January 16, 2024 • 46 mins
Embark on a riveting odyssey with Steven Schkolne, a polymath whose professional course has been as diverse as it is deep. As he shares tales from his early days dabbling in BASIC and Logo, you'll find yourself immersed in the nostalgia of programming's past, drawing unexpected connections to the complex dance of modern development. Listen and be inspired by the transformative power of passion, whether it's in code, art, or the simple joy of gardening.
Steven's journey is a reminder that the paths we tread often converge in unexpected places. From the mathematical allure of ray tracing to the epiphanies found in grad school, we uncover how a love for numbers and aesthetics can coexist harmoniously. Our conversation reveals the pivotal junctures where art meets technology - from GUI breakthroughs to creative digital art endeavors - charting Steven's evolution from an outsider to a pioneer in computer engineering and design.
As we round off this insightful dialogue, Steven doesn't shy away from envisioning the future of coding, interfaces, and digital art markets. He discusses the cultural significance of NFTs, the importance of user-friendly design, and his hopes for a tech world that enhances, rather than replaces, the human element in engineering. Join us as we celebrate the symphony of skills and experiences that sculpt a life rich in passion and purpose.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Steven Schkolne (00:00):
my heart is in the work and I would say work If
you're struggling to find yourpassion.
Work at things.
As you work at things, youunderstand.
The more you appreciate, themore you learn more.
I don't like gardening, but ifI spent a lot of time working at
gardening, I would find a wayto connect with it and I think a
(00:21):
lot of people looking at mycareer and saying, oh, am I
supposed to do this?
Like I spent so many yearswondering what I was supposed to
be because I didn't really fitinto the world in a way that
made a lot of sense.
I had all these differentinterests and I just kept
working at it and kept doingthings and I wish I'd spent less
time worrying and more timejust being engaged, doing things
, working with people, gettingto know people, having those
kinds of social experiences.
(00:42):
It's ultimately what drives mesocial experiences through what
you're doing and just keepworking and don't worry so much
about what it means.
Tim Bourguignon (00:52):
Hello and welcome to Developer's Journey,
the podcast bringing you themaking of stories of successful
software developers to help youon your upcoming journey.
I'm your host, tim Bologna.
On this episode, I receiveSteven Scolny.
Steven is a computer scientist,self-taught designer and
entrepreneur who's passionateabout how human work creatively
(01:14):
with machines.
Speaking of which, he pioneeredVR creative tools long before
their commercial debut and I seesome VR goggles behind you,
don't turn around.
His current focus is a webproject called Mighty Melt, a
visualization and creationplatform for sophisticated React
(01:35):
code bases.
Maybe we're going to talk aboutthis today, but we'll see.
Steven, a warm welcome toDevTourney.
Steven Schkolne (01:41):
Yeah, thank you , Tim.
Glad to be here.
Oh, it's my pleasure.
Tim Bourguignon (01:45):
But before we come to your story, I want to
thank the terrific listeners whosupport the show.
Every month you are keeping theDevTourney lights up.
If you would like to join thisfine crew and help me spend more
time on finding phenomenalguests than editing audio tracks
, please go to our website,devjourneyinfo, and click on the
(02:08):
Support Me on Patreon button.
Even the smallest contributionsare giant steps toward a
sustainable DevTourney journey.
Thank you, and now back totoday's guest, steven.
As you know, the show exists tohelp the listeners understand
what your story looks like andimagine how to shape their own
future.
So, as is usual on the show,let's go back to your beginnings
(02:29):
.
Where would you place the startof your DevTourney?
Steven Schkolne (02:33):
So the first actual lines of code I wrote
were in basic and copied andpasted them out of a book and
typed them into an IBM PC in theearly to mid 80s.
It was quite young, had parentswho were early adopters and
(02:55):
really into the PC.
I don't know if that actuallycounts as the beginning of my
DevTourney because I didn'tunderstand much of what was
going on with the basic.
I think I was maybe six orseven years old or something
like that, so basically copyingand pasting.
But I would say the first realDev experience I had was using
(03:17):
this thing called Logo.
And it was a turtle.
There's this little triangle onthe screen and your type of
series of commands, like youknow go 40 and go 40 pixels and
write 90.
And if you did that four timesit would draw a square.
And I was using that on the PCmaybe eight years old or so and
(03:39):
drawing pictures with thislittle turtle, and I think
that's the first time I wasgiving instructions to a
computer in a way that reallygot me excited and that I just
wanted to dive in and explore.
So that's where I would makethe start.
Tim Bourguignon (03:56):
You would be amazed how many people had a
first experience with Logo.
Nowadays.
It would be probably Scratchfor the younger generation, but
Logo seems to be really reallyreally widely available.
Back then.
Steven Schkolne (04:12):
Yeah, and for someone I kind of think there
are two sort of spheres to mathand to programming the visual
and the linguistic, and I tendto be more on, or sorry, maybe
the spatial and linguistic.
Yeah, we could say spatial,visual, and I tend to be very on
the spatial side of things.
So for me, being able to messwith geometry and do something
(04:33):
visual and geometric just Ireally thinking about my journey
from there, that's been a bigpart of it.
You know, just making pictures,so fast forwarding, I did learn
, eventually learn Pascal at asummer camp, but then I had this
little later when I was like 14or so, using this thing called
Pavre, which is a ray tracer andyou basically handwrite these
(04:56):
scene files and then it wouldtake, like you know, minutes to
make these like basic pictures.
These are the kinds of thingsthat really got my enthusiasm in
terms of development when I wasyoung.
Tim Bourguignon (05:10):
So Did you picture it as coding, or was it
just a means to doing somethingelse with a visual component?
Steven Schkolne (05:21):
I don't really see it as coding.
Keep in mind, in these days,this is the 80s we didn't know
anyone called it coding.
It was called programming.
That's true, that's true, forstarters.
And my enthusiasm was just usingcomputers.
Just to use a computer was athing.
To be a person who could use Icould.
What were the files, thestartup files on MS-DOS.
(05:44):
Trying to configure yourcomputer to run certain things
or a certain program needed somevirtual memory.
And that was really how I, whatI thought I was doing.
I wasn't so much programming asI was a computer user.
And just to be a computer userthese days of course everyone
does it that was kind of my.
The hat I was wearing was acomputer using kit and that was
(06:08):
kind of a big part of myidentity growing up.
Tim Bourguignon (06:13):
Computer using, as you put it, was way more
technical back then than it istoday, less consumerism.
It was really you were in theinside Right at the beginning.
You just had the prompt and youhad to code it yourself,
program it yourself, sorry, yeah, otherwise your computer didn't
do anything.
Just had to teach you first todo something and yeah, you were
(06:36):
inside right away.
Yeah, you're programming.
It felt like using this thingthat cannot do anything else.
Steven Schkolne (06:43):
Yeah.
Yeah, this was really difficultrelatively to figure out how to
do things.
You had a manual and I rememberI wanted to learn to program and
see at some point that I got abook and you had the right
compiler and it's really I don'tthink it's even possible.
I kind of feel like when I wasgrowing up people were trying to
(07:03):
say imagine time before radio,just trying to explain that time
.
It's like you want to learn tosee programming and it's like
you get a book but it's adifferent compiler than the one
you have and they're differentlibraries and you're like what
is this library thing and howcome these functions don't work
and they don't match up andthere's no other way for you to
figure it out.
So I was actually kind of stucka lot when I tried to get
deeper into the programmingbecause there just weren't
(07:24):
resources available, even thoughI had a lot of resources for,
relatively speaking for thetimes and for my age, it was
really difficult to get up andgoing on the seven-sided and
talk to you.
Tim Bourguignon (07:36):
So yeah, it resonates a lot with what I live
through.
I had a C-book as well quiteearly and I probably skimmed
over the compiler piece and so Iwent all the way to Algorithmic
and could do for loops andeverything.
I just couldn't compile and ittook me years to understand.
(07:57):
Oh, I have to compile the thingnow, because I started with
Bayseek as well and Bayseek wasjust interpreted and was just
running like this and didn't doanything else and let's see, you
have to compile it first.
Steven Schkolne (08:10):
Oh yeah, took some years, yeah yeah, and also
there are the it's kind of twohalves.
Now maybe I take it for granted, but learning how to develop.
There is this model where Icould be in an environment that
was created and write code sortof within like an IDE or
something.
Maybe it was like a Turbo C++.
They had certain libraries andthen there was the activity of
(08:32):
actually plugging differentthings together, like installing
a new package or having a newlibrary available, linking that
up in the OS and eventually thisgoes into like connecting over
the network and doing otherthings like that.
And there really are two halvesof the development experience.
And I think this is especiallyeven true today for people.
(08:53):
Learning how to code, beingable to work within an
environment, is one thing, andthere's this meta scale of being
able to sort of configure yoursystems and bring things
together and bring the rightthings together in order to make
your program work.
And they're both necessary.
And for me, I was very much inthe sort of first half of that
in my early years and it wasn'tuntil I got sort of older and
(09:14):
had more experiences that I feltcapable of plugging different
things together and sort ofbringing everything together in
different ways.
So I don't do have words forthat.
Speaking of terminology.
Do we have words for that?
Tim Bourguignon (09:25):
I have no idea Like systems versus just
straight coding.
I've no idea, but it's exactlythe same.
Nowadays, when you open aGitHub project somewhere,
there's first three pages of howyou set up your gems and NPM
and whatever package manager andbuilder and minimizer and
everything, just to be able tostart the damn thing.
(09:46):
Yeah, it's exactly the same,just different.
Steven Schkolne (09:51):
Yeah, maybe it's kind of like the split
between DevOps and development,right, because I think every
developer has to do somethingout of just DevOps.
Whether it's installing an NPMpackage, it's still kind of your
DevOps, and DevOps is alwaysencoding, even if it's a script
or something for infrastructureas a service.
