Carpenter: [06:56] Yeah, the blends are working for me. I'm I don't know. I'm feeling a seven. I like it. Definitely get it again. I'm pretty surprised because it's all sourced from Indiana with their recipes or whatever, but still, it's interesting. It's good somewhere.

Melanie Sumner: [07:10] 6.2, 6.5 ish in there.

Robbie Wagner: [07:15] Very exact.

Melanie Sumner: [07:16] Yeah.

Chuck Carpenter: [07:16] Yes. You could do the what was that old show where it's like three and a quarter stars? Six and a quarter tentacles.

Melanie Sumner: [07:24] Also, for the record, when Chris Manson was on the show, he gave his whiskey way too high a score. I love you, Chris, but that was way too high a score. I'm throwing some shade.

Robbie Wagner: [07:36] Did you try it afterwards?

Melanie Sumner: [07:38] No, I know it because I've tried it before, and I was just like, no, honey, that's not what that gets. That's not the right grade.

Chuck Carpenter: [07:47] I can't wait until he hears this.

Robbie Wagner: [07:49] He's actually going to be on tomorrow.

Melanie Sumner: [07:52] Oh, great.

Robbie Wagner: [07:52] Again.

Melanie Sumner: [07:53] Good.

Chuck Carpenter: [07:54] So we'll tell him that is tomorrow. Yes. There's going to be well. We won't give away too much.

Robbie Wagner: [08:02] Yeah.

Melanie Sumner: [08:02] Okay.

Chuck Carpenter: [08:03] We'll talk about it tomorrow.

Melanie Sumner: [08:04] Yeah. Keep his surprises.

Chuck Carpenter: [08:05] Yeah. There we go.

Melanie Sumner: [08:06]But tune in for more.

Chuck Carpenter: [08:09] Same octo time. All right, so Robbie wants to play a game. He's really started to get into this.

Robbie Wagner: [08:16] Fun to start with a game?

Chuck Carpenter: [08:18] Sure. Okay. Yeah.

Robbie Wagner: [08:19] Yeah.

Chuck Carpenter: [08:19] He likes to start adding a game to our format.

Robbie Wagner: [08:23] Why not, right?

Chuck Carpenter: [08:24] I'm bad at them, that's why not. But we'll try it anyway.

Robbie Wagner: [08:28] Well, there's no winners on this. So this is a web dev, would you rather so it's just kind of, like, pick what you like better? But I do have one of the questions is with Chuck in mind, so I'll ask Chuck this one.

Chuck Carpenter: [08:43] Perfect. I'm already reading it, and I already have my answer.

Robbie Wagner: [08:46] Yeah. Would you rather write only CSS forever or get to use whatever tools you want but have to code on a five-inch screen?

Chuck Carpenter: [08:55] I mean, you already know the answer to this, and I have one of those seven-inch Raspberry Pi touchscreens. I would rather work on that. You can write YAML on that just fine. That's all I'll do.

Melanie Sumner: [09:05] No CSS forever.

Chuck Carpenter: [09:07] Okay.

Melanie Sumner: [09:08] I'm working on an Ultrawide right now, and I'm not sure I have enough real estate. You know what it is? I'm getting older. Right. And I have to zoom in on things all the time because everyone writes their websites in, like, twelve size twelve-pixel font sizes. And what is that? And then they do, like, gray and light gray, so I really can't see it. And I'm always zooming in, so that small of a screen would just drive me bunkers.

Chuck Carpenter: [09:33] Yeah. I mean, I'm infamous for my text size on my monitor. Every time I screen share, people are like, what is going on? How blind are you? I'm, like, very blind, so it's fine. So I feel you there, but I don't know. Given I don't like CSS, I don't want to write it forever.

Robbie Wagner: [09:52] So, with that in mind, you would only be able to see a couple of lines of your code at a time.

Chuck Carpenter: [09:57] It's fine. The scroll slowly. Basically, if I can just code on, like, an old Nokia phone or something, that that's fine. As long as it's not CSS.

Melanie Sumner: [10:06]I love CSS. I am jealous of people who get to write only CSS for a living. Not Sass. I hate mix-ins, but just, like, straight-up CSS.

Robbie Wagner: [10:16] Yeah, I don't mind CSS.

Melanie Sumner: [10:18] Yeah. It's like an old friend. So this June will be 25 years since I started writing code for the web, and CSS is just, like, my oldest friend. I started by trying to change the styles for a blogger blog. Like, that's what got me into it. So I would totally do that.

Chuck Carpenter: [10:39] That's fair.

Robbie Wagner: [10:40] So let's see. Here's another one. Would you rather have to have 100% code coverage on all code you write or never be allowed to write any tests?

Melanie Sumner: [10:54] That's a mean question.

Chuck Carpenter: [10:57] That's pretty rough. I mean, both are death traps of hell.

Melanie Sumner: [11:01] Both are ensuring that I fail. I could try to test, quote, unquote, my code with an app, like a sipper app.

Chuck Carpenter: [11:11] Oh, right.

Melanie Sumner: [11:12] I've seen people take that approach.

Chuck Carpenter: [11:13] Yeah. Go like ghost inspector or something. What was that?

Melanie Sumner: [11:16] Yeah.

Chuck Carpenter: [11:16] One of those where you just record clicks and stuff. So there you go.

Robbie Wagner: [11:20] True. Getting around it.

Chuck Carpenter: [11:21] You wouldn't write any tests, but you could record tests. Yeah. It's like a functional testing still.

Melanie Sumner: [11:28] Yeah.

Chuck Carpenter: [11:28] I could live with that. I'm also taking that answer. Third and final terrible question.

