December 12, 2023 • 46 mins
Imagine attending a summer camp at the tender age of six that sparks a lifelong love for software development. That's the journey our esteemed guest, Moriel, embarked on, leading her to explore the complexities of right-to-left language support and localization, and ultimately landing her a coveted position at Wikipedia. Moriel shares her gripping story that highlights the power of starting young and finding your tribe in the world of open source.
Buckle up as we navigate Moriel's unexpected switch from (Hollywood to) astronomy to physics and the unanticipated challenges she had to overcome as a woman in academia. Shining light on the importance of following your passion, no matter the hurdles, Moriel embodies the resilient spirit of a true trailblazer. Not only did she make strides in academia, but she also entered the vast arena of open source, discovering its wonders through an internship at Wikipedia.
We end our riveting conversation with an exploration of the messy, yet crucial aspects of open source software and its undeniable impact on the Wikimedia movement. Hear about the constant pressure to revamp the whole Wikipedia platform and how future technologies play a vital role in this process. Finally, be inspired as Moriel shares experiences of a front-end engineer at Wikipedia, emphasizing the importance of seizing opportunities and expressing passion for Wikipedia's mission. Tune in, get inspired, and let Moriel fuel your passion for open source.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Moriel Schottlender (00:00):
find where you're passionate about, because
I think it's true for everyplace, not just open source
every place has their pros andcons.
You have, like, the greatmoments and then the problem
moments.
Open source has that too.
It's online, it's on theinternet, it's exposed.
Everybody can see your stuff,Everybody comes in, has opinions
, all of it.
So with that, you also havethat.
So if you find, find yourselfeither a group or you know some,
(00:25):
some project you're passionateabout to join in, so that you
find people like you that youwill connect with and will have
your back right, We'll remindyou why you want that.
That will will put aside likesome of the noise that you're
hearing, because everywhere hasnoise Open source a little more.
And so find the place that isgood for you and there are lots
(00:47):
of places like that and you can,you can search for that are
many places to search and thereare many places to look for them
.
But find a place, not just that, you know.
Oh, I just want to start.
I'll go to whatever I find,because sometimes then it you
know you don't get into itwhatever.
Find a place that will supportyou and that you can find your
passion in that's.
That's the biggest.
Tim Bourguignon (01:06):
Hello and welcome to developers journey,
the podcast bringing you themaking of stories of successful
software developers to help youon your upcoming journey.
I'm a host team On this episode.
I receive more of shot lender,more of the physicist turned
software engineer, turned systemarchitect currently working on
(01:27):
modernizing Wikipedia'sarchitecture and features.
She is an open sourceenthusiast, right to left,
language support andlocalization evangelist and a
general domain hoarder.
I'm going to try to guess whichone you last pull out of your
(01:48):
nose, which one you lastregistered, but let's keep it
for later.
Shall we.
Moriel Schottlender (01:54):
Oh yes, Morel, let's keep everybody in
intention to see what it is.
Tim Bourguignon (01:58):
Exactly the first day.
First, a warm welcome toeveryone.
Thank you very much, I'm veryhappy to be here and it's our
pleasure.
But before we come to yourstory, I want to thank the
terrific listeners who supportthe show.
Every month, you are keepingthe Dev journey lights up.
If you would like to join thisfine crew and help me spend more
(02:21):
time on finding phenomenalguests than editing audio tracks
, please go to our website,devjourneyinfo and click on the
support me on Patreon button.
Even the smallest contributionsare giant steps toward a
sustainable Dev journey journey.
Thank you, and now back totoday's guest.
(02:42):
As you know, morel, the showexists to help the listeners
understand what your storylooked like and imagine how to
shape their own future.
So, as is customary on the show, let's go back to your
beginnings.
Where would you place the startof your Dev journey?
Moriel Schottlender (02:59):
Well, when dinosaurs run there I'm just
kidding, I always say thatbecause I'm a little, you know
it all starts so early.
Everything has an origin.
Well, my origin, I would say,was, I think, when I was around
six years old, which for me wasa long time ago.
It was in the 80s, whendinosaurs run I'm just kidding,
(03:24):
but close to that at the veryleast, when computer dinosaurs,
right, like you know, when wehad like those really old
computers.
And so when I was six, due to abunch of kind of like my dad's
job, my whatever, I got kind ofthis opportunity to join a
computer summer camp and it allcame about because my dad was a
(03:48):
photographer and there was likea starting out this, this like a
PC magazine, and he was, youknow, taking pictures and you
know, for that magazine and andthey kind of like paid him money
but also gave him, you know,paid in stuff.
So I had a computer when I wasgrowing up, around six years old
, which was one of the first inmy class that had, you know, an
(04:11):
actual computer, not like theone with the, you know the XT,
the one with the like greenscreen.
I had like a real one, a 286.
Yeah, ibm it was like.
And so I started just likeplaying around.
And I started playing aroundand like doing things with it,
but not not completely, justlike getting myself familiar,
(04:33):
and there was not in not a wholelot of you know things with a
UI like there are today's like alot of stuff.
You had to learn how to docommands and whatever, so
started getting into it.
And then I had this opportunitywhen I was six to go to a
computer summer camp and ofcourse I loved it.
I was the youngest there but Iloved it.
It was like I don't know acouple of weeks and we would,
(04:56):
you know, try to programsomething and whatever.
And what I did?
I remember this we took like aLego, you know, lego that you
build like Lego, and they usedto be I think they're probably
is still today, although itprobably is called something
different.
It used to be Lego logo.
Okay, I don't know if anyoneremembers this programming
language called logo.
(05:17):
It had a little turtle in themiddle of it and you just gave
the turtle instructions.
So the programming languages.
It had loops, it had a lot ofstuff, but it was basically you
move the turtle places, so yousay like five forward means like
five step forward, whatever,turn right.
And then five forward andwhatever.
And you draw things on thescreen, right, with that turtle.
(05:37):
So what we did logo Lego.
You would take your, yourturtle, whatever, but it would
send instructions.
Instead of just the turtle onthe screen, it would send
instructions to a motor or twomotors that you can then build
logo around Lego, right.
So what I did?
I was six years old.
What I did was I made a coffeestaring machine because my dad
(06:04):
loved coffee and I was like I'mgoing to build for my dad.
I was a little machine with alittle hand that held the spoon,
the like the teaspoon, and youhad to put the coffee and then
the sugar yourself.
Okay, cause it wasn't that.
You know, I wasn't as smart asI thought it was, but then it
(06:25):
would like dump the thing prettyfast.
So you had to be like carefulwith the glass there were.
You know, that wasn't a bug,that was a feature.
It would dump it in, yeah, andthen it would drop itself into
the cup and then just go circlesand circles and circles around
to like stir it, and then itwould stop very dramatically,
lift itself up, and then youcould take the glass and I was
(06:48):
so proud of myself, I was soproud.
I was like, look, I did it formy dad.
It was great.
And that was basically my firstkind of real interaction with
what happens when you giveinstructions to a computer and
that you know that just openedit up and ever since then I kept
(07:10):
on doing these kinds of things.
I never thought I'd like work init.
I didn't think that it's goingto be the thing that I'm like
very good at or whatever, but itwas just for the convenience
sake, from the wonder sake, likeyou know.
It just kept on coming back andforth and then I kind of
dropped it a little bit.
Like you know, it was okay.
Whatever, I used computers whenI needed to, but there were
other things that I wanted to do.
(07:30):
I got into sciences a lot.
I really loved Star Trek.
I wanted to go and be in StarTrek.
So I meant you know, explorespace.
But other people told me I needto be in Hollywood to be in
Star Trek, which I guessofficially is correct, although
that's not exactly what I meant.
I was kind of like I love thefact that they're in space and
they're exploring, and you know,it took a while for me to
(07:53):
understand that what I actuallywant to do is study astronomy.
But initially I was like, ohokay, I want to go to Hollywood.
So there was a lot of kind oflike these you know kid
aspiration stuff.
That happened and I kind ofdropped the computer stuff.
I was in junior high and Iremember this because I had this
, this like smart C kid in classthat was kind of like walking
(08:13):
around in the studio, owns theplace.
You know one of those kids andhe used to tell everybody that
he looked, he programs in visualbasic six, vb six.
I remember this.
And I remember there was like Ididn't, I wasn't really
interested in kind of like beinglike hardcore program or
whatever.
It was okay, I kind of didstuff, I did a little HTML, I
did like you know that stuff,whatever.
(08:34):
And then I don't remember ifit's what happened.
I just literally neededsomething.
I just I want.
I was, I was lazy, you know.
You know engineers build stuffusually because we're lazy.
We want something else to do ourthing for us Right we spent now
weeks and weeks working onsomething so that we can do
something that would have takenus five minutes, but basically
(08:57):
right.
So basically that's whathappened to me in, like you know
, junior high.
I needed something I don'tremember what, whatever and he
kept going on about kind of likeI program in VB six, maybe six
is so awesome, and up until thenI made like web pages and like
Jocities or whatever it was.
It was even before that, Ithink.
So I went over to him and I waslike can you teach me how to,
(09:17):
how to do VB six?
And he looked at me.
The most condescending Like thiswas, I think it was great
because it planted.
So it was so condescending thatI wanted to prove him wrong
kind of thing.
You know what I mean.
Like he looked at me and waslike it's too hard for you.
And then he said, like well,you just like open VB six,
(09:40):
double click an image and dolike button click and like you
know something very vague I'mlike.
So I started thinking to myselflike gee, okay, whatever I
would like, I'll open it up andlook myself.
And I literally did what hesaid.
I was like opened up an imageand then double clicked it and a
code to open it up.
I'm like, wait, what happens ifI do click Like he said?
(10:02):
It clicks, huh.
And then, by the end of thatyear, I programmed something
bigger than what he did, whichwas awesome.
Because, just because like oh, Ican't do it.
So sometimes people tell youyou can't do things and you're
kind of like really that's crazy, yeah, I know Really.
So yeah, so that's kind of like.
(10:23):
You know how I got back alittle bit into it, but still it
was a little bit.
It was mostly a hobby, Like mypassion.
When I understood thatHollywood was, I mean, I loved
to be, you know, famous actress,but that's not actually what I
wanted.
When I started to understandthat the passion was actually,
you know, the astronomy aspectof Star Trek, I started leaning
(10:44):
a little bit towards there, andso computers remained.
