I love VS Code. That's just what I enjoy. It
just feels so much better than U of M. And I
also, I love Windows. It's overall, it's a solid
operating system. This package I have right here
is just something I threw together in a few days
as kind of a joke. And what it does pretty much
is generate nonsensical math papers. You can
zoom in and see it's just like all random. Byjective
constructible algebra, the anti -standard Zilber
groupoid lemma for anti -standard groupoid is
extremely reliable. Sounds like something you
would have written. Like I can show, for example,
you're familiar with the problem Fizzbuzz used
a three instead of a five. Oh. So that's easy
fix. There we go. Do you have any thoughts on
substance abuse, like drugs, alcohol, all that
stuff? Yeah, sure. Well, if you're listening
to this as a podcast, remember that it was originally
recorded as a video. If you're not following
along, you can go to my YouTube channel. My username
is Linkarzu. And if you want to support me to
keep this podcast going, you can donate in Ko
-fi. I'm going to leave a link in the description.
All right. So let's get started with this chapter
then. We bring in the studio this morning, one
of the Vimotions activists, Mr. Should I call
you Mr. Sylvan Vimati Franklin. Thank you for
coming in. Good afternoon. Hey, what's up? Why
are you a Vim user? I don't know. It's kind of
a long story. I guess how everyone gets into
it. It's just like years of seeing people do
it on YouTube. And I just I wanted to do the
same thing. I wanted the speed. So I guess that's
why this is a simple answer. Yeah. And what did
you get started with? Sylvan. Can I call you...
How do you like to be called? Sylvan? Vimati?
Sylvan is good. Okay. What are your thoughts
on the name that was imposed to you by Primogen,
Vimati? What did you think when you... Did you
watch the video? Of course you did, right? Oh,
of course I did, yeah. Well, I mean, it's funny.
It keeps coming up. it's definitely not a bad
thing like being compared to an attractive actor
constantly it's like no dude oh no yeah i'm not
mad about it yeah okay so what did you get started
with did you get started with um vs code vim
neo vim or i i guess i got started actually with
eclipse like very early on um learning java and
At some point, I switched to like the JetBrains
IDEs and PyCharm and IntelliJ. And then from
there, I went to VS Code with the Vim bindings.
And from there, I went to NeoVim. And why did
you start with Vim? Was it inspired by YouTube
or how did all that start? It was, yeah. I think
the first person I saw ever using Vim was the
YouTuber Ben Awad. I don't know if you remember
him. He kind of just mentioned it in passing
in a video, and I don't know why it just struck
me. I was like, how bad can it be? I'm learning
a bunch of programming stuff right now. If everyone
says that's a good thing to do, I'll just do
it. And yeah, I learned like HJK, all the basic
stuff, and then I picked up more and more Vim
as I went. Yeah, I remember that guy. He's not
doing YouTube anymore, right? Not really. He's
on to like startups and stuff, I think. He's
got a game he's working on. Oh, really? Yeah.
Now, do you remember how you felt the first times
that you used Finmotions? And be honest, you
know, because I remember the first times, man.
It was... Yeah. it felt like garbage and i was
like but why do people do this to themselves
and uh it didn't stick you know the first like
three times i just gave up i didn't come back
for years you know so you remember how how that
was for you how did you feel i don't remember
it super strongly but i definitely like i had
kind of the same experience as you and i think
a lot of people like hjkl was pretty easy for
me right off the bat, because that's on the home
row. I kind of understood the idea there. But
learning the other parts of it, I feel like you
don't really start to understand Vim until you're
getting V around objects and you're moving stuff
with visual. Then you get the appeal. But before
that, yeah, I was using my mouse all the time.
I would use just kind of H, J, K, L, and maybe
W and B. just like the very basics but for some
reason ever since the beginning i just really
liked the feel of it it took me a while to fully
get in but yeah once i started i never really
went back no no it didn't happen to me because
i used to open vim in servers and usually i needed
to do something there and just get out get out
of the server you know so yeah it was like oh
man was it was tough and it i didn't like it
at all but now I cannot go back to, you know,
using the arrows and all that stuff. But H -A
-K -L was really tough for me, if I'm being honest
with you. No, I didn't get used to it fast. It
took me quite some time. How old are you, by
the way, if you want to share that with us? I'm
20. I'm about to be 21 in October. Oh, nice.
Okay. Now, let me look at your website here.
real quick. Okay. So I have it pulled up. Um,
this is where we can find you, right? Okay. So
what do we see here? Uh, okay. Is this, I've
never seen it in dark mode before. That's interesting.
Oh yeah. It's, it's a light theme. Yeah. And
we see here pyramid schemes. What is this about?
Is this like a referral type of thing? It is.
Yeah. It's, um, Have you ever heard of the YouTuber
Luke Smith? The one that is in the forest right
now? Yep, the weird Vim guy. One of his things
was also credit cards. You're in South America,
right? Central. I don't know about Central. I
don't know about there, but credit cards here,
the credit card companies give you a ton of different...
They give you a bunch of cash back and rewards
for using their card. And you can make quite
a lot of money doing it, actually. I make a couple
thousand dollars a year just on credit card rewards.
And basically, the idea is he put a lot of people
onto it. And if you put your referral links on
your website, like whenever anyone signs up for
one of these cards, I get the referral bonus
from it. And it caps out at like five per month.
or something but it refreshes every month so
it's a pretty solid source of income and it doesn't
inconvenience anyone like if they're getting
the card anyway they might as well interesting
i didn't know that so it's a real like bonus
that you get okay and look used to do it right
you mentioned he did yeah he has a video where
he bought a car just on credit card rewards oh
man That's really interesting, actually. Okay,
so do you have any articles here or is it just
this front page and that's it? Like links to
your other pages? That's it. It's just static
HTML one site. That's all there is. Okay, then
your GitHub. Now, let's see your experience.
Director of Dynamic Interpolation for... Comprehensive
media distribution analysis as it applies to
heuristic community building and efficient workplace
design practices. Through the Open Ambiguity
Foundation, former head of technical minutiae.
How do you pronounce that? The minutiae, yeah.
Okay, at the Global Foundation of Situational,
Systematic Dependence and Programmatic Regression
Analysis. Lead team, lead. It's not just... lead
right it's the lean tip lead at corp corp okay
and what is what is this what is this about it's
kind of just a a parody of other people's github
because i think it's really funny when people
take github too seriously or social media yeah
exactly and they're putting all their their like
acting like it's a big serious thing and their
projects are used by a bunch of people and it's
just random learning projects so it's kind of
a parody of that i think it also helps me stand
out to recruiters a little bit i would like to
think at least exactly it does you know because
That's what everyone tells you. Your GitHub profile
has to be professional and all that. I did that.
I still have my main page, but in my .files readme,
I just don't care anymore. Same with LinkedIn,
man. I had my LinkedIn. I didn't have the picture,
you know, the suit. I hate that. You know, the
picture with the tie and the suit and black and
white. I just don't like it at all. But yeah,
LinkedIn is not. too useful actually what what
are your thoughts on linkedin do you use it uh
no not really i i guess i have it just for people
to contact me because a lot of people like don't
like writing emails anymore so it's kind of an
easier version of that but i don't like the culture
of linkedin at all like you said it's just it's
it's so fake there's nothing good happening on
there at all especially now that they've added
the ability to I don't know, post content like
it's Instagram. It's just turned into such a
bad website. Yeah. I just use it to promote my
videos, man. And that's basically it. Just post
them there. What is this Aura coding? Do you
mind sharing with us? I'm not exactly sure what
that is, honestly. I just kind of came up with
it randomly. It's kind of funny because the,
you know, the word vibe used a lot by Gen Z kind
of started out for vibe coding and aura is kind
of another term that means the same thing, but
it came after vibe just isn't a way to say the
same thing. So I was like, I'll just take that
and make it my own thing. Yeah, pretty creative.
Has it drawn other people's attention, your GitHub
profile? have people talked about it um i'm not
honestly sure i don't know if i don't know if
it's been pointed out beyond i mean on my channel
people like will mention it and i've talked about
it on my channel before but i haven't seen anyone
else comment on it really which is a shame i
think it's pretty funny yeah it is it is and
regarding your content creation approach i see
that it's different to what is usually out there,
you know, because everything is pretty serious,
including myself. You know, most of the people
are pretty serious in YouTube. And if it's a
tutorial, you know, everything is just black,
white. There's no too much of, you know, that
humor, we could say. Yeah. So what are your thoughts
on the... content out there on youtube all of
the vim or the overall tech related content yeah
sure well i was um i was looking around at youtube
because people that use vim and neovim we watch
a lot of youtube to find the the tips and stuff
you know and i saw like there was kind of a gap
for someone doing comedy since ben awad left
And other people do it. Like, I guess you could
say Fireship and there's BigBoxSWE. He also does
some. But yeah, no one who really made it their
main thing. And I was also looking at NeoVim
and all the people who do Unix stuff. And everyone
there right now seems to kind of have the same
style of like neon text, synthwave aesthetic.
That's me, man. It's everyone. There's nothing
wrong with that inherently at all. I mean, it
is cool looking, but the problem comes in when
like so many people are doing it, you know, it's
hard for you to stand out when everyone else
is doing it. And yeah, especially I see like
a lot of, I follow like as many new of them YouTubers
as I can, right? Keep an eye on the competition.
And a lot of them just start off and they have
exactly that same aesthetic. So I just wanted
to go with something completely different. And
it's also another thing is I think a lot of people
have really clean setups. You know, I guess DevOps
Toolbox was the first one to really do that.
And there's another guy like Josian, I think.
Yeah. Who has kind of a similar. Yeah. And that's
it looks really nice. It looks really clean.
Right. But. the average guy doesn't have a setup
that looks like that we're we're rocking like
you're just throwing your laptop on a table and
you don't have a crazy maybe you have a desk
setup but so i think it it also helps to relate
to people more when you're just using simple
stuff yeah okay and uh what type of content do
you consume on youtube you watch um your vim
related stuff I do now and then, not hugely anymore
that I'm producing it now. I just kind of, the
way I source my information is through the manuals
most of the time. Sometimes I like to just drop
by other people that I know, like you sometimes,
and there's Henry Misk is another guy I talked
to before. So I like to check out his content
now and then. And yeah, I just like to see what
other people are up to. But I don't watch a huge
amount of, yeah, Neofim YouTube anymore. I'm
kind of... I guess other than TJ sometimes for
like really advanced Lewis stuff that I can't
figure out myself. Yeah. Same happened to me.
I used to watch a lot of YouTube and a lot, but
now that I'm creating videos, it's like watching
a two hour video. I don't do that. You know,
if it's a 12 minute video, 15 minute video, I'll
watch it, you know, and I don't know what happens
with me, but I watch it all the way to the end.
I cannot just, you know, stop it mid video. That's
good for retention. I'm glad to hear that. Yeah.
Yeah. Your videos are quite short, right? And
do you do that on purpose? Like, because if you
make it eight minutes or more, you can put ads
in between. Is that why you do it? Because you
don't want to have ads in between videos or?
Uh, you're giving me too much credit. I barely
even think about it. There's no script. I just,
I just talk and when I'm done, I'm done. Oh,
okay. So if it's two, three minutes, just don't
care, right? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. That's pretty
much it. Yeah. Now, um, I noticed that in your
videos, you're more into BIM. and uh not too
much into neo vim like why are you doing vim
and not neo vim related stuff well i mean i i
guess i technically still am within neo vim but
i'm you're referring to i'm very on the like
minimal side where it's like closer to closer
to vim less plugins and stuff yeah or your thumbnails
or titles is it's vim it's not like neo vim because
everyone else is like neo vim and the neo vim
logo and all that stuff but i say vim right in
your content i guess when i do that on the thumbnail
it's less it's less that it's about vim over
neo vim it's just i'm kind of referring to i
don't know i kind of consider them both the same
thing at least vim neo vim is vim i guess vim
isn't neo vim but Okay, okay, okay. But there's
no reason. Do you use both? Do you use Vim and
NeoVim or mainly NeoVim or what? I just use NeoVim,
like a pretty minimal configuration of it. There
are some people, right? I don't know if you've
come across them that are kind of, they've used
Vim for a longer time and they're like, they
don't like Lua, they're Vim script purists. I
don't fully agree with that because if you go
and you look at like the amount of work, I mean,
you know, you interview people who are connected
to NeoVim all the time. Like these people are
putting in a huge amount of work to NeoVim's
development and there's a bunch of good stuff
that's gone into it. And Vim is, it's cool and
minimal, but Vim script is pretty. tough to work
with and lua lua definitely adds quite a lot
in terms of extensibility and it's nice to work
in but i'm also i am interested in kind of going
back to vim script because i don't know sometimes
you're trying to type out an auto command or
something that's like vim .api underscore and
vim create auto command that it's like this would
have just been au if this were vim script i think
we're jumping through a lot of hoops here to
just for the sake of lua But I don't know too
much about the internals of NeoVim, so I don't
want to bash on it. There's so much work that's
being put into it. And there's a lot of great
new features that are added. And what are your
thoughts on extending NeoVim? Because like you
mentioned, purists, right? There's people that
just want NeoVim to be Vim, just using with stock
motions. not U -Images and U -Vim, you know,
just use it the traditional way. Do you have
any thoughts on that? Yeah, totally. So I've
said several times, I talked about not wanting
to extend the motions, no custom text objects
or like Leap and Vim or any kind of plugin like
that. To be honest, it doesn't really matter.
