EW S07E07 Transcript
EPISODE 07

[INTRODUCTION]

[00:00:07] AH: Welcome to Elixir Wizards, a podcast brought to you by SmartLogic, a custom web and mobile development shop based in Baltimore. My name is Alex Housand, and I'll be your host. I'm joined by my co-host, Sundi Myint. Hey, Sundi. What’s up?

[00:00:19] SM: Hello.

[00:00:20] AH: As well as my producer, Bonnie Lander. This season's theme is Impact of Elixir. We're joined today by a very special guest, Brooklin Myers. Welcome to the podcast, Brooklin.

[00:00:30] BM: Hi. Thank you so much for having me.

[00:00:32] AH: It's great to have you here. You mentioned that you want to talk about Surface, but I also have a fun question for you before we – that came up today at work, and it's what word do you constantly misspell?

[00:00:45] BM: It used to be color for a long time, because I grew up as a kid putting in the U. Then I started programming it. Technically speaking, I always misspell color, because I spell it the wrong way in Canada. I don't know what the right way is anymore. It's a point of confusion. Also, I've been working on a feature with the word assessment, which has way too many S's. Oh, my God. Every time you ask yourself, is there two S's? The answer is always yes. Which is insane. Those are the two.

[00:01:14] AH: That's how I feel about questionnaire. Oh, yeah. The color one is interesting, because I feel like, you're technically also spelling it correctly, both ways, also.

[00:01:24] BM: This is the dilemma. This is –

[00:01:25] AH: Who’s right?

[00:01:26] BM: Exactly. I mean, I code, so I have to spell it with an O. But I'm Canadian, so I'm not representing my country. I've actually seen it spelt the Canadian way in a code base before, and I felt angry, and I don't know why. It was a conflict between national pride and like, this is wrong. You shouldn't do this.

[00:01:45] AH: I feel the same about behavior, with mocks, specifically, I can't spell it without the U now in my regular life. I am also in a conundrum as an American. 

[00:02:00] SM: I had a job where a committee was spelled wrong in a few places. It was spelled with three M's. It always really threw me off, because I would be looking for it. I'll be like, “Why can't I find the piece that I'm looking for?” Oh, it's in the area where it spelled wrong. Whatever. Spelling is hard, everybody. I don't believe you're talking to any spelling bee champions here, but I may be wrong. I don't know. Back to what we're supposed to be talking about, though, Brooklin. You are very passionate about surface. Can you tell us a little bit about where that passion comes from?

[00:02:30] BM: It comes from familiarity, honestly. I think that Elixir has been working on extending more branches to different communities. My background primarily is from JavaScript and React. When I jumped into Elixir, I was in love with pretty much everything. The only thing that I wasn't in love with was the templating language and writing what felt like, very raw HTML. Didn't have a lot of reusable components. That was really my background. Surface came in and said, “Hey, remember all of that cool stuff you're super used to, and have a bunch of patterns built up for? Here you go.” It just created this branch as someone who has that background to write code the way that I want to write code.

[00:03:13] SM: We have a note here that you're thinking about that as a bridge to the community. Is that something that you're thinking that Surface can bring to Elixir in the sense that increase Elixir adoption, or just make it easier for people? Okay, cool.

[00:03:27] BM: Exactly. I want to see more ways to bring people into Elixir. My whole thing is trying to help newbies adopt Elixir, either people who are new to the language, or who are new to programming in general. The more things we can do that make it feel familiar, like lots of people have talked about how Ruby and Ruby on Rails, there's tons of parallels, back and forth between Ruby and Elixir, so it makes it feel very comfortable. Adding this in, so that people were more comfortable with React, and more comfortable from that background can come into community, I think that's great.

[00:04:00] AH: Yeah. Going from one job that was Node and React, and then getting a next job that was in Elixir was definitely a big mind shift, even though I enjoyed it. There were no real good tools to help me along that journey, I guess. I don't know. Brooklin, how'd you find Elixir in general?

[00:04:19] BM: I fell in love with the readability. It felt very well-reasoned. It felt like a language that had put a lot of thought into it. Whereas, JavaScript, I don't think people feel that way necessarily. It feels ad hoc and all over the place, which, frankly, is something I love about JavaScript, too. I know it's very popular to hate on JavaScript, and to be fair, for good reason. I love JavaScript. It's what got me into programming in general. It's where my roots were. I love feeling like, hey, I can do whatever the heck I want, even if it's terrible. Whereas, Elixir is a bit more like, “Hey, here's maybe a good way of doing this.” It's a bit more restrictive, but it is restrictive in a good way.

As well as testing. That was really the big thing that drew me to Elixir was coming from JavaScript, coming from mobile development, testing was always a struggle. There's tons of different libraries to do it. You have to add it on to what you're doing. It's an afterthought, as opposed to built directly in, figuring out, how do you test something is just always painful. It literally took, I think, weeks on a previous project to set up an end-to-end testing system with React Native, with detox. Whereas with Elixir, it took me a day to figure out Wallaby. It was like, “Wow. Okay, this is cool. This is powerful.” These testing has been amazing.

[00:05:40] AH: Just the difference in time alone. Just couple weeks, just slogging away, just beating your head against the computer. We've all been there. It does stink.

[00:05:52] SM: Developer tooling is truly a powerful motivator for whether you want to do something or not. It's such a true story there. I'm also really curious. Were you just Googling best programming languages? Or programming languages that are not JavaScript? Or, I don't know. How did you find it?

[00:06:10] BM: I'm sure I've Googled good languages that are not JavaScript before. No, so I got into Elixir because a very good friend. This very good friend is actually the person who got me into programming. I knew how passionate and interested in Elixir they were. I always respected their opinions, and so it was something I really wanted to check out.

When I got an opportunity to actually work with it professionally, I was like, “All right. Got to jump on this, because I know how cool they've said it is. I really want to give it more of a shot.” The few spare moments that I could spend checking it out, it really looked cool. You really have to try something in a professional environment, before I think you've given it enough of a shot to know if it's actually something that you enjoy.

[00:06:57] SM: This person who got you into programming, was that in college? Or did you have another – were you in another field before?

