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A bestselling computer book and a mayor's office may seem worlds apart, but Dan Gookin's path connects them through curiosity, clear communication, and public service. I talk with the DOS for Dummies author and Coeur d'Alene mayor about making technical writing useful, challenging industries that resist new ideas, and finding success by improving work others do poorly. Dan also shares why he entered local politics, how transparency and community engagement built public trust, and why responsible leadership often means asking the questions others overlook. We close by exploring political division, religious freedom, social media algorithms, and the need to reduce online anger without losing the internet's benefits. Highlights: 00:06:48 - Why leaving your comfort zone creates growth. 00:11:07 - How doing something better can become a business. 00:12:39 - Why writing for beginners changed computer publishing. 00:27:06 - How transparency concerns led Dan into politics. 00:37:30 - Why responsiveness helped Dan earn public trust. 00:54:49 - How social media fuels anger and division. About the Guest: Dan Gookin is the mayor-elect of Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, having won election in November 2025 after serving on the City Council since 2011. Known as a fiscal conservative, outspoken advocate for government transparency, and a committed budget hawk who asks tough questions, he is often described as “the lone voice of reason” on the council, consistently championing the public and the “little guy” against bureaucracy. Gookin views his public service as protecting individual rights. He prides himself on listening to all perspectives, welcoming alternative viewpoints, remaining open to new information, and never being a rubber-stamp vote. Professionally, Gookin is known as a writer and online trainer. He has been writing about technology since the early days of personal computing, combining his humor with a passion for gadgets to create informative and entertaining books. He authored the groundbreaking DOS For Dummies in 1991—the world's fastest-selling computer book at the time and the title that launched the iconic For Dummies series, now a publishing phenomenon. With more than 170 titles to his credit, over 12 million copies in print, and translations into more than 30 languages, his popular works include PCs and Laptops For Dummies, Android For Dummies, Word For Dummies, and C For Dummies. He maintains two helpful websites, wambooli.com and c-for-dummies.com. He creates online courses for LinkedIn Learning on diverse topics, and in 2020 published Running for Local Office For Dummies. Gookin graduated from the University of California, San Diego with a BA in Communications/Visual Arts and minors in cognitive psychology and theatrical design. He put his creative talents to work as artistic director of the Lake City Playhouse, where he designed sets, lighting, and directed many productions between 1997 and 2002. First and foremost, Dan considers himself a father who raised four boys in Idaho. Gookin resides in Coeur d'Alene with his wife, Brie, along with various children and pets. In his leisure time, he enjoys woodworking, playing the piano, riding his bike, cooking, gardening, and making lists of things he enjoys doing along with occasionally annoying those who think that they're important. Ways to connect with Dan**:** LinkedIn:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/dan-gookin-46995713/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/dangookin About the Host: Michael Hingson is a New York Times best-selling author, international lecturer, and Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe. Michael, blind since birth, survived the 9/11 attacks with the help of his guide dog Roselle. This story is the subject of his best-selling book, Thunder Dog. Michael gives over 100 presentations around the world each year speaking to influential groups such as Exxon Mobile, AT&T, Federal Express, Scripps College, Rutgers University, Children's Hospital, and the American Red Cross just to name a few. He is Ambassador for the National Braille Literacy Campaign for the National Federation of the Blind and also serves as Ambassador for the American Humane Association's 2012 Hero Dog Awards. https://michaelhingson.com https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/ https://twitter.com/mhingson https://www.youtube.com/user/mhingson https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhingson/ Thanks for listening! Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page. Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below! Subscribe to the podcast If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher. You can subscribe in your favorite podcast app. You can also support our podcast through our tip jar https://tips.pinecast.com/jar/unstoppable-mindset . Leave us an Apple Podcasts review Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple Podcasts, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you have a minute, please leave an honest review on Apple Podcasts. Transcription Notes: Michael Hingson  00:04 What if the biggest thing holding you back isn't what's in front of you, but rather what you believe? Welcome to Unstoppable Mindset, where inclusion, diversity, and the unexpected meet. I'm your host, Michael Hingston, speaker, author, and advocate for inclusion and possibilities. This podcast explores how the beliefs we carry shape the way we live, lead, and connect with others. Each week, I talk with people who challenge assumptions, face adversity head-on, and show what's possible when we choose curiosity over fear. Together, we focus on mindset, resilience, and the small shifts that lead to meaningful change. Let's get started. Hello there, everyone. Welcome to another episode of Unstoppable Mindset. I am your host, Michael Hingston, and today we get to chat with Dan Gookin. Do you know who Dan Gookin is? Probably not, but you will by the time we're done. But I will tell you one thing about Dan. He was elected mayor of Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, in November of 2025. I think Dan, you're the first political person as such that we have had on, which is kind of cool. I'm really honored to to have you here, and and we can spend the the whole time picking on on other politicians, but there's no need to do that. I mean, what good does it do? It's a waste of time. But I want to welcome you to Unstoppable Mindset, and Dan, thanks very much for being here. Dan Gookin  01:44 Thank you, Michael. Thank you for having me on. Michael Hingson  01:46 Well, this will, I think, really be a lot of fun. I'm sorry that you guys aren't getting a lot of snow up there. My brother-in-law has been keeping me posted on the lack of snow, so today here we're expecting a temperature at about 70 degrees. Last week it got up to 39. So I don't know. There's something going on with the climate. Dan Gookin  02:10 Something. Michael Hingson  02:11 Yeah, whatever it is. Speaker 1  02:13 Well, there was a name for that. Michael Hingson  02:15 Yeah, yeah. If if there were enough people, would only believe it. But that's another story. You are right. Well, thanks very much for being here. Why don't we start? Tell me about the early Dan growing up and all that. Speaker 1  02:31 So I grew up in San Diego, California. Good place. I still say San Michael Hingson  02:35 Diego has the best weather in the country. Speaker 1  02:38 They do. It's changed a little bit as everything has, but I escaped from there back in 1991. Went up to Washington State because I was doing some work with Microsoft, and then decided that that was Seattle was another big city. So we kept looking east and finally landed in Idaho in Coeur d'Alene because it's pretty. Michael Hingson  03:01 It's a nice area. So you you did your schooling and all that down in San Diego. Speaker 1  03:06 Yeah, I graduated from the University of California, San Diego with a degree in communication visual arts. That was in 1983. Michael Hingson  03:13 Cool, wow. I've spent many a a day down in San Diego. I lived in Vista for six years, so I'm familiar with the area. Yeah, I liked Vista. Vista was a nice place to be. You Speaker 1  03:24 did a radio show out of Vista. Did you for a while? Yeah, computer call-in show. So that was way back. Michael Hingson  03:32 What did you discuss, or just anything dealing with computers? I Speaker 1  03:36 was editing a magazine, a local computer magazine at the time, and we purchased an hour, and so I would drive from my home in Tierra Santa all the way up to Vista to be in this little tiny radio station, where we would do call-ins. And sometimes people would call in, and I would help them solve their computer problems. And sometimes I had to talk to myself for Michael Hingson  03:57 an hour. And and and did you get answers when you talk to yourself. Speaker 1  04:02 No, but I got really hoarse. Ah, okay. Michael Hingson  04:04 Well, you know, just just checking. Well, that's cool. Well, I guess we could tell everyone that, among other things, Dan is also the author of a number of books, including DOS for Dummies. I still like DOS. Thank you. I I like DOS. I've just always enjoyed it. Although, I have to admit, Windows has progressed a whole lot more. But I always liked DOS. Speaker 1  04:27 Yes, it was good, and and it was its complexity or its a rudeness, I shall say. Yeah, that's a good. Sold the book because you had to type. You had to know the commands in Windows. You can kind of look and point and do all this stuff, but in DOS, you had to know the commands and type the commands, and people wouldn't-they couldn't remember. There were all these options, and so we sold a lot of books doing that. It's still, like I said, I I like it too. I like the command line because it's faster if you know what you have to type. Yeah, it takes less time to type. Than it does to look around, point and shoot with the mouse. Michael Hingson  05:04 Yeah, there are a number of blind people on some list serves that I am part of that every so often something regarding DOS comes up, which is I think kind of cool. Speaker 1  05:15 Yep, hasn't gone away. It's it's still lurking in there somewhere. Michael Hingson  05:19 It is still a kind of the basic underpinning foundation of a lot of Windows, isn't it? Speaker 1  05:25 Well, Windows actually does run on top of it still. If you if you when you start a program in Windows, you're actually issuing a text command. So inside there is a long text command that is issued that gets everything running. It's just that you're configuring that from a graphical perspective, Michael Hingson  05:44 right? Yeah, but but it is still running. DOS essentially runs under Windows, which is which is something that is is relevant. So I guess we could blame that on Bill Gates, Speaker 1  05:57 or credit him. I don't know. Michael Hingson  05:58 Or yeah, yeah, one of the other. Well, so you you graduated, you moved to Seattle. As you said, it is a big city, although you know it's kind of hard to fight Pike's fish market. Speaker 1  06:11 Well, there's there's the fun and charming parts of of Seattle that I really enjoyed. So I mean, I can't say that you know it was a horrible city. The thing I admired about Seattle the most was that Seattle would occasionally not take itself seriously, and I liked that it had a sense of humor and that people there were generally good natured. San Diego was a little bit more uptight, you know, fair weather fans, that kind of stuff, where Seattle was more of a community, and I admired that greatly. Michael Hingson  06:43 And there used to be a lot of rain up there. Speaker 1  06:45 Not as much as people say. That's kind of their reputation. The Pacific Northwest we do have. So I moved from Southern California where you have 360 days of sun a year to Pacific Northwest where you have 180, so it was kind of a shock from that point of view. It's mostly like today; it's overcast. It's just there's no sun, so that's the big difference. Michael Hingson  07:10 And then you moved up to Idaho, and and how many days of sun or not sun are there a year? Speaker 1  07:16 Oh, still about 180. 180. Uh huh. But it's you know so you get used to it after a while, and when the sun comes out, you're all happy, and it's like, look, the sun's out, everything's pretty. Michael Hingson  07:27 Yeah, fair. Yeah. So when you were in San Diego and so on, what did you want to do or be when you grew up? Speaker 1  07:36 So originally, I wanted to be a doctor, and then I had the misfortune of being in a hospital, and I said I don't ever want to be back here, and changed my mind and figured I would be a writer. So for years I started writing and submitting things to magazines, trying to work on books and stuff. I mean I wrote a few books, and they say that you have to get about a million words of junk out before you actually are a good writer. So I I worked on that for a long time, and got to the point where I I actually had a reputation with some of the editors in the magazines who would write me back personal notes instead of the generic you know dismissal, and so that was working really well. But then what happened in 1984 was I wrote something for the local computer flyer, and they liked that, and it got published, and that was what really started the career for tech because tech wanted people who knew how to write, so that was good timing. Michael Hingson  08:35 Yeah, so many technical manuals are just so boring. I really wish people would learn how to write more interesting books. Of course, I say that about textbooks as well. I am of the opinion that having a master's degree in physics and having read many a physics book, the and there are so few of them. The best books are the ones where the authors have put some actual personal stories in to draw people in with human interest parts of the science, and I wish more people would do that. Speaker 1  09:03 And that was my point too. It was like these books are dull and boring. And the problem I had because I was writing computer books at the time, I had a computer book literary agent. There is such a thing, and it's it's backwards in that industry though, because the publisher says what they want a book on, and then they have you write the book on the topic, and so I was doing that for many years. But I did not like the fact that they would edit my books to make them dry, and the editors would actually complain to me and say, "There's too much personality in here. You can't have this. It was like it was like they thought that was a built-in feature of the book, and my protest was, "Well, no. Let's make them interesting. Let's use real life examples. Let's have some personality in there. Let's have some interaction with the with the reader. And they didn't like that until DOS for Dummies came around, and the publisher was willing to change the paradigm. Michael Hingson  09:55 Jeez, yeah, it's so unfortunate. They they think they know. Everything there is to know, and the reality is they don't. Speaker 1  10:04 That's the way it is with just about any industry. You know that I think the corporate mentality is kind of to resist innovation, even in the most innovative industries, until something crazy comes along. And I think that's why in Silicon Valley you had all these startups. You know, if you look, if you trace the lineage of a lot of the big companies, they started at other big companies that were unwilling to do the crazy ideas these guys had, and so they went off. I mean, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak left Hewlett Packard and started up Apple Computer, and I'm pretty sure there's probably been some engineers from Apple Computer who've left and started up their own company and becoming Michael Hingson  10:43 well. And Bill Gates is essentially the same way. It's it's he started out doing something, but he attracted people's attention by some of the other things that he did. Speaker 1  10:53 Yep. Michael Hingson  10:54 And that was was very relevant. But I I hear what you're saying. It makes perfect sense because people just don't like to be innovative and don't like change, and and that's unfortunate that we have so many people that just, as much as they talk about the fact that change is everywhere, they don't like it. Speaker 1  11:10 No, it's well, I think yeah, we we get in our comfort zone, and you don't grow out in the comfort zone. So I like to challenge myself and do interesting things like become mayor, and you know you leave your comfort zone. And what what can I do here, or how can I do this better? Michael Hingson  11:26 Yeah, well, and that makes makes perfect sense. Well, what got you started writing about technology? Just because you were writing that that one article there, or those articles that got interest on the part of a publisher, or what? Speaker 1  11:41 What got me started was that I got paid. Ah, Michael Hingson  11:44 good point. Speaker 1  11:45 You know, they they paid me, and then you know, as as someone who was you know using a computer at the time, and they were called microcomputers, and they were really primitive compared to what we have today. Oh yeah, I I used it to write. So, and the the problem with that was that the the documents, the manuals that we talk about, were so dry and boring, and eventually, all of a sudden, it would dawn on me: it's like, well, this is what it's trying to say. So why don't they just come out and say it this way, or why don't they use an analogy and try to explain it in that manner instead of coming at it from this hardcore technical? And that was what really turned off a lot of people, so it motivated me to want to do it better, and that's kind of what I tell the kids, like my kids. I say you should start up a business. That's really the best way to get successful is start up your own business and become famous like that. And they're well, what business should I start up? I said that the easiest way is to find something that you like, something that's being done poorly, and just do it better. Yeah, and that's really a lot of the the creative, insanely genius stuff that's happened throughout the world is just someone who does something routine but does it better. Michael Hingson  12:52 And that's really the operative part about it, and and the real key. I think you're you're absolutely right. Find something that people aren't doing well, and by the time you get creative enough to figure that out, you're well on your way. Speaker 1  13:05 Yep. So that's that's what I did. Michael Hingson  13:08 Yeah. And so you started going off and and writing a variety of things. What what actually got you to write Dos for Dummies? What specifically? That's first of all, I love the the title of all the Four Dummies books. I think it makes sense. But what got you started in writing DOS for Dummies directly? Speaker 1  13:27 Well, I I knew that there was an appetite out there for beginner computer books, but the publishing industry would not publish beginning computer books because they said beginners don't buy computer books. And I explained to them, well, your problem is you don't write beginner computer books. You write something and you call it, you know, the easy guide to whatever, but the content of it is not written for a beginner. Maybe the first chapter is very condescending and patronizing, and then the rest of it is just technical garbage. So I said you have to keep that tone throughout the entire text. You have to identify who it is you're writing to, as who's a smart person who may just not get it, and explain it to them, and just keep going. And that was the problem. So I I did originally called it the Idiots Guide for DOS, which was based after the Idiots Guide to Volkswagen Repair. My dad had a copy of that, and I thought, well, what a brilliant idea. Michael Hingson  14:20 Yeah. Speaker 1  14:21 And so the publisher saw me speak at a conference, and where I was bemoaning the fact that the books were so boring, and they kept editing out my personality. And then went to to him, and and he's like, "This is great. Your outline that you have for this book is perfect. Except we want to call it DOS for Dummies. I thought, like a lot of other people, that was condescending and patronizing, but that it's an alliteration, so that's what they go with. And then he said to make it a reference. Don't make it a tutorial because, and this is brilliant, these people don't want to learn anything; they just want to do their job. Yeah, that makes sense. So that was and that was it, and we put a lot of humor in it. You know, people would tell me that they'd read the book on the subway, and you know, you'd see someone laughing reading a computer book. That's weird, but there would just be enough humor, and I'd use Mad Magazine as my inspiration. So it was kind of like us versus the nerds, and and that was what really founded the whole thing, and I tell you what, it caught on. I did not think it would. There was no way we were planning on writing a book that would sell, you know, 8 million copies. We were just thinking, well, this is going to be fun. Let's just do this, get it out of our system, and then go back to writing boring books. Michael Hingson  15:36 Made the publisher very happy. Speaker 1  15:39 Oh yeah, they were printing Gold bricks, yeah. Michael Hingson  15:43 That, of course, was the real key. Well, that started a brand, didn't it? Speaker 1  15:47 Oh yeah, they did. There was no intention to do that, but then they they followed that up with Max for Dummies and a bunch of other titles that were just very popular at the time. AOL for Dummies, you know, Windows for Dummies eventually came out, and that was the King for Dummies book. But yeah, they have and they have it on all topics. I've even so as someone who is you know starting in government, I got Robert's Rules for Dummies, which you know you've been to a meeting, you know they follow Robert's Rules, which is very dry and boring, but it's it's important. And Robert's Rules for Dummies is a good example of a For Dummies book because it explains everything carefully. Lots of humor in there, and so there's a lot of them. Wine for Dummies was another one that I really liked. I thought they did a good job. Golf for Dummies. There's a there's on every topic. There's a For Dummies book. Michael Hingson  16:37 How many of them did you write? Speaker 1  16:40 Only wrote the ones with my names on them, but probably about 40 separate titles. So over the years, most of them have been rewrites. So technology changes. So there have been 16 editions of Word for Dummies, and 13 editions of PCs for Dummies. There were four editions of DOS for Dummies. So you're you're always writing new editions, so all totaled 180 separate titles. But individual titles, without not counting multiple editions, right? About 60. Michael Hingson  17:09 Wow. Speaker 1  17:10 Yeah. Yeah, Michael Hingson  17:10 and I can appreciate that that books like Word for Dummies or even iPhones for Dummies has to change over time. Speaker 1  17:19 Yeah. Well, some of them. I mean, I've been doing a kind of a review on on YouTube. I've been doing short videos highlighting some of the goofy images that I put in the books over the years. And way back about 20 years ago, I think I was updating these titles once a year. They would say, "We need a new version of this. We need a new version of this. And at the time, technology was just. I mean, they were cranking out new stuff all the time. Michael Hingson  17:44 So, who's written AI for Dummies? Speaker 1  17:47 I don't know, but that is a title, so I wouldn't be Michael Hingson  17:50 surprised. Speaker 1  17:51 It should write itself, though. You think about Michael Hingson  17:53 it. Yeah, you you know, they they really should do that. It should write itself. Speaker 1  17:56 Someone told me once that they they they wanted to do a manual in my style, so they directed AI to write something in the style of Dan Gukan, and apparently AI can do that. So, am I going to get paid? I don't know. Michael Hingson  18:10 Well, that's another story, of course. Yeah, but still, it it is a it's a it's a great franchise. It's a great brand all the way around, and I know different people have written different different kinds of books like that, but still, the the fact is we need that in the world, and and I agree with you, especially that it's good to put humor and personality into it. And I really wish more people would do that. I really wish that would go into the the textbook world, but it hasn't yet. Speaker 1  18:37 No, that's that, and that's a different planet. I tried to break into that world, and that academia is is it's different. It is weird. Michael Hingson  18:44 Yeah, there are just not that many people who can get away with it like Richard Feynman did with some of the things that he did in physics, and even there, his his books were a little boring at times. But still, Speaker 1  18:56 he was awesome. His of course, his his autobiography is a lot of fun. Michael Hingson  19:00 Yeah, surely you're joking, mr. Fineman. Speaker 1  19:03 Exactly. Michael Hingson  19:04 Adventures of yeah, it is. I I keep it around. I've got an audio copy of it, and every so often I will go back and read parts of it. It's a it's a great book. Speaker 1  19:14 He's kind of an inspiration to me, especially in the area of government. And one of the parts of his book where he was on the panel that was reviewing textbooks for, I think, the state of California, and he noticed that one of the books was blank; it was empty, and he was the only one on the panel who did it. And I kind of echo that often in government because I'm occasionally the only person who actually reads some of the material they provide. Yeah, and and those kind of moments are classic. I love those. You know, when you can say, "Well, as everyone notices, you know, page 14 is blank, and they all madly flip to page 14, like, "Oh my gosh, how did you find this? Well, I, I did my job. I read the thing. Michael Hingson  19:54 I had a roommate in college, and we at that time we were using the Berkeley Physics series. I don't know. Whether that even still exists anymore, but different professors from Berkeley wrote various books, and the guy who wrote the book on waves, I had a roommate who was reading that book, and he searched vigorously to try to find a single misspelling of a word in the whole book. Wow! He finally found one. He said there really was one in the book. Kind of makes you wonder if that was deliberate, but but he actually found one. But it took him most of the quarter we had the book to find it. But but he did. Speaker 1  20:33 Excellent. Yeah, I got to say that's that's an art form. I used to work in a publishing house, and we would pore over books looking for spelling errors and mistakes and punctuation and all this stuff and of course you don't find them until the book's actually printed. Michael Hingson  20:46 Of course not. Yeah, yeah. Now it's it should be easier, but it's not, and they still don't come out until the book is already published and it's out there, and then you find out what isn't right. Speaker 1  20:58 Right. Michael Hingson  21:00 I suppose that gives the publisher an excuse to republish the book and make more money. Speaker 1  21:05 Well, yeah, it depends. It's if it is selling. If it doesn't sell, then obviously the the mistake's going to linger out there. Of course, with digital copies, they can update it right away, but not with a print book. Michael Hingson  21:17 Yeah, nowadays there's so many print books that are done pretty much on demand, so that if you want a copy, unless it's just something where they're selling literally millions a month, the book is available on demand. Although there's a little bit of a lag time to get it, my book Thunderdog, which is the story of Roselle and me in the World Trade Center, is is still selling pretty well, but it is more printed on demand by Thomas Nelson than now Harper Collins. Speaker 1  21:46 Yeah, Michael Hingson  21:47 and I understand that as long as it's available, I'm not going to complain. Speaker 1  21:51 And they and they they prefer to sell it that way as opposed to printing out 5000 copies they have to store somewhere. So Michael Hingson  21:56 right, yeah, they don't have to pay for storage and they just print it, and so it takes an extra week to get somewhere. That's fine. We can cope with that as long as it's available, and then that's all that really matters. Speaker 1  22:08 Yeah. Michael Hingson  22:09 But you've written a lot of books. How come so many? Because they're not all for dummies. Ah, okay. Speaker 1  22:16 Well, it just you know that was my profession, and that's what I did. And so, and I had a good agent who would find me a lot of work, so yeah, they would come up and they would want me to write a book on this or that, and a lot of it was because at the time in that industry I had a name and a reputation. I'm also very fast, so and that that kind of surprises people. In fact, there's some someone who accuses me of having a ghostwriter, which I do not. It's just I've been doing it so long, and you know, when I started, my agent said that he said the more you do this, the faster you'll get, the better you'll get. So, whereas in the original book, the first book I wrote took about six months to to write. I've written books in less than a month. It really depends. It depends on the topic, how well I know the topic, but also I do a lot of organizing with an outline, and so I will will work with an outline almost until it's down to the paragraph level, and then that makes it really easy to write the book, especially a technology book where there's a lot of cross references, and this sequence, you know, assuming someone's reading it front to back is really important, so you got to make sure that you touch upon things and do it in the right order. And then that's so yeah. I just got really good at it, which annoyed a lot of my fellow authors because as I was writing and I would get faster and faster, the contracts would start demanding the books in a more expedient manner, so other authors would complain to me and say, "You know, I have to write this book, and they're only giving me three months to do it. They're blaming me because I can do it in three months, and they figure everyone can do it in three months. So that was fun. Michael Hingson  23:54 Have you had books that someone asked you to write where you really didn't know much of anything about the subject, and you had to spend more time researching it, or you just spend time researching it, but you still did that very quickly. Speaker 1  24:06 Yeah, when I first started, that was pretty much the case. In fact, I talked with a guy who he had written the like the best-selling DBase three book. So DBase was a database way back in DOS, and it was the most popular database program, and he wrote the number one best-selling DBase three book that everyone who used that that program would buy, and he told me that he knew nothing about it when he signed the contract. So the the process of writing the book involved this intense deep dive into finding out what it is the program does, and then working on that. Of course, in those days, the books, the software came with a manual, so it was possible to go through the manual and see what the thing was capable of, and maybe get a few hints about that. But the books were not just a rephrase. The manual; they were a little bit better, the project oriented, whatever. So there was one one book that I did on a program called Super Card for the Macintosh, and it was the it was the there was no documentation, and I could call up the developer and I could ask him. So that was that was a tool I could use if I had access to the developer. I could call them up and I could say, "Okay, so I'm I'm doing this. What can you tell me that's like a secret or that is not obvious? And they love to share that stuff. Sure, I just write it all down, and then that that'll make the book better. If you could get through the the gatekeepers and get into where the nerds were, then you could get a lot of good information, and they were happy to share it. I did a few books on OS two that were like that, where I finally was able to escape into the lab and ask them. And the the guy they were so friendly, and they're like, "Oh, you got to tell him this, this, this, this. You know, we we couldn't put this in the manual. You have to tell him this, and so you write a great book. But of course, OS two, no one used it, so no one bought the book. Michael Hingson  26:05 Yeah, yeah, OS two was not one of those things that everybody loved. If Speaker 2  26:13 you enjoy Unstoppable Mindset and would like to help us continue bringing these conversations to you each week, we've created a way for you to support the show. Your contribution helps us cover production costs and continue sharing stories, insights, and ideas that inspire people to live with purpose and possibility. If supporting the podcast feels right for you, you'll find the link in the show notes. Thank you for being part of the unstoppable mindset community. Michael Hingson  26:46 I remember when I was a student at UC Irvine. I wasn't an information computer science major. I was physics major, but several people took ICS one, two, and three, which was a three quarter course, or well, it was a year course, and the the book they used was Introduction to Computer Programming by Ken Ingram. And what was fun about that was that on the first day of class, the professor would come in and he'd say, "Okay, I want you to read chapter one of information of introduction to computer programming by Ken Ingram. It's the textbook we're going to use. I want you to read that before our next class. And of course, most everyone had not touched the book prior to that. And what he didn't say was that that first chapter took up half the book. Speaker 1  27:40 I like it. Michael Hingson  27:43 Yeah, I know. Wasn't that? And I, I, I heard about it. I, I never did get the book, and I didn't get it transcribed into Braille. But I thought that was cute. Chapter one was half the book. Speaker 1  27:53 No one would have suspected chapter one's an easy chapter. It's four pages. Right, supposed to be right. I think it was like Michael Hingson  28:00 180 pages. It was amazing. Michael Hingson  28:03 I'm not sure whether Ingram had a sense of humor or what, but anyway, there you go. But yeah, that that was kind of kind of amazing. So you you wrote all these books and you continue to do that, but somewhere along the line, you got interested in doing things in politics. What was that all about? Speaker 1  28:25 Well, that was frustrating. Not Michael Hingson  28:28 bad, Speaker 1  28:29 because I. So I think a lot of people are kind of interested. They follow politics. If I call up my mom in San Diego, she has to complain to me about you know the mayor of San Diego and what the city council is doing and and it's it's common it's just I think I think the most most people who are active in in their community know a little bit about politics or whatever and in my case I had just moved from the county here near Courtland and then I'd moved into the city, and I had heard that there was someone was buying up properties in my neighborhood, and I thought that was curious, and I wanted to see if this was something that you know are they going to tear down houses? What are they going to do? So I started researching using the the county website to see who was own who owned these properties, and it was a place called the Lake City Development Corporation, and I thought, well, I need to find out what that is, and it turned out that was an urban renewal agency that was formed by the city of Cortland, and I started reading the statutes and I started reading their minutes and finding out what it is they do, and while on the surface it sounded really fun, there were a lot of curious things that I didn't like. A lot of non-transparent things, a lot of things where you know they're spending public money on what I thought were frivolous things, and so I started asking questions. I started coming to meetings, and they're missing. Was that they pushed back, and so I just something triggered me, and I had a red flag, and I just started going after it. We started, we formed a group of people who were all interested in this, and we would meet regularly and go over what was going on with the government. We'd find issues regarding transparency and spending, and lots of interesting stuff. Never really anything nefarious. Never anything that would. But just a lot of stuff that, as we let the public know about what was going on, they would become outraged and they would say, "Wait a second! They're spending millions of dollars on this, and you know, with property taxes so high, and what is this, and why is it affecting me? And and so I went to the city council meetings here in Portland, and I was frustrated because no one else seemed to get it. And I would look at them, and they would have some issue that would come up, and everyone on the council-there were six members on the council-they would all vote in unison, and no one had asked a question. And I would say, "Well, wait a second, why aren't they asking a question about this, or why aren't they concerned about this, or what about the side effects of this? And so I started writing articles for the paper. I eventually did videos and to speak to various groups and such because I was like, we got to hold government accountable. So I ran for office in ran for the city council in 2007, and I lost. And then I ran in 2009, and I lost, but only by like 29 votes. And then I was done at that point. I really didn't want to do it again because running for office is a pain. Michael Hingson  31:33 Yeah. And Speaker 1  31:34 then they had this huge thing where all of a sudden they were going to redo a park without a public vote, and I wanted a public vote. Lots of people wanted to vote on it, but no, they were going to do it, and they didn't care what the public thought. So they made me run. They made me run a third time, and I won. And I've been on the city council ever since. And then, of course, well, since last November when I got kicked up to the mayor seat, which is where I'm sitting Right now, strange journey. Michael Hingson  32:04 Well, yeah, but on the other hand, there is something to be said for transparency, and there's somebody something to be said for somebody who really wants to look out for what what people want and what people are doing. I I got involved. Well, I've not run for public office, but I've been very much involved in political kinds of things because I've been involved in the blindness world since early 1970s, and the National Federation of the Blind has had for well now, gosh, more than 50 years or around 50 years, what used to be called the March on Washington. Now it's called the Washington Seminar, which is a an event that takes place every year, where several 100 blind people descend on Washington and go off and visit legislators. And the idea is to really get them to understand what the needs of blind people are and try to get them to vote on issues that directly relate to issues concerning us, and sometimes they do. Although it's gotten a lot harder to get things passed, especially in the last eight or nine years. But still, that it it has to be done. But I remember, among other things, I was living in Massachusetts when I first started going, and among other things, we we went and saw the Speaker of the House, who was Tip O'Neill at the time, which was kind of fun. And what an interesting, what a charismatic guy! Didn't matter what party he was with; it was a charismatic guy. And we also visited people like Senator at the time Paul Songis, and what was interesting about him was we we talked about our issues, and it was the end of the day, and then suddenly he said, you know, I'm not going anywhere for the next few minutes. Do you guys have time? And we ended up just talking for about an hour and a half about his view of of and our views of what Massachusetts needed to do, not only for blind people but just in general, it was just fascinating. There weren't very many politicians who would do that. Speaker 1  34:08 That's awesome. Yeah, I liked him. I liked Tungus a lot. Michael Hingson  34:12 Yeah, I wish he'd been able to run for president, but he got cancer, and that's that's unfortunate. Yeah, but because I think that he's one of those people who would do what really needed to be done and do it the right way. Speaker 1  34:26 In other words, the people who never win. Yeah, that's unfortunately Michael Hingson  34:31 really the case, isn't it? Speaker 2  34:33 Yeah, Speaker 1  34:33 yeah. Michael Hingson  34:34 But but you got to do that. Speaker 1  34:36 Yeah. Michael Hingson  34:38 So you you know, but you you hopefully you'll make a big difference, and maybe you'll be able to get people to believe in climate change. Oh, did I say that Speaker 1  34:48 this year? Nah, Michael Hingson  34:53 not unless you predict snow when it actually comes. Speaker 1  34:56 That and that and that's the key. Yeah, Michael Hingson  34:59 yeah. No, I understand, but it but it is fascinating. I you know I I enjoy the concept of politics. I enjoy people who really have a vested interest in making government go well, but it is so unfortunate that we don't see that much of it, which is just too bad. Speaker 1  35:18 There are a lot of good dedicated people out there. I think so. Of course, the the problem is is you know, like they say, politics is sports for the uncoordinated, and it's drama for the ugly. But the the thing is, the people who really do a good job, who are out there doing what you want them to do, they don't get the headlines. It's the noisemakers. It's the extremists. It's the people who are going to have some obnoxious opinion because that that gets everyone's attention. You know, the the guy out there who's doing the job, who's putting in the time, representing the citizens, and making his community a better place. You know, you're never going to read that guy in the paper, unfortunately. Michael Hingson  35:59 Yeah, and that's also part of the problem: is that the media looks for all the drama rather than really looking to to represent the the average citizen and what they truly want and need. Speaker 1  36:10 So those don't the actual the things don't make headlines. In fact, it was a it was really funny. There was a guy who was elected to the state house from this county, and one of his campaign platforms, he was going to repeal all the useless laws, all the things that are still on the books. That you know, just we don't need those laws anymore. They're old. They're outdated, and he did that for about a week, and it doesn't make headlines. So here he is, you know, doing this, doing the job that you think they they would want to do and making government more effective, no one cared. I remember there was one year where we actually we cut property taxes here in the city, and I thought, wow, everyone's going to come up and say thank you. No, no one did. So it's like, what's the motivation? If you go, they say, I want you to be I want you to be my mayor and I want you to work to cut that budget and so you cut the budget and then no one says thank you. Michael Hingson  37:08 We got Tom Steyer here in California who wants to become governor and he's talking about all these things that he's going to do. He's going to get electric utility rates lowered by a significant amount. He's going to encourage and bring competition to the electric grid industry, and he talks about lowering housing costs by building a million homes and doing so many things. And every time I hear his campaign commercials, the thing that I keep asking myself is, haven't we learned anything? And no offense to Donald Trump, but Donald Trump made a lot of promises that we're not seeing. Steyer is making a lot of promises that he has yet to say how he's going to pull any of them off. Speaker 1  37:56 Oh yeah, and that's and that's the thing is you got to. There's so much. There's only so much you can do. But you can you when you campaign, they can say anything. Of course, I know they might as well just say free ice cream and ponies for everyone. Michael Hingson  38:07 Yeah, and and that's almost essentially what's happening. And I'm not saying that he'd be a bad governor. I I haven't researched him enough, but the commercials just don't do anything to make me thrilled because he's not saying how he's going to do any of it, and and that's what I really want to know. Speaker 1  38:25 Yeah, I didn't when I when I ran this campaign, I didn't really promise anything that was sexy at all. I said, you know, I'm going to work on a policy manual. I'm going to increase the amount of information and transparency, and it was like nothing that you want to put on a bumper sticker, but I still won. I mean, there were people who were in the race who were promising this and that, and they were going to do this and all this stuff, and somehow I eked it out. Michael Hingson  38:51 Why do you think you won? Speaker 1  38:52 Name recognition, Michael Hingson  38:54 okay, Speaker 1  38:55 and that's and that's pretty much that's a lot of what politics is is is just the the name recognition. You can win on that. I also do have a reputation. I mean, being on council for 14 years and being often called the lone voice of reason, like I said earlier, I'm the one who asked that obvious question. Yeah, and people are in the audience are going, "Well, thank you. Someone's finally asking what what they wanted to ask, and so there was there was that, and and I also, you know, I I do return my emails. I answer the phone calls. I make sure that I'm I'm available. So you know, and I think that that reputation kind of spread itself around that that I would be responsive. It didn't mean that I actually did anything because the you know the powers are really limited. So if someone wanted you know they want to put in a stop sign somewhere, I'll go visit them, and we'll look at the thing, and we'll look at the traffic data, and all this stuff. But there may not be a stop sign there. Still, I showed enough time that I paid attention to them, and I responded to them, and you know, we'll see what we can do. That's the best you can say. Michael Hingson  39:55 And if it didn't happen that there was a stop sign, but there was a good reason for it. I would suspect that you would be the kind of person who would say, "Here's why it didn't happen. Speaker 1  40:03 Right, exactly, and and to explain that for and a lot of people don't understand things like that because it's easy to get defensive with government because sometimes it can be so colossally stupid. Yeah, but but it's just as long as you have that explanation, and sometimes it's it's really it's refreshing because then they hear the answer and they're good with it, so we have a problem here with there's noise on the freeway because they're expanding the freeway, and a lot of people are upset, so they call city hall, but it's not our project; it's the state highway district. So you know, it's like I can do only what I can do, but it's still you know, if you're the only elected official who bothered to reply to them and told them, you know, I hear what you're saying. I'm going to do whatever we can. Sometimes that makes people happy. They may not be happy in the big picture, but at least they got a response. Michael Hingson  40:48 And when you discover something that's relevant, I'll bet you are the kind of person who would then initiate another letter saying, "Here's why it didn't work, or "Here's why it will work. Speaker 1  40:59 Right, and I do follow up. So I did. In that case, I wrote a letter to the governor and said, "You know, is there anything you can do? And then I forwarded the letter on to the person who had contacted me and said, "Okay, this is the best I can do. Let's let's see what he can do. So yeah, Speaker 1  41:14 yeah. Michael Hingson  41:15 I'm I'm curious. You mentioned that property taxes did get lowered once in Cordellane, but nothing. No one ever did anything with that. How come? Speaker 1  41:23 Well, no. It's just we we did. We we kept them. You got you got them lowered. Michael Hingson  41:27 But but why didn't anybody pay attention to that? Speaker 1  41:30 No. Well, see, I'm sure they paid attention to it. We are only one entity on your property tax bill, so there's there's a few. Ah, good Michael Hingson  41:39 point. Speaker 1  41:39 We might have been the the one who kept it down, but the other ones may have kept it up. And then there's all the the formula is really complex, and so it could be that you know their assess property assessment went up, a lot of other things that would have happened that would have affected it. But like I said, I mean we made a big to do about it, saying hey look we worked, we cut the budget. We kept it flat for all you guys, and then no one said anything. But you know that that's it's discouraging, but it doesn't discourage me from continuing to try because I'll always try. Michael Hingson  42:12 You can only do what you can do, but at least at least you're doing it. Yeah. Now, if you want to live in a state where the taxes are very interesting, move to New Jersey, yeah, where we lived, the the taxes every town, every city had its own property taxes. You could live on a street, yeah, you could live on a street where you had a property tax of some amount, and if you walked across to the other side of the street, the property tax would be twice what yours was because the border runs right down the middle of the street. Speaker 1  42:45 That's crazy. Michael Hingson  42:47 We thought it was. Yeah, we thought it was kind of interesting, but we fortunately never had too horrible of property taxes in Westfield. But still, we heard about some other places that had some some horrible property taxes, but you know it's it's what what you have. Speaker 1  43:07 Yep. Michael Hingson  43:08 So you were in the city council for 14 years. What made you decide that you were going to run for mayor? Because you had to do that. You had to make that decision. Speaker 1  43:17 Yeah, didn't want to. You know, wasn't on my on my dance card to like, oh, next step up is going to be mayor. It was more of there was frustration that I had because the the past couple of mayors, good men, good people, but I always wanted to do more. I mean, being on the council, it was frustrating because I wanted a little more leadership out of the center seat wasn't seeing that, and then I worked earlier last year. I called up a bunch of people to see if they'd be willing to do the job. You know, good strong community members who would be provide the leadership and had the name recognition required to do the job, and no one wanted to do it. So I was like, okay, well, I'll I'll see if I can do it. I still have two years left on my council term, so if I lost, I'd still be part of the process. But there ended up being four people in that race, so it was pretty crowded. Which to me, you know, if if you're running if you run unopposed, it's pretty much a sign that people kind of like the way things are going. They're not they're not upset with you. Generally, if you have one opponent, you're considered that you know oh well good you know I get to compete for for the job or someone else is unhappy. But if you have a lot of opponents, it generally means that the public isn't happy with what's going on and they want to see some change. So there were four people in the race. I won with like 38% of the vote, so that's wow, Michael Hingson  44:45 yeah. Well, but clearly you're different than a lot of people. For example, you're a member of the Kootenay County Republican Central Committee, and yeah, and they sued you for defamation. What was all that about? Speaker 1  44:59 Well. So we had an episode here where the first of all the local Republican Party decided that running partisan races wasn't enough; that they wanted to get involved with nonpartisan races. And in Idaho, a lot of the local offices are nonpartisan. So city council is nonpartisan, school districts are nonpartisan. You know, water district, highway district, all these smaller local offices, and we have a community college here called North Idaho College. And the Senate committee decided that they would start to what they call rating and vetting candidates to determine who was the most conservative. And while a lot of Republicans appreciate that and they want to know who the real conservative is. The central committee realized that it was a way for them to exercise political power, because when people would get their recommendations, that would be the person who would win. And so they got power mad, and in my opinion, they hijacked the trustees of our local community college, and pretty much almost ran the thing into a ground. It was the it's the only college a community college in the history of the country that's ever been put on probation for disaccreditation due to board governance. Normally, when you disaccredit a college, you're disaccrediting it because of financial reasons, or something else, but or academics. Never, never has it happened that the board has been so crazy that the the ACL ACCU whatever it is the accreditation agency for community colleges has said, "What we're gonna we're gonna pull away your credentials, and all your students will not be receiving college credit. So, I mean, what what this board did that was endorsed by the local Republican Party, the extremists on the party, they they fired the president for no reason. They they started running up the bills, increasing the athletics budget. The board meetings were just pure chaos. Employees would leave. The local high schools stopped their their co education programs. It was just crazy. Wow! And and a lot of people didn't really understand what was going on. So I did a YouTube channel called Kootenay Rants, and Kootenay is the name of our county. Michael Hingson  47:20 Kootenay, yeah. I said Kootenay. Sorry about that. Speaker 1  47:22 It's no, it's okay. It's it could be either way. Who knows? Up north, they do say Kootenai, so we don't know. But anyway, this really got under the skin of the central committee because I pinned the blame on what was going on at the college on them, which is was justified, and I would not make anything up. Instead, I would just put in highlights from the meetings and say, "Here's what's happening, and here's the crazy stuff. You know, trustees yelling at members of the audience, making fun of them. You know, interrupting people, saying just weird, strange things. I mean, it just-it was odd. It was so bizarre, and so it was easy for me to make these videos. My background is in communications, and I know video production, so I was able to put together these videos on a YouTube channel, and you know, hundreds of people in the county would start watching them, including the central committee that did not like that I was exposing what I consider to be their corruption and their the the fact that I think they were responsible for this and they didn't like that so they accused me of defamation basically mean tweets because I would tweet about them and their nonsense and it was like they they made a big to do out of it because I was running for re-election for city council, so they came to a city council meeting to serve me, and you know recorded it and put it up on the internet and all this other stuff that that was just crazy. But my insurance company fortunately decided to represent me, and they just they thought the the suit was without merit. They don't say frivolous. They say without merit. Without Michael Hingson  49:04 merit. No, yeah. Speaker 1  49:05 And so yeah. And so eventually, now the suit is over, and I figured I would either win in court or it would be dismissed. But the insurance company settled, and I it was against my wishes. I said no. I said don't settle with these people. But the insurance company did settle, and I made sure that, as part of the settlement, that they would not say that I agreed to it, or that I said I was wrong, or I apologized, or anything. No, the insurance company just didn't want to waste any more money, so they decided to settle. They wrote a check. I don't know what it cost the central committee. As a member of the central committee, it has never been reported to the committee how much money they spent on that? Because it's it's pretty much the the Republican Central Committee of Kootenay County is pretty much a tyranny run by one guy and a personality cult, and there are members of the committee. There are some good Republicans such as myself on the committee who do believe in transparency and limited government and all those Ronald Reagan things. But there are these extremists on there who are just nutballs, and so there's a group of us here called North Idaho Republicans who are working to counter their insanity. And we've done a good job, but we need to do more work, and that's the story of the KCRCC. And they sued me for defamation. Michael Hingson  50:21 That's kind of crazy, though. Nevertheless, Speaker 3  50:23 of course. Michael Hingson  50:24 And it's only kind Speaker 1  50:26 of that. I wasn't laying awake. I mean, occasionally someone would call me up and they would say, "So what's the case? What's the what's happening with a lawsuit? And I'd say, "Well, a lawsuit. I said, "Oh yeah, that's right. They're suing me. I mean, it was never really. I was never obligated for it. Michael Hingson  50:39 Yeah. Well, so just out of curiosity, since the Republicans were doing this, where were the Democrats in all of that? Speaker 1  50:47 Well, we don't really have a lot of Democrats. That's Michael Hingson  50:49 what I was wondering. Yeah, Speaker 1  50:51 and so and and I always used to joke. I would say that the the Democrats, the Kootenai County Democrats, are looking for a new meeting location, and if anyone has a spare closet, got it. You let them know. No, they're they're all they're all very nice people. Michael Hingson  51:05 Yeah, Speaker 1  51:05 but they're they are in an extreme minority, and unfortunately, they they do try. So last time they had a body for every seat up for election, but they don't really come close. And it's a lot of it comes down to name recognition, but you also have a lot of red blue state refugees who come here. You have a lot of COVID refugees who came here, and so Idaho is very red. Kootenay County is very red, and it would take a tremendous amount of effort to to have a Democrat win here. We do have Democrats in the legislature, not a lot, but we do have them, and the the National Democratic Party is unwilling to spend a lot of money here because they know they're going to lose. So that's what I hear from them. But they are they are generally nice people. I mean, like you said, you if you wanted to vote for me here and you're a Democrat, I'd happily accept the vote. It's a nonpartisan position. We don't deal with those big divisive issues that you know that you you see on the news. Yeah, we're pretty much community-minded people, and I appreciate anyone who is. I do fight the KCRCC because I don't see them as community-minded, and that's one of the issues. Michael Hingson  52:18 Yeah. Well, it's it's unfortunate that that people are that way, but I I see it all too often in so many different ways. I mean, we face it with even in the blindness world with so many things where there ought to be major improvements and there ought to be defenses of the civil rights of blind people. For example, some of the rideshare programs don't do a lot to train their drivers about the fact that in reality they're obligated to take blind people with guide dogs, and oh, there's there is a fair amount of that, and it's and and the companies aren't willing to do anything about it, and we have to keep fighting it, which is just too bad. But there's just so many stuff, and there are so many people who just have these hidden agendas, or they just what it really comes down to is we don't want anybody telling us what to do, Speaker 1  53:09 right? Michael Hingson  53:11 And that's what it really comes down to. So, do you find that that religion gets into any of it at all, like with the conservative Christian movement or any of that, Speaker 1  53:24 there well, there's I do not like the politicization of the church. Michael Hingson  53:29 Yeah, Speaker 1  53:30 my favorite quote on that is that politics poisons the purity of the church. So I think we should keep the separation of church and state as much as possible, but there are you know politically motivated, politically active pastors, and I just I I think that's that's not the proper role of religion. I know that that there's kind of a battle going on in the far right about you know how much religion or how much that should should should be involved in politics in the public arena. In fact, there's a little across from the Costco up here. There is a little yard sign in front of some business that says "Vote Bible, and I always think that's kind of. I mean, I understand what the sentiment is, and I would always want to think that the people who we elect are good moral people. You know, Adam said that our Constitution is best suited for a moral people. I don't believe that means that there's morality in the Constitution. I believe there's morality in people, Michael Hingson  54:32 right? Speaker 1  54:33 And we do want people who have good ethics and good morals in public office, and it's very obvious when that doesn't happen. But I do not think. I think the purpose of our Constitution and the First Amendment is to ensure that we all have the the right to enjoy whatever religion we want, and we don't want to pick favorites. And so, what I see with a lot of these people is that they want to pick a favorite. Michael Hingson  54:55 Yeah, Speaker 1  54:56 they they not only want to pick the first religion, but they want. Everyone to go to the same church and the same service and sit in the same pew. Yeah, and that's not going to happen in any church. It's not going to happen in any denomination of any church. And then, and see, that's the other question: is if you know if you're going to insist that this is a Christian nation, it's like okay, but which denomination is it? Catholic? Is it Protestant? Is it Mormon? I mean, I you know you tell me because it's just going to be this incredible knot of worms, which is why I think the genius of the founders was that you know the the clause about religion is is two things: it gives you the freedom to exercise your own religion, and it also restricts the government from declaring that there's a religion. Yeah, and I think the far right kind of misses that when they when they take the message of we like moral people in office, but to dictate the morals to someone else is wrong. Michael Hingson  55:52 You know, I and it was Tolstoy who once said the biggest problem with Christianity is that people don't practice it, and I I see that so often. It's it is so unfortunate, but it is Speaker 1  56:03 there. Yeah. So that is a tough one. Michael Hingson  56:07 So if you could change one thing in the world, what would it be? I'd Speaker 1  56:12 get rid of the internet in a heartbeat. Specifically, social media. I think the the problem with social media is it amplifies our immaturities, and that is a huge issue. the The solution to that is to make the the publishers responsible for the content. So, in other words, Facebook could be sued for anything that someone puts on Facebook, and that would terrify Facebook, but it would terrify them to the point that they would actually regulate themselves and and start dialing back. I mean, I can say 20 years ago or so, when I whenever I was first on Facebook, I would go on there and I would see my kids, and they'd be playing a ball game or they'd be over at a friend's house. You'd see birthdays, vacations. It was just kind of like it was a social thing. You go on there now, and it's politics, and it's like this person deserved to be shot, and it's just-it's so-it's so extreme, and it's so rude. And you know, some of the stuff they said about me is not very nice, but I think that if we're going to solve one problem in the world, we really need to dial back all the animosity that's on the inter

