Hey, hey everyone.
Super pumped to hang out with James today on the 99 Dev Problem Show.
James, I would love for you to introduce yourself.
Yeah, I feel like I haven't done like an introduction in a long time.
For a while it was like, I don't know, a podcast or like video or whatever, everything about it.
Well, you're doing a lot of content yourself, so it's like, it's, you're on the other side sometimes, you know.
Yeah.
Well, I've slowed down a lot.
It's been really interesting.
Like I haven't, haven't done traditional stuff that I had been doing since like September.
So it's been a nice break to kind of step away for a little bit.
But primarily I consider myself three things, developer, speaker, teacher.
And I've done some combination of those things professionally for over 10 years now.
Every time I say that, it gets longer and longer that I've been doing it.
It makes me feel older and older.
But currently the sum of that is I'm working at a company called Mixwift,
a visual builder that integrates with Next.js as the head of developer experience.
And they were acquired by BigCommerce last year.
So like an interesting mix.
We were talking about this beforehand of like really small startup vibe, like 18 people,
and then bigger company.
I don't know how big DC is, but like bigger company, different vibe, different culture.
So it's fun.
Yeah, absolutely.
I love your intro.
That's like really clear, right?
Developer, speaker, teacher, like it, it really encapsulates a very good view,
which is very accurate of what I know of you as well.
Yeah.
Yeah, I think so.
I've used that for years now because I just haven't found anything that's like concise
that really feels like it like addresses all the things that I do.
And that seems to be the thing that like I've just stuck with for several years.
Yep.
I like it.
I still am struggling with who I am and what my title is, especially since turning my
business.
I'm like, I do growth.
I do devrel.
Like some people don't know devrel.
It's like, I do things.
Yeah.
Cool.
And I think that's because like developer, speaker, teacher is not necessarily a title.
Like it's, it's a scripture, but if I were to put on LinkedIn, like what am I, I really
struggled with that when I was working for myself and didn't have like a formal role
that I like knew my title in.
So.
Yep.
That's me.
I just gave myself title CEO with this big dream that it'll be some big monolithic
thing where a CEO is necessary.
Well, I mean, that's also like just the branding thing.
I think a lot of branding is us choosing how to convey what is there, right?
Like you could, you could say CEO and not really mean it and, and like wish that it was a bigger
deal or you could just make it a bigger deal.
You know what I mean?
Like so much of that, just so much of perception comes from like, what is the, the vibe and
confidence and details that we give off and we get to, we get to really like influence
what the perception is that people have.
And I talk about this in like, I'm ranting now, but like an interview.
Like if you can't sell your confidence to me, why would I have confidence in you?
Right?
Like I'm a new candidate, one of which is like not cocky, but confident.
And even if it's confident, like I don't know that answer, but I am confident I could figure
that out given the opportunity.
Like that versus someone that's like, Oh, I just built a thing or I don't know about
this, blah, blah, like you're going to hire the person who has more confidence in themselves.
And sometimes honestly, you have to fake it.
Like you have to just like practice it.
It's a practice thing, which is interesting too.
But it goes a long way.
I agree.
It's funny that you say that because my mantra, my entire career has been fake it to you.
Make it because I had dropped out of college, like three times college dropout.
Right.
So it was like, I always had this level of imposter syndrome, like I'm not educated.
And I was like, whatever, I'm going to fake it till I make it.
And I think I maybe made it.
I don't know.
I'm somewhere.
And the reality is like, especially after the first couple of years, but especially,
especially after like several more, like college education really doesn't play a factor
anymore.
Like I went to, I went to Vanderbilt.
It's the top 20 university in the country.
Boom.
I didn't, I didn't come out.
I could say that, but like that didn't mean anything to me now.
That didn't make me a better developer.
In fact, I studied computer science and I got my ass kicked in interviews coming out
of college because I treated it like school, not like I was trying to learn something valuable.
So like I did well on test.
I got good grades at a top 20 university, but then I got my ass kicked in like basic
interviews because I didn't really understand programming.
And there are things that like I got introduced to them that I didn't understand until years
later, like from actually writing code and like appreciating and wanting to learn.
So like, I don't think that that has a factor very quickly after it, like after graduating
or not graduating, like it just, it doesn't really matter other than initially having
Vanderbilt on my resume.
Definitely like got some extra visibility.
So there's definitely, definitely benefit to that early on.
Yeah.
I would agree with that.
One of my questions is actually to ask you about your education and you just like slid
right in and delivered that answer.
So I love that.
I think that's really interesting too, because a part of the show and what I've, you know,
as I've been talking with different people, I like to ask that question because there
is just such a diverse like span of developer education in our ecosystem.
