8 Bits
8 Bits
8 Bits with PJ Metz and Sam Julien!
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Sam is a Developer Advocate at Auth0!
Watch the Video Podcast: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDF-60KI_pQ
Follow Sam on Twitter: https://twitter.com/samjulien
Follow PJ on Twitter: https://twitter.com/MetzinAround
Follow Brandon on Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheCodeTraveler
Hello,
Unknown:good.
Brandon Minnick:I love that countdown.
Pj Metz:And it does this tempo.
Brandon Minnick:Ooh, does it,
Pj Metz:it started. And then it went,
Unknown:Oh, yeah.
Brandon Minnick:I don't know if that's on purpose or not, but it might just be like the stream catching up, baby. Welcome to the show everybody. My name is Brandon Minnick. I'm your host this week with a very special guest host, PJ Metz. He's back. He's been our guest a couple times. Now. Our co host Chloe Condon is taking a much deserved vacation, and PJ graciously offered to fill in. So PJ, welcome back to the show. Listen, it's
Pj Metz:nice to be on the other side of the aisle on the other side of the desk here, as we say in the teaching world. It's kind of neat. Like, I feel like I've been given an unhealthy amount of power, and I actually have no power at all. So this is
Brandon Minnick:cystic personality. Love it. And and for anybody who didn't catch the episodes where he came out as a guest. tell the folks who are you? What do you do?
Pj Metz:So my name is PJ Metz. I'm a current high school teacher living in Florida. And I am on my journey, learning how to code and hoping to become a developer at some point soon, eventually, perhaps maybe in the future. But I've been coding since May, because Brandon, which I have to point this way, Brandon here, brought up that he thought that it's something that I was capable of. And I was like, You're a liar. I'm not able to code. I don't have the math brain. And then I found out it's not quite math, Brain Stuff. And then I found out, I am capable of doing it. So I've been learning to code and C sharp. I've been making websites in ASP. NET Core. And I am doing this all while teaching AP Lang and English for standard English classes at a high school nearby.
Brandon Minnick:Easy.
Pj Metz:Whatever, like it doesn't matter. So the websites I made Brandon when he first was teaching me he was like, well, you gotta have some kind of project, something you're working on. And I came up with your new favorite poem dotnet, which is available at metzen around comm cuz I managed I this happened what like four weeks ago, I was like, I branded myself, my Twitter, my GitHub, my Twitch, all of them have the same name on them. And I managed to find a.com for it too. So metzen around calm has all the stuff I've made I made the your new favorite poem dotnet which is a why nfpw dotnet the full address is your new favorite poem.as your website's calm. Um, but yeah, it's it's all about modern poetry. It's all about poets you probably didn't learn about in your English class. And it's all about poets who deserve to be read. And it's been a journey that Brandon, you've been on with me building that website, making it spending four hours trying to make a database work on it.
Brandon Minnick:Yeah, that's, that's been the fun part. Because so yeah, like PJ mentioned, he's he's been an English teacher for Gosh, 10 years now. 10 plus years,
Pj Metz:and a decade.
Brandon Minnick:And now we're just chatting his friends do over 14 via zoom. Back in May. And the school year is wrapping up. And I mentioned PJ I was like, dude, you could you could totally do this, like you can learn to code. And so ever since then. He's ironically been using me as a teacher who knows nothing about web. I'm a mobile developer. I make iOS and Android apps, and teach it. He's PJ said he wanted to make websites I said, Great. We'll figure it out together. Yeah, we've been live streaming on Twitch every Sunday, if you want to. also join the struggle. Check us out. 9am Pacific, noon, Eastern noon, Eastern. But anyways,
Sam Julien:yes.
Brandon Minnick:How's your week been? PJ? Oh, man.
Pj Metz:Uh, our school is very proactive about being safe during all of this because as you know, like, that has to be a top priority. There's a couple schools around the central Florida area that have had to go completely virtual for two or three weeks. And our school actually works really hard to keep that from happening. They're very adamant about mass. They're adamant about keeping six feet apart whenever possible. And they're they've bought into the there's the the Swiss cheese method of prevention, where you put as many layers of protection even if there's some problems and gaps if you've got several layers of protection. That's that tries to close. All those gaps, so I actually feel safe at work, which is good. But even now, there's still a positive case here a positive case there. And they're doing everything they can to get kids in a learning environment that's safe. But uh, this week, especially, it's just felt kind of hard. But uh, we're getting it done. We're getting it done, which is great. Um, yeah. And we're finishing up the crucible, which is one of my favorite favorite books. I love it. I love the crucible. We just finished teaching it, they're taking the test tomorrow, and then we move on to it's called Maggie a girl the streets. And it's by a Stephen crane. And it's about the saddest book you could ever read. My poor AP kids are not gonna know what hit him. They're not. I always tell him like this is gonna be a sad book, but uh, sorry.
Brandon Minnick:You'll thank me when you're older.
Pj Metz:Yeah, exactly.
Brandon Minnick:Well, that's awesome. Yeah, obviously, thank you for all the all the extra work, extra stress you're doing during the pandemic, teachers everywhere. Thank you. Obviously, none of this could be done without you. That speaking of schools, specifically High School, we have an amazing guest today, who I actually met back when I was in high school. And he he's one of the we actually we played the drums together. We're on drumline and he's one of the most amazing percussionists I've ever seen and gotten the opportunity to play with. And unfortunate we fell out of touch after high school. But it turns out, he's also gotten into dev REL and the developer relations. And we've since reconnected over on the Twitter's and was so excited to reach out to him today to invite him on the show. So let's bring him in. give a big round of applause to Sam Julian from boss zero.