In this podcast episode, Gayatri Kalyanaraman is in conversation with Kumaran Anandan, CTO of TinyMagiq and Enterprise Architect —shares a refreshingly honest journey across hardware, industrial automation, embedded systems, startups, consulting, and Microsoft. From writing programs on a programmable calculator (and storing them in audio cassettes!) to building deep learning habits through daily compounding, Kumaran explains why modern technologists must fall in love with failure, understand fundamentals, and stop building software without users who will pay. A thought-provoking conversation on architecture, human psychology, AI hallucinations, and what it really means to create value. 00:00 – 01:00 — Kumaran's self-introduction: experimenting constantly and looking forward to failures. 01:00 – 02:25 — Earliest career memory: building a DBase 3+ application for a school and earning a watch as his first “payment.”02:26 – 03:29 — Not getting campus placed, being an average student, and the early struggle of finding a job.03:29 – 05:20 — First software experience in 10th holidays: programmable Casio calculator, BASIC programming, and saving programs using an audio cassette tape.05:20 – 07:56 — Early career direction: interest in hardware, industrial automation, 8085 assembly programming, and learning through real-world constraints.07:56 – 10:12 — Moving up the stack: C/C++, antivirus software, Wipro's hardware + software work, and “mobile apps” before mobile became mainstream.10:12 – 11:34 — Entrepreneurship journey: starting a company during the internet boom, shutting it down after the bubble burst, then transitioning to Microsoft.11:36 – 12:29 — Kumaran's definition of good technology: anything that protects evenings and weekends from work.12:31 – 13:48 — A conscious career decision: taking a salary cut to work on hardware because learning mattered more than comfort.13:48 – 15:39 — Microsoft Consulting Services: being called only for complex “fires,” shorter engagements, and high learning intensity.15:39 – 17:23 — The daily learning habit: “Kumaran of yesterday won't be Kumaran today,” and how small learning compounds over time.17:24 – 19:28 — Curiosity beyond the surface: learning “under the hood,” connecting ideas across psychology, neuroscience, and technology.19:42 – 23:16 — Microsoft culture: self-learning, asking better questions, getting pointers instead of hand-holding, and building independent thinking.23:39 – 26:10 — Fundamentals matter: software is predictable (input–process–output), hardware is ambiguous, and AI changes predictability in software.26:36 – 29:21 — TinyMagiq and mentoring: serendipity, a clear timeline to quit corporate life, and why enterprise software rarely creates joy.30:39 – 33:35 — A common founder mistake: building for 14–18 months with no paying users and confusing “features built” with “value delivered.”33:35 – 36:46 — Pricing reality check: if nobody pays even ₹100, the problem isn't the market—it's unclear value and weak conviction.36:46 – 38:35 — “I don't like code”: code as debt, and why architecture must fight unnecessary complexity.38:35 – 41:19 — Loving failure: video games as a metaphor, why software needs failure-tolerance, and a warning to those who want “safe IT careers.”41:56 – 44:01 — Entrepreneurship mindset: de-addiction to monthly salary, India's services legacy, and why playing safe kills learning.44:01 – 46:40 — “Unlearning” is reframing: the hardest failure is success because it reinforces old patterns and makes change difficult.48:11 – 51:27 — AI hallucinations and “Maya”: why we're already trained to handle uncertainty, and how that applies to building AI systems.51:27 – 52:08 — Architecture simplified: an architect ensures user happiness through people, process, and technology.52:44 – 53:06 — Closing advice: be curious about how you can enjoy failure.  Quotable Quotes “A person who keeps experimenting… and looks forward to failures.”“Kumaran of yesterday will not be the Kumaran who goes to sleep today.”“The power of compounding becomes very high.”“If you don't have a user who wants to pay for it… what is the value of your product?”“Even if you can't get somebody to pay you hundred rupees… you have not delivered that value.”“To me, a lot of code is nothing but debt.”“People should fall in love with failure.”“An architect is somebody who ensures happiness of the user.”“Be curious about how you can enjoy failure.”Kumaran Profile:Technology professional with 20+ years experience (Unix, Windows, Cloud AI)Conducts two podcast series: "Saturday Architecture" and "Mindset Matters"Experience spans from hands-on development to business architectureKnown for: Connecting technical and philosophical conceptsKey Philosophies:"If you don't have pain, you haven't done anything"Long-term thinking reveals patterns short-term goals missAge brings pattern recognition advantage despite reduced raw capacityCommon sense is the most uncommon thingKumaran can be contacted at https://www.linkedin.com/in/akumaran/ @ctomentor is Kumaran's  twitter handle