Right.
I think more than anything, we do see a lot of like self taught.
We obviously see a lot of computer science, but we also see a lot of like career transition
areas, which I think is really interesting as well.
So, oh yeah.
I mean, there's, it's like, it's tougher now just because of the economy and like layoffs
are still happening every day.
Like that is a real thing that we have to address, especially with people that are looking to
change careers.
Like at a certain point, like two, three years ago, like it was never easier to like go to
a boot camp and then six months later, you've got a job, you've got a totally different
career and it's not the case right now.
Unfortunately.
And that's because we're continuing to see layoffs.
So the pool of candidates out there is unfortunately just continuing to grow.
And that's candidates that like have experienced, like let go from roles and then are having
to like sometimes backtrack in terms of level, like take a step down to find their next thing
because of just the state of the economy.
So it, like it is very difficult now.
Like if we have that conversation about like, you can go do a career change, you absolutely
can.
It's different than it was two, three years ago.
So I think it's worth like at least kind of bringing that up in the context of, of making
those career shifts.
But those are the people honestly that like inspire me.
Like I think that's the coolest thing that you could possibly do is just like say, I'm,
I need something more and I'm going to do whatever I need to to actually get there.
And I think the opportunities are there.
Yeah.
I, I love that you said that.
And I, I fully agree with that.
So I'm originally from Minnesota, live in Texas now, and there was a code school or
bootcamp in Minneapolis called prime Academy.
And it was, it sort of came out, I think around the time as some of the other bootcamps came
out, but it's definitely not a franchise version.
So it was just, it's locality only to Minneapolis.
And they, wow, did they contribute to that ecosystem?
There's a lot of like med tech there.
So, you know, health and things like that.
Long story short, they shut down like a week or two ago.
And I'm just like tears because it's just such a, it's just heart like disheartening
to see that of like this beautiful solution to bring somebody into a new career.
And I mentored many developers that came from that and most of them are career transitioners
and just, it's really unfortunate.
That's what we're seeing right now.
Yep.
Absolutely.
Really quickly, just chat wise.
I haven't been on like my stream channels in a long time.
Destin and Jordan on Twitch, what's going on?
And then Christoph on, on YouTube.
Yeah.
I've been like really quiet.
So I feel like I'm like almost popping out of nowhere, like being, being back on stuff
now, Ryan, what's going on?
I might get to see Ryan in person in a couple of days in New York City.
If I get to make it out, it's supposed to snow tomorrow and then my flight, so like Saturday
morning and Memphis does not handle snow.
So we'll, we'll see how that goes.
Oh, is it an event that y'all are heading to or wow, the chat is just popping now.
Yeah.
So we're going to call it NRF.
It's the big, big marketing event.
So this is a new area for me and like makes with as a visual builder, it's integrating
with a new thing from a big commerce, which is basically like a reference next JS application.
And so you get an extra application that connects to big commerce and you get the visual building
of that and makes with.
And so we're going as a huge team.
It's like 60 people, which is ridiculous.
And it's from a marketing perspective.
So that's going to be like total new, like new experience for me.
So we'll see.
Yeah.
It's interesting.
We were just chatting about this.
I had the chance to speak with their founder over the summer and I, I was really intrigued
by their product.
And I also think it's really interesting of sort of the use case because I think, you
know, in their sort of target market, right?
Of course, like it's developers, but they're buyers.
I felt like we're definitely marketers and in that sort of, you know, marketing team.
So it brings, it's always interesting when you're in sort of a dev rel like role, right?
You're like, yes, I talked to the devs, but then it's like, but I'm also hanging out in
these other ecosystems at which my company needs me to be in.
And that's one of like, it's one of the hardest challenges, honestly, is, is thinking through
communication.
How do you communicate to both?
What do you communicate to both?
What do you not communicate to one that you communicate to another?
Cause a visual builder, a person that's using a visual builder, it doesn't care what something's
called technically behind the scenes.
They just care about being able to build shit, right?
So it's two very distinct audiences.
We actually have two separate sets of docs based on that.
And in the leading, to your point, like the leading, the people who are going to make
decisions to actually buy makes with are going to be the marketing people.
Like nobody, I don't think a developer is looking out there for something they can build with
the XJS to then say, Hey marketing team, this gives you what you need.
I think it's more good to go the other route where marketers like, Oh, this works really
well for me.
Now I need a developer in XJS.
I can go in and customize the things that I then have access to, to leverage inside
the building.
Yeah.
It's interesting too.
Like I could see that being like a lot of developer agencies, right?
Or like, you know, developers who are building for those types of users.