[00:07:05] BM: I was working a terrible minimum wage job before I got into programming. I was selling computers. I was very lost in life. I just come out of high school, and was really desperate for some career path. I came from a household who had struggled with student loan debt. I was terrified. Beyond reason, terrified of getting myself into a bunch of debt for a career, that there's really no guarantee you're actually going to enjoy. You can take a four, or five, six-year program and end up saying, “Oh, I actually hate this. I don't want to do it. Now I'm thousands of dollars in debt.” I knew that whatever I was going to do, needed to be debt-free. I needed to be something that I could teach myself how to do. This friend who, I hope it's okay. I'm just going to say his name. Jonathan Stanton has been an absolute hero to me for my entire life. I have to share some appreciation for him.

[00:08:02] AH: We love a shout out.

[00:08:03] BM: He started by sending me a Udemy course, actually. It was this complete web developer course that I started going through. Started just getting interested in. I was a terrible employee selling computers. I would literally sneak away onto the computers to do either programming challenges, or preparing for Dungeons and Dragons. Then, I would work about 20% of the time that I was there. 80% of my time was that.

Completely fell in love with the process of, “Huh, I wonder if I can do that.” Then figuring it out in the code. I would literally, I remember lift my arms up, shouting for joy, just like, “Yes, I got that done.” That feedback cycle of identify a problem, figure out a problem. I just completely fell in love with. Yeah, eventually that led to deciding, “You know what? I can no longer keep practicing this in my spare hours. I'm not really making enough progress.” Decided to go through the Cord Core bootcamp route, which eventually, they became a college. I think, I'm allowed to say that I went to college. That's how I view it. I've been to college, everyone. Yeah. Then, that led to actually, getting a job with the same person who got me into programming. That has led to everything I've done since then.

[00:09:13] AH: That's such a lovely story. Do you think that passion of problem solving is what keeps you doing what you're doing today?

[00:09:22] BM: Yeah, absolutely. Pretty much everything I do, I start by asking the question like, “That might be fun. Maybe that would be fun.” Then just giving it a try. Continuously motivated by, there's a new – I'm very inspired by anime. I grew up watching those power animes and stuff, where it's the one character who's like, “I must get stronger.” To me, software has just been that process, but in real life. You constantly look at yourself and go, “Oh, man. There's a new challenge. It's so much more intimidating than anything I've faced before.” Then you figure it out. You're like, “Oh, my gosh.” Then you're reminded, “Oh, hey. The ocean’s a lot bigger than you think. There are bigger fish here.” You're just costly going through this process, if there's something, there's some new challenge, something harder, something on the horizon. Yeah, I've really fallen in love with that.

[00:10:13] SM: I think that for people who know you in the community, we can definitely say that your passion comes through the Internet. We feel it. To frame it for our audience, you have – on Twitter, you go through your review blog posts and talks, books, you make Twitter threads, tweet threads, how do we refer to this? Tweet-tweets. For people who maybe don't have time to go through something themselves, you do a really lovely summary of all of these amazing projects. That's just really cool. Then, you also have a podcast, Elixir Newbie. I just have to say, super excited for every time I see something from you, I really appreciate what you do there, because I definitely am not somebody who has a lot of time to go through things. I also was very excited, just going to slip this in here that today, you did a little summary of my talk. Thank you for that one.

[00:11:04] BM: It deserved it. That was such a cool talk.

[00:11:05] SM: Thanks. I had this little moment earlier, where I was like, “Okay, we're going to talk to Brooklin later.” Then I saw the tweet. I was like, “Oh, my gosh. Am I famous?” Oh, that was so cool. Thank you. Yeah, I want to hear about your podcast, too, Elixir Newbie. Can you tell us more about that?

[00:11:24] BM: Yeah. Elixir Newbie was started on a total whim. Pretty much everything I do is, like I said, just started with that thought of, “You know what? That might be fun.” Let's give that a shot. I'm very inspired by people like Kent C. Dodds, who talk about one, the power of learn by teaching. Pretty much everything I do is just saying, “Hey, I want to learn this. Okay, I've started to learn that. Why don't I summarize that and give it to other people?” The podcast has been a way of doing that. The Twitter summaries have been a way of doing that.

I view it as, we are all scaling this ginormous mountain that has no end. There is no top. There's certainly stops along the way. We can all look back and try to make the handholds more obvious as we're climbing. We started Elixir Newbie, as a way to summarize and share what I was learning, and try to help other people get into it and also document the experience of getting into Elixir. I am an Elixir newbie as well. I've only been doing this since last June, I think, is when I really started going hard on Elixir.

It's been this way to share that experience, share that process. It's led to meeting people who I would have never otherwise have gotten to interact with, and to be able to help them along their journeys and share my stumblings and where I go wrong, so that other people can go right, and where I go right, so that other people can follow. That's where it's come from.

[00:12:57] AH: At what point did you decide like, “I'm going to turn this idea. I want to have this community of Elixir Newbies. I want to help other people. I want them to help me.” At what point did you say, “I'm going to make this a podcast”?

[00:13:09] BM: That is a great question, because it's been a process of continuously reacting to what's happening and trying out new things. I literally for the very first episode of, well, I should say, the secret pilot episode that no one will ever see, because it's terrible. The secret pilot episode of Elixir Newbie was literally me turning on a microphone and talking into it for an hour, with no plan. No idea what I was going to say. Just, let's talk for an hour.

Then, I showed that to some friends and they gave helpful feedback. They're like, maybe don't talk about this completely unrelated stuff. You talked about tacos for an unreasonably long amount of time, which happens.

[00:13:50] SM: You actually talking about us? Because I think, we did that on an episode with the [inaudible 00:13:54] angel. We talked about tacos for the first 15 minutes.

[00:14:00] BM: Honestly, that was some weird mental connection stuff there. I really did not know that. I've been listening to Elixir Wizards. I love everything that you guys do. Like I said, I'm new to the community, so there's only so much that I've seen, that is wild.

[00:14:11] SM: Well, they came out today. On the day of recording, it came out today. No harm there.

[00:14:16] BM: [Inaudible 00:14:17] messaging right there. I don't know what’s going on. Yeah, I've completely lost my place, now that I'm thinking about tacos. I 100% forget what we were talking about.

[00:14:26] AH: We love a secret pilot episode. It's a fun time.