But there were kind of likethis convenience thing, Like if
I want to do something so that Ican do like electrical
engineering better or astronomybetter, kind of like
communication better, yeah, Ihave that thing here that I can
like touch on, but it's not likeobviously I'm not a
professional at it, and sothat's how everything kind of
(11:08):
started and I can keep going onhow it continued, but I don't
know, do you want me to?
Tim Bourguignon (11:13):
Absolutely.
I want to see where you went.
Of course, you started as arobotics engineer and then you
wanted to go towards astronomy.
Somehow you took a wrong turnand ended up as a software
engineer.
Moriel Schottlender (11:25):
So I call it.
It might be because I'm a verybig advocate for right to left.
I call all my turns right turns.
Tim Bourguignon (11:31):
Okay, so you took a lot of right turns, but
if you make three right turns atsome point you come back on
your tracks, so that's good.
Moriel Schottlender (11:36):
That's true Effectively.
They might be turning metowards the left, but they were
right turns.
Tim Bourguignon (11:43):
So that was first right turn.
Let's take the second one now.
Moriel Schottlender (11:47):
Yes, so I did.
I went to study.
So initially I still planned.
I had this.
When you're a kid you have thisvision of yourself and for the
longest time I had a vision ofmyself of kind of like I want to
go to Hollywood because that'sStar Trek where I want to go.
But even when I realized thatthat's not really what I did, I
(12:08):
was like what I wanted to doactually is astronomy.
I still had that thing in myhead of kind of like, well,
hollywood, whatever.
So the initial plan wasactually to go and study script
writing, like screenwriting.
And then a whole bunch ofthings happened.
So that wasn't even a turn,because I kind of realized that
it's a case where there's not awhole lot of money in it and I'm
(12:28):
not an advocate to choosesomething to do only because
there's money in it.
But I'm saying like if you knowthat you're going to run into
challenges, like look, there'snot a whole lot of money in it,
you need to be really, really inlove with what you're doing and
really passionate with whatyou're doing.
And I realized that I love itand I'm kind of I like it, but I
don't know if I'm thatpassionate about it to be able
(12:50):
to do that.
So that kind of like got methinking.
I'm like, hang on a minute, isthat really what I want to do?
No, I actually want to dealwith space more, and so that's
what I did.
So I went at first intoelectrical engineering and the
idea there was that, again, Ididn't think I could do it.
I didn't think I could dophysics.
(13:11):
What do you mean?
You need to be like a mastergenius to be, like you know, phd
physics.
I'm okay, you know, I did alittle physics in high school,
but like I didn't really likemath and whatever, like nah, so
I'm going to go at it from theelectrical engineering angle,
which deals with, like you know,the radio antennas, right, and
(13:34):
kind of like the equipment of itand kind of like the signals
and all that kind of stuff.
And I was like that's reallycool, and I did.
And in order to do that, I movedto the US and I had a job and I
studied at the same time, whichwas not very easy.
But not only was it not veryeasy, because you know, okay,
fine, you're working full time,you're studying full time.
(13:57):
It's kind of like I realizedthat if I want to continue doing
engineering.
One of the problems withengineering is that it's very,
very rigid.
If you don't take the amount ofclasses that you need to take
within one specific semester now, your entire next semester is
delayed.
It's really rigid.
So if you do kind of like shiftwork or whatever and you're
saying like, okay, I'll takemaybe these courses instead of
(14:19):
these courses, there's verylimited.
So that was one problem.
And the second wasn't really aproblem.
I took physics 101 because weall, you know, you're kind of
like in the US especially you'rekind of taking the first year
to be kind of, you know,interest to a lot of things.
And so I went to physics and Ialready studied a little bit of
physics in high school and thisphysics 101 was very, very basic
.
So I basically sat down and didnothing in class because I
(14:39):
already knew everything andapparently that impressed the
professor.
I don't know how he didn't kickme out, but apparently it was
impressed with me.
I was a little bit of a smartass.
I remember one class he wastalking and I already knew the
material and I did all thehomework and I was fine.
So I was kind of like spacingout.
I don't know.
I think I filled a sadoku in themiddle of class or something,
(15:04):
and he was asking this physicsriddle.
I think he was like, if I havea cup and the cup has, like you
know, water on it, I put ice inthe cup and also water up to the
rim, and now I wait for the iceto melt.
Who thinks the water would belike lower right, and then
people raise their hands.
And who thinks like the waterwill be higher, will drop out of
(15:26):
the cup?
People raise their hands.
Who thinks it will be the samething?
People raise their hands.
And I didn't raise my hand toanything because I didn't listen
.
I was kind of like I was allspacing out.
I don't know what happened.
I was doing my own sadoku,whatever it was, and so the
professor noticed, so he lookedat me and then he pointed at me
and he was like Moriel, what doyou think?
And so initially, of course,panic, because what?
I don't know what you wereasking.
(15:47):
So you know, in your own mind,you're like rewind.
So I'm like rewinding to myself.
I was like what just happened?
Wait, da, da, da, da, da.
And so while I'm doing that,panic rises because I'm in front
of everybody.
So the first thing that comesout of my mouth is like, well,
it depends.
And he was on the floor becauseit's true, it does depend, it
absolutely depends.
And then I kind of rewound bythat time and now I'm stuck
(16:10):
because I said that depends.
Now I have to continue with whyit depends, and he looks at me
and I'm like, well, you know theair pressure and stuff.
And I'm just at this point like, seriously, he knows that I
didn't listen.
I know I didn't listen, but heloves it.
So he came to me after classand he was like, listen, you
have to do a major in physics.
And I'm like what are youtalking about?
(16:31):
How did you get from this tolike doing a major in physics?
And he's like you have it, youhave to do a major in physics.
And so I did.
I was kind of like, all right,well, it's working out with
engineering, but not really.
I just swapped to physics.
And I even remember I went inorder to do that, you have to go
to your advisor, right, likeyou know, to kind of say, all
right, well, I'm going to switchto the advisor in engineering,
(16:54):
looked at me and he was likeyou're going to switch to
physics from engineering.
And I'm like, yeah, do you notlike money?
I was like, well, that's aninteresting point.
But to reiterate my previousone, if you're passionate about
(17:15):
something, you know, I'm good,but it was an interesting point
to make.
So I did.
I started studying physics andI did.
I finished my entire degree.
I did my bachelor's in physics.
I loved it.
I went to do some internshipsthat were extremely interesting.
But I realized something in themiddle Again one of those right
(17:38):
turns.
I realized that in order tolook, in order to be an
astronomer, in order to be likea PhD, you need to go into
academia.
Right, you do that, and thenafter that you could.
There are ways for you to thensay, ok, you know what?
I don't want academia anymore,I want the industry or whatever.
But you have to be an academiaand you have to be an academia
for quite a long time.
(17:59):
And it's very, very tough, andI'm not just talking about the
materialist stuff, I'm talkingabout the environment.
It's very, very tough,especially for women in these
kind of things, in physics ingeneral and chemistry a little
too, also Quite, and inastronomy.
There's another aspect herethat people don't think about a
(18:21):
lot is that when you do go to doyour PhD, you a lot of times
have to go and be in remoteplaces, because a lot of the
radio telescopes and thetelescopes are in the middle of
the desert or middle of remote.
And that adds to the difficulty, because whatever other
difficulty you have with being awoman or just being in tech and
being in this kind ofenvironment, science right is
(18:43):
then going even bigger Becauseyou're not also Alone in that
environment you don't have.
So all of that came in andagain I did this assessment in
my head of like Look, I am notthis, this like Incredible mind
that can sit down and do theseall, like you know, mathematical
(19:05):
equations in my head.
And da da da, it's just not me.
I'm more creative person, so Ican do a lot of the astronomy
stuff which is creative, of likeanalyses and stuff like that.
But but how Passionate am I?
And doing that, given what I'mgoing to have to go through in
order to be successful in it,given the amount of of, like you
(19:26):
know, things that I have?
And I wasn't entirely sure IDidn't decide it that I wasn't,
I was just not entirely sure.
So I said, okay, I'm going toEither way, I'm going to have to
do, like you know, the examsand whatever the GRE and and all
that kind of stuff which isalready you have to like study,
like mad, for I'm going to giveit a little bit of time For now.
(19:49):
I continued.
I had like an internship thatturned into a little bit of a
job to be responsible for like awebsite of the American
Institute of physics, some somedepartment in the American
Institute of physics.
So I worked in physics but Idid like website work and so I
came back a little bit to the,to the programming stuff.
But again it was kind of like aside thing and and that when I
(20:10):
was thinking about kind of like,okay, well, what am I doing
with my?
So like, where do I want to go?
Do I want to continue thisphysics thing?
Like I can't really, you can'treally do a lot of the astronomy
stuff only with the bachelor's.
You need to do the PhD stuff,like you can't.
You know you have to be that.
Do I?
Am I willing or do I want to?
Or can I find myself in a placewhere I'll be and I'll feel
(20:31):
very, very passionate about andsucceed?
I don't know.
But what I do know is I'm kindof liking what I'm doing with
this computer stuff right now.
I don't know, it's kind of cool.
Maybe I can find, you know, aplace that will hire me and then
see what it's like.
And that's what I try to do.
I try to find kind of like aplace that you know, kind of
(20:51):
like as a junior engine, likeyou know, software developer,
try to see, like you know, if Ican get back into it.
I didn't know anything aboutlike working in a team or
working professionally.
I was like, but Because I was astudent in the US, the visa
type I was only allowed to workin, what I graduated from, which
was physics.
Yes, and there are ways to kindof like, make the point of like
(21:13):
, physics is very broad andComputers is probably related,
but a lot of but the companyneeds to agree to that to make
that case.
And so another considerationcame to mind and I was like well
, how about I take a masters inComputer science?
And then that will do twothings first of all, it will
allow me to say, okay, I do havea masters in computer science,
(21:35):
therefore I could go work insomething related to programming
.
But it will also get me backinto this computer stuff that I
didn't do a long time you know,I did it as a side thing and
maybe give me some principles toremember.
This is what I did.
So I wanted to a masters and Iactually really enjoyed it.
I think that, you know, schoolis not for for everyone.
(21:57):
I'm not like a proponent ofsaying kind of like, you know,
jobs are only for people who dida degree or stuff.
I don't think so, but I dothink that some people really,
you know, if you connect to it,I think it's really cool and I
do, I really love that.