(10:11):
So yeah, Fun times.
Tim Bourguignon (10:16):
It was, anyway, definitely, definitely.
So at which point maybe not atwhich point how did you decide
what to do for your studies andwhere to go?
And indeed, that programmingplay a role in there.
Steven Schkolne (10:32):
Yeah, I was kind of, as I was getting
through high school I justdidn't really think that I could
have a career with computers.
I just I wasn't sure what Iwould do.
But I realized that's kind ofraising a family where I was
very expected that I would go tocollege and study something.
And in high school I just kindof realized, oh hey, I can study
(10:54):
this thing called computerscience and I love computers, I
need to.
I do all these things withcomputers.
I haven't actually programmedthat much.
I was like I'll major incomputer science.
It's like this is what I loveto do, it's the thing that I'm
so passionate about.
Like there's a major withcomputer in the name.
I'm actually doing computerengineering as an undergrad.
(11:15):
For reasons I don't reallyunderstand now, I ended up
choosing computer engineering, Ithink because I wanted to learn
about the hardware and thesoftware side of things.
And so I ended up going tocollege at Carnegie Mellon and
in the program of electrical andcomputer engineering, and at
that time I showed up and thereare all these students who
(11:36):
programmed a ton and I was oneof these people who just hadn't
programmed very much.
I'd done a little bit, but someof my fellow students were just
having writings you know thesekind of like hobbyist types of
writing all this code.
They knew all theinfrastructure stuff that I had
no idea about how to bring allthese different things together
and I felt a little bit behindin a way in terms of just not
(12:02):
knowing all these things.
But I was very strong at mathand I think that made it a
little easier for me and kind ofmade sense for me to be doing
this computer science thing,because math has always been a
love of mine and that's reallywhat I did a lot of in high
school was math, and so, yeah, Ilearned to program but I didn't
(12:22):
really enjoy programming.
I didn't start enjoyingprogramming until I was in my
first year in grad school, whenI was like 20, 21 or 22.
I actually started to enjoyprogramming but I sort of made
it all this way.
You know, had actually gottenmy degree and was good at it,
but I didn't have a passion forcoding the way I had a passion
(12:46):
for math, the way I love math,and so it was kind of funny for
me, my experience of just notloving it, and I'm sure a lot of
people who are trying to getinto it are like they see these
people who just love it or justlike writing this code left,
right and center, and they'relike, am I in the right place
and I'm an imposter, why don't Ilove it this much?
And for me it just took timeand something flipped.
(13:09):
I think we can get into that abit later.
But something eventually flippedand I got the taste for it.
But I didn't actually have thetaste for it for quite a while.
So I don't know if I have ajourney.
Maybe my deaf journey startedwhen I was 21,.
You know, when I got the tastefor it, everything up was just,
you know, computers and gettingnew things.
Tim Bourguignon (13:28):
So it was building up to it.
It was just a taste of a tasteand at some point it really
started.
Do you remember that momentwhen it flipped?
Steven Schkolne (13:39):
Yeah, yeah.
So it was actually when I firststarted doing art projects on
the computer.
So I also have like anotherwhole other sort of thread in my
story is my my story with artand design.
And I did a lot of music when Iwas younger and I was very
(14:02):
interested in again.
Something I didn't know was afield I was doing, like the
layout for my high schoolnewspaper and a yearbook.
I was using PageMaker.
I actually started doing it onone of those Macs with like the
five inch screen, you know, oh,wow, which was amazing.
I mean, my enthusiasm at thetime was all about the graphical
stuff.
Like Windows 3 coming out andlike loading up Windows 3 for
(14:27):
the first, 3.0 for the firsttime and seeing that it was in
color and there was a GUI andeverything was visual, that just
blew my mind.
And to use a Mac and see thatvisual screen, that stuff was
what I was super passionateabout when I was younger and
it's again.
It's hard to relate to the nextgeneration because computers are
no longer getting impressive inthat way.
(14:48):
Maybe some people have thisexperience of putting on an
Oculus or something like thatfor the first time, but there
was this real experience at thetime where, like every couple of
years, your computer could justdo things that it absolutely
couldn't.
You could make pictures, playyou know, started to like low
resolution videos and seeingthat and having these graphical
experiences of dragging anddropping like a whizzy wig.
(15:08):
All these things were reallyexciting to me, and I think
getting into design was justpart of that.
But I didn't know design was athing I remember my senior year.
One of my friends was likewhere do you go study?
He's like I'm going to be amajor in design and I said
what's that?
Tim Bourguignon (15:25):
Ha, ha, ha, ha Ha ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha ha.
Were you jealous when youfinally realized that this
existed.
Steven Schkolne (15:34):
No, I don't say I was Jealousy wouldn't be the
word for it I you know.
According to them, they had areally big design program.
I think I just quickly learnedabout it.
I took classes, I had friendsdoing art and design and it's a
really powerful experience.
One summer where I was doing aninternship in Microsoft and I
(15:56):
got to be friends with someonethere who's doing a design
internship and we made a.
He was studying at the schoolcalled Cal Arts in California
and he had this wild Cal Arts isjust wild aesthetics.
He had these crazy styles.
This guy is super talented andhe wanted to make a short film
and he was super passionateabout making a short film.
So we ended up he brought me onto help with the project and we
(16:20):
did it together and we madethis short film.
We got some actors, some localactors from Seattle.
We filled it in elevator onMicrosoft campus and we like had
the doors open.
We got someone like open theelevator, had our whole thing
built there.
We like filmed this short film,we edited it and I just had
this amazing, pivotal experienceof my life that summer and I
(16:41):
was like I love doing that.
I was like I got to find someway.
I was like a computer person.
Up to that point I've beentaking some graphic design
courses in college and I waslike I got to bring this into my
life.
But it was again it's kind ofslow building thing the whole
design and art parts of my storyand that's kind of how that got
(17:02):
to be more part of my life,which then leads to my
development of Piphany, whichwas actually making my first art
projects with code and makingabstract art and basically
abstract paintings with code,which at the time was like a
very novel and ground breakingkind of thing to be doing.
Tim Bourguignon (17:21):
So how did you stumble upon that, or how did
you get that idea?
Steven Schkolne (17:27):
I was.
I've been taking some artclasses and I don't know what
led me to start doing that.
I think I was just exploring somany things with art.
At the time I was also makingthese mechanical sculptures with
engines in them and things liketaking these little engines,
(17:50):
like going to the surplus storeand building sculptures, and I
had this tendency to try to takesome of my engineering
proclivities and channel them toart, Because there's so many
things that hadn't been done yetand there's a way to get to the
things that hadn't been done.
And I started.
I think the first one I wrotewas actually it was like a mesh,
(18:10):
and then the there's a Delaneytriangulation, A set of points
of the Delaney triangulation,and then the dual of it is the
Voronoi diagram.
I don't know if this I have toget this math out.
Yeah, basically, if you take aset of points, there's a Delaney
(18:31):
triangulation which sort ofgives a fair, like it puts lines
between the points in a waythat kind of makes sense.
I think it's the best way toexplain the Delaney
triangulation and then the dualsof Voronoi diagram, and if you
take the center of each of thoseshapes and connect those with
it and every edge becomesflipped, you get another one.
(18:54):
Anyway, we don't need attentionto that, but I animated that and
just wrote some random numbergenerators and a little bit of
sign functions and random, andit was extremely beautiful and I
was just like here's thisextremely, extremely beautiful
thing.
That's a simple mathematicalobject and I started exploring
and I started to get away fromthese more standard data
(19:16):
structures into custom thingsthat weren't in any math book
anywhere.
And it actually led me to dosomething where I was like I
needed to make my pieces of code, my building blocks, and I
needed to be able to move reallyquickly and artistically
explore things, and so I reallyhad to encapsulate the things I
was working with in ways thatmade them fast and fluid to play
(19:38):
with.
And that's when everythingreally synced for me and extreme
experience which was like wow,it's so beautiful to get these
small building blocks and tomake them truly flexible and to
seal it.
And not only did it acceleratemy passion for development, I
think it also really upped mygame in terms of development,
(19:59):
because if you can get a systemto work that way, then you're
really set in terms of having abeautiful system that's super
capable.
All the right abstractions, youknow.
You know the routine.
Tim Bourguignon (20:08):
So and when you were totally telling this,
because the listeners cannot seeyet sparkles in your eyes and a
big smile on your face.
It really seems like a happyplace for you thinking about
this.
Steven Schkolne (20:22):
Yeah, yeah, it was, it still is, yeah, to go
back, and I think that's stillwhat motivates me to this day.
So, to sort of your secondanswer for the question, I think
you could say, yeah, maybe itbegan with using logo, but it
was really this moment where Ifelt like I got hooked by it and
(20:44):
fell in love with the actualact of programming itself.
And since then, whenever I havethe chance to do some coding I
love and I dive in, I get inexactly that same modality
Modality really hasn't changedmuch since then which is like
how can I make my little Legopieces super modular and
adaptable and solve the problemand then have that amazing
(21:05):
experience of getting them justright and then bringing them
together and making them dosomething, and then you know,
two days later I have to dosomething else.
But you're ready for thatbecause all those red
abstractions in place.
So that's really where it's at,if I think for development.
It seems like you're kind ofnodding.
It seems like you.
Tim Bourguignon (21:23):
I totally understand where that comes from
.
So obviously you became anartist coded art pieces since
then and it's been the rest ofyour journey, right that's it.
Steven Schkolne (21:35):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
I yeah I don't know if we haveenough time on the podcast to go
through all the wrinkles of myjourney, but yeah, that's
certainly.
I just really inspired me.
I ended up doing my whole PhD,I ended up making art, making
tools for my PhD.
(21:56):
So I just very inspired by Ithink that's, maybe that's when
my journey with creative toolsbegan and my my having that
experience of creation andwanting to give that experience
to other people.