[00:14:30] BM: I'll maybe release that in 10 years to let people know like, “Hey, here's how bad your first thing is going to be. Most of what you do will not feel good. Just do it.” That's really been the whole thing is I just started recording. I kept continuously following the process of, okay, well, let's record it. Okay, find a program that does that. Okay, now I have this recording. Let's edit it. Okay, now it has less ums and ahs. All right, I need to figure out how to put this on a place. All right, put it on to Spotify. Then, I was engaged with people on Twitter and they're like, “Hey, I'd love to have it on all of these different platforms. All right, cool. I'll go and figure out how to do that and just continuously react to what's working and what's happening. There was never a grand vision. Everything I do is unplanned and ad hoc, and just in response to what works and what doesn't, and just been continuously following that.

[00:15:17] SM: I like this reminder, this idea that you show your mistakes, because a lot of the times when you recognize us now as content creators is what you're doing, essentially, with the podcast, and what we do, too. It's nice to remind people that yes, you make mistakes. Just because you're at the forefront of things, doesn't mean the thing that you said in the last episode, or your last blog post is concrete.

It reminds me of a comic I saw on Twitter, I think yesterday. It was two people staring at a UI. They were like, looks we made a poor decision with this. Then the person they're talking to says, “No, no, no. We made a good decision. The outcome was poor.” There were many unknowns, and we decided based on what we knew. Never judge a decision by its outcome. I was just like, this is a hug in comic format. I think, that's really what you were saying just now is just like, “I should release this in 10 years.” You can release it tomorrow. You wanted to embrace your failures. Or not even really your failures. Just your awkward first pilot episode.

[00:16:21] AH: Yeah. I mean, keep it if you want, but I'm just saying.

[00:16:23] BM: Now, you’re making me want to publish it. It is terrible. Hey, maybe that's useful for some people. The worst that –

[00:16:28] SM: For someone who wants to start a podcast.

[00:16:31] BM: Exactly. It is okay, to put something out and have it be bad. That's okay. The worst thing that's going to happen, at least this was what I was thinking in my mind putting it out, because I was terrified to hit that publish button for the very first time. The worst thing that's going to happen is people don't like it, and no one listens to it. It's not like a million people are going to listen to something that's terrible. That's okay. Just try it. See what happens and keep it going.

[00:16:56] SM: Yeah. That reminds me of the first time I ever pushed anything I’m proud of in my life. My tech lead, I was hovering over the enter button. My tech lead was like, “Sundi, you're not launching a rocket.” I said, “Oh, yeah. You're right.” Then I hit enter.

[00:17:11] AH: It is nerve-wracking, though.

[00:17:12] SM: Oh, yeah. Absolutely.

[00:17:13] AH: It's also something we talked a little bit about, I think, a few episodes last season about just learning to embrace your failures, and also, embracing the failures of those who might look up to you, who you might mentor. It was right about the time that the whole HBO email intern debacle happened. It's just a good reminder in general, that it's okay to fail.

[00:17:37] BM: I love that. I'm very inspired by a quote, which is, it's not your job to judge yourself. Other people will do that for you. You don't need to critically analyze everything that you can do. You can put things out and just – I love this story. I forget where I got it. It's probably from the book, Atomic Habit Change, which is taking it from another story. Everything is just stories and stories. It's the story of this teacher who was teaching pottery. She decides to attempt this experiment, where she takes her class and splits it into two. She says to one side of the class, “You're going to be marked on how good of a pot you can make. You only have to make one, but I'll grade it on its quality.” Then, the other side of the class, she says, “You will be graded on how many pots you make. Doesn't matter if they're terrible. Just make as many pots as you can.”

What winds up happening in the story is that the class, the side of the class that was just making as many pots as they could without even worrying about quality, not only made more pots, but actually wind up with a far better pot, by the end of it. Because naturally, as you go through, if you're just producing lots and lots and lots, you're going to improve and you're going to get better. You can also stop that perfectionist mentality that will just keep you second-guessing and keep you going, “Is this good enough? Is this good enough?” You'll just learn and you'll naturally get better, and then you'll produce something better. If you're ever struggling with perfectionism, that I find is a good thing to keep in the back of your mind is hey, this is a way to circumvent that perfectionist side that can come out sometimes.

[00:19:13] SM: I worked somewhere once where our tagline, or our motto was, don't let done be the enemy of shipped. We shipped often. It was usually fine.

[00:19:24] AH: Right. Also, fine, is fine. Everything will never be perfect. Also, a good thing to remember. Life is not perfect.

[00:19:34] SM: It's fun though, to hear about the way you think about learning and improving yourself, and improving upon the way you get information. Actually, once I started seeing your Twitter threads, once I started seeing them, I started taking notes this way. When I was running into a pair programming session, or if I was watching a video, I'm not very good at intaking the information. I've been working on how to improve my learning.

Taking notes in small blurbs like that is actually helpful. I just don't tweet them, because I'm not confident in them maybe, or maybe I want to make them pretty later. I usually just do it notion. I started actually capturing notes. Then, it makes it way easier to turn it into something else later. The recent blog post I just posted about filtering in Phoenix was that in the beginning. It was notes on filtering in Phoenix that I didn't really understand. Then, just little by little built up. I actually took maybe eight months to write that, but not because it took me eight months to write it, it's just that it was just my notes, notebook for a while.

[00:20:42] AH: How do both of you decide what blurbs to write? It could be really easy if you're watching some type of tutorial video to just keep typing, right? You're like, “I'm just going to stream of consciousness, write everything that I'm hearing.” What makes you go, “Ding. That's something I need to write down”?

[00:21:02] BM: The way that I go about it is when you're first intaking something, I'm writing down pretty much as much information as I pick up. You can't prejudge, is this going to be useful? You're just, as fast as your hands can move, taking it down. I'm not an expert on meta learning, or anything like that. The things that I do know, are that you want to recall information that's good for your understanding.

Ideally, you want to chunk information. That's why those Twitter summaries are so powerful for me is, it forces me to take an idea and fit it into a single tweet, and then make a number of those single tweets. It shouldn't read like a book. It should read a bunch of individual ideas that have meaning on their own. So often, it starts with that initial brainstorming phase of just putting everything onto the paper. Then once you have those notes, I'll look at it and go, “Okay, what here is an individual chunk?” This is where I've converted into a Twitter thread, and go through and just chunk it up into individual ideas.