Pj Metz:Yes.
Sam Julien:Yeah, super, super excited to be here. I can't believe that I happen to be here when Chloe's on vacation. But I'm also super excited to hang out with PJ because the other cool thing about this is that it turns out all three of us went to the University of Florida, around the same time. hang out together. We didn't even know each other. Well, we knew each other
Brandon Minnick:all the college all at the same time. And none of us do it. Here we are.
Pj Metz:We are different worlds. I think my world might have overlapped. Maybe the most actually not not even that's not true. I thought it would have because you were into percussion and Brandon quit entirely when he got to college. But you said other than a few things, right? Like, we all did drumline in high school, but I'm the only guy who kept going. What is that?
Sam Julien:Yeah, I am. I didn't, I didn't keep going with all that stuff. I just play I played, you know, on my own doing stuff. I went through a brief period where I was in a band in Portland, but it was short lived once. Once the basis had twins. So that was the basis that has Oh, is the base price. Yeah, it was classmen. Classic again, is
Brandon Minnick:that Yeah, man, it's so good to hang out with you again. And I think what's really cool is, you know, there's a there's definitely a common theme on the show where we, we talk about everybody's journey into tech because it is all different. And we have two folks joining us today in both PJ and Sam. Sam's a little farther along than PJ but pj chokin is chugging away at it. So awesome. But yeah, Sam, you also did not start out in tech. tell the folks a little bit about your background.
Sam Julien:Yeah, yeah. I am also a self taught developer. I started. I mean, I did a little bit I learned a little bit of like HTML and CSS when I was in high school. But then I when I went to USF, I started in computer science, and then I washed out really quickly because of the math. I too, just like Fiji, I thought like Well, I mean, my schedule was basically like calc two physics, you know, and I was like, I learned to code I don't like I don't understand this. And as I was signing up for differential equations for the next semester, I thought maybe this isn't for me, maybe I'm just not cut out for this. So I quit I moved over to I ended up doing a bunch of philosophy, history, religion, sociology, stuff like that. I ended up getting a degree in religion, thought I was going to go into academia, and then I actually ended up going into finance for like, five years. And then, at the brokerage that I was working at, we had a, we were kind of special in that we wrote our own trading platform. And so I had become friends with developers there. And I was starting to get really disillusioned and burnt out by the world of finance, I kind of got into it, because I could, you know, help the average person and, you know, make a difference, you know, all the same things that all young 20 somethings, think about changing the world and all that stuff. And. And so, luckily, these developers that I was working with, they became friends with me, and they started helping me learn to code and I too started with dotnet, and C sharp, and it was case God Allen, who rest in peace, who had he's the first person who, whose courses I watched to learn dotnet and C sharp and, and so through a variety of people helping me I ended up getting into development, I moved to Portland had my first development job, in sort of the rest is history ended up getting into Developer Relations and stuff like that started working for us a couple of years ago. So I'm, I'm really passionate, I had a lot of people helped me along the way. And I'm really passionate about helping other people get into coding, because it's such a huge life changing. I mean, it really changes the trajectory of your life and your family. And so I sometimes call myself a professional gate opener, because I like to help help people who, who, you know, also think that they have to have a degree in computer science or something like that. I see James. Just wanted to say hi to James, my teammate, he's dropped in on.
Pj Metz:Yes,
Sam Julien:yeah. Hey. But yeah, that's that's sort of the Reader's Digest version of my story, and why I do what I do. And, and I'm happy to be here.
Brandon Minnick:Yeah, and that's what I think is. I love I love hearing these stories, because there's definitely there's simply still that stigma around that. Yes, you have to get a degree. But sit like you're saying I mean, I, yeah, sure. I did the computer engineering degree in college. But it Why, why so much emphasis on math? I mean, I, I enjoy math and science. But yeah, how often do I use differential equations? In my day to day life as a programmer? I probably zero.
Pj Metz:I was actually really waiting to hear the need to learn. Is it like once because I won't know what to do?
Brandon Minnick:At least think of like, is there has there been one situation where I've had to use differential equations? And like, I can't think of any. And so yeah, I took a class on it. I had to pass that class to get this degree. But is it really necessary these days? We really need to keep hammering this home? Oh, definitely not?
Sam Julien:Yeah, the more poetry classes are, baby. Yeah. And that's something that I've really been loving is getting to know people from all over, you know, totally different backgrounds. You know, I know people who were biologists before, or who were geniuses at the Apple store, or Google where, you know, all over the place. And it's amazing how you can pretty much anyone who wants to learn to code can learn to code and often dramatically impact their like financial picture, you know,
Pj Metz:not only that, there seems to be a lot of programs out there that are aimed at getting people who are from not just non traditional backgrounds as far as work or as far as careers or as far as college, but just underrepresented people that want that opportunity to I'm seeing tons of opportunities for women, for LGBT people, for people of color for, for black people. This is just such a great time, I think there seems to be more and more opportunities. And as more of those people get in, they're going to do what Sam did, and go and open the gates and get more and more qualified, great, hard working people in.
Sam Julien:Yeah, for sure. Yeah, I love all that stuff. There's a lot I know there's a lot of work to do. But it's it's it is a good time. We're definitely starting to see some cracks in the armor and get more and more people in. So yeah,
Brandon Minnick:tear down those gates. And actually, speaking of which, not only does Sam talk about it, but he puts his money where his mouth is so to speak. Sam, you have a book, we'll put it in the ticker down below getting started in Devereaux.
Sam Julien:Yes.
Brandon Minnick:Tell us more about like, first, what inspired you to do a book because that terrifies me. So thank you, and congratulations.