So they understand that there needs to be usable after the fact.
Yeah.
It's really, it's pretty cool.
Yeah.
I like that.
It's been interesting too.
So as I've served a few different clients, like thinking about kind of like tech, right?
And so I had one client who came in and they like absolutely hate it.
And this has actually happened multiple times now that I think about it.
They hated their website and it was built in like something that was like ridiculous
to like try to support.
It was so painful to create blog posts.
And it's just interesting to me sort of as we look at in the tech ecosystem, like how
difference it is that I was like, y'all built like this beautiful product that does this
amazing stuff, but like the website, they just can't figure out.
And so it's just, it's that idea of like, you know, even though we like things to be
techie, sometimes we just want things to be super simple when it comes down to the thing
that we actually need to just function.
Yeah.
And my experience with like no code, low code is like a lot of stuff is really good.
Every time I've always wanted the ability as a developer to go and build something custom,
like to handle one specific use case.
And that I think is where like the beauty is here is like developers can have access
to touch things, to customize things in a way that makes sense from the marketing visual
builder perspective.
So a couple more people in chat, by the way, Roxy on LinkedIn, Roxy said she didn't know
where to look or where to watch.
I know that's everywhere on my channels on LinkedIn.
And then Ryan has the New York comments on the weather there.
So yeah, we'll see if we get to get to make it up there or if I hope y'all, I hope y'all
do it's done some prayers out to Danny Thompson.
It's like snowing in Dallas, but Waco has avoided it.
We got, we got like ice rain for like five minutes at around 7am.
It was creepy.
Yeah.
And then it stopped.
So I think the weather's just weird everywhere.
And then LA fires.
I don't know, things are strange.
Yeah, that's like, it's still crazy to me that like as intelligent and developed as
a society are, like when weather hits, we can't do anything about it.
Like we can't, we can't stop the impact of weather, whether it be hurricanes, tornadoes,
fire, like just heavy rain, flooding, like we just, there's like legitimately almost
nothing we could do.
And that's mind boggling to me, but the fire stuff looks terrifying.
Very terrifying.
I actually had tweeted about this this morning too, because there's like tons of people from
Snapchat and it's getting really close to Snapchat's like HQ office over there.
And I'm like, oh, it's just all around.
And then like, yeah, to just like know what's coming to you.
It's one of those things of like, I feel like in society we are, we are like, we want this
instant gratification.
Like we want to fix anything that's wrong.
We want to address anything that's around.
Like we just, we get on top of it.
We have social media.
Everything's handed to us.
And I think weather is just one of those things that sort of like re-levels us, right?
Cause we're like, okay, we can't control everything and this is just something we have to sit and
wait out.
Yeah.
And that's for, especially for people that are used to solving problems that is definitely
a challenge.
I love it.
Everyone's having a little heyday over where they're going to watch and chat with one another.
I know.
Yeah, they're all, they're all bouncing around.
Andre Snack, once that's me, amigo.
I think they're all going to YouTube.
It looks like.
Yeah.
Yeah, we'll see.
I love it.
I think it is Richard.
Is that right?
Yes.
Yes, it is.
Yep.
Hey, Richard.
Yeah.
All right.
Well, let's get into it a little bit.
We've been sort of chatting about my normal questions, but you know, you and I know each other.
So it's fun to just kind of chat and catch up.
But we alluded to it a little bit, but I would love to hear about what you do more in your
role and things that you face as like challenges, what kind of your day to day looks like.
Yeah.
Anything you want to share in that regard?
Yeah.
Maybe probably as people expect.
So my role is head of developer experience, which again is interesting considering like
there's a developer aspect of this, but a lot of the stuff I've been doing is like from
a marketer background experience perspective as well.
Yep.
So we big commerce launched something called Catalyst about a year ago, I think, and it's
basically a reference architecture next to application that integrates with big commerce
APIs.
And you just give that to people and they start like building their e-commerce platform with
that's cool.
The new iteration and what we're going to like really show is ready next week or like
Saturday, Sunday at NRF, no big deal, is all of that, but then integrated into makeswift.
So if you think about like, I have a next JS project that integrates with APIs from big
commerce, then there's a lot of work that built custom components inside of the source
code that integrates with makeswift, which allows me then to drag and drop header components,
footer components, slide show components.
And the developers get to customize like what are all the individual properties for all
those components that the person using the visual builder gets to fill out or not, right?
So the developer gets choices over like, what do we let them have access to versus what
do we not because like they don't need to or like it's dangerous if they do, they could
make something anyway.
Yeah.
So very, very cool, interesting balance.
There's been a lot of work getting this ready to like start sharing tomorrow or Sunday whenever.