So I did that and at the end ofit, towards the, towards the
second, the end of the secondyear, I Saw interships.
I was like, oh, you have to goto internships or whatever.
(22:18):
And Again, with my self-esteembeing awesome, as this is a
recurring thing, you see, here Ican't do it.
I also was kind of like, oh,come on, I don't have experience
in anything.
Who's gonna take me?
So I kind of I I submitted, butit was like half-hearted, like
I don't, I don't know, nobodywill take me, it's not gonna
(22:39):
work out.
And then I saw Google Summer ofCode.
And Google Summer of Code wasthis internship still going
today that allows you to go andwork in an internship with open
source organizations?
And I was like, okay, I, I knowWordPress because I've been
doing websites and I know wikis,because I've been doing some
websites, I Don't know, maybeone of them will want me.
(23:02):
And so I kind of posted.
There was a way to kind of likesay I want to join this,
whatever.
And initially it was actuallyreally funny because I went to
the Wikipedia one right, themedia foundation was was part of
the organizations that and Iwent in into one of the forums
and I put in that I'm interestedand I Gotta reply.
Someone replied.
(23:23):
Someone say, like oh, it's socool that you're interested.
Oh my gosh, like, hey,reminding you that if you are
interested, you should also dothis, like send this message to
the mailing list.
And I was like I'm not even inyet.
They responded I'm not evenworking for them yet, oh my god.
And so I was so impressed andso like, oh my god, maybe maybe
(23:46):
there is a chance here.
That I did.
I went to the mailing list and Iposted and I kind of like hey,
I want to do an internships here.
My idea for a project is one ofthe things that you need to
come up with, an idea for aproject, and my idea for a
project was a some extension toMedia wiki, which is the thing
for Wikipedia, that that doesvisualizations for physics.
(24:06):
I was like this is great, Iknow physics, I could do this,
whatever.
And the next thing thathappened was that nothing.
Nothing happened, like it wasChirp, chirp on on the mailing
list, crickets, nothing.
And I'm like Someone needs toaccept my idea in order for me
(24:28):
to do an internship.
What's happening?
Maybe it's a bad idea, maybe,like just no one you know, like
I don't know if anyone reallyknew how to do the physics thing
and whatever.
There was no buyers.
And Then a person saw that Ispeak Hebrew one of the people
in the, in the foundation of meand he contacted me and he's
(24:50):
like, listen, you know how toprogram, you speak Hebrew.
We could actually use help withour editor, with our just text
editor, to make sure that itkind of, like you know, supports
Right to left languages likeHebrew and Arabic and Farsi and
stuff.
And I'm like I don't know howto do that.
It's like you know, you don'tknow and you don't need to know
(25:10):
a lot.
I'll tell you, like you knowthe rules that I know.
I just need to know thatthere's someone that can do
programming and understand thatand I'm like, okay, I'm sure I
can give it a try, why not?
And that was my project for thesummer.
There you go, you got it, I gotit, I was in, that's it, and
yeah, and, and that you know,since then, this is this has
(25:32):
been like One of one of thebiggest things when I talked to
people about like you know howto white, to get into open
source and what's it's a littlewhatever.
Well, when I developed forWikipedia, I was an intern and
within a month of me justworking on Just stuff, I had two
patches that were in production.
Billions of people who visitWikipedia just saw them and I
(25:53):
was dancing around and one ofthem was like a tiny little CSS
fix.
I didn't even matter.
I was like look at me, you andyou look at it.
What other place like there'snot a whole lot of places where,
as an intern, you're like yourstuff is already in production,
like you know a month.
Right, it was just.
It was just like and that's it,I'm there.
I'm there since then, since2013.
(26:15):
Wow, that that was yeah, sothat's how it started.
Tim Bourguignon (26:23):
You turn, right turns as you and you landed
when I see your smile and howyou're dancing, talking about
this, the right spot.
I think so too yeah passion iswhere I don't know if the money
is there, but at least thepassion is there and the
willingness to do it.
Moriel Schottlender (26:39):
So I think so I think this is this is the
thing, right, and this is a lotof times when I talk to people
again about kind of like opensource and stuff.
We all know that there's opensource can be very tough right,
because it is online, witheverything that has to do with
online.
It could be the good, good,good things and the bad things
and there are bad things too init, but this is what I'm saying,
like always, as a device topeople to get into open source.
(27:00):
It's like find yourself, yourcommunity, that you have passion
and they see you right.
And this is just what happenedto me.
I I went in to a place where Ihad backing.
I had people who wanted methere, who could support me when
things weren't as great, whocould teach me when I went, when
you know, and help me out andwhatever, and when I was
(27:22):
passionate about this, and Ithink that combination just
worked.
I suddenly found myself in aplace where I didn't know where
I was going.
I was kind of like I don't knowphysics, not physics, I'll do
this.
I tried to keep physics in thepicture of kind of like you know
, when I was programming, I waslike this is what I'm good at.
Maybe I have a degree in it.
I must be doing something.
Okay, like it was all like this, and then, just out of out of
(27:43):
nowhere, you stumble in.
I think, and I think some of itis just recognized.
I recognized you know which oneof the doors that opened for me
Made me feel the best and Ijust walked into that one.
Tim Bourguignon (27:57):
It was you know , yeah, I want to be a bit
polarizing a little bit and andthen have, have me, have you
correct me?
Um, so when I think about opensource, I I have the one picture
Uh, that's xkcd picture for oneguy in Nebraska Holding the the
world On his shoulders becausehe did or she did some kind of
(28:21):
small open source software andmaintaining it since then.
And if they remove it, pad leftand and the world crumbles on.
Or you have the other wayaround, maybe microsoft size or
google size enterprises, um,publishing something on the
internet as open source,whichever licenses they use, and
(28:44):
then I'm making a face there,but somehow it doesn't feel open
source.
They're just creating a giantsoftware, it's a big enterprise
and somehow this lands as anopen source software on the
internet.
I'm sure you're somewhere inthe middle of this, but how does
Wikipedia or Wikimedia, theWikimedia Foundation, works in
(29:05):
terms of open source, is termsof working together on that
spectrum and beyond?
Moriel Schottlender (29:13):
So, as you're pointing out, this is not
polarizing at all.
No, not at all.
Let's go into it, why not?
So, as you're pointing out,open source is an entire world
and arguably some places callthemselves open source when
arguably they might not be OK.
It depends who you ask aboutthe definition of open source
(29:34):
and the definition of opensource, if you go backwards and
forwards, there are officialones, but then the things that
are practically.
There's a whole bunch of messhere.
I would argue personally that apiece of application that comes
out with a license that doesn'tallow that license itself is not
open source.
The software is not open source, even if the code is visible,
(29:56):
and I think that most peopleagree with me on that.
I would further argue that,even if the license is OK for
you to fork and do whatever youwant, but if the software itself
doesn't accept contributions so, for example, android is open
source, I believe, also thelicense.
I need to check into that.
Please don't kill me if I'mwrong, but I think I believe
that you can technically take itand fork it and whatever, but I
(30:18):
don't know how much.
If I want to put a patch orwhatever, it will immediately go
in and depending on how easythat is, because there are other
examples of that kind of thingI'm not entirely sure on the
scale of free and opensourceness I would put it.
I would say, ok, it might beopen source, but it might not be
(30:38):
, as and we're talking about thefoundation and the Wikimedia
movement we're pretty set onmaking sure that we are very,
very much open source, arguablysometimes a little much, and
again, please don't kill me,everybody who listens to this
I'm not saying that being opensource is bad.
(30:59):
I am saying, however, thateverything has a price, right.
Everything has kind of like abalance of things, and you allow
, and we do out of principle,right, like we are saying what
made Wikipedia great was not thetech, what made Wikipedia great
was the technical idea, andthen the people who used it
(31:21):
right, the amount of users thatcame in and just had a vision
for this and changed it and comein.
And then the people who thencame in and said, ooh, ok, I'll
add this in and I'll add this intechnically.
And that happened because it'sopen source and because it's
free and not free.
How would you call it?
Not free as in freedom, notfree as in beer?
Tim Bourguignon (31:40):
Free as a kitten.
Moriel Schottlender (31:42):
Right, exactly, and in this case, it's
both.
It's both free of money andfree of freedom, but it is
something that we really, reallycare about, and this is
something that also, as you cansee when I'm talking about it,
I'm very passionate about this,because this is, I think, a
thing that really impacts theworld, and I think this is the
(32:02):
one thing that, for me inWikipedia, is one of the biggest
reasons why I'm there and whyI'm staying there and why I
stayed there for so long BecauseI have impact.
I literally I feel that, and Ihad impact when I was an intern,
and I have impact today, andthis is impact that outright
does something to the world.
There's no doubt about it, andpart of that is absolutely to be
(32:25):
with the mentality of open andcollaborative, both in the
content to make sure that ourcommunities can put the content
and the way that the contentneeds to be what everybody can
edit and in the code, and so, ofcourse, there are also
hardships with it, and these arethe things that I'm dealing
(32:46):
with right now with my team.
It's the idea of look, we wantto be open source, but then open
source and there's differentideas about the one sister, the
bazaar and the cathedral and allthat kind of stuff, ideas of
who's running.
How do you run your open sourceso far?
And people also have opinionsabout whether it still is open
source, if it is more cathedralstyle, and whether it is open
source if not.
(33:06):
Whatever it is, the way that yourun your open source software
impacts the way that yoursoftware is then built.
And when you have a softwarelike MediaWiki, which is a
software underlying to Wikipediaand 11 other projects right,
it's not just Wikipedia.
We have Wiktionary and Commonsthat does image, and we have
Wicked Data that does graphicalconnections between small bits
(33:29):
of knowledge All that kind ofstuff is the same software and
for 20 years we kind of pulledthat software in all multiple
directions because that's whatusers came in to do.
And that's beautiful in oneaspect, because you're kind of
like no one would have guessedthis would happen.
Jimmy Wells, when he justreleased it, would not have
guessed, I'm sure, where we aretoday.
(33:51):
On the other hand, when you lookat the architecture of your
software, it is messy.
It is messy because there wasno plan in the beginning.
You didn't come and say, ok,the architecture needs to be
very solid because, blah, therewas no true, solid, single
vision for the product, becausepeople just came in and made the
vision and that is beautiful,but then technologically that
(34:13):
could be challenging.
So that is kind of like a lotof the problems that I love
dealing with, like, ok, give methat problem, what do we do with
this now?