Host Dave Coriale re-releases the very first episode of the podcast in honor of Loretta DeLuca, DelCor's Founder and CEO. Joined by longtime colleague Brian Sheehan, the trio reflects on the early days of DelCor, their shared journey through decades of tech evolution, and the values that shaped the company's culture. This heartfelt conversation offers a glimpse into the foundation of DelCor, the transformation of the association community, and the enduring legacy Loretta leaves behind.In this redrop of Season 1, Episode 1, Dave, Loretta, and Brian discuss:DelCor's Origin Story Loretta, Dave, and Brian share how they met and began working together.Early days of crawling under desks, rebuilding Novell servers, and programming in dBase and R:Base.Loretta's role as one of the first Gold Novell resellers in the DC area.From Law Firms to Associations Transition from serving law firms and insurance agencies to focusing exclusively on associations.The moment Loretta identified associations as DelCor's true market.The cultural and mission-driven differences that drew them to the nonprofit sector.First Association Clients & Conferences Memories of their first association clients and attending their first conference in Las Vegas.The excitement (and exhaustion) of exhibiting for the first time.Longstanding client relationships, including one that began in the early '90s and continues today.Technology Evolution in the Association Space The shift from on-premise to cloud computing started around 2008.The impact of .NET and the rise of integrated systems.The growing importance of data analytics and AI in decision-making.Strategic Role of Technology Technology's evolution from a task-based tool to a strategic enabler.The need for IT to have a seat at the leadership table.Challenges associations face in fully leveraging their data and systems.Looking Ahead: What Associations Need Now Cultural shifts around how organizations view and use technology.The importance of aligning IT with strategic goals.Encouragement for associations to invest in analytics and integration.DelCor's Culture & Values Reflections on 30+ years of shared values, growth, and collaboration.Pride in building a company culture where people stay for decades.The essence of DelCor: a team driven by purpose, community, and mutual respect.

