August 19, 2025 • 58 mins
The journey from circus performer to respected software developer isn't a common career path, but Aji Slater navigates it with the same thoughtful precision he applies to code. As a former Ringling Brothers clown who now leads development teams at ThoughtBot, Aji brings a refreshingly unique perspective to technical challenges and community contribution.
Diving into his current work with a 12-13 year old Rails codebase, Aji shares his struggles with an Angular frontend implemented in non-standard ways. Despite his graphic design background and comfort with frontend development, the architectural decisions in this Angular implementation present significant challenges. His approach to overcoming these obstacles reveals a thoughtful balance between leveraging AI tools for understanding code while preserving the creative problem-solving aspects that make development enjoyable.
The conversation shifts to Aji's crowning achievement—his "Keynote of Keynotes" presentation at RailsConf that earned him the title of "RailsConf World Champion" from Aaron Patterson. This monumental project required watching 94 hours of past keynotes, tracking down information about 16 presentations that weren't recorded, and synthesizing two decades of Rails community wisdom. Through this archaeological deep-dive, Aji uncovered a powerful throughline in Rails history: the focus on shared solutions that make developers "stronger together than if we were working alone."
Aji's reflections on public speaking reveal surprising insights about performance anxiety. Despite having performed for crowds of 24,000 during his circus days, he still experiences nervousness before technical presentations—though of a different quality than most speakers face. His upcoming move to Scotland adds another fascinating dimension to his story, as he discovers the limitations of UK-focused resources that often neglect Scottish cultural specifics.
Whether discussing his frustrations with Keynote (the presentation software), sharing his thoughts on ADHD in technical work, or explaining why he named his dog after Jim Henson, Aji demonstrates the warmth, humor, and thoughtful perspective that have made him a beloved figure in the Ruby community. His story reminds us that the most interesting developers often bring their whole, multifaceted selves to their work.
Connect with Aji on Bluesky at doodlingdev and watch for his upcoming short technical talks on YouTube!
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of
Code and the Coding Coders whoCode it.
I'm your host, drew Bragg, andI'm joined today by the
RailsConf World Champion asproclaimed by Aaron Patterson
Aji Slater Aji.
For anyone who is not familiarwith you, would you please do a
brief introduction for thelisteners?
Speaker 2 (00:18):
Yeah, Hi everybody.
My name is Aji and I am aformer Circus Clown, current
Rails and Ruby developer.
I work with ThoughtBot as adevelopment team lead and, yeah,
happy to be here, awesome.
Speaker 1 (00:32):
So the way that this works is I'm going to ask Aji
three questions.
I'm going to ask what are theyworking on?
What kind of blockers do theyhave?
If they don't have a currentblocker, what's a recent blocker
they had and how do they goabout solving it?
And then the last question, myfavorite what is something cool,
new or interesting that you'verecently learned or discovered?
It doesn't have to be codingrelated, but this is code and
(00:53):
the coding coders who code it,so it totally can be.
So, adi, what are you workingon?
Speaker 2 (00:59):
Well, my current client project at Thoughtbox for
consultancy is working with avery old Rails code base Been
around for, I think, 12 to 13years, and so it's got all of
that that comes along with that,and the front end is Angular,
(01:19):
which I have never worked withbefore before this client I have
never worked with before beforethis client, and so that's been
kind of an interesting journeyto see how much I can possibly
avoid working in the Angularcodebase, which is not very much
, because I kind of trendtowards the front end in my
personal proclivities.
So that's been an experience.
Speaker 1 (01:40):
I was going to ask if avoiding the Angular part was
because of Angular or because itwas the front end, which
sometimes back end folks arelike I don't do that front end
stuff, so with it being like a12, 13 year old Rails app,
that's Rails 4, 3?
Speaker 2 (01:58):
Yeah, I don't know where it started.
That feels about right.
Speaker 1 (02:02):
Three maybe have they kept up on their upgrades or
are you still working with aslightly older version of Rails?
Speaker 2 (02:08):
A slightly older version of Angular, but the
Rails is all up to date.
Nice.
Speaker 1 (02:12):
Okay, so you do lean towards the front end-ish, or
you enjoy it.
You don't shy away from it.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
Right, I don't shy away from it.
I started in school withgraphic design and things like
that, so visual art and thatkind of layer has always been
interesting to me.
So, yeah, I haven't shied awayfrom it.
And after going to a Ruby bootcamp, we did our final project,
my team in JavaScript having notreally touched JavaScript all
(02:42):
that much, so I feel like it'snot my native language, but
pretty close to it because I gotinto it pretty heavily at the
beginning.
Speaker 1 (02:49):
But you are kind of avoiding the front end because
of Angular on this project.
Because of Angular, I also havenot had the privilege pleasure
of working with Angular, sowhat's driving you batty on the
Angular front?
Speaker 2 (03:09):
I think there's two different things in this
particular code base.
One is just sort of Angulartakes a lot of different
decisions and a lot of differentapproaches to solving problems
than I'm either used to or wouldkind of choose to do myself.
I feel like it probably suitsreally well people that have
come from maybe NET or Javadifferent things like this.
There's a lot of kind ofdecisions and architectural
(03:31):
quirks that feel vaguely likethat, even though I haven't
worked in either of thoselanguages or frameworks either.
So that's all supposition on mypart.
So there's that where how tosolve a problem is just a
completely different approachand style that I'm used to.
(03:52):
And then the second is thatthis particular code base has a
configuration or fleet oflibraries that work together in
a way that is very not thestandard way that Angular is
done, and so finding resourcesto know how these things work
together on the internet is notsuper easy, because it's kind of
(04:16):
an uncommon stack in a way, andso it's been pretty challenging
not only having to reverseengineer a thought process that
is pretty far away from mine,but also to have to navigate the
differences between theresources that are available out
there.
Speaker 1 (04:33):
Interesting.
So is this also kind of asituation where, because it's
not best practices, standard,common way of doing things, that
AI isn't really helping toanswer some of the questions?
Or do you not generally use AIin work at ThoughtBot?
Speaker 2 (04:52):
I think it's a little bit different for everybody the
level to which they use thesekind of tools.
I have been using Claude and alittle bit of Copilot, I think
pretty usefully.
It hasn't been able to generatecode in a way that it might for
some other things Like, hey,give me this, I need this
solution, give me a first draftof that.
(05:13):
But it has been very good atexplaining what is going on here
.
How do these things fittogether?
And I can at the very least geta more specific to the project
answer than a documentation pagewould.
So that's actually been prettyhelpful.
(05:39):
Framework through chatting withan LLM, as opposed to doing the
kind of foundational work withthe framework, building up my
understanding and then workingwith it kind of approach that I
would have before things likeClot and GPT.
Speaker 1 (05:56):
Yeah, so how is that experiment going?
Is it something that you'repotentially going to keep using
as you go forward, or maybetweak it more?
Speaker 2 (06:06):
I think, tweaking it probably.
There have been a lot of timeswhen I've gotten caught in that
LLM loop of here's the solutionoh, that didn't quite work.
And three more steps later itsuggests the solution it did in
the first place and it's likeokay, well, we've gone nowhere.
So I think there'll be a littlebit of a hybrid of more of that
(06:28):
kind of upfront learning on mypart, so that I will know better
when we're kind of going astraya little bit interesting.
Speaker 1 (06:36):
Okay, yeah, I don't really have to do that kind of
hey, help me understand this bitof code because I'm working in
the same code base.
But yeah, the AI does seem likeit would be fairly useful for
understanding code you're seeingfor the first time, with the
caveat of because it canhallucinate so badly at times.
(06:59):
Knowing when to call its bluffis probably a really good bit of
knowledge to have.
Speaker 2 (07:06):
Do you find that you do use that pretty often in your
work, though?
Speaker 1 (07:09):
I've had mixed results with AI.
I don't know if it's my poorbreaking a problem down small
enough for the LLM to understandand give me good feedback, or
if they're just not there.
It's interesting that youbrought it up, because we were
having this conversation atPodia the other day at our
(07:30):
weekly dev team meeting and wewere talking about AI.
The topic essentially was whatdo we want AI to do for us and
what don't we want it to do forus?
And I actually don't want AI towrite code for me.
I like writing code.
I like solving code.
I like solving problems.
I like the whole process of it,from the creative bits to some
of the frustrating bits.
(07:50):
It's enjoyable.
It's part of the reason why Ilove my job.
So I don't want AI to take that.
I just want it to kind of be aslightly more responsive rubber
duck when I'm working throughsomething, and I don't think
that that's actually how a lotof people feel.
I feel like, especially withlike how much you hear people
(08:11):
talk about vibe coding and stufflike people do want to just be
able to say build me X and itgives you the code to do
whatever you wanted it to do,and I don't want that.
So I'm wondering if maybe theproblem is that it's not
designed to do the kind of thingI want it to do, or I'm just
bad at prompting.
Speaker 2 (08:29):
Yeah, I think that really hits on the way that I
kind of feel about it.
I was using cloud code for thefirst time to just be completely
removed from the code and justtell it what I wanted to have
happen.
I hadn't gone that far into ituntil picking up that particular
tool and it sort ofcrystallized my feelings.
(08:50):
I had this kind of ick feelingabout all of the like,
LLM-assisted coding andeverything, and I couldn't tell
why.
Like, am I just a Luddite?
Do I just fear change at thispoint?
Anything like that?
And I realized as I was doingit it was working fairly well.
I think I just don't like it.
Yeah, I enjoy coding the waythat I code.
(09:12):
I, like you were saying, enjoyproblem solving.
This is a fun and satisfyingwork for me and if it's going to
completely go in that directionwhich probably won't if I can't
find the joy in that approach,then I just don't want to do
this anymore.
So we'll see how it goes.
(09:33):
I'm sure there's another way toget that same kind of enjoyment
if the industry or whatever ourjobs end up being that, but I
haven't found it yet.
Speaker 1 (09:44):
Whatever, our jobs end up being that, but I haven't
found it yet.
Yeah, I think at minimum, we'redefinitely a few years away
from our jobs being really atrisk Some of the funny but
horrific stories of peopleshipping really insecure code or
not being able to.
Yeah, it's amazing what AI cando.
It is truly incredible, butit's also not as coming for your
(10:08):
job as some people would haveyou think.
Yet Hopefully, that's so far inthe future.
We don't have to worry about it, but definitely not yet.
So the one thing that you're notworking on, but I do feel like
we sort of have to talk about,since Aaron Patterson crowned
you as the RailsConf worldchampion after your amazing
(10:32):
keynote is your amazing keynote.
So for anyone of you listeningwho doesn't know, because I
haven't shut up about it, I wason the programming committee for
this last RailsConf and when wewere going through the
submissions, the CFPs Ajis cameup as a regular talk but still
(10:54):
entitled the keynote of keynotes, and it wasn't because of the
title, it was because of thecontent that we all kind of went
oh, this needs to be a keynote.
I know that you talked a littlebit about it on the bike shed
with Joel Quinville.
You said it jokingly.
Yeah, I just tried to use theword keynote as many times to
(11:16):
get, but really in your headwere you thinking maybe they'll
bump this into a keynote?
I?
Speaker 2 (11:24):
was hoping for that, especially because the scope of
the thing was to watch all ofthe keynotes and try and give a
little takeaway from everyRailsConf keynote ever.