Robbie Wagner: [11:34] Yeah. Last one is, would you rather only get to use Angular 1 forever or have to learn and use a new framework every six months?

Melanie Sumner: [11:44] Hands down? New framework. Angular 1 was my first framework, and oh, dear God, the nightmares. I'll take the new.

Robbie Wagner: [11:52] That's how I feel.

Chuck Carpenter: [11:54] Yeah. I think we all were scarred for life from that. Yeah. Also, choosing that.

Melanie Sumner: [11:59] I'm sorry if that's spicy. I know they had good intent, and I try to remember this because, like, Ember, right? I'm trying to remember our own intent. They didn't mean to build something terrible, but they did.

Chuck Carpenter: [12:09] Yeah.

Melanie Sumner: [12:10] It just happens sometimes.

Robbie Wagner: [12:11] Yeah. There weren't a lot of good alternatives at the time either. So they didn't know better.

Melanie Sumner: [12:17] Yeah. And I think a lot of people learn from their mistakes. Even they learned from their mistakes in the second version. Right. So live and learn.

Chuck Carpenter: [12:26] Yeah. And then iterated a ton over the next couple of years and kind of caught up to everything else. Something to be said for that, I think.

Robbie Wagner: [12:35] Yeah. So you started to talk about how you got into coding a little bit. Do you want to go more into that story?

Melanie Sumner: [12:42] Sure. It really was a few things happened at once, actually. My uncle gave me a computer for high school graduation. He was in tech. He actually puts together WiFi networks at, like, movie sets and train stations and stuff like that. That's what he does for a living, which I think is pretty cool. But he gave me a computer, and he said websites are the future. Learn how to write code. And this was 97 when Dreamweaver came out. And he said, don't use the GUI programs that do it for you. Learn actually how to write the code behind it because that's the future. Everything's going to go to the web. And he's an original feminist in my life, so thank you, Uncle Paul. And I took it to heart, and it became my hobby. I took some time out and joined the Navy because I didn't think building websites was serious enough. Like, I had this idea that I needed to change the world or something, but that's really what got me into it. And then, I got into CSS because I wanted to edit the theme for my Blogger blog. I got into Markup because I was playing Final Fantasy XI at the time, and I wanted to write code Spellcast mods, so like macro thing, basically fancy macros, really, for PC gaming. And what did I want to learn how to do next? I don't know why my brain has made this connection, but it has. I'm good at learning foreign languages, and that kind of translated into me believing I was good at writing code and learning new code languages because it's all about what are you trying to say and how do you want to say it, and that's just sort of what got me interested. And then once you're hooked, once you build that first form and it submits and posts to the server and you can get back the results, you're like, oh, I could do anything right. And that feeling is completely addictive to me. And yeah, so now it's my living.

Robbie Wagner: [14:51] Nice. Yeah. I can definitely relate to being addicted to it. I feel like open source and just like, seeing my GitHub graph be more green is very gratifying sometimes.

Melanie Sumner: [15:04] So I succumbed to the trend of putting that little score on my GitHub README. And it kind of conglomerates some kind of score between your pull requests and your commits. And how many stars do your repos have? Which I think is terrible metric, but for reasons obviously, I work at accessibility, so it's not as popular as like Dracula pro theme or something. I don't mind the commit green boxes. Those are nice, but that grade, man. I have an A plus, and I'm keeping it.

Chuck Carpenter: [15:39] I see, yeah.

Melanie Sumner: [15:40] So I can empathize, yeah.

Chuck Carpenter: [15:42] Succumb to the gamification of that. I'm having to work so much in GitLab lately, so I don't get that. I don't get proper credit, and it's hosted GitLab, so it's not even.

Melanie Sumner: [15:55] Oh no, that's the worst.

Chuck Carpenter: [15:58] Yeah. For so many reasons, you don't even know.

Robbie Wagner: [16:03] You get to write a lot more YAML.

Melanie Sumner: [16:05] Yeah, but at least it's not TFS.

Chuck Carpenter: [16:06] Yeah, I don't have control of the hardware, and they're constantly running out of space image space and.

Melanie Sumner: [16:11] Nope.

Chuck Carpenter: [16:12] Yeah, package manager is on hosted hardware, just all the things.

Melanie Sumner: [16:15] Nope.

Chuck Carpenter: [16:16] So I get no credit on the internet. I have an F plus.

Melanie Sumner: [16:19] You should build a green box spot where you can just run a script, and you keep track of how many commits you've done the day at work, and you just run the script that many times to give you your green boxes.

Chuck Carpenter: [16:32] Okay, there you go. I like that.

Robbie Wagner: [16:34] Yeah, they have a thing called GitHub Gardener that just goes through and commits random commits every day so that you always have commits.

Melanie Sumner: [16:42] Are you serious?

Chuck Carpenter: [16:43] Yeah.

Melanie Sumner: [16:44] That's amazing.

Chuck Carpenter: [16:45] That is funny.

Melanie Sumner: [16:46] Here I am, thinking I'm clever.

Robbie Wagner: [16:48] I don't use it because you'll see I have empty days, of course, but.

Chuck Carpenter: [16:52] Yeah. I don't want to game it necessarily.

Melanie Sumner: [16:53] Empty days are important, though, yeah, they are. You need to be a good example and show that you take time off and you have your work-life balance. I think Faker JS could have been saved by, well, a better supportive environment, but we developed this very unhealthy culture in web, in tech where it's like, oh, I have to be rockstar, ninja, unicorn person who can do all the commits on all the days. No, show me your empty days. Actually, I want to see where you took time off.