So, yeah, I think that's.
Yeah, that's when some otherstories began.
Tim Bourguignon (22:22):
But at some point I'm sure you had bills to
pay.
Yeah, how did you manage totransform generating art with
code into paying bills.
How did you navigate that?
Steven Schkolne (22:34):
I never.
Well, I I did manage to paysome bills many years later by
making prints and selling printsof.
Yeah, this is another we have tofast forward.
There's another creative tool Ibuilt around gradient is.
Yeah, I don't know if we wantto go into the story or not, but
(22:55):
eventually so I was in gradschool at the time.
So the simple answer is I wason a stipend, you know, for my
research.
I didn't have to worry aboutpaying bills and I was making
art, but it was also in a PhDprogram that went on for like
five or six years, and so I wasmaking art and I got kind of
(23:16):
discovered by these internetartists.
We're talking like 1999, 2000,.
Internet was still very new.
The idea of making art on theinternet was very new.
And there's this thing callednet art, which is this movement
about hey, let's actually putpaintings on the internet.
And I got connected with thisgroup of artists that was
(23:36):
treating the browser like aframe for a painting and making
all of these artworks.
And I was basically doing thisand I'm like, hey, man, you're,
that's exactly what we're doing.
And they were all coming morefrom the art tradition and
getting into flash.
Flash was a huge piece of thisand I was like the coder the
coder guy, you know, who's likecoming from the other direction
(23:57):
and we met and I ended up havinga lot of fun and showing, like
having lots of shows and andmaking a lot of art with that.
I never made any money fromthat at all, like none.
I got flown around places andgot a lot of nice experiences
but I never, never made anythingother than although I think I
(24:21):
could say I got very rich fromthat.
But money doesn't make you rich.
Other things make you rich.
Tim Bourguignon (24:25):
Nice way to put it, but at some point you just
got a VR.
Yeah, do you remember when that, when that came in?
Steven Schkolne (24:36):
Yeah, so the VR story was really similar time.
When I showed up at my graduateprogram, there was this table
projection table in the basementand basically it was like a VR
surface that came out of atabletop and the idea was that
you could actually have thingson.
They had this application oflike a like a patient is about
(24:59):
the size of a human body, and soyou'd like a, you could
investigate a skeleton or somekind of scan of a body or
something like that, and so Iwas kind of interested in this
and I that also had aninteresting origin story.
I was learning figure drawingand I took this class by this
instructor named named Dallasgood, and I taken one figure
(25:20):
figure drawing class and then hehad that there's a follow on
class, which is figure drawingwith the, with the pencils, but
also with with Maya, and so wewere actually the 3D software.
Yeah so we learned Maya and wewere learning figure drawing and
then we actually had we wentback and forth and at the end of
the class we actually weredoing figure drawing in Maya.
(25:42):
So it have the model, come inin the traditional studio style
and draw the model with the 3Dsoftware.
And it really is reallyinteresting course, and it
really showed me.
I was like there's somethingmissing in digital creation
which is the sort of physicalityof traditional media, and so I
was like I'm going to try tobuild that and that was
basically my thesis topic andthe kind of the world's first
(26:04):
actual creative tools for VR aswell.
I didn't realize it at the time,but no one had really explored
building things and creatingthings in VR, and so I built
this system where you couldtouch imaginary shapes and then
they would become real.
I got this like instrumentedglove you put on your hand and
you would actually justbasically trace an imaginary
(26:25):
shape and it would betriangulated with a mesh and you
would actually have that shapethere in front of you in 3D and
so you could do these 3Dactually basically completed the
vision of the course.
You could do these 3D figuredrawings gesturally and you know
, these days people are familiarwith things like tilt brush and
(26:45):
VR and kind of think a lot ofpeople have had that experience.
But I was kind of building thatkind of stuff for the first
time and somehow managed to geta PhD in computer science for
doing an art project, so workedout well for me Golf clap for
you.
Tim Bourguignon (27:02):
I mean when you're describing classes in
finger drawing.
That's not the classicalclasses I picture in a computer
science degree.
Yeah, that's really cool.
It was part of it.
Steven Schkolne (27:14):
Yeah, I actually it was pretty cool my
program at Caltech.
They I didn't actually have totake any, I just took math
classes.
I just did pure math.
And I took a few CS classes.
I did like research but I'dlearned so much in my undergrad
in CS I ended up minoring in CS.
It was just there, was just myadvisor amazing was just like
you know, you don't need tolearn any more CS If you want to
(27:36):
do math that we love math, likedo that instead.
And then I went to the schoolart center nearby and did the
drawing stuff.
So they're in like the wholeart, all the metal artists there
as well.
Tim Bourguignon (27:52):
So, and and what happened when you finished
your PhD?
So you had written, this PhDtook you six years, you said
five or six years, immersed, punintended, into virtual reality.
And and what happenedafterwards?
Do you enter the gamingindustry to to create VR for you
?
Steven Schkolne (28:12):
No, I am.
I did not go into the gamingindustry.
I ended up, basically, I endedup doing projects.
I kind of opted to Freelance Iguess is probably what you would
call it.
Okay, yeah, yeah.
(28:32):
So I ended up getting clientsand doing various projects in
flash.
I did some consulting forDisney and I made was making art
at the time and I got a halftime teaching position at Cal
Arts school.
I still you know, very close tomy heart and basically spent a
few years teaching and makingart and working with clients,
(28:58):
doing client work for a while,and then I ended up starting my
own agency business.
So I kind of went through thiswhole trajectory of art.
Where I was, I had like amission with art and I kind of
finished my mission.
I kind of hit a point where Iwas like I've done the art that
I need to make and I was, yeah,ready to move on to other things
(29:21):
.
I started this agency businessand did that for a while and
like started to learn what itwas like to build a team and to
build a company.
And there's this other thread inmy life which is the kind of
business entrepreneurial thread.
And I think those are really mythree sort of threads the
technical sort of design,artistic and the business.
(29:42):
And you know, for as Iunderstand, it's really about
like how do you find your career, how do you make it all make
sense.
But I really had this kind ofwhat's it in skiing, the triple
black diamond, no problem when Iwas like I have this deep need
for creative, some kind ofcreative fulfillment.
I have a deep need fortechnical work and also this
(30:02):
deep kind of businessentrepreneurial drive.
And so my challenge has alwaysbeen how do I kind of scratch
all three of these itches?
And, you know, super restlessunless there's an all sort of
firing.
For me the easiest way toscratch the three itches is to
have three careers, but it canbe tiring.
Tim Bourguignon (30:23):
So did you manage to nowadays scratch the
three itches with one career?
Steven Schkolne (30:30):
Yeah, so nowadays I very, very much have
that going on.
With this new project that I'vebeen well, maybe actually not
that new, but it's relatively do.
This project I've been workingon for the past couple of years
and, yeah, and that's mightymild, and so it's basically a
creative tool and for webdevelopers, this is a very
(30:51):
technical tool that is actuallyabout bridging the gap between
code and then the sort of visualexperience of a product, and
it's a startup and so as astartup, there are a lot of
businesses challenges involvedin it.
And so right now I'm very, verystoked to be doing what I'm
doing.
I think actually think I'm themost engaged and excited and
(31:18):
having like the most creativetime of my career right now
doing what I'm doing.
Wow, I have definitely managedto bring it all together and so
fulfilled by what I'm doing, butit took so many different
experiences you know, I'm reallyhappy where I'm at but a lot of
(31:39):
things went into it A lot ofdifferent experiences, getting
sort of working on differentparts of creativity, technology
and business to kind of bringthis all together.
Tim Bourguignon (31:50):
So, yeah, Just right there, you called it
creativity and, if I'm notmistaken, you mentioned art
before in this triangle.
Is this analogous for you or isthere a difference?
Steven Schkolne (32:07):
I.
You know, if we could rewindthe tape I might not have used
the word creativity.
I kind of object to using theword creativity to talk about
art because engineering is socreative and business is so
creative, so maybe I use thatbecause that's what our culture
uses to describe it.
Okay, I would say for me thatthe sort of art piece is really
(32:29):
about the human experience andinteraction and sort of modeling
the psyche of people who arecoming to an experience and
doing something visual andhaving that.
Maybe it's more aboutinteractivity Design is another
word we could use for that partof it but I think it's really
about the human side of problems.
(32:51):
And for me, when it comes toengineering, like every
basically all the engineeringand coding I've done, there's
almost always a user interfaceof some kind and I'm very
involved in the user interfaceand I can even think that, like,
my interest in design and artsort of got funneled into user
interface and interaction.
So I don't really know what thethird piece is exactly, but
(33:16):
that's.
Tim Bourguignon (33:16):
That's as good as it takes.
I mean, you said modeling thepsyche of people.
Is this what you implicitly tryto do with art as well?
Steven Schkolne (33:26):
I think art when it succeeds.
Art does so many things andthere's so many different kinds
of art.
I think part of art isunderstanding how a viewer is
going to see what you've madePart of art.
And these are sort of thedeeper levels of art, which
aren't so much part of my itchto scratch, but I know a lot
about it from working with a lotof artists and being in that
(33:48):
world.
You're actually channeling theculture through your artifacts.
So you're making artifacts thatchannel culture in a way that
resonates with the culturethat's receiving the artifacts.
And if you're successful,they'll also resonate with the
cultures that follow and be asymbol of your culture for the
(34:11):
cultures that follow.
And I have a good friend of minefrom from those days who is
having a tremendously successfulcareer in with net art and now
the whole crypto thing hasgotten him paid very well for
doing this kind of thing andthere's really a market for
digital art.
It was really hard to sell thatstuff before the NFT thing
(34:35):
happened.
And Rafael Rizendoll, by theway, you should check out his
work If you get a chance.