This show has been flagged as Explicit by the host. Introduction Hosts: MrX Dave Morriss We recorded this on Saturday September 14th 2024. This time we were at Swanston Farm, a place we had previously visited for lunch in March 2024. After lunch we adjourned to Dave's car (Studio N) in the car park, and recorded a chat. The details of why it is Studio N instead of Studio C is mentioned in the chat itself! Preparing this show has taken longer than usual this time - apologies! Topics discussed Studio change: Sadly, since the last recording Studio C (Dave's 10-year old Citroën C4 Picasso) self-destructed. It was a diesel car and one of the fuel injectors failed and destroyed the engine management system as it died. It wasn't worth repairing! The replacement is Studio N, a Nissan Leaf, which is an EV (electric vehicle). The price of nearly new EV cars is fairly good in the UK at this time in 2024, so it seemed like a good opportunity to get one. Learning to own and drive an EV can be challenging to some extent: "Range anxiety" and access to charging stations Regenerative braking Fast (DC) charging on the road is relatively expensive (£0.79p per kWh), but is convenient Ideally, a home (AC) charger is required. It will be slower (7 kW per hour) but will be cheaper with a night tariff (£0.085 per kWh versus £0.25 per kWh normal rate) There is potential, with solar panels and a battery, to use free electricity to charge an EV at home MrX might like to move to an EV in the future YouTube channels: Dave is subscribed to a channel called "The Post Apocalyptic Inventor (TPAI)" and recently shared one of the latest videos with MrX. The channel owner collects discarded items from scrapyards in Germany, or buys old bits of equipment, and gets them working again. Milling Machine Adventure! Bring her Home! / Gantry Build I built a CNC Plasma Cutting Table from Scrap! Databases: MrX used dBase on DOS in the past, and received some training in databases. In 2017 he obtained a large csv (comma-separated values) file from the OFCOM (Office of Communications, UK) website containing their Wireless Legacy Register, which contains licensees and frequencies with longitude and latitude values. A means of interrogating this file was sought, having found that spreadsheets were not really very good at handling files of this size (around 200,000 records). MrX used the xsv tool, which was covered in shows hpr2698 and hpr2752 by Mr. Young. It allows a CSV file to be interrogated in quite a lot of detail from the command line. However, with a file of this size it was still quite slow. In a discussion with Dave the subject of the SQLite database came up. Using the SQLite Browser it was simple to load this CSV file into a database and gain rapid access to its contents. SQLite databases may also be queried through a command-line interface which can also be run on a Raspberry Pi, phones, tablets and on a ChromeBook. The textimg tool: This is a command to convert from colored text (ANSI or 256) to an image. Dave generates coloured text from his meal database (HPR show hpr3386 :: What's for dinner?, this being a later enhancement), then captures the output and sends it to a Telegram channel shared with his family. Dave also exchanges weather data obtained from the site wttr.in with Archer72 on Matrix. This is a useful tool for generating images from text, including any text colours. It can be installed from the GitHub copy, and maybe from some package repositories. Using coloured text in BASH (Dave responding to MrX): I have used a function to define variables with colour names: Call a function define_colours which defines (and exports) variables called red, green, etc. Using red=$(tput setaf 1); export red I use the colours in two ways: Method 1: use these names in echo "${red}Red text${reset}" Method 2: use another function coloured which takes two arguments, a colour name (as a string) and a message. The script encloses the message argument in a colour variable and a reset. The colour name argument is used in a redirection to turn red into the contents of the variable $red. This probably needs a show to explain things fully. Terminal multiplexers: Dave and MrX use GNU screen. Both recognise that the alternative tmux might be better to use in terms of features, but are reluctant to learn a new interface! Dave has noticed a new open-source alternative called zellij but has not yet used it. Variable weather: Dealing with hot weather: YouTube, Techmoan channel PERSONAL AIRCON - Ranvoo Aice Lite Review MrX had recently had a holiday in the Lake District where the weather was good. In Scotland the weather has been wet and windy in the same period. Spectrum24, OggCamp: MrX is attending his first OggCamp in Manchester. Dave will be attending too, as will Ken. HPR has a table/booth at OggCamp. Ken was recently at Spectrum24, an amateur radio conference in Paris. Meshtastic an open source, off-grid, decentralized, mesh network built to run on affordable, low-power devices Old inkjet printers: MrX has an Epson R300 printer where the black ink seems to have dried up. Dave has an old HP Inkjet with the same type of problem. This printer has a scanner and FAX capability. An HPR show was done in 2015 describing how it was set up to use a Raspberry Pi to make it available on the local network. Propelling or mechanical pencils: Dave had a Pentel GraphGear 1000 propelling (aka mechanical) pencil which was mentioned on HPR show 3197. This was dropped onto concrete, and didn't appear damaged at the time, but it apparently received internal damage and eventually fell apart. Links Electric cars: EV (electric vehicle) Regenerative braking Databases SQLite: SQLite SQLite Browser An Easy Way to Master SQLite Fast Open source SQLite Studio available for Linux SQLiteStudio SQL: Origins: The Birth of SQL & the Relational Database Intricacies: MySQL JOIN Types Poster (Steve Stedman) Design: How to Fake a Database Design - Curtis Poe (Ovid) The textimg tool: GitHub repository: textimg zellij: Website: zellij Github repository: zellij Quote from the repo: Zellij is a workspace aimed at developers, ops-oriented people and anyone who loves the terminal. Similar programs are sometimes called "Terminal Multiplexers". Provide feedback on this episode.