You can go either way. And at this point, my
configuration is pretty custom. I'm using a custom
keyboard layout. So if I were to go custom motions,
I'm still getting a lot of speed and stuff. I
just need to SSH quite a lot for my jobs. And
I like to be able to, I don't know, I feel like
if I got used to leap or I got used to a text
object and I started just hitting that motion
constantly. and it would it's something that
would be hard to bring my configuration over
i guess vim if you defined it in vim script it
would be easier because most servers have vim
pre -installed but sometimes you want your configuration
from nvm on the server and like it doesn't support
the newest version of it for some reason because
it's running like red hat linux or some old weird
you know what i mean you can't you can't get
the full features working and then it's just
a massive pains i want to keep it simple yeah
i remember that I don't SSH too much into servers
right now because once you set them up, you just
forget about them, right? But when I SSH into
one of my servers, I used to install my Neovim
config, but they're my servers, right? So I don't
care. I don't care about security. But at a company,
you will not be able to install or you should
not install Neovim in all of its plugins because
it's a huge security concern, right? Is it really?
I didn't know that. Yeah, because of the plugins.
Are there exploits you can do? Because you're
just installing plugins. Maybe nothing bad will
happen. Maybe there's nothing malicious in the
plugins, you know. But just to avoid any sort
of issues. So when it was a work -related server,
I used Vim. So none of my custom configs worked
there. And it just felt different. It was not
as effective. So I guess it depends, right? Do
you work with servers a lot or not? I don't work
with them too much at the moment, so I don't
care. I'm extending NeoVim as much as possible.
But there's this other option as well, remote
.envim. I'm going to make a video about it. I
have been thinking, you know, just from your
NeoVim instance, remote into the server and use
your NeoVim as usual. It could be another option,
right? Yeah, I have heard about that. I haven't
fully gone to try it out yet because I tried
a plugin or like an earlier version of that and
it was very glitchy. Like they hadn't figured
everything out yet. I remember. Especially like,
yeah, you've got all your like custom plugins
like oil and stuff and fuzzy pickers. It's kind
of difficult for those to like, they really have
to be careful with how they implement the SSH
connection. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Now, how
do you feel about videos that nowadays you see
everywhere? Like I saw this in one of your videos,
you know, the terminal in the background, a lot
of transitions, a lot of animations, a lot of
stuff. How do you feel about? Those over edited
videos, I would say it's a lot of work, man.
It's definitely, I give them credit for that.
It's definitely a huge amount of work. I don't
know if there's a team behind those videos or
what, but how do you feel about those videos?
Yeah, great question. I don't hate them. I don't
feel like strongly bad about them because like
you said, I mean, they're a lot of work and it
takes a lot of skill to edit like that. And like,
I guess. I guess DevOps Toolbox, again, is the
big one who has really fancy editing and stuff.
Nothing wrong with that at all. It's just, for
me, it's so much work, and it really would slow
down the output of my videos to do that. And
it's also, when I watch them, I don't really
care all too much about the editing and how nice
it looks. I'm there to learn some Vim tips, and
then I'm... I'm dipping. I'm gone. So it doesn't
matter to me how nice the metrics and graphs
are. It's cool to have your overlay with all
the information and animate it all. But to get
it to work, you could just pull up a random piece
of ASCII art in the terminal. I don't care, as
long as I can understand it. So I do think it's
cool. It's just a lot of work, for sure. Yeah.
I get a little bit distracted, to be honest.
And I just get lost. I just start thinking maybe
about the editing process and I'm like, did this
happen? And the video just continued and my mind
is somewhere else already. So I just feel that
I disconnect sometimes. But yeah, a lot of work.
I do that too. I'm always thinking about how
they edited a certain part. Now that I've done
a little bit of editing myself, every video I'm
looking at is how did they pull that effect off?
Yeah, yeah. And do you follow advice? Because
when you're making videos, there's a lot of advice
there. You have to reply to each one of the comments.
I've seen that you don't do that, right? You
get a lot of comments. Why don't you reply to
all of them? Or you just want to make a few folks
out there, a few of the furries that are in your
comments special. So you just give them the hard
reaction. Like, so that they feel touched by
God. Like, I'm just going to like this one and
this other one. I think I don't want to hand
it out too heavily. First of all, it would take
up all my time. If I give everyone the attention,
then no one is special. If it's just like a few
people, everyone wants it. So they keep coming
back for more. Oh, man. Do you recognize their
names already? Oh, yeah. Yeah, for sure. There's
definitely some people that come back over and
over again. um that i i usually recognize them
by their profile picture but there's one guy
uh it's a a aaron or something aaron like 79
or i don't some number every video he asked me
like when are you switching to cocoon just every
single time no matter what it is oh man so you
just leave you just make them earn it the the
reaction the heart right yeah And I mean, some
people, they just, they say things that aren't
worth responding to. After the thousandth Timothy
Chalamet comment, I don't need to hurt that anymore.
Yeah. Yeah. And have you ever received sponsorship
opportunities? What do you think about that?
I do all the time, actually. I'm noticing a lot
of AI companies now, like AI startups that have
big followings on GitHub. And my outlook on that
is I'm never going to take a sponsorship. because
whenever i see a youtuber take a sponsorship
my credibility of them is just destroyed and
if people know me and i say that that i'm never
going to do sponsorships and then later in my
career i go around to do it it's like this guy
is very fake he has he has no spine he's just
turning around and doing it for money but with
that being said i mean there are times i would
do it like if if i desperately needed the money
right i'm starving on the street or something
i'm gonna do it i'm gonna sell out or if um If
it's a company that I really believe in, that's
kind of an issue, right? Because YouTubers, sometimes
they say that, like, oh, I've used this service
for years, and I'm always like, okay, sure, yeah,
I don't know about that. But I would have to
do a free promotion for the company before, like
months before, so I can show people, look, I
actually have used this. And there aren't many.
I think there's one sock company from... my home
state of Vermont called darn tough socks that
they make these wool socks that are like lifetime
warrantied. And I just really liked them as a
company, but you know, those, those kinds of
things are like, they're not software. They're
not going to sponsor me. I'm, I'm in software,
but yeah, I'm, I'm never going to do that, but
it's just. Especially your audience, you know,
they use high striped socks. So maybe you can
talk to that company and tell them to create,
you know, I didn't even think about that. Imagine
that all of those Rust boys there could get the
socks and it would be a great business, actually.
That's a great idea. I did reach out to them,
I don't know, a few weeks ago, but they ghosted
me, I think. Too weird of a channel for them.
Yeah, they definitely will not get it, for sure.
Yeah. The primogen could get a yoga ball sponsor.
Yeah. Yeah. I've thought about that too. Sponsorships.
I don't know. A sponsor reached out about CD
keys, you know, like keys. I don't know. That's,
I don't know what that is. And I was like, that's
crap. I don't care about that. There was another
one about AI, whatever. I was like, no, whatever.
There's another one that reached out as well,
but the price was too low. I don't care. Look,
if it's like a one -hour video, you know, I do
a lot of tutorials. I don't care putting in a
60 -second ad in there because the viewer is
still going to get the content, right? Right.
And I do it mainly to support my family. So I
don't care too much, right? So if someone offers
me the right... amount of money i'll do it i
don't care um yeah but i have seen videos that
you watch a 15 minute video and it's basically
an ad how has that happened to you like you're
like every video man but i don't know how do
you feel about fireship he's well he's i've said
it and people know now he's just a private equity
ai farm there's other channels like like no but
is it but is that a joke or is that real no it's
no that's real he's been acquired by private
equity it's it actually happened really yeah
i thought you were joking no i wish i was i i
liked fireship but he's he's done now No, I can't.
I thought you were joking, to be honest. And
I was like, okay, Sylvan and his stuff, whatever,
right? Because I did watch a video about Fireship
years ago when they went into his house and you
meet him and all that stuff. Did you watch that
by any chance? Yeah, I've seen that. I have,
yeah. So what happened then? I'm not sure. I
think he was a really nice guy. People say he
kind of like... after his mom died he kind of
got depressed and like spiraled down a little
bit and i think that's maybe why he he sold the
channel i guess probably for his family just
to i'd imagine a channel that size right at four
million subscribers averaging millions of views
of video he's got to be making huge amounts of
money not to mention he's sponsored so he's he's
making an enormous amount of money on that channel
the private equity company must have acquired
him for a multi -million dollars probably probably
over 10 or 20 because he has so much influence
as well so he can just retire now but thinking
about that like what's your purpose in life after
you've made that much money like you're you're
kind of done with all earning but you're you've
lost your creative outlet they they took your
life's work from you so i think that's um a little
bit sad I watch him still just out of curiosity
to see how the private equity company is handling
it. But he's definitely not what he used to be.
The 100 seconds videos were, I think, when he
was at his best. But is there official information
about this somewhere? Or is it a Reddit post?
Is a Reddit post like the official? No, there's
a news article by, I don't remember what company,
but it was disclosed. The company that owns him
is Electrify Video and they also own a couple
of other big companies. He actually confirmed
it too in a recent video. He made some joke about
it. He was like, I've been acquired by private
equity. You shouldn't trust anyone who's been
acquired by private equity. He referred to it
and everyone is roasting him in the comments
for it. Oh, because you never know when he's
joking as well, right? So it's like, whatever
yeah so i was like no whatever it's just playing
around i didn't know that to be honest but um
i guess we don't know how how much like he could
be he could have just had it a part of it acquired
right maybe they get a say in what he makes it's
not confirmed that it's full ai voice cloning
but it is sometimes like a little weird his his
intonation kind of sounds like it to me but we
do know he's he has been acquired but okay so
we don't know if he's still making the videos
or if it's like ai generated because it's just
the voice basically right yeah which which you
can clone now yeah pretty indistinguishably i
watched the video man and you can even clone
video as well you could clone me great video
you know with emotions voice everything it's
like god damn yeah it's creepy yeah But I watched
other videos, you know, like 15 minutes videos,
a guy that I found out there randomly. I'm not
going to say any names. It's not the ones that
I follow. You know, it's not a tech related video,
just a random guy. I watched one of the videos
and I was like, OK, this guy is cool. But as
soon as he started getting sponsorships. It was
just an ad, you know, so. Yeah. just found a
way to get an intro to get into the ad and then
you continue watching the ad and it's like i
don't watch it anymore so i guess that's a bad
completely and 100 bad bad way of doing it but
if you do your video right if you have something
that you want to share out there and you put
in an ad in the middle yeah i don't think it's
too bad right Yeah, I can see that. I can see
your point. Especially if you want to make a
living on YouTube, it's pretty much essential.
That's where a lot of the money is. It is what
it is. It is unfortunate, but it's their way
of embedding ads. Luckily, I have other side
occupations. I'm a software engineer and also
I'm a student, so I don't hugely need... to be
making a full -time salary at the moment but
if i was like could be a totally different story
yeah yeah well just wanna also thank the first
ceo which is there in the comments is web23 web23
.com because i have memberships as well you know
so um web23 is uh the first ceo the per the first
person actually that joined as a ceo so i just
have to say the name In the credits, I'm just
saying it right now, so I don't have to say it
at the end. What's up, Web 2 .3? Now, what are
your thoughts on giving smaller channels a chance?
I'm quite small still, but I reached out to DistroTube,
for example, and he agreed to do an interview.