How do we keep it, this freedomthing, this free thing that
everybody could still do stuff,but we've got to have some rules
, because otherwise it'll belike this everything on top of
everything, that everythingcollapses and whatever, and we
(34:35):
won't be able to do anything.
So how do you find that balanceto make it sustainable for the
next 100 years, with whateverother?
There's new technologies comingup and everybody's yelling that
PHP is dead, even though it'sjust by thinking about how many
WordPress websites there arethere, it seems to me like PHP
is still alive and well andkicking, I think.
But OK, it's kind of like oh,you should the amount of people,
(34:58):
by the way, that I hear thattell us that we should rewrite
the entire Wikipedia and go.
Tim Bourguignon (35:02):
Absolutely.
Moriel Schottlender (35:03):
Let's do it tomorrow.
Yes, just like, go ahead, giveit a try.
All right, sure, but yeah.
So you want to still make surethat in 100 years time,
wikipedia is still here, and soyou do need to think about these
kind of things with this.
Tim Bourguignon (35:20):
So these are the things that I'm getting
really, really excited about andreally how did you, did you
travel from this, from thisinternship in this part of
Wikipedia that you love and inthis activity that you love?
Was it?
Was it just well, a bit likelike the Valve software handbook
, but they describe well, youjust go wherever you think you
(35:42):
can add value and just do it.
Or is it really trying to climbthe stairs with big air quotes,
of going into the architectureof Wikimedia and having to prove
that you can do this and reallyhaving to?
I don't know how that works.
Moriel Schottlender (35:58):
So it's a little bit of both.
So when I joined in, I joinedin 2013 to the visual editor
team, which is now the editingteam, because they're not just
doing visual editor as a frontend engineer also, front end is
my expertise even today.
And I joined in and, as I said,my job as an intern basically
was support for Hebrew stuff orsupport for right to left right,
(36:21):
and I knew Hebrew and becauseof because I, like you know, I
fell into this passion very,very quickly, I started doing
things that were part of that,of that support, but we're not
necessarily part of, like, thetasks that I was given.
I was kind of like I rememberthat there was, for example, one
of the tasks was we want tomake sure that, you know,
templates are being supported,and then I noticed that in order
(36:43):
to support templates templatesthere was a new thing coming out
template data.
And template data is a JSONstring, and so users can kind of
like save this JSON string thatgives like a some sort of
definition about what a templateis, that then the software
visual editor can read and tellyou how to fill it out, whatever
.
And I noticed that when you putthe JSON in the wiki in English.
(37:04):
It's a little annoying but it'sokay.
But if you put it in a right toleft wiki in Hebrew, arabic or
whatever, it is completelymangled.
You can't understand anything.
In fact, it gets worse becauseit's so mangled that you know
how you have key value in in inright to left they flip.
(37:25):
So now you have value key andyou don't know which one is
which and whatever.
So it was just unworkable and Iwas charged with kind of like
helping out how to do it.
And I'm looking at it and likeI don't.
There's no way to do this withJSON properly unless we were
like rewrite the internet.
So I built a little interfaceto kind of like instead of you
(37:45):
writing down JSON, here's like aUI for the user to say what key
values they want and then itproduces the JSON for you, right
?
So I took a lot of stuff whereI saw right like opportunities a
little bit.
Again, some of it was because Iwas too lazy.
Too lazy to copy paste it tosomewhere else.
And then I was like I wantsomething to automatically do it
(38:05):
for me.
And there you go.
It's kind of you know,engineers are lazy inherently,
which is how we come up withgreat stuff to save everybody
time.
So it started kind of like withthis right, and then after I
finished, after I graduated, Iwas looking a little bit further
out and whatever.
But I kind of knew that Iwanted to continue with the
foundation and I joined in andthen I was.
(38:28):
It was.
It was a little bit of both interms of where can you go,
because there were other teamsand you could see that there's
like openings done.
So there were a little bitchanges and I moved to another
team where we worked onsomething slightly different.
There was still front end, soit was different.
And then there was anopportunity to lead a team, to
be a tech lead of a team, and Ijust I, you know, I thought
(38:50):
about it, I submitted it and Iwent in there.
So I became like a tech lead ofone of the teams and that
exposed me a little bit to kindof like this higher level
questions, right, instead ofjust looking at like the code
that you need to deliverspecifically the task whatever.
Now you're looking at kind oflike how should we do things a
little bit higher level what isthe architecture of my product,
who do I need to talk to, andstuff like that.
(39:11):
And then a couple years afterthat, the team opened that was
the architecture team, which wasthe tasks on basically thinking
about these kind of questions,but in a much higher level of
like what is the systemicarchitecture of Wikipedia and
everything else?
And they joined that and nowwe're doing basically a lot of
(39:34):
thinking about media wiki as aproduct instead of just this,
this platform project, and nowwe're doing so.
A lot of it was kind of likethese opportunities that opened
up.
Some of it was a little bit ofself advocacy, of kind of like
Okay, I think I can do it andraising my hand.
For some of it was just likeseeing a door open and checking
into it.
It was a little bit of a mix,but a lot of people ask me if
(39:56):
kind of like oh my gosh, you'renine years in the same place.
That is so unusual.
Usually software engineers justmove places right, like you
work three years in one placeand then you move to another.
And then I asked those peoplewhy do software engineers do
that?
Usually they do that one of tworeasons either to get more
money, right, or to get promoted, and unfortunately that's
(40:18):
because the way that theindustry is.
But I did get promoted.
I started as an intern andtoday, nine years later, I am a
principal engineer that works ona lot of strategic stuff.
So I did get this promote.
I didn't need to go, and as longas and I don't I mean I don't
want to say I don't care aboutmoney, but I don't work for
Wikipedia for the money of it,right, like I work for the
(40:39):
mission, I work for the you know, and so I didn't need to switch
jobs.
So I'm not saying, you know,never switch jobs though,
whatever, but I think that thatI would caution against falling
into these like expectationsthat people might give.
You have kind of like, well, ifyou can't work in some place
like for so long, because then,I don't know, you'll come out
(41:00):
and people will wonder why youdidn't shift.
Well, here's my answer for whyI didn't Right, and I learned a
lot and I did a lot.
So a lot of it was basicallyopen doors, just recognizing
them.
Tim Bourguignon (41:13):
And you have to make your own like.
It's very important to be ableto organize the doors to be able
to grab them when they open.
If you're not ready for that,you'll miss them.
That's true.
And I guess you came back tothe, to the passion piece.
You're where your passion ledyou and you've been talking and
moving and making gestures allthe time.
So I guess you found the rightplace and that's that's enough
(41:37):
for me to not ask the questionwhy have you been there for 13
years?
It's it's enough, or 10 years,I don't know Almost 10.
Moriel Schottlender (41:44):
Yeah, almost 10.
Tim Bourguignon (41:47):
No, fantastic.
Thank you for this, for thisride of your life in just about
40 minutes.
Moriel Schottlender (41:53):
I know I can't believe it.
I was like, All right, we'reall.
The rest of the five, sixquestions.
I'm like, Wow, this has beenthe story of my life.
Tim Bourguignon (42:03):
A little bit.
Moriel Schottlender (42:04):
I'm sure a lot out.
Tim Bourguignon (42:05):
Yeah, for a different discussion.
That's true.
Before you get there, whatwould be your advice?
If somebody wanted to get intoopen source, what would be the
way you would advise them to getthere?
Moriel Schottlender (42:18):
Oh, okay, there's a whole bunch of ways,
but what I would recommend Ithink I talked a little bit
about this in the beginning Findwhere you're passionate about,
because I think it's true forevery place, not just open
source every place has theirpros and cons.
You have, like, the greatmoments and then the problem
moments.
Open source has that too.
It's online, it's on theinternet, it's exposed.
(42:39):
Everybody can see your stuff,everybody comes in, has opinions
, all of it.
So with that, you also havethat.
So if you find, find yourselfeither a group or you know some,
some project you're passionateabout to join in, so that you
find people like you that youwill connect with and will have
(43:01):
your back right, we'll remindyou why you want that.
That will will put aside likesome of the noise that you're
hearing, because everywhere hasnoise Open source a little more.
And so find the place that isgood for you, and there are lots
of places like that and you can.
You can search for that aremany places to search and there
are many places to look for them.
But find a place, not just that, you know.
(43:22):
Oh, I just want to start.
I'll go to whatever I find,because sometimes then that you
know you don't get into itwhatever, find a place that will
support you and that you canfind your passion in that's.
That's the biggest.
Tim Bourguignon (43:32):
I love the answer.
The answer I kind of saw inmyself when I started searching
in open source was okay, whatcan I do?
And searching for that?
I can do C++, I can do C sharp,I can do Java, I can do it.
So let's search for projectslike this.
And I went right into a wall.
That just doesn't work.
You have to find a community,you have to find a passion, you
(43:53):
have to find something thatreally propels you in learning
whatever language you need tolearn to participate.
Moriel Schottlender (44:00):
And you know what, Find that person in
XKCD right that holds with theirbare hands the one thing that
all the, by the way, commercialcompanies that don't pay for it
use, and if it will fall down,everything will find them
because you use it.
Right, Like you probably usesomething.
Find them and then go help them.
Right, Like, find somethingthat you use, you know you have
(44:23):
passion about, and theneverybody will accept you
because passion is somethingthat people want to see.
Tim Bourguignon (44:28):
Indeed, we do Amen to that, boyle.
It's been fantastic.
Thank you so much.
It's been great.
Thank you so much.
Where would be the best placeto continue this discussion with
you and rub off some of thatenergy about open source and get
hyped about going so?
Moriel Schottlender (44:44):
there used to be a network that I was
always in, but now it's a littlebit gone from the front and who
knows where it's at right now.
Tim Bourguignon (44:50):
Let's not mention it.
Moriel Schottlender (44:51):
No, so I am in Mastodon.
It's not a cultsocial SlashMuiPu.
I can give you the stuff, so itprobably will appear and you
can go to my website.
All my contact information,including anywhere that I'm
online Morieltech.
I'm basically anywhereeverywhere as MuiPu too, so you
(45:14):
can feel free to contact me,talk, ask questions.
I would be really, really happy, especially if you're
interested in getting into opensource or interested in learning
about right to left stuff.
I am around and be happy tohelp.
Tim Bourguignon (45:28):
And I'll add a link all the links in the show
notes, so you didn't get them.