I was thinking I can't do thatin half an hour, that's not
going to work.
Speaker 1 (11:39):
It was an easy pick for us to say this should become
a keynote, but what doesn'tsound like it was very easy was
the talk creating it.
Watching every keynote fromevery RailsConf for the past 20
years multiple keynotes becausewe didn't always have the hack
day as the middle day, so you'dhave two additional keynotes.
(12:01):
There's so many aspects of thatthat sound challenging and
interesting, but the one that mybrain won't let go of is like
for recent Rails comps it'spretty easy to find the videos.
Comfreaks does an amazing job,but for older ones I imagine
(12:21):
that took some detective work.
What was that like?
Finding the older, maybe beforeComFreaks or just older videos?
Speaker 2 (12:30):
It was actually even a little bit more difficult than
I kind of expected.
I looked on YouTube to seewhere the gaps might be before
writing up the proposal and then, once I knew that I had to dig
in and do this, I starteddigging around.
There was a lot of the WaybackMachine and Internet Archive
(12:52):
going on old RailsConforgschedules and different things
like this, because RailsConforgjust gets written over every
conference so it doesn't evenexist.
There's no archive page even onRailsConforg.
So it was very much that ideaof nobody in 2008 thought anyone
(13:12):
in 2025 was going to care whatthey were talking about.
So just nobody recorded, evenwho was there a lot of the time
without doing a little detectivework.
But yeah, those videos theybasically don't exist.
I think there were 16 thatthere just is no video.
I reached out to the speakers,to people involved in early
(13:36):
RailsConf, all of these sort ofthings.
Nobody just kept those around.
They might not even have beenrecorded at all.
There were one or two yearsthat because O'Reilly used to be
involved with RailsConf and sofor a little while there some
were on O'Reilly's servers andtheir sites.
Those are all gone now andnobody kind of grabbed them
(14:00):
before they were gone.
So for those missing keynotes,my material came from blog posts
of people who were there andkind of like writing their
thoughts and their takeaways.
And luckily there was enough inthe community that wanted to
talk about their experiences atRailsConf that I could
(14:22):
reconstruct enough of the sortof main ideas A few of the
speakers remembered enough andthey sent bullet points of what
they remembered they wantedtheir key points to come away
with, but nobody even had theirslides still.
It's all just kind of gone.
Speaker 1 (14:40):
Especially nowadays.
You just think if you give aconference talk, it goes up on
YouTube and that's it.
It's there forever.
At the time, I doubt anybodywas from the oldest one, or did
you have, like I want to do likeAaron's given what did you say?
16?
, 15 notes, 16.
Okay, did you watch all AaronPatterson at once or did you go
(15:14):
chronologically, I guess, is thequestion I'm trying to ask.
Speaker 2 (15:17):
I thought about that for a while before starting to
watch them.
Did I want to gochronologically?
Did I want to find themes?
Did I want to gochronologically?
Did I want to find themes?
Did I want to go with allthrough one person and kind of
see their arc more back to back?
But I think, as is my opinionwith rewatching an old TV show
(15:38):
or series of movies or something, release order is the proper
order to watch them in, becausethey're going to be in
conversation with each other ina way that you're not going to
get if you watch in timelinechronologically with the MCU or
something like that.
So I wanted to kind ofreconstruct the context of the
(15:59):
conversations going on at thoseconferences and at the time by
watching them as close to inorder as I could get, as far as
like within one conference.
But yeah, it was reallyinteresting to see sometimes
when there was an idea that youcould tell caught on from one
keynote and then got mentionedand talked about in the next one
(16:20):
, and seeing where peopledefinitely rewrote that little
section because they wanted torespond to something someone had
said a day or two before andthings like that.
So I went with chronologicallyand I think it was the right
choice after I had gone througha few years worth.
Speaker 1 (16:35):
And you've also seen a lot of keynotes yourself
because you've been in thecommunity a while.
Right when was your first?
Railsconf?
2016.
Okay, so, of the keynotes thatyou watched prior to that year,
do you have a favorite or onethat sticks out to you?
Speaker 2 (16:54):
It's tough because, like a favorite ice cream or
favorite movie or somethingdepending on like how I'm
feeling or what I'm thinkingabout that answer changes, but I
think one that had me thinkingabout it the most since I've
watched it was Gary Vanderberg'sI think it's 2011 talk that, as
far as I'm concerned, settledthe question of are developers
(17:18):
engineers or not, which I knowis not as hotly debated a topic
anymore.
I know is not as hotly debated atopic anymore, but it was for a
few years after I started mycareer in 2015.
And it's shocking because, asfar as I'm concerned, it was
settled in 2011 because thattalk was just really brilliant.
(17:38):
It broke down the comparisonbetween more quote-unquote
traditional engineering roleslike civil engineering and
chemical engineering and thingslike that, and why those are
seen as engineering and what issimilar to our work and also how
is the mindset of engineeringcarried forward into development
(18:01):
and actually set us back a lotand like what needs to be broken
down and kind of took another40, 50 years with xp and all of
these other things to reallybreak apart the kind of using
the wrong metaphor ofengineering and yet at the, I
(18:22):
still think it probably decidedthat yeah, we're engineers.
Engineers is a bigger conceptthan maybe we're stuffing it
into Interesting.
Speaker 1 (18:32):
Would you consider that a technical talk?
Obviously it's a keynote.
So when I say talk, I'mreferring to keynotes just as a
blanket.
But when you think of atechnical versus a non-technical
talk, would that be consideredto you a technical talk?
Speaker 2 (18:51):
It's borderline.
When you first were asking thatquestion I thought like, yeah,
absolutely.
But then I thought it's moreabout meta, about the work, but
it's not completely removed, inthat it's like human first and
then gets into the work.
It's like process first andthen it gets into the work.
(19:11):
So, yeah, yes, but there wasn'tany code on screen, that kind
of thing.
The thing that I kind of thinkabout technical talks is that as
soon as whatever they'retalking about is out of date,
then that talk is kind of out ofdate for a certain amount, and
that's sort of the thing that isthe maybe defining quality or,
(19:38):
nebulously, the kind of energyof like, well, this is a
technical talk versus anon-technical talk.
Is it going to stay with us andbe higher concept or kind of
broader, or is it about atechnique, technical?
Speaker 1 (19:55):
idea, technique, technical idea, armed with that
description of technical versusnon-technical from your now very
complete experience, probablythe most complete of anybody in
the community, are keynotes,mostly technical or
non-technical.
Speaker 2 (20:17):
Yeah, I think they're mostly non-technical because
people try to hit a broader idea, for better or for worse.
Sometimes I think that'sdetrimental because people try
to speak too broadly and don'treally say very much at all.
But certainly at the beginningof RailsConf there was tradition
(20:42):
of kind of introducing thenewest parts of Rails and like
what are the kind of technicalconcepts that are driving
forward this last year and maybethe next year coming up of
Rails development?
That we kind of moved away from, as I think a little bit the
framework got more stable.
There wasn't as manygroundbreaking things to talk
about each year, and then wealso expanded the horizons of
(21:05):
who we had come to speak with us.
There were people that weren'tjust Rails developers.
There were people that weren'tdevelopers at all and we learned
what we could from otherdisciplines and other points of
view and those just kind of bytheir very nature had to be less
technical because even if theywere technical people, their
(21:26):
technical content was not goingto be related to Rails keynotes.
Speaker 1 (21:34):
Is there a trend in keynoting similar to that where
we've gotten away from the hey,this is what's new in Rails
technical keynote and we'vebrought in more people who might
not be talking directly aboutRails?
Is there any trend similar tothat that you've seen in
(21:54):
keynotes that you hope keepsgoing at RubyConf or any
conference that does utilizekeynotes that you hope they take
that away of?
Speaker 2 (22:02):
like hey, it took RailsConf a while to get there,
but I really like this stylemaybe of conferences in general,
because the majority ofconferences I've attended have
been Ruby Central conferencesand so they have shared a
(22:24):
similar arc in kind of theirlearnings and the way that they
present topics.
So I'm not as aware of non-Rubyor Rails conferences what they
sort of look like.
But as far as RubyConf or whatwould I hope to see when I do go
(22:46):
to a conference that's not aRuby or Rails focused one is, I
would hope, is that continuationor that same idea of using the
keynote as horizons, broadeningopportunity, getting someone
(23:06):
that isn't part of the whatevercommunity or maybe isn't going
to talk about something veryspecific and kind of that energy
of the keynote.
It's a little bit of a catch-22in that you don't want to set
(23:26):
out to say something lofty,otherwise you're probably just
going to lose the thread andwander all over and not really
have a coherent presentation.
And wander all over and notreally have a coherent
presentation but at the sametime wanting it to not be so in
the weeds, really, because thatfeels like the quality that a
(23:47):
normal session would have right,like you're there to get in the
weeds about something thatmaybe like a blog post, is not
the right way to release thisinformation or to talk about
this thing and the keynote isn'tgoing to land with as many
people, if it's really specific,so that maybe a third of the
conference would want to go seethat session.
(24:09):
Right, you want to do somethingthat's going to be more
applicable to the wider group?
Yeah, so I think, kind offollowing that trend of like
having a broader or morewide-reaching topic, but still a
specific topic, rather thanjust come in here and do a
end-all, be-all TED Talk stylething that trips people up,
(24:33):
makes them kind of lose touch ofwhy they might have been
invited or elevated or whatever,to give a keynote talk, because
it's probably because you'realready saying or thinking about
something interesting that morepeople are going to want to
hear about.
Speaker 1 (24:46):
So you kind of mentioned it in that segment and
I know you talked a bit aboutit on the bike shed.
I keep referencing that episode, so sorry listeners, if you
haven't listened to it yet, justhit pause, go listen to that
episode, come back, we mightcover some of the same stuff.
But you talk a little bit, or afair amount, about not trying
(25:06):
to make the keynote thisimpactful thing, not setting out
to be like I'm going to saythis really powerful thing in my
keynote because I have thisfancy stage and this fancy slot,
because if you do that you mayend up not saying anything
important, etc.
How did you manage that ownthought that I need this keynote
(25:31):
to be good?
I want to say somethingmeaningful, not just talk about
every keynote that's everhappened.
But also, I can't set out toblow everyone's minds because of
every point you already made.
How did you manage that?
Speaker 2 (25:48):
It was a theme that I had to keep front of mind every
time that I started to, outsideof the content, come up with an
idea of something I wanted tosay.
So, from my own thoughts orfrom my own experience, or again
thinking about the opportunityof having that moment on stage,
(26:08):
I had to specifically tellmyself it's like no, that didn't
come from the project, itdidn't come from the content, so
put that aside.
If it ends up being usefulbecause it comes out of the
content, I can pick it up again,but I really had to concentrate
on what is the story coming outof the group of these talks?
(26:30):
What are the themes?
Are there things that Trying tonotice things that people were
bringing up again and againacross the years, and trying to
find the ways that I wasaffected or the things that I
was thinking about because ofwatching the keynotes, rather
than sort of a meta thing orsomething that I was bringing
(26:54):
from outside?
And eventually I got to thepoint where it's like okay, I've
been purposefully not thinkingabout anything.
What is the point of my talk?
And I started to think aboutthat until I had watched
Yudikatz's 2014 keynote, wherehe said something about Rails
(27:14):
and convention overconfiguration, being kind of
this culmination of sharedsolutions that can make us all
stronger together and make usall more powerful together than
if we were working alone.