Sam Julien:For a number of different factors. So one So, this topic. So the book is about sort of what is developer relations? What is the developer advocate? We know Are we just glorified sticker dispensers? Like, how does that work? And and so I have people ask me all the time, like, how do I get into dev role? Or how do I become a developer advocate. So I have, I've already I'd started writing some of these things down, I've always been a writer and I was sort of an add this in the backline mind. And then two things happen simultaneously, that really helped out one One was that I run this program at austero, called hero ambassadors. And it's a really great program for people to get into writing and speaking and making content around identity and security and things like that. So I've been developing a training curriculum for them. And then at the same time, I have a friend who is a dev advocate for Facebook named Joe pervy. And he started doing these two week chat product challenges where he would have people join these little cohorts, and write either write an E book, or create like a digital product of some kind, and do it from start to finish in two weeks. So all of these things sort of converged in around September. And so it gave me this impetus and accountability to actually put this out there and turn it into a book. And so I said, so 70 page ebooks, it's nine bucks. And it's just to help people kind of dip their toes into the water Devereaux and learn what it is. And I actually give a strategy for how you can start doing dev REL stuff if you want to, and measuring your impact and all that so that if you want to get into that field, or just level up your career, you can be prepared for interviews, because you can actually show a body of work and how that body of work has impacted other people and improve the community. So that's that's the long and short of it.
Brandon Minnick:That's amazing. And I think one of the most common questions I get, because you kind of forget that the rest of the world, especially outside of our tech bubble doesn't know what deverill beans are developed regulations are.
Sam Julien:And a lot of people in the tech world don't know.
Brandon Minnick:That's true, too. But yeah, I'd say that's probably the hardest question I get is when somebody like so what do you do for work? I, I kind of result to just say, I'm an iOS and Android app developer, because that's true. I'll be a Yes, I've worked in Developer Relations. And my goal is building and contributing to the greater community. But yeah, I've had so many times like, I'll just say, Oh, yeah, I work at DEF CON. So I'm just like, what?
Pj Metz:The target the demo?
Brandon Minnick:But yeah, it's so good to see you have we have materials on it. We can recommend these to folks, you know, and PJ is somebody that's new and getting into it. That book,
Pj Metz:I'm buying that book. today. I was grading a lot yesterday, but we talked, we talked Monday and I was like, Oh, yeah, I made a note, go buy this book. It's nine bucks. Like, I'm not gonna not buy that book. I'm trying to get a job here.
Brandon Minnick:Definitely. And Sam, I'd love to dive deeper into that. That insights in the analytics part because I've I've been doing this job been working at deverill for a few years now. And that's always the hardest part for me, because, yes, I can give a talk at a conference. Yes, I can publish a video to YouTube or host a workshop. But you never really know what exactly that impact is bit like Did somebody that workshop go off to push an app to the iOS and Android app stores that somebody go off and just like create the best website in the world? Well, probably not for me, except a web developer. Thanks, PJ. But yeah, what's up? What are your recommendations around managing those? That analytics and that feedback loop?
Sam Julien:Yeah. So there's a woman named Mary thang ball, who wrote a book called The business value of Developer Relations. And she has a quote in that book, one of the most difficult things to do in dev REL is prove that the investment is worthwhile. And that's really true. And so there there the thing with measuring, we like to call this measuring impact in Developer Relations. And you have to do that along several different dimensions. And you have to do that both quantitatively and qualitatively. So on the one hand, you want to look you have to look at things like number of views or number of attendees at a conference or whatever, but that doesn't always tell the whole story, right? because like you said, you could give a talk to 500 people and you're just background noise, or you could give a talk to 30 people and one of them becomes the next You know, Suren, who wrote who made code newbie, you know, so like you never know who you're talking to and and what kind of impact you're having. So you also need to measure qualitative things like sentiment in the community and like goodwill that you're building in the community or, you know, problems that you're solving for people and noticing trends and things like that. And so there's entire strategies that you can build around both the quantitative and the qualitative side of Devereaux.
Brandon Minnick:I love it. And, and yeah, that's, that's the challenge, right? Yeah. How do you build your tools and feedback? And, yeah, cuz at the end of the day, somebody has to sign your paycheck. And if right that, if we can't prove, if I can't prove to Satya Nadella at Microsoft that what I'm doing is making an impact, then he's probably gonna not send my paychecks anymore.
Sam Julien:Right, right.
Brandon Minnick:That's always my biggest challenge and concern, really, for me, like, I love this job. And I see the one on one conversations I have, and I know that we are making an impact. But yeah, how do you monetize that into a way that, you know, maybe a CEO only cares about dollars and cents in growth, and they didn't want to manage her use views on YouTube as a metric. But I think I think more companies are starting to figure it out that deverill is an important thing that we have to grow our developer communities, we have to have learning materials and documentation and all that has to be really good, because otherwise people won't use the tools. How many times have we all been there where you go, like, you hear about this library? Like, oh, cool, pop into my app, I'll try it out. And there's no documentation of the documentation that's there just is years old, and it doesn't work and you find yourself on Stack Overflow, try to figure out the answers. Or maybe it's open source if you dive in the source code, but yeah, it's almost become it's starting to become a thing in the industry where it's like, step one is like, we can't push a product without all this stuff. We need to have a tutorials we need to have this documentation. Yeah, and, and actually PGS I'm curious how your experience has been because somebody who is brand new, yeah. Did what do you trust?