What here can I remove? What's important, but is something that I don't think needs to be summarized as part of it? Obviously, when I'm summarizing a 40-minute talk in 10 tweets, I can't keep everything. It really forces you to be very critical about what is important here. What are other people going to care about? What will I care about in the long-term? Yeah. That's the process. I highly recommend, if you're considering it, Sundi, to try out making a tweet summary.

It was motivated by the same thing, actually, of not being able to absorb content. I would listen to cool podcasts, like this and others and, and then I would look back and be like, “What do I remember about that?” I just spent an hour listening to a podcast, and I remember one word. It was like, that's not enough. I decided to try the Twitter summary. I think, someone who was a hero to me retweeted the first one. That gave me the, “Oh, this is actually useful for other people. Not just me.” Then it continued from there. Now, I try to do it as much as I can.

[00:22:56] AH: That's fun. You do that for books, too, right? You're in the Elixir book club?

[00:23:01] BM: Yeah. I try to do it for just anything that I'm trying to absorb and learn. I have goldfish memory. I can't remember anything. I either put it in my giant collection of notes, or I lose it forever. Those are the two options.

[00:23:16] AH: Are you also face blind? 

[00:23:18] BM: Face blind, like I can't – What his face blind?

[00:23:20] AH: Face blindness is when you literally cannot remember people's faces. You might meet somebody a 100 times. They might be someone you work with. Then you went into them on the train and you're like, “I don't know who you are, by your face.” As soon as they tell you your name, you actually would remember them and everything associated. In the face. Yeah, it's interesting.

[00:23:41] BM: I have had that before. I have had that before in a very embarrassing way. Where someone walked up to me and I had known them for years, previously. Then, they told me their name. I went, “Oh. Oh, of course.” Yeah, absolutely. That happened before.

[00:23:59] AH: That's happened to me recently, but with people who I haven't seen in 18 years. They're like, “Alex. Hello. Oh, my God. How are you?” I'm standing there like, “Who are you?”

[00:24:12] BM: Do I know you?

[00:24:13] SM: That happens to me in the opposite. I have a really weirdly good memory with people, and every experience I've ever had with them. I definitely ran into an old co-worker on a train once. Didn't know he had faced blindness. I was like, “Hey, I heard you moved over to this neighborhood. How's the new job?” He was like, “Who are you?” That was real fun. Anyways, how do we get on this?

[00:24:36] AH: Goldfish brain.

[00:24:36] SM: Goldfish brain. Yeah.

[00:24:37] BM: I have one small story related to this, and then maybe we can pop off. Whenever I have one of these moments, I'm allowed to blame brain damage. I got a concussion in high school, and experienced retrograde amnesia. I have this experience, where I was working a service sales gig. I was an expeditor at a restaurant. This new hire walks in and I just greet her. I'm like, “Oh, hey. Hello. Nice to meet you. I'm Brooklin. We're going to be doing this stuff today.” She looks at me like I'm a crazy person. I'm like, “What's up?” She goes, “You trained me all of yesterday.”

I had spent a six-hour shift one-on-one with this person the entire day before. It just, “No, that doesn't exist. Have no idea what you're talking about.” Anytime I have one of those moments, it's that, concussion moment, whatever. Even though there's no way it still is anymore, but –

[00:25:27] SM: It's a fun one.

[00:25:29] AH: You don't know that. Maybe it is. I'm wondering if goldfish have face blindness now. Do goldfish not recognize other goldfish? That's a different podcast in a different day, I think.

[00:25:38] SM: Yeah. Back to a book club, maybe. I was going to ask like, where do you find the time? You're in book club, you have your podcast, you are tweeting these great Twitter threads with small chunks of information. How do you do it? Do you sleep?

[00:25:55] BM: No.

[00:25:57] SM: Excellent. We found the answer, everyone.

[00:26:00] BM: No. I find that having times for things. Having regular intervals and scheduling does help me a lot. Knowing that Monday, I do this. Tuesday, I do that, and just having these repeated times. As well as, like I said, that focus on whatever you make doesn't have to be perfect. Just get it done. It's okay. Sometimes, something that I put out and go, “Oh, this is total crap.” People actually like it. It's like, “Oh, okay.” I just put that out, because I knew that I had to do that today. I even do this with social things, which maybe is going a bit far. Every Wednesday, I hang out with my dad. If I'm remote, we'll play video games, or whatever. If I'm here, then we will hang out and spend time.

I've been getting him into Full Metal Alchemist, which I finally got my dad into anime. I'm really happy about that. Yeah, so just having times for things, having blocks. Recently, I have been – I've been meaning to talk about this on the podcast. Actually, I have been feeling a little bit burnt out, so wanting to take a step back. There's moments where you go hard, and then moments where maybe you dial it back for your mental health. Yeah. That's where I've been coming from.

[00:27:05] AH: Very important to recognize the signs that you need a break. Yeah.

[00:27:11] SM: I definitely also have the drive to do everything. I love hanging out with people, doing everything, reading every book. I have four books open right now. I really had to figure out what was important to me and try things out. I decided to go back to figure skating. It’s a sport I did my whole life. When I decided to go back, I was like, “Something has to go.” I really had to evaluate everything I was doing.

Unfortunately, something I had been volunteering with for a very long time, I decided I wasn't getting as much value from it anymore. I decided to take a step back. That sucks, but I am getting something else from it in a different space. It's nice to switch from tech to sport. Sometimes, it's just a different headspace. I know Alex has a bunch of crazy hobbies, too, that it must be nice to do those, and get out of that space and do that. Yeah.

[00:28:05] AH: It's a good mental switch, I would say, speaking of mental switches. I don't know what our code word is going to be to make sure you stop, but –

[00:28:17] BM: Finally.

[00:28:18] AH: I believe, I think it was on your Twitter, or maybe your LinkedIn. I'm not sure. You said you love programming as much as you love Dungeons and Dragons.

[00:28:27] BM: Yes.

[00:28:28] AH: When did you start playing Dungeons and Dragons? Then what's your role? Is that right? I’ve never played.