And kind of refuting somedetractors that were saying that
shared solutions are just leakyabstractions.
(27:37):
And he said that we needed tofocus on the things that bring
us together instead of focusingon the things that drive us
apart.
And when he said that I pausedit.
I went back, I watched thatline a couple of times, I made
sure that I had it down verbatimbecause all of a sudden it had
kind of crystallized this ideaof Ruby on Rails for me, of
(28:00):
RailsConf, of what so manypeople had been and then would
later talk about, in this kindof chronological escapade of
keynotes that kept coming up.
That people would be sayingsomething about a technical
topic, but it would be aboutthese shared solutions, it would
be about coming together, itwould be about working stronger
(28:23):
together and all of thesedifferent things that were both
in technical content and innon-technical content, and it
just seemed like that was thetheme, that was the history, the
point of Rails and RailsConfand it just really struck me at
that moment.
I was like, well, there you go.
That's the through line.
That's what I am going to kindof put my own opinion to.
(28:46):
At the end of it, what was thepoint of all this is to
rediscover this idea that wasjust sort of latent and I felt
was already there, but I justnever had words or never had a
thought to elevate like that.
And so, yeah, it was that 2014talk that just struck me and I
knew that's where it was goingto be.
Speaker 1 (29:05):
That's such an interesting challenge to be able
to go into watching all ofthese keynotes and try to not
inject your own thoughts orfeelings into them and just take
them as they are so that youcan present them to others who
also weren't there, withoutbringing your own.
Here are my thoughts on thisperson's keynote.
(29:26):
It was not the goal.
The goal was this person talkedabout this and these impactful
things, but still make it yourkeynote yeah, it was concerted
effort.
Speaker 2 (29:35):
It was a concerted effort and it was also at some
level I knew going to beimpossible, because just by
choosing what I thought theirtakeaway was, I was imposing my
own editorial voice on it, andthe only way to not do that
would be to just hit, play andwatch all the keynotes together.
(29:56):
So it was a little bit of likeI'm going to do the best I can
while knowing that it'scompletely impossible to do 100%
.
Speaker 1 (30:04):
But the effort is there, which is not always the
case.
If someone's telling you,trying to tell you even facts
without injecting their ownopinion, the effort is
appreciated.
I want to talk so much moreabout this keynote because it
was full disclosure.
(30:25):
Aji spoiled the ending for me,asking for some practice and I
knew it was coming and it stillgot me.
I think it got most people andyou got a very well-deserved
standing ovation afterwards.
And if anybody listening tothis has not seen the videos are
now out, you need to see thekeynote.
It is a lot of work and it is aton of effort, as you just
(30:51):
explained, but should be clearto anybody, and especially after
watching it.
Oh, knowing the amount of workit took, knowing some of the
work it took that you weren'texpecting, knowing everything,
would you do it again, all overagain, from scratch?
Speaker 2 (31:13):
there were definitely times while I was working on it
that I was like why did I dothis to myself?
This is awful.
My talk writing technique isunsustainable in the first place
, the way that it just sort oftakes over my life.
But this was another 94 hoursof watching video on top of
needing to come up with anhour's worth of material.
(31:33):
It was a lot, but I would.
I love how it came out.
I love how it landed withpeople.
I love the way that people haveconnected with me since then.
The sense of being pulledfurther into the community that
I had that day after giving thattalk was just incredible.
(31:56):
I was saying the other day thatI had a different kind of
anxiety before giving the talk.
It wasn't the usual like arepeople going to like it?
Am I going to mess up?
That kind of presentingsomething live anxiety.
It was more an excitement.
I came down to the conferencearea from my hotel room and I
(32:19):
was thinking that I know it'sgood, I just can't wait to share
it with people, and it was adifferent kind of excitement and
nervousness than I'd ever hadbefore.
So yeah, I would absolutely doit.
I think I have been maybe alittle annoying in conversations
over the last few months beinglike.
You know.
There was a keynote where theysaid I'll take that too.
(32:41):
I'll be that person again, andI will be that person for months
, if not years still, I'm sure.
Speaker 1 (32:47):
Well, you do have a very unique knowledge set now
and, yeah, I mean, you earned itright.
That's a lot of hours of videowatching, that's a lot of hours
of collecting your thoughts, andyou did all of the
illustrations right, I did yeah.
Yeah, there was a lot of reallygood illustrations in it too.
(33:08):
So it is funny because, foranybody who doesn't know, I did
a keynote not a RailsConfkeynote, it was a RubyConf
keynote, barely and it was yourpartner's fault, it was Mina's
fault.
At least she was the one thattalked me into doing it.
Speaker 2 (33:27):
Oh, she fully takes credit for that, by the way.
Yeah, it's cool.
Speaker 1 (33:28):
So, because I keep saying it's Mina's fault, and my
keynote by your definition of agood keynote, was a terrible
keynote.
There was no point to it.
It was me going up on stage andmaking the creator of this
language.
I love laugh and just feelinggood about doing that kind of
nonsensical.
That was a lot of work, I feltlike, and then hearing the lot
(33:52):
of work you put in, that is adifferent level.
I don't know if I even havethat capability to put in that
many hours into something andthen put in that much time and
effort into making veryimpressive.
This is where Andrew Masonwould tell me to shut up because
I'm fanboying, but he would usemore harsh language.
Speaker 2 (34:15):
I think first of all you shouldn't sell your own
keynote short, that playfulnessand enjoying and fun is somehow
not a worthy theme and cause,especially amongst Rubyists.
Speaker 1 (34:32):
I think it's a great talk, or at least it's got to be
, because people keep asking meto do it.
It just felt weird to do it asa keynote.
It felt really weird to do itin front of everybody.
It wasn't a hey, go to thattalk or the game show or this
other talk, it was hey, ifyou're coming to the conference,
you're going to sit here andwatch this game show Felt
(34:53):
surreal.
Speaker 2 (34:55):
I don't know how this will change your opinion of
everything, but it was not thefirst Ruby game show to happen
as a keynote at RubyConf.
Speaker 1 (35:02):
No, I sort of found this out from trying to prepare
myself for your talk of likeseeing what some of the keynotes
were and what some of thetopics you were going to cover
are, and also a little bit of myown, like, hey, people have
done game shows in the past.
What did they do?
How did this land Stuff likethat?
(35:22):
So, yeah, it just felt weirdfor me to be doing it, I guess.
Speaker 2 (35:27):
This is a bit of a tangent, but it's kind of
related there, because I feellike you've talked about this in
conjunction with that wholeidea of you making fun of this
language and the creator issitting right there in front of
you watching you do that.
Is it true that you named yourdog?
Speaker 1 (35:44):
Mats.
Yes, Matsumoto is actually whatwe call him.
We call him Mats for short.
He's adorable.
He wore a red tuxedo at ourwedding because of course he did
, and we had gotten a girl doginstead.
It would have been Ruby.
I absolutely love Ruby For somany reasons.
Ruby changed my life.
(36:05):
To have the opportunity to namesomething I deeply care about
after something else I deeplycare about, that's what I was
going to do.
Speaker 2 (36:15):
I have kind of a similar experience that Amina
and I's first dog together.
We named Henson after JimHenson, who is an incredible
influence, and Jim Henson's workacross the Muppets and
everything else that he did andhis philosophy on life has been
so impactful to me and so wenamed our little Muppets.
And everything else that he didand his philosophy on life has
(36:36):
been so impactful to me and sowe named our little Muppet
Henson.
And much the same as youtelling Matt's that fact of you
having a named your dog afterhim.
I was lucky enough once to runinto Heather Henson at the
(36:57):
Orlando fringeinge and she sawon the poster for my show.
She was like, oh, is that yourdog?
Yeah, I was like yeah, it is.
And she said what's his name?
I was like Henson, he's namedafter your dad.
Speaker 1 (37:11):
So, yeah, when you told that story about your pup
and matt's being in the audience, I know how that feels you did
bring up something that I wantto at least touch on how do you
go from circus performer, circusentertainer, circus clown to a
(37:36):
rubius, to a developer orengineer, if you so choose?
Speaker 2 (37:41):
so, yeah, I ran away to join the circus.
I went to circus school in sanfrancisco.
There's a school there's acircus school.
Yeah, it's the san franciscoschool of circus arts, or the
circus center as it's known.
They have a clown programcalled the Clown Conservatory
that I did two years at and Igot a degree in experimental
(38:03):
theater with them.
And, yeah, now I work in tech.
Yeah, I changed careers becauseit didn't work out in comedy
for me for a myriad of reasons,one of which was the undiagnosed
adhd that I didn't really findout about until some pandemic
(38:27):
induced self-reflection that ledme to spread my interests and
things too thin to ever get tolike a circus level of skill in
a lot of different things.
I tried to make that what I did,that.
I was a collector of uselessskills.
I even had still out there thisdigital YouTube channel where I
(38:50):
tried to learn a useless skillevery week for a year and like
make a video about it.
That was unsustainable as well,but it didn't really work out.
It landed really well withpeople that it landed with, but
not enough to sustain a career.
We left the Bay Area.
Mina and I met on tour in thecircus with Ringling Brothers,
(39:11):
by the way and then.
So we lived in San Franciscoagain after that and we left
because we couldn't afford itbecause you can't live in the
Bay Area unless you're in tech.
And then you still kind ofcan't live in the Bay Area.
We moved to Chicago and theidea of just having to work the
network from the ground up itwasn't interesting, it wasn't
going to be like satisfying orfulfilling.
(39:32):
And so I started looking aroundand I found Dev Bootcamp
satisfying or fulfilling.
And so I started looking aroundand I found Dev Bootcamp and
I'd always been kind oftinkering more with my website
and other performers' websiteswhile being a performer, so I
thought, hey, maybe this issomething that I could do.
And then I found Ruby and Railsinstead of just HTML and CSS,
and it's like, oh, this is howthe internet happens, and just
(39:54):
kind of stuck.
Speaker 1 (39:56):
That's amazing.
It's so funny because I'mpretty sure you're the first
person I've met that can be likeI was a circus clown and now
I'm in tech, but at the sametime your story is so familiar.
So many people in this industryof like I used to do this and
then just took this fun littlehobby or interest I had and
turned it into this amazingcareer.
(40:17):
It's interesting to hear thatyou toured with Ringling
Brothers Circus, which is, Iimagine, a big deal.
I mean, it's a prettywell-known circus.
I imagine they don't just takeanybody.
And then to hear you also saythere's an anxiety when you give
a talk, when you get up onstage, you still have an anxiety
(40:38):
of being in front of peopleafter you were a clown more
maybe about like I want it to bereceived well and these
(40:59):
different things.
Speaker 2 (40:59):
So there is definitely a cheat code or
something that I can think like,as big as this audience gets,
it's never going to be the24,000 people at Boston's TD
Garden that I performed for, orsomething like that.
So whenever people ask how toget better at speaking and they
get to the point where it's likeokay, but I'm afraid of public
speaking, I'm like I wish Icould help you, but it's not a
(41:19):
shared experience.
I can help you with all thelike technique parts of it and
please, if there's anybody thatwants to get into speaking,
reach out to me.
I'm very happy to help.
I'm just not going to be ableto help with that part.