Pj Metz:Like luckily for me, I either have you or Chloe helping me you've been helping me build the your new favorite poem website. And Chloe has been helping me build shanaya pot, which is a way that once a day tweets, let's go girls, as a motivator, are all the people who need it, which, yep, that's the article close putting together about building a bot. And with the two of you, I always feel like I can get my question answered pretty quickly. But I also sometimes feel like I'm being dragged along. And I'm like, looking at things as we're passing by you're like, those are just API's. Don't worry about it right. Now. We'll get back to that. That's just async. We don't need to worry. You'll find out later. And I'm like, okay, say
Unknown:that. Yes. But wait,
Pj Metz:yeah, but there's also this sense of, there's all this world and I think Sam said it earlier, like sometimes even in tech, there's not a realization that the way your tech world works is not necessarily the way everyone outside of it works. So if it is about opening it up, and trying to get more and more qualified people in and giving them ease of access, and tools that are just going to make them better. employees, developers, help them to create something, then making sure that you've got someone who can explain the tools and who can help people use the tools, and just give them a spark of an idea. That's all that person needs. Sometimes. I've seen this in teaching where we use a lot of tech and teaching now we've got learning management systems, and we've got Nearpod and Pear Deck and all these different things that help us bring things to students. And just giving a teacher an idea, well, this is how you could use it, that teachers then get a run with it and take it in a new direction and find something interesting to do. I just used a great app called parlay. And I know no one out there is like, Oh, I'm gonna go use parlay. But it's called parlay. It's for online discussions. And I was trying to think how I could use it in my class because I have half virtual half in person. And I use this online discussion tool to make everyone sort of be in the same room virtually, essentially. And they are able to have this back and forth discussion and it gives me tools to measure engagement on the students. And it's something that they had to like, show me work with me on and then I was able to use it on my own but if there's not someone showing people how to use a library, how to use Xamarin Forms, like you're always talking about Xamarin forms Brandon. And if there's not someone out there pushing it, no one's gonna use it because they don't know what it can do for them.
Brandon Minnick:Very well said, very well hire me, we click that and get it in front of every CEO that doesn't believe in Deborah.
Sam Julien:One of the things that I love the most about that role is that you, your job is to work with all of these different teams at all of these different levels. You know, like I was just on, on, I'm planning to give a presentation to our sales team. Because even though dev role is not sales, I can help them understand like the developer mindset and what's going on with that. But then at the same time, I can work with our SDK team on improving a feature or work with our docs team on clarifying something that, you know, people are having trouble with. And that's kind of the beauty of being a Developer Advocate as you can you literally advocate for the developer across all levels of the company.
Brandon Minnick:Yeah. And my favorite part that you just touched on is there's there's no sales. A lot of folks think like, oh, like, What are you trying to sell me, I'm like, I'm not trying to sell you anything like, I get, I don't have a commission. I just want to share my passions with you. And if if you're excited about something, I'm excited about something, and that's what I'm here for, but right with that, there's also like, at least at Microsoft, we're not tied to sales. We're not tied to marketing. And so I can, I can be honest. And there's been times where people ask me about something, I say, Hey, I would use that, like, I know, that's the Microsoft tool, and Microsoft wants you to pay that money for it. But like that one hasn't been updated in a couple years. I don't recommend it. And here's another one. And actually, speaking of amazing tools, Sim, you're currently working at auth zero, which I've had a chance to play around with it. And it is a great tool. But I'm kind of curious, because we've had this conversation around learning things and teaching things. I have a hunch that PJ's maybe never heard of zero. Could we try? Get into? Yes, yes. Yes. on all of us understanding what is nazira? I guess, PJ, are you? Are you done for
Pj Metz:Monday? And I was like, Oh, yeah, I love authority. 01 of my favorite punk bands. But I get a feeling you're not actually doing dev REL for authority zero. So so I'd love
Sam Julien:to know about this. I love being being a dev advocate for a punk rock band. Sounds pretty fun. I'm not gonna lie. I mean,
Pj Metz:yeah. I would probably do Bad Religion instead of authority zero, but they're both awesome.
Sam Julien:PJ, have you had to add login to an app yet? Have you gotten to that stage of anything yet?
Pj Metz:No. But it is something that has been brought up as a possibility for the poem website, having people like login and then create an account. And then this is like, a million years in the future. Like, yeah, what are your poems that you like? write poetry, you know what I mean? You know what I mean?
Sam Julien:Right, right. Exactly. Yeah, yeah. So that whole kind of system of like, having somebody be able to create a profile login, have, you know, have different maybe roles, maybe some people can only use certain poems, or, you know, maybe there's an an admin role or something. That's the kind of thing that auth zero works, does, basically. So it's basically a kind of a set of libraries and tools to make that process easier. instead of you having to write every piece of that from scratch, you basically just made a drop in
Pj Metz:sugar, without having to build that.
Sam Julien:Build that whole thing, you just kind of like drop it in, configure it, and then and kind of tweak it and then, you know, does does all of the gnarly off stuff behind the scenes, basically. Okay, so
Pj Metz:then you do does it give you like your own unique account? Or is it like, like, when I go to a new website, it's like, do you want to use Facebook or Google or this to login? Or is it like, unique accounts? Only to that particular website that like, let's say, I dropped your librarian for my poetry website? Would it be a unique account? Or would it be like a third party authentication?