You just released a new piece.
It's really beautiful.
I was checking out justyesterday but he's like I have
no idea.
I'm really successful now, but Ihave no idea if I'm going to
succeed or not until after I die.
I have no way of knowing.
So that's what art is about.
It's a very, very differentthing, and I feel like I really
(35:01):
didn't connect with that as much.
I think I'm far more about, ina way, research is about that as
well, and I didn't connect withresearch as much.
I'm more about immediacy andconnecting with people, and I
did all this research in VR andI look at things like the
Nintendo Wii coming out or someof these actual devices that hit
the market as a product, andthat's what motivates me is to
(35:24):
get things in people's handsright now and have that
experience, and I sort of shiedaway from some of those deeper
waters that I was swimming inearlier in my career, so now I'm
a shallow, shallow business man.
Tim Bourguignon (35:39):
I still don't get why you're not in the gaming
industry.
That's just yeah.
Steven Schkolne (35:44):
I don't understand that either.
I think it makes perfect sensefor me to be in gaming.
It just didn't quite happenthat way, yeah.
Tim Bourguignon (35:52):
There was another itch to scratch.
So that place where you are nowwith Mighty Mail and scratching
the tech, the business and thecreativity on the side or the
art, or however we call it thethird one Is this something you
see yourself doing for years andyears and years?
This the place where you're atright now.
Steven Schkolne (36:10):
Yeah, I mean it seems to be going very well
with our products, so thesethings take years to reach their
potential.
So it could be the case it'sbuilding startup.
(36:30):
Land is very volatile, so youalso never really know.
But I'm trying to enjoy it andenjoy the moments.
Tim Bourguignon (36:40):
That's the big smile on your face coming back.
So it seems to be true.
You talked a little bit at thebeginning about this change of
paradigm when you had no userinterface, probably just a
common prompt on the computer,and suddenly you had Windows 3.0
and the first visual interface,or the first Macs with the
(37:01):
visual interface.
What you're doing right nowwith Mighty Mail is really
bringing React, I think, ordeveloping React, to a whole new
level that's way more visualand way more tailored for the
needs of visual approach.
Do you have an idea what thenext jump in paradigm is going
(37:21):
to be?
Steven Schkolne (37:23):
In terms of with React or.
Tim Bourguignon (37:26):
In terms of how we code.
I mean, we've been typing wordsfor years and there's AI coming
.
There's a lot of visual toolsthat are trying to abstract away
the code and going at it fromthe visual piece, but the AI is
coming on the side and saying,well, maybe we don't do either,
(37:46):
or it's something else entirely,and what's?
Steven Schkolne (37:49):
your take on that.
Yeah, I have strong opinions onthis.
I definitely understand yourquestion.
Now I think what I seehappening and what we're working
towards with Mighty Mail is Anexperience that uses technology
to get engineers deeper intotheir code and deeper into the
abstractions that are used todrive their products and have
(38:14):
them understand things moredeeply and fly more quickly
through these abstractions andthese systems, but not to
diminish control.
My kind of axe to grind with alot of these things from the
engineering perspective is lackof control, and I think we've
all used the kind of uses like atemplated thing or prebuilt
(38:36):
solution and it doesn't quite dowhat we need.
Maybe it takes us 95% of theway.
Less 5% is like another 3x ofthe work and we're like yeah.
And we've all been there andthere are all these.
There are many, many people whodon't develop and they're
wonderful net code products thatwill go from design and give
you some code or like somethingsimple, and that's actually been
(38:56):
going on for like 20 years.
Going back to what was it?
Hypercard on the Mac was, Ithink, the first time that I saw
this way, back in the 90s, andso that stuff is well and good,
but I think there's going to bea continuing need for these
custom solutions where peopleare really driving technology to
do very precise things in verycontrolled ways, and that's what
(39:22):
we're building towards withMighty Meld.
What Mighty Meld is about istaking your.
Basically, the way it works isyou take your existing React app
.
You add a couple ofdependencies to it, you run
Mighty Meld.
Mighty Meld runs your React appand in the browser, but as you
click on your app, you can runit the regular way and you can
go into an edit mode, and whenyou click on parts of your app,
(39:42):
it loads up the JSX tree on theleft for the component you
clicked on.
You can see that element inthat component and it looks like
a figma layer tree, but it'sactually your JSX, and as you
click on things on that layertree, it'll show you the styles
and properties and theattributes of that element on
the right.
And it's predicated on thisobservation that the figma flow
also the illustrator flow andthe Photoshop flow we're
(40:04):
familiar with, like a layer treeand elements is what JSX is,
and that JSX is this beautifulvisual layer and kind of
separates your code base intotwo places into the visual and
stylistic stuff with the JSX andyour CSS or whatever you use
for styling, and then everythingelse, which is your logic.
And so what we're doing withMighty Meld is giving developers
(40:26):
a visual and intuitive way tonavigate their code, but we
aren't obscuring that code.
We're making that code moreevident, not less evident.
So when you drag somethingabove something else like the
JSX tree moves and guess whatyou look at your code and the
JSX has moved there as well, andso that is a superpower for
developers.
It's something that gamedevelopers have had for a lot.
(40:47):
Like the inspiration for thisactually came from Unity.
In Unity, you can pause yourgame and go in and see all the
structures in your scene thatare driving what you're looking
at, and it's trying to give thatexperience to developers.
So I think it's time is rightfor this on the web right now.
So that's kind of where we arenow with Mighty Meld and there
(41:09):
was a where we're headed andthings like AI.
We do have some integration withAI in Mighty Meld and again,
we've seen a lot of these thingswith AI.
It's like you give a prompt andit gives you a whole basic app
as a result and that's wonderful.
But is it going to be able tomake something new or something
that really fits a lot ofprecise constraints?
(41:31):
The AI itself it could getthere.
I'm not here to you know.
I certainly don't want to godown on the record for saying I
will never do something.
I know it's going to do a lotmore in the future, but one of
the challenges of AI is like howto feed all the constraints,
and I've also other sideprojects.
I wrote a book about machineconsciousness.
(41:51):
Maybe we don't need to get intothat, but I've really studied
consciousness a lot and there'sa real limitation of free will
with AI.
And just to sort of summarize myfindings on that AI is aware of
a lot and really capable, butin terms of actually having
agency and directive and likeagendas, that part of the
technology is way underdevelopedcompared to the rest of it, and
(42:13):
so, at least for theforeseeable future, I think
humans are going to be providingthat aspect of things, and so I
see a sort of human in loopkind of modality where
developers have more and more ofthese superpowers and ways to
get things done, make fastermoves, but nothing ever hides a
chessboard from them.
You know we want to allow thoseto move faster on the board, but
you have to see the board, likeat some point, like you have to
(42:36):
drill down and like picksomething or like see what's
going on and keep it clean, keepit tidy, and so you can have,
basically that, my peakexperience by second start of my
dev journey of like having thebuilding blocks and moving them
around.
I think that's really importantto our whole world of software.
So I don't know if that'sroughly my take on things.
Tim Bourguignon (42:57):
Yeah, absolutely yeah.
That's a very interesting takeand we'll have to link to this
book you wrote.
We didn't go too much into it,but we'll definitely have to
link about it.
I'd like to come back to onething.
That's the piece where Iusually ask for advice, and one
thing really, really struck meat the beginning.
You were talking about enjoyingprogramming and loving math,
(43:20):
and you powered through thiscomputer science studies until
you found what really was yourpassion and basically connected
these two pieces together.
So it would be the advice youwould give students or people
who are searching for theirpassion.
They like something, they feelthat there's something, but it's
(43:41):
not quite there yet.
Steven Schkolne (43:43):
Yeah, I think the advice I give is you know, I
think it's the motto ofCarnegie Mellon my heart is in
the work.
And I think Andrew Carnegiesaid it my heart is in the work.
And I would say work if you'restruggling to find your passion,
work at things.
As you work at things, youunderstand them more, you
(44:06):
appreciate them more, you learnmore.
I don't like gardening, but if Ispent a lot of time working at
gardening, I would find a way toconnect with it, and I think a
lot of people looking at mycareer and saying, oh, am I
supposed to do this?
Like, I spent so many yearswondering what I was supposed to
be because I didn't really fitinto the world in a way that
made a lot of sense.
I had all these differentinterests and I just kept
(44:27):
working at it and kept doingthings and I wish I'd spent less
time worrying, more time justbeing engaged, doing things,
working with people, getting toknow people, having those kinds
of social experiences.
It's ultimately what drives mesocial experiences through what
you're doing, and just keepworking and don't worry so much
about what it means.
Amen to that.
Tim Bourguignon (44:51):
Really cool, stephen.
It's been a blast followingthat story, made of art, made of
tech and a little bit ofbusiness.
At some point crept in andstuck to the end.
Yeah, definitely.
Where would be the best placeto continue the discussion with
you?
Steven Schkolne (45:07):
Yeah, I think anyone who wants to reach out
you can follow me.
So my last name, Skolny, isvery rare, so you just search
for Skolny on the internet.
You'll find me on Twitter, Ifyou can spell it correctly.
Check the show notes.
But if you can spell my lastname correctly, you'll find me
at Skolny on Twitter andLinkedIncom or the slash in
slash Skolny.
And I also encourage people tocheck out MightyMeld.
(45:28):
We're up on MightyMeldcom andgive it a spin, especially if
you're a React developer.
I'd love to hear from you howit goes and stay in touch that
way.
So I do actually answer emails.
I have had random people emailme just like I'm at this point
in my career and I actually doanswer emails like that.
(45:49):
Maybe I'll get a flood of themfrom this show, but I'm
certainly.
I love working with people.
I love helping people who aretrying to find their path and
trying to share what I'velearned because I've had so many
challenges along the way.
So I'm basically here for thecommunity.