DJ was kind enough as well to show up in one
of my videos. definitely gives you credibility
i would say and helps with your channel right
so yeah would you promote any small channel no
matter what it's about or would you like filter
it like okay so it has to be good or what are
your thoughts there that's a good question I
think if there is good reason to collaborate,
then I totally would. There is one idea that
I have of kind of forming like one giant video
with like everyone in the NeoVim niche, even
people that are very small, like less than a
thousand subscribers, and just have everyone
give one Vim tip. I think that would be pretty
cool, but it would also be... It would be hard
to coordinate that. I mean, to make sure no one
overlaps and to get all the footage together
to one person and who edits it, who uploads it.
But if that were possible to pull off, that would
be definitely an awesome thing to see. Yeah,
that's a pretty good idea, actually. Hopefully,
we could pull it off someday. But yeah, I do
like that idea. And why did you decide to start
with YouTube? Did you ever think about doing
it like a faceless channel, right? Because when
I started, I didn't show my face. I started showing
my face like, I don't know, five months ago,
six months. I don't remember. But how did it
happen for you? So it was probably about three
months ago. It was towards the end of my sophomore
year of college. And the reason it started, I
guess. Well, it's a couple of things. I've wanted
to start a YouTube channel for a long time. I
think a lot of people kind of do it because I
mean, it's it is really fun. You just make videos
about things you care about and you get paid
in fame for it. So that's it is pretty awesome.
But it's also what kind of held me back. It's
like everyone kind of is going to judge you no
matter how much people say they aren't. I mean,
especially if you're doing something like Vim
or Linux, it's like, God damn, that's that's
kind of. Go outside, dude. So I was I was hesitant
to do that, but I just went for it. And my another
thing was I was working on a board game at the
time. I still am, but I wanted to have some way
to promote it. And I thought I've been thinking
about this for a while. If I have some kind of
following, I can maybe generate sales for this
board game. But. Yeah, the channel ended up becoming
more important than the board game in the end.
I still might publish it one day, but it's kind
of stalled out right now. And did you always
think about doing the channel like showing your
face or did you ever think about doing it faceless?
Or you just wanted to show the Vimity like that
Vimity looks on YouTube? I didn't really give
it much thought either way, to be honest. I'm
not sure it even crossed my mind to do faceless.
I just thought, I don't know, I wasn't really
going into it with much of a plan. I just thought
other people show their face in tutorials. I
feel like it just makes it more approachable,
more human. It sets you apart from other people.
So I just thought it was kind of a necessity.
That's what Prat said, or Prat, that's what he
said. You know, if you're going to do something,
you know, open source, something, just show your
face because it's going to help you connect with
people a lot more, you know, because otherwise
you just don't know who is behind all that stuff.
Exactly, yeah. There's a question there in the
comments, like, where does Sylvan come from?
Yeah, if you want to share that. Yeah, I'm from
the state of Vermont. It's like upper left corner
of the US. And it's right on the Canadian border.
It's right near Montreal. We're like two hours
from there. And yeah, that's pretty much it.
I've been all over the world. I've lived in many
different places all throughout my life. But
that's where I'm based most of the time. Is that
where Prime is from? I don't remember where he's
from. I don't know where he's from. I'd imagine
he's closer to Silicon Valley, somewhere in California.
No, he moved somewhere quite calm. I don't know,
Vermont? No, I don't think it's Vermont. Where
is it? Maybe South Dakota? South Dakota. I have
no idea. Okay. Yeah, the U .S. geography is pretty
brutal, you gotta know. How do you call it? How
do you call it, by the way? I just want to know
this. Do you call it America or do you call it
United States? Either one. Usually United States,
but yeah, I don't know. I switch. No, because
I'm in America as well. So, you know, because
I'm right below Mexico and Guatemala. So it's
a pet peeve, I guess. When I hear America, hearing
America, it's like the U .S. Yeah. You know?
America. Yeah, we kind of stole the term. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. Now, have you seen all this drama
with Pirate Software? Do you know who Pirate
Software is? I've seen it a little bit. I've
seen it in passing, like mentioned on the Primogen.
I know, like, actually also the channel Coding
Jesus, I think, was maybe where I heard about
it. But, yeah, I don't hugely know about. I never
watched him really before, so I wasn't all that
invested. Okay, okay. Let's talk about something
a little bit more serious. Do you have any thoughts
on... This is something that I took to Pratt
as well. You know, substance abuse. Since you're
pretty young, right? You're pretty young. I remember
my 20s, man. It was wild. It was wild. I was
doing everything. Drinking, just, man. And doing
everything I could do back then. Do you have
any thoughts on substance abuse? Like drugs,
alcohol, all that stuff? Yeah, sure. Well, obviously,
substance abuse is bad. When it becomes abuse,
it's bad. But I hear a lot of people now, especially
in programming, be very against any kind of substance
at all. No drinking, no anything like very clean
cut, lock in, focus on improving and doing well
in your career. And a lot of people, that's what
they want. They just want to exercise a lot,
be super healthy. be successful in every way
you know and i think there's that's that that
is great that's a great thing to aspire to but
also you shouldn't just dismiss everything like
just without trying it you know if you've never
tried i'm not saying go out and try a very serious
drug don't don't try any like opioids or anything
like that crystal meth don't do that but if you
uh I think trying the mild stuff that most people
will do is pretty important in your development.
Yeah, I do. It is a slippery slope, though. You've
got to be very careful. Yeah, yeah. I think people
say it based on their experience. And I don't
know what young people think about it, you know,
but I didn't ask about how old he is. Prime is
like a year older than me, I think. I just see
myself, you know, and I just see where things
are going to end. And I'm just trying to make
people avoid the same mistakes. You cannot do
anything anyway, right? So people are just going
to do what they are going to do. But I think
people that had bad experiences with alcohol
and drugs are the ones that are saying like,
no, don't do it. Because my plan was not for
it to go out of control. You know, it started
with the beer. You're like, what, am I talking
to my dad or something? Does it feel? Yeah, but
it progressed really fast for me. And then I
added more things into the mix, you know, marijuana,
cocaine, crystal meth. Is my video going to be
demonetized for talking about all this stuff?
I don't know. They won't check, whatever. Yeah,
but. Then you start doing it more often, more
often, often, often, then every day, every day.
I guess, like I said in the conversation with
Prat, it depends on your personality. I know
myself, I'm pretty addictive. NeoVim, doesn't
matter if it's NeoVim, if it's macOS, if it's
something I just go all in. So if it's bad, I
will go all in. Or if it's good, I'll go all
in as well. So I guess you have to know yourself.
If you feel that you're kind of an addictive
person, just, yeah, personally, you know, I'd
say just careful because when you feel 10 years
are going to be, you know, are going to pass
and you're going to be in a completely bad situation.
I don't know. I don't know, man. It's complicated.
That is great advice. Yeah. it's and i i also
i think in a lot of people who do vim and whatnot
i think i do have a very addictive personality
i mean kind of like a adhd type like you just
keep pursuing immediate dopamine you know so
it's definitely something i'm very conscious
of like i i definitely don't want to get pulled
into it because i can see it happening yeah yeah
if it happens with vim neo vim you know computer
and all that stuff uh there's a high chance it'll
happen with drugs because man it's delicious
you know no being honest it's delicious you do
crystal you don't sleep for three days i remember
man is this too much what i'm talking about right
now but uh no i'd be interested to hear it because
it's it's rare you can hear someone talk about
uh Yeah. Doing something like that. You don't
sleep for three days. You're focused. You don't
eat. You don't want to eat anything at all. And
I remember being drinking, you know, just drinking,
of course, beer. That's what I used to drink,
you know, just drinking. Crystal, three days
straight, no sleeping, no eating. After that,
my skin was all shitty. I was, you know, all,
no, it's not a good experience. Same thing with
marijuana. I started with marijuana. You know,
just a couple, you know, puffs, right? Right.
It didn't sit well with me. We didn't get along
fine the first time. I guess because of my personality
as well. I used to get really paranoid, right?
Yeah, it's a common experience. But that's just
the first few times. Then you get used to it.
Then you don't feel paranoid anymore, right?
You just get used to it. And then you feel good.
Once you pass that paranoid state, after doing
it often, you get used to it. But then comes
the bad part, the addictive part. Because I hear
it all the time. And people say, it's not addictive.
Marijuana, I can leave it whenever I want. Man,
you cannot. You cannot. And I have a lot of friends
that say that. It's not a drug. It's something
natural. I can leave it whenever I want. But
it gets really tough. It's really difficult to
leave it afterwards. And the worst thing that
happened to me because of it is depression. I
finally met depression after doing marijuana
every day for like, I don't know, a year, you
know, daily, more than once a day. No, it just
messed up my brain. And it was tough to go out
of it. But fortunately, I did, you know, so.
I guess that's that's the reason why I just advise
people if they can avoid it, you know, it's a
good option, but. It's totally fair, yeah. But
do you consider like. Is it worth it to. to not
go down that path if you never got the chance
to experience it at all you know if you you're
completely safe if you never try it but is that
worth giving up the experience of it just the
one time because it is i mean there's pretty
much nothing else like it it's like the closest
thing you have to magic in the world i mean oh
but even if even if it's not something you love
it's like It's a very interesting experience.
It's one of the things in this life that's, I
don't know, it's a cool thing to explore. Oh,
yeah. But you mean doing it once, right? Or doing
it daily and ruin yourself the way that I personally
did? Or you mean just doing it and testing it
for the experience? Well, I mean, if you're saying
like, if you're warning people against it, you
know, that's, it is great. If you don't want
to go down that path. if you're protecting people,
but do you think like to never try it at all,
just to be as safe as possible is what people
should do. Or do you think it's something that's
worth trying just once? Cause that's kind of,
that's my opinion. I mean, it's, it is very risky
for some people. Like, I don't know, one in 20
maybe we'll go down a very bad path because of
it. But for the rest of the people, the experience
is like, it's very interesting. It's a cool part
of life. Yeah. You know, thinking, for example,
about my daughter, even though I love her so
much and I will tell her, don't do it. And I
will just talk to her about what happened to
me and I will be graphical about it, but I cannot
avoid it. Right. So. Right. She's pretty young
right now. She's eight. I don't know what's going
to happen when she grows older. It all depends
as well on the friends that you have, right?
So there's always going to be that friend. I
was that friend, you know, the nasty MF -er.
So my advice is... Yeah, that's... Go ahead.
No, no, you go ahead. I was just going to...
gonna talk about parenting like i think that's
i'm very glad that my parents are not very strict
like they're i mean we're from vermont we're
very uh very forward thinking but they're the
type of parents who would like smoke weed with
me you know like they like they're they have
like standards they're not like letting me do
anything i want at all but they're very much
like if you're gonna do it anyway we should be
there like we should we should make sure you
know what you're doing And how was their experience
with it? Well, I don't want to get too personal
and all that stuff, but was it always in control
or did it ever get out of control for your parents?
Do you have an idea or no? Yeah, I think for
both of them, it was pretty in control, pretty
standard. Most people try these things when they're
in college. And I think both of them did, but
didn't go crazy beyond that. That's the thing.
If that happens to you, that's awesome. You're
one of the few people that is able to just try
it and move on. And that's great. Didn't happen
to me, unfortunately. And not everyone is like
me, you know. But like I said, I go all in. Once
I tried alcohol, man, I spent drinking for like
10 years straight, you know. And I didn't stop
in drugs and all that. So, difficult advice.
In my case, for example, you know, with my daughter,
I'll be like, you have never seen me doing that.
What I drink nowadays is 0 % beers, you know,
like 0 % alcohol beers. Right. Or not beers,
you know, it's like a soda, basically. So my
advice with her will be just avoid it because
it's not going to lead to anything good. But
if she does it, what am I going to do? You know,
nothing. I cannot do anything. Have you watched
this movie, Beautiful Boy, by Timothee Chalamet?
By the way, have you watched it? Let me show
it to you. I haven't, no. No? Hold on. Let's
see this one. And it's a wonderful movie. And
it's you right there, man. How come you haven't
watched it? I just don't watch a ton of stuff,
to be honest. No. I definitely should. I should
watch more Timothee Chalamet stuff now just so
I can hone my look. No, at least this movie because
it, man, it's a good movie because you have both
of the perspectives, right? I used to be this
kid. Well, not him because I don't look like
him at all, you know, but. I was on his side,
you know, and now I'm more on that side. So it's
a wonderful movie. It just talks about what I've
been talking about right now. You know, his personality,
addictive. And he just went all in drugs and
it was tough for them, the whole situation. So,
I don't know. It's a good movie. I did really
enjoy it, actually. yeah that's that is really
cool to to see both sides of it yeah yeah yeah
now i'll definitely have to watch that yeah let
me know let me know how it goes do you have any
thoughts on um on a supreme being as well like
god you have any thoughts there not hugely to
be honest so i was raised very um not atheist
really i guess more agnostic just we didn't We
just weren't super religious at all. And a lot
of people around me, especially up in Vermont,
just if they are religious, it's not something
that's really talked about. But like now that
I've left Vermont and I've traveled a lot, there
are many, many more religious people. I'm not
someone, like I know certain people who are atheists
or very against religion. They think if you're
Catholic, whatever, you're brainwashed. You're
all a victim of your upbringing, your surroundings.