Just scroll down and click andyou'll be covered.
Moriel, thank you so much.
Moriel Schottlender (45:38):
Thank you.
Tim Bourguignon (45:39):
Thank you very much, and this has been another
episode of Dev First Journey.
We'll see each other next week.
Bye, bye.
Thanks a lot for tuning in.
I hope you have enjoyed thisweek's episode.
If you like the show, pleaseshare, rate and review.
It helps more listenersdiscover those stories.
You can find the links to allthe platforms the show appears
(46:02):
on on our website,devjourneyinfo.
Please subscribe.
Talk to you soon.
find where you're passionate about, because
I think it's true for everyplace, not just open source
every place has their pros andcons.
You have, like, the greatmoments and then the problem
moments.
Open source has that too.
It's online, it's on theinternet, it's exposed.
Everybody can see your stuff,Everybody comes in, has opinions
, all of it.
So with that, you also havethat.
So if you find, find yourselfeither a group or you know some,
(00:25):
some project you're passionateabout to join in, so that you
find people like you that youwill connect with and will have
your back right, We'll remindyou why you want that.
That will will put aside likesome of the noise that you're
hearing, because everywhere hasnoise Open source a little more.
And so find the place that isgood for you and there are lots
(00:47):
of places like that and you can,you can search for that are
many places to search and thereare many places to look for them
.
But find a place, not just that, you know.
Oh, I just want to start.
I'll go to whatever I find,because sometimes then it you
know you don't get into itwhatever.
Find a place that will supportyou and that you can find your
passion in that's.
That's the biggest.
Tim Bourguignon (01:06):
Hello and welcome to developers journey,
the podcast bringing you themaking of stories of successful
software developers to help youon your upcoming journey.
I'm a host team On this episode.
I receive more of shot lender,more of the physicist turned
software engineer, turned systemarchitect currently working on
(01:27):
modernizing Wikipedia'sarchitecture and features.
She is an open sourceenthusiast, right to left,
language support andlocalization evangelist and a
general domain hoarder.
I'm going to try to guess whichone you last pull out of your
(01:48):
nose, which one you lastregistered, but let's keep it
for later.
Shall we.
Moriel Schottlender (01:54):
Oh yes, Morel, let's keep everybody in
intention to see what it is.
Tim Bourguignon (01:58):
Exactly the first day.
First, a warm welcome toeveryone.
Thank you very much, I'm veryhappy to be here and it's our
pleasure.
But before we come to yourstory, I want to thank the
terrific listeners who supportthe show.
Every month, you are keepingthe Dev journey lights up.
If you would like to join thisfine crew and help me spend more
(02:21):
time on finding phenomenalguests than editing audio tracks
, please go to our website,devjourneyinfo and click on the
support me on Patreon button.
Even the smallest contributionsare giant steps toward a
sustainable Dev journey journey.
Thank you, and now back totoday's guest.
(02:42):
As you know, morel, the showexists to help the listeners
understand what your storylooked like and imagine how to
shape their own future.
So, as is customary on the show, let's go back to your
beginnings.
Where would you place the startof your Dev journey?
Moriel Schottlender (02:59):
Well, when dinosaurs run there I'm just
kidding, I always say thatbecause I'm a little, you know
it all starts so early.
Everything has an origin.
Well, my origin, I would say,was, I think, when I was around
six years old, which for me wasa long time ago.
It was in the 80s, whendinosaurs run I'm just kidding,
(03:24):
but close to that at the veryleast, when computer dinosaurs,
right, like you know, when wehad like those really old
computers.
And so when I was six, due to abunch of kind of like my dad's
job, my whatever, I got kind ofthis opportunity to join a
computer summer camp and it allcame about because my dad was a
(03:48):
photographer and there was likea starting out this, this like a
PC magazine, and he was, youknow, taking pictures and you
know, for that magazine and andthey kind of like paid him money
but also gave him, you know,paid in stuff.
So I had a computer when I wasgrowing up, around six years old
, which was one of the first inmy class that had, you know, an
(04:11):
actual computer, not like theone with the, you know the XT,
the one with the like greenscreen.
I had like a real one, a 286.
Yeah, ibm it was like.
And so I started just likeplaying around.
And I started playing aroundand like doing things with it,
but not not completely, justlike getting myself familiar,
(04:33):
and there was not in not a wholelot of you know things with a
UI like there are today's like alot of stuff.
You had to learn how to docommands and whatever, so
started getting into it.
And then I had this opportunitywhen I was six to go to a
computer summer camp and ofcourse I loved it.
I was the youngest there but Iloved it.
It was like I don't know acouple of weeks and we would,
(04:56):
you know, try to programsomething and whatever.
And what I did?
I remember this we took like aLego, you know, lego that you
build like Lego, and they usedto be I think they're probably
is still today, although itprobably is called something
different.
It used to be Lego logo.
Okay, I don't know if anyoneremembers this programming
language called logo.
(05:17):
It had a little turtle in themiddle of it and you just gave
the turtle instructions.
So the programming languages.
It had loops, it had a lot ofstuff, but it was basically you
move the turtle places, so yousay like five forward means like
five step forward, whatever,turn right.
And then five forward andwhatever.
And you draw things on thescreen, right, with that turtle.
(05:37):
So what we did logo Lego.
You would take your, yourturtle, whatever, but it would
send instructions.
Instead of just the turtle onthe screen, it would send
instructions to a motor or twomotors that you can then build
logo around Lego, right.
So what I did?
I was six years old.
What I did was I made a coffeestaring machine because my dad
(06:04):
loved coffee and I was like I'mgoing to build for my dad.
I was a little machine with alittle hand that held the spoon,
the like the teaspoon, and youhad to put the coffee and then
the sugar yourself.
Okay, cause it wasn't that.
You know, I wasn't as smart asI thought it was, but then it
(06:25):
would like dump the thing prettyfast.
So you had to be like carefulwith the glass there were.
You know, that wasn't a bug,that was a feature.
It would dump it in, yeah, andthen it would drop itself into
the cup and then just go circlesand circles and circles around
to like stir it, and then itwould stop very dramatically,
lift itself up, and then youcould take the glass and I was
(06:48):
so proud of myself, I was soproud.
I was like, look, I did it formy dad.
It was great.
And that was basically my firstkind of real interaction with
what happens when you giveinstructions to a computer and
that you know that just openedit up and ever since then I kept
(07:10):
on doing these kinds of things.
I never thought I'd like work init.
I didn't think that it's goingto be the thing that I'm like
very good at or whatever, but itwas just for the convenience
sake, from the wonder sake, likeyou know.
It just kept on coming back andforth and then I kind of
dropped it a little bit.
Like you know, it was okay.
Whatever, I used computers whenI needed to, but there were
other things that I wanted to do.
(07:30):
I got into sciences a lot.
I really loved Star Trek.
I wanted to go and be in StarTrek.
So I meant you know, explorespace.
But other people told me I needto be in Hollywood to be in
Star Trek, which I guessofficially is correct, although
that's not exactly what I meant.
I was kind of like I love thefact that they're in space and
they're exploring, and you know,it took a while for me to
(07:53):
understand that what I actuallywant to do is study astronomy.
But initially I was like, ohokay, I want to go to Hollywood.
So there was a lot of kind oflike these you know kid
aspiration stuff.
That happened and I kind ofdropped the computer stuff.
I was in junior high and Iremember this because I had this
, this like smart C kid in classthat was kind of like walking
(08:13):
around in the studio, owns theplace.
You know one of those kids andhe used to tell everybody that
he looked, he programs in visualbasic six, vb six.
I remember this.
And I remember there was like Ididn't, I wasn't really
interested in kind of like beinglike hardcore program or
whatever.
It was okay, I kind of didstuff, I did a little HTML, I
did like you know that stuff,whatever.
(08:34):
And then I don't remember ifit's what happened.
I just literally neededsomething.
I just I want.
I was, I was lazy, you know.
You know engineers build stuffusually because we're lazy.
We want something else to do ourthing for us Right we spent now
weeks and weeks working onsomething so that we can do
something that would have takenus five minutes, but basically
(08:57):
right.
So basically that's whathappened to me in, like you know
, junior high.
I needed something I don'tremember what, whatever and he
kept going on about kind of likeI program in VB six, maybe six
is so awesome, and up until thenI made like web pages and like
Jocities or whatever it was.
It was even before that, Ithink.
So I went over to him and I waslike can you teach me how to,
(09:17):
how to do VB six?
And he looked at me.
The most condescending Like thiswas, I think it was great
because it planted.
So it was so condescending thatI wanted to prove him wrong
kind of thing.
You know what I mean.
Like he looked at me and waslike it's too hard for you.
And then he said, like well,you just like open VB six,
(09:40):
double click an image and dolike button click and like you
know something very vague I'mlike.
So I started thinking to myselflike gee, okay, whatever I
would like, I'll open it up andlook myself.
And I literally did what hesaid.
I was like opened up an imageand then double clicked it and a
code to open it up.
I'm like, wait, what happens ifI do click Like he said?
(10:02):
It clicks, huh.
And then, by the end of thatyear, I programmed something
bigger than what he did, whichwas awesome.
Because, just because like oh, Ican't do it.
So sometimes people tell youyou can't do things and you're
kind of like really that's crazy, yeah, I know Really.
So yeah, so that's kind of like.
(10:23):
You know how I got back alittle bit into it, but still it
was a little bit.
It was mostly a hobby, Like mypassion.
When I understood thatHollywood was, I mean, I loved
to be, you know, famous actress,but that's not actually what I
wanted.
When I started to understandthat the passion was actually,
you know, the astronomy aspectof Star Trek, I started leaning
(10:44):
a little bit towards there, andso computers remained.
But there were kind of likethis convenience thing, Like if
I want to do something so that Ican do like electrical
engineering better or astronomybetter, kind of like
communication better, yeah, Ihave that thing here that I can
like touch on, but it's not likeobviously I'm not a
professional at it, and sothat's how everything kind of
(11:08):
started and I can keep going onhow it continued, but I don't
know, do you want me to?
Tim Bourguignon (11:13):
Absolutely.
I want to see where you went.
Of course, you started as arobotics engineer and then you
wanted to go towards astronomy.
Somehow you took a wrong turnand ended up as a software
engineer.
Moriel Schottlender (11:25):
So I call it.
It might be because I'm a verybig advocate for right to left.