I love doing it, so I'd love toget back.
Tim Bourguignon (46:06):
You heard him.
Steven Schkolne (46:07):
I've had so many mentors who helped me.
Tim Bourguignon (46:11):
You heard him Reach out.
All the links will be in theshow notes.
If you didn't get that, justscroll down and it will be there
.
Stephen, thank you so much.
Yeah thanks, tim, and this is it, another episode of DevLose
Journey.
I'll see each other next week.
Bye, bye.
Thanks a lot for tuning in.
I hope you have enjoyed thisweek's episode.
(46:31):
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
on on our websitedevjourneyinfocom.
Subscribe.
my heart is in the work and I would say work If
you're struggling to find yourpassion.
Work at things.
As you work at things, youunderstand.
The more you appreciate, themore you learn more.
I don't like gardening, but ifI spent a lot of time working at
gardening, I would find a wayto connect with it and I think a
(00:21):
lot of people looking at mycareer and saying, oh, am I
supposed to do this?
Like I spent so many yearswondering what I was supposed to
be because I didn't really fitinto the world in a way that
made a lot of sense.
I had all these differentinterests and I just kept
working at it and kept doingthings and I wish I'd spent less
time worrying and more timejust being engaged, doing things
, working with people, gettingto know people, having those
kinds of social experiences.
(00:42):
It's ultimately what drives mesocial experiences through what
you're doing and just keepworking and don't worry so much
about what it means.
Tim Bourguignon (00:52):
Hello and welcome to Developer's Journey,
the podcast bringing you themaking of stories of successful
software developers to help youon your upcoming journey.
I'm your host, tim Bologna.
On this episode, I receiveSteven Scolny.
Steven is a computer scientist,self-taught designer and
entrepreneur who's passionateabout how human work creatively
(01:14):
with machines.
Speaking of which, he pioneeredVR creative tools long before
their commercial debut and I seesome VR goggles behind you,
don't turn around.
His current focus is a webproject called Mighty Melt, a
visualization and creationplatform for sophisticated React
(01:35):
code bases.
Maybe we're going to talk aboutthis today, but we'll see.
Steven, a warm welcome toDevTourney.
Steven Schkolne (01:41):
Yeah, thank you , Tim.
Glad to be here.
Oh, it's my pleasure.
Tim Bourguignon (01:45):
But before we come to your story, I want to
thank the terrific listeners whosupport the show.
Every month you are keeping theDevTourney lights up.
If you would like to join thisfine crew and help me spend more
time on finding phenomenalguests than editing audio tracks
, please go to our website,devjourneyinfo, and click on the
(02:08):
Support Me on Patreon button.
Even the smallest contributionsare giant steps toward a
sustainable DevTourney journey.
Thank you, and now back totoday's guest, steven.
As you know, the show exists tohelp the listeners understand
what your story looks like andimagine how to shape their own
future.
So, as is usual on the show,let's go back to your beginnings
(02:29):
.
Where would you place the startof your DevTourney?
Steven Schkolne (02:33):
So the first actual lines of code I wrote
were in basic and copied andpasted them out of a book and
typed them into an IBM PC in theearly to mid 80s.
It was quite young, had parentswho were early adopters and
(02:55):
really into the PC.
I don't know if that actuallycounts as the beginning of my
DevTourney because I didn'tunderstand much of what was
going on with the basic.
I think I was maybe six orseven years old or something
like that, so basically copyingand pasting.
But I would say the first realDev experience I had was using
(03:17):
this thing called Logo.
And it was a turtle.
There's this little triangle onthe screen and your type of
series of commands, like youknow go 40 and go 40 pixels and
write 90.
And if you did that four timesit would draw a square.
And I was using that on the PCmaybe eight years old or so and
(03:39):
drawing pictures with thislittle turtle, and I think
that's the first time I wasgiving instructions to a
computer in a way that reallygot me excited and that I just
wanted to dive in and explore.
So that's where I would makethe start.
Tim Bourguignon (03:56):
You would be amazed how many people had a
first experience with Logo.
Nowadays.
It would be probably Scratchfor the younger generation, but
Logo seems to be really reallyreally widely available.
Back then.
Steven Schkolne (04:12):
Yeah, and for someone I kind of think there
are two sort of spheres to mathand to programming the visual
and the linguistic, and I tendto be more on, or sorry, maybe
the spatial and linguistic.
Yeah, we could say spatial,visual, and I tend to be very on
the spatial side of things.
So for me, being able to messwith geometry and do something
(04:33):
visual and geometric just Ireally thinking about my journey
from there, that's been a bigpart of it.
You know, just making pictures,so fast forwarding, I did learn
, eventually learn Pascal at asummer camp, but then I had this
little later when I was like 14or so, using this thing called
Pavre, which is a ray tracer andyou basically handwrite these
(04:56):
scene files and then it wouldtake, like you know, minutes to
make these like basic pictures.
These are the kinds of thingsthat really got my enthusiasm in
terms of development when I wasyoung.
Tim Bourguignon (05:10):
So Did you picture it as coding, or was it
just a means to doing somethingelse with a visual component?
Steven Schkolne (05:21):
I don't really see it as coding.
Keep in mind, in these days,this is the 80s we didn't know
anyone called it coding.
It was called programming.
That's true, that's true, forstarters.
And my enthusiasm was just usingcomputers.
Just to use a computer was athing.
To be a person who could use Icould.
What were the files, thestartup files on MS-DOS.
(05:44):
Trying to configure yourcomputer to run certain things
or a certain program needed somevirtual memory.
And that was really how I, whatI thought I was doing.
I wasn't so much programming asI was a computer user.
And just to be a computer userthese days of course everyone
does it that was kind of my.
The hat I was wearing was acomputer using kit and that was
(06:08):
kind of a big part of myidentity growing up.
Tim Bourguignon (06:13):
Computer using, as you put it, was way more
technical back then than it istoday, less consumerism.
It was really you were in theinside Right at the beginning.
You just had the prompt and youhad to code it yourself,
program it yourself, sorry, yeah, otherwise your computer didn't
do anything.
Just had to teach you first todo something and yeah, you were
(06:36):
inside right away.
Yeah, you're programming.
It felt like using this thingthat cannot do anything else.
Steven Schkolne (06:43):
Yeah.
Yeah, this was really difficultrelatively to figure out how to
do things.
You had a manual and I rememberI wanted to learn to program and
see at some point that I got abook and you had the right
compiler and it's really I don'tthink it's even possible.
I kind of feel like when I wasgrowing up people were trying to
(07:03):
say imagine time before radio,just trying to explain that time
.
It's like you want to learn tosee programming and it's like
you get a book but it's adifferent compiler than the one
you have and they're differentlibraries and you're like what
is this library thing and howcome these functions don't work
and they don't match up andthere's no other way for you to
figure it out.
So I was actually kind of stucka lot when I tried to get
deeper into the programmingbecause there just weren't
(07:24):
resources available, even thoughI had a lot of resources for,
relatively speaking for thetimes and for my age, it was
really difficult to get up andgoing on the seven-sided and
talk to you.
Tim Bourguignon (07:36):
So yeah, it resonates a lot with what I live
through.
I had a C-book as well quiteearly and I probably skimmed
over the compiler piece and so Iwent all the way to Algorithmic
and could do for loops andeverything.
I just couldn't compile and ittook me years to understand.
(07:57):
Oh, I have to compile the thingnow, because I started with
Bayseek as well and Bayseek wasjust interpreted and was just
running like this and didn't doanything else and let's see, you
have to compile it first.
Steven Schkolne (08:10):
Oh yeah, took some years, yeah yeah, and also
there are the it's kind of twohalves.
Now maybe I take it for granted, but learning how to develop.
There is this model where Icould be in an environment that
was created and write code sortof within like an IDE or
something.
Maybe it was like a Turbo C++.
They had certain libraries andthen there was the activity of
(08:32):
actually plugging differentthings together, like installing
a new package or having a newlibrary available, linking that
up in the OS and eventually thisgoes into like connecting over
the network and doing otherthings like that.
And there really are two halvesof the development experience.
And I think this is especiallyeven true today for people.
(08:53):
Learning how to code, beingable to work within an
environment, is one thing, andthere's this meta scale of being
able to sort of configure yoursystems and bring things
together and bring the rightthings together in order to make
your program work.
And they're both necessary.
And for me, I was very much inthe sort of first half of that
in my early years and it wasn'tuntil I got sort of older and
(09:14):
had more experiences that I feltcapable of plugging different
things together and sort ofbringing everything together in
different ways.
So I don't do have words forthat.
Speaking of terminology.
Do we have words for that?
Tim Bourguignon (09:25):
I have no idea Like systems versus just
straight coding.
I've no idea, but it's exactlythe same.
Nowadays, when you open aGitHub project somewhere,
there's first three pages of howyou set up your gems and NPM
and whatever package manager andbuilder and minimizer and
everything, just to be able tostart the damn thing.
(09:46):
Yeah, it's exactly the same,just different.
Steven Schkolne (09:51):
Yeah, maybe it's kind of like the split
between DevOps and development,right, because I think every
developer has to do somethingout of just DevOps.
Whether it's installing an NPMpackage, it's still kind of your
DevOps, and DevOps is alwaysencoding, even if it's a script
or something for infrastructureas a service.
(10:11):
So yeah, Fun times.
Tim Bourguignon (10:16):
It was, anyway, definitely, definitely.
So at which point maybe not atwhich point how did you decide
what to do for your studies andwhere to go?
And indeed, that programmingplay a role in there.
Steven Schkolne (10:32):
Yeah, I was kind of, as I was getting
through high school I justdidn't really think that I could
have a career with computers.
I just I wasn't sure what Iwould do.
But I realized that's kind ofraising a family where I was
very expected that I would go tocollege and study something.