[00:28:33] BM: Totally. Well, maybe is it useful for me to just quick blurb, here's what Dungeons and Dragons is. Dungeons and Dragons is difficult to explain, because it's like nothing that exists. There's no, oh, it's like a video game. No, it’s not. Well, it's like a board game. No, it's not. The way that I try to describe it is it is a role-playing game, where you are playing some role, so the player is like a warrior, or a mage, or a warlock, or something cool like that. You are experiencing that character.

It's the coolest improv game you'll ever play. There's one person who is the Dungeon Master, the Game Master, depending on what you're playing. There's different ways of calling it, but they're the referee to the world. They describe the scenery, the events that happen. They play all of the NPCs, so non-playable characters, just anything that you're experiencing in the world that isn't the people who are the players.

I usually play the Dungeon Master, and I got into it in about, I want to say, 2015-ish, because I was doing it when I was working at that computer sales job. I would sneak in and write all my prep for the games and build the worlds. I got into it because of this awesome podcast, The Adventure Zone. As these brothers who play Dungeons and Dragons with their dad, and it's so funny, I would literally be listening to it in the side of the street, and just burst out laughing in front of a bunch of people. Just have that like, “No, no. It's funny. I swear I'm not a lunatic just laughing on the side of the street.”

It sounded like such a good time that I had to get. They have these starter kits for Dungeons and Dragons. When I started, it was Lost Mines of Phandelver. I think, they have a new one out now. That's probably a better way to get into Dungeons and Dragons, if you're hoping to, and I started by just getting a few my friends, running a game and absolutely loving it. It was like, whenever you start anything. It wasn't great for my first time, but it was a lot of fun. I think, it carries over to a lot of things. It's a weirdly reusable skill, being able to improv and make jokes and pretend to be a wizard.

[00:30:32] AH: Improv is a great skill. Yeah, I took one that semester of improv, but I had to learn improv in high school and drama class. That takes you far.

[00:30:42] SM: You also said something about being a wizard before we started recording. I just want to rehash that. Can you repeat what you say?

[00:30:49] BM: Yeah. When I was young, I used to read all these different wizard books. I loved fantasy. There was actually this specific book that was like, How to Be a Wizard. It had these little examples of spells that you could cast. I had little Phoenix feathers and things that in it. It was just like, I love this. I was like, “I want to be a wizard.” The day that I learned that I would never be able to cast fireball, I was livid. I was so upset. I was like, “I wanted magic.”

Discovering programming for me, was the closest thing in the real world that I could do to magic. You have this magical arcane language. You have these incantations that will go and do things. Yeah. I wanted to be a wizard, so I became a programmer.

[00:31:34] SM: Programming sounds so much more fun with this on it.

[00:31:39] AH: Man, I relate to that so much. I had a friend, when I was young. I think, I was maybe 10. Her older sister made us – it was so intricate. She dyed paper and tea and sent us fake Hogwarts acceptance letters. I was so mad. I was like, “I know Hogwarts. Is it real? I know I will never be magical, and I would like to be.” This is not okay. You’re pulling at my heartstrings.

[00:32:03] BM: Where’s my owl?

[00:32:04] SM: Don’t you still have that letter?

[00:32:07] AH: No. That was from a weird job thing. No. The letter that I was given when I was 10 is probably in a box in my house at home, somewhere.

[00:32:18] SM: I'm referencing a Hogwarts letter that I'm remembering Alex having on her desk at some point.

[00:32:23] AH: That was fun. I was the judge of the holiday decorating contest in the office above ours, which I think was Greenpeace. Each pod, decorated their pod and they put on little skits for the holidays. They were all around the theme. The theme, the year I judged was movies. I think, it was the accounting pod. They always went all hardcore. They had totally transformed their office into Hogwarts. It was great. They gave us little letters. I think, they had jelo shots, like per the colors of the houses.

[00:33:01] SM: Very on brand. Love it. Yeah, I think I was talking about ElixirConf. Amos and I were hosting. Amos, me and Sigu, we’re hosting the Lightning Talks. Before Sigu joined us, I had told Amos, “I will host Lightning Talks with you, but only if someone announces us as a wizard and an outlaw walk into a room.” That is what I wanted. That is all I wanted. Then when Sigu joined us, I was like “All right, let's punt it. We can use it later.” We never did. Even at the bars. We should have used it at the bar. Wizard and outlaw walk into a bar. Anyways, shout out to Amos. We love him.

[00:33:37] BM: I love that guy. He's wonderful. It is my dream to perform a talk, wearing a full wizard costume, specifically. Once I do that, I'm good. I can retire. That's my shining moment.

[00:33:52] SM: Programming is magic talk for kids. Yeah, who are thinking about programming.

[00:33:57] AH: Absolutely.

[00:33:58] BM: I love that. It's a great idea.

[00:34:00] SM: Yeah. I did a history of emojis talk for middle school, aged 11 to 12-year-olds, I think. It was wonderful. You know what was really great about that, was I actually had done that for adults and meetup, but I did not change – I did not change my presentation one inch., and they got it. It was great. They absorbed the information. If you're going to deliver that talk in a wizard costume, please, please do it. Record it, so the whole world can see it.

[00:34:28] BM: It’s going to happen. Now that it's been said, it has to happen.

[00:34:30] SM: Absolutely.

[00:34:31] AH: We will manifest it into existence. Brooklin, do you think somebody who doesn't like board games would like Dungeons and Dragons?

[00:34:41] BM: Yes. I have specifically gotten someone into Dungeons and Dragons, who said that they were going to hate it, who doesn't like playing games. The idea of spontaneous improv was just not something that they were down for, and they got into it. Were fantastic with the improv. Had a wonderful time and experience. You need the right DM. I think, Dungeons and Dragons is a game that really, if you have someone who makes it a good experience, it'll be good. If it's not a good experience, it won't be good. Yes, I think everyone should try Dungeons and Dragons. If it's not for you, fine. Like many things in life, you should just give it a shot, and see if it's something that you enjoy. Because if you do, it opens up worlds.

[00:35:22] AH: It's just like trying vegetables as a kid.

[00:35:24] SM: Just got to try it before you know.

[00:35:26] BM: Well, that one, I'm still not down for it, to be honest.