Sam Julien:Yeah, so you can actually do either one you could create. You could use kind of like username and password kind of thing. Or you could have somebody sign in with something like Facebook or Twitter or twitch or whatever other social provider you want. Okay. All right. It was kind of connected to that. Yeah, well, I
Pj Metz:have no idea what the benefits of one or the other I know, I tend to use Google I used to use Facebook a lot and then imported all of like my facebook profile info to the new profile. It was like to get a free PowerPoint slide that I was using for my class. And one of the things that was on there was like a stupid joke in the bio. You remember when there was like an About section? Oh, yeah. And it was only a single set I had. I had a silly joke there a little silly joke. And it imported that for some reason. And then I got called to the principal's office, and they're like, so some kid found a something online and you need to get rid of it. I was like, Where? Because I had totally forgotten I didn't even exist to my mind. So I set my friends on Facebook. I was like, You guys need to help me find this website and someone did and I got on deleted by profiles. Oh my god. Oh, it was terrible.
Sam Julien:Yeah, it's so funny. I've noticed that like, because I think it was like around the time that we were in college that they had the the like ABOUT SECTION everything. And there are a lot of friends that if I go on their profile, they have the same about me section from like, 2006 and it's really funny cuz it's like, completely, you know, they're like doctors and lawyers now. Like, against me quotes and like Go Gators and stuff like that. They're like, Oh, yeah. Oh,
Unknown:oh, six champs.
Sam Julien:Yeah. I don't know if I want 2006. Sam on the internet. Yeah. Oh,
Pj Metz:I just had a flood of memories hit me. And I think I need to lie down pretty soon.
Brandon Minnick:That's one of the things like I'm sure you guys too. But like I was one of the first users on Facebook. Like back when it was still the Facebook back when you had to have a college, your college email address. Just create an account the wall over the text? Yeah. And it's, it's so different now. But as it's changed, you've changed the way you treated it. And I mean, to be frank, I don't really use it much for anything. Now it is like, there's a couple Xamarin Facebook groups that I hang out in, but I don't really post anything or anything like that. But I used to all the time back then. Because like, all my friends at the college, we could share all this stuff. And it's Yeah, thinking about, like you said DJ having something from 2006 appear to work, man. No, thank you.
Pj Metz:That's not good stuff. Not good stuff. Remember, you would get home from a party and your friend would like send you a text. I was like, hurry up and upload the pictures from the party. Upload from your phone, you had to like plug in your camera, upload them it's random fun titles, add comments tag, it was a whole ordeal.
Brandon Minnick:Right? Before we do that, we were just tagging friends and photos. But now we know that well, we were actually trading Facebook's face record facial recognition AI for free for them. So you're welcome Facebook. You got me? Yeah. Thanks.
Pj Metz:updated the 10 year challenge.
Brandon Minnick:Oh, man, so. So PJ, how are you feeling about ot zero.
Pj Metz:So it makes sense that I never thought about what that process might look like, when you're building website. So it makes total sense that there's a library that exists in a series of libraries, like you said that you can just drop in that creates it and god yeah, it's I start again, I start thinking about like, my own, and I get really sweaty and gross. But yeah, that makes sense to me that that's a product that you guys provide. I like that.
Brandon Minnick:Yeah, and I will say the biggest feedback I can give to anybody looking into getting getting into off just authorization authentication. Don't try to create your own library. Like if you are actually an expert, like you're a security expert, you know, all the things. Okay, but for somebody like me, you're just asking for security vulnerabilities, loopholes and backdoors and that's why I really appreciate companies like zero because they they have the experts so you can rely on them to establish these safe secure authorization authentication connections and you can kind of sleep easier at night knowing that you didn't forget to code something
Pj Metz:that's like I purchased a home security system I didn't build a complicated and and like other things so that when the door opens like a gong hits and I'm like someone's here like I I purchased that someone else It'll take care of that for me.
Brandon Minnick:Absolutely.
Sam Julien:I see we had a question in the chat. surly dev asked, Is azzura competing our complimentary to multi factor technologies such as Microsoft, Google, so it's complimentary. You can use it with that. And actually Twilio. authy is based on is based on a theory. We're like mutual customers of each other. So you can use other multi factor things. But yeah, the, the rolling around off it. I think for like a small side project thing, you can do it as an educational exercise. But then beyond that, you get into trouble, right? She started talking about like secure passwords and multi factor and brute force attacks and all that. And it's just too much too much.
Brandon Minnick:It's terrifying. Yeah. I, because I was there a couple years ago, because somebody gave me that that same advice, and I was like, I'm smart enough I can. And then, yeah, sure, you can get like a login page working and Little things like you want to hash the password and salted before we put in the database so that if the database gets hacked, and nobody has clear text passwords, but then like, yeah, like you're just saying, same with like, how do you how do you reset a password? What if somebody forgets their password? How do you authenticate them? Like, how do you send those emails back to them that says, like, you're the new user, how do you implement two factor off and like, it becomes really hard really quickly. Even ignoring all of the security patches and flaws that I probably had in my system, so don't try to reinvent the wheel use amazing tools like azzura.
Pj Metz:This makes me really appreciate the fact that I had to recently reset my Mo's app password, so I could order some most Monday. It was a process but I appreciate it. Now. I'm thinking about everything that has to go into that. I appreciate having to go through all those hoops. I don't want people ordering those without my consent.
Brandon Minnick:That's right. Especially if your credit cards in there.
Pj Metz:Yeah, that was my free case. Also, yeah. my credit card is in fact attached to that. So that's important too.
Sam Julien:I guess. I missed most. I don't have those over here.
Pj Metz:They don't have but I'm not moving to the Pacific Northwest now.
Sam Julien:Right side there. There is still a lot of amazing food out here. So
Pj Metz:as long as the visit in and out I'll be happy
Sam Julien:there. Southern Oregon. Medford there's one in metric. There's one in Salem, actually, I don't know. Okay. Salem, Salem, south of Portland. Is that yeah, it's an hour south of Portland. So you'll be fine.