You just believe that because that's what your
parents told you. I'm not someone who will put
that down because I'm not qualified to say. We
don't know, man. So I personally, it's not a
huge part of my life, but I'm never going to.
trash on someone else's beliefs at all um yeah
that's that's pretty much my take on it and i
think a lot of people have criticisms of religion
like it's been used for a lot of bad things in
the past i mean if you look at the the history
of the catholic church they've done a lot of
stuff and other churches other religions as well
have been used to justify a lot of very bad events
throughout history but also on the other hand
i mean there's a lot of good to the church like
to the community element of it to just the value
system the the morals and ethics but yeah it's
it's just not a world that i was raised in so
i'm not super inclined to go into it i mean and
i can totally get people being in it though and
no hate to them no hate to anyone that's basically
my take on it interesting yeah i'm kind of in
the same boat you know i used to be an agnostic
as well you know and uh somewhat of an atheist
i would say more agnostic you know i just i don't
know yeah right but um a lot of things happened
and uh i was raised as a catholic actually you
know my parents are catholics and uh just didn't
click with me I found India religion and I don't
know. That's what helped me go out of drugs and
all that stuff. You know, it's weird. Hinduism?
Yeah. Yeah. Very cool. Yeah. But I don't care
too much either. You know, as long as it makes
everyone better people, like you said, you know,
it brings what's used. Or the way that it originally
started, it was really bad, you know? The origins
are, you know, were not the best, you know? It
was not used the right way back then. Quite the
opposite, right? But nowadays, as long as it
makes people better people, it's fine, you know?
Yeah, I also kind of... I have a problem with
people that critique it a lot because there are
very, very smart people that are... religious
and smart people that are atheists too i mean
i've met people that are like incredibly smart
and very religious and they've thought about
their beliefs a lot it's not something that they've
been just like tricked into people that are fully
aware of i was raised like this you know it's
it's likely that because i'm in this environment
i'll end up religious and people on the other
side too kind of raised as atheists it's people
that are just that claim that they know outright
they de facto have the answer that's kind of
suspicious i feel like Knowing that you don't
know is the best move. And I think also imposing
it into other people. That's where the problem
comes in as well. That's when a lot of fight
happen and a lot of disagreements. Because I'm
not going to impose my beliefs on anyone, right?
I just believe in what I believe, what helped
me. And I don't care what other people... believes
in you know i respect everyone so i think that's
you know a big part as well right uh imposition
trying to you know your truth is the truth no
man we just don't know just believe in what you
want to believe in that's it leave everyone else
alone right yeah what about zoomers do you know
what the trend is right now are you a zoomer
what's a zoomer by the way zoomer Gen Z? Yep.
Yeah, I guess I am. I guess I fit into that bracket.
I mean, it's interesting. There are a lot of
different kinds of people in every generation,
but I think I've heard it said that we, Generation
Z, is like the most similar to the boomer generation
in terms of our work ethic and also the millennials
are kind of known for being he's like very offended
at things they don't want to work and both boomers
and gen z are like we're hard working we're ambitious
and we're also we're not as afraid of offending
people like we're kind of returning more to offensive
humor and stuff like that that's it seems like
a general pattern i've come across oh and amongst
your friends what's the trend in religion because
In my generation, atheists was, you know, a big
trend. You know, what do you, like your friends,
you know, a small demographics, like what do
you see that predominates more their religion,
people being atheists or what? It's hard to say.
I think a lot of, a lot of my friends, it's just,
I don't talk about it with, and most of them
are either like atheists or Catholic, I think.
is the majority and yeah it's just not something
we really discuss it's not all that important
too yeah yeah makes sense makes sense okay yeah
and um how did your parents or how do they take
this youtube thing going on how do they see it
do they understand it do they share it they do
they they watch it everyone in my family even
my grandmother grandfather watch it and i think
i mean some things they can understand more than
others like if i'm not talking about vim but
for a lot of it is probably just complete gibberish
to them but they're they're very supportive and
uh yeah they tune in yeah that's good that they
support you and uh i want to talk about um something
that i've been noticing lately you know I'm not
sure if it's just me or I feel that way. I've
noticed that a lot of people nowadays call themselves
autists or people with ADHD with a lot of those
disorders. I don't know what they are. They feel
like proud of, you know, of that, you know, having
ADHD and all that stuff. Right. Is it really,
do you think it's really ADHD and autism or people
is just overstimulated too much social media?
You cannot concentrate after all that your brain
damages, right? It takes a hit for sure. And
you need to take. tests to be diagnosed with
that stuff you know it's not just as simple as
if you believe that you're autistic you are no
you have to go through a lot of tests then you
have to be diagnosed properly have you seen that
increasing do you have any thoughts on that yeah
i have seen that increasing i've seen a lot of
people like with adhd or claiming to have adhd
and i i actually do i'm diagnosed with adhd but
i don't i don't know if i have it like i never
really did any rigorous test i was just like
i can't really focus they give me adderall um
but i do i have a lot of thoughts about that
i have a video about that actually coming out
soon but basically i mean i think it's very like
you were saying it's over diagnosed like a lot
of people that don't have those things claim
to claim to i i think more so uh adhd than autism
like there's no one like claiming to have autism
doesn't really get you anything but claiming
to adhd does i think a lot of people that claim
to have it don't and like you were saying it's
just our short form content the attention economy
is just terrible and people are just lazy they
don't have adhd but there are also a lot of people
that did have adhd like and they never needed
uh like stimulant medication before now because
growing up before computers and especially short
form i guess is the big one like You don't pay
attention in class, right? Or whatever, like
you're zoning out. No big deal. Everyone does
that. That's normal. But now that we have like
engineered attention grabbing stuff and you have
ADHD, that can just ruin your life. You know,
if you're someone who's impulsive and just follows
something, the amount of time you can waste.
And that was kind of the case for me. I mean,
I was always curious about Adderall, right? Someone
who's very into getting work done, which we all
are. We're all workflow people. And Adderall
is just something that's like, it's the work
drug, right? I've got to try this. But what is
it? Is it amphetamine? Yeah, dextroamphetamine
is Adderall. There's other brands like Vyvanse,
Ritalin. So it's sort of, I'm not sure, but is
it somewhat like crystal, but in small doses?
Is it related? It is related to crystal meth,
but it's a very benign form of it. And another
reason for that is if you're smoking something,
you ingest all the amphetamines super quickly,
which gives you a high. But if you're digesting
a pill, It's much, much slower, so you can't
get high from it. Even if you take 100 milligrams
of Adderall or a huge amount, it doesn't really
make you high in the same way. I know some people
crush and snort it. It's a very bad thing to
do. That probably would make you high, but taking
it normally, there's no high. There's no euphoria.
There's nothing like that from it. It helps you
focus and do stuff. Well, yeah, it is kind of
weird. It doesn't just make me immediately able
to focus. I would say what it helps with is I
always feel like I have a bunch of different
voices in my head. I'm pulling me different directions.
And like you were saying, watching that video
earlier, and you see the editing, I start immediately
thinking of something else. Like, oh, how did
they pull off this editing? And I find in the
middle of something, I'm just... Thinking about
something totally else and I do it all the time.
Sometimes it's good because it helps me come
up with ideas but sometimes I'm trying to do
homework and I just I can't do it like no matter
how much I try my mind is just wandering like
very quickly going to the next thing and Yeah,
it's it's also if there's constantly notifications
and stuff and like I mean now with YouTube like
the internet is more compelling to be on than
ever it's it's like tough to resist. So I think
amphetamine is kind of like a good counter to
all this attention engineering. And ideally,
we wouldn't need it or we evolved to have like
the ADHD traits. They serve a biological advantage,
right, of early cavemen. We were the people who
would like go eat new mushrooms and berries and
just like... Hopefully we didn't die, but we
were there for the good of humanity to explore
new things and just take risks. But now it's
like we haven't adapted well to the modern world.
At least that's what I've heard the explanation
for it being. For a long time, I was also skeptical
of Adderall, right? Because it's weird. It's
like big pharma giving you a brain altering substance.
it's just it doesn't it doesn't feel right it
feels it feels kind of druggy and weird and like
yeah there's something that just feels wrong
about it and there's a lot of stigma around it
and a lot of people that don't fully agree with
the science but i when when i like started researching
this and when I got my diagnosis I did I did
a bunch of research towards like all the studies
that have been done and it's it turns out it's
it's been going on a long time they've tried
many different treatments towards ADHD and it
is it's the most effective thing by far and oh
another thing is people say um a lot of drug
addicts uh have ADHD they have like poor impulse
control they go down to like dark roads you know
and having adhd and not taking adderall is very
risky for you they people with it end up dying
in car crashes or from drug overdoses or just
bad situations like 20 more frequently than normal
people it's actually pretty safe for you to it's
almost like it's it's leveling the playing field
it's making you 20 more likely to survive but
i don't know that's that's just what i've read
there's Totally different perspectives on it,
too. Yeah. Quite an interesting take, actually,
because could it be that we're overstimulated?
I remember before, because, you know, I was around
before social media. You know, my phone used
to be a dumb phone, you know, back in the day.
No internet, just the phone. Only the game. What
is it? Snake was just a small game. That was
it. You know, nothing else. So SMS messages,
you know. That's all you would get in the past.
So you were not slave. The computer, maybe a
little bit, but not too much. But now it happened
to me. It also affected me. I used to do things
in the past, you know. I used to focus and get
things done. Nowadays, man, it is extremely difficult.
It sure is, yeah. Yeah. I had social media. I
had Twitter. Instagram, TikTok. I had all of
them just to share my videos, you know. But then
I started opening them and scrolling one, then
to the next one, Twitter, right? Then to the
next one, then to the next one. And the cycle
would start over. I would spend four hours like
that. So I just uninstalled all of them. And
I just said, no, I'm not doing that. So now I
do it with Twitter from time to time and YouTube.
I need to find something. I just need to, I always
end up doing something. But I don't know. It's,
it's tough. I do think that we are overstimulated.
And like you said, we have not adapted well to
all of this technology and all that stuff. So.
Yeah. I don't know. Yeah. I totally agree. I've
done the same thing with all social media. But
now that being a content creator is also kind
of its own endless pull of attention, right?
Like, there's so many notifications from this.
It's like a constant thing you're kind of monitoring.
Yeah. So it's like I escaped it, but I went right
back to it. Yeah. I said the YouTube app, the
YouTube Studio app, short format is killing our
attention span. Yeah, definitely. Definitely,
man, because I create one hour tutorials, you
know, like BIM tutorials with all the stuff I
know. It's not the best tutorials out there,
but people don't watch them, right? They're used
to shorts. They're going to watch three minutes.
You know, that's like the average view time,
three, five, seven minutes of a one hour long
video. So, yeah, I see that too. It's just, yeah,
it's tough. How do you do with the YouTube Studio
app? Because I uninstalled it, but I installed
it again. Yeah, me too. Yeah, that's a great
question. I have to uninstall it, like you said,
just because it's such a distraction. But sometimes
I use it to upload shorts. I edit shorts on my
phone usually. I was doing it on desktop, but
it's just a lot more convenient for me. So what
I do is I like... Whenever I want to upload a
short, I download the YouTube Studio app, sign
in, upload it, and then delete the app again,
which is, yeah, it's kind of ridiculous jumping
through hoops. Yeah, I limited the app because
I have an iPhone. You can do it on any phone,
right? But I limited the app to, in the screen
time app on the phone itself, to 15 minutes a
day, right? So if I open it for 15 minutes, it's
just going to... Show me a message that I cannot
open it. I can open it. You can override it easily.
But I set it to 15 minutes. I've been trying
to stick to it. I don't respect that at times,
but it has helped because otherwise I was just
watching. It doesn't make a difference, right?
It's just a waste of time, actually. Yeah, exactly.