[00:35:30] SM: No. Okay, so rapid change. Just because I really want to give us the time to talk about this, because I know you'll have some really interesting insight here. This season, we're talking about the impact of Elixir. Because you've had a really interesting path, a really interesting story here. Elixir meant a lot to you. I'm wondering, what has the impact of Elixir been on you? Have you seen impact from your podcast, and various tweet threads on the community also? Let's start there, because there's a lot to unpack here.

[00:36:02] BM: Absolutely. It's a huge topic. The community in Elixir has been so profound to me. I think, it's this very special thing, where, because it's not the default path, it's not what you would just fall into for most people, a lot of people decide to be into it, because of their interest, their passion for technology. They're usually motivated. Of course, that's not everyone's story and that's okay. It draws people who are just very naturally supportive.

I think, one of my first experiences in the Elixir community was actually, with you, Sundi. It was with you and Jeffrey Mathias at that meetup. You guys were just so supportive. I would ask my questions, and took the time to answer. That was just this like, “Whoa, this is cool. I really love what's going on here.” To me, it has been very special being able to interact with people in the community, getting to talk about technology, who have helped me ramp onto it. I still have lots to learn. I'm really excited, too, because people have made that just such a fun experience. For me, the community around Elixir has been very special.

[00:37:07] SM: That's so exciting. I remember that meetup and thinking like, “Yeah, you're here. You're new to the meetup, and you were asking really good questions.” Then I followed you after that. Then, I saw all of your great content after, and I just assumed I hadn't seen it before, because I hadn’t followed you before. Did not put together that there was a correlation. That's super cool.

[00:37:25] BM: Yeah, a 100%. I don't think I was even writing. I was writing, but I wasn't doing many of the things that I'm doing now, I was not doing when I first met you. Yeah, that was a huge inspiration. Jeffrey has been another person who I'm just very, very grateful for, and has helped me onboard. Has been unbelievably supportive. 

[00:37:42] AH: Jeffrey is great. Also, shout out to Jeffrey for having a treadmill desk, which I believe we talked about before we started recording.

[00:37:50] SM: Yes. I have the same treadmill, or the one that he wants that everyone at community uses. He recommended it to me and I was like, “Bought. Purchased.”

[00:38:00] AH: Fancy. Very fancy. Brooklin, what do you feel – I feel like, you have a very particular personal impact from Elixir. That sentence was wrong, but you know what I mean. How do you feel your programming abilities have been impacted by Elixir? We've talked in a couple of recordings about how we feel we write code differently, maybe better. It's subjective, but how do you feel about that?

[00:38:32] BM: Absolutely. I was always somewhat inspired by functional programming without even knowing it. Because a lot of the people I knew who were getting into JavaScript already had that background. When I transitioned to Elixir, it was like, “Oh, this is a language that is just built for the stuff we're already trying to do.” It enables that, and it lets you write very, very concise, readable, powerful code. For me, it has enabled me to write code the way that I want to. It's also enabled me to think about things that I normally, honestly, wouldn't consider. I'd like thinking about code as magic. I like having little spells that I can cast, of course. Elixir is extremely explicit. It lets you figure out, how do all these little details work? If you want to dive into it, you can.

Thinking about being as explicit as possible has been huge. Thinking about processes as well. I honestly programmed for a year and a half professionally, two years before I was even familiar with the word process. In my day job, it just wasn't something that came up a lot. Elixir, I think, does this fantastic job of not forcing you to think about it and know too much all at once and overwhelm you with information, but it does expose those details. If you want to think about processes, you can work with them very directly with gen servers, and being able to, for example, you can write very happy path code of Elixir using with statements and handling just, here's how things should work. I will put in error handling later. Being able to just follow your path and knowing that you're going to come in and handle that. Hopefully, that answered the question.

[00:40:12] AH: Yeah, I think so. Do you feel like, Elixir has had an impact on the programming community at large?

[00:40:18] BM: I think so. I don't know if I'm the right person yet to answer that question, because I am so fresh, and so new. I don't necessarily have that. Yes, I've been watching the community for 10 years, and I've seen how it's evolved. I do think that it's opening up different ways of thinking about code. Weirdly enough, I feel like, Elixir actually captures what object-oriented programming was supposed to be this idea of sending messages and having different things communicate with each other.

Elixir is object-oriented in a weird way, in the way that is good. I know, maybe that's a contentious statement, but it is functional, but it is not strictly functional. It allows you to do things and think about things as boxes and sticks, and being able to connect things together and have all your message sending. I think, it's bringing people back to what object-oriented was supposed to be.

[00:41:09] SM: If you could give, one or two things that you feel like Elixir maybe could improve on, because nothing – things grow, or things will only grow if you give feedback on it, right? Things stagnate if you just say it's perfect. What are some things that you could say that Elixir could do better for better adoption, or more usage?

[00:41:30] BM: I think that right now, Elixir as I understand the background of it, came from a bunch of incredibly smart people trying to do something very specific. It got this marketing as a niche language, as for – There's this weird thing where functional programming is only for intelligent programmers. It's like, why? Why does functional programming – Why do people think it's harder than object?

I would love to see more resources given to, and this is where I'm trying to target. That was how I diagnosed the community when I first saw it was, a lot of the resources are built with this expectation that you already understand programming, that you already have a background in something else, and you're coming to Elixir from a different background already. You're not necessarily jumping into it for the first time.

The way of thinking about that, that I like to describe it as is, you hack your way through this thick jungle and all these different weeds. It's this horrible path at the very beginning. Then you find out that there's this paved concrete road that everyone has been using. You're like, “Why was this pave concrete road not extended to the start? Why did I have to hack my way through the jungle to get here?” People are working on these resources. I think it's getting there. You guys are probably familiar with that Stack Overflow survey that came out. Elixir developers are more highly paid than other developers on average. They had a very high salary. To me, while it's exciting, I think it indicates that we don't have many juniors. We need to figure out how to open up that area of the community, so that people who are brand new can start getting involved. That's where Elixir Newbie came from.

[00:43:07] SM: Yeah. Before we got started, Alex asked me about my hot takes with the community. I was like, “Ooh, we can't talk about it. We can't talk about it.” But you basically, just touched on it. It’s just that, we really – if we want the language to grow, we need to incorporate more juniors. Just in general, we're looking for new folks to join our team. Consider not just Elixir developers, but developers from other languages. Not just Ruby. Not just Rails. Everywhere. You can from JavaScript. It doesn't mean, it doesn't indicate anything. I also came from JavaScript before working in Elixir. Alex, you too. I know you had some other familiarities.