Pj Metz:I can get there. I can do it. I mean, I wasn't thinking of moving to Portland Salem was on the shortlist Salem. Oh, it was a Beaverton.
Sam Julien:ban was my in laws are in Salem, and it's a great place. It's a great place. Pi rock says in and out is way overrated. And you know what, I don't have a theory. I have a theory. We have a theory, okay. We call it the chick fil a in and out nostalgia theory. Here's our theory. If you grew up eating chick fil a, or in and out, you think they're much better than they actually are. Because you have nostalgia. So if you've eaten them as an adult for the first time, then you don't think so Amy grew up in Oregon had never had chick fil a until I came along into her life. And she finds it very mad. And and I take my girl. No, no, even though I think in and out for a cheap burger is a good burger. Like, I don't think it's the greatest burger I've ever had.
Pj Metz:I'm not saying it's the greatest, but it's the first thing I do when I get to California. Like my friends a vegetarian and I land and he picks me up in LA. And I'm like, good to see you. I'm so glad I'm here. Take me to an in and out right now. Yeah, I mean,
Sam Julien:yeah, I mean, anytime I'm in California, I definitely hit an in and out or like Vegas or whatever. Like I I like it. I just you know, I don't think it's like the best thing ever.
Pj Metz:No, there's better burgers, of course, and I will I'm not gonna argue with pie rock. Five Guys. Side by side. Yeah, I'm gonna enjoy a five guys burger better. But when I'm in California, I'm gonna get a double double and some animal style fries. Well done. Thank you very much.
Sam Julien:Yeah, I'll give you that. Yeah,
Brandon Minnick:we even have some Ronnie in the comments is saying chick fil a on the West Coast isn't as good as chick fil a in the south from Atlanta originally. So maybe the farther away you get from the hub. But uh
Unknown:i don't know.
Pj Metz:chick fil a was on the west coast. I didn't know they had any locations
Sam Julien:over there. Only recently, only recently.
Pj Metz:Yeah, there's a legend. There's a legend of a Gainesville in and out actually people swear to god that there was an in and out in Gainesville Florida and there's a rumor that it was maybe the official in and out that had like a random franchisee or that it was like named in and out but it wasn't the same. But talk to kids who grew up in Gainesville and they'll swear there was an in and out there.
Brandon Minnick:Well, I can't be cuz the owners of this is what I say
Pj Metz:these these games you know there wasn't in and out.
Brandon Minnick:Yeah, cuz they refuse to expand their distribution past 24 hours of trucking so that they can still have fresh ingredients. And so I don't know, man, that would doesn't pass the smell test. It
Pj Metz:doesn't. But like I can't convince my friends who grew up in a small town in Florida.
Brandon Minnick:Now maybe there was a restaurant called in and out.
Pj Metz:It was an affiliate and Out Burger. And there's a menu ism.com page about In and Out Burger in Gainesville.
Brandon Minnick:Oh, man, the plot thickens.
Pj Metz:I'm telling you. They were like, yeah, it's just like, in and out. And I was like, it can't be but I again, I'm not saying one way or the other. People are saying and most of those people are from Gainesville, and grew up there.
Brandon Minnick:Well, speaking of death row,
Pj Metz:I'm really derailing. I'll be a great dead bro.
Brandon Minnick:We gotta have a whole nother episode just devoted to food based preferences and conspiracy theories because of all it so share. share them with us in the comments. Let us know what you got. And we'll queue up a whole episode Otto be great.
Sam Julien:Definitely nikoli for that one, though.
Pj Metz:Yeah.
Brandon Minnick:So, uh, so Sam, I know, you mentioned you got started with dotnet. C sharp when you're teaching yourself to code which great, those are my favorites. But I know you have a website now called upgrading Angular j. s. So does that mean, you're a full fledged JavaScript developer now? And how did the tell us more about how that website came about?
Sam Julien:Yeah. So So yeah, I my first, my first jobs were in C sharp with just sort of like, you know, MVC and jQuery and stuff. And then that was like, right around 2014, which is when a bunch of JavaScript frameworks started coming out 2013 2014. And so I started learning Angular j s, it was just called Angular back then. And that's the version one dot x, and was able to convince my company to let me write a feature in Angular JS. And that kind of started me down the JavaScript path. And I got, I've gotten real deep into JavaScript on both the back end and the front end. But I've done a lot of work in the Angular community. And what sort of led me to death row was, there was this period of time where Angular went from version one to version two plus, and it was a huge breaking change. It wasn't, it wasn't like just an upgrade. And so there, it was a big problem, lots of companies needed to figure out how to migrate from version one, which is called Angular j. s to version two plus, which is Angular, just called Angular. And so I made this big, huge course, like I was in the middle of doing it doing a migration myself. And there were no good resources out there really, at the time, there were some little bit of documentation, but no, kind of like comprehensive tutorials or anything. So I made the course that I wish existed. And it's like 230 videos, and step by step walks through the process of going from AngularJS to Angular. And so I launched that I spent pretty much all of 2017, building that and then launched it in 2018, with a couple of friends. And, and so then, I, that kind of, like, launched me into dev REL stuff because I started writing articles to promote it, I started giving talks about the migration process and the libraries that you have to use and the steps and everything. And that that's still going. You know, I I teach on other platforms. Now, I give talks on a lot of different topics, but the upgrade stuff, believe it or not, is still viable. It's still a thing that people struggle with a lot of like big enterprise companies are still doing this process of migrating from old Angular to new Angular. And so that's kind of what got me down that road.
Pj Metz:That sounds like this is what they need.