So a lot of things I've been doing a lot of documentation work.
They, again, there's product docs and there's developer docs, there's new APIs that we've
introduced.
There's updates to existing controls, there's new controls that we've added.
So there's a lot there and talked about this, I think before we were live of like that stuff
has been moving super fast.
So even just like knowing a thing is out there, docking that like writing docs around it is
not easy because it could change, but one of the cool things about that too, from a developer
experience perspective is as they're like coming up with new APIs or like thinking through
them, I get to be a part of that and say like, oh, I actually like, I would rather it be
this way for this reason or like, oh, that makes sense.
It's just so good.
Like as an engineer, it like you have it, you have a job and you do it and it's kind of
easy to lose the like outside perspective of what it's like to use the thing that you're
building.
And so I come in and I've gotten to really play.
I think like a pretty big role in shaping that and I think have earned respect enough
for like when there's ideas out there, like, oh, let's get James to like run through this,
like see what he thinks, et cetera.
So that I think that's been a big part of it as well.
And again, like excited to kind of be a part of shaping that.
The other thing is and what a lot of people know me for is content and I haven't done a lot of
like public facing content, but I have done a lot of internal videos, like showing some of the
things we built, explainer things, some scripts, like some other stuff.
So there's a lot of like working with the education team that does docs on the BC side.
They also do internal trainings.
They also have internal content that people can use to ramp up.
So being involved in like kind of going through that and making sure it makes sense when they talk
about makes with other things that are that are relevant to what we do.
So again, like the danger of developer experience docs, API feedback, testing,
things out, finding bugs.
It's not as much public facing developer experience like getting feedback yet because this is going to be kind of
a real big opportunity to leverage the big commerce audience to kind of grow that.
And that's going to be a big thing for us is like taking that feedback and continue to iterate on the product
based on what people are using, seeing, needing, what doesn't work, et cetera.
And then another big focus for us is going to be more content this year as we're a little less deadline driven
and more like future open to like looking towards the future things that are going to help us out longer term.
That was a lot of words.
No, that's that was great though.
Like it was a lot of words, but it was great.
Like it was beautiful words.
That's really interesting because it sounds a lot like, you know, what I did over at snap, right?
It's like same thing backed by big company with money public, right?
But inside of that, we were very much this like tiny little startup that was trying to push augmented reality into
the ecosystem.
And so our users were businesses.
Honestly, I spent tons of time in enterprise more than anything.
So it was very different from where I am today.
Oh, Clark.
Hey, Clark.
But I focused, I think the first full year was focused on developer experience.
We had the consumer support team was answering developer support questions.
So I was like, oh, okay, we got a deflect support at all costs and heavily focused on that.
So it sounds very similar.
Honestly, it's a really, yeah.
It's another challenge we have is like a lot of support is not strictly technical, like from a developer perspective.
And also we're finding with like customers as well as internally, like the depth of knowledge in next year.
Even if you are like have some developer experience, like you got to be pretty well versed in next year to not just like break something and and understand why.
Like it's so easy to change something that you don't quite get, not understanding the impact of doing that.
And so that's the challenge to we also have like the challenge of like reporting bugs.
Like we say, like, hey, can you tell us what's going on?
And it's like very vague answer.
No, like links to PRs are like the details that you need to be able to debug that stuff.
So some of it's like us having to enforce those rules.
And then some of it's having to maybe like change the templates that were required, like the details we need, etc.
To make that process go as smoothly as possible and to limit the amount of like actual engineering time on our end.
That's helping debug stuff that like doesn't need to be done debugged by our engineering teams.
Yeah, gosh, it's hard to because I like I feel like there should just be this like answer of like, like I've wanted to create a benchmark right where it's like,
if these are the struggles that we're seeing, then like this is where we need to invest and it's just this cycle that you keep going.
But the problem is, is that in this space, man, shashi, like look at the great people up in the world.
Just bring James on the show.
Well, I mean, we talked about this like kind of my plan is to do this more often because I've wanted to like, like I've been in general the majority of my career and I like,
to be quite honest, like I'm probably pretty up there in terms of years of experience because at that point when I started jet like it was technical evangelism at the time,
but I feel like it's evolved so much in 10 years and like now it's become or in the last few years like become a hotter, more exciting thing probably because they saw people like traveling across the world to speak at conferences,
which is part of what you do.
Anyway, so yeah, I like it. Yeah, but it is a part and it can can be fun can be overwhelming can be all the things.
The point of all that.
You're in but yeah.
Yes. Yeah, absolutely.
The point of all that is like I've been wanting to kind of build more of a public brand around like my experience and developer education relations experience, etc.