[00:43:44] AH: I did some JavaScript. I did some C sharp. That's about it.

[00:43:50] SM: All over. All over the place. Still.

[00:43:53] AH: Yeah, a variety of experiences, I should say. Yeah. I think, what you said really resonated with me, Brooklin, and I know what resonates with Sundi, because I mean, she's written a blog post about this. My first job in Elixir, was truly just a – you seem like a good developer. We think you have the skills to learn this language, you're hired. Great. Which does not always happen. I think, it's probably way more rare than we would like to think. Also, my first programming job was truly just like, you are fresh out of college. You probably know next to nothing, because what you learned in college really is not going to prepare you much for what you're going to do in your day job, but you seem like you're capable. They took a chance and they hired me.

I'm not sure how much that happens anymore. In that way, it was a small company right to – I'm not talking necessarily about the two-year program at big company that then maybe hires you on. I’m not saying those are not valuable, because I think they are. I also think, we need to be catering to everybody's comfort level with company sizes and what you're going to be doing.

[00:45:07] BM: Yeah, I completely agree. Coming back from that perspective, too, I got lucky. I'm not going to pretend that oh, I bootstrapped and I worked hard. It's like, yeah, okay. I rode the wave of luck to get into this industry. A 100%. I got lucky, knowing someone. I got lucky that they offered me my first gig. One of the negative feedback loops that I see in the programming industry, not necessarily exclusive to Elixir, is that a lot of companies want to develop senior-only teams. The problem is, if you don't create that initial ladder, that first rung of the ladder for people to latch on, and to get into the industry, you won't have any seniors.

I think, you're actually starting to see that. You're seeing that feedback loop take place, because everyone's different for seniors. There's this massive hiring crunch. If you don't train people to become seniors, well, you don't have any seniors. That's one thing I would love to see Elixir putting more resources into is figuring out how do we get new people in? Because that's the only way to keep the ecosystem stable.

[00:46:04] AH: Yeah. Have you gotten a lot of some really inspiring, positive feedback from people who are in the Elixir Newbie community that really inspire you, even days you're feeling burnt out, or you're like, “Yes. This is what I want”?

[00:46:17] BM: 100%. Shout out to Matthew Baker, who reached out randomly on LinkedIn some time. Was also on Elixir Newbie, talked about how the podcast that helped him. Him and I have become friends. I've had him on the podcast. Right now, I'm trying to help him get his first Elixir gig. That's where a lot of my effort is going right now is figuring out well, how do I help people onboard into Elixir? Been doing some side project experiments to figure out how to get more information there. Yeah, he keeps me going. These made this whole thing very worth it. Thank you to him.

[00:46:51] AH: Shout out, Matthew. That's great.

[00:46:53] BM: Yeah, he's wonderful. He's a super wonderful human being. I don't have time to list through all the people I love. There's been a lot of love and gratitude getting into this industry. For all those people, yeah, they've continued support and have helped out so much. A huge thank you. If I'm allowed to give one more shout out, I have to, Gilly Doyle. She has nothing to do with Elixir. She is just my rock, my whenever I am stressed out, or burnt out, she has just been the person who keeps me going, keeps me healthy, makes me go outside.

[00:47:22] AH: Makes you eat vegetables.

[00:47:25] BM: Yeah, everyone needs a good friend. Yeah, everyone needs a good friend.

[00:47:30] AH: Yeah. Everybody needs a good friend who checks in on you to say, “Hello.” That was really great, Brooklin.

[00:47:35] BM: [Inaudible 00:47:35] a lot of McDonald’s coming from your apartment. Are you okay? I haven’t seen the world in three days. What’s going on?

[00:47:41] AH: Have you showered today? I mean, not every day. We won't get into that. That was great, Brooklin. It was like, your academy award speech. I would like to thank the academy. I really liked it. It was really great.

[00:47:59] BM: A lot of love and gratitude, honestly. It's a lot of gratitude. I've reached a point in my career where I'm –

[00:48:04] AH: It’s the best place to be coming from. Love and gratitude.

[00:48:07] SM: Are you thinking about now that you've met a ton of people in the community, are you hoping once things open up a little more, to get to one of the Elixir conferences?

[00:48:15] BM: So badly. So badly. I want to eat pop tarts with Amos. So bad. Oh, my God. All of you people. Everyone in the community has been just so lovely. Getting to see more than just a face on the screen, I would love.

[00:48:31] SM: What's your favorite pop tart flavor? You have different ones in Canada?

[00:48:35] AH: Oh, my God.

[00:48:37] BM: I don't know. I don’t know if we have different ones in Canada.

[00:48:39] SM: Just name a few.

[00:48:41] BM: You know what? I'm not picky. Give me a pop tart and shove it in my mouth and I am stoked.

[00:48:44] AH: You want it toasted?

[00:48:45] BM: See, there’s the thing is when I first heard Amos talking about this, I was like, “There are other ways to make pop tarts?” I was like, “Oh, my God. I need to learn.”

[00:48:52] SM: This was their pop tartar episode of Elixir Outlaws, where I was like, “Did they just name an episode Pop Tartar?” Excuse me.

[00:49:02] BM: Yeah. I need to learn the masters.

[00:49:05] SM: Yes. It's fun getting to experience new food with people and chatting over food. I think, that's the best way to bond. Then certainly, attending talks together and running lightning talks together and seeing what people create. I mean, seriously, the lightning talks at ElixirConf this year, I was just like, “Did some of you really just run up there and talked about pasta? Because, oh. my gosh. Yes. Also, oh, my gosh. I'm hungry.”

[00:49:30] BM: That was the very first talk I saw when I popped onto the online conference. I was like, “Am I in the right place?”

[00:49:35] AH: Where I am?

[00:49:35] BL: Am I actually signed up to a pasta conference?

[00:49:38] AH: That's a conference I'll go to, any day. Let's go.

[00:49:42] BM: All you can eat and conference are words that really need to go together.

[00:49:47] AH: Yeah. Okay, so before I ask you the final set of things. What's your favorite type of pasta? Not the preparation, so not spaghetti bolognese, but the actual pasta shape. Mine is penne. I like a short pasta.