But it's hard to resist. It is. Yeah. And why
so serious in the comments says. He watches videos
on double speed, man. That is something that
I do as well. Because you want to be productive,
right? I do that too. 1 .5 or 2? What's the speed?
It depends. It depends on the person. Usually,
yeah, I don't know. Some people I have to go
full two times speed, but sometimes 1 .25. That's
why I try to talk quite fast in my videos and
just move really fast. That way people hopefully
don't do that. Yeah, I do it as well all the
time. 1 .5 is usually where I leave them at.
Depends on the person as well. Some people, too,
double speed, you know, but usually 1 .5 is...
I cannot watch Prime videos on 1 .5. It's just
too fast. Yours, I watch them at regular speed
as well, but usually 1 .5. That's funny. It's
also when I'm editing, I always edit in times
two speed. Oh, yeah. I hate that. I can't stand
to hear myself in one time. It takes so long.
Yeah. What are you used to edit, by the way?
DaVinci or what? DaVinci, yeah. Man. And it sounds
really awful when you put it in double the speed,
right? I don't know how to do it because I don't
know how to edit video, man. But I put it in
double speed and it sounds really ugly. And I
just... continue all the way through the video
and if it's a two hour long video man it takes
so long it's yeah yeah it's it is tough but i
have pretty bad sound quality anyway it doesn't
bother me okay now going back to um to your personal
stuff you mentioned school right now right so
What is it that you're studying, by the way?
Something related to math, right? Yes, yeah,
I'm a pure math major, but I also, I'm kind of
thinking of going into like philosophy and more
liberal arts than the computer science, just
because I have the computer science skills already.
And in the past taking classes, I've just, I've
known everything already. It's not useful for
me. And what do you do in as a math major? Like
what is the career about? I have no idea. I mean,
usually it's like a companion career. A lot of
people go into programming, but there are other
things you can do with it. Like obviously some
people become stats. Some people do what's called
operations research, which is like figuring out
how to make a company operate. more efficiently.
The example I've heard is the plastic water bottles,
they have that like little cap on the end and
someone figured out making that like 15 % smaller
saves them a hundred million dollars every year
or whatever. That's like someone doing operations
research. So it's like, that's one way to apply
it. I mean, you could also become a professor
of math. You could become a researcher in a theoretical
area. And I don't know, that could connect back
to anything, really. There's lots of places where
math is applied throughout computer science and
stuff. Especially now with transformers, people
are really looking for the more theoretical.
Anyone can kind of set up a whatever retrieval
augmented generation pipeline or any of that
stuff with Python. But the people doing the theoretical
research, that's where the big companies really
want you. is your career strictly math or is
it also programming related like do you get programming
classes and all that stuff or it's just math
or is it computer science oriented it's it's
pure math oriented but you can also take like
other classes outside of it if you want to out
of interest so i i just tried that i took like
a low level like operating systems course and
it It wasn't stuff that was super helpful to
me. And I already have the programming skill
set, you know, so I can always go into that if
I need to. And where or when did you learn about
programming? Did you do it by yourself? I did,
yeah. I remember I wanted to get into it because
I didn't understand the question, like, where
do you write code? Like, what does it go into
when you write code, you know? i just really
wanted to know the answer to that i asked my
parents they obviously didn't know because they're
uh they're artists and professors they it's not
their area so i decided like i'm just gonna buy
a computer and figure that out so i got like
uh the macbook in 2019 i think was the the i5
macbook air pretty terrible computer now but
yeah i i saved up all summer to buy that and
then i Started watching videos on Java, like
early programming, I think. There's a channel,
Alex Lee, he did Java tutorials. And then I bought,
like, you know the platform Udemy? Yep, I used
it a lot in the past, yep. Yeah, so I followed
a Java course through that. And it took me a
long time to learn everything I know today, but
it was basically all on my own. And yeah, I just
went up through like Python and then I did web
development and then I did some lower level stuff.
And yeah, that's the progression pretty much.
I remember my Udemy days. I did it a lot and
it's a good platform. Well, there's good and
bad courses, right? There's courses that are
really bad, but there's some other ones, man,
extremely. good courses right so yeah it all
depends on the instructor but i used udemy a
lot in the past you know for all of the um vernettis
related stuff linux networking um you know i
have a lot of background in networking that's
what i started with and i use udemy a lot and
yeah and um yeah Why are you on Mac still? I
guess everyone in your comments, you hear that
a lot, like you should move to Linux, especially
in our niche, you know, because it's NeoBIM related.
You have the Mac looks, by the way. You look
like a macOS guy, if we're honest, right? So
why are you still in Mac? Well, I made a video
about it a while ago and I've gotten less comments
since then, but... It basically boils down to,
I grew up on the hardware. That's the computer
company my whole family used. And I've always
seen it as like the... the academic computer
you know it's like the computer of higher education
and so i was just like i actually remember my
friends when i was saving up for my first computer
they all wanted me to play some game and they
were like you should get a you should get a pc
you should get a windows computer and i like
wanted to to know how to code so i was like no
i'm i'm getting a macbook terrible deal like
a thousand dollars for a very weak computer but
i just i liked the aesthetic of it and a lot
of people like in linux like roast me for that
like oh you're so soy that you like apple like
come on just you should you should be supporting
open source and stuff and i totally get that
argument open source is like it's a great thing
for the world the reason i'm still using it is
the hardware is just the battery life and everything
is just so good it's pretty hard to beat in terms
of like i've used thinkpads before and they're
just It's not the same at all remotely close.
I can use a Linux desktop, I think, because I
don't have to be on the move. But I need a lot
of battery life when I'm traveling a lot. And
I mean, there's also all the video processing
software. You can get FFmpeg, obviously, and
a couple. I think DaVinci runs on Linux. I guess
there's a lot of powerful video and audio software.
And another thing is, I mean, you know this,
you can get a very good workflow on the Mac.
It is pretty much Linux in terms of, yeah, it's
like Unix -based. The directory system's all
the same, and it's got Homebrew, and most open
-source pieces of software will run on Mac. You
see the options are... Mac is usually first because
it's convenient for people to port to. There's
some stuff I don't like. There's certain things
that are really annoying about the operating
system, but you can customize it, I think, a
lot more than Linux people think. They assume
it's Windows, it's shut down, it's all proprietary.
Certain things you can't change, of course, but
there is a lot that you can change. You can get
a... a very good workflow and we have tiling
window managers now we have obviously you buy
an aerospace and whatever amethyst the other
ones pretty much everything you need in terms
of a great workflow is runnable on mac so i don't
really see the need to switch but also so much
of my audience wants me to at that point it's
just like i might as well do it for the content
Yeah, I did that. I installed Arch a few days
ago and a computer that I have back there. I
don't know. You cannot see it, but it's just
a microcomputer. And I want to try Omarchi, however
that's said by DHH, you know, because I've just
came to the conclusion and the realization that
I just like decisions to be taken for me. My
wife chooses my clothes, you know. I don't care.
She just buys them and I'm like, I'm going to
wear them. Right. So I just want to try something
that works out of the box. So if we come think
about DHH is going to be like my wife, we could
say, cause he's taking all the decisions for
me. Right. But I don't care about customization
anymore. It's just like, I just want it to work.
I just. We'll let someone else figure it out.
Just like my NeoVim distribution, which is LazyVim.
I'm old already. I don't care. You know, at this
point in life, it's just whatever. I installed
Arch using the wiki and I didn't know what Hyperlink
was, what the compositor, whatever the bar. No,
it's just, I'll try a Marchi or a Marki and I'll
see how it goes. Yeah, I get that. People are
often saying like, oh, it's about learning Linux
though. It doesn't matter that it's inconvenient.
But if I were someone who's never tried Linux
before, I would agree with that. But I SSH all
the time. I know all the shell commands. I know
Linux. It's like the specific stuff. I'm not
all that interested in learning how some random
display server works, how some random desktop
environment. Yeah, I guess like... Maybe you
can get some kind of cool features going, more
customizability, but it's so much work to learn
those things. I'd rather put time into the stuff
that's on all the platforms, the shell utilities
and Vim and stuff like that. Yeah. And like you
said as well, people think that macOS is pretty
closed like Windows. I've been using Windows
right now because at the work that I'm on, I
use a Windows computer. They gave me a ThinkPad
and it's a really good ThinkPad. It's one of
the latest models. 32 gigs of RAM. Nice display.
But it's just plasticky. It's clunky. It's ugly.
The battery doesn't last that long. Windows,
man. windows just switching between applications
it feels slow i don't know there's something
going on with with windows but what are your
thoughts on windows by the way i hate windows
i have to use it for work it's just it's terrible
even if you install wsl oh it's it's just it's
not the same like everything is always breaking
you're trying to set up things it's like the
Windows side, the Linux side, there's so many
problems with everything constantly. And the
interface is not configurable at all. It feels
so slow. It's not Unix. It's not the same. And
I guess Linux is the best, best case scenario.
But macOS just feels so much better than Windows.
Oh, yeah. There's no contest. Yeah, definitely.
I don't know what's going to happen with me and
Linux, you know. It's really comfortable. Mac
OS is really comfortable. I don't know. Supporting
big companies like Apple. I don't care, man.
Just give me a product that works. I don't care
too much about ethics and all. I don't know.
I just want my computer to work and Mac OS works
just fine with me. I don't see a point in switching.
I'm doing it for the content, of course, you
know, because I want to install Arch. I want
to experience how Arch is and all that stuff
and understand what people talk about. It looks
beautiful, but I don't know, maybe in the future.
But for now, I'm sticking to macOS, I think.
What about you? Yeah, I... i do really like the
side of it where people are concerned with privacy
and not supporting big corporations but it's
very tough in this day and age to to be like
that because if you're saying that you're on
the internet okay you're supporting youtube you
support google yeah your browser your everything
you do is and you are in a database you're being
tracked you can't avoid it like it's too late
at this point it's kind of like They get more
and more data, but it's not like there's someone
evil in Apple that's like, I'm going to manipulate
you specifically. You're just one person in a
massive data set. That is scary that we're in
a surveillance state, and we should try to shut
that down. Ideally, everyone should be running
Linux, and it's great to see it's gaining more
popularity. I'm very supportive of that, but
at the same time, the individual privacy thing
is like, okay, at this point, if I'm a public
figure on YouTube, my privacy is... already there's
no hope yeah so but i i don't want to dismiss
the open source the privacy people at all because
that is a very valid concern and they're they're
kind of keeping us from if there was no linux
that would be kind of worrying if all software
was controlled by private companies but yeah
that's That's just my thoughts on it. Yeah. And
Linux, of course, balances everything out, you
know, because it's the standard that everyone
aspires. It for sure influences macOS, right?
So I don't know. It's pretty similar, actually.
Like you said, it's Unix based. So I do the same
things that I do in macOS, I do in Linux. I configure
a window manager, the bar at the top, you know,
it doesn't even look like macOS. So Linux definitely
brings a lot of ideas to macOS for sure. So without
Linux, man, I don't know where we would be. macOS
would be like Windows, you know, pretty closed,
pretty horrible. You couldn't customize it too
much. But all of that open source being done
in Linux is then brought over to macOS. And that's
awesome, right? Yeah. Yeah, and it is quite similar
also beyond just the Unix stuff. If you ever
try to develop low -level things for macOS, they
have equivalents to LaunchD and sockets and daemonizing
processes is pretty similar on macOS. They have
equivalent stuff to all the Linux stuff. It goes
down pretty deep. There's obviously some stuff
that's closed and proprietary. like there's some
things i really wish i could change i don't want
a login screen at all when i restart because
my keyboard layout is different i'm always like
mistyping it and getting locked out i wish i
could just like root remove that but i think
it's just baked in but yeah it's it's overall
it's a solid operating system okay now what do
your friends think about because you're all of
your friends are in math what do they think about
your channel your youtube and your you know passion
for computers and all that stuff do they understand
it or they're like what there's uh i have maybe
one or two friends at my school that like program
and that actually know kind of what i'm talking
about one of them like is into vim and stuff
and the other one is just a programmer not into
them they understand it but i'd say i'm not really
at a big computer science school and 99 of my
friends just have no idea what i'm talking about
online like they just know there's a bunch of
there's a bunch of weirdos that are just really
into this for whatever reason and there's a market
for it but yeah it's it is kind of weird sometimes
like people say something to me like oh i saw
you said in such and such a video the other day
and i'm really surprised they watch my content
because i think like who would watch this if
they don't know what vim is it would make no
sense so they watch it do they know you're popular
then yeah they do um i'm actually not sure because
other than my very close friends that i talk
about this with like it's mostly just a ton of
people that I'm not sure if they're watching
me or not. Some of them probably are. Some of
them will probably watch this, but I don't know
who it is. A lot of people I've met once or twice,
but that now know that I'm somewhat of a public
figure. And did Prime's reaction increase your
viewers? Did you notice if it went up a lot?