And so I figured since you already doing a bunch of good stuff that I could maybe double dip and just like contribute to the stuff that you're doing so we'll see.
Absolutely.
To speak to what he's referring to you as well, like with a built for devs which by the way Clark I'm wearing my that conference shirt today you just can't tell because my hair is covering it up.
But what I'm doing over there is obviously like I'm a community builder like we are both community builders like we bring developers together and that's the essence of what we love to do.
And so the built for dev hub is actually at hub dot built for devs which you can see in the annoying little ticker that's at the bottom.
But the beautiful thing about it is it's a platform called gradual and you can actually host like full fledged conferences in person with badges and ticket like a printer integration.
I don't know how in person stuff. Yeah, dude, it's bananas.
And so I have this plot. Yeah, I had this platform that was like gifted to me from the gradual team because they know that I work with DevRel teams and so the installment there of hey do you need a new developer platform, which if anyone is checked it out like I don't even have it built out to the level that it could be but it is so freaking cool.
So if anyone wants to dig into gradual you're building a community James maybe one day you need the community to make shift you hit me up and we can talk about it but.
Question for you on the like support stuff have you tried like office hours or does makeshift have like a developer community yet.
Discord or otherwise. Yeah, that's one of the things that will it's always so hard with like a really small team because like every I think it's easy to have those ideas of like yeah we should we should have a discord or slack or whatever and the reality is like to do those things and do them well you have to have like really dedicated
to that and I don't think that we're there like we actually have a channel inside of BC slack.
Yeah, it's not super active, but we have that and so I will always be like more hesitant to add something new.
If I'm not really confident that like we have the resources and the prioritization to be able to do that thing the right way because the worst case is like you bring a bunch of people in and they ask for help and then you're not responsive to the place that you told them to go in the first
so we don't have a lot of that again this is like.
What it'll be really interesting year as we like a lot more people using us through big commerce.
We get to really build our product and like roadmap I think around that and and figure out what like community ecosystem and stuff looks like with that.
Yep, really quickly just because I feel bad like missing comments.
Go ahead, shout out anyway, Joseph said love your videos and content. Thank you. I appreciate it.
Clark, good to see you. Hunter. Hello, Mark Huggins.
I haven't seen a long time. I feel like I haven't seen everyone because I haven't been doing the source stuff.
So thanks for like dragging me out of my dungeon to be live and public with people.
I had to get drug out of my dungeon which is when speaking to what you said earlier when you were talking about people having to pivot and sort of adjust because it's the ecosystem of where we're at and having to almost go backwards.
I think that that's actually the place where I knew that that was the place where I was going to be at when things happened at Snap.
I knew there was going to be a layoff eventually and so in my head I knew going self employed was the path.
And so I was like going with that good grief. There's a reason why I was saying that.
And for that, like where you starting to... I wish that would have been super smart.
That's what like general advice for people is like don't like don't think you're just going to go out there and do your own thing and it's going to be super easy.
But like if you're if you're starting to build something for yourself, whether it's just being active on LinkedIn, making connections that way, you start to go to meetups to start to build your network or you start to finally write that blog post that you've been thinking about.
Or you like start to think about doing consulting and start to build it up or like whatever those things are.
Start doing them now because you never know when that might be the thing that you like kind of have to lean on.
And I've been in that situation. I went full time with content because I got like go from PlanetScale to a half year or whatever.
And those two years, like that's one of my biggest accomplishments in my career ever is being able to work for myself.
Like there's nothing cooler. I'm at a different point now like mentally.
Like there's different things I'm looking for and there's different challenges.
But to look back and say that I was able to do that, which is what you're doing now.
Like that's one of the coolest stories that you can ever tell, especially if it's in a situation where like, oh, now I need something like I need to have this thing because I just got like, oh, or something changed.
Yep. Yep. I absolutely agree.
Okay, so tiny little like tip for you because I agree with Discord.
And that's why I asked because oftentimes there's these different developer products, right?
And they created Discord server and then it's like crickets.
The thing that really worked well for us was actually launching office hours and we did them weekly.
And so it started to create like a crew of like, you know, just a good handful of developers.
It was, you know, 20, 30, 40 summer in that range.
And then they seeded the community.
And so we went community forum instead of Discord because it's locked behind a login wall.
So then we elevated developers to start answering questions instead.
So as you work through your journey, yeah, that's because literally it sounds like it's a play by play of my role at Snap.
And in the beginning it was like, okay, developer experience, all the things, where are the gaps?
And then it was like, okay, now how do we start helping people?
Man, there is just people in here like crazy. I love this.