A lot of it is just you'd kindof just have to do it, but I'm
not going to be able to tap intothe same kind of emotions in
the same way that somebody elsewho has a similar experience
(41:40):
will be able to kind of help andshare those kind of trials and
tribulations.
Speaker 1 (41:45):
Dang, because I was hoping you were going to tell me
because I still I've done thegame show more times than I can
count with shoes on, I think, atthis point, and I still get
nervous every time I go up onstage like it's the first time
and I was kind of hoping you'dbe like well, here's how you get
over that.
But I guess not.
Speaker 2 (42:03):
The only thing that I think that has helped me when
I've needed it, and I think hashelped other folks, is to
remember that everybody therewants you to succeed.
Nobody is looking for you tofail.
They paid money to be there.
They want this to be good, aswants you to succeed.
Nobody is looking for you tofail.
They paid money to be there.
They want this to be good, asmuch as it might feel like it at
times.
Nobody is rooting for yourfailure.
That's all I got there.
Speaker 1 (42:22):
So the next question I would normally ask is what
kind of blockers do you have?
If you don't have a currentblocker, what is a recent
blocker you had?
And it can be about the Angularproject that you currently have
.
It can be about you kind oftouched on blocker-esque things
with the keynote.
But if there's like somethingspecific where you're like
actually, yeah, I hung up onthis thing, what's a blocker in
(42:45):
the life of Aji?
Speaker 2 (42:46):
To kind of keep going on the speaking train.
It is the application keynote,because, like I said, I went to
school for art and I studiedanimation and I have a lot of
opinions about how things shouldlook visually and I want that
(43:07):
to show up in my slides andpresentations.
And Keynote doesn't want to doall of the things I want to
happen, and so the number ofhoops that I have to jump
through trying to make somethinglook remotely the way that I
want, or the hacks that I haveto come up with to make this
(43:29):
program bend to my will, isridiculous, and just the sheer
number of clicks to do somethingsometimes, and the fact that
it's an apple made applicationand the apple scripting support
is terrible.
I could take away a couple ofthose clicks.
I know how to program, eventhough that's barely a
(43:51):
programming language.
That is always my biggestblocker and somehow I will put
myself through the hell of allof those hoops because I am
opinionated about how I wantthis thing to look and I think
it is worth it, and I have a lotof opinions about how animation
can help people understand aconcept, and so the more angles
(44:13):
I can take to help someoneunderstand a concept, I'm going
to take them and so I put in allof this extra work.
But I really wish there was abetter presentation software,
because I've tried a bunch ofthe other ones and they are
still not as powerful as Keynoteand Keynote is still incredibly
limited.
Powerful as Keynote and Keynoteis still incredibly limited, so
(44:35):
I don't know what it is.
I'm going to have to startusing After Effects or Final Cut
or something to make thesepresentations.
Speaker 1 (44:43):
Go full-blown Hollywood movie style.
Instead of slides, we're goingto hit.
Play on this movie now.
Speaker 2 (44:48):
That's my biggest blocker to getting one of these
things done.
That's my struggle.
Keynote is my struggle.
Speaker 1 (44:55):
I keep telling myself I'm going to learn Keynote one
day so that I stop with mycrappy markdown converted slides
.
But I'm like, but they work,they do the job.
And Keynote seems, feels,daunting.
Take it from someone who'sopened the application like
three times and been lost withinlike 10 minutes.
I know that in order to get theslides better, I'm going to
(45:17):
need to learn it.
My God, it seems so daunting.
I would rather just deal withcrappy slides.
Speaker 2 (45:24):
Yeah, and I think for the majority of slides and
talks and presentations, toomuch bells and whistles can
really detract.
There's like a bell curve,inverted bell curve.
There's a gulf in the middlewhere too much stuff is just
going to make it worse.
So it's either you need to keepit simple and stick to your
(45:47):
message or kill yourselfanimating 800 slides in a half
hour presentation or something.
Speaker 1 (45:57):
No, I'll keep it simple.
I appreciate you enabling meand my laziness with my slides.
The last question is what issomething cool, new or
interesting that you want toshare?
Could be you built.
It could be you read, it couldbe anything.
The floor is yours.
Speaker 2 (46:17):
I'm looking around my crazy workshop right now to try
and figure out the things thatI've been learning lately,
because I do a lot of differenthobbies and projects and I'm
always trying to learn somethingnew.
But I think right now my bigproject is I'm moving to
Scotland at the beginning ofNovember.
Project is I'm moving toScotland at the beginning of
(46:40):
November, and so a lot of whatI've learned about is the kind
of differences between theUnited States and the UK as far
as logistical things about likelanguage differences and all
these different things.
But what I've kind of learnedthe most is that so much about
living in the United Kingdom isabout England and I'm going to
(47:02):
be moving to Scotland and I knowthat those are two different
countries with differentcultures, and so I have learned
that there is not as much to belearned about my coming up new
home as I sort of expected thereto be with all of the
information there is aboutliving in the UK.
(47:23):
It's so much about England and Iknow that there is going to be
a sort of cliff where that stopsworking, and so I've gotten to
the point where I've learnedwhat the unknowns are, which I
think is an important step inlearning anything.
Right, because you can startlearning and you're like, oh, I
got this.
But then you get to a pointwhere you've actually learned
(47:45):
enough, where you know that youdon't know anything yet.
And I've gotten to that point.
And that's a frustrating point,but it's also an exciting point
, because that's where youactually kind of stretch and
grow and you get the most out ofit.
And so I'm there and I'm likeready to go into that next step,
but it has to kind of waituntil November and then we'll
(48:05):
see how it goes.
Speaker 1 (48:05):
I'm moving to which I like to camp and do a little
dabble in backpacking and I do aton of research before I go
anywhere.
I can't imagine movingsomewhere like your life moving,
(48:29):
not visiting, moving and notbeing able to find information.
Speaker 2 (48:31):
There's enough stuff about the things that you would
need to know to make the movestick, like laws and all of that
.
I just think that there's alittle bit of there's going to
be more culture shock than Isort of expect because you think
, moving to a different country,well, they speak the same
language.
There's enough of kind of likeroot culture similarities and I
(48:53):
know a lot about the differences.
I've been an anglophile all ofmy life and all of these
different things.
But I just know watching thesethat it's like, yeah, that's not
how I've felt in Scotland sofar, so something's not matching
up here and, yeah, just kind oflearning that vague feeling
(49:15):
that I can't put my hand onexactly why just yet.
But I know that this isn't thewhole picture and it's exciting,
it's daunting, it's all of thegood things about taking on a
new sort of challenge and a newjourney.
Speaker 1 (49:29):
Not that there's anything wrong with Scotland.
I'm not asking the why it'slike.
Why in the world would youchoose Scotland?
I just mean there's a lot ofplaces that you could move in
the world.
What drew you to scotland,edinburgh's?
Speaker 2 (49:41):
just the most gorgeous city.
So that's part of it for sure.
Like I said, I've been ananglophile my whole life.
My paternal grandmother wasborn in england and so just kind
of an interest and closeness toUnited Kingdom-y-ness has been
(50:01):
kind of near to my life in a lotof different ways.
Grew up watching Britishsitcoms and that sort of thing.
Mina, my wife, really needselevation in scenery and we
don't really get that in Chicagoin scenery and we don't really
(50:21):
get that in chicago but you doget that in a little bit in
edinburgh and definitely in thehighlands.
The landscape is just beautiful, the kind of closeness from the
city to nature.
A lot of like little reasonsthat kind of add up and
aggregate.
There's kind of feeling ofcloseness to like magic and myth
a little bit, in that it feelslike that's where the fairies
(50:41):
live.
And even though I've tried toexplain to Mina that fairies are
not actually very kind tohumans please do not go talk to
the fairies, bad things willhappen she's still very excited
about meeting fairies so youknow your fairy myth.
Speaker 1 (50:59):
Not many people know that that fairies are, for lack
of a better term, their decks.
Speaker 2 (51:03):
Yeah yeah, but yeah, just like lots of little things
the kind of quality of homenessis the only way I can describe
it that I felt living in sanfrancisco.
I felt walking around inEdinburgh and maybe it's a
little bit the sidewalkssometimes turn into stairs.
There's a quality in both ofthose places.
(51:25):
The weather is a little bit thesame.
It's kind of like temperate buta little coldish.
A lot of little things thatsort of add up to make it seem
kind of like a dream or afantasy and it's like, yeah, but
we're going to go make it real.
Speaker 1 (51:39):
It's such a cool way of describing it.
I'm not just moving, I'm goingon this like semi-permanent
adventure.
That's awesome.
Is there anything else that youwant to talk about before we
wrap this?
Speaker 2 (51:51):
up.
I don't know if this is for thepodcast or what, but you
mentioned when you were talkingat the podcast panel at
RailsConf that there was anepisode of Code in the Code
Encoders, that Code it.
That kind of stands out andmeans a lot to you where you
talked with your guest aboutADHD and tech and that whole
thing, and I would like therecommendation of which episode
(52:13):
that was, so that I can go backand listen to it.
Speaker 1 (52:16):
Sure, so definitely episode one, pretty much any
episode that I have Andrew Masonon.
We talk a little bit about itin episode one because he's my
first guest.
He kind of hijacked my ADHD alittle bit to make sure that the
episodes happened.
I said this at the podcastpanel, but I was struggling to
(52:37):
get that first episode recordedand I was just texting with him
and we have very similar ADHDsHis is a little worse than mine,
but very similar.
He just knew like, okay, we'lljust do it now While we're
talking about it, what's goingon?
But the episode that we did alot of ADHD talking about is
episode 18, which is from March7th of 2023, which is crazy to
(53:02):
say out loud.
So we do a bunch of ADHDchatting in both of those
episodes.
If I'm remembering correctly,18 is the one where we had a
full segment on working with ourADHDs and making sure not being
(53:23):
afraid to, which was alwayssomething for me.
I was very afraid to be likewell, I have ADHD, but how
important it is when you'reworking with others, especially
in a world like this.
I have ADHD can help otherpeople just understand our
workflows, understand why it's 2in the morning and we just
ripped out a ton of PRs and youdidn't get anything done for the
(53:44):
past three days and now it's 2in the morning on a Thursday.
What's going on?
Stuff like that where it canstill be hard to talk about a
little to a degree.
But I think, especially gettingto interact with so many other
devs and successful devs andvery intelligent people that are
like, yeah, I also have ADHDand here are the types of
(54:07):
struggles I have and I'm like Ihave those too.
This is not nearly as bad or asdamning as it was in my head
when it was first revealed to methat I had it from my doctor.
So good episodes to listen to.
Speaker 2 (54:20):
Good call out yeah it's that shared experience and
everything that I'm looking for,so I'm looking forward to it.
Speaker 1 (54:28):
Hopefully those episodes give it to you and the
next time you come on the showwe can talk about nothing but
ADHD, because I do think there'sa lot that I wish I knew when I
was first diagnosed andespecially when I first got into
this industry after beingdiagnosed which happened a few
years before I got into thisindustry so I'm always down to
(54:50):
talk about it and give otherpeople a resource, a place to
like learn about themselves in away.
You just haven't figured thisout yet.
It took us a while too, butwe'll tell you all about it.
So anybody who wants to followyou or learn more about you on
the internet, where can theyfind you?
Speaker 2 (55:09):
Yeah, I'm mostly these days on blueskydoodlingdev
, I think, because I finallylinked my domain to my account
there, so you can find me thereand I'm going to say this out
loud, so that I have to do it.