There was a jump. It wasn't... Crazy. I remember
seeing it live. I was at work and my friend Ethan
Neisser, I don't know if you know that guy. He's
like a crazy TypeScript wizard at Vercel. He
messaged me that Primogen was reacting to me.
So I jumped out of work and I went and watched
it. But it didn't take until he actually published
the video before a bunch of people found out
about me. Oh, and did it increase your subscribers?
i think so it's hard to say like because there's
many different videos all at different levels
like i think it did i'm not sure exactly by how
many but definitely there was more people coming
in because of it okay now let's debunk a myth
maybe it's just a false myth right so people
probably wonder do looks impact Your percentage
of female YouTube audience, you know, like my
percentage of females. What is it? Hold on. I
don't remember what it is. Let me look it up
real quick. I think I have it somewhere here.
Let me see. Okay. So my female audience is 1
.6%. 1 .6%. We're starting to sound like the
Linux guys. We just crossed 0 .7 market share.
So do you have an idea on your analytics? What
percentage is female, your audience? I was checking
it earlier when I was editing. It's like 3 .5,
which is also, it's very small. But I mean...
I'm not sure. I'm not sure. It's twice as mine.
It's a lot. I mean, yeah, I guess so. I guess
so. That's still like, there should be more girls
doing this, but it is what it is. And I mean,
I had that video with a real girl in it. Maybe
that helped a little bit. I'm not exactly sure
what would draw it. I know. I don't know if you've
heard the Ben Awad story. He switched over to
Instagram for programming content and his audience
became like 99 % girls. He just turned it like
a thirst trap channel for a couple of months.
But yeah, I'm not sure. I'm not sure if that
helps. It's around 3 .5 % you said, right? Okay.
I also heard that in one of the videos you mentioned,
why are your thoughts on the Harpoon plugin,
the new plugin by Prime? Oh, the Harpoon plugin.
I have beef with that, yeah. So my problem with
it, I used it for a long time, to be fair. I
thought, like, this is an awesome idea, right?
Switch between your frequent files. But then
I was thinking about it and how it relates to
VS Code. It's literally just... like four tabs
at the, it's exactly like having just tabs at
the top of your screen and VS code using like
control one, two, three, four to switch to them.
Except the only difference is you can't really
see the names. And what would happen with me
is like, I know you can show the names, but I'd
always put in maybe two that I really like switch
back and forth between a lot. And then the other
two, I'd like always forget which one I put in
the third and fourth. So I'd be like kind of
spamming all the shortcuts to try to open them.
And it just, It's just not that good. I realized
it's just, it's an overrated plugin because what
you can do is, you know, the alternate file command,
the E a hashtag or control carrot. I would just
do that for the two main files. And then I either
just like fuzzy find the last two or just drop
global marks just for, if it's a file that starts
with M I just put the global M mark in it. And
then it's much easier for me to remember. And
it's one less plugin. Plus I can. If I'm on a
remote server, I'm going to be fine. I tried
it as well, Harpoon. I used it for like a couple
of weeks. But you need to have a system, I guess,
you know, because this file is always going to
be on the, has to be on the same, you know, Harpoon
position because you will, or the shortcut, so
you will always jump to that file. So I did have
like four files. One of them was my key maps
file, any of them. The other one was my CSHRC
file, I think. And I used to jump to them very
often. But if you don't use them, I don't know.
You need to configure it. So I think it loses
the appeal. I don't know. Maybe I don't understand
it. That's what I think. I don't have the system
to, let's say that the main file is always going
to be this shortcut. This file is always good
to be this other shortcut. I don't know. But
I just stopped using it. I use the alternate
file a lot as well, like you said. And the alternate
Tmux session, right? So I just switch between
the last two sessions, the last two files. And
then I just scroll through my open buffers and
switch to it that way. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Do you
use Tmux, by the way? Oh, yeah. I'm a big fan
of Tmux. Yeah? What do you use it for? I use
basically the Primegens workflow with the TMUG
Sessionizer. So I just like every project directory,
I just open it with the TMUG Sessionizer. And
then I can just spawn tabs off that. It's usually
just to have like one Vim instance. And then
if I'm doing web dev, I'm running a server in
another tab. Or yeah, it's usually just one or
two. different things but being able to just
fuzzy find to any of your projects and then i
have like dedicated key maps for certain ones
like i have capital d for dot files and then
my capital p for projects and i have my home
directory and downloads and just common ones
so just lets me fly around really quickly and
yeah i see people like opening a ton of different
terminal tabs and using like zoxide to move around
it's like i did that for a while and it's just
it's ridiculous to try to do that 10 times and
I'm like, you want to switch projects? Good luck,
close every tab, open up 10 new processes. It's
just so much better than that. Yeah, this is
what I do as well. I use my daily note a lot,
especially for calls like this. You know, this
is where I have my notes right now, you know,
the questions that I've been asking. But if I
need to switch to my .files, it's just, you know,
a key map away. Quite fast, right? go back to
my daily notes or go to my blog post, for example,
right? Here's my blog post. And I have it configured
so that it opens NeoVim when I switch and so
that it restores the session or to my home session.
I have another one as well. The first time, of
course, it's going to take a little while because
it needs to open it. But after it's open, it's
quite fast to jump to them, right? Just quite
easily. i guess you use it in a similar way right
yeah it's also sometimes i randomly command q
my whole terminal and if i wasn't able to restore
everything with tmux that would be really annoying
oh yeah definitely okay and um do you wanna demo
something on your end do you wanna show us something
sure yeah um should i open a new tab just so
i don't get an infinite Yep, let me know and
I'll switch to your screen. Yeah, you should
be good too. Okay, let's see. Yep, I'm looking
at your screen right now. What are you going
to demo for us today? I guess I should show off
some of the types language because that's what
I've been famous for. Just to set the stage,
what is that? And how does it compare? Because
there's these other... Is it a language? LaTeX
or LaTeX? I don't know how it's pronounced. LaTeX?
Apparently it's LaTeX according to the LaTeX
Foundation, but everyone just kind of says, they
say all different things. It's kind of a pronunciation
disaster. There's no, no one really follows their
advice. People just say how they learned it.
Oh, okay. So what are they? Are they like similars?
latex and typist are the languages that you use
for writing text or what are they yeah they're
really um they're used most heavily in like academic
math for writing textbooks and papers at least
that's what latex is used most for but they're
basically like languages that compile to pdfs
or images so There are also other things that
kind of do this. I know there are Puppeteer.
No, not Puppeteer. Is it Playwright? There's
one thing on the back end that kind of does a
similar thing that can render PDFs. I'm not sure
what it is. It's like a JavaScript package. But
you can really do it. You can use it for anything
that you're generating notes or documents. Yeah,
it's largely like an academic thing, though.
What do you use it for? For your math classes?
yeah for the most part for submitting homework
i'm i'm not someone who takes notes really it's
never worked out for me so i just we have to
type up our math into a printable document if
you're a math major that's a pretty common requirement
they don't let you hand write it anymore so that's
mostly what i use it for but i also i kind of
just use it now as uh stand in for any kind of
writing that i have to do for school because
if you're taking notes that you're going to look
at yourself or people in the computer science
world are going to look at right markdown is
great and there's a lot of support for it but
if you have to give it to someone who's outside
of that like i guess you can compile it to a
pdf and give it to them but like you can't give
markdown to a normal person they're gonna freak
out when they see all the hashtags and stuff
so it's like it's like that but you have much
more control than you can do any kind of arbitrary
layout rather than just mark down headings and
links and stuff um but yeah so that's that's
that's i guess the basic intro here's a um what
you can do with it so this package i have right
here is just something i threw together in a
few days as kind of a joke and what it does pretty
much is generate nonsensical math papers so i
have a little plug -in called types preview which
lets you just generate like a live web view of
the document you're currently editing so if i
enter that you can see it'll pop up this paper
that's just browser rendered and you can zoom
in and see it's just like all random objective
constructable algebra the anti -standard silver
groupoid lemma for anti -standard groupoid is
extremely sounds like something you would have
written I want to go back and improve this one
day because there's quite a lot of small mistakes
in it. You can see right here. Oh, I guess that's
someone's name I thought that was about. But
yeah, there's repeated words and a bunch of weird
mistakes. But it was a fun project. And you can
see the language is very fast. So if I were to
change anything in the seed here, There's no
random numbers in this language because it's
deterministic, but this is now a new paper. I
guess it's kind of hard to see that anything
was switched, but if we look, there's 10 references.
If I add more text down here and switch back,
now there's seven references. So it regenerates
the whole paper each time. And I had to do all
pseudo -random number generation because there's
no math random standard library in this language.
And you do all of this in typist, right? Yes.
Yeah. There's, this is kind of the main template
page, but here you can see, I can zoom out a
little bit to show this is a 800 line file. That's
mostly because I'm storing like a bunch of like
word databases, basically. Let's see. Yeah. Like
a bunch of symbols, a bunch of stuff like this.
And yeah, it's all kind of, it lets you like
use for loops and stuff. And are you the only
one in your school that does this? How do others
use it? I don't think they're using Vim or NeoVim.
I guess they're dedicated tools that do this?
Yeah, there's kind of other math majors I know
will use LaTeX and Overleaf. I don't know if
you've ever heard of that. It's basically like
a web editor for LaTeX. And it lets you just
kind of like, it's basically what I just showed
except all web -based and it's a lot slower.
Oh, like, like a Google docs for. Yeah, exactly.
Yeah. Late tech. Okay. And no one is really using
types. Types does vary. It's like, it's coming
out of Germany. It's very new. Like pretty much
no one at my school. No. And why did you go for
types? and not LaTeX. I tried LaTeX initially
because you kind of have to as a math major.
It's just the standard that you learn. And it
was so bad. And I'm like very into optimizing
things. I had been using Vim. I had a Vim plus
LaTeX set up for a while, but I thought someone
has got to have made like a better version of
LaTeX by now. It's probably written in Rust too.
And I looked it up, sure enough. So, yeah, I
just. i tried it out i was a little hesitant
to switch but the more i looked into it the more
the the cooler it is because latex doesn't have
like control flow at all it's just kind of like
markdown whereas this language has first class
like i can show for example say you're familiar
with the problem fizzbuzz i've heard it in primes
videos but i'm not i'm not a programmer by the
way i just hear them oh i got you and yeah it's
pretty much um you want to print out the first
100 numbers or whatever and then if it's divisible
by three you print fizz if it's visible by five
you print buzz if it's divisible by both so like
15 then you print fizz buzz and otherwise you
just print the number so you could like do that
theoretically in this language very easily like
i can declare a for loop just like in python
and then like go through 100 values right and
then in here use control flow so it's kind of
weird it's not all that intuitive it's calc dot
remainder and then you you pass it like that
instead of like normal modulo so that's uh that'll
let me see if it's fizz i'm actually going to
declare a variable here and say let uh answer
equals an empty string so if it's visible by
three answer you can you can add logic in your
text then and how exactly benefit you well it
would allow you to like arbitrarily lay out very
complicated textbooks or diagrams or anything
like that you can kind of calculate and automatically
generate a bunch of pages um so it's very and
then why is this during an error here wd expected
boolean oh if equals zero of course yeah so like
if you want to conditionally render things or
just complicated layouts So I'll add buzz to
that. And I'll be able to show you in a minute
what this looks like. So we're almost good there.
But if it's neither divisible, we just want to
make the answer. So if the answer equals just
an empty string, we want to say the answer equals
the string equivalent of i. And that's good.
So we can just... The number that you said, right?
Just print the number. Right. Right. The LSP
for all of this is great, by the way. So then
we're done with that, and we can just basically
render in content. So I'm going to use what's
called a box, and then here just render the answer.
Hold on. What do you use for the LSP? Is there
a NeoVim -dedicated plugin or language server?
Yes, there is. It's called TinyMist LSP. It's
developed by these... chinese guys and they are
really they're really brilliant this is a excellent
lsp and it has like support for still maintaining
oh yeah big time it's it's got a i'm actually
a an occasional maintainer at i help them write
documentation because their english is a little
bit iffy sometimes oh okay um but yeah that's
basically and then we can have like an inset
Oops. And you can see here we've got fizzbuzz
rendering in a PDF, which is pretty interesting.