On this episode of Lochhead on Marketing, Christopher Lochhead, a three-time CMO and a leading figure in category design, gives his Pirates Perspective into the critical concept that "the category makes the brand, not the other way around." This principle underscores the importance of understanding and defining a category in marketing, as it can profoundly influence consumer perception and the overall success of a brand. Through engaging stories and practical examples, Christopher illustrates how effective category design can lead to market dominance. Additionally, Christopher highlights Microsoft's strategic shift in the tech industry, emphasizing the importance of a unified category approach. Welcome to Lochhead on Marketing. The number one charting marketing podcast for marketers, category designers, and entrepreneurs with a different mind. Understanding Category Design Category design is a strategic approach that involves creating and defining a new market category, thereby positioning a brand as the leader within that category. This concept is pivotal because it shifts the focus from competing within an existing market to creating a new space where the brand can dominate. Christopher emphasizes that successful brands are those that not only understand their category but also actively shape it. The Category Shapes the Brand Christopher's central thesis is that the category makes the brand, not the other way around. This means that the success of a brand is largely determined by how well it defines and owns its category. By focusing on the problems they solve and the experiences they create, companies can differentiate themselves and achieve lasting success in their respective markets. Case Studies: Barcade and Qualtrics Christopher then shares compelling examples to illustrate the importance of category design. One notable example is Barcade, an innovative arcade bar that successfully carved out its niche by blending the nostalgia of classic arcade games with a vibrant bar atmosphere. By defining its category clearly, Barcade attracted a dedicated customer base and differentiated itself from traditional bars and arcades. Another significant case study is Qualtrics, a company that transformed its market position through a focus on experience management. Christopher contrasts Qualtrics with its competitors, such as Medallia and SurveyMonkey, to highlight the impact of effective category design. While Qualtrics successfully defined and owned its category, the other companies struggled to differentiate themselves, leading to varying degrees of success in the marketplace. Microsoft's Journey Christopher recounts the story of Microsoft and its journey to dominate the office productivity software market. Initially, Microsoft faced fierce competition from established players like WordPerfect in word processing, Lotus in spreadsheets, and dBase in databases. Despite launching competitive products, Microsoft struggled to gain significant market share. The turning point came when Mike Maples Sr., a key figure at Microsoft, discovered an anomaly in sales data during a trip to Australia. He learned that bundling applications together and offering them at a discounted price led to a significant uptick in sales. This insight prompted Maples to rethink the problem: instead of viewing these applications as separate categories, he recognized that they collectively addressed a larger issue—productivity for office workers. To hear more about Christopher Lochhead's Pirate Perspective on Brand and Category Design, download and listen to this episode. You can also check out more Pirates Perspective at Category Pirates. Don't forget to grab a copy (or gift!) of one of our best-selling books:  Snow Leopard: How Legendary Writers Create A Category Of One  The Category Design Toolkit: Beyond Marketing: 15 Frameworks For Creating & Dominating Your Niche  A Marketer's Guide To Category Design: How To Escape The “Better” Trap,

In this episode, Karen, Inspired Action Life Podcast interviews Janice Litvin, a renowned expert on workplace burnout and the author of "Banish Burnout Toolkit" and "Banish Organizational Burnout Workbook". Janice shares her journey from a computer programmer to a successful entrepreneur and burnout expert. She provides insights into how she navigated #careerpivots, recognized and managed #burnout, and ultimately found her passion in helping others overcome workplace stress. Key Moments To Her Success Journey: 1. Introduction and Background:    - Janice began her career as a computer programmer in San Francisco, driven by a desire for independence and influenced by her mother's advice on technical degrees. 2. **Early Career and Experiences with Burnout**:    - Janice experienced workplace burnout in her initial corporate job due to a lack of employee recognition and demanding work hours.    - She transitioned to a software consulting firm, where she thrived in a client-facing role, aligning better with her sociable and communicative personality. 3. **Shift to Training and Consulting**:    - With encouragement from a supportive boss, Janice took on a training role and discovered her passion for teaching.    - She started her own software consulting and training company, leveraging her skills in sales and networking. 4. **Entrepreneurial Journey**:    - Janice's entrepreneurial path included various roles and a lot of networking, training, and persistent effort to build her business.    - She emphasized the importance of preparation, saving funds, and continuous learning before fully committing to entrepreneurship. 5. **Innovative Training Methods**:    - Janice developed engaging, hands-on training programs to make technology learning less intimidating and more effective.    - She offered classes on essential software like DOS, Lotus 123, and dBase, adapting to the needs of the market as personal computing became widespread. 6. **Lessons and Reflections**:    - Success requires persistence, passion, and a focus on helping people, which can make even the less enjoyable tasks manageable.    - Recognizing and addressing burnout is crucial for finding fulfilling and suitable work environments.    - Each career step builds on the previous ones, contributing to overall growth and success. 7. **Transition to Burnout Expertise**:    - Janice's personal experiences with burnout led her to focus on helping others manage and prevent workplace burnout.    - Her journey underscores the importance of aligning career choices with personal strengths and passions.    Contact Information Janice Litvin   Website: [www.janicelitvin.com](http://www.janicelitvin.com)   Email: janice@janicelitvin.com   LinkedIn: [Janice Litvin on LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/janicelitvin) Tune in to hear more about Janice's inspiring journey and gain valuable insights into managing and preventing workplace burnout! #WorkplaceBurnout #BurnoutExpert #JaniceLitvin #BanishBurnout #EntrepreneurJourney #BurnoutManagement #CorporateWellness #CareerPivot #StressManagement #InspiredActionLife #PodcastInterview #PreventBurnout #EmployeeWellbeing

I was working with a customer recently and they said they didn't want to set up a pipeline. Somehow they wanted magically to see changes that developers made to their database appear in their production database without making any effort to build or configure a pipeline in a tool like Octopus Deploy. As I was thinking about how to find them a solution they would accept, I realized that I've always had a pipeline for software. Early on, this was a copy of all the files in a folder sent to the client for Clipper and dBase apps. Later, my pipeline was copying around all the VB6 files from a .zip file and executing a few SQL scripts that were sent to me in emails. Read the rest of You Always Have a Software Pipeline

An airhacks.fm conversation with Brian Benz (@bbenz) about: C64, writing an inspirational notes app in Basic, writing software on paper cards for Apple, exploring gas fields in the see with Lotus 123 and dBASE, working on System 38, travelling Europe with train and bicycle, writing replication engine in Clipper-llrp, floppy disc replication, Lotus Notes and CouchDB, Lotus Notes by Iris Associates, The Lotus Notes and Domino 6 Programming Bible book, The XML Programming Bible, writing a XML replication engine, LexisNexis, using Apache Xerces and Apache Xalan, Append-only storage, job interview at Microsoft in XML area, Apache POI, Microsoft Open Tech, using AWS as XML search API, joining the first JavaOne Brian Benz on twitter: @bbenz

Multitasking on the Macintosh evolves beyond Switcher. MultiFinder review by Bruce Webster, Macworld, April 1988. Commentary by Jerry Borrell, Macworld, January 1988. Correction: Declaring an application's memory requirements through a SIZE -1 resource began in the days of Switcher. (source: MacTech Spring 1989) Charismatic IBM evangelist David Barnes selling OS/2 Steve Jobs-style at a 1993 meeting of the HAL-PC Users Group. David's presentation is in the second half of the meeting. Memory prices were a hot topic in computer magazines during the DRAM crisis of 1988-1989. CE Software's DiskTop: helping you fake multitasking since 1986. Rick Chapman's “In Search Of Stupidity” covers the fall of dBase, Borland, OS/2, WordStar, and other things people under the age of 50 have never heard of. Steve Crutchfield of BeamWars fame has (in the year 2023–I am not making this up) backported Mac OS 8's relative dates feature to System 6! Download “Today's The Day” from Macintosh Garden. (discussion, Let's Play BeamWars) “Damn!” is a registered trademark of 65scribe.