Sam Julien:I can't it's one of those things like I I don't toot my own horn very often. But I will say like, this is the probably the best resource out there. They're they're very, at this point, I'm, I'm an industry expert on this problem, like, I actually know a lot about it. And there's like, a handful of other people who know as much as I do, but not many. And so like, I put a lot of time and effort into this into that course. And it's, there's a few things that in it that that, you know, as it's gotten older, have been either updated or whatever, but the core concepts have not really changed. So. But yeah, I mean, it's crazy, because it's like, something that's been a problem for a couple of years. And I literally, like I did a consulting job on it like, a month ago, like I said, it's been like three years. So it's a, it was a big problem and for that community. So
Pj Metz:that's such a fantastic, like, you saw a void in what people needed. You're like, well, like, if I have to do this anyway, I'm going to document it, and so other people can follow me. And that's really forward thinking. And it's something that I think is is something I'm trying to work on in teaching is when I come up with an idea, and when I do something, I'm almost afraid to like, share what I've done, because I don't want people to be like, Well, yeah, obviously, that's what we would do. And I don't want to say something that's already been said. But when you notice that that vacancy, and you know, people will need it, because you could have used it, it's awesome that you you set out to fill in that void and to basically offer a hand to everyone who was going to have to go through what you were going through. It's brilliant. I think that's such a great way to operate.
Sam Julien:Well, it's funny, you say that, because as confident as I am right now, I was actually I was really terrified to release it as my first video course, I didn't have like very fancy equipment, you can clearly now like do this for a living. So I have this. But back then I had like a not super expensive computer, I had a you know, maybe a $60 microphone. And I had never I had no idea how people were gonna respond. And so I was terrified, because I was like, What have I just spent all this time and I released this and people are like, this is stupid, like, Who is this guy? Like, this is so obvious, like, nobody needs this. So I, you know, I'm glad I kind of took a risk. And I had other people that were helping me like, keep me accountable and things like that. And that helped a lot. And it sort of points to a lesson because, you know, as we're talking about death row, one of the one of the things that I always tell people is like, you know, people, a lot of people think, you know, they want to do writing and speaking and things. And they see that they want to make that their full time job. And I always say like, you might not need to like you might be doing something at work that like to use seems boring, or like, you know, you're just you know, you're so you're so like, zoned into that thing that you It's normal to you. It's average, like, it doesn't seem extraordinary at all. But if you were to make, turn the things that you're already doing at work into resources that can help other people, then you might like be able to turn that into a new, either a new position or a new career or whatever, by, by just like helping people do the things that you're already doing at work. And that's sort of what I did. I mean, like, I was just in the case that that course didn't come out of me like wanting to, you know, get into dev REL I came out of the like blood sweat and tears of like doing this really painful migration process and so yeah, Ronnie in the chat says, that's been my hang up. Why, you know, so simple. Why would anybody care need this? But yeah, yeah, I would definitely say like, if something feel just because something feels obvious to you doesn't doesn't mean it's not going to help other people a lot of a lot of the best teaching resources out there are just like straightforward tutorials like I can't tell you how many I've how many times I've googled like rebasing on get, you know, get just like, just a little thing like that, where, you know, just write down things that you're learning and, and get them out there in the world and you never know who you're going to be able to help with it.
Pj Metz:You just set that on your Twitter, like even as you're learning things and as you're encountering new things. Just write it down, make a quick blog post. It doesn't need to be fancy. It doesn't need to be super shiny, just write it down, say what you figured out and put it out there because can help somebody and like you also said on your Twitter, it also flexes that publishing muscle like you are out there you are making things happen. And you're building a skill for yourself to
Sam Julien:write. Yeah, exactly, you can always come back and update, revise like, fit up, whatever, you know, if you start noticing that a lot of people are asking about it or talking about it or something, you can always make it better. I'm in the process of doing that right now with a lot of my old posts like going through and updating them and things like that, making them better for, you know, better for SEO and all that. But it's getting something out there in the world. It helps you out there learn to express yourself, and help other people get into.
Brandon Minnick:Yeah, and it's funny guys say this because I, I went through the same thing, just a couple years ago. And I was just getting into blogging and different by toe into this Devereaux world. And I was so worried about having the perfect blog post. My, my, actually, my first blog post ever published to my blog is all about testing your mobile apps, and specifically using Xamarin UI test. But I played out of my head, okay, this needs to be a three part series, each part needs to build on top of you know, of the previous one. And it's all going to just be this amazing, beautiful masterpiece. And I was what Well, what I know now as I was so I became so obsessed with getting it perfect that yeah, I mean, no typos, everything needs, screenshots, everything needs to be up to date, everything needs to make sense, I need to get a million people to proofread this. And then on top of that, setting this like three blog posts series as a constraint. I, I even though I had the first blog post done, it was even. And once it got to that point where like I had it perfect, like I didn't even want to publish except have the third one done yet. And right. When I yeah, when I look back on that it's I made these, this false set of constraints, and I kind of boxed myself in. Whereas if I just published the first one, people are gonna read it, people are gonna give you feedback. And then you can use that feedback for your next blog post. Or you can iterate on the current blog post. And just getting something out there that's helpful is going to help people yeah, maybe Yeah, so what you spelled a word wrong doesn't matter. Or like, if somebody leaves a comment that says, hey, you said to do this, but I can't find the button. Oh, then you can go add a screenshot, like, it doesn't have to be perfect. And that's kind of the approach I'm taking now is, let's just create content that'll help people. And we can we can always iterate on it later. We don't have to worry about finding the perfect platform, like do we announce it on Twitter, or Facebook or dev two, or, like all that stuff? We'll figure that out. But get your get your content out there and help the world? Because that's how we all become better together.