What's up, Flemau?
Hey, if anyone has questions for James, throw them in the chat and we'll bring them up.
So next question I'm going to ask and also let kind of people throw that out there.
This is one of the last questions that I asked, but I figure your amazing viewers in the chat will probably bring in some more.
So I'm going to ask now and then we can just, you know, take this where it goes.
When you are stuck, whether it be in your developer experience role, whether it be out externally, you're building something, what is kind of your like hierarchy of let me, what do I need to do to get unstuck?
Getting someone else to look at the thing, I think is like a huge one.
I think there's a lot of, Dustin, there's people on, yeah, there's people all over the place, LinkedIn, YouTube, Twitch, sorry, we're kind of calling out people on different platforms and not specifying.
So yes, there's people everywhere.
There's so many things in docs. Docs is not my natural thing. I'm not naturally a writer. I do video content because I find that a lot easier than writing, et cetera.
I find I have a lot of challenges like how do I word this? How do I make this a call out? Do I not make it a call out?
Like the annoying things of like, do we specifically capitalize this type thing versus not?
And those, they kind of overwhelm me a lot and that's a lot of what send docs, unfortunately.
And so I have conversations back and forth with several different people at all times of like, oh, would you do this or that?
And one suggestion to people if you're looking for feedback on stuff, like a lot of what happens is like, hey, I built a new page.
What feedback do you have? And then you don't hear anything.
And the reason is because people, it's overwhelming for people to look at something that they're not intimately familiar with and know what to give feedback on.
And so a better way to do that is say, hey, I'm looking for feedback specifically on X, Y and Z and or give them two different options.
People will happily tell you like what they choose between A and B because that's that's simple, right?
Like spot check A, spot check B, like that's the thing that I prefer.
So a lot of it, I think any of those situations is just feedback and trying to make that like a broader conversation.
Because I can spend a lot of time just like being overwhelmed like, I don't know how to write this section and then stop.
But otherwise, I just pretty quickly like, I'll write something and it's not the best.
And then I'll just send it out and say like looking for feedback on this.
This thing, how would you do this? Would you choose this?
And then use that as a way to iterate.
Yeah, I like that.
Is there anything else that you do if it's something maybe that others can't provide feedback on?
Oh, that actually that's probably always the case.
Is there any other backups?
Basically is what I was going to ask any other tricks or tips that you could share?
Yeah, I'm trying to think about like situations that I've had recently.
I guess like another example is going to do research on other platforms.
Right? Like the challenges that I solve are not unique challenges.
I mean, like maybe to a certain extent, but like other companies, other people in similar positions have have solved them as well.
So I find myself again, talking about docs, going and looking like other people's docs.
How do they lay it out? How do they do callouts for X, Y and Z that sort of stuff?
So I think that's a big one is just being able to do comparison.
And then the other other thing I guess is like, especially from a docs perspective, this is all about docs so far, but it's taking a step back and really, yeah,
taking a step back and following the docs from scratch.
I think it's something we often don't do.
And it's, I have a couple of things that I need to go back and do this for that is about to get launched to make sure everything looks good.
Like starting from scratch and making sure the whole thing is like, makes sense together, actually works the way like follow this.
That's what you're telling other people to do to make sure that it actually does what it's supposed to.
Yeah, I think one interesting thing too with docs is like, it's all about sort of the understanding who that end user is, right?
And if you don't understand who that end user is from a tech, like a technical scope, right?
Are they junior? Are they mid level? Are they super experienced? Is this a new technology?
Is this a new language? And it really brings a lot into it.
And I feel like the more that coming back to your feedback comment, right, the more that you can actually get it in the hands of somebody else and be like,
Hey, can you go try this? Like, does this getting started guide work for you? Like, where does this land you?
You know, and yeah, I think that that's key.
All right. Do we have any questions over there? Just a lot of people freaking out because I haven't seen James for a while and we've all dug him out of the code.
But you came back. Yeah.
I remember why what I was going to, I remember what I was going to say with my silly business.
Wow, totally like tired morning is this is that I spent just over two years at Snap and I felt like I just disconnected from everybody because I was so in the weeds of my role.
And I wasn't necessarily focused on growth towards till the year or the latter part of right before I got laid off.
And then that year was like hit the ground running with growth.
And so it's, I love to see this. This is beautiful.
I feel like I'm doing the same thing of like coming out and reacquainting myself with humans because most of my audience wasn't in AR and honestly, like, you know, it's totally different ecosystem.
All right. Any good questions you saw in the chat?
Other than coming back, someone or a hundred commented on Astro having talking and docking sessions to get feedback on documentation.
