Dev 'n Life

Rob is diving into Rust and feels like he has to relearn everything. JD has been diving into game engines, and has set up Bevy for their project. He's hacking around to get a gRPC API set up within the engine, and is blown away by learning about Entity-Component-Systems and Data-Oriented Design.

JD wonders if it makes more sense to focus on game development, or invest equally in building up a community around the project. Rob's concerned that someone might steal their work, and is not too enthusiastic about the idea of open source. The two start a long discussion around this, diving into the pros and cons of open source, the difficulties of monetization, and their fears and concerns regarding the success of the project.

After deciding to try the Shape Up methodology to build the game, JD and Rob sit down to discuss what to build first. Feeling a bit intimidated by the complexity of the project, they discuss reducing the complexity by focusing on singleplayer first and using a game engine. At the end, they make plans for their first bets for the first implementation cycle.

On their One Year Anniversary, Rob and JD dive deep into the Shape Up methodology and discuss how they can use it for their new project. Rob shares his concerns around finding a good balance between planning and execution, and JD is excited about having focus and direction.

Rob is back, and JD catches him up on the latest developments with their game. JD shares some background about the inspiration for the game, considerations for an early prototype, and the technologies he wants to use to build the game. The two discuss Rust, React, and gRPC, and share their concern for the complexities of designing an interesting video game.

Rob is about to move, and JD has been thinking a lot about the intersection of practicing programming and video games. Unhappy with his current approach to start a new side project for everything he wants to learn, he wonders if we can't create a game that provides programmers with a sandbox to try out things in a fun and engaging way.

Rob shares his experience with hey.com, while JD spent the last two weeks playing with Rails and OAuth. He's been using Basecamp to try out the Shape Up methodology, and found a few helpful tools in it. The two get into a huge discussion about 1Password, its business model, and the tension of uploading sensitive data into the cloud.

Rob and JD discuss the launch of hey.com, and their plans to switch email providers. Rob is interested in ProtonMail, which JD is considering to leave. The two talk through the pros and cons of each provider, their personal relationship with email, and their hopes for a new service. This one is all about email...

Rob is still going in depth with elixir, discussing his progress and learns more about processes, concurrency and parallelism in elixir. JD discusses his struggles in finding the project he wants to pursue, leaning towards gamification for learning to code.

The last episode got JD thinking. What projects are important enough to work on, given the limited time we have? How might the science of habit formation help stick to a project? And when do JD and Rob start their business? Big questions that Rob had as well, and that neither has a good answer for yet.

This episode has everything. Rob shares a story about the crappy website he had to use to book tickets for a park, JD is starting to plan his summer vacation in a COVID world, and then it gets technical. JD has a better understanding of Domain-Driven Design now, and the two discuss his learning from last week. This leads into a broader discussion about side projects, progress, and experience, and the two share their frustration comparing their progress with popular open source projects.

Rob and JD go in depth about software architectures, domain driven design and web frameworks. JD is getting a bit overwhelmed at home, but still managing to dive into his side project and deciding and thinking about the architecture around it, while listening to a lot of Alicia Keys. Rob and JD discuss their, strong dislike for JavaScript because hate is a strong word, discussing all the "bugs/features" that the technology offers along with its crazy types.

Rob and JD catch up after missing a week. Rob has been learning new things, and has experimented with Phoenix LiveView and nuxt. The two discuss StimulusReflex, a similar solution for Rails, and wonder what the next big thing for Rails might be. Could it be better way to support mobile apps? JD has been looking a bit into Domain Driven Design, and it becomes clear that another episode needs to be dedicated to this topic...

JD introduces a new project he is working an: a Rust CLI to organize files in a sane way. Dreaming of a paperless office, he is looking for the best way to use the local file system to organize thousands of files in a structured way.

Rob is enjoying his new life as a freelancer, while JD struggled through another stage of grief. Both have been using their side projects to ignore the current state of the world, and have found great enjoyment in Rust and Elixir. Rob has been diving into GraphQL and password hashing algorithms, while JD has used Rust to rewrite a small CLI he created five years ago.

Corona is still a thing that weighs heavily on Rob and JD. They catch up on how they've been dealing with quarantine, and discuss how living in a remote rural area suddenly seems very appealing. Despite the lock down, JD still managed to make a new experience at a McDonald's drive-thru. Rob shares his experience diving deeper into Elixir and Domain Driven Design, and how he's considering GraphQL for the Taskful backend. JD reorganized his Git repositories now that GitHub organizations are free, and has slowly picked up development on the iRacing API. His most exciting news this week is the new font in his IntelliJ IDE, which ends in a discussion about IntelliJ IDEs and how they compare to VS Code.