I call all my turns right turns.
Tim Bourguignon (11:31):
Okay, so you took a lot of right turns, but
if you make three right turns atsome point you come back on
your tracks, so that's good.
Moriel Schottlender (11:36):
That's true Effectively.
They might be turning metowards the left, but they were
right turns.
Tim Bourguignon (11:43):
So that was first right turn.
Let's take the second one now.
Moriel Schottlender (11:47):
Yes, so I did.
I went to study.
So initially I still planned.
I had this.
When you're a kid you have thisvision of yourself and for the
longest time I had a vision ofmyself of kind of like I want to
go to Hollywood because that'sStar Trek where I want to go.
But even when I realized thatthat's not really what I did, I
(12:08):
was like what I wanted to doactually is astronomy.
I still had that thing in myhead of kind of like, well,
hollywood, whatever.
So the initial plan wasactually to go and study script
writing, like screenwriting.
And then a whole bunch ofthings happened.
So that wasn't even a turn,because I kind of realized that
it's a case where there's not awhole lot of money in it and I'm
(12:28):
not an advocate to choosesomething to do only because
there's money in it.
But I'm saying like if you knowthat you're going to run into
challenges, like look, there'snot a whole lot of money in it,
you need to be really, really inlove with what you're doing and
really passionate with whatyou're doing.
And I realized that I love itand I'm kind of I like it, but I
don't know if I'm thatpassionate about it to be able
(12:50):
to do that.
So that kind of like got methinking.
I'm like, hang on a minute, isthat really what I want to do?
No, I actually want to dealwith space more, and so that's
what I did.
So I went at first intoelectrical engineering and the
idea there was that, again, Ididn't think I could do it.
I didn't think I could dophysics.
(13:11):
What do you mean?
You need to be like a mastergenius to be, like you know, phd
physics.
I'm okay, you know, I did alittle physics in high school,
but like I didn't really likemath and whatever, like nah, so
I'm going to go at it from theelectrical engineering angle,
which deals with, like you know,the radio antennas, right, and
(13:34):
kind of like the equipment of itand kind of like the signals
and all that kind of stuff.
And I was like that's reallycool, and I did.
And in order to do that, I movedto the US and I had a job and I
studied at the same time, whichwas not very easy.
But not only was it not veryeasy, because you know, okay,
fine, you're working full time,you're studying full time.
(13:57):
It's kind of like I realizedthat if I want to continue doing
engineering.
One of the problems withengineering is that it's very,
very rigid.
If you don't take the amount ofclasses that you need to take
within one specific semester now, your entire next semester is
delayed.
It's really rigid.
So if you do kind of like shiftwork or whatever and you're
saying like, okay, I'll takemaybe these courses instead of
(14:19):
these courses, there's verylimited.
So that was one problem.
And the second wasn't really aproblem.
I took physics 101 because weall, you know, you're kind of
like in the US especially you'rekind of taking the first year
to be kind of, you know,interest to a lot of things.
And so I went to physics and Ialready studied a little bit of
physics in high school and thisphysics 101 was very, very basic
.
So I basically sat down and didnothing in class because I
(14:39):
already knew everything andapparently that impressed the
professor.
I don't know how he didn't kickme out, but apparently it was
impressed with me.
I was a little bit of a smartass.
I remember one class he wastalking and I already knew the
material and I did all thehomework and I was fine.
So I was kind of like spacingout.
I don't know.
I think I filled a sadoku in themiddle of class or something,
(15:04):
and he was asking this physicsriddle.
I think he was like, if I havea cup and the cup has, like you
know, water on it, I put ice inthe cup and also water up to the
rim, and now I wait for the iceto melt.
Who thinks the water would belike lower right, and then
people raise their hands.
And who thinks like the waterwill be higher, will drop out of
(15:26):
the cup?
People raise their hands.
Who thinks it will be the samething?
People raise their hands.
And I didn't raise my hand toanything because I didn't listen
.
I was kind of like I was allspacing out.
I don't know what happened.
I was doing my own sadoku,whatever it was, and so the
professor noticed, so he lookedat me and then he pointed at me
and he was like Moriel, what doyou think?
And so initially, of course,panic, because what?
I don't know what you wereasking.
(15:47):
So you know, in your own mind,you're like rewind.
So I'm like rewinding to myself.
I was like what just happened?
Wait, da, da, da, da, da.
And so while I'm doing that,panic rises because I'm in front
of everybody.
So the first thing that comesout of my mouth is like, well,
it depends.
And he was on the floor becauseit's true, it does depend, it
absolutely depends.
And then I kind of rewound bythat time and now I'm stuck
(16:10):
because I said that depends.
Now I have to continue with whyit depends, and he looks at me
and I'm like, well, you know theair pressure and stuff.
And I'm just at this point like, seriously, he knows that I
didn't listen.
I know I didn't listen, but heloves it.
So he came to me after classand he was like, listen, you
have to do a major in physics.
And I'm like what are youtalking about?
(16:31):
How did you get from this tolike doing a major in physics?
And he's like you have it, youhave to do a major in physics.
And so I did.
I was kind of like, all right,well, it's working out with
engineering, but not really.
I just swapped to physics.
And I even remember I went inorder to do that, you have to go
to your advisor, right, likeyou know, to kind of say, all
right, well, I'm going to switchto the advisor in engineering,
(16:54):
looked at me and he was likeyou're going to switch to
physics from engineering.
And I'm like, yeah, do you notlike money?
I was like, well, that's aninteresting point.
But to reiterate my previousone, if you're passionate about
(17:15):
something, you know, I'm good,but it was an interesting point
to make.
So I did.
I started studying physics andI did.
I finished my entire degree.
I did my bachelor's in physics.
I loved it.
I went to do some internshipsthat were extremely interesting.
But I realized something in themiddle Again one of those right
(17:38):
turns.
I realized that in order tolook, in order to be an
astronomer, in order to be likea PhD, you need to go into
academia.
Right, you do that, and thenafter that you could.
There are ways for you to thensay, ok, you know what?
I don't want academia anymore,I want the industry or whatever.
But you have to be an academiaand you have to be an academia
for quite a long time.
(17:59):
And it's very, very tough, andI'm not just talking about the
materialist stuff, I'm talkingabout the environment.
It's very, very tough,especially for women in these
kind of things, in physics ingeneral and chemistry a little
too, also Quite, and inastronomy.
There's another aspect herethat people don't think about a
(18:21):
lot is that when you do go to doyour PhD, you a lot of times
have to go and be in remoteplaces, because a lot of the
radio telescopes and thetelescopes are in the middle of
the desert or middle of remote.
And that adds to the difficulty, because whatever other
difficulty you have with being awoman or just being in tech and
being in this kind ofenvironment, science right is
(18:43):
then going even bigger Becauseyou're not also Alone in that
environment you don't have.
So all of that came in andagain I did this assessment in
my head of like Look, I am notthis, this like Incredible mind
that can sit down and do theseall, like you know, mathematical
(19:05):
equations in my head.
And da da da, it's just not me.
I'm more creative person, so Ican do a lot of the astronomy
stuff which is creative, of likeanalyses and stuff like that.
But but how Passionate am I?
And doing that, given what I'mgoing to have to go through in
order to be successful in it,given the amount of of, like you
(19:26):
know, things that I have?
And I wasn't entirely sure IDidn't decide it that I wasn't,
I was just not entirely sure.
So I said, okay, I'm going toEither way, I'm going to have to
do, like you know, the examsand whatever the GRE and and all
that kind of stuff which isalready you have to like study,
like mad, for I'm going to giveit a little bit of time For now.
(19:49):
I continued.
I had like an internship thatturned into a little bit of a
job to be responsible for like awebsite of the American
Institute of physics, some somedepartment in the American
Institute of physics.
So I worked in physics but Idid like website work and so I
came back a little bit to the,to the programming stuff.
But again it was kind of like aside thing and and that when I
(20:10):
was thinking about kind of like,okay, well, what am I doing
with my?
So like, where do I want to go?
Do I want to continue thisphysics thing?
Like I can't really, you can'treally do a lot of the astronomy
stuff only with the bachelor's.
You need to do the PhD stuff,like you can't.
You know you have to be that.
Do I?
Am I willing or do I want to?
Or can I find myself in a placewhere I'll be and I'll feel
(20:31):
very, very passionate about andsucceed?
I don't know.
But what I do know is I'm kindof liking what I'm doing with
this computer stuff right now.
I don't know, it's kind of cool.
Maybe I can find, you know, aplace that will hire me and then
see what it's like.
And that's what I try to do.
I try to find kind of like aplace that you know, kind of
(20:51):
like as a junior engine, likeyou know, software developer,
try to see, like you know, if Ican get back into it.
I didn't know anything aboutlike working in a team or
working professionally.
I was like, but Because I was astudent in the US, the visa
type I was only allowed to workin, what I graduated from, which
was physics.
Yes, and there are ways to kindof like, make the point of like
(21:13):
, physics is very broad andComputers is probably related,
but a lot of but the companyneeds to agree to that to make
that case.
And so another considerationcame to mind and I was like well
, how about I take a masters inComputer science?
And then that will do twothings first of all, it will
allow me to say, okay, I do havea masters in computer science,
(21:35):
therefore I could go work insomething related to programming
.
But it will also get me backinto this computer stuff that I
didn't do a long time you know,I did it as a side thing and
maybe give me some principles toremember.
This is what I did.
So I wanted to a masters and Iactually really enjoyed it.
I think that, you know, schoolis not for for everyone.
(21:57):
I'm not like a proponent ofsaying kind of like, you know,
jobs are only for people who dida degree or stuff.
I don't think so, but I dothink that some people really,
you know, if you connect to it,I think it's really cool and I
do, I really love that.
So I did that and at the end ofit, towards the, towards the
second, the end of the secondyear, I Saw interships.
I was like, oh, you have to goto internships or whatever.
(22:18):
And Again, with my self-esteembeing awesome, as this is a
recurring thing, you see, here Ican't do it.
I also was kind of like, oh,come on, I don't have experience
in anything.
Who's gonna take me?
So I kind of I I submitted, butit was like half-hearted, like
I don't, I don't know, nobodywill take me, it's not gonna
(22:39):
work out.
And then I saw Google Summer ofCode.
And Google Summer of Code wasthis internship still going
today that allows you to go andwork in an internship with open
source organizations?