Looks like there's something weird about this.
Oh, that makes sense. I accidentally used a 3
instead of a 5. Oh. So that's... Easy fix. There
we go. Oh, I see. Okay. Okay. Okay. And have
you found a legal use case for this logic that
you can implement in your files? I kind of have
been using it for my board game. that's really
like in shambles at the moment i don't have any
working solution but for laying out like cards
like playing cards because you can overlay a
bunch of text and stuff that's really cool it'll
be a lot more useful during the school year it's
definitely like a note -taking kind of math homework
type language definitely but i can see also how
people could use it to maybe generate sales reports
or any kind of professional document anything
like that yeah so you don't go out to another
tool to do the math and all that stuff you can
do it inside the document and yeah exactly yeah
and there's any kind of arbitrary math you can
also what's cool is do styling based on like
regex and stuff so you can say show for regex
of is if we want to turn this green we can say
set text and then green and then i'll do a global
regex on the file and render all those as green
and you could really do anything with this you
could transform it in any way you want which
is really powerful and is this types more human
friendly the language itself because i did remember
using latex or math back in school and to type
a formula it was a pain in the you know just
fractions i don't remember the exact um you have
to backslash frag yeah yeah it's bad uh it it
is definitely this is beyond the scripting like
similar to markdown you also have headings and
stuff so you can do stuff like that define headings
with equal sign which is a little weird i don't
know why they swapped equal sign and hashtag
but and then math is like say that i want like
a summation i could do like that uh for the summation
symbol and then to get subscript pretty easy
like i could do n equals zero and then to get
superscript let's say we want to go to n you
just do the little carrot then we've got that
looks a little strange i'm not sure exactly why
Maybe we need to surround in parentheses here.
That. Oh, there we go. Yeah. That's still slightly
strange. I guess maybe multi -line math. I haven't
done a sum in a while, but you can also do stuff
like, say, an integral. Check, actually, that
my LSP is integral. yeah from i don't know zero
to a hundred and then give you a nice and then
fractions are also as opposed to the backslash
you can just do like a over b and then it'll
and that's it yeah that's quite cool yeah it's
exactly like you would you would think it would
be so super nice for typing out math what a professional
writer you know just like a book writer benefit
of using types do you have an idea or is it more
oriented to math people and people that need
a lot of formulas and stuff oh it's totally like
for anyone especially writers actually if you
go to types not types .app i guess types universe
uh is a good source you can see all the kind
of plugins people have written for this so there
is like you can see like quantum circuit diagrams
here so i mean this is like math people but you
can also electronic stuff as well right yeah
and like a lot of people use resumes which is
great because you can just kind of use a config
file and plug in your stuff and then it like
auto fills everything into the resume for you
that's a great use for it yeah and it's got it's
got great like layouting for any kind of i don't
know i've used it also in the past for presentations
because you can set the page size to anything
you want so you can just kind of auto generate
and you can see all they do is like type basically
markdown headings and it generates the powerpoint
presentation for you can you do like um have
you heard about plans uml like the diagrams uh
uml yeah um What field is it for? Let me show
you here real quick. There's this thing. Am I
good to go back to this tab? I don't want to.
Hold on. Let me switch here. There. There we
go. So here, let me switch. It's just diagrams.
Let me minimize this. class diagram for example
notice that they have examples here for classes
they have them listed here uml related stuff
computer science gotcha gotcha yes yeah there
there is a package for that i've had to do that
in the past oh so you can do that there as well
right You can pretty much, there's one package
that everyone uses called Fletcher that lets
you draw anything. And people build all these
plugins on top of that. And yeah, there's really,
you can pretty much do anything. I think maybe
Fletcher's, yeah, it supports any kind of arbitrary
diagram. Like there's a whole syntax for. Interesting.
There's a lot of stuff then. Okay. Okay. It can
pretty much, and people have made like 3D games
and PDFs with this. It's like capable of doing
anything pretty much. Okay. So anyone then can
use type. Is this not just for math people? It's
just for book writers, everyone in general then?
Yeah. I never use anything like Google Docs anymore.
I'm doing all my writing in types and then I
just, because you can export it to a PDF and
it's really fast. You can send it to anyone.
Oh. Awesome. Okay. I switched to our screen.
Do you want to show something else in there?
Maybe a bit more. Is there anything you're curious
about in terms of my workflow? Or I'm happy to
talk about whatever. I was interested in that
type because I've been wanting to learn LaTeX,
but the small. experience I had with it, I was
like, no, man, I just don't like typing all these
brackets or curly braces. No, it's just like,
no. But I do see the appeal. So it's quite nice.
Let's see. If we need to share something on your
screen, we can switch to it at any time. I had
a question as well. Because you're working as
an intern at one or multiple companies. Has that
benefit, have you learned a lot of stuff from
that experience, you know, working as an intern?
How has your experience been? I definitely have.
I'll say that it's a very different area than
I worked in before. I've done a lot of math and
a lot of kind of theoretical programming. And
also I spent a lot of time on. like workflow
stuff, of course, too. But it's really what we
do there is like a lot of DevOps. It's like a
lot of Docker and just kind of standard setting
up fast APIs, setting up AWS infrastructure,
setting up all that kind of stuff. It's very
it's like the same thing over and over again,
the same react templates, the same stuff. I don't
love it, to be honest. Like it's not something
I want to do long term because it just it seems
like it's something that ai can replace that
kind of work that's so repetitive i wish i was
doing like more deep down server architecture
that would be cool but there is i'm also working
as like a researcher on on vascular surgery um
and that's like we use a super computer to to
train an llm or not an llm but like a conventional
neural network i guess And that job experience
has definitely been a lot better. I've definitely
done a lot more AI than I thought I would in
both of these jobs, which I guess it's the hype
thing everywhere. But I'm kind of over it. I'm
kind of sick of AI, to be honest. Yeah. Do you
use AI a lot? How do you use it? What tools do
you use? What AI tools? I don't use any AI anymore.
I do at work sometimes, like we use cloud code
a lot. And that's just because it's like they
have big component libraries, right? And like
templates, ways they do things. And in that sense,
it's just a lot easier to use AI. But for me,
like my job is a student. That's like literally
my job is to learn as a student. That's what
you're supposed to do. And people who are using
AI very early in their career to try to get ahead,
like you are not a startup founder. You're not
like an engineer yet. Your job is to become one.
And people doing that are just absolutely depriving
themselves. There's no like debate, does it make
you faster? You're just crippling your learning
if you're using AI to code. So I don't do it
at all. I'm actually, I'm working on turning
off my LSP. completely just so I'm trying to
memorize like the all the language keywords like
the method names for standard libraries just
because I think the counter to AI is just going
crazy the other direction and using everything
like analog my other my other take on this is
people say it'll replace your job right it'll
this career is over and Even if that happens,
let's say best case, we get super intelligent
AI and it replaces all of us. Then what do you
do with your life? People say, oh, it'll save
us so much time. We won't have to do stuff. We
can get back to problem solving. If all your
problems are solved for you, what are you going
to do? Go jerk off for the rest of time? The
best part of your life is figuring out problems.
all problems are solved. I'm still going to be
working on film stuff. Cause that's just what
I enjoy. Like there's, we're just going to sit
there like watching content and doing nothing
forever. It doesn't matter. Even if the career
is over, I don't care. I'm still doing it the
old way. Cause what other purpose is there in
life? Yeah. I mean, yeah. Good point there. I
don't know, man. It's. complicated but yeah if
you're trying to learn and if you're using ai
it's just definitely not not worth it do you
still use udemy to learn stuff or you just left
that in the past i kind of left that in the past
i don't really because now that i'm in school
right that's like udemy but but you're paying
like ridiculously over the top amounts of money
for it and Yeah, I guess I'm just in a different
stage of learning. If I wanted to learn another
language, would I use Udemy again? I'm not sure.
I mean, I got that course for like $10 on sale.
And when you do that, it's good. It kind of commits
you to going through the whole thing when you
buy it. But I don't know. Now when I learn stuff,
it's usually through YouTube. Yeah, definitely.
What are your thoughts on NeoVim distributions?
Distro or no distro? Your own config. So I started
off using a distro. I started out with LunarVim,
I believe. My problem with it is I kept trying
to change things about it. And when you're using
a distro, there's like a weird extra configuration
layer, you know, where like they've defined their
custom setup for everything. So you're going
through like a weird other API and that's not
inherently super bad, but you try to Google something
about how do I fix X issue, you know, and now
you're looking for like the lunar vim issues
on GitHub and it's like just impossible to fix
anything. So. Yeah, after a while, and I felt
kind of bad. I was like, I'm not fully understanding
this as much as I could be. And so I decided
to just go, like, plain, write my own configuration.
And watching a tutorial from the Primogen, that's
how I did it the first time, it's really, it
was not as hard as I thought. I was, like, very
intimidated by it. But when you write the whole
thing yourself from the ground up, it's only,
like, 10 files or something. And if you're writing
it by hand, you then understand every line. And
that was huge for... my configuration journey
for sure. Yeah, I'm still using a distro. I'm
still using LazyVim, but I 100 % agree, man.
The first days when I needed to modify something,
even if it was really small, man, it took me
a long time. The smallest thing, if I wanted
to do something with wind bar at the top, man.
Yeah. Yeah. pretty pretty tough what do you use
to push to version control do you use lazy git
or what uh yeah i use lazy git i i'm kind of
um not sure git is something i haven't put all
that much time into compared to vim at least
and i kind of feel like i should put more time
into it because i use lazy git it's okay but
i'm not i'm not a master of it you know i know
the basics But there's other things. I feel like
I could either spend more time configuring and
learning Lazy Git, or I could find some other
plugin. There's an endless amount of them. There's
some built into Vim. There's Git UI. And yeah,
raw Git, that's a great point. I do raw Git a
lot of the time. If you just git commit dash
a for the ad, it's pretty ergonomic, honestly.
But there is, I don't know. Not super qualified
to talk about the advanced stuff, right? Because
my use case is like ad commit push. Once in a
while, I'll have a branch. I'm not someone who's
like 20 branches, interactive rebase, cherry
pick, using Git archive to rip things up. I'm
not doing that. So it's not something I've put
a ton of effort into. If I ever am at a job where
it's like a huge project with many branches,
then I'll definitely have to look at it. Yeah,
just lazy git for me for now. No configuration,
vanilla. Okay. Yeah, me too. Lazy git. I'm not
a git expert. I did it with commands for a few
times, but I just got tired of them, you know,
because it was only, oh, nah. And I'm just, I
got used to lazy git because I'm lazy, you know?
So I just like opening up lazy git, going through
my different changes. Okay, so this one, stage
it with a single, you know, key, space, stage
it. right like the commit message then move on
to the next one stage it commit message i don't
know i just find it really intuitive to be honest
yeah it's especially for staging stuff that's
where it's really you just want to see like a
view of your file tree really it's like you could
do get status and then you try to like type in
the whole directory to add all these things it's
like oh it's not worth it yeah yeah and what
terminal are you on by the way are you in ghosty
did you fall for the height still on alacrity
no no still rocking alacrity why i should probably
make a switch at some point but it works for
me it's it's fast it's gpu accelerated it's i've
never had any issues with it i can zoom in and
zoom out it's written in rust i mean my config
file is simple I guess there are cool things
you can get, and I've heard a little bit about
Ghosty and how it's fixing a bunch of stuff,
but... He's probably busy with better stuff.
Yeah. Yeah, and also I like the name Alacrity.
I think it's a cool name. Yeah, I used Alacrity
for a long time. Well, not a long time, but I
was pretty happy with it until I decided that
I want to view images in Nuvem, and I... do the
images because of my blog post you know just
right switch here i don't know if you can see
my screen or not but um yeah i can where do i
have a file with images let me see um i know
which one this one like with rising for example
right so if i bring this up or do i have some
images Like here, for example, right? I want
to be able to paste images in there and make
sure that I have the right image. So I don't
know. I just got used to that. I wanted to do
it in any of them, right? I couldn't do it in
Alacrity because it does not support images.
So that is the only reason why I moved away from
Alacrity, actually. Just images. That's it. Because
I like the simplicity, you know. I don't like
tabs. I don't like, yeah, I don't like tabs.
I use Tmux, so I do everything basically in Tmux.