I'm going to start puttingshort, essentially like little
(55:30):
talks on a YouTube channel.
So if you want to hear what I'mthinking about as far as, like,
ruby and object-oriented codeand stuff, it'll be on YouTube
Doodling Dev.
Speaker 1 (55:39):
Awesome.
I'll put those in the shownotes so everyone can easily
find it.
What do they say on YouTube?
Smash the like and subscribebutton Gotta use the right word
Otherwise it doesn't work, and Ijust see Aaron Patterson in my
head every time.
I say that out loud.
Well, thank you so much forcoming on, aji, for talking
(56:00):
about the keynote, for thekeynote Again.
Listeners, if you've gottenthis far and you haven't hit
pause to go watch the video assoon as this episode is over.
Go watch it.
It's incredible.
We'll definitely have you onagain, because this was a blast.
Listeners, I will see you inthe next one.
Bye.
Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of
Code and the Coding Coders whoCode it.
I'm your host, drew Bragg, andI'm joined today by the
RailsConf World Champion asproclaimed by Aaron Patterson
Aji Slater Aji.
For anyone who is not familiarwith you, would you please do a
brief introduction for thelisteners?
Speaker 2 (00:18):
Yeah, Hi everybody.
My name is Aji and I am aformer Circus Clown, current
Rails and Ruby developer.
I work with ThoughtBot as adevelopment team lead and, yeah,
happy to be here, awesome.
Speaker 1 (00:32):
So the way that this works is I'm going to ask Aji
three questions.
I'm going to ask what are theyworking on?
What kind of blockers do theyhave?
If they don't have a currentblocker, what's a recent blocker
they had and how do they goabout solving it?
And then the last question, myfavorite what is something cool,
new or interesting that you'verecently learned or discovered?
It doesn't have to be codingrelated, but this is code and
(00:53):
the coding coders who code it,so it totally can be.
So, adi, what are you workingon?
Speaker 2 (00:59):
Well, my current client project at Thoughtbox for
consultancy is working with avery old Rails code base Been
around for, I think, 12 to 13years, and so it's got all of
that that comes along with that,and the front end is Angular,
(01:19):
which I have never worked withbefore before this client I have
never worked with before beforethis client, and so that's been
kind of an interesting journeyto see how much I can possibly
avoid working in the Angularcodebase, which is not very much
, because I kind of trendtowards the front end in my
personal proclivities.
So that's been an experience.
Speaker 1 (01:40):
I was going to ask if avoiding the Angular part was
because of Angular or because itwas the front end, which
sometimes back end folks arelike I don't do that front end
stuff, so with it being like a12, 13 year old Rails app,
that's Rails 4, 3?
Speaker 2 (01:58):
Yeah, I don't know where it started.
That feels about right.
Speaker 1 (02:02):
Three maybe have they kept up on their upgrades or
are you still working with aslightly older version of Rails?
Speaker 2 (02:08):
A slightly older version of Angular, but the
Rails is all up to date.
Nice.
Speaker 1 (02:12):
Okay, so you do lean towards the front end-ish, or
you enjoy it.
You don't shy away from it.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
Right, I don't shy away from it.
I started in school withgraphic design and things like
that, so visual art and thatkind of layer has always been
interesting to me.
So, yeah, I haven't shied awayfrom it.
And after going to a Ruby bootcamp, we did our final project,
my team in JavaScript having notreally touched JavaScript all
(02:42):
that much, so I feel like it'snot my native language, but
pretty close to it because I gotinto it pretty heavily at the
beginning.
Speaker 1 (02:49):
But you are kind of avoiding the front end because
of Angular on this project.
Because of Angular, I also havenot had the privilege pleasure
of working with Angular, sowhat's driving you batty on the
Angular front?
Speaker 2 (03:09):
I think there's two different things in this
particular code base.
One is just sort of Angulartakes a lot of different
decisions and a lot of differentapproaches to solving problems
than I'm either used to or wouldkind of choose to do myself.
I feel like it probably suitsreally well people that have
come from maybe NET or Javadifferent things like this.
There's a lot of kind ofdecisions and architectural
(03:31):
quirks that feel vaguely likethat, even though I haven't
worked in either of thoselanguages or frameworks either.
So that's all supposition on mypart.
So there's that where how tosolve a problem is just a
completely different approachand style that I'm used to.
(03:52):
And then the second is thatthis particular code base has a
configuration or fleet oflibraries that work together in
a way that is very not thestandard way that Angular is
done, and so finding resourcesto know how these things work
together on the internet is notsuper easy, because it's kind of
(04:16):
an uncommon stack in a way, andso it's been pretty challenging
not only having to reverseengineer a thought process that
is pretty far away from mine,but also to have to navigate the
differences between theresources that are available out
there.
Speaker 1 (04:33):
Interesting.
So is this also kind of asituation where, because it's
not best practices, standard,common way of doing things, that
AI isn't really helping toanswer some of the questions?
Or do you not generally use AIin work at ThoughtBot?
Speaker 2 (04:52):
I think it's a little bit different for everybody the
level to which they use thesekind of tools.
I have been using Claude and alittle bit of Copilot, I think
pretty usefully.
It hasn't been able to generatecode in a way that it might for
some other things Like, hey,give me this, I need this
solution, give me a first draftof that.
(05:13):
But it has been very good atexplaining what is going on here
.
How do these things fittogether?
And I can at the very least geta more specific to the project
answer than a documentation pagewould.
So that's actually been prettyhelpful.
(05:39):
Framework through chatting withan LLM, as opposed to doing the
kind of foundational work withthe framework, building up my
understanding and then workingwith it kind of approach that I
would have before things likeClot and GPT.
Speaker 1 (05:56):
Yeah, so how is that experiment going?
Is it something that you'repotentially going to keep using
as you go forward, or maybetweak it more?
Speaker 2 (06:06):
I think, tweaking it probably.
There have been a lot of timeswhen I've gotten caught in that
LLM loop of here's the solutionoh, that didn't quite work.
And three more steps later itsuggests the solution it did in
the first place and it's likeokay, well, we've gone nowhere.
So I think there'll be a littlebit of a hybrid of more of that
(06:28):
kind of upfront learning on mypart, so that I will know better
when we're kind of going astraya little bit interesting.
Speaker 1 (06:36):
Okay, yeah, I don't really have to do that kind of
hey, help me understand this bitof code because I'm working in
the same code base.
But yeah, the AI does seem likeit would be fairly useful for
understanding code you're seeingfor the first time, with the
caveat of because it canhallucinate so badly at times.
(06:59):
Knowing when to call its bluffis probably a really good bit of
knowledge to have.
Speaker 2 (07:06):
Do you find that you do use that pretty often in your
work, though?
Speaker 1 (07:09):
I've had mixed results with AI.
I don't know if it's my poorbreaking a problem down small
enough for the LLM to understandand give me good feedback, or
if they're just not there.
It's interesting that youbrought it up, because we were
having this conversation atPodia the other day at our
(07:30):
weekly dev team meeting and wewere talking about AI.
The topic essentially was whatdo we want AI to do for us and
what don't we want it to do forus?
And I actually don't want AI towrite code for me.
I like writing code.
I like solving code.
I like solving problems.
I like the whole process of it,from the creative bits to some
of the frustrating bits.
(07:50):
It's enjoyable.
It's part of the reason why Ilove my job.
So I don't want AI to take that.
I just want it to kind of be aslightly more responsive rubber
duck when I'm working throughsomething, and I don't think
that that's actually how a lotof people feel.
I feel like, especially withlike how much you hear people
(08:11):
talk about vibe coding and stufflike people do want to just be
able to say build me X and itgives you the code to do
whatever you wanted it to do,and I don't want that.
So I'm wondering if maybe theproblem is that it's not
designed to do the kind of thingI want it to do, or I'm just
bad at prompting.
Speaker 2 (08:29):
Yeah, I think that really hits on the way that I
kind of feel about it.
I was using cloud code for thefirst time to just be completely
removed from the code and justtell it what I wanted to have
happen.
I hadn't gone that far into ituntil picking up that particular
tool and it sort ofcrystallized my feelings.
(08:50):
I had this kind of ick feelingabout all of the like,
LLM-assisted coding andeverything, and I couldn't tell
why.
Like, am I just a Luddite?
Do I just fear change at thispoint?
Anything like that?
And I realized as I was doingit it was working fairly well.
I think I just don't like it.
Yeah, I enjoy coding the waythat I code.
(09:12):
I, like you were saying, enjoyproblem solving.
This is a fun and satisfyingwork for me and if it's going to
completely go in that directionwhich probably won't if I can't
find the joy in that approach,then I just don't want to do
this anymore.
So we'll see how it goes.
(09:33):
I'm sure there's another way toget that same kind of enjoyment
if the industry or whatever ourjobs end up being that, but I
haven't found it yet.
Speaker 1 (09:44):
Whatever, our jobs end up being that, but I haven't
found it yet.
Yeah, I think at minimum, we'redefinitely a few years away
from our jobs being really atrisk Some of the funny but
horrific stories of peopleshipping really insecure code or
not being able to.
Yeah, it's amazing what AI cando.
It is truly incredible, butit's also not as coming for your
(10:08):
job as some people would haveyou think.
Yet Hopefully, that's so far inthe future.
We don't have to worry about it, but definitely not yet.
So the one thing that you're notworking on, but I do feel like
we sort of have to talk about,since Aaron Patterson crowned
you as the RailsConf worldchampion after your amazing
(10:32):
keynote is your amazing keynote.
So for anyone of you listeningwho doesn't know, because I
haven't shut up about it, I wason the programming committee for
this last RailsConf and when wewere going through the
submissions, the CFPs Ajis cameup as a regular talk but still
(10:54):
entitled the keynote of keynotes, and it wasn't because of the
title, it was because of thecontent that we all kind of went
oh, this needs to be a keynote.
I know that you talked a littlebit about it on the bike shed
with Joel Quinville.
You said it jokingly.
Yeah, I just tried to use theword keynote as many times to
(11:16):
get, but really in your headwere you thinking maybe they'll
bump this into a keynote?
I?
Speaker 2 (11:24):
was hoping for that, especially because the scope of
the thing was to watch all ofthe keynotes and try and give a
little takeaway from everyRailsConf keynote ever.
I was thinking I can't do thatin half an hour, that's not
going to work.
Speaker 1 (11:39):
It was an easy pick for us to say this should become
a keynote, but what doesn'tsound like it was very easy was
the talk creating it.
Watching every keynote fromevery RailsConf for the past 20
years multiple keynotes becausewe didn't always have the hack
day as the middle day, so you'dhave two additional keynotes.
(12:01):
There's so many aspects of thatthat sound challenging and
interesting, but the one that mybrain won't let go of is like
for recent Rails comps it'spretty easy to find the videos.
Comfreaks does an amazing job,but for older ones I imagine
(12:21):
that took some detective work.
What was that like?
Finding the older, maybe beforeComFreaks or just older videos?
Speaker 2 (12:30):
It was actually even a little bit more difficult than
I kind of expected.
I looked on YouTube to seewhere the gaps might be before
writing up the proposal and then, once I knew that I had to dig
in and do this, I starteddigging around.