Robbie Wagner: [17:28] Yeah, I remember when GitHub got rid of the streaks thing they used to have because I remember Robert Jackson had like 4000 commits a year or something. He still has something like that, but it was every day, like even Christmas Day had commits and I was like, what are you doing?

Chuck Carpenter: [17:46] Like and exactly.

Robbie Wagner: [17:48] But then yeah, they they turned that off and he it was like two weeks straight of no commits from him he was just like rage quit. Like, I'm not doing anything for like two weeks.

Chuck Carpenter: [17:58] That's funny but sad.

Robbie Wagner: [18:01] Yeah, but yeah, we definitely do need to make people aware that they don't have to work all the time and that it shouldn't be incentivized and glorified to work every second of every day.

Chuck Carpenter: [18:14] Right.

Robbie Wagner: [18:14] But do as I say, not as I do.

Melanie Sumner: [18:17] When they put the green box spot or the green box feature up. Who first thought I need a green box every day? Why wasn't the first thought? I'm going to show my work-life balance by showing days where I work a lot and days where I don't work. I think the green boxes are just sort of the result or the outcome of the underlying symptoms. I don't think they really caused it, though. Those were already there.

Chuck Carpenter: [18:42] Yeah.

Robbie Wagner: [18:43] I do wonder what if they weren't green, they were red? Would people want them as much?

Melanie Sumner: [18:48] Yes.

Chuck Carpenter: [18:49] There's another thing.

Melanie Sumner: [18:50] OCD, maybe.

Chuck Carpenter: [18:52] Yeah, they wanted to be full, fill the graph, because somehow you feel penalized. Even if you worked that day and you didn't push a commit for whatever reason, maybe you said, oh, the thing I was working on was garbage, and just I needed to go through the exercise and tossed it away, or never pushed the branch or whatever else. I was working locally, but I didn't get commit for working that day because I don't have the credit because I don't have the box. Maybe micromanagers are responsible. People are wanting to see visual representation that you did something.

Melanie Sumner: [19:23] Yeah, but even then, why did they think to keep a log? What today I learned, like, started today I learned repo and commit every day. Something you learned that day or something you thought about that day, that's pretty easy, and you could open source it, and somebody can watch your journey. Actually, it's a really good idea. I might do that. I have a weakness, like most developers, for collecting domains and starting projects. I shipped a website, even today.

Chuck Carpenter: [19:49] Oh, nice.

Melanie Sumner: [19:50] Just on a whim?

Robbie Wagner: [19:51] Yeah. You sent me the list of the domains you had. There are quite a few.

Chuck Carpenter: [19:58] I'm going to click that right now. That seems highly necessary.

Melanie Sumner: [20:01] Yeah, I have a domain tracker. It keeps me honest about the number of domains I buy.

Robbie Wagner: [20:08] You think if it gets too many, it will be public shame of just collecting too many or something?

Melanie Sumner: [20:14] No, it's not the shame part. I don't think it should be shame nor praise. I think it should be what it is. And it's just about awareness. So, as you can probably tell, I kind of ascribe to a lot of the principles of Zen Buddhism because it's about awareness and acceptance of what is and things are not good or bad. They just are. But if I have too many projects, too many domains, that's a signal to me to, hey, slow up for a hot minute and think about what you're doing. You're consuming, and it seems to be not intentional. There's no outcome. Maybe it wasn't as important to me when I was younger, and as I get older, it's more important, like my time suddenly is more valuable, or I want to maximize my time a lot more. So I don't know. It's just something that just it helps me stay aware of what I'm doing and why I'm doing it.

Chuck Carpenter: [21:15] Got you.

Robbie Wagner: [21:15] Makes sense.

Melanie Sumner: [21:16] Yeah.

Chuck Carpenter: [21:17] There's some great domain names here. www.dot.com. Dot.

Robbie Wagner: [21:22] What's jumping out at you?

Chuck Carpenter: [21:23] Well, I'm just reading. www.

Robbie Wagner: [21:24] Dotcom.com.

Chuck Carpenter: [21:24] Dotcom.com. Yes.

Melanie Sumner: [21:28] Well, www dotcomdot.com. Like, there's a lot of.

Chuck Carpenter: [21:36] Rotten-type matoes. Rotten-type matoes. I like that that one.

Melanie Sumner: [21:40] Yeah.

Chuck Carpenter: [21:41] Like the story behind the puffy white cloud. It's good. I finally know enough Melanie developers that we could have our own conference melcomf.com anyway. All right, I don't have to read them all, but yeah, there's some funny, clever stuff there.

Robbie Wagner: [21:55] Yeah. The couple that really stuck out to me, I am definitely not up to date on my Shop Talk Show. So what was the RSS tricks? Were they talking about that?

Melanie Sumner: [22:06] Yeah, it was Dave's idea to make a site RSS Tricks. That's like CSS Tricks, but it just helps you preview your RSS feed and tells you all the information you need to know about RSS feeds because they're always hard. And why are they hard? And this should be easy. So it's either really easy, like, one click, or it's super hard and you can't figure it out at all. Actually, if you're a Shop Talk Show supporter, you get access to Patreon supporter, you get access to their Discord, and somebody else in the Discord started the repo, and I'm supposed to go help on the project, and I just haven't done it yet. So a little bit of shame there for me, I guess.

Robbie Wagner: [22:47] So someone listening to this eventually can actually go to rsstricks.com and see something. Nice.

Melanie Sumner: [22:54] That's the idea. There's a lot of podcasts that I meant to start and then never did.