And I was like, okay, I, I knowWordPress because I've been
doing websites and I know wikis,because I've been doing some
websites, I Don't know, maybeone of them will want me.
(23:02):
And so I kind of posted.
There was a way to kind of likesay I want to join this,
whatever.
And initially it was actuallyreally funny because I went to
the Wikipedia one right, themedia foundation was was part of
the organizations that and Iwent in into one of the forums
and I put in that I'm interestedand I Gotta reply.
Someone replied.
(23:23):
Someone say, like oh, it's socool that you're interested.
Oh my gosh, like, hey,reminding you that if you are
interested, you should also dothis, like send this message to
the mailing list.
And I was like I'm not even inyet.
They responded I'm not evenworking for them yet, oh my god.
And so I was so impressed andso like, oh my god, maybe maybe
(23:46):
there is a chance here.
That I did.
I went to the mailing list and Iposted and I kind of like hey,
I want to do an internships here.
My idea for a project is one ofthe things that you need to
come up with, an idea for aproject, and my idea for a
project was a some extension toMedia wiki, which is the thing
for Wikipedia, that that doesvisualizations for physics.
(24:06):
I was like this is great, Iknow physics, I could do this,
whatever.
And the next thing thathappened was that nothing.
Nothing happened, like it wasChirp, chirp on on the mailing
list, crickets, nothing.
And I'm like Someone needs toaccept my idea in order for me
(24:28):
to do an internship.
What's happening?
Maybe it's a bad idea, maybe,like just no one you know, like
I don't know if anyone reallyknew how to do the physics thing
and whatever.
There was no buyers.
And Then a person saw that Ispeak Hebrew one of the people
in the, in the foundation of meand he contacted me and he's
(24:50):
like, listen, you know how toprogram, you speak Hebrew.
We could actually use help withour editor, with our just text
editor, to make sure that itkind of, like you know, supports
Right to left languages likeHebrew and Arabic and Farsi and
stuff.
And I'm like I don't know howto do that.
It's like you know, you don'tknow and you don't need to know
(25:10):
a lot.
I'll tell you, like you knowthe rules that I know.
I just need to know thatthere's someone that can do
programming and understand thatand I'm like, okay, I'm sure I
can give it a try, why not?
And that was my project for thesummer.
There you go, you got it, I gotit, I was in, that's it, and
yeah, and, and that you know,since then, this is this has
(25:32):
been like One of one of thebiggest things when I talked to
people about like you know howto white, to get into open
source and what's it's a littlewhatever.
Well, when I developed forWikipedia, I was an intern and
within a month of me justworking on Just stuff, I had two
patches that were in production.
Billions of people who visitWikipedia just saw them and I
(25:53):
was dancing around and one ofthem was like a tiny little CSS
fix.
I didn't even matter.
I was like look at me, you andyou look at it.
What other place like there'snot a whole lot of places where,
as an intern, you're like yourstuff is already in production,
like you know a month.
Right, it was just.
It was just like and that's it,I'm there.
I'm there since then, since2013.
(26:15):
Wow, that that was yeah, sothat's how it started.
Tim Bourguignon (26:23):
You turn, right turns as you and you landed
when I see your smile and howyou're dancing, talking about
this, the right spot.
I think so too yeah passion iswhere I don't know if the money
is there, but at least thepassion is there and the
willingness to do it.
Moriel Schottlender (26:39):
So I think so I think this is this is the
thing, right, and this is a lotof times when I talk to people
again about kind of like opensource and stuff.
We all know that there's opensource can be very tough right,
because it is online, witheverything that has to do with
online.
It could be the good, good,good things and the bad things
and there are bad things too init, but this is what I'm saying,
like always, as a device topeople to get into open source.
(27:00):
It's like find yourself, yourcommunity, that you have passion
and they see you right.
And this is just what happenedto me.
I I went in to a place where Ihad backing.
I had people who wanted methere, who could support me when
things weren't as great, whocould teach me when I went, when
you know, and help me out andwhatever, and when I was
(27:22):
passionate about this, and Ithink that combination just
worked.
I suddenly found myself in aplace where I didn't know where
I was going.
I was kind of like I don't knowphysics, not physics, I'll do
this.
I tried to keep physics in thepicture of kind of like you know
, when I was programming, I waslike this is what I'm good at.
Maybe I have a degree in it.
I must be doing something.
Okay, like it was all like this, and then, just out of out of
(27:43):
nowhere, you stumble in.
I think, and I think some of itis just recognized.
I recognized you know which oneof the doors that opened for me
Made me feel the best and Ijust walked into that one.
Tim Bourguignon (27:57):
It was you know , yeah, I want to be a bit
polarizing a little bit and andthen have, have me, have you
correct me?
Um, so when I think about opensource, I I have the one picture
Uh, that's xkcd picture for oneguy in Nebraska Holding the the
world On his shoulders becausehe did or she did some kind of
(28:21):
small open source software andmaintaining it since then.
And if they remove it, pad leftand and the world crumbles on.
Or you have the other wayaround, maybe microsoft size or
google size enterprises, um,publishing something on the
internet as open source,whichever licenses they use, and
(28:44):
then I'm making a face there,but somehow it doesn't feel open
source.
They're just creating a giantsoftware, it's a big enterprise
and somehow this lands as anopen source software on the
internet.
I'm sure you're somewhere inthe middle of this, but how does
Wikipedia or Wikimedia, theWikimedia Foundation, works in
(29:05):
terms of open source, is termsof working together on that
spectrum and beyond?
Moriel Schottlender (29:13):
So, as you're pointing out, this is not
polarizing at all.
No, not at all.
Let's go into it, why not?
So, as you're pointing out,open source is an entire world
and arguably some places callthemselves open source when
arguably they might not be OK.
It depends who you ask aboutthe definition of open source
(29:34):
and the definition of opensource, if you go backwards and
forwards, there are officialones, but then the things that
are practically.
There's a whole bunch of messhere.
I would argue personally that apiece of application that comes
out with a license that doesn'tallow that license itself is not
open source.
The software is not open source, even if the code is visible,
(29:56):
and I think that most peopleagree with me on that.
I would further argue that,even if the license is OK for
you to fork and do whatever youwant, but if the software itself
doesn't accept contributions so, for example, android is open
source, I believe, also thelicense.
I need to check into that.
Please don't kill me if I'mwrong, but I think I believe
that you can technically take itand fork it and whatever, but I
(30:18):
don't know how much.
If I want to put a patch orwhatever, it will immediately go
in and depending on how easythat is, because there are other
examples of that kind of thingI'm not entirely sure on the
scale of free and opensourceness I would put it.
I would say, ok, it might beopen source, but it might not be
(30:38):
, as and we're talking about thefoundation and the Wikimedia
movement we're pretty set onmaking sure that we are very,
very much open source, arguablysometimes a little much, and
again, please don't kill me,everybody who listens to this
I'm not saying that being opensource is bad.
(30:59):
I am saying, however, thateverything has a price, right.
Everything has kind of like abalance of things, and you allow
, and we do out of principle,right, like we are saying what
made Wikipedia great was not thetech, what made Wikipedia great
was the technical idea, andthen the people who used it
(31:21):
right, the amount of users thatcame in and just had a vision
for this and changed it and comein.
And then the people who thencame in and said, ooh, ok, I'll
add this in and I'll add this intechnically.
And that happened because it'sopen source and because it's
free and not free.
How would you call it?
Not free as in freedom, notfree as in beer?
Tim Bourguignon (31:40):
Free as a kitten.
Moriel Schottlender (31:42):
Right, exactly, and in this case, it's
both.
It's both free of money andfree of freedom, but it is
something that we really, reallycare about, and this is
something that also, as you cansee when I'm talking about it,
I'm very passionate about this,because this is, I think, a
thing that really impacts theworld, and I think this is the
(32:02):
one thing that, for me inWikipedia, is one of the biggest
reasons why I'm there and whyI'm staying there and why I
stayed there for so long BecauseI have impact.
I literally I feel that, and Ihad impact when I was an intern,
and I have impact today, andthis is impact that outright
does something to the world.
There's no doubt about it, andpart of that is absolutely to be
(32:25):
with the mentality of open andcollaborative, both in the
content to make sure that ourcommunities can put the content
and the way that the contentneeds to be what everybody can
edit and in the code, and so, ofcourse, there are also
hardships with it, and these arethe things that I'm dealing
(32:46):
with right now with my team.
It's the idea of look, we wantto be open source, but then open
source and there's differentideas about the one sister, the
bazaar and the cathedral and allthat kind of stuff, ideas of
who's running.
How do you run your open sourceso far?
And people also have opinionsabout whether it still is open
source, if it is more cathedralstyle, and whether it is open
source if not.
(33:06):
Whatever it is, the way that yourun your open source software
impacts the way that yoursoftware is then built.
And when you have a softwarelike MediaWiki, which is a
software underlying to Wikipediaand 11 other projects right,
it's not just Wikipedia.
We have Wiktionary and Commonsthat does image, and we have
Wicked Data that does graphicalconnections between small bits
(33:29):
of knowledge All that kind ofstuff is the same software and
for 20 years we kind of pulledthat software in all multiple
directions because that's whatusers came in to do.
And that's beautiful in oneaspect, because you're kind of
like no one would have guessedthis would happen.
Jimmy Wells, when he justreleased it, would not have
guessed, I'm sure, where we aretoday.
(33:51):
On the other hand, when you lookat the architecture of your
software, it is messy.
It is messy because there wasno plan in the beginning.
You didn't come and say, ok,the architecture needs to be
very solid because, blah, therewas no true, solid, single
vision for the product, becausepeople just came in and made the
vision and that is beautiful,but then technologically that
(34:13):
could be challenging.
So that is kind of like a lotof the problems that I love
dealing with, like, ok, give methat problem, what do we do with
this now?
How do we keep it, this freedomthing, this free thing that
everybody could still do stuff,but we've got to have some rules
, because otherwise it'll belike this everything on top of
everything, that everythingcollapses and whatever, and we
(34:35):
won't be able to do anything.
So how do you find that balanceto make it sustainable for the
next 100 years, with whateverother?
There's new technologies comingup and everybody's yelling that
PHP is dead, even though it'sjust by thinking about how many
WordPress websites there arethere, it seems to me like PHP
is still alive and well andkicking, I think.
But OK, it's kind of like oh,you should the amount of people,
(34:58):
by the way, that I hear thattell us that we should rewrite
the entire Wikipedia and go.