But yeah, just precisely for the ability to viewing
images, that's the only reason I switched to,
what was it, Kitty, which is great. Man, I didn't
know about COVID until I interviewed him because
I had a bad image about him. But the guy's a
genius. Pretty cool guy, by the way. Have you
seen a video that I created with him by any chance?
I haven't watched it. I've seen the thumbnail.
Yeah, it's a pretty cool dude. I have a bad image
about him, but it's, man, I'm a fan. I'm a fan
now. So, Tried Kitty, then moved to, what was
it? Western? Yeah, Western for like a month.
Then switched to Ghostie and I'm in Ghostie right
now. I could use either, you know, Ghosty, Western,
or Kitty. Same thing. I don't have a reference,
we could say, but I'm just on Ghosty. I don't
know. I think it's good. I think same thing for
me. If someone were to just swap out my terminal
for Ghosty and the configuration looked exactly
the same, I wouldn't care. I wouldn't bother
switching back to Alacrity. It's just like, I
see no reason to write another configuration
file to get my same. setup which to be fair is
super simple it's like a font a color scheme
that's all i need keybinds to zoom and yeah that's
that's it yeah so do you use a window manager
in mac os i use uh yeah aerospace i was using
you buy back in the good old days of that but
aerospace came along and like everyone switched
to it kind of i find sometimes randomly It's
not perfect. I think it's still in beta. It'll
just crash, especially certain apps just immediately
instant crash it for some reason. But you can
usually just restart it and it's fine. I don't
a lot of people like you see on rising and stuff.
They have like five terminals next to each other
in their browser. I almost never put two windows
next to each other unless it's like my. my editor
and my types document preview all i use it for
is like five spaces you know i have my terminal
space my spotify my browser and then whatever
the fourth one for figma or davinci resolve and
i just i want something that'll keep them in
the spaces and that's basically all it's for
and it does its job fine and why did you move
away from your buy was there a reason or just
hype I can't remember. Honestly, it was so long
ago. I think. Yeah, I guess it was just a hype,
which is not really like me, especially. Yeah.
Yeah. Okay. Okay. Do you use a single monitor?
Are you a single monitor or multiple monitor
person? What are your thoughts there? I've been
on my laptop for probably two years now. I used
to use a desktop and then. I had my laptop and
a monitor, so kind of two monitors. But now that
I travel so much and when I'm in school, I kind
of like to just do work in our library and stuff.
I just don't really have a need for multiple
monitors, to be honest. I can somewhat see the
appeal, but I kind of just want to focus on one
thing at a time, just a window of code. Yeah,
same here. Do you use a special keyboard? What
do you use? Do you use a split one? I do. Not
currently. I'm just using my laptop's keyboard.
But I was using, you know, the Ferris sweep.
Yeah. Why so serious? He's a guy on Discord that
is always telling me to use that Ferris. But
man, it's just too... I would miss keys. You
have to do the Naruto combos just to be able
to type a caps, just an uppercase letter, like
four keys to type an uppercase letter. How was
your experience with that, with the Ferris? Like
you were saying, yeah, definitely. I spent a
long time figuring out all my homeroom mods and
stuff, and I tried to make it very efficient.
I used it for a long time. I started to realize,
like, I used my laptop keyboard for school because
I don't want to be bringing that around, especially
if, like, girls are going to see it. So, yeah,
I switched to the laptop keyboard. And the laptop
keyboard is, like, it's fine. It has some problems.
Like, typing numbers and symbols is a little
bit awkward compared to, like, a split keyboard
where they're right there. But I just started
to realize, like, no layers is kind of the move.
You can be really fast on a normal keyboard.
There are QWERTY typists that do 180 to 200 on
a normal keyboard. And all that layer switching,
it did definitely help. It felt really good to
type on. But I went back to it, and I was programming
and typing special symbols like curly brackets
and all that. And just feeling all the constant
layer switching and the small delays from the
home row mods, it really like... It didn't feel
bad at all before, but after the contrast from
the laptop keyboard, like nothing at all, no
homer mods, it felt really sluggish. So I'm kind
of thinking like, I kind of want to go back to
a split keyboard. I like them, but maybe I'll
use something bigger. Like you have, I don't
know, maybe a Kinesis or Moonlander kind of sized
keyboard. Just the Ferris sweep is really cool
looking and it was fun to build and stuff too.
And it's fun to program, but. It's just so small.
You have to really have your layers down to a
science or else it can be kind of tough to use.
Yeah. It's just because of the row on the sides
that is missing, right? Because I used the dedicated
shift keys. I didn't get used to the shift on
the home row mods because of the delay. And it's
like you have to wait that delay to type shift.
No, just move. shift back to its dedicated key
on the on the pinkies but now on this one i'm
using only um because it has 80 keys in total
right so i'm just using 40 keys so there's a
keyboard that came out um where is it hold on
where can i find it let me see There's a lot
more people doing this now. I remember back when
I built my Ferris sweep, like the subreddit for
these keyboards was really small. It was kind
of rare to see people post. And now whenever
I like go on Reddit by accident, I just see like
20 posts from the subreddit. Like everyone is
doing this. Yeah. A lot of people. Yeah. Ferris,
I think it's a popular one, right? Yeah. Let's
see this one. Let me show this to you real quick.
I'm going to switch to my screen right now. Here.
I pre -order it. Oh, I feel like I have seen
that. Yeah. Yeah. Because it has the keys that
I need on the side here, right? For my pinky.
I'm using just 40 keys in total. This one has
42, whatever. So I'm not going to use. one of
these in the thumb i'm just using two in the
thumb and why because i have the exact same layout
on my macbook keyboard right so i'm using the
space bar and just two keys on the macbook keyboard
the the ones next to the thumb so the left one
is backspace and the right thumb is enter on
my macbook the built -in keyboard right so i
have the same experience on the macbook keyboard
and in the glove 80 but um i have too many keys
now i need 40 and that's it i've been using 40
for like a month now i got used to it um pre
-order this one and i'll see how it goes because
i just don't i miss my my small apple keyboard
and uh yeah it was soft i was fast on that keyboard
you know and um the glove 80 is mechanical the
switches are taller So I just look at the difference
and this one is quite flat. So I want to test
that out and see how it works. See if it's any
better. Yeah, I'm curious to see. Because I really
like the MacBook keyboard switches. They're just
really fast. Yeah, the external one. That's the
one that I like, the Magic Keyboard switches,
man. So this seems like a good option. It doesn't
feel like a MacBook keyboard, they said. I will
not know until I try it out. You use QWERTY?
No, I use Colmac DH. Oh, yeah? Why? It was a
while ago. I had already done Vim and stuff,
and I thought... I guess I probably saw a YouTube
video. That's usually how it goes. I'm not exactly
sure why, but yeah, I remember... I had been
thinking about it for a while and I was like,
okay, I learned Vim. That's really hard. I can
definitely do this. It'll probably be, it'll,
it'll pay off in the long run. And so I, I did
it in two days, actually went from zero to 80
words per minute. Oh, really? Practicing really,
really hard. Yeah. So I switched right over.
I actually pried off all my MacBook keys on my
old MacBook and rearranged them, which. It was
probably not smart at all. That totally voids
the warranty, but I don't really care. I didn't
do that on the new one. I asked if they would
do it and they said, hold on. It doesn't matter.
I don't look at the keyboard. Yeah. And how do
you feel when you move to a non -Colemac keyboard?
Do you find it really difficult? I never use
a non -Colemac keyboard. I never have to. no
i look at my job like it was set up like that
i just immediately installed uh what's there's
a windows version of like hotkeys i think yeah
yeah yeah and i think a lot of people kind of
oversell it they're like these keyboard layouts
the ergonomic ones aren't they're not going to
make you crazy fast but they do feel very comfortable
like you just start typing words and it's it
just feels correct it's like Everything is right
where it should be. So, okay. Makes it more comfortable
then. Okay. Let's see. Moving on to the final
topics that I want to discuss. Are there two
bands that you would like to recommend or that
you enjoy listening to? Oh, that's a great question
because there's just so many out there. I listen
to so many different kinds of music. um i guess
i also kind of consider it like i don't want
to recommend uh mainstream music because they
already have enough promotion yeah yeah and you're
a contrarian you're a contrarian so of course
right yeah um recently i guess my friend i'm
a friend who's really into like psychedelia kind
of music um And he gave me a recommendation from
a guy called Mr. Finn. It was an album. I'm not
sure what the album is called. I know the title
track is called Lucid Lucy. It's psychedelic
Australian guitar. Very small on Spotify. He
only has a few thousand monthly listeners. But
yeah, just an absolute excellent psychedelic
music. okay and i guess i guess the other one
is my friend and i are really into like the traditional
music of the quebecois people like the french
quebec um and there's one band called levante
nord which is i guess translates to the north
wind wind of the north and they make also really
good music i think My friend and I, every day
when we went to the gym, we'd listen to these.
We probably like top 0 .001 % for Levanta Nord.
So I would say them. Okay, awesome. And are you
into movies, Manichans, or no? Not hugely, to
be honest. I don't watch a ton of stuff. Especially
stuff that comes out now. There are definitely
movies I love. any kind of thing in like, like
Marvel or any big Disney kind of thing is just
like, I cannot palette at all. Yeah. Yeah. So
I, I do like movies that definitely like on the
older side, there are some great classic movies.
Um, silence of the lambs is a really good movie.
They, um, Anything from Studio Ghibli, if you
know them. Yep. Ponyo and, yeah, my daughter
watches Ponyo, Totoro, and all of those, right?
Yeah, I grew up on those movies. Yeah, awesome.
Are you into video games or not anymore? Not
anymore. Like, I was definitely hugely when I
was, like, younger teenager, right? But now I
just, like, have... i'm just interested in other
things i once in a while i'll go and play like
an indie mobile game like i really i find games
that are like very not not gameplay focused not
like multiplayer fun just like an art experience
you know like a puzzle game maybe the gameplay
isn't the best but it's like there's a ton of
really cool art going on here the the monument
valley games i don't know if you've heard of
those or like puzzle games but they have They
use like impossible geometry, like a lot of optical
illusions, a lot of like impossible shapes that
you're walking over. And anything by the studio
Playdead, they're like a Finnish game company
or Norwegian maybe. They made a game called Limbo,
which is like a black and white horror game.
And yeah, those indie art games are really, that's
all I really play anymore. You play them on the
Mac or? Another computer. Usually just my phone.
Oh, yeah. Yeah, I'm not into games anymore. I
was when I was a kid, but I don't feel that excitement
anymore, you know? Exactly, yeah. Yeah. All right,
so, man, I really appreciate that. You know,
we spent, what, two and a half hours? That's
a lot of time. Good content. Yeah. Thanks for
sharing with all of us, man. So I just appreciate
you being here. Thanks. Yeah, for sure. Thanks
for having me. Yeah. Any final words, anything
you want to say to wrap it up? I guess I wanted
to ask you, maybe people have asked this before,
but what's the deal with your name, Linkarzu?
I know like part of your last name is in there,
but what's the story with that? Oh, I just. needed
to come up with a name that it that was not searchable
i just searched in google you know because if
you look it up on google nothing else is gonna
show up just me basically everywhere you know
that's smart i see yeah main page images videos
everything related to me so if you look that
up it's just gonna be me nothing else no furries
like the primogen if you look for the primogen
you're gonna find some uh furry related stuff
i don't know but uh That was the reason. Link,
because I used to play Zelda when I was really
young, a current of time. So I was like, what
words can I use? What can I use before my last
name? And that just came up and I just used it.
But it was basically because of that searchability.
Yeah. Wow, that's smart. I didn't even think
of that. But I guess my name is weird enough
that I'm pretty safe. Yeah. What happens if you
search? Let's see. Sylvan. Franklin, if I search
here in Google, it shows up. Yeah, you show up
at the very top. Your website, YouTube, GitHub,
you're safe. But there's channels that you don't
remember. Is it too difficult to remember my
channel name? Not hugely, no. I think it's pretty
unique. If it was hard to pronounce, then it
would maybe be an issue, but those are all syllables
that are pretty... It jumps out to me. I always
thought it was a cool -sounding name. Yeah, I
appreciate it, man. So, Sylvan, thank you very
much for your time, man. Hope to see you in the
channel again if we do another collab, maybe
with... What is this guy's name? Henry Misk.
you know we can think about something you know
coming up with an idea and uh you know so i'd
like to have you here again we'd appreciate it
man cool man yeah okay talk to you later