Chuck Carpenter: [23:00] Yeah. Shift Left I'm interested in.

Melanie Sumner: [23:02] Oh, yeah? That was based on conference talk I gave. I'm going to link it to you because that was a good talk.

Chuck Carpenter: [23:09] Perfect. Murder JS is scary sounding.

Melanie Sumner: [23:13] Well, yes, but also Murder JS, a Murder of Crows. I love crows. Like, I have a lot of artwork around my house of crows.

Chuck Carpenter: [23:23] Okay.

Melanie Sumner: [23:23] And a group of crows is called a murder. I think it's three or more crows. Yeah.

Chuck Carpenter: [23:30] I had no idea that.

Robbie Wagner: [23:31] Two is a manslaughter.

Chuck Carpenter: [23:36] I wonder who decided that a group of crows at a certain number was going to be called a murder.

Melanie Sumner: [23:44] Crows are very smart, though. Maybe they actually murdered things.

Chuck Carpenter: [23:50] Well, they clean up the murder, right? That's kind of what they do. They hang around until the murder is done, and all right, we'll take what we got to take. I don't know.

Melanie Sumner: [23:59] Yeah.

Chuck Carpenter: [23:59] This is going in a different direction than I intended, but I did learn something.

Melanie Sumner: [24:04] So on NHK World Japan, I have a thing for watching documentaries from NHK World Japan. They just do them really well. They had a whole documentary about crows, and I got really interested in them, and they just started reading a bunch of books about crows and how smart they are and everything.

Chuck Carpenter: [24:21] Next is to get your own murder.

Melanie Sumner: [24:24] Yeah. When Ember becomes too React, I will fork an older version of Ember that I liked and make it Murder JS, I think.

Chuck Carpenter: [24:34] Okay, Robbie has some comments there around that.

Robbie Wagner: [24:37] Oh, I do.

Chuck Carpenter: [24:38] What's the tipping point? That's what I wonder. I'm curious.

Robbie Wagner: [24:41] I mean, honestly, with all of the work I've been putting in, trying to update things to Ember for an Embroider, we've almost hit the tipping point already for me. But yeah. I mean, I feel like we were in a sweet spot for a while, and Glimmer was nice, but I feel like we didn't really need it.

Melanie Sumner: [25:02] Yes.

Robbie Wagner: [25:02] I could be wrong.

Melanie Sumner: [25:03] No, that's exactly how I feel. I'm used to angle brackets now, but we could have stayed handlebars. I was so productive.

Robbie Wagner: [25:09] Yeah.

Melanie Sumner: [25:10] And all of a sudden, I just had learned how to do everything different.

Robbie Wagner: [25:13] Yeah. And I still don't know how to track stuff right. And I don't have fun with this dot said, and this dot get, but.

Melanie Sumner: [25:21] It's the loud people that get the attention. And there wasn't enough people saying, hey, I'm really happy, I'm really productive. Don't change anything. There were more people saying people who use React will never use Ember unless we do X, Y, and Z. And unfortunately, I feel like I do feel like it's unfortunate that we succumb to some of that. And I think we're getting even closer with thinking about changing to a single file component format. And I totally understand the people who want to do it and why they want to do it. I was using a different framework recently, and I just was so unproductive. The fact that I can ship an app in a day with Ember, that means something, but now it's more like two days because I have to remember what all the imports are, and I have to do actions correctly, and I'll get used to it eventually. But there's a lot of cognitive overhead that I didn't used to have because Ember had more magic.

Robbie Wagner: [26:22] Yeah.

Melanie Sumner: [26:23] And I really loved it.

Robbie Wagner: [26:24] Yeah. And I think one of the biggest things for me was, like, you can just use Ember CLI and generate everything and be done. And now we're adding Webpack. We haven't had Webpack in so long, and I'm just like.

Melanie Sumner: [26:38] Do you know how happy I was that I didn't have to ever touch Webpack or think about Webpack or have discussions or arguments about Webpack? And I know conceptually. It's not about Webpack. It's about whatever comes next.

Chuck Carpenter: [26:51] Right.

Melanie Sumner: [26:52] It's about that you can plug any tool in that you want, and we'll make sure Ember does the right thing. But why does it have to be a Webpack?

Chuck Carpenter: [27:00] It's hard to be a catch-all.

Robbie Wagner: [27:02] Yeah. I mean, if it's going to be painful, at least do roll up or.

Chuck Carpenter: [27:06] Parcel or whatever.

Robbie Wagner: [27:07] Yeah.

Melanie Sumner: [27:08] Have you seen the new Parcel CSS tools? Those look pretty cool.

Robbie Wagner: [27:12] I have not.

Melanie Sumner: [27:13] I have not been attracted to new shiny web things. Like, I am like, give me the stable shit, man. Because you're just trade sorry for my language. You're just trading one set of problems for another. Really. When you go to the new Shiny, it's just a different set of problems. It's not no problems. It's just different problems.

Robbie Wagner: [27:33] Right.

Melanie Sumner: [27:33] So let me stick to the thing. I know, but this new Parcel CSS thing looks pretty slick.

Chuck Carpenter: [27:40] It might turn your head.

Melanie Sumner: [27:41] It's got my attention a tiny bit.

Chuck Carpenter: [27:43] Yeah, there's some interesting stuff.

Robbie Wagner: [27:46] Yeah, I haven't seen it. What is it? What does it do?

Melanie Sumner: [27:48] Oh, let me see.

Chuck Carpenter: [27:50] I just like that Parcel is, like, low or no config. It's like doing the things that Webpack does without like.

Melanie Sumner: [27:57] It's fast.