There was a lot of the WaybackMachine and Internet Archive
(12:52):
going on old RailsConforgschedules and different things
like this, because RailsConforgjust gets written over every
conference so it doesn't evenexist.
There's no archive page even onRailsConforg.
So it was very much that ideaof nobody in 2008 thought anyone
(13:12):
in 2025 was going to care whatthey were talking about.
So just nobody recorded, evenwho was there a lot of the time
without doing a little detectivework.
But yeah, those videos theybasically don't exist.
I think there were 16 thatthere just is no video.
I reached out to the speakers,to people involved in early
(13:36):
RailsConf, all of these sort ofthings.
Nobody just kept those around.
They might not even have beenrecorded at all.
There were one or two yearsthat because O'Reilly used to be
involved with RailsConf and sofor a little while there some
were on O'Reilly's servers andtheir sites.
Those are all gone now andnobody kind of grabbed them
(14:00):
before they were gone.
So for those missing keynotes,my material came from blog posts
of people who were there andkind of like writing their
thoughts and their takeaways.
And luckily there was enough inthe community that wanted to
talk about their experiences atRailsConf that I could
(14:22):
reconstruct enough of the sortof main ideas A few of the
speakers remembered enough andthey sent bullet points of what
they remembered they wantedtheir key points to come away
with, but nobody even had theirslides still.
It's all just kind of gone.
Speaker 1 (14:40):
Especially nowadays.
You just think if you give aconference talk, it goes up on
YouTube and that's it.
It's there forever.
At the time, I doubt anybodywas from the oldest one, or did
you have, like I want to do likeAaron's given what did you say?
16?
, 15 notes, 16.
Okay, did you watch all AaronPatterson at once or did you go
(15:14):
chronologically, I guess, is thequestion I'm trying to ask.
Speaker 2 (15:17):
I thought about that for a while before starting to
watch them.
Did I want to gochronologically?
Did I want to find themes?
Did I want to gochronologically?
Did I want to find themes?
Did I want to go with allthrough one person and kind of
see their arc more back to back?
But I think, as is my opinionwith rewatching an old TV show
(15:38):
or series of movies or something, release order is the proper
order to watch them in, becausethey're going to be in
conversation with each other ina way that you're not going to
get if you watch in timelinechronologically with the MCU or
something like that.
So I wanted to kind ofreconstruct the context of the
(15:59):
conversations going on at thoseconferences and at the time by
watching them as close to inorder as I could get, as far as
like within one conference.
But yeah, it was reallyinteresting to see sometimes
when there was an idea that youcould tell caught on from one
keynote and then got mentionedand talked about in the next one
(16:20):
, and seeing where peopledefinitely rewrote that little
section because they wanted torespond to something someone had
said a day or two before andthings like that.
So I went with chronologicallyand I think it was the right
choice after I had gone througha few years worth.
Speaker 1 (16:35):
And you've also seen a lot of keynotes yourself
because you've been in thecommunity a while.
Right when was your first?
Railsconf?
2016.
Okay, so, of the keynotes thatyou watched prior to that year,
do you have a favorite or onethat sticks out to you?
Speaker 2 (16:54):
It's tough because, like a favorite ice cream or
favorite movie or somethingdepending on like how I'm
feeling or what I'm thinkingabout that answer changes, but I
think one that had me thinkingabout it the most since I've
watched it was Gary Vanderberg'sI think it's 2011 talk that, as
far as I'm concerned, settledthe question of are developers
(17:18):
engineers or not, which I knowis not as hotly debated a topic
anymore.
I know is not as hotly debated atopic anymore, but it was for a
few years after I started mycareer in 2015.
And it's shocking because, asfar as I'm concerned, it was
settled in 2011 because thattalk was just really brilliant.
(17:38):
It broke down the comparisonbetween more quote-unquote
traditional engineering roleslike civil engineering and
chemical engineering and thingslike that, and why those are
seen as engineering and what issimilar to our work and also how
is the mindset of engineeringcarried forward into development
(18:01):
and actually set us back a lotand like what needs to be broken
down and kind of took another40, 50 years with xp and all of
these other things to reallybreak apart the kind of using
the wrong metaphor ofengineering and yet at the, I
(18:22):
still think it probably decidedthat yeah, we're engineers.
Engineers is a bigger conceptthan maybe we're stuffing it
into Interesting.
Speaker 1 (18:32):
Would you consider that a technical talk?
Obviously it's a keynote.
So when I say talk, I'mreferring to keynotes just as a
blanket.
But when you think of atechnical versus a non-technical
talk, would that be consideredto you a technical talk?
Speaker 2 (18:51):
It's borderline.
When you first were asking thatquestion I thought like, yeah,
absolutely.
But then I thought it's moreabout meta, about the work, but
it's not completely removed, inthat it's like human first and
then gets into the work.
It's like process first andthen it gets into the work.
(19:11):
So, yeah, yes, but there wasn'tany code on screen, that kind
of thing.
The thing that I kind of thinkabout technical talks is that as
soon as whatever they'retalking about is out of date,
then that talk is kind of out ofdate for a certain amount, and
that's sort of the thing that isthe maybe defining quality or,
(19:38):
nebulously, the kind of energyof like, well, this is a
technical talk versus anon-technical talk.
Is it going to stay with us andbe higher concept or kind of
broader, or is it about atechnique, technical?
Speaker 1 (19:55):
idea, technique, technical idea, armed with that
description of technical versusnon-technical from your now very
complete experience, probablythe most complete of anybody in
the community, are keynotes,mostly technical or
non-technical.
Speaker 2 (20:17):
Yeah, I think they're mostly non-technical because
people try to hit a broader idea, for better or for worse.
Sometimes I think that'sdetrimental because people try
to speak too broadly and don'treally say very much at all.
But certainly at the beginningof RailsConf there was tradition
(20:42):
of kind of introducing thenewest parts of Rails and like
what are the kind of technicalconcepts that are driving
forward this last year and maybethe next year coming up of
Rails development?
That we kind of moved away from, as I think a little bit the
framework got more stable.
There wasn't as manygroundbreaking things to talk
about each year, and then wealso expanded the horizons of
(21:05):
who we had come to speak with us.
There were people that weren'tjust Rails developers.
There were people that weren'tdevelopers at all and we learned
what we could from otherdisciplines and other points of
view and those just kind of bytheir very nature had to be less
technical because even if theywere technical people, their
(21:26):
technical content was not goingto be related to Rails keynotes.
Speaker 1 (21:34):
Is there a trend in keynoting similar to that where
we've gotten away from the hey,this is what's new in Rails
technical keynote and we'vebrought in more people who might
not be talking directly aboutRails?
Is there any trend similar tothat that you've seen in
(21:54):
keynotes that you hope keepsgoing at RubyConf or any
conference that does utilizekeynotes that you hope they take
that away of?
Speaker 2 (22:02):
like hey, it took RailsConf a while to get there,
but I really like this stylemaybe of conferences in general,
because the majority ofconferences I've attended have
been Ruby Central conferencesand so they have shared a
(22:24):
similar arc in kind of theirlearnings and the way that they
present topics.
So I'm not as aware of non-Rubyor Rails conferences what they
sort of look like.
But as far as RubyConf or whatwould I hope to see when I do go
(22:46):
to a conference that's not aRuby or Rails focused one is, I
would hope, is that continuationor that same idea of using the
keynote as horizons, broadeningopportunity, getting someone
(23:06):
that isn't part of the whatevercommunity or maybe isn't going
to talk about something veryspecific and kind of that energy
of the keynote.
It's a little bit of a catch-22in that you don't want to set
(23:26):
out to say something lofty,otherwise you're probably just
going to lose the thread andwander all over and not really
have a coherent presentation.
And wander all over and notreally have a coherent
presentation but at the sametime wanting it to not be so in
the weeds, really, because thatfeels like the quality that a
(23:47):
normal session would have right,like you're there to get in the
weeds about something thatmaybe like a blog post, is not
the right way to release thisinformation or to talk about
this thing and the keynote isn'tgoing to land with as many
people, if it's really specific,so that maybe a third of the
conference would want to go seethat session.
(24:09):
Right, you want to do somethingthat's going to be more
applicable to the wider group?
Yeah, so I think, kind offollowing that trend of like
having a broader or morewide-reaching topic, but still a
specific topic, rather thanjust come in here and do a
end-all, be-all TED Talk stylething that trips people up,
(24:33):
makes them kind of lose touch ofwhy they might have been
invited or elevated or whatever,to give a keynote talk, because
it's probably because you'realready saying or thinking about
something interesting that morepeople are going to want to
hear about.
Speaker 1 (24:46):
So you kind of mentioned it in that segment and
I know you talked a bit aboutit on the bike shed.
I keep referencing that episode, so sorry listeners, if you
haven't listened to it yet, justhit pause, go listen to that
episode, come back, we mightcover some of the same stuff.
But you talk a little bit, or afair amount, about not trying
(25:06):
to make the keynote thisimpactful thing, not setting out
to be like I'm going to saythis really powerful thing in my
keynote because I have thisfancy stage and this fancy slot,
because if you do that you mayend up not saying anything
important, etc.
How did you manage that ownthought that I need this keynote
(25:31):
to be good?
I want to say somethingmeaningful, not just talk about
every keynote that's everhappened.
But also, I can't set out toblow everyone's minds because of
every point you already made.
How did you manage that?
Speaker 2 (25:48):
It was a theme that I had to keep front of mind every
time that I started to, outsideof the content, come up with an
idea of something I wanted tosay.
So, from my own thoughts orfrom my own experience, or again
thinking about the opportunityof having that moment on stage,
(26:08):
I had to specifically tellmyself it's like no, that didn't
come from the project, itdidn't come from the content, so
put that aside.
If it ends up being usefulbecause it comes out of the
content, I can pick it up again,but I really had to concentrate
on what is the story coming outof the group of these talks?
(26:30):
What are the themes?
Are there things that Trying tonotice things that people were
bringing up again and againacross the years, and trying to
find the ways that I wasaffected or the things that I
was thinking about because ofwatching the keynotes, rather
than sort of a meta thing orsomething that I was bringing
(26:54):
from outside?
And eventually I got to thepoint where it's like okay, I've
been purposefully not thinkingabout anything.
What is the point of my talk?
And I started to think aboutthat until I had watched
Yudikatz's 2014 keynote, wherehe said something about Rails
(27:14):
and convention overconfiguration, being kind of
this culmination of sharedsolutions that can make us all
stronger together and make usall more powerful together than
if we were working alone.
And kind of refuting somedetractors that were saying that
shared solutions are just leakyabstractions.
(27:37):
And he said that we needed tofocus on the things that bring
us together instead of focusingon the things that drive us
apart.
And when he said that I pausedit.
I went back, I watched thatline a couple of times, I made
sure that I had it down verbatimbecause all of a sudden it had
kind of crystallized this ideaof Ruby on Rails for me, of
(28:00):
RailsConf, of what so manypeople had been and then would
later talk about, in this kindof chronological escapade of
keynotes that kept coming up.
That people would be sayingsomething about a technical
topic, but it would be aboutthese shared solutions, it would
be about coming together, itwould be about working stronger
(28:23):
together and all of thesedifferent things that were both
in technical content and innon-technical content, and it
just seemed like that was thetheme, that was the history, the
point of Rails and RailsConfand it just really struck me at
that moment.
I was like, well, there you go.
That's the through line.