An airhacks.fm conversation with Vinicius Senger (@vsenger) about: msx computer, delivering pizza to buy computer with 12 years, learning Basic to write games, learning dBASE, arduino and Java, writing dBase software for real estate management, the step clipper functions, harbour project or clipper on linux, learning C, the reset boy, Delphi vs. Visual Basic, NetWare LANtastic, writing Perl for Sun Microsystems, teaching Java, SL-275, SL-285, SL-310, OO-226, SL-425, SL-500, SNMP and traps, Sun Tech Days, the Globalcode company, The Developer's Conference (TDC), the Sun SPOTs, the network is the computer, Amazon Corretto openJDK, Vinicius on Github: vsenger, Java on AWS Vinicius Senger on twitter: @vsenger

An airhacks.fm conversation with Mary Grygleski (@mgrygles) about: 808X as first computer, Hong Kong was high tech, enjoying space missions, Star Trek and Star Wars, the intriguing registration terminal, writing code in Pascal, 3 GL programming languages and SQL, set theory and SQL, the seven layers of OSI, OSI model, IBM MVS, AS 400 is the opposite of micro services, developers get bored too early, learning X-Windows, working with early Oracle databases, using dBASE, clipper and FoxPro, transarc, stratos tx, Transarc the transaction file system, Transaction Processing: Concepts and Techniques, working on SMTP / MTA, CouchDB and Lotus Notes, the Sun Ultra 30 workstation, starting at Sybase, EA server Sybase / Jaguar, using emacs for Java development, then netbeans, Java EE and the hierarchical class loaders, working on EJB 3 specs, mobile apps with Apache Cordova, reactive systems at IBM, using akka, Eclipse Vertex and MicroProfile, working for datastax and Pulsar, Datastax provides support for Apache Cassandra and Apache Pulsar, separating the compute from the storage, astra the managed cloud platform Mary Grygleski on twitter: @mgrygles

The U.S. is on track for a soft landing, Goldman Sachs chief economist says - MarketWatch - https://www.marketwatch.com/story/the-u-s-is-on-track-for-a-soft-landing-goldman-sachs-chief-economist-says-11662463937 What It's Like to Date in the Metaverse - The New York Times - https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/18/style/virtual-dating-metaverse.html Ethereum Tags Database - https://tags.eth.samczsun.com/#query=aave Mission DeFi EP 70 - $70 billion in instant liquidity across most chain and dex - Dejun Qian Founder of Chainge Finance | Mission: DeFi - https://www.missiondefi.com/Chainge-Finance-Fusion/ Chainge Finance - https://www.chainge.finance/ Mission DeFi EP 69 - Paladin II - Better Bribes For Projects & Users - Figue and Alejandro | Mission: DeFi - https://www.missiondefi.com/paladin-2-better-bribes/ Joe Cawley and Brad Nickel cover the DeFi news of the day, new opportunities in the space including liquidity pools, yield farming, staking, and much more. This is not financial advice. Nothing said on the show should be considered financial advice. This is just the opinions of Brad Nickel, Joe Cawley, and our guests. None of us are financial advisors. Trading, participating, yield farming, liquidity pools, and all of DeFi and crypto is high risk and dangerous. If you decide to participate, do your own research. Never count on the research of others. We don't know what we are talking about and you can lose all your money. Never invest more than you can afford to lose, because you probably will lose it all. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/missiondefi/support

An airhacks.fm conversation with Alejandro Pablo Revilla (@apr) about: Commodore 64, Morse code and RTTY, long distance radio, a signal goes around the world, programming low level assembler, the 6510 assembly, increasing a counter in ROM as copy protection, Commodore 128k ran on z80, dBASE runs on CPM and z80, starting with clipper, migrating from Clipper to Java, using Apache POI to access Exccel, spending thoursands of dollars per month for telephone lines, running on BBS networks, using UUCP, cts.com provided UUCP services, from Borland Turbo C to running Lattice C, unix and minix, xinu, Xenix, qnx and VMS, founding the compuservice company inspired by BIX, starting the jPOS Software company, starting JavaPC, green threads and Project Loom, using Java blackdown by Johan Vos checkout episode "#6 Mobile Java", the Orion Application Server became OC4J, EJB 1.0 relied on Java serialization for configuration, XML deployment descriptors were introduced with EJB 1.1, writing own application launcher inspired by JBoss, writing a JMX micro-kernel, QSP v2 was called Q2, Alejandro's project / companycompany: JPOS, Alejandro Pablo Revilla on twitter: @apr

Many years ago I was starting in a software development role using dBase and Clipper. I needed to upgrade a DOS based dBase program to Clipper to take advantage of some graphical libraries. Around this time, we were also moving many clients machines from DOS to Windows 3.1, giving them a GUI experience. Also, to the dismay of the management, access to Solitaire. One of our early jobs was to remove that game and Minesweeper from installs. In any case, I started to experiment with compilers that would allow Clipper programs to run in Windows as native apps. This meant moving to a more event-driven style of programming instead of the procedural way that DOS programs worked. This change was a paradigm shift for me and I spent many hours at home experimenting and trying to understand event-driven programming. Read the rest of New Old Architectures

Oxide and Friends Twitter Space: August 16th, 2021The Showstopper ShowWe've been holding a Twitter Space weekly on Mondays at 5p for about an hour. Even though it's not (yet?) a feature of Twitter Spaces, we have been recording them all; here is the recording for our Twitter Space for August 16th, 2021.In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, speakers on August 16th included special guests G. Pascal Zachary (see gpascalzachary.com), and Jessamyn West (see jessamyn.medium.com), as well as Dan Cross, Tom Lyon, Josh Clulow, and others. (Did we miss your name and/or get it wrong? Drop a PR!)Some of the topics we hit on, in the order that we hit them: G. Pascal Zachary's “Showstopper! The Breakneck Race to Create Windows NT and the Next Generation at Microsoft” book Tracy Kidder's “The Soul of a New Machine” book [@0:46](https://youtu.be/hlQuF75L4TE?t=46) “The endless debate of NT vs Unix.” Bryan: My whole career was kind of defined by going where Windows wasn't. I don't know what I was expecting, but what I found was a real time capsule from software development in the 90's. [@2:46](https://youtu.be/hlQuF75L4TE?t=166) Jessamyn: There was some familial impact (from developing DG Eclipse) that wasn't mentioned in the book. “O, Engineers!” retrospective from wired [@6:30](https://youtu.be/hlQuF75L4TE?t=390) What was Kidder's process? “He lived in my house!” [@8:32](https://youtu.be/hlQuF75L4TE?t=512) Zachary interviewed family members extensively. > People couldn't leave, they were staying at the office all the time. [@14:23](https://youtu.be/hlQuF75L4TE?t=863) I do feel this is a time capsule. A time before two mega-trends hit: the Internet and open source. [@17:33](https://youtu.be/hlQuF75L4TE?t=1053) Microsoft was kind of a joke software company in the early 90's. > Dave Cutler was a force of nature. [@19:59](https://youtu.be/hlQuF75L4TE?t=1199) No one understood why someone was good at coding. It was a mystery to everyone, why there was such a wide stratification of coders. > There were projects that never saw the light of day.  Ashton-Tate, dBase > There was a sense from Cutler and Perazzoli, that leadership of the team, > that these guys at Microsoft really didn't get how serious the process > of building this battleship was. I think the level of anguish did surprise me. [@23:59](https://youtu.be/hlQuF75L4TE?t=1439) In “Soul of the New Machine,” the machine was the star, and people served it. East Coast vs West Coast attitudes. > On the West Coast, the personal computer were supposed to help you > actualize your counter-cultural values.  Ken Olsen of DEC > Computing is equivalent with IBM. There was no software industry > so long as IBM gave all the software away for free. [@26:09](https://youtu.be/hlQuF75L4TE?t=1569) Crashes. > Wozniak dreamed of owning > his own PDP > computer, which cost as much as a house. So he was aware of the robustness > of the minicomputer, and by contrast, the puny power of a personal computer.  Thirtysomething > Dave Cutler was not cuddly. He was menacing, he could lose his temper. > And I tried not to get to close to him physically for that reason. > There were two looming father figures in Cutler and Gates. > And I think it created a lot of anxiety. [@29:52](https://youtu.be/hlQuF75L4TE?t=1792) The stakes for NT at Microsoft were high.  Fred Brooks' “The Mythical Man-Month” book > It was a watershed moment in the history of computing. > It was more like the last battleship, rather than the next frontier. Bryan: I didn't realize this, that Gates was arguing against memory protection with Cutler. From our perspective, shipping an operating system without memory protection, in an era when microprocessors supported it, is malpractice. [@33:14](https://youtu.be/hlQuF75L4TE?t=1994) Cutler's vendetta against Unix. > Conflict was at the heart of innovation at Microsoft at that time.  Mitch Kapor of Lotus. > These early personal computer innovators were dismissed and sometimes > humiliated by mainstream big iron people of the 60's and 70's. Bill Gates' “The Road Ahead” book doesn't mention the internet. Zachary's “Endless Frontier: Vannevar Bush, Engineer of the American Century” book > Computers on the West Coast were seen as extensions of your creativity, > and a tool for liberation. And for a long time that dominated the horizons. In 2005 Gates and Ballmer don't want to do cloud computing. “Who's gonna want to put their stuff in the cloud?” We've found that computing is a collective experience. [@38:28](https://youtu.be/hlQuF75L4TE?t=2308) Email and personal messaging  Sun Ray thin client computer Dennis Ritchie and Ken Thompson's “The UNIX time-sharing system” paper > Unix was an experiment in collaboration. RSX-11 for the PDP-11. And VMS for the VAX. > The attitude of looking down on Unix (as undesigned, academic) is > carried forward by Microsofties today. Tom: You can forgive Cutler's misgivings, because Unix pretty much stole the thunder out of VMS. [@42:24](https://youtu.be/hlQuF75L4TE?t=2544) Interviews for the book. Family members perspective on workplace behavior.  Betty Shanahan, Society of Women Engineers. Brief Q&A EAGLE (Eclipse Appreciation and Gratitude for Lonely Evenings) award > Betty's husband got an award for having to do his own laundry… Jessamyn's “Women in Early Tech” blog entry about Shanahan [@48:10](https://youtu.be/hlQuF75L4TE?t=2890) Where did these engineers end up? They are broadly no longer engineers. This project burned people out.  Short 1993 article by Zachary: “After two years in ship mode… a lot of people are angry, tired, and burned out.” Johanne Caron, linkedin Pascal: Kidder was like a fly on the wall. I was doing reconstruction as well as observation. I talked to family members to get the whole picture. [@53:20](https://youtu.be/hlQuF75L4TE?t=3200) Cutler got to run his own show. > Ken Olsen was like the LBJ > of the computer industry: he's waist deep in the big money.  Corporate culture. Hotshot coders. Renegades, rebels, hero programmers. > It's the majesty and mystery of code writing, that there's such a wide > range of performance. Pascal: I wasn't invited to the 25 year anniversary of the NT team.. [@1:01:47](https://youtu.be/hlQuF75L4TE?t=3707) Journalists and companies. > Soul of a New Machine was very flattering to the company.  Jobs backdated stock options, in violation of clear federal law. Gates repeatedly stole things. > The hobbyists were a small market, Microsoft needed to sell to corporations. Zachary's “Software, the Invisible Technology” 2016 essay > Where we used to relate to programs, we now relate to services. I think there needs to be a greater literature of software: the making of it, its purpose, its vulnerabilities, its values.Tom: It's because us practitioners are too embarrased about it all.. [@1:05:49](https://youtu.be/hlQuF75L4TE?t=3949) Josh compares and contrasts. > Coders don't have to test their own stuff. The second stringers do that.  Pascal: I would encourage people to write more about software and how it's created. Zachary's “Code Rush” film ~56mins about Netscape. [@1:08:58](https://youtu.be/hlQuF75L4TE?t=4138) The rise of open source. Software as immutable artifact: once it's written, it's written. > Amazon, Google, Netflix are not possible without open source. [@1:10:50](https://youtu.be/hlQuF75L4TE?t=4250) Jessamyn on helping people use tech. Accessibility > I'm a service oriented person. I work with > people who are struggling with technology. [@1:15:24](https://youtu.be/hlQuF75L4TE?t=4524) Agency of users. > Bryan: Without memory protection, you would lose hours of work. > One bad application could cause the computer to reboot.  Open source tools, and user accessible scripting/modding. Gary Larson's “The Far Side” comic “Blah blah blah Ginger” Tweet series about Internet Explorer's 25 year anniversary [@1:22:01](https://youtu.be/hlQuF75L4TE?t=4921) Pascal's parting thoughts. > The transformation of software from artifact into service, > is both fabulous and also scary. It changes all the time. > When NT was done, it was a fixed unchanging thing.  Bryan: The darker side to services is people need to attend to it whenever it breaks. Adam: It's the death march with no end. > Pascal: Thanks everyone, I'd love to hear from you individually. > I'm interested in why people continue to turn to Showstopper > and find some value in it. Pascal: I encourage you to think about the literary aspects of software. I think it's valuable for society and civilization, for our culture, because there really is an artistic, artisanal side to software. Thanks again for including me. If we got something wrong or missed something, please file a PR! Our next Twitter space will likely be on Monday at 5p Pacific Time; stay tuned to our Twitter feeds for details. We'd love to have you join us, as we always love to hear from new speakers!