Chuck Carpenter: [27:58] Yeah, it's fast. I also experimented some with SWC Minifier, and that's super fast.

Melanie Sumner: [28:06] Really?

Chuck Carpenter: [28:07] Next Twelve has SWC for its Minifier, and yeah, it's pretty great.

Melanie Sumner: [28:13] So how do you like Next? Because I've been really frustrated by it.

Chuck Carpenter: [28:16] I like it because it has some guardrails around React. So I like it better than, like, normal Create React app.

Melanie Sumner: [28:23] Plain React.

Chuck Carpenter: [28:24] Yeah. Plain React is just a piece of the puzzle. And now you've got a debate over 60 other packages. And Vercel has made it really easy. They have the platform for it. They're doing it serverless-wise. You don't have to think about routers. And I like the API routes, actually. So you can basically build a full stack app if you're using, like, an ORM. So I like those things. I don't love hooks. I think they're a little weird.

Robbie Wagner: [28:48] But it's JSX, though.

Chuck Carpenter: [28:50] Yeah, JSX is whatever. Hooks are a little bit weird for me, but I guess they take out the complexity of needing, like, Redux or MobX or whatever flavor of random state management thing. So that's good. So you were saying Ember is edging towards and trying to compete in the React crowd. The problem with that is that's a very crowded space now.

Melanie Sumner: 29:14] Yeah.

Chuck Carpenter: [29:14] Right? So is that really the developers you want to get?

Melanie Sumner: [29:18] So number one, no and no and absolutely not. One of the problems that has been frustrating for me is when I interview React developers. I ask them to, okay, so write some markup for me. Obviously, I care a lot about accessibility. That's my whole job. So when it's rendered to the browser, what should the markup look like for a drop-down? And they can't do it. They can write the JavaScript for it. They can make it into some kind of custom component and explain where they put the click handlers and where they insert the CSS. And I'm just like. I can't even keep up with you right now because none of this is separate. It's all jumbled together.

Chuck Carpenter: [30:01] Yeah.

Melanie Sumner: [30:02] But, like, produce the markup, though. Like, know what the browser does already. You don't need to do it all in JavaScript. The browser gives you lots. And that's sad to me. Like we're losing this whole understanding of the platform that we're building for what is that doesn't seem great.

Chuck Carpenter: [30:21] No, people are being trained for a very specific outcome. They're being trained to write React because that's all the jobs are hiring for and they have no idea the rest of it. It's sort of like learning JavaScript as like a jQuery person back in the day. I don't know how to interact with the Dom natively. It's the whole thing. You have this sugar on top, and that's what I know how to build React apps. I don't know how to build JavaScript apps necessarily, or just write markup for the web. I think that's happening a lot. And that definitely is what happens in these accelerators.

Robbie Wagner: [30:53] Yeah.

Melanie Sumner: [30:54] It's even worse when they don't give a lick or talk a bit about accessibility at all. So you're pushing all of these folks out into the market who are expecting well-paid tech jobs because that's what they've been told the money is. But really, what companies need now, especially with so many companies getting sued, like lawsuits are up something ridiculous, like 500% in the last three years. Companies are legit getting sued for not having accessible websites. And yeah, a certain percentage of them are like the drive-by ambulance chasers.

Chuck Carpenter: [31:31] Right.

Melanie Sumner: [31:32] But some of them are legit, and they're going to end up being on the hook for millions of dollars because boot camps aren't churning out developers who know how to write accessible things. That seems bad.

Chuck Carpenter: [31:45] Yeah, it's not part of the toolbox 100%. The toolbox is to go and win in these interviews. And so that's the other side of the coin, though, that people aren't being pushed for this kind of skill or being educated in that kind of skill. Right. Like what is the bare minimum? What could you get in an accelerator that includes the basics of accessibility? I think I'm even probably naive to what that would be.

Robbie Wagner: [32:12] I think basic things are just you just have to care enough to put little things on. Like you can start small, it doesn't have to be 100% perfect. But just having things like, for example, tabbing in the right order, right?

Melanie Sumner: [32:25] Yeah.

Robbie Wagner: [32:25] Is like a thing that's broken on lots of stuff.

Chuck Carpenter: [32:28] Oh, yeah.

Melanie Sumner: [32:28] So I think there are some things we could do, and I don't even think it has to be about caring. I think caring is good, and we should develop the caring skill set. But I'd rather our tools get better. So I spent a year or so working on Ember Template Lint. So while you're writing your code, you'll get the feedback. You're doing something that's not accessible. We need more of that. We need more of that real-time feedback. Hey, this is not going to go well. But there's things like when I see a very seasoned developer use an H3 because they don't like the size of an H1. H1 to H6. They need to be in order. Think of an old Word document where you did an outline. That's how it should work. Or don't nest interactive elements. If we just did that, one thing, if I had to say, is there one thing we could do? And it's don't nest interactive elements because you're creating a blocker to someone using your platform. If they can only access it with a keyboard, and the keyboard can't get to the nested interactive element, it doesn't know how to do that, then you've just stopped them from logging into their bank account or paying their utility bill or accessing their education course. So that's the one thing I would say. Do that first.

Robbie Wagner: [33:53] That's definitely one that I've been guilty of. And I think my question there is, I don't have a great example, but let's say your whole page has a click handler for some reason, right? And then you want to put like a button inside it. What's the correct way to do something like that?

Melanie Sumner: [34:12] I love that you ask that because this is the number one question I get asked in the Ember Accessibility channel. And there is a great example of interactive cards. Let's see, accessible interactive cards. And it's about making the click area bigger with CSS. So you're keeping your Dom structure correct, but you're making the click area bigger.