And in high school I just kindof realized, oh hey, I can study
(10:54):
this thing called computerscience and I love computers, I
need to.
I do all these things withcomputers.
I haven't actually programmedthat much.
I was like I'll major incomputer science.
It's like this is what I loveto do, it's the thing that I'm
so passionate about.
Like there's a major withcomputer in the name.
I'm actually doing computerengineering as an undergrad.
(11:15):
For reasons I don't reallyunderstand now, I ended up
choosing computer engineering, Ithink because I wanted to learn
about the hardware and thesoftware side of things.
And so I ended up going tocollege at Carnegie Mellon and
in the program of electrical andcomputer engineering, and at
that time I showed up and thereare all these students who
(11:36):
programmed a ton and I was oneof these people who just hadn't
programmed very much.
I'd done a little bit, but someof my fellow students were just
having writings you know thesekind of like hobbyist types of
writing all this code.
They knew all theinfrastructure stuff that I had
no idea about how to bring allthese different things together
and I felt a little bit behindin a way in terms of just not
(12:02):
knowing all these things.
But I was very strong at mathand I think that made it a
little easier for me and kind ofmade sense for me to be doing
this computer science thing,because math has always been a
love of mine and that's reallywhat I did a lot of in high
school was math, and so, yeah, Ilearned to program but I didn't
(12:22):
really enjoy programming.
I didn't start enjoyingprogramming until I was in my
first year in grad school, whenI was like 20, 21 or 22.
I actually started to enjoyprogramming but I sort of made
it all this way.
You know, had actually gottenmy degree and was good at it,
but I didn't have a passion forcoding the way I had a passion
(12:46):
for math, the way I love math,and so it was kind of funny for
me, my experience of just notloving it, and I'm sure a lot of
people who are trying to getinto it are like they see these
people who just love it or justlike writing this code left,
right and center, and they'relike, am I in the right place
and I'm an imposter, why don't Ilove it this much?
And for me it just took timeand something flipped.
(13:09):
I think we can get into that abit later.
But something eventually flippedand I got the taste for it.
But I didn't actually have thetaste for it for quite a while.
So I don't know if I have ajourney.
Maybe my deaf journey startedwhen I was 21,.
You know, when I got the tastefor it, everything up was just,
you know, computers and gettingnew things.
Tim Bourguignon (13:28):
So it was building up to it.
It was just a taste of a tasteand at some point it really
started.
Do you remember that momentwhen it flipped?
Steven Schkolne (13:39):
Yeah, yeah.
So it was actually when I firststarted doing art projects on
the computer.
So I also have like anotherwhole other sort of thread in my
story is my my story with artand design.
And I did a lot of music when Iwas younger and I was very
(14:02):
interested in again.
Something I didn't know was afield I was doing, like the
layout for my high schoolnewspaper and a yearbook.
I was using PageMaker.
I actually started doing it onone of those Macs with like the
five inch screen, you know, oh,wow, which was amazing.
I mean, my enthusiasm at thetime was all about the graphical
stuff.
Like Windows 3 coming out andlike loading up Windows 3 for
(14:27):
the first, 3.0 for the firsttime and seeing that it was in
color and there was a GUI andeverything was visual, that just
blew my mind.
And to use a Mac and see thatvisual screen, that stuff was
what I was super passionateabout when I was younger and
it's again.
It's hard to relate to the nextgeneration because computers are
no longer getting impressive inthat way.
(14:48):
Maybe some people have thisexperience of putting on an
Oculus or something like thatfor the first time, but there
was this real experience at thetime where, like every couple of
years, your computer could justdo things that it absolutely
couldn't.
You could make pictures, playyou know, started to like low
resolution videos and seeingthat and having these graphical
experiences of dragging anddropping like a whizzy wig.
(15:08):
All these things were reallyexciting to me, and I think
getting into design was justpart of that.
But I didn't know design was athing I remember my senior year.
One of my friends was likewhere do you go study?
He's like I'm going to be amajor in design and I said
what's that?
Tim Bourguignon (15:25):
Ha, ha, ha, ha Ha ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha ha.
Were you jealous when youfinally realized that this
existed.
Steven Schkolne (15:34):
No, I don't say I was Jealousy wouldn't be the
word for it I you know.
According to them, they had areally big design program.
I think I just quickly learnedabout it.
I took classes, I had friendsdoing art and design and it's a
really powerful experience.
One summer where I was doing aninternship in Microsoft and I
(15:56):
got to be friends with someonethere who's doing a design
internship and we made a.
He was studying at the schoolcalled Cal Arts in California
and he had this wild Cal Arts isjust wild aesthetics.
He had these crazy styles.
This guy is super talented andhe wanted to make a short film
and he was super passionateabout making a short film.
So we ended up he brought me onto help with the project and we
(16:20):
did it together and we madethis short film.
We got some actors, some localactors from Seattle.
We filled it in elevator onMicrosoft campus and we like had
the doors open.
We got someone like open theelevator, had our whole thing
built there.
We like filmed this short film,we edited it and I just had
this amazing, pivotal experienceof my life that summer and I
(16:41):
was like I love doing that.
I was like I got to find someway.
I was like a computer person.
Up to that point I've beentaking some graphic design
courses in college and I waslike I got to bring this into my
life.
But it was again it's kind ofslow building thing the whole
design and art parts of my storyand that's kind of how that got
(17:02):
to be more part of my life,which then leads to my
development of Piphany, whichwas actually making my first art
projects with code and makingabstract art and basically
abstract paintings with code,which at the time was like a
very novel and ground breakingkind of thing to be doing.
Tim Bourguignon (17:21):
So how did you stumble upon that, or how did
you get that idea?
Steven Schkolne (17:27):
I was.
I've been taking some artclasses and I don't know what
led me to start doing that.
I think I was just exploring somany things with art.
At the time I was also makingthese mechanical sculptures with
engines in them and things liketaking these little engines,
(17:50):
like going to the surplus storeand building sculptures, and I
had this tendency to try to takesome of my engineering
proclivities and channel them toart, Because there's so many
things that hadn't been done yetand there's a way to get to the
things that hadn't been done.
And I started.
I think the first one I wrotewas actually it was like a mesh,
(18:10):
and then the there's a Delaneytriangulation, A set of points
of the Delaney triangulation,and then the dual of it is the
Voronoi diagram.
I don't know if this I have toget this math out.
Yeah, basically, if you take aset of points, there's a Delaney
(18:31):
triangulation which sort ofgives a fair, like it puts lines
between the points in a waythat kind of makes sense.
I think it's the best way toexplain the Delaney
triangulation and then the dualsof Voronoi diagram, and if you
take the center of each of thoseshapes and connect those with
it and every edge becomesflipped, you get another one.
(18:54):
Anyway, we don't need attentionto that, but I animated that and
just wrote some random numbergenerators and a little bit of
sign functions and random, andit was extremely beautiful and I
was just like here's thisextremely, extremely beautiful
thing.
That's a simple mathematicalobject and I started exploring
and I started to get away fromthese more standard data
(19:16):
structures into custom thingsthat weren't in any math book
anywhere.
And it actually led me to dosomething where I was like I
needed to make my pieces of code, my building blocks, and I
needed to be able to move reallyquickly and artistically
explore things, and so I reallyhad to encapsulate the things I
was working with in ways thatmade them fast and fluid to play
(19:38):
with.
And that's when everythingreally synced for me and extreme
experience which was like wow,it's so beautiful to get these
small building blocks and tomake them truly flexible and to
seal it.
And not only did it acceleratemy passion for development, I
think it also really upped mygame in terms of development,
(19:59):
because if you can get a systemto work that way, then you're
really set in terms of having abeautiful system that's super
capable.
All the right abstractions, youknow.
You know the routine.
Tim Bourguignon (20:08):
So and when you were totally telling this,
because the listeners cannot seeyet sparkles in your eyes and a
big smile on your face.
It really seems like a happyplace for you thinking about
this.
Steven Schkolne (20:22):
Yeah, yeah, it was, it still is, yeah, to go
back, and I think that's stillwhat motivates me to this day.
So, to sort of your secondanswer for the question, I think
you could say, yeah, maybe itbegan with using logo, but it
was really this moment where Ifelt like I got hooked by it and
(20:44):
fell in love with the actualact of programming itself.
And since then, whenever I havethe chance to do some coding I
love and I dive in, I get inexactly that same modality
Modality really hasn't changedmuch since then which is like
how can I make my little Legopieces super modular and
adaptable and solve the problemand then have that amazing
(21:05):
experience of getting them justright and then bringing them
together and making them dosomething, and then you know,
two days later I have to dosomething else.
But you're ready for thatbecause all those red
abstractions in place.
So that's really where it's at,if I think for development.
It seems like you're kind ofnodding.
It seems like you.
Tim Bourguignon (21:23):
I totally understand where that comes from
.
So obviously you became anartist coded art pieces since
then and it's been the rest ofyour journey, right that's it.
Steven Schkolne (21:35):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
I yeah I don't know if we haveenough time on the podcast to go
through all the wrinkles of myjourney, but yeah, that's
certainly.
I just really inspired me.
I ended up doing my whole PhD,I ended up making art, making
tools for my PhD.
(21:56):
So I just very inspired by Ithink that's, maybe that's when
my journey with creative toolsbegan and my my having that
experience of creation andwanting to give that experience
to other people.
So, yeah, I think that's.
Yeah, that's when some otherstories began.
Tim Bourguignon (22:22):
But at some point I'm sure you had bills to
pay.
Yeah, how did you manage totransform generating art with
code into paying bills.
How did you navigate that?
Steven Schkolne (22:34):
I never.
Well, I I did manage to paysome bills many years later by
making prints and selling printsof.
Yeah, this is another we have tofast forward.
There's another creative tool Ibuilt around gradient is.