An airhacks.fm conversation with Prof. dr. Matjaz Juric (@matjazbj) about: ZX Spectrum 48k, loading apps from cassettes, playing games, enjoying Space Invaders, switching from Basic to assembly, switching to C-64, implementing application for exams at elementary school, starting to structure programs, getting serious with Schneider PC, creating bookkeeping applications with Borland Turbo Basic, dBASE and clipper were productive, visiting the CEBIT in 1990-ties, daily linear algebra in a bus, C, C++, Pascal, assembly, Vax then Java, studying at the University of Maribor, writing software to assess the value of companies, Ph.D. with ORBIX, Visigenic and RMI in Java, reading JavaReport magazines, writing performance about Java performance, RMI and CORBA, working with IBM Hursley on RMI-IIOP implementation, starting at University of Ljubljana, Java migration projects, Java EE - the enterprise edition was fascinating, Wrox publishing books, contributing performance chapter for Professional EJB book, writing Professional J2EE EAI book for wrox, Service-oriented architecture was a hot topic, orchestration is challenging for non-developers, decomposing application to services is useful, Azure Logic Apps, using JBPM for modelling long-running transactions, BPMN improved BPEL, writing WS-BPEL 2.0 Beginner's Guide about Colaxa, then oracle BPEL suite, the advent of KumuluzEE, attending JavaOne, proposing "the end of application servers" session, applying for Duke Choice Award, KumuluzEE is Java Duke's Choice Award Winner, attending the Java Duke Choice Award ceremony, making KumuluzEE kubernetes-aware, early KumuluzEE started with cloud-native EE extensions before availability of MicroProfile, Prof. dr. Matjaz Juric on twitter: @matjazbj, Prof. dr. Matjaz Juric at University of Ljubljana