Chuck Carpenter: [34:42] Oh, okay.

Melanie Sumner: [34:42] Yeah.

Robbie Wagner: [34:43] Makes sense.

Melanie Sumner: [34:44] Sometimes that's the answer. Other times you're overthinking. You're over-engineering it. Stop that. If you want to figure out, like, what am I doing wrong here? How can I make this more accessible? The first thing you should reach for your toolbox is, can I make this interface more simple? And a lot of developers will say, well, that's the designer's job, or I don't have power to do that. The designer has that. No, you're a grown adult, and you can go have a conversation with the designer so gently and lovingly but with all the sternness of the older sister who will tell you when you're wrong. Go talk to the designer. Go ask them. Hey, this is turning out to be really complex, and I have some concerns. Can we make this simpler? Sometimes the answer is no. But most of the time, in my experience, the answer has been, sure, let's work on it. So that's my hot take.

Robbie Wagner: [35:41] Yeah. I think everyone is generally usually open to changing things around, especially if it gets you a better outcome. So don't be afraid to bring stuff like that up. Yeah. Okay. So we've talked a lot about tech stuff. Let's get a little bit into some whatnot here. Mentioned that you are into some video games. What have you been playing?

Melanie Sumner: [36:04] It depends on the day. I've been playing a gacha game lately. I am sorry to admit this, but not sorry because it's really fun. I've been playing Genshin Impact. So I have a streaming Twitter or a Twitter account that just tracks my gaming, and sometimes I'll stream. But the game, the graphics are really pretty, and I like the game mechanics because it has elemental influences and elemental magic in it. My first video game, love beyond Snake and Pong. Right. The first video game I really got into was Final Fantasy XI. That's actually how I met my husband. I was a white mage. He was a ninja is meant to be. But I played 14. I play off and on Final Fantasy IV. Of course, we played through all the Final Fantasy games because when you're a couple who meets in Final Fantasy XI, then you proceed to play all the games together.

Chuck Carpenter: [36:58] Right.

Melanie Sumner: [36:59] Yeah. I couldn't finish eight, but nine was super fun. And, of course, seven is epic. But then I just kind of like little games like Stardew Valley or Minecraft or kind of world-building kind of games. I need some complexity because my mind will say, you're wasting time. You could be writing more code. So I need some complexity, but I need not so much as Final Fantasy XI anymore. I'm kind of a little bit past that era. I played through the last campfire because the character's name is Ember, and that was just an adorable game and it had a sweet story, and I finished it in, like, two days. I like those kind of games, but I just don't have it in me for an MMORPG any more. I don't think there's too much grind there.

Robbie Wagner: [37:52] Yeah, they take too much time. But I'm somewhat on the same page, I think, of where the game has to feel a little bit like work, or I feel like it's not worth my time. So, yeah, it has to feel like I'm basically addicted to having a job and completing a task. That's why I like open source, and I like games like that. That kind of stuff.

Melanie Sumner: [38:14] Yes, exactly.

Chuck Carpenter: [38:16] So wait.

Robbie Wagner: [38:16] Yeah.

Chuck Carpenter: [38:17] Are you playing Job Simulator on Oculus?

Robbie Wagner: [38:20] Is that a game?

Chuck Carpenter: [38:21] It's a game. Apparently, my brother has it. Well, so it is an office situation with cubicles and stuff. But I guess robots have kind of taken over, and they're playing a bunch of the roles. I'm not really sure. I didn't play it, but this is what I heard secondhand.

Melanie Sumner: [38:36] Oh, my God.

Chuck Carpenter: [38:36] I'm like, I don't understand why you'd play that. You could just walk around and go to your cubicle and.

Melanie Sumner: [38:41] Go to work.

Chuck Carpenter: [38:42] Yeah, you could just go to work. Job Simulator.

Robbie Wagner: [38:45] Yeah.

Chuck Carpenter: [38:45] If you're missing the cubicle.

Melanie Sumner: [38:47] If you're going to play VR, play, like what's that one with the Beat Saber or something?

Chuck Carpenter: [38:53] I've heard this is good, but my brother doesn't want to play it. We play Echo VR together, and that is pretty fun. Yeah, Echo is cool. It's like zero gravity, but then you have a jet pack thing, and you throw this disc back and forth, and then you're trying to throw it through a goal, and you can punch people. It's very fun.

Melanie Sumner: [39:12] Oh, this could be therapeutic.

Chuck Carpenter: [39:14] It's good. And then we do like a bunch of rec room games, like just Disc Golf or whatever.

Melanie Sumner: [39:19] Beat Saber is pretty fun. It makes me feel, like, more coordinated than I actually am in real life.

Chuck Carpenter: [39:24] Okay, I'll get into this.

Melanie Sumner: [39:26] So it's kind of nice. Yeah.

Chuck Carpenter: [39:28] I don't know. Fighting Darth Vader was like a workout so that one was fun and interesting, but it was like.

Melanie Sumner: [39:35] Yeah.

Chuck Carpenter: [39:35] I'm sweating.

Melanie Sumner: [39:37] My son likes that I have a 15-year-old, and he really likes those kinds of games. There's another one he plays where he has to fight, like, waves of robots. And I'm just like, okay, I'm just going to get my Peloton if I want to work out.

Chuck Carpenter: [39:49] Yeah, right? Yeah, there's a lot of zombie shooting ones, and I'm like, why are there 64 different games where you shoot zombies? I don't want to do that. No, I don't want to do it on the first one. Yeah, the horror ones. There's like a Blair Witch game, and I'm like, no, that's a hard no in VR.