That's like smart.
That's such a good, like, I don't think we have the public community yet for people to really care what I would be doing in that case.
Like that's the kind of thing that I think can build.
And I think there's opportunities around that.
But anything kind of learning in public, I feel like is all way like most of the time beneficial just to get other people's takes to get other people's ideas immediately to like balance.
Ideas off of other people and anything where you're building branding reputation in the community is always a benefit.
And even though I haven't been as active and like creating content recently, like I'm still still doing things like this that come up.
Like I still am in being a part of the community connecting with people that I like haven't known that do know like to reconnect still doing some in person stuff.
And I think the relationship someone had this quote in college relationship management is the key to success.
And like, I don't think I hate the idea of networking from like a cold sterile the way it sounds perspective, but like networking and relationship management is absolutely the key to success.
Like maintaining and or building continue to build new relationships is huge.
And you never know when you need that connection.
You never know, like, don't do it selfishly, but you never know what's going to come out of like anybody that you meet that you connect with that you have like overlapping interests and experience with.
So, yep, I fully agree.
All right, so before we get towards wrapping up, although I feel like everyone in the chat will be sad about that they've they get their James time now.
What is your tool stack look like and I know this kind of changes based on what you're building and what you're doing but oftentimes audience and listeners really like to hear about like the new tools and tricks and hey how are you doing shortcuts and things so do you have any any tools you really love that just absolutely live inside of your toolbox tools.
And warp is a favorite of mine.
It's like, it's a terminal the one thing I wish like I'm so much waiting on this is I use built in terminal and VS code so I can see my logs and like starting different processes and stuff right inside of my editor, I run everything in full screen so I swipe between them.
And warp does not integrate directly into VS code which is like the one downside that I'm really waiting on like I think they'll get there.
But warp is super cool they've got like AI and like snippets and like all sorts of stuff that I built on the product including like working with a team and other cool stuff.
Raycast is huge. There's so many separate tools that I've used to do different things there's like, there's like a tool I've had to organize I think it was magnet to organize windows on my thing there's like I used to use text expand or for snippets I used to use something else for something else.
All those things Raycast can do they have integrations with like so many things.
Raycast is super super cool so it's a spotlight replacement on Mac and it does so many things you can customize the crap out of it super super cool.
Love that flow just mentioned that.
Was it yesterday no two two shows ago so definitely check out recast.
Yes, super cool.
I don't know what else is like.
Those are the two big ones that I think about right now.
I know that's what I think about that too and I actually installed warp.
As we were talking about in the pre show right we were talking about how I have been disconnected and I actually hadn't even been coding really because I was more living in docs and doing other things and there's some coding with that but it's different than actually building projects right it's more like can I get this getting started guide to function and then after that you like go build you know.
Anyways, so I installed warp and I actually like stopped using it because I was like wait a minute only because it does have the AI goodness where like you can just type whatever you want and it'll it'll just prompt it for you and figure out what the command is and I was like nope.
I have to read read get my wheels and get back to do it right.
Yes, exactly and then I was like but then I'm going back to work because it is really cool so you just need to get back to the basics.
Alright, anything else that you want to share with with folks that are listening.
I don't know where.
What was the date we settled on we're scheduling another live string.
I don't know I don't think it's like public because I haven't gotten you all the details but I think it's January 30th.
So we'll have some information come out about that and have a few different people from different like areas of Deverall and just kind of have have a chat about it.
So something people can look forward to.
Perfect, I made it public just in case people want to go register right now but the details are not in the event.
It's also lacking a beautiful pretty image I will throw it in this in the chat for those that will see it on Twitch and YouTube.
So I did just publish that really quickly but yes more details to come on that super excited about that event.
Like James said earlier I think it's it's cool to be able to bring some of these Deverall sort of energies together and be able to talk about them so.
Oh Clark moved to ghostly.org last night.
What is that ghosty.org.
Okay, look I can show.
I did not.
Oh yeah nice.
Flemall asked about doing Wednesday the week on the Fridays and discord.
I'll be honest discord has been a big challenge for me mentally last like several months and if you're asking you probably noticed that I like haven't been involved at all.
It's like I realized especially after having my daughter Jamie who's now a year and a half she's a handful she's amazing.
That just my mental capacity to do so many different things especially now that I have a full time role is I just I just only have so much and discord has been a really big struggle so I'm honestly unsure of what that means for the learn build teach discord right now.
Which makes me really sad but I kind of have to prioritize the things that I have capacity to do and I think that was a realization that I came to have like I need to cut back on several things and discord at least for the last several months has been something I've cut back on significantly so I don't know what that means unfortunately.