Yeah, I don't know if we wantto go into the story or not, but
(22:55):
eventually so I was in gradschool at the time.
So the simple answer is I wason a stipend, you know, for my
research.
I didn't have to worry aboutpaying bills and I was making
art, but it was also in a PhDprogram that went on for like
five or six years, and so I wasmaking art and I got kind of
(23:16):
discovered by these internetartists.
We're talking like 1999, 2000,.
Internet was still very new.
The idea of making art on theinternet was very new.
And there's this thing callednet art, which is this movement
about hey, let's actually putpaintings on the internet.
And I got connected with thisgroup of artists that was
(23:36):
treating the browser like aframe for a painting and making
all of these artworks.
And I was basically doing thisand I'm like, hey, man, you're,
that's exactly what we're doing.
And they were all coming morefrom the art tradition and
getting into flash.
Flash was a huge piece of thisand I was like the coder the
coder guy, you know, who's likecoming from the other direction
(23:57):
and we met and I ended up havinga lot of fun and showing, like
having lots of shows and andmaking a lot of art with that.
I never made any money fromthat at all, like none.
I got flown around places andgot a lot of nice experiences
but I never, never made anythingother than although I think I
(24:21):
could say I got very rich fromthat.
But money doesn't make you rich.
Other things make you rich.
Tim Bourguignon (24:25):
Nice way to put it, but at some point you just
got a VR.
Yeah, do you remember when that, when that came in?
Steven Schkolne (24:36):
Yeah, so the VR story was really similar time.
When I showed up at my graduateprogram, there was this table
projection table in the basementand basically it was like a VR
surface that came out of atabletop and the idea was that
you could actually have thingson.
They had this application oflike a like a patient is about
(24:59):
the size of a human body, and soyou'd like a, you could
investigate a skeleton or somekind of scan of a body or
something like that, and so Iwas kind of interested in this
and I that also had aninteresting origin story.
I was learning figure drawingand I took this class by this
instructor named named Dallasgood, and I taken one figure
(25:20):
figure drawing class and then hehad that there's a follow on
class, which is figure drawingwith the, with the pencils, but
also with with Maya, and so wewere actually the 3D software.
Yeah so we learned Maya and wewere learning figure drawing and
then we actually had we wentback and forth and at the end of
the class we actually weredoing figure drawing in Maya.
(25:42):
So it have the model, come inin the traditional studio style
and draw the model with the 3Dsoftware.
And it really is reallyinteresting course, and it
really showed me.
I was like there's somethingmissing in digital creation
which is the sort of physicalityof traditional media, and so I
was like I'm going to try tobuild that and that was
basically my thesis topic andthe kind of the world's first
(26:04):
actual creative tools for VR aswell.
I didn't realize it at the time,but no one had really explored
building things and creatingthings in VR, and so I built
this system where you couldtouch imaginary shapes and then
they would become real.
I got this like instrumentedglove you put on your hand and
you would actually justbasically trace an imaginary
(26:25):
shape and it would betriangulated with a mesh and you
would actually have that shapethere in front of you in 3D and
so you could do these 3Dactually basically completed the
vision of the course.
You could do these 3D figuredrawings gesturally and you know
, these days people are familiarwith things like tilt brush and
(26:45):
VR and kind of think a lot ofpeople have had that experience.
But I was kind of building thatkind of stuff for the first
time and somehow managed to geta PhD in computer science for
doing an art project, so workedout well for me Golf clap for
you.
Tim Bourguignon (27:02):
I mean when you're describing classes in
finger drawing.
That's not the classicalclasses I picture in a computer
science degree.
Yeah, that's really cool.
It was part of it.
Steven Schkolne (27:14):
Yeah, I actually it was pretty cool my
program at Caltech.
They I didn't actually have totake any, I just took math
classes.
I just did pure math.
And I took a few CS classes.
I did like research but I'dlearned so much in my undergrad
in CS I ended up minoring in CS.
It was just there, was just myadvisor amazing was just like
you know, you don't need tolearn any more CS If you want to
(27:36):
do math that we love math, likedo that instead.
And then I went to the schoolart center nearby and did the
drawing stuff.
So they're in like the wholeart, all the metal artists there
as well.
Tim Bourguignon (27:52):
So, and and what happened when you finished
your PhD?
So you had written, this PhDtook you six years, you said
five or six years, immersed, punintended, into virtual reality.
And and what happenedafterwards?
Do you enter the gamingindustry to to create VR for you
?
Steven Schkolne (28:12):
No, I am.
I did not go into the gamingindustry.
I ended up, basically, I endedup doing projects.
I kind of opted to Freelance Iguess is probably what you would
call it.
Okay, yeah, yeah.
(28:32):
So I ended up getting clientsand doing various projects in
flash.
I did some consulting forDisney and I made was making art
at the time and I got a halftime teaching position at Cal
Arts school.
I still you know, very close tomy heart and basically spent a
few years teaching and makingart and working with clients,
(28:58):
doing client work for a while,and then I ended up starting my
own agency business.
So I kind of went through thiswhole trajectory of art.
Where I was, I had like amission with art and I kind of
finished my mission.
I kind of hit a point where Iwas like I've done the art that
I need to make and I was, yeah,ready to move on to other things
(29:21):
.
I started this agency businessand did that for a while and
like started to learn what itwas like to build a team and to
build a company.
And there's this other thread inmy life which is the kind of
business entrepreneurial thread.
And I think those are really mythree sort of threads the
technical sort of design,artistic and the business.
(29:42):
And you know, for as Iunderstand, it's really about
like how do you find your career, how do you make it all make
sense.
But I really had this kind ofwhat's it in skiing, the triple
black diamond, no problem when Iwas like I have this deep need
for creative, some kind ofcreative fulfillment.
I have a deep need fortechnical work and also this
(30:02):
deep kind of businessentrepreneurial drive.
And so my challenge has alwaysbeen how do I kind of scratch
all three of these itches?
And, you know, super restlessunless there's an all sort of
firing.
For me the easiest way toscratch the three itches is to
have three careers, but it canbe tiring.
Tim Bourguignon (30:23):
So did you manage to nowadays scratch the
three itches with one career?
Steven Schkolne (30:30):
Yeah, so nowadays I very, very much have
that going on.
With this new project that I'vebeen well, maybe actually not
that new, but it's relatively do.
This project I've been workingon for the past couple of years
and, yeah, and that's mightymild, and so it's basically a
creative tool and for webdevelopers, this is a very
(30:51):
technical tool that is actuallyabout bridging the gap between
code and then the sort of visualexperience of a product, and
it's a startup and so as astartup, there are a lot of
businesses challenges involvedin it.
And so right now I'm very, verystoked to be doing what I'm
doing.
I think actually think I'm themost engaged and excited and
(31:18):
having like the most creativetime of my career right now
doing what I'm doing.
Wow, I have definitely managedto bring it all together and so
fulfilled by what I'm doing, butit took so many different
experiences you know, I'm reallyhappy where I'm at but a lot of
(31:39):
things went into it A lot ofdifferent experiences, getting
sort of working on differentparts of creativity, technology
and business to kind of bringthis all together.
Tim Bourguignon (31:50):
So, yeah, Just right there, you called it
creativity and, if I'm notmistaken, you mentioned art
before in this triangle.
Is this analogous for you or isthere a difference?
Steven Schkolne (32:07):
I.
You know, if we could rewindthe tape I might not have used
the word creativity.
I kind of object to using theword creativity to talk about
art because engineering is socreative and business is so
creative, so maybe I use thatbecause that's what our culture
uses to describe it.
Okay, I would say for me thatthe sort of art piece is really
(32:29):
about the human experience andinteraction and sort of modeling
the psyche of people who arecoming to an experience and
doing something visual andhaving that.
Maybe it's more aboutinteractivity Design is another
word we could use for that partof it but I think it's really
about the human side of problems.
(32:51):
And for me, when it comes toengineering, like every
basically all the engineeringand coding I've done, there's
almost always a user interfaceof some kind and I'm very
involved in the user interfaceand I can even think that, like,
my interest in design and artsort of got funneled into user
interface and interaction.
So I don't really know what thethird piece is exactly, but
(33:16):
that's.
Tim Bourguignon (33:16):
That's as good as it takes.
I mean, you said modeling thepsyche of people.
Is this what you implicitly tryto do with art as well?
Steven Schkolne (33:26):
I think art when it succeeds.
Art does so many things andthere's so many different kinds
of art.
I think part of art isunderstanding how a viewer is
going to see what you've madePart of art.
And these are sort of thedeeper levels of art, which
aren't so much part of my itchto scratch, but I know a lot
about it from working with a lotof artists and being in that
(33:48):
world.
You're actually channeling theculture through your artifacts.
So you're making artifacts thatchannel culture in a way that
resonates with the culturethat's receiving the artifacts.
And if you're successful,they'll also resonate with the
cultures that follow and be asymbol of your culture for the
(34:11):
cultures that follow.
And I have a good friend of minefrom from those days who is
having a tremendously successfulcareer in with net art and now
the whole crypto thing hasgotten him paid very well for
doing this kind of thing andthere's really a market for
digital art.
It was really hard to sell thatstuff before the NFT thing
(34:35):
happened.
And Rafael Rizendoll, by theway, you should check out his
work If you get a chance.
You just released a new piece.
It's really beautiful.
I was checking out justyesterday but he's like I have
no idea.
I'm really successful now, but Ihave no idea if I'm going to
succeed or not until after I die.
I have no way of knowing.
So that's what art is about.
It's a very, very differentthing, and I feel like I really
(35:01):
didn't connect with that as much.
I think I'm far more about, ina way, research is about that as
well, and I didn't connect withresearch as much.