Melanie Sumner: [40:03] Oh, my God, no, it's a hard no. I'm going to have nightmares just thinking about the fact that that exists in real life.

Chuck Carpenter: [40:12] I always need, like, little bites in games because I'll have, like, oh, I've got an hour tonight to play or something like that. So I have the Oculus, that's kind of fun. Doing some of those things. And I have Stadia, which is pretty cool because you can go.

Melanie Sumner: [40:27] Has it gotten better?

Chuck Carpenter: [40:28] It's been pretty good so far for me. I only have a couple of games, but it's nice to like, so when I bought it or when I got one of the games, they sent me like a free Chromecast Ultra or whatever it was. So I set that up on the TV. But then I have a controller also for, like, if I want to do the laptop or I like being able to like the flexibility there. Oh, I'm going to play games. Wife is watching a show. I'll just do it on my laptop. Oh, everybody's in bed now. I have the TV, that kind of thing. It's pretty nice.

Melanie Sumner: [40:57] That's kind of nice.

Chuck Carpenter: [40:58] And it's obviously way cheaper than having a console.

Melanie Sumner: [41:01] Yeah.

Robbie Wagner: [41:02] Does it pick back up easily where you were on the other device?

Chuck Carpenter: [41:05] It does. Yeah, it's pretty good. So those things are good. You have to have a really good Internet connection. So I've tried it a couple of times with not-great Internet, and then it's like terrible.

Melanie Sumner: [41:15] Okay.

Chuck Carpenter: [41:15] The way that it has to send your button push there and back and all that kind of funny stuff. So I've had like, oh, there's not good Internet. Okay, this isn't going to work because this is going to be like a second delay.

Melanie Sumner: [41:26] Yeah.

Chuck Carpenter: [41:27] But in general. I've been pretty happy with it.

Melanie Sumner: [41:30] That's good to know. I heard it really sucked when it first came out, so I didn't try it. Which now that I think about it, I should give it a go. Because when Ember first came out, I read in a magazine that it wasn't good for mobile development, so I didn't try it. And then it was years later, and I did try it, and I liked it, so maybe I should. That's my lesson. Give Stadia a second chance, right?

Chuck Carpenter: [41:51] Yeah, try it out. See, I mean, it's pretty low bar to get involved because they have inexpensive games. Or you can do the trial. I think you get like a month of pro-free. So then there's free games.

Melanie Sumner: [42:03] That's cool.

Robbie Wagner: [42:04] I can't try it because I don't have Internet.

Chuck Carpenter: [42:08] That's because you have a farm. You have to mow.

Robbie Wagner: [42:10] Yeah, I have nine megabits Internet. Super slow.

Melanie Sumner: [42:14] Nine?

Chuck Carpenter: [42:16] Yeah, he's at the office now.

Melanie Sumner: [42:19] I have 900. How do you exist?

Robbie Wagner: [42:21] Yeah, I went from gigabit to nine.

Melanie Sumner: [42:24] Oh, my God.

Robbie Wagner: [42:24] It's not great, but yeah, so I'm at the office right now, and I have 500 here.

Melanie Sumner: [42:28] Okay. Okay.

Robbie Wagner: [42:30] That's how I exist.

Melanie Sumner: [42:31] Okay. Yeah, that makes more sense.

Chuck Carpenter: [42:33] Don't be home.

Robbie Wagner: [42:34] Yeah.

Chuck Carpenter: [42:35] You have to move all your gaming equipment to the office.

Robbie Wagner: [42:38] Yeah. Caitlin would love if I just didn't ever come home.

Melanie Sumner: [42:42] No, she wouldn't.

Chuck Carpenter: [42:43] You're like, I'm working.

Robbie Wagner: [42:45] Yeah, super busy today. I'll be home later.

Melanie Sumner: [42:50] Wait, does she listen to the podcast? Did you just tell on yourself?

Robbie Wagner: [42:53] She hasn't yet. She keeps saying she should start.

Melanie Sumner: [42:57] Okay, you're safe then.

Robbie Wagner: [42:58] Yeah, no, but I wouldn't play games at the office.

Melanie Sumner: [43:01] That's funny.

Chuck Carpenter: [43:02] Because then that's just a whole other rabbit hole. You need the separation, too.

Melanie Sumner: [43:06] That's how I've survived the pandemic, is I have zones. My apartment is now zones. You only eat at the table. You only do work at the desk. You only watch TV at the couch kind of thing.

Chuck Carpenter: [43:19] It's reasonable.

Robbie Wagner: [43:20] That's a good idea because I feel like I'm very guilty of, like, I have my laptop. I can work everywhere. And then it's hard to turn it off because it's like, oh, let me just do a little bit more.

Melanie Sumner: [43:30] It'll kill you. Especially in the pandemic. I was fine when I could work for three days, but then I could go somewhere and have a vacation or walk by the lake or not be afraid I'm going to catch a virus that might kill me.

Chuck Carpenter: [43:45] Those were the days.

Melanie Sumner: [43:46] So now it's like routines and rituals, and you stick to them and survive. But, oh, my God, I want to go outside again. I want to EmberConf again so I can see people. And those are so exhausting for me. Like, I'm kind of an introvert in real life, so I love going to them, but then I'll sleep for, like, a month after. But I genuinely cannot wait until we have another in-person EmberConf. That will be so amazing.

Robbie Wagner: [44:16] Yeah, I'm guessing. I haven't even checked. Is there one happening this year at all?