I love the idea of Wednesday the week I think that's one of the coolest things that we can do is just encourage people to reflect positively.
Like a lot of people finish the week and they're like oh I didn't do this I didn't do this I didn't do that and we forget to appreciate the work that we did do.
So I think the idea of Wednesday the week is huge.
I don't know when I'll have like the mental capacity to formally bring that back maybe it's something we could tie into like stuff that I do here and kind of overlap.
So we'll see.
Yes.
James is a human yes.
It's true though and I think it's it's really interesting I think these devrel opportunity is like you do get to connect with developers more and be out in the community.
But it's very much the developers that suit your company and so whatever you have sort of in your personal network and things that you know you're driving in those relationships it becomes hard like I completely understand.
Yeah.
Also flimosa that he just became a dad as well.
Congratulations.
That's exciting.
No I have baby fever even though I have four kids and my toddler is so naughty.
I have them from 16 to two but there are no more children that will be in my future but man this new life and I don't know it's just such a beautiful thing.
Jamie's pretty wild too.
Yeah.
Is she a runner or is she like a runner?
Oh all of it.
She's not going on anything.
Yeah.
Very like physically focused like climbing running.
Yeah.
Interesting.
You know what's interesting about that.
I have three boys and one girl and my girl was nothing like that.
She was just delicate a little flower like the sweet and didn't really want to do that.
All three of the boys were just insane like literally they get hang off the chandeliers.
Yeah.
They'd be hanging on.
So two of our best friends who live here have four kids and I remember one of them was a
number one of their seeing one of their kids that was like two at the time climb on to the changing table like by himself.
I'm like what is happening like mind blown.
I'm like how like that shouldn't ever happen.
And now Jamie does it.
She climbs up there by herself.
I'm like what the hell.
Yeah.
Dude the amount of things that we had to do for like little life hacks that people probably judge us for his bananas like we have to lock our child in his room like we lock his door when he goes to bed because otherwise like he will come out and he can do the same thing like he can
climb up and counters he could get into the fridge.
He could get into the stove or the laundry room or whatever you know it's really wild to think about.
Really really is not sure who geek is but I assume they're local because they're talking about weather and here in the 901 which is Memphis.
Yes I just don't recognize the name.
Let me know.
Oh boy it was easy daughter.
Not so much.
Yeah.
So we're we're supposed to get four to eight I think is the most recent estimate of snow which like you're in Texas so I'm sure you also don't have many resources where you live to support snow which we definitely do not.
So we'll see what that looks like for for flights on Saturday.
Yeah goodness.
I mean I'm from Minnesota so I definitely know what snow is but like you're you can like handle it there right we've got all the tactics and the needs and all the things.
I think we legitimately have one snowplow I think is what I've heard or like maybe two for the entire city.
So yeah.
Oh yeah y'all are staying inside till the snow melts.
Yeah.
Yeah exactly.
Oh man.
All right well this has been a fabulous conversation.
Obviously we need to do more events together or with you you bring the you bring the dev crew along with you which really speaks to just all of your awesome work.
And I respect you so much and just really adore like the things that you do and the beautifulness that you bring into the community and you're always instilling like such great like energies of kindness and I think it's it's really powerful so I appreciate that.
Yeah.
Well right back at you wouldn't be here if it wasn't the same.
Stony on Twitter hello and Kevin Yancy.
Hi.
Now I know who you are.
Yeah.
I always say like the difference between like real names and screen names and not having any idea who people are based on like user names sometimes.
Yep.
You got to figure it out.
You know what's really a bummer about that is when you spend a great deal of time hanging out with a like a crew of developers like maybe for a role or maybe because it's a personal community you want to be into and then you come back and it's like oh my gosh I should know who that person is.
I used to know what that username was.
You just lose it over time.
Especially on like live streaming especially because you get you get used to it right because they tell you once and then you don't do it for six months and it's like oh shoot.
Yep.
Yes.
Exactly.
All right.
Well where can folks find you.
I do publish this on the podcast too.
So for the audio version where can folks find the awesome James quick.
Yeah.
James Q.
Quick on most things.
Twitter, YouTube and James Q.
Quick.com website.
Love it.
Check out makeswift.
So he's hanging out these days.
Share your feedback if you have it.
And this has been an absolute fabulous conversation.
Any parting words for your amazing viewers in the chat.
Go out there and build stuff.
That's why I like that's why we write code.
That's why I write code is it's just fun to build stuff.
So go do it.
It is fun to solve problems.
That's my.
Yep.
All right.
Well I'm signing off everyone's been great to see all you in the chat.
Have a lovely rest of your day.
See y'all.
.