At the end of week five of quarantine, JD and Rob catch up. They start being sick of staying home and they miss exercising. But Rob shares exciting news about big changes in his work, and JD has upgraded his hobby. Two weeks into Q2, they finally find the time to reflect on Q1 and the goals they set at the beginning of the year.

JD and Rob continue where they left off. They check in about how they've adjusted to Corona, and share how they stay sane being at home. Rob shares how the launch of Taskful 3 went, and JD talks about what he did in his side project the last two weeks. Long story short: lots of procrastination playing with Terraform. JD mentions that he is looking for better ways to plan his work, and the two discuss tools and their trade-offs for managing tasks, projects, and ideas.

JD and Rob are stuck at home like everyone else. With these unique times they each share their experience, being a different set up for JD and nothing changing for Rob. They both discuss the future and permanent effects they think this pandemic and quarantine may cause to society. Rob and JD also talk about what they have been working on and the process they are making.

For the first time ever, both Rob and JD are formally working remotely. They catch up on COVID-19, routines while working from home, and the risks of walking to your mailbox in Florida, and then they get technical. Rob has some questions around legacy databases and Elixir, and JD shares his experience working with TypeScript. They discuss the pros and cons of React and Vue, and the value of strongly typed languages. At the end, JD provides an update on his work in the sim racing space, and explains the problem he is trying to solve in more detail.s

Rob and JD catch up where they left off two weeks ago. Rob shares stories about his progress working with Elixir, and a new project he is working on. JD is formally on vacation, but finds it hard to relax amidst worries about his home, car, and finances. The topic of relaxation and healthy hobbies eventually leads Rob and JD to discuss the state of the internet, and whether things will get better or worse in the future. Don't worry, though, they end on a kinda optimistic note...

Rob and JD check up on each other's goals and how it is coming along, Rob is having some struggles on one specifically. JD starts working and learning React and they both discuss the way their brain learn new things and and the methods and approaches they use to learn. JD is going strong with his new project and he is facing new challenges.

JD has started working on a side project, and some what poorly explains to Rob what he is doing. They talk about racing simulations, APIs, and the programming language Rust. Rob is back from a company retreat, and feels more excited than ever to dive into Elixir.

First episode of the year. JD and Rob got back from holidays and are motivated to start a great year with their new set of goals. JD and Rob both discuss self improvement goals, meditation, and career paths for the year as well as how they plan to accomplish them.

The last episode of 2019! JD and Rob reflect on their first six months of podcasting, the expectations they had before starting, and the lessons they learned along the way. They end up randomly discussing how their music consumption has changed, especially in relation to work and exercise, and close out the episode with a brief look ahead into 2020. Whoever made it this far, thanks so much for sticking with us. We can't believe we managed to get to eight episodes, and are very excited to continue next year. See you in 2020!

Reaching the end of the year, Rob and JD talk about what they're doing and their tech plans for the holidays. Rob continues learning Elixir, JD is pursuing Rust and plans to organize all his storage into his own in-house server and they're both planning on getting the new MacBook Pro 16 inch.

Scheduling a time to record is tough across continents, and Rob and JD finally catch up again after two weeks. Since last time, JD bought a car, and Rob started to explore the programming language Elixir again. The two chat about their distaste for advertisement in apps, the question of frontend vs. backend, and what hobbies to pick up to be more creative.

Following up on last week's episode about burnout, Rob and JD discuss finding a healthy balance in life. They talk about sleep, new habits, camping and fishing, and buying cars. Rob teases a new project he wants to work on, but emphasis that it's all about the balance.

Burning out is never good, Rob did not have a good week at work. Anxiety and lack of enjoyment at work can lead to unpleasant results. In this episode, Rob and JD discuss possible solutions to move away from a burn out and find enjoyment or a balance again.

It has been 4 weeks since the last episode?! After that long, JD and Rob do some major catching up. Talking about JD's eventful weeks at his new job, finding new routines and adjusting to the unique lifestyle it comes with. They also talk about productivity issues and tools and techniques to try out.

Jan David and Rob are back for their second episode to discuss side projects, both their own and side projects in general. They live on different continents now, and reflect on the experience of recording and publishing a podcast, and their hopes and fears for the next episodes.

After weeks of procrastination, Rob and JD make it happen and record their first podcast episode. Don't worry if you don't know who they are! They spent three whole minutes introducing themselves. And after that, they just keep talking...