That's what I am going to kindof put my own opinion to.
(28:46):
At the end of it, what was thepoint of all this is to
rediscover this idea that wasjust sort of latent and I felt
was already there, but I justnever had words or never had a
thought to elevate like that.
And so, yeah, it was that 2014talk that just struck me and I
knew that's where it was goingto be.
Speaker 1 (29:05):
That's such an interesting challenge to be able
to go into watching all ofthese keynotes and try to not
inject your own thoughts orfeelings into them and just take
them as they are so that youcan present them to others who
also weren't there, withoutbringing your own.
Here are my thoughts on thisperson's keynote.
(29:26):
It was not the goal.
The goal was this person talkedabout this and these impactful
things, but still make it yourkeynote yeah, it was concerted
effort.
Speaker 2 (29:35):
It was a concerted effort and it was also at some
level I knew going to beimpossible, because just by
choosing what I thought theirtakeaway was, I was imposing my
own editorial voice on it, andthe only way to not do that
would be to just hit, play andwatch all the keynotes together.
(29:56):
So it was a little bit of likeI'm going to do the best I can
while knowing that it'scompletely impossible to do 100%
.
Speaker 1 (30:04):
But the effort is there, which is not always the
case.
If someone's telling you,trying to tell you even facts
without injecting their ownopinion, the effort is
appreciated.
I want to talk so much moreabout this keynote because it
was full disclosure.
(30:25):
Aji spoiled the ending for me,asking for some practice and I
knew it was coming and it stillgot me.
I think it got most people andyou got a very well-deserved
standing ovation afterwards.
And if anybody listening tothis has not seen the videos are
now out, you need to see thekeynote.
It is a lot of work and it is aton of effort, as you just
(30:51):
explained, but should be clearto anybody, and especially after
watching it.
Oh, knowing the amount of workit took, knowing some of the
work it took that you weren'texpecting, knowing everything,
would you do it again, all overagain, from scratch?
Speaker 2 (31:13):
there were definitely times while I was working on it
that I was like why did I dothis to myself?
This is awful.
My talk writing technique isunsustainable in the first place
, the way that it just sort oftakes over my life.
But this was another 94 hoursof watching video on top of
needing to come up with anhour's worth of material.
(31:33):
It was a lot, but I would.
I love how it came out.
I love how it landed withpeople.
I love the way that people haveconnected with me since then.
The sense of being pulledfurther into the community that
I had that day after giving thattalk was just incredible.
(31:56):
I was saying the other day thatI had a different kind of
anxiety before giving the talk.
It wasn't the usual like arepeople going to like it?
Am I going to mess up?
That kind of presentingsomething live anxiety.
It was more an excitement.
I came down to the conferencearea from my hotel room and I
(32:19):
was thinking that I know it'sgood, I just can't wait to share
it with people, and it was adifferent kind of excitement and
nervousness than I'd ever hadbefore.
So yeah, I would absolutely doit.
I think I have been maybe alittle annoying in conversations
over the last few months beinglike.
You know.
There was a keynote where theysaid I'll take that too.
(32:41):
I'll be that person again, andI will be that person for months
, if not years still, I'm sure.
Speaker 1 (32:47):
Well, you do have a very unique knowledge set now
and, yeah, I mean, you earned itright.
That's a lot of hours of videowatching, that's a lot of hours
of collecting your thoughts, andyou did all of the
illustrations right, I did yeah.
Yeah, there was a lot of reallygood illustrations in it too.
(33:08):
So it is funny because, foranybody who doesn't know, I did
a keynote not a RailsConfkeynote, it was a RubyConf
keynote, barely and it was yourpartner's fault, it was Mina's
fault.
At least she was the one thattalked me into doing it.
Speaker 2 (33:27):
Oh, she fully takes credit for that, by the way.
Yeah, it's cool.
Speaker 1 (33:28):
So, because I keep saying it's Mina's fault, and my
keynote by your definition of agood keynote, was a terrible
keynote.
There was no point to it.
It was me going up on stage andmaking the creator of this
language.
I love laugh and just feelinggood about doing that kind of
nonsensical.
That was a lot of work, I feltlike, and then hearing the lot
(33:52):
of work you put in, that is adifferent level.
I don't know if I even havethat capability to put in that
many hours into something andthen put in that much time and
effort into making veryimpressive.
This is where Andrew Masonwould tell me to shut up because
I'm fanboying, but he would usemore harsh language.
Speaker 2 (34:15):
I think first of all you shouldn't sell your own
keynote short, that playfulnessand enjoying and fun is somehow
not a worthy theme and cause,especially amongst Rubyists.
Speaker 1 (34:32):
I think it's a great talk, or at least it's got to be
, because people keep asking meto do it.
It just felt weird to do it asa keynote.
It felt really weird to do itin front of everybody.
It wasn't a hey, go to thattalk or the game show or this
other talk, it was hey, ifyou're coming to the conference,
you're going to sit here andwatch this game show Felt
(34:53):
surreal.
Speaker 2 (34:55):
I don't know how this will change your opinion of
everything, but it was not thefirst Ruby game show to happen
as a keynote at RubyConf.
Speaker 1 (35:02):
No, I sort of found this out from trying to prepare
myself for your talk of likeseeing what some of the keynotes
were and what some of thetopics you were going to cover
are, and also a little bit of myown, like, hey, people have
done game shows in the past.
What did they do?
How did this land Stuff likethat?
(35:22):
So, yeah, it just felt weirdfor me to be doing it, I guess.
Speaker 2 (35:27):
This is a bit of a tangent, but it's kind of
related there, because I feellike you've talked about this in
conjunction with that wholeidea of you making fun of this
language and the creator issitting right there in front of
you watching you do that.
Is it true that you named yourdog?
Speaker 1 (35:44):
Mats.
Yes, Matsumoto is actually whatwe call him.
We call him Mats for short.
He's adorable.
He wore a red tuxedo at ourwedding because of course he did
, and we had gotten a girl doginstead.
It would have been Ruby.
I absolutely love Ruby For somany reasons.
Ruby changed my life.
(36:05):
To have the opportunity to namesomething I deeply care about
after something else I deeplycare about, that's what I was
going to do.
Speaker 2 (36:15):
I have kind of a similar experience that Amina
and I's first dog together.
We named Henson after JimHenson, who is an incredible
influence, and Jim Henson's workacross the Muppets and
everything else that he did andhis philosophy on life has been
so impactful to me and so wenamed our little Muppets.
And everything else that he didand his philosophy on life has
(36:36):
been so impactful to me and sowe named our little Muppet
Henson.
And much the same as youtelling Matt's that fact of you
having a named your dog afterhim.
I was lucky enough once to runinto Heather Henson at the
(36:57):
Orlando fringeinge and she sawon the poster for my show.
She was like, oh, is that yourdog?
Yeah, I was like yeah, it is.
And she said what's his name?
I was like Henson, he's namedafter your dad.
Speaker 1 (37:11):
So, yeah, when you told that story about your pup
and matt's being in the audience, I know how that feels you did
bring up something that I wantto at least touch on how do you
go from circus performer, circusentertainer, circus clown to a
(37:36):
rubius, to a developer orengineer, if you so choose?
Speaker 2 (37:41):
so, yeah, I ran away to join the circus.
I went to circus school in sanfrancisco.
There's a school there's acircus school.
Yeah, it's the san franciscoschool of circus arts, or the
circus center as it's known.
They have a clown programcalled the Clown Conservatory
that I did two years at and Igot a degree in experimental
(38:03):
theater with them.
And, yeah, now I work in tech.
Yeah, I changed careers becauseit didn't work out in comedy
for me for a myriad of reasons,one of which was the undiagnosed
adhd that I didn't really findout about until some pandemic
(38:27):
induced self-reflection that ledme to spread my interests and
things too thin to ever get tolike a circus level of skill in
a lot of different things.
I tried to make that what I did,that.
I was a collector of uselessskills.
I even had still out there thisdigital YouTube channel where I
(38:50):
tried to learn a useless skillevery week for a year and like
make a video about it.
That was unsustainable as well,but it didn't really work out.
It landed really well withpeople that it landed with, but
not enough to sustain a career.
We left the Bay Area.
Mina and I met on tour in thecircus with Ringling Brothers,
(39:11):
by the way and then.
So we lived in San Franciscoagain after that and we left
because we couldn't afford itbecause you can't live in the
Bay Area unless you're in tech.
And then you still kind ofcan't live in the Bay Area.
We moved to Chicago and theidea of just having to work the
network from the ground up itwasn't interesting, it wasn't
going to be like satisfying orfulfilling.
(39:32):
And so I started looking aroundand I found Dev Bootcamp
satisfying or fulfilling.
And so I started looking aroundand I found Dev Bootcamp and
I'd always been kind oftinkering more with my website
and other performers' websiteswhile being a performer, so I
thought, hey, maybe this issomething that I could do.
And then I found Ruby and Railsinstead of just HTML and CSS,
and it's like, oh, this is howthe internet happens, and just
(39:54):
kind of stuck.
Speaker 1 (39:56):
That's amazing.
It's so funny because I'mpretty sure you're the first
person I've met that can be likeI was a circus clown and now
I'm in tech, but at the sametime your story is so familiar.
So many people in this industryof like I used to do this and
then just took this fun littlehobby or interest I had and
turned it into this amazingcareer.
(40:17):
It's interesting to hear thatyou toured with Ringling
Brothers Circus, which is, Iimagine, a big deal.
I mean, it's a prettywell-known circus.
I imagine they don't just takeanybody.
And then to hear you also saythere's an anxiety when you give
a talk, when you get up onstage, you still have an anxiety
(40:38):
of being in front of peopleafter you were a clown more
maybe about like I want it to bereceived well and these
(40:59):
different things.
Speaker 2 (40:59):
So there is definitely a cheat code or
something that I can think like,as big as this audience gets,
it's never going to be the24,000 people at Boston's TD
Garden that I performed for, orsomething like that.
So whenever people ask how toget better at speaking and they
get to the point where it's likeokay, but I'm afraid of public
speaking, I'm like I wish Icould help you, but it's not a
(41:19):
shared experience.
I can help you with all thelike technique parts of it and
please, if there's anybody thatwants to get into speaking,
reach out to me.
I'm very happy to help.
I'm just not going to be ableto help with that part.
A lot of it is just you'd kindof just have to do it, but I'm
not going to be able to tap intothe same kind of emotions in
the same way that somebody elsewho has a similar experience
(41:40):
will be able to kind of help andshare those kind of trials and
tribulations.
Speaker 1 (41:45):
Dang, because I was hoping you were going to tell me
because I still I've done thegame show more times than I can
count with shoes on, I think, atthis point, and I still get
nervous every time I go up onstage like it's the first time
and I was kind of hoping you'dbe like well, here's how you get
over that.
But I guess not.
Speaker 2 (42:03):
The only thing that I think that has helped me when
I've needed it, and I think hashelped other folks, is to
remember that everybody therewants you to succeed.
Nobody is looking for you tofail.
They paid money to be there.
They want this to be good, aswants you to succeed.
Nobody is looking for you tofail.
They paid money to be there.
They want this to be good, asmuch as it might feel like it at
times.
Nobody is rooting for yourfailure.
That's all I got there.
Speaker 1 (42:22):
So the next question I would normally ask is what
kind of blockers do you have?