I'm more about immediacy andconnecting with people, and I
did all this research in VR andI look at things like the
Nintendo Wii coming out or someof these actual devices that hit
the market as a product, andthat's what motivates me is to
(35:24):
get things in people's handsright now and have that
experience, and I sort of shiedaway from some of those deeper
waters that I was swimming inearlier in my career, so now I'm
a shallow, shallow business man.
Tim Bourguignon (35:39):
I still don't get why you're not in the gaming
industry.
That's just yeah.
Steven Schkolne (35:44):
I don't understand that either.
I think it makes perfect sensefor me to be in gaming.
It just didn't quite happenthat way, yeah.
Tim Bourguignon (35:52):
There was another itch to scratch.
So that place where you are nowwith Mighty Mail and scratching
the tech, the business and thecreativity on the side or the
art, or however we call it thethird one Is this something you
see yourself doing for years andyears and years?
This the place where you're atright now.
Steven Schkolne (36:10):
Yeah, I mean it seems to be going very well
with our products, so thesethings take years to reach their
potential.
So it could be the case it'sbuilding startup.
(36:30):
Land is very volatile, so youalso never really know.
But I'm trying to enjoy it andenjoy the moments.
Tim Bourguignon (36:40):
That's the big smile on your face coming back.
So it seems to be true.
You talked a little bit at thebeginning about this change of
paradigm when you had no userinterface, probably just a
common prompt on the computer,and suddenly you had Windows 3.0
and the first visual interface,or the first Macs with the
(37:01):
visual interface.
What you're doing right nowwith Mighty Mail is really
bringing React, I think, ordeveloping React, to a whole new
level that's way more visualand way more tailored for the
needs of visual approach.
Do you have an idea what thenext jump in paradigm is going
(37:21):
to be?
Steven Schkolne (37:23):
In terms of with React or.
Tim Bourguignon (37:26):
In terms of how we code.
I mean, we've been typing wordsfor years and there's AI coming
.
There's a lot of visual toolsthat are trying to abstract away
the code and going at it fromthe visual piece, but the AI is
coming on the side and saying,well, maybe we don't do either,
(37:46):
or it's something else entirely,and what's?
Steven Schkolne (37:49):
your take on that.
Yeah, I have strong opinions onthis.
I definitely understand yourquestion.
Now I think what I seehappening and what we're working
towards with Mighty Mail is Anexperience that uses technology
to get engineers deeper intotheir code and deeper into the
abstractions that are used todrive their products and have
(38:14):
them understand things moredeeply and fly more quickly
through these abstractions andthese systems, but not to
diminish control.
My kind of axe to grind with alot of these things from the
engineering perspective is lackof control, and I think we've
all used the kind of uses like atemplated thing or prebuilt
(38:36):
solution and it doesn't quite dowhat we need.
Maybe it takes us 95% of theway.
Less 5% is like another 3x ofthe work and we're like yeah.
And we've all been there andthere are all these.
There are many, many people whodon't develop and they're
wonderful net code products thatwill go from design and give
you some code or like somethingsimple, and that's actually been
(38:56):
going on for like 20 years.
Going back to what was it?
Hypercard on the Mac was, Ithink, the first time that I saw
this way, back in the 90s, andso that stuff is well and good,
but I think there's going to bea continuing need for these
custom solutions where peopleare really driving technology to
do very precise things in verycontrolled ways, and that's what
(39:22):
we're building towards withMighty Meld.
What Mighty Meld is about istaking your.
Basically, the way it works isyou take your existing React app
.
You add a couple ofdependencies to it, you run
Mighty Meld.
Mighty Meld runs your React appand in the browser, but as you
click on your app, you can runit the regular way and you can
go into an edit mode, and whenyou click on parts of your app,
(39:42):
it loads up the JSX tree on theleft for the component you
clicked on.
You can see that element inthat component and it looks like
a figma layer tree, but it'sactually your JSX, and as you
click on things on that layertree, it'll show you the styles
and properties and theattributes of that element on
the right.
And it's predicated on thisobservation that the figma flow
also the illustrator flow andthe Photoshop flow we're
(40:04):
familiar with, like a layer treeand elements is what JSX is,
and that JSX is this beautifulvisual layer and kind of
separates your code base intotwo places into the visual and
stylistic stuff with the JSX andyour CSS or whatever you use
for styling, and then everythingelse, which is your logic.
And so what we're doing withMighty Meld is giving developers
(40:26):
a visual and intuitive way tonavigate their code, but we
aren't obscuring that code.
We're making that code moreevident, not less evident.
So when you drag somethingabove something else like the
JSX tree moves and guess whatyou look at your code and the
JSX has moved there as well, andso that is a superpower for
developers.
It's something that gamedevelopers have had for a lot.
(40:47):
Like the inspiration for thisactually came from Unity.
In Unity, you can pause yourgame and go in and see all the
structures in your scene thatare driving what you're looking
at, and it's trying to give thatexperience to developers.
So I think it's time is rightfor this on the web right now.
So that's kind of where we arenow with Mighty Meld and there
(41:09):
was a where we're headed andthings like AI.
We do have some integration withAI in Mighty Meld and again,
we've seen a lot of these thingswith AI.
It's like you give a prompt andit gives you a whole basic app
as a result and that's wonderful.
But is it going to be able tomake something new or something
that really fits a lot ofprecise constraints?
(41:31):
The AI itself it could getthere.
I'm not here to you know.
I certainly don't want to godown on the record for saying I
will never do something.
I know it's going to do a lotmore in the future, but one of
the challenges of AI is like howto feed all the constraints,
and I've also other sideprojects.
I wrote a book about machineconsciousness.
(41:51):
Maybe we don't need to get intothat, but I've really studied
consciousness a lot and there'sa real limitation of free will
with AI.
And just to sort of summarize myfindings on that AI is aware of
a lot and really capable, butin terms of actually having
agency and directive and likeagendas, that part of the
technology is way underdevelopedcompared to the rest of it, and
(42:13):
so, at least for theforeseeable future, I think
humans are going to be providingthat aspect of things, and so I
see a sort of human in loopkind of modality where
developers have more and more ofthese superpowers and ways to
get things done, make fastermoves, but nothing ever hides a
chessboard from them.
You know we want to allow thoseto move faster on the board, but
you have to see the board, likeat some point, like you have to
(42:36):
drill down and like picksomething or like see what's
going on and keep it clean, keepit tidy, and so you can have,
basically that, my peakexperience by second start of my
dev journey of like having thebuilding blocks and moving them
around.
I think that's really importantto our whole world of software.
So I don't know if that'sroughly my take on things.
Tim Bourguignon (42:57):
Yeah, absolutely yeah.
That's a very interesting takeand we'll have to link to this
book you wrote.
We didn't go too much into it,but we'll definitely have to
link about it.
I'd like to come back to onething.
That's the piece where Iusually ask for advice, and one
thing really, really struck meat the beginning.
You were talking about enjoyingprogramming and loving math,
(43:20):
and you powered through thiscomputer science studies until
you found what really was yourpassion and basically connected
these two pieces together.
So it would be the advice youwould give students or people
who are searching for theirpassion.
They like something, they feelthat there's something, but it's
(43:41):
not quite there yet.
Steven Schkolne (43:43):
Yeah, I think the advice I give is you know, I
think it's the motto ofCarnegie Mellon my heart is in
the work.
And I think Andrew Carnegiesaid it my heart is in the work.
And I would say work if you'restruggling to find your passion,
work at things.
As you work at things, youunderstand them more, you
(44:06):
appreciate them more, you learnmore.
I don't like gardening, but if Ispent a lot of time working at
gardening, I would find a way toconnect with it, and I think a
lot of people looking at mycareer and saying, oh, am I
supposed to do this?
Like, I spent so many yearswondering what I was supposed to
be because I didn't really fitinto the world in a way that
made a lot of sense.
I had all these differentinterests and I just kept
(44:27):
working at it and kept doingthings and I wish I'd spent less
time worrying, more time justbeing engaged, doing things,
working with people, getting toknow people, having those kinds
of social experiences.
It's ultimately what drives mesocial experiences through what
you're doing, and just keepworking and don't worry so much
about what it means.
Amen to that.
Tim Bourguignon (44:51):
Really cool, stephen.
It's been a blast followingthat story, made of art, made of
tech and a little bit ofbusiness.
At some point crept in andstuck to the end.
Yeah, definitely.
Where would be the best placeto continue the discussion with
you?
Steven Schkolne (45:07):
Yeah, I think anyone who wants to reach out
you can follow me.
So my last name, Skolny, isvery rare, so you just search
for Skolny on the internet.
You'll find me on Twitter, Ifyou can spell it correctly.
Check the show notes.
But if you can spell my lastname correctly, you'll find me
at Skolny on Twitter andLinkedIncom or the slash in
slash Skolny.
And I also encourage people tocheck out MightyMeld.
(45:28):
We're up on MightyMeldcom andgive it a spin, especially if
you're a React developer.
I'd love to hear from you howit goes and stay in touch that
way.
So I do actually answer emails.
I have had random people emailme just like I'm at this point
in my career and I actually doanswer emails like that.
(45:49):
Maybe I'll get a flood of themfrom this show, but I'm
certainly.
I love working with people.
I love helping people who aretrying to find their path and
trying to share what I'velearned because I've had so many
challenges along the way.
So I'm basically here for thecommunity.
I love doing it, so I'd love toget back.
Tim Bourguignon (46:06):
You heard him.
Steven Schkolne (46:07):
I've had so many mentors who helped me.
Tim Bourguignon (46:11):
You heard him Reach out.
All the links will be in theshow notes.
If you didn't get that, justscroll down and it will be there
.
Stephen, thank you so much.
Yeah thanks, tim, and this is it, another episode of DevLose
Journey.
I'll see each other next week.
Bye, bye.
Thanks a lot for tuning in.
I hope you have enjoyed thisweek's episode.
(46:31):
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
on on our websitedevjourneyinfocom.
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