Tim Bourguignon (35:02):
Absolutely.
Moriel Schottlender (35:03):
Let's do it tomorrow.
Yes, just like, go ahead, giveit a try.
All right, sure, but yeah.
So you want to still make surethat in 100 years time,
wikipedia is still here, and soyou do need to think about these
kind of things with this.
Tim Bourguignon (35:20):
So these are the things that I'm getting
really, really excited about andreally how did you, did you
travel from this, from thisinternship in this part of
Wikipedia that you love and inthis activity that you love?
Was it?
Was it just well, a bit likelike the Valve software handbook
, but they describe well, youjust go wherever you think you
(35:42):
can add value and just do it.
Or is it really trying to climbthe stairs with big air quotes,
of going into the architectureof Wikimedia and having to prove
that you can do this and reallyhaving to?
I don't know how that works.
Moriel Schottlender (35:58):
So it's a little bit of both.
So when I joined in, I joinedin 2013 to the visual editor
team, which is now the editingteam, because they're not just
doing visual editor as a frontend engineer also, front end is
my expertise even today.
And I joined in and, as I said,my job as an intern basically
was support for Hebrew stuff orsupport for right to left right,
(36:21):
and I knew Hebrew and becauseof because I, like you know, I
fell into this passion very,very quickly, I started doing
things that were part of that,of that support, but we're not
necessarily part of, like, thetasks that I was given.
I was kind of like I rememberthat there was, for example, one
of the tasks was we want tomake sure that, you know,
templates are being supported,and then I noticed that in order
(36:43):
to support templates templatesthere was a new thing coming out
template data.
And template data is a JSONstring, and so users can kind of
like save this JSON string thatgives like a some sort of
definition about what a templateis, that then the software
visual editor can read and tellyou how to fill it out, whatever
.
And I noticed that when you putthe JSON in the wiki in English.
(37:04):
It's a little annoying but it'sokay.
But if you put it in a right toleft wiki in Hebrew, arabic or
whatever, it is completelymangled.
You can't understand anything.
In fact, it gets worse becauseit's so mangled that you know
how you have key value in in inright to left they flip.
(37:25):
So now you have value key andyou don't know which one is
which and whatever.
So it was just unworkable and Iwas charged with kind of like
helping out how to do it.
And I'm looking at it and likeI don't.
There's no way to do this withJSON properly unless we were
like rewrite the internet.
So I built a little interfaceto kind of like instead of you
(37:45):
writing down JSON, here's like aUI for the user to say what key
values they want and then itproduces the JSON for you, right
?
So I took a lot of stuff whereI saw right like opportunities a
little bit.
Again, some of it was because Iwas too lazy.
Too lazy to copy paste it tosomewhere else.
And then I was like I wantsomething to automatically do it
(38:05):
for me.
And there you go.
It's kind of you know,engineers are lazy inherently,
which is how we come up withgreat stuff to save everybody
time.
So it started kind of like withthis right, and then after I
finished, after I graduated, Iwas looking a little bit further
out and whatever.
But I kind of knew that Iwanted to continue with the
foundation and I joined in andthen I was.
(38:28):
It was.
It was a little bit of both interms of where can you go,
because there were other teamsand you could see that there's
like openings done.
So there were a little bitchanges and I moved to another
team where we worked onsomething slightly different.
There was still front end, soit was different.
And then there was anopportunity to lead a team, to
be a tech lead of a team, and Ijust I, you know, I thought
(38:50):
about it, I submitted it and Iwent in there.
So I became like a tech lead ofone of the teams and that
exposed me a little bit to kindof like this higher level
questions, right, instead ofjust looking at like the code
that you need to deliverspecifically the task whatever.
Now you're looking at kind oflike how should we do things a
little bit higher level what isthe architecture of my product,
who do I need to talk to, andstuff like that.
(39:11):
And then a couple years afterthat, the team opened that was
the architecture team, which wasthe tasks on basically thinking
about these kind of questions,but in a much higher level of
like what is the systemicarchitecture of Wikipedia and
everything else?
And they joined that and nowwe're doing basically a lot of
(39:34):
thinking about media wiki as aproduct instead of just this,
this platform project, and nowwe're doing so.
A lot of it was kind of likethese opportunities that opened
up.
Some of it was a little bit ofself advocacy, of kind of like
Okay, I think I can do it andraising my hand.
For some of it was just likeseeing a door open and checking
into it.
It was a little bit of a mix,but a lot of people ask me if
(39:56):
kind of like oh my gosh, you'renine years in the same place.
That is so unusual.
Usually software engineers justmove places right, like you
work three years in one placeand then you move to another.
And then I asked those peoplewhy do software engineers do
that?
Usually they do that one of tworeasons either to get more
money, right, or to get promoted, and unfortunately that's
(40:18):
because the way that theindustry is.
But I did get promoted.
I started as an intern andtoday, nine years later, I am a
principal engineer that works ona lot of strategic stuff.
So I did get this promote.
I didn't need to go, and as longas and I don't I mean I don't
want to say I don't care aboutmoney, but I don't work for
Wikipedia for the money of it,right, like I work for the
(40:39):
mission, I work for the you know, and so I didn't need to switch
jobs.
So I'm not saying, you know,never switch jobs though,
whatever, but I think that thatI would caution against falling
into these like expectationsthat people might give.
You have kind of like, well, ifyou can't work in some place
like for so long, because then,I don't know, you'll come out
(41:00):
and people will wonder why youdidn't shift.
Well, here's my answer for whyI didn't Right, and I learned a
lot and I did a lot.
So a lot of it was basicallyopen doors, just recognizing
them.
Tim Bourguignon (41:13):
And you have to make your own like.
It's very important to be ableto organize the doors to be able
to grab them when they open.
If you're not ready for that,you'll miss them.
That's true.
And I guess you came back tothe, to the passion piece.
You're where your passion ledyou and you've been talking and
moving and making gestures allthe time.
So I guess you found the rightplace and that's that's enough
(41:37):
for me to not ask the questionwhy have you been there for 13
years?
It's it's enough, or 10 years,I don't know Almost 10.
Moriel Schottlender (41:44):
Yeah, almost 10.
Tim Bourguignon (41:47):
No, fantastic.
Thank you for this, for thisride of your life in just about
40 minutes.
Moriel Schottlender (41:53):
I know I can't believe it.
I was like, All right, we'reall.
The rest of the five, sixquestions.
I'm like, Wow, this has beenthe story of my life.
Tim Bourguignon (42:03):
A little bit.
Moriel Schottlender (42:04):
I'm sure a lot out.
Tim Bourguignon (42:05):
Yeah, for a different discussion.
That's true.
Before you get there, whatwould be your advice?
If somebody wanted to get intoopen source, what would be the
way you would advise them to getthere?
Moriel Schottlender (42:18):
Oh, okay, there's a whole bunch of ways,
but what I would recommend Ithink I talked a little bit
about this in the beginning Findwhere you're passionate about,
because I think it's true forevery place, not just open
source every place has theirpros and cons.
You have, like, the greatmoments and then the problem
moments.
Open source has that too.
It's online, it's on theinternet, it's exposed.
(42:39):
Everybody can see your stuff,everybody comes in, has opinions
, all of it.
So with that, you also havethat.
So if you find, find yourselfeither a group or you know some,
some project you're passionateabout to join in, so that you
find people like you that youwill connect with and will have
(43:01):
your back right, we'll remindyou why you want that.
That will will put aside likesome of the noise that you're
hearing, because everywhere hasnoise Open source a little more.
And so find the place that isgood for you, and there are lots
of places like that and you can.
You can search for that aremany places to search and there
are many places to look for them.
But find a place, not just that, you know.
(43:22):
Oh, I just want to start.
I'll go to whatever I find,because sometimes then that you
know you don't get into itwhatever, find a place that will
support you and that you canfind your passion in that's.
That's the biggest.
Tim Bourguignon (43:32):
I love the answer.
The answer I kind of saw inmyself when I started searching
in open source was okay, whatcan I do?
And searching for that?
I can do C++, I can do C sharp,I can do Java, I can do it.
So let's search for projectslike this.
And I went right into a wall.
That just doesn't work.
You have to find a community,you have to find a passion, you
(43:53):
have to find something thatreally propels you in learning
whatever language you need tolearn to participate.
Moriel Schottlender (44:00):
And you know what, Find that person in
XKCD right that holds with theirbare hands the one thing that
all the, by the way, commercialcompanies that don't pay for it
use, and if it will fall down,everything will find them
because you use it.
Right, Like you probably usesomething.
Find them and then go help them.
Right, Like, find somethingthat you use, you know you have
(44:23):
passion about, and theneverybody will accept you
because passion is somethingthat people want to see.
Tim Bourguignon (44:28):
Indeed, we do Amen to that, boyle.
It's been fantastic.
Thank you so much.
It's been great.
Thank you so much.
Where would be the best placeto continue this discussion with
you and rub off some of thatenergy about open source and get
hyped about going so?
Moriel Schottlender (44:44):
there used to be a network that I was
always in, but now it's a littlebit gone from the front and who
knows where it's at right now.
Tim Bourguignon (44:50):
Let's not mention it.
Moriel Schottlender (44:51):
No, so I am in Mastodon.
It's not a cultsocial SlashMuiPu.
I can give you the stuff, so itprobably will appear and you
can go to my website.
All my contact information,including anywhere that I'm
online Morieltech.
I'm basically anywhereeverywhere as MuiPu too, so you
(45:14):
can feel free to contact me,talk, ask questions.
I would be really, really happy, especially if you're
interested in getting into opensource or interested in learning
about right to left stuff.
I am around and be happy tohelp.
Tim Bourguignon (45:28):
And I'll add a link all the links in the show
notes, so you didn't get them.
Just scroll down and click andyou'll be covered.
Moriel, thank you so much.
Moriel Schottlender (45:38):
Thank you.
Tim Bourguignon (45:39):
Thank you very much, and this has been another
episode of Dev First Journey.
We'll see each other next week.
Bye, bye.
Thanks a lot for tuning in.
I hope you have enjoyed thisweek's episode.
If you like the show, pleaseshare, rate and review.
It helps more listenersdiscover those stories.
You can find the links to allthe platforms the show appears
(46:02):
on on our website,devjourneyinfo.
Please subscribe.
Talk to you soon.
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