[00:50:02] SM: I also like the short pastas.

[00:50:04] BM: Well, typically, if I'm making it myself, I'm a gnocci guy. I love that gnocci.

[00:50:08] AH: You home-make it?

[00:50:09] BM: I buy it out of a bag. That's cooking to me, is I buy it out of a bag and I eat it. There's this one place in Burnaby area, which is a side off of Vancouver. It's called Anton’s. It is the most amazing pasta place. They're known for these giant portions that's just a plate covered with as much pasta as possible. I love the tortellini there. If you eat it all, you win a pen. That to me is a personal challenge. That's truly my favorite pasta of all time is that, whatever it is, white sauce tortellini.

[00:50:40] AH: Is it a pen for writing, or a pen you put on your shirt?

[00:50:44] BM: Pen for writing, and on specific branded pen.

[00:50:47] AH: I love that that is the prize. They were like, “Listen, we got to go minimal here. We can't give people lifetime supply of pasta. That's going to be too much. A pen.” I love that. Do you get your picture on a wall?

[00:51:04] BM: I don't think they do the picture on the wall. Maybe I should just sneak in there one day and put my picture on there. It's like, start it and then see if it picks up. Like, “Oh, hey. I didn't realize we'd started putting pictures on the wall. All right. All right.”

[00:51:15] AH: Also, you come back a little bit later and you bring them a little Instax, like Polaroid camera. They're like, “When did we get this camera?”

[00:51:25] BM: This was left at my table. It has your name on it. Says, “Please, use to take photos of –”

[00:51:34] AH: Don't know where it came from.

[00:51:36] SM: I can't say that, I think we've established that the Elixir community likes food. This is something we all really have in common. That sounds like a no brainer, but I definitely have friends who are just like, “Eh, I'll eat it.” Then like, why are you like this?

[00:51:54] BM: I have a friend who only eats double bacon cheeseburgers whenever he goes out. That's it. It's the only food item. I love him to death, but I don't think he's human.

[00:52:02] AH: Yeah, I have a chicken tender friend. Same deal.

[00:52:05] SM: Alex is shaking her head so hard.

[00:52:07] BM: Amazing, like another word for friend that we can use, because that just doesn't fit.

[00:52:10] AH: There's so much more to life. Get the burger that has a whole onion ring on it or something. Or one that's got a different type of cheese. Live a Little.

[00:52:23] BM: It does sometimes backfire. I love openness to trying things, but I think I had – I don't know if I'm allowed to say brand names, or if that's a problem, but I had a quesadilla burger from the restaurant with a redheaded girl as the logo. Do you guys have that? I'm assuming that's big in the states, but I'm assuming.

[00:52:38] AH: It rhymes with Mendy? Mendy’s?

[00:52:41] BM: Yeah, exactly. It's probably fine to just say it, but it's funny.

[00:52:44] SM: It's way funnier. We can totally say it, but it's way funnier.

[00:52:48] BM: Way funnier to try to skirt it. It was a quesadilla of cheese nacho burger. I was starving. We were going to a movie, and I was like, “I need to eat something.” Then I see it and I see the words ‘limited time’, which is my kryptonite. I'm like, “Okay, it looks terrible, but I have to get this.” Despite being on the edge of starvation, I couldn't. I don't like throwing away food. That is a sin to me. I just couldn't. I forced myself through four bites. I was like, “This is awful. This makes me unhappy that food exists and that's terrible.”

[00:53:23] AH: Oh, that is sad.

[00:53:25] SM: Oh no. We got to flip it around to a happier note, Alex. Take us away.

[00:53:28] AH: That is sad.

[00:53:28] BM: That’s the [inaudible 00:53:28] on that.

[00:53:29] SM: On a happier note, I would like to give a shout out to something that has gotten me through quarantine, which is the Eat the Menu Series by former BuzzFeed employee Keith Habersberger. He goes to a restaurant and eats everything on the menu. He only has to take one bite of everything, but he eats everything. He has one where he's like, in the back of a van, and he eats everything at Wendy's. Great. The best one personally, is the one where he goes to a place that rhymes with Golive Arden. It's just so funny.

[00:54:05] AH: I'm reeling a little bit that you're telling me The Try Guys is no longer at BuzzFeed. All right, let's move on.

[00:54:09] SM: A different topic. 

[00:54:10] AH: A different topic. Whatever, say lovey. Brooklin, do you have any final plugs, asks? Where can people find you on social media? Where can people find your podcast?

[00:54:20] BM: 100%. Yeah. If you want to, I'm always open to chatting on Twitter. I'm @BrooklinJMyers. If you DM me, I will respond. I'm always happy to message out. No promises on time sometimes. As long as you're not rude, I will engage with you and do my best to help. Also, creating the elixirnewbie.com website. www.elixirnewbie.com. We’ll have the podcast and the blog. I'm hoping to also put learning resources on there, time permitting. That's something I'm hoping to put on there. By the time you see it, it might just be the podcast and the blog.

Yeah. I've already thanked them, but Jonathan Stanson. Thank you so much for giving me that career, for helping me out of the dark place that I was. You're a beautiful human being. Thank you.

[00:55:00] AH: Shout out to Jonathan. Also, another great reminder, be nice to people on social media. Be nice, not rude. Put it on a t-shirt. Well, thank you, Brooklin, for joining us. This was great.

[00:55:14] BM: Yeah. Thank you. This was tons of fun. Thank you so much.

[00:55:17] AH: This was incredible. That's it for this episode. Thank you again, Brooklin Myers for joining us today.

Elixir Wizards is a SmartLogic production. Today's hosts include myself, Alex Housand, and my co-host, Sundi Myint. Our producer is Bonnie Lander and our executive producer is Rose Burt. We get production and promotion assistance from Michelle McFadden.

Here at SmartLogic, we build custom web and mobile software. We're always looking to take on new projects. We work in Elixir, Rails and React, Kubernetes and more. If you need a piece of custom software built, hit us up. Don't forget to like, subscribe and leave a review. Follow @SmartLogic on Twitter for news and episode announcements. You can also join us on the Elixir Wizards on Discord. Just head over to the podcast page to find the link. Don't forget to join us again next week for more on the impact of Elixir.

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