Melanie Sumner: [44:22] So, official announcement pending. So this, you know, don't take this as gospel truth, but from what I understand, we're going to do a one-day EmberConf online on April 19. The speakers are being invited now and just kind of doing something smaller. We were going to do some kind of hybrid event, but then Omicron kind of shut everything down again. But we're going to have Ember camp in Chicago as a virtual event, and we're planning some fun watch party stuff, so regional watch party kind of things. So keep an eye out for that.

Chuck Carpenter: [45:00] Okay. There you go. Another hot take.

Robbie Wagner: [45:05] Yeah. I'm definitely ready for anything where we can see people again, but my wife is pregnant right now, so I'm not seeing anyone or doing anything.

Melanie Sumner: [45:17] Stay in your bubble.

Robbie Wagner: [45:18] Yeah.

Chuck Carpenter: [45:19] Better for the short term, for sure.

Melanie Sumner: [45:21] Yeah. Figuring out the new normal, man. What does that look like? What does that mean for open source?

Robbie Wagner: [45:29] Yeah.

Melanie Sumner: [45:30] But we'll get there. I'm hopeful that we'll get there. We'll figure it out.

Robbie Wagner: [45:33] Yeah. I mean, I hope it's not like this forever, but it can't be, right? Like something will change.

Melanie Sumner: [45:39] Well, either we'll all die or.

Chuck Carpenter: [45:43] That would qualify as change, I think.

Melanie Sumner: [45:45] Yes. There will be some outcome.

Chuck Carpenter: [45:47] Yes.

Robbie Wagner: [45:49] Hopefully, it's not that one.

Chuck Carpenter: [45:51] We'll all go crazy and run outside.

Melanie Sumner: [45:53] I'm sure that people that lived through the Spanish flu felt that this will never end. We're all going to die.

Robbie Wagner: [45:59] Yeah.

Chuck Carpenter: [46:00] And we have technology.

Melanie Sumner: [46:01] Yes, we do. Which has that been better or worse? I don't know.

Robbie Wagner: [46:06] I think technology has made a lot of things a lot worse. Honestly, if you didn't have social media, you could probably just get everyone to get vaccinated and be done. No one could spew like, oh, it's fake, and all this stuff online and whatever.

Chuck Carpenter: [46:21] And the speed of sharing of news and the lack of vetting that goes into that.

Robbie Wagner: [46:27] Right.

Chuck Carpenter: [46:28] Qualifying as a journalist or qualifying as someone who can just collect information and share it.

Melanie Sumner: [46:32] That you can make money by sharing factually inaccurate news. That's what harms us. I don't think it's a tech that harmed us. I think we didn't think it through all the way. And that's where we end up when we're not inclusive when we build our teams because we need someone on the team to say, hey, what if some college students in Eastern Europe decide that they want to make money by posting fake news? They made so much money by posting false stories about Hillary Clinton and Trump in the election and stuff. And I don't want to say they got away with it, but they got away with it. We didn't build anything in to stop it because we just assumed people wouldn't do that. And so you have this whole older generation of folks who the news is gospel.

Chuck Carpenter: [47:24] Right.

Melanie Sumner: [47:25] They trust their news anchors. So you have all these older folks who are just like, the world is suddenly horrible, and what happened? Not surprised, but I'm sad by it. But now we know better, and it's our job to do better. Will we do better is the question. Maybe.

Robbie Wagner: [47:43] Yeah, we'll see.

Melanie Sumner: [47:45] Yeah, we can try.

Chuck Carpenter: [47:47] We're going to start by just not embedding an interactive element into another interactive element. I think that's a good place to start.

Melanie Sumner: [47:55] Start where you are. That's the best place to start. So I agree.

Robbie Wagner: [47:58] Yeah, we definitely have those in Swatch is why I was asking about that question. So we're going to go fix those.

Melanie Sumner: [48:05] That's a great idea.

Chuck Carpenter: [48:07] Perfect.

Robbie Wagner: [48:09] Yeah. Well, we're getting towards the end here. We've kind of talked about some things you're passionate about and stuff, but is there anything specific you would like to plug or, like, projects you're working on, causes you care about things you want the world to know before we wrap up here?

Melanie Sumner: [48:24] Yes. I am a board member for Vets Who Code, which is an organization that helps veterans learn how to write code and transition to careers in tech after military service. I absolutely, extremely encourage everyone to not only donate but hire these veterans. They have an unmitigated work ethic that is rarely matched outside of the military, and there's a lot of care. Military veterans really like working on things they care about and causes, and that makes for a really great combination. So please visit Vets Who Code on the web and find veterans to hire. It'll be worth it, I absolutely promise you.

Chuck Carpenter: [49:10] All right, cool.

Robbie Wagner: [49:11] Yeah, I can endorse that people with work ethics like that are the people you want, for sure. I always say that the people that are the best coders are, like, the people that are really focused and want to get a thing done. So, yeah, agree with that. And yeah, thanks again for coming on and hanging out with us for a little while.

Melanie Sumner: [49:33] Yeah, thanks for having me. It's been really fun.

Robbie Wagner: [49:35] Yeah, you're welcome.

Melanie Sumner: [49:36] Cheers.

Robbie Wagner: [49:36] All right, thanks, everybody, for listening, and we'll catch you next time.

Chuck Carpenter: [49:43] Thanks for listening to Whiskey Web and Whatnot. This podcast is brought to you by Ship Shape and produced by Podcast Royale. If you like this episode, consider sharing it with a friend or two and leave us a rating, maybe a review. As long as it's good.

Robbie Wagner: [49:58] You can subscribe to future episodes on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. For more info about Ship Shape and this show, check out our website at shipshape.io.