If you don't have a currentblocker, what is a recent
blocker you had?
And it can be about the Angularproject that you currently have
.
It can be about you kind oftouched on blocker-esque things
with the keynote.
But if there's like somethingspecific where you're like
actually, yeah, I hung up onthis thing, what's a blocker in
(42:45):
the life of Aji?
Speaker 2 (42:46):
To kind of keep going on the speaking train.
It is the application keynote,because, like I said, I went to
school for art and I studiedanimation and I have a lot of
opinions about how things shouldlook visually and I want that
(43:07):
to show up in my slides andpresentations.
And Keynote doesn't want to doall of the things I want to
happen, and so the number ofhoops that I have to jump
through trying to make somethinglook remotely the way that I
want, or the hacks that I haveto come up with to make this
(43:29):
program bend to my will, isridiculous, and just the sheer
number of clicks to do somethingsometimes, and the fact that
it's an apple made applicationand the apple scripting support
is terrible.
I could take away a couple ofthose clicks.
I know how to program, eventhough that's barely a
(43:51):
programming language.
That is always my biggestblocker and somehow I will put
myself through the hell of allof those hoops because I am
opinionated about how I wantthis thing to look and I think
it is worth it, and I have a lotof opinions about how animation
can help people understand aconcept, and so the more angles
(44:13):
I can take to help someoneunderstand a concept, I'm going
to take them and so I put in allof this extra work.
But I really wish there was abetter presentation software,
because I've tried a bunch ofthe other ones and they are
still not as powerful as Keynoteand Keynote is still incredibly
limited.
Powerful as Keynote and Keynoteis still incredibly limited, so
(44:35):
I don't know what it is.
I'm going to have to startusing After Effects or Final Cut
or something to make thesepresentations.
Speaker 1 (44:43):
Go full-blown Hollywood movie style.
Instead of slides, we're goingto hit.
Play on this movie now.
Speaker 2 (44:48):
That's my biggest blocker to getting one of these
things done.
That's my struggle.
Keynote is my struggle.
Speaker 1 (44:55):
I keep telling myself I'm going to learn Keynote one
day so that I stop with mycrappy markdown converted slides
.
But I'm like, but they work,they do the job.
And Keynote seems, feels,daunting.
Take it from someone who'sopened the application like
three times and been lost withinlike 10 minutes.
I know that in order to get theslides better, I'm going to
(45:17):
need to learn it.
My God, it seems so daunting.
I would rather just deal withcrappy slides.
Speaker 2 (45:24):
Yeah, and I think for the majority of slides and
talks and presentations, toomuch bells and whistles can
really detract.
There's like a bell curve,inverted bell curve.
There's a gulf in the middlewhere too much stuff is just
going to make it worse.
So it's either you need to keepit simple and stick to your
(45:47):
message or kill yourselfanimating 800 slides in a half
hour presentation or something.
Speaker 1 (45:57):
No, I'll keep it simple.
I appreciate you enabling meand my laziness with my slides.
The last question is what issomething cool, new or
interesting that you want toshare?
Could be you built.
It could be you read, it couldbe anything.
The floor is yours.
Speaker 2 (46:17):
I'm looking around my crazy workshop right now to try
and figure out the things thatI've been learning lately,
because I do a lot of differenthobbies and projects and I'm
always trying to learn somethingnew.
But I think right now my bigproject is I'm moving to
Scotland at the beginning ofNovember.
Project is I'm moving toScotland at the beginning of
(46:40):
November, and so a lot of whatI've learned about is the kind
of differences between theUnited States and the UK as far
as logistical things about likelanguage differences and all
these different things.
But what I've kind of learnedthe most is that so much about
living in the United Kingdom isabout England and I'm going to
(47:02):
be moving to Scotland and I knowthat those are two different
countries with differentcultures, and so I have learned
that there is not as much to belearned about my coming up new
home as I sort of expected thereto be with all of the
information there is aboutliving in the UK.
(47:23):
It's so much about England and Iknow that there is going to be
a sort of cliff where that stopsworking, and so I've gotten to
the point where I've learnedwhat the unknowns are, which I
think is an important step inlearning anything.
Right, because you can startlearning and you're like, oh, I
got this.
But then you get to a pointwhere you've actually learned
(47:45):
enough, where you know that youdon't know anything yet.
And I've gotten to that point.
And that's a frustrating point,but it's also an exciting point
, because that's where youactually kind of stretch and
grow and you get the most out ofit.
And so I'm there and I'm likeready to go into that next step,
but it has to kind of waituntil November and then we'll
(48:05):
see how it goes.
Speaker 1 (48:05):
I'm moving to which I like to camp and do a little
dabble in backpacking and I do aton of research before I go
anywhere.
I can't imagine movingsomewhere like your life moving,
(48:29):
not visiting, moving and notbeing able to find information.
Speaker 2 (48:31):
There's enough stuff about the things that you would
need to know to make the movestick, like laws and all of that
.
I just think that there's alittle bit of there's going to
be more culture shock than Isort of expect because you think
, moving to a different country,well, they speak the same
language.
There's enough of kind of likeroot culture similarities and I
(48:53):
know a lot about the differences.
I've been an anglophile all ofmy life and all of these
different things.
But I just know watching thesethat it's like, yeah, that's not
how I've felt in Scotland sofar, so something's not matching
up here and, yeah, just kind oflearning that vague feeling
(49:15):
that I can't put my hand onexactly why just yet.
But I know that this isn't thewhole picture and it's exciting,
it's daunting, it's all of thegood things about taking on a
new sort of challenge and a newjourney.
Speaker 1 (49:29):
Not that there's anything wrong with Scotland.
I'm not asking the why it'slike.
Why in the world would youchoose Scotland?
I just mean there's a lot ofplaces that you could move in
the world.
What drew you to scotland,edinburgh's?
Speaker 2 (49:41):
just the most gorgeous city.
So that's part of it for sure.
Like I said, I've been ananglophile my whole life.
My paternal grandmother wasborn in england and so just kind
of an interest and closeness toUnited Kingdom-y-ness has been
(50:01):
kind of near to my life in a lotof different ways.
Grew up watching Britishsitcoms and that sort of thing.
Mina, my wife, really needselevation in scenery and we
don't really get that in Chicagoin scenery and we don't really
(50:21):
get that in chicago but you doget that in a little bit in
edinburgh and definitely in thehighlands.
The landscape is just beautiful, the kind of closeness from the
city to nature.
A lot of like little reasonsthat kind of add up and
aggregate.
There's kind of feeling ofcloseness to like magic and myth
a little bit, in that it feelslike that's where the fairies
(50:41):
live.
And even though I've tried toexplain to Mina that fairies are
not actually very kind tohumans please do not go talk to
the fairies, bad things willhappen she's still very excited
about meeting fairies so youknow your fairy myth.
Speaker 1 (50:59):
Not many people know that that fairies are, for lack
of a better term, their decks.
Speaker 2 (51:03):
Yeah yeah, but yeah, just like lots of little things
the kind of quality of homenessis the only way I can describe
it that I felt living in sanfrancisco.
I felt walking around inEdinburgh and maybe it's a
little bit the sidewalkssometimes turn into stairs.
There's a quality in both ofthose places.
(51:25):
The weather is a little bit thesame.
It's kind of like temperate buta little coldish.
A lot of little things thatsort of add up to make it seem
kind of like a dream or afantasy and it's like, yeah, but
we're going to go make it real.
Speaker 1 (51:39):
It's such a cool way of describing it.
I'm not just moving, I'm goingon this like semi-permanent
adventure.
That's awesome.
Is there anything else that youwant to talk about before we
wrap this?
Speaker 2 (51:51):
up.
I don't know if this is for thepodcast or what, but you
mentioned when you were talkingat the podcast panel at
RailsConf that there was anepisode of Code in the Code
Encoders, that Code it.
That kind of stands out andmeans a lot to you where you
talked with your guest aboutADHD and tech and that whole
thing, and I would like therecommendation of which episode
(52:13):
that was, so that I can go backand listen to it.
Speaker 1 (52:16):
Sure, so definitely episode one, pretty much any
episode that I have Andrew Masonon.
We talk a little bit about itin episode one because he's my
first guest.
He kind of hijacked my ADHD alittle bit to make sure that the
episodes happened.
I said this at the podcastpanel, but I was struggling to
(52:37):
get that first episode recordedand I was just texting with him
and we have very similar ADHDsHis is a little worse than mine,
but very similar.
He just knew like, okay, we'lljust do it now While we're
talking about it, what's goingon?
But the episode that we did alot of ADHD talking about is
episode 18, which is from March7th of 2023, which is crazy to
(53:02):
say out loud.
So we do a bunch of ADHDchatting in both of those
episodes.
If I'm remembering correctly,18 is the one where we had a
full segment on working with ourADHDs and making sure not being
(53:23):
afraid to, which was alwayssomething for me.
I was very afraid to be likewell, I have ADHD, but how
important it is when you'reworking with others, especially
in a world like this.
I have ADHD can help otherpeople just understand our
workflows, understand why it's 2in the morning and we just
ripped out a ton of PRs and youdidn't get anything done for the
(53:44):
past three days and now it's 2in the morning on a Thursday.
What's going on?
Stuff like that where it canstill be hard to talk about a
little to a degree.
But I think, especially gettingto interact with so many other
devs and successful devs andvery intelligent people that are
like, yeah, I also have ADHDand here are the types of
(54:07):
struggles I have and I'm like Ihave those too.
This is not nearly as bad or asdamning as it was in my head
when it was first revealed to methat I had it from my doctor.
So good episodes to listen to.
Speaker 2 (54:20):
Good call out yeah it's that shared experience and
everything that I'm looking for,so I'm looking forward to it.
Speaker 1 (54:28):
Hopefully those episodes give it to you and the
next time you come on the showwe can talk about nothing but
ADHD, because I do think there'sa lot that I wish I knew when I
was first diagnosed andespecially when I first got into
this industry after beingdiagnosed which happened a few
years before I got into thisindustry so I'm always down to
(54:50):
talk about it and give otherpeople a resource, a place to
like learn about themselves in away.
You just haven't figured thisout yet.
It took us a while too, butwe'll tell you all about it.
So anybody who wants to followyou or learn more about you on
the internet, where can theyfind you?
Speaker 2 (55:09):
Yeah, I'm mostly these days on blueskydoodlingdev
, I think, because I finallylinked my domain to my account
there, so you can find me thereand I'm going to say this out
loud, so that I have to do it.
I'm going to start puttingshort, essentially like little
(55:30):
talks on a YouTube channel.
So if you want to hear what I'mthinking about as far as, like,
ruby and object-oriented codeand stuff, it'll be on YouTube
Doodling Dev.
Speaker 1 (55:39):
Awesome.
I'll put those in the shownotes so everyone can easily
find it.
What do they say on YouTube?
Smash the like and subscribebutton Gotta use the right word
Otherwise it doesn't work, and Ijust see Aaron Patterson in my
head every time.
I say that out loud.
Well, thank you so much forcoming on, aji, for talking
(56:00):
about the keynote, for thekeynote Again.
Listeners, if you've gottenthis far and you haven't hit
pause to go watch the video assoon as this episode is over.
Go watch it.
It's incredible.
We'll definitely have you onagain, because this was a blast.
Listeners, I will see you inthe next one.
Bye.
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