Pj Metz:Perfect is the enemy of good, y'all.
Sam Julien:Yeah, who Yeah, that's, that's that that's really true, I've been really finding that, instead of trying to, I, I definitely used to be like a really big perfectionist on that too. And it, it definitely prevented me from taking my own advice A few years ago, you know, like, I would wait and wait and edit and edit and edit. And, and the truth is that, like, you need other people's feedback to make your content better, or make your writing better, you need to be able to, I mean, PJ and English teacher, like, you gotta like, send, you know, like, get that out there and publish the smallest iterable thing that you can do. publish it, when you feel like it's like, 80% of the way there, like you're a little embarrassed about it. You're a little embarrassed about it. And so you put it out in the world, and then you can, you know, there's something about actually publishing it, that is the, like the switch that has to happen in your brain for some reason, like, it's a different experience than just working on it continuously. I don't know why that is, but like something about like, seeing it live up in the world, like, makes you look at your writing differently. And so then you after you publish it, I mean, nobody else nobody knows what the first version is like you could like five minutes later updated. To be like, just get it out there.
Pj Metz:Yeah. It's very important to just constantly flex that muscle. I mean, since I know it was high school, but we all did marching band in high school. Imagine not doing the show until it was perfect. That first time you march it. Sometimes it's only like two of the four songs or three of the songs and sometimes you stand still for half the show because you haven't learned Because you're
Sam Julien:just standing there,
Pj Metz:you're always adding to it. You're always making it better. And that's, that's an important lesson. People are worried about putting stuff out there. Do it. Well just do it. Make the mistake and make it really big. And you will figure it out afterwards and you'll be better next time.
Brandon Minnick:Yeah, and shout out Jacob says, marching bands, a perfect analogy.
Pj Metz:All the all the band nerds out there, I got your back on analogies, man, just come see me.
Brandon Minnick:So we we've only got a couple minutes left. And I wanted to make sure we had the opportunity to ask both of you today, or had had you here to ask you this. Because you both come from such different backgrounds, too, from the typical tech employee engineer computer science. What's the biggest thing? Or what's the one one thing, the biggest thing you've noticed in the tech world that says is strange to you? Like, I don't understand why everybody does. x and sand. Let's go to you first.
Sam Julien:So the biggest so that kind of the strangest thing about tech coming from non traditional background basically. Right? To me, I not I need to go back to my kind of my earlier thing. Like, I'm always really confused by gatekeeping around like, languages or tools are like what you look like or what you what your hobbies are, like, to me, I've always found that very illogical, like, who cares whether you like, look a certain way, or whether you use a certain language, like I've just never understood that I just feel like it The world is a big place, and everybody has a part and you can do whatever you want, like. So that part has always been weird. I'm glad that we're as an industry moving away from that and getting more like welcoming and inclusive and things like that, because I've just always found that really strange.
Brandon Minnick:Well said, PJ,
Pj Metz:I feel like my answer is dumb, but I'm gonna say it anyway. Sort of the office culture around a lot of like tech companies totally blows me away. And the way that like, there's so much available, like, I had a friend who was working in tech, and I visited him over Christmas break one year, and he's like, Hey, I can pick you up from the airport. But I gotta take you back to like my office, and you're gonna have to hang out at my office. And I was like, Okay, cool. And it was the biggest kitchen I've ever seen. And there was every kind of soda food imaginable. And he was like, yeah, you can help yourself. And I was like, Alright, and I had like a bowl of Captain Crunch, and bagel and like adult food. I was like, What is going on? This is like the most food I've ever seen in my life. And he was like, oh, man, you wouldn't believe people complain that they don't have the right soda for them. And I'm like, there's every set I've ever known over there. That's all super available. And it's like a norm. Like, I hope all y'all are being super nice to your office managers, because they deserve a lot of praise. Because that seems like a lot of stuff to have in an office. I always imagined offices. I mean, I'm a high school teacher. I was lucky if I got like, like a high five and a thank you sometimes. So seeing the stuff that's available out there. It's just fantastic. It also makes me really excited to not work remote. Eventually, as a junior Dev. I'm looking forward to getting my mountain dew on.
Brandon Minnick:mentioned that because that's a weird one to me too. Because I, I worked as an engineer, but in the small town of Melbourne, Florida, where I met PJ at a company called Harris and there was none of that. So like this is kind of new to me as part of like this will say the big tech so like the Google's the Facebook's the Microsoft's even the startup cultures. And I'm thankful that I experienced I guess what we call the real world before coming in, because I am so thankful for that. I mean, obviously, I haven't been to the office in months. But knowing that there was always something to drink something to eat, knowing that I didn't have to go hungry if I needed to work through lunch like, and I'm so thankful for it. And yet On the flip side, you see the folks that grew up in it, and they complain about the food's terrible or there's not their favorite drinks. But I digress. We are almost out of time. Sam, thanks so much for coming on the show today. tell people where they can find you.
Sam Julien:Yeah, thanks. It's been awesome to be here. Yeah, so Twitter. I'm just at Sam julene everything else I pretty much I put on my website. I write a lot. I just wrote like a guide to getting started with AWS for developers. I also write a weekly newsletter on like career tips. Several tips, things like that. So, if you just go over to Sam julene.com that's a good way to keep in touch with me. And yeah, I hope hope we can brighten some people's day to day and have an awesome. Have an awesome week. And to go later,
Pj Metz:right go publish it right now y'all.
Brandon Minnick:That's right. could have said it any better myself. Well, PJ Sam, thanks so much for joining this week. Amazing. see you guys again as always, and we'll see you again next week.