Office Space Minute - Minute 20 - Decoding DBase 2

Office Space Minute - Minute 20 - Decoding DBase 2

Did you ever wonder why IT diagrams always use a cloud to show an element where stuff goes in and comes out, but we're not 100% sure what happens inside? That was originally called a "TAMO Cloud" - which stood for "Then A Miracle Occurred". It indicated an area of tech that was inscruitable, but nevertheless something we saw as reliable and consistent in it's output. For IT pros who hold a strong religious, ethical, or moral point of view, our journey has had its own sort of TAMO Cloud - where grounded technology and lofty philosophical ideals blend in ways that can be anything from challenging to uplifting to humbling. In this series, we sit down with members of the IT community to explore their journeys - both technical and theological - and see what lessons we can glean from where they've been, where they are today, and where they see themselves in the future. This episode features my talk with my long time friend, fellow Clevelander, and co-conspirator, Doug Johnson. Listen to our discussion or read the transcript below. Intro (00:03): [Music] Leon Adato (00:32): Welcome to our podcast, where we talk about the interesting, frustrating and inspiring experiences we have as people with strongly held religious views working in corporate, IT, we're not here to preach or teach you our religion. We're here to explore ways. We make our careers, it professionals mesh, or at least not conflict with our religious life. This is technically religious. Leon Adato (00:53): Did you ever wonder why it diagrams always use a cloud to show an element where stuff goes in and comes out, but we're not 100% sure what happens inside that was originally called a TAMO cloud, which stood for then a miracle occurred. It indicated an area of tech that was inscrutable, but nevertheless, something we saw as reliable and consistent in its output for it. Pros who hold a strong religious, ethical, or moral point of view. Our journey has had its own sort of TAMO cloud where grounded technology and lofty, philosophical ideals blend in ways that can be anything from challenging to uplifting, to humbling. In this series, we sit down with members of the it community to explore their journeys, both technical and theological, and see what lessons we can glean from where they've been, where they are today and where they see themselves in the future. Leon Adato (01:39): My name is Leon Adato, and the other voice you'll hear on this episode is a frequent contributor to technically religious and a friend of mine for 30 years. Doug Johnson. Doug Johnson (01:52): We are so old. So very old. Leon Adato (01:52): We are so old. Before this podcast started, we realized that there may be close to a hundred years of experience on this particular episode. And there's just two of us on the line, Doug Johnson (02:01): Man. I'll tell you been at this for a little while. Yes, indeed. And this wasn't my first career, so really? Think about that. Leon Adato (02:10): Yeah, it's really, were like Methuselah put us in a jar. Um, okay. So as we are want to do here on technically religious, we're going to start off with a shameless self promotion, Doug, tell us a little bit about what you're working on, any special projects, how people can find you on social media and required, uh, is your religious ethical or moral point of view? Doug Johnson (02:31): Okay. Basically there's two, technically speaking things that I work on, I work for a company called Southwestern health resources, which is an accountable care organization, health kind of stuff down here in Dallas, Texas. Leon Adato (02:45): Uh huh. Doug Johnson (02:45): Um, when they sold this to me a year ago, I, remember I was working on my own. So I really wasn't looking for a job, but this cool thing came up that put all my background together and I thought, Oh, that's cool. And they said, well, this is a startup. Now keep in mind that this startup was, uh, peeled off from the two big 800 pound health gorillas, thousands and thousands of employees in, in, in Texas. So this startup that I've been part of for a year has 800 employees, $2 billion in revenue, plus et cetera, et cetera. That's not what I thought of when, uh, when we said startup, but there we are. So I am the web developer for the marketing department. And if you're a technical person, you know how most technical people feel about marketing departments. So the fact that I'm the only technical person in the marketing department should tell you a little something there, but it's kind of fun. They, their expectations are really low. So I exceed them all the time and it works out really well for me. Leon Adato (03:44): There you go. Doug Johnson (03:44): My side gig, the one that's going to go ahead and make me a multi-billion million. Okay. A hundred thousand air maybe if were lucky,. Leon Adato (03:52): You'll be able to buy coffee. Doug Johnson (03:54): I'm hoping. Yeah so far, so far it's cost a lot of money, but basically where we do a inventory management for small to medium size, uh, healthcare offices, primarily optical at this particular point using radio frequency identification. And I am the CTO, the chief technology officer, I supposedly know everything that I'm doing. I've designed it. It's working well. We've been breaking even for almost a year and we actually expect to make a profit this year until we then hire an, an employee. And then we'll go back in the red again. Leon Adato (04:24): It's all going to go, right? It all goes down the tubes again. Doug Johnson (04:26): That one is wave rfid.net. So if you have an optical shop and really actually want to control your inventory, go there. Leon Adato (04:35): Awesome. And your religious point of view, Doug Johnson (04:38): Religious point of view, I am a born again, evangelical Christian, but not one of those weird ones. I don't know. You know, I mean, you know, there are evangelical Christians who basically will smack you over the head with a really heavy Bible until you give up. I'm more one of the ones that thinks that we should talk about it and if you come to it, that's great. Um, Leon Adato (04:57): Got it. Doug Johnson (04:57): So yeah, I have, Leon Adato (04:59): I was going to say, Doug is one of the weird ones for those people listening he is, Doug Johnson (05:02): I am one of the weird ones, but not necessarily in the way that you expect me to be weird. Leon Adato (05:06): An evangelical Christian. Doug Johnson (05:07): Exactly. Leon Adato (05:07): Yeah, um hmm. Doug Johnson (05:08): Exactly. So there you are. So that's, that's my, I mean, I've read the Bible multiple times. I do know what I'm talking about. Um, but by the same token, I, I, I respect, I respect your, uh, right to choose, uh, the wrong choice. Leon Adato (05:23): [laughing] I was waiting to get around to that. I Knew somewhere along the way, Doug Johnson (05:31): I keep, I keep on going with the, I could be wrong. I don't think I am, if I'm wrong. Oh, well, uh, I'll deal with it when the time comes. And by this, you know, by the same token, I'm going to try and convince you that, uh, this is the right way to go. Leon Adato (05:45): Right. You might be wrong, but you gave it your best shot. Yeah. Point, you know, it has certainly worked for me over the years, A for enthusiasm. Um, okay. So tales from the Tambo cloud is, uh, structured in a particular way where we talk about your journey first through tech and then through religion. So I want to talk about where you're at now. I mean, you gave us a taster and amuse-bouche perhaps of where you're at technically, but in terms of the day-to-day work that you do, what are you doing today? Doug Johnson (06:14): The stuff that I'm doing today is actually well below my technical capabilities, um, which is fine. I'm okay with that. Um, I, uh, in my, in my day job, I am doing web development. Uh, I was just on Friday given the, uh, requirements to go ahead and re-skin one of our sites in WordPress in two weeks, which most people wouldn't be able to do. And certainly none of our, the people we normally hire at ridiculously high rates would be able to do, but they also know that I'm going to be able to pull it off. So. Leon Adato (06:48): Uh huh. Doug Johnson (06:48): And actually, technically speaking, I'm supposed to have it done in a week so that they can go ahead and get the content over. So having actually worked with a couple of our vendors for months not to get this to happen, I get to do it in a week. So, you know, it'll work, it'll work out okay. On the wave RFID side, I am the CTO. I don't actually do the programming. We got a great team of people in India who were actually doing all the work we're working in a stack that I understand. So they can't get too far out from underneath me. Well, you know, Leon Adato (07:20): Right. Doug Johnson (07:20): Sometimes, sometimes people who are, you know, they don't know the technical stack and, anything could happen at that particular point. I could in essence, dump them at any at any point and take it over, but God, why would I want to, these guys are great. Leon Adato (07:33): Uh huh. Doug Johnson (07:33): I've known them for years. They're doing a good job. It's a layer of L slash PHP slash react stack. It's working great. Clients are happy. They don't care how we do it. And so that one is more, uh, advisory than anything else. I do the design. I make sure that it will go ahead and scale as we grow to thousands of clients instead of tens of clients. And, uh, you know, that's, that's, that's my day to day. Leon Adato (08:03): Well, and, and I'm going to having known you for a while. I'm also going to sort of fill in some of the blanks there, which is that for as long as I've known you, you've always been in, you've always been one of the best examples of an architect level, uh, developer, meaning you're the big idea guy. You're the one who sees that we're gonna, you know, this is the goal we're going for the end result that we're going for. And here's how we're going to get there. You know, the stack, the code, the whatever, you'll, pseudo-code out, what needs to be done. You'll, you'll talk about the flow. And if somebody gets sick or wins the lottery and buys an Island and disappears, you can take over for them, but you don't want to, because you don't really want to be a code monkey day after day after day, you want to jump in, solve the really hard problems or point the way to solving the hard problems and go on. But you certainly could if you needed to. Doug Johnson (08:54): Yeah. And pretty much that would be accurate. I mean, yeah. And, and just for those people who are wondering, gee, I wonder if I should go into tech someday and all that kind of stuff. I'm completely self-taught. Leon Adato (09:04): Yes. Doug Johnson (09:05): I did not get it. I don't have a CS degree. In fact, there's a couple of jobs that I wanted along the way that I lost, because I couldn't do an algorithm on a whiteboard. It just, no, I'm serious. Leon Adato (09:16): No, I know you're serious. Doug Johnson (09:17): I flew out to LA, I flew out to frickin Seattle. I talked with the CTO of the company and he was happy with me. And then the guy who was going to be my boss threw this link list thing at me, and I was like, I, I know how to do what you're talking about, but I don't know how to do that. I mean, you know, I was just. Leon Adato (09:38): Right. Doug Johnson (09:38): And I lost, I didn't get the job as, as a, as a tech evangelist who doesn't actually have to write code because I couldn't do a link list thing. Leon Adato (09:48): Yeah. Doug Johnson (09:48): Do I sound bitter? Leon Adato (09:50): My, not even a little. My, my response in those situations is frequently. Is this something that your employees do often? Doug Johnson (10:00): Right. Well and that's a, Leon Adato (10:01): You do code on a board without, anything like, is that how development is done here? Doug Johnson (10:08): well, Yeah. Unfortunately this was early enough in a job change that I would, at this point, if they had said, if he had said, I need you to do a link list thing, I would go, I don't do that. That's what I would do now, because now having been in that situation one, Nope. I don't have a CS degree. I know what link lists are. I've taught it, but it was 30 years ago, you know? So I don't know. I don't do that anymore. If that's not good enough, I'll just go home fine. Leon Adato (10:35): Right. Exactly. Okay. Doug Johnson (10:36): But I'm old and cranky now, so. Leon Adato (10:38): Right, exactly. So you've earned the ability to be blunt a little bit. Listen, Sonny. Um, so, but you, you hit upon where we're going next, which is that you are self-taught, you didn't, uh, depart the womb already knowing how to code with a silver keyboard in your mouth. Doug Johnson (10:55): Yup. Leon Adato (10:55): Um, so how, where did you start out? Doug Johnson (10:58): Technically, I started out in college. I went to college where they invented Basic. And so you could, in fact, they, they encouraged all departments to do stuff with the computer because we were kind of big on that whole thing. In fact, the, uh, one of the inventors of basic became the president of my college and his signature is out of my diploma. So, so basically you could go down to the, uh, computer center or to a couple of different places around campus, put in your, uh, your college ID number, no password mind you, um, and just put it in and then you'd be on and you could do basic on a teletype. Leon Adato (11:40): Uh huh. Doug Johnson (11:40): And so, and I, you know, I, I did various incentive things. We would all do. English classes would have you do something on the computer, blah, blah, blah. But in physics class, I, uh, the, the first real, uh, indicator that I was, uh, going to do something, interestingly weird with this, I was trying to go ahead and do this, uh, make something, uh, orbit around the planet. Leon Adato (12:07): Uh huh. Doug Johnson (12:07): And all of a sudden on the teletype, there were dots everywhere. I mean, just asterisks cause remember. Leon Adato (12:14): Its full of stars, Doug Johnson (12:15): It's little, Little asterisks everywhere. And I went, okay, that's interesting saved. It went off, uh, went to a different building where they had a, uh, a plotter. And I went ahead and did the 150, uh, baud modem with the phone to go ahead and get it to connect. And it did this really interesting loopy thing. And I went, Oh, that's interesting. And so what had happened was I had, I had actually divided incorrectly in my program. Leon Adato (12:47): Uh huh. Doug Johnson (12:47): And so what ended up happening was I had negated the effect of gravity on, um, on orbits. So by going ahead and doing different numbers with this kind of stuff, I got these really cool loopy things. And remember, this is like, this is early seventies when this stuff was considered to be cool. Leon Adato (13:04): Uh huh, right. Doug Johnson (13:04): Um, , you, you wouldn't even think about it now. You'd go, what are you just a fricking idiot? But at the time, no, you know, it's like, and so I got, I now have on my college degree, uh, not on the degree, but on, on my, uh, resume it basically, I have a citation in physics for a modified gravitational model of a, uh, on a computer. I forget exactly what the words are, but it is a citation in physics keeping in mind, I got a C plus in physics because I really wasn't that great at it. Leon Adato (13:37): Right, right. Doug Johnson (13:38): So I knew, I knew if a computer mistake can do this for me, this was probably a field for me someday. Leon Adato (13:45): There you go. Okay. So that was, that was your humble beginnings. Doug Johnson (13:48): yes, but then I became a disc jockey. Leon Adato (13:48): Your humble beginnings was a citation in physics. Doug Johnson (13:52): I know really? Yes. Except that, except that I realized that now, remember, I wasn't a science guy. I mean, I did, I was thinking about pre-med until I got to biology and realized that wasn't going to work. And so, uh, eventually I got my degree in philosophy. Leon Adato (14:07): Uh huh. Doug Johnson (14:07): I was a disc jockey. They would pay you to sit there and actually tell people what time it was and what song you had just played. And so that's what I kind of did for the next 10 years. Leon Adato (14:16): Right. Right. And actually for those people who were wondering, he was, uh, the number one, uh, was it, Doug Johnson (14:22): Mid day. Leon Adato (14:22): it wasn't DriveTime. Yeah. Doug Johnson (14:24): Mid day. Leon Adato (14:25): Number one mid day, jockey up against, um, 105 in Cleveland, the Cleveland market. Doug Johnson (14:32): Yes. For at least one or two books. I forget. I'm sure Matt, the cat hated me for it, but that's just the way it is. So I beat him. I beat you Matt. Leon Adato (14:41): There we go. Claim, yet another claim to fame, Doug Johnson (14:44): Right. So did that, uh, stop doing drugs? Um, got married, um, worked for the phone company for 12 weeks, nine weeks training, three weeks on the job went, okay, this ain't gonna work. And then I was with Eastern singing telegrams for a whole year. That was a good job. And then I got a job selling computers. So here we are at the end of, uh, when did the Lisa come out? 82 or 81. And it was the October for October before the Lisa came out. Leon Adato (15:16): Okay. Doug Johnson (15:17): Uh, because I, I know that because I did the Apple Lisa rollout training, I'm one of the few people that's ever seen a Lisa let alone a room full of them. Um, but, uh, so basically at that point I was selling computers. Um, and you know, it did rather well at it. Uh, I had a knack for it as it turned out and we were off and rolling. So somewhere along the line, um, we started instead of being just an Apple shop, we picked up IBM's and the way I had been selling apples all along was people would come in and they would say, I need to do a, uh, I needed to be able to do a mailing list. And so I would show them on the Apple, how they could go ahead and set up using profile to do this thing and, and put all their names in. And, and they would say, well, I'm looking at the IBM. I said, well, okay, that's good. I have just shown you on the computer. How I can do this. I would need you, you, you should probably go back to the IBM guy and have the IBM salesman, show you how they're going to do that. Now at the time on the IBM, the only real database for doing that was the thing called dBase wonderful little database program. And when you type dBase at the prompt, A dot would appear. That's all, Leon Adato (16:34): That's what you got. um hmm. Doug Johnson (16:35): And most salespeople would never show you anything on the IBM, because they didn't know how it worked. Now. We decided to carry the, I, we decided to carry, and then they would come back to me and buy the Apple because it made sense. Leon Adato (16:49): Because they could do things. Right. Doug Johnson (16:49): Exactly. Well easily without being, you know, a computer programmer. So basically when we, when my company decided to sell IBM's, I said, nobody is going to do that to me. I went in, learn dBase. I would, Oh, sweet. Okay. I learned how to do my example, so I could do it for my, anybody I was selling to, but I found out, gosh, I can do this. I can handle, I mean, this is programming. I can do this. And it was difficult because it was really early on. But, but the answer is, I just found out I had a knack for it and went out. I was the DBAs expert, then a FoxPro expert. And, you know, I would just keep on learning new stuff as we went along and I keep on learning new things and .NET and Delphi and C and C sharp and keep on going. I mean, it's just like, if it, and then I got into PHP and Drupal and WordPress and combine it, it's just like, yeah, whatever would offer, essentially ahead and allow me to, to continue to pay the bills and have a good time doing it. I would just keep learning it. And as long as you keep on learning in this wonderful world of technology, you're okay. It's when you decide, you know, as much as you need to know, unless it's COBAL, in which case you can keep on working until you die. But come on. There's a lot of COBAL calls still out there baby. Leon Adato (18:10): There's still a lot of COBAL out there. Well, there's a lot of support stuff. I remember meeting a guy who was in his like mid twenties and he decided to really get good at COBOL. And, you know, I'm like, okay. And he just pointed around the bullpen where they were all sitting and he's like, look around me. They're going to die soon. Doug Johnson (18:26): Yep. And he's absolutely correct. I mean, what would they say? Most banking codes still runs on COBOL. Leon Adato (18:32): Yeah. yeah. Doug Johnson (18:32): So I mean now, I mean, I've read COBOL. I've never actually written any useful COBAL code, So that's one of the few languages I can't claim that I've been paid to write. Leon Adato (18:44): There you go. All right. And that covers the, Doug Johnson (18:47): So that's how I got here. Leon Adato (18:47): That, that covers how you got from there to here. So that's, I mean, that's a journey. Um, and I think one of the lessons to, this is something you told me a while ago is that somebody who's new on the market can probably use the latest tools and use them competently. Um, you know, and probably will work for cheaper than, than someone like us at our point in life. But what we bring to the table is that we know what came before it, and probably what came before that. So we know why the current version works the way it does. Doug Johnson (19:18): Yup. Leon Adato (19:18): And how to get around all the hidden bugs. And I remember specifically, I was working with Tivoli at the time and I was trying to, uh, at the time they had just created one of their GUI's and I was putting containers, you know, uh, nesting containers. And every time I would nest something inside of something inside of something inside of something, the entire database would corrupt. And I was complaining to you as I am, want to do often. And you said, well, yeah, because it's a Corba database and I, I don't like banana hamster? Like, what are we talking? Like, why is it no, no, you understand Corba databases are one of the first object oriented database structures ever. And they only handle three levels of can, you know, have container ship after that, the database corrupts, you literally did what it can't do. And I'm like, okay, but who would, who would know that, you know, coming at it new. Doug Johnson (20:10): Yup Exactly. But, and the flip side to that though, and again, this is, I've had all kinds of people saying, well, I'd like to get an attack, but it's way too late. And I'm going, no, you are exactly two years behind the cutting edge. So if you pick out whatever's cutting edge now in two years, you'll be the expert and people down the road will be saying, I don't know how to do this. So, you know, it's like, you're never too late in our industry to jump in. You just have to, you just, you don't want to start with something that's so fricking old that you're battling against everybody like me. Who's been doing this forever. You want to be battling. You want to be battling on the front lines and learning it. And then in two years, yes, it'll take you a little while for the cutting edge to move back. But if you pick the right cutting edge, you know, you will be the expert in two years and making the money you want to make. Leon Adato (21:03): So what you're saying is that Moore's law may not be true until the earth, So the sun dies because of heat death, but it will in terms of chips, but it will be true in terms of getting a career in it that Moore's law will, Doug Johnson (21:17): Surprisingly Moore's law actually is key. It keeps on con, it should have died years ago, and yet it keeps on rolling. Leon Adato (21:25): Right. And once again, if you're old like us, you know what we're talking about when we talk about Moore's law, okay. I want to, I want to pivot, we talked about tech now let's pivot to the, um, religious side. Doug Johnson (21:37): Ok, works for me. Leon Adato (21:37): I know that labels, labels are difficult and often incredibly imprecise. And most of the time on this, uh, on these TAMO episodes, when I say so, what are you, you know, religiously, the answer begins with well, and it ends, uh, several minutes later, when many, many, many qualifications have been given to an answer. That being said, how do you, you know, besides, you know, evangelical, evangelical Christian, but not one of the weird ones. How do you define yourself religiously? Doug Johnson (22:08): Basically, Um, I believe the Bible is to be the word of God. I believe that, um, Christ is the Messiah that he is, uh, my savior that he has. Um, he died for my sins, and I actually, there's nothing that I can do to make myself worthy in the eyes of God. Other than to say, I am the, Christ said, I'm okay. I've trusted in Christ. Therefore, uh, if, if Christ is your son, God, and you think he's okay, then could you maybe think I'm okay too? Leon Adato (22:50): Okay. Doug Johnson (22:51): That's pretty much it. Leon Adato (22:53): Okay. Doug Johnson (22:53): I mean, that's, it's, it's the base that it's, it is the basis of real Christianity. That's a really good book by CS Lewis called Mirror Christianity that I recommend to people all the time. Uh, it's a little more philosophical than most people are willing to slog their way through, although it was a series of radio interviews for God's sake. Uh, so it's, it's good reading, but it basically covers the basis of what Christianity is. And I really have not gotten much beyond the basics, um, could, because it's when you get off in all the weird, you know, differences that Christians tend to go ahead and get in trouble with each other. If you stay with the, the mainstream stuff, for the most part, we agree. Leon Adato (23:37): Got it. Doug Johnson (23:37): So I, so I try and stay, stay pretty central. Leon Adato (23:41): There we go. Okay. And, uh, you mentioned the whole born again thing a minute ago, several minutes ago, Doug Johnson (23:46): Yup. Leon Adato (23:46): But I wanted it. So you, that was not the family, that was not the household into which you were born. Doug Johnson (23:51): No. Leon Adato (23:51): So where did you start? Doug Johnson (23:52): It works the same as my technical journey. Surprisingly. Leon Adato (23:56): Um hmm. Doug Johnson (23:58): When I was, I went to, um, uh, I belong we went to church every Sunday, blah, blah, blah. Um, we, we would, uh, be yelling at each other on the way to church because we were late and we would be yelling at each other on the way home from church, because, uh, we weren't respectful enough in church. So, you know, you, you got a good solid feel for how great church is, uh, and that sort of situation, but, uh, Leon Adato (24:22): Big motivation to go every week. Doug Johnson (24:24): Exactly. Leon Adato (24:24): You look forward to it. Doug Johnson (24:25): But at the same time, you know, I mean, I, I did, I went to, went to youth group and all that kind of stuff. I was, uh, I was one of the three people who did stuff on the senior sermon day, you know, when I was a senior in college, but just for the integrity purpose, there was a, there was a statement of faith that we were supposed to make at some point, along the way, uh, community, uh, not confirmation. It was like a confirmation thing. And I specifically did not actually say some of the words in the statement that we were supposedly standing up and making. So, you know, I was a little bit of a, of a re reactionary there. So I went to college. Okay. At college was where I first got my first introduction to computers. Well, in college, that's where I first went and said, you know what? This is kind of, this is garbage. And. Leon Adato (25:15): Uh huh. Doug Johnson (25:15): I actually, I can actually remember some Christians coming to dorm room going ahead and, you know, trying, you know, laying out the whole Christian thing. And I knew the Bible better than they did, and basically, uh, shot down all of their arguments. And I, I hope I pray to God that I did not ruin their cause I will feel really bad if I was able to go ahead and push them off of their path. Leon Adato (25:39): Knock somebody else off the, yeah, Doug Johnson (25:41): Exactly. Leon Adato (25:41): I so, so, just to hold that thought for a second. Um, first of all, uh, just a point of order for people listening, never, ever get into religious argument with somebody who's in the philosophy department. That's really not, that's not the, the part of the dorm you want. Like if the, if there's a philosophy wing to the dorm, which God help them, if they really did that. But if they're like, if they say so what's your major philosophy. Thanks. Great talking to you. Bye. Just go, just go. Um, and second of all, I heard from actually one of the other folks that we talk with a lot, um, Josh Begley, who said that the missionaries that we, they send people out on, on mission work, not to try to change anybody else's mind, but to try to deepen the faith of the people who are doing the mission, because being told no repeatedly and aggressively causes you to dig in harder into your own, uh, point of view. So they do it because they want that reaction. So you probably helped many, many people develop a stronger tie to their faith. I'm, I'm working really hard, make this okay for you. Doug Johnson (26:44): Well, in the end, and again, based on what I believe as I stand before the, uh, the, the throne and get told, well done thou good and faithful servant. I have a feeling that he's gonna say, Oh, and Doug, I got a little conversation with you ok? Just yeah. Right. With these people. And then you and I, we're going to talk just a little longer, so we'll see how that all works out. But so basically I managed to get through, uh, college, uh, with what I would consider to be a somewhat hedonistic philosophy that basically said, if it's not hurting anybody at camp, it can't be all bad. Leon Adato (27:20): Okay. Doug Johnson (27:20): Right. And, um, and I lived that out. I was a philosophy major. I truly lived that out. I was a disc jockey after that, everything bad that you've ever told your daughters to avoid. I was that thing, right. Leon Adato (27:34): You were that boy. Doug Johnson (27:35): I was that boy, I was the poster boy for who, who you shouldn't have your daughter bring home and, you know, went through that whole thing, blah, blah, blah, uh, graduated from, uh, has got cut, got out of college, was a disc jockey, did all kinds of things for about 10 ish years or so. Leon Adato (27:55): Um hmm. Doug Johnson (27:54): Um, And then I was a disc jockey in Cleveland and then, um, got invited to, uh, a business meeting. We've all heard of Amway. Leon Adato (28:08): Um hmm. Doug Johnson (28:08): So, you know, it sounded interesting went blah, blah, blah. Did that for a while, went to a, uh, big meeting on the weekend. They had a religious service on Sunday morning and they did an alter call and I said, okay, God, here's your shot. Leon Adato (28:28): [laughing]. Doug Johnson (28:28): Don't laugh. I mean, it really is. I know exactly. So I said, fine, I will go forward. Here you go. And it was one of those, you know, hit, God figured he had his one shot, hit me with a two by four tears, blah, blah, blah, the whole thing. And you know, it, it, it stuck. Leon Adato (28:50): Okay. Leon Adato (28:50): So, you know, when, when they say born again, not everybody, uh, I, I don't think you have to have a dramatic, uh, con uh, a dramatic change in your life. I did it. And it probably is the only thing that would have gotten my attention. So I did what I was, I started studying the Bible, doing all kinds of things. Next thing you know, somebody said at the door, Hey, would you like to study the Bible? I went, sure, come on in. I think these Jehovah's witnesses had never actually had anybody really invite them in before. Now, of course, I didn't know much about the Jehovah's witnesses at that point, because I hadn't been saved that long, but so we're going through it and we're studying on a weekly basis. And, um, and in fact, one of the fun things was there was an Easter service that we went to that they, you could, they called you up to the front to take communion. Leon Adato (29:38): Uh huh. Doug Johnson (29:38): Well, I didn't know. You're supposed to be one of the 180,000 saved people to go up. Leon Adato (29:44): Oops Doug Johnson (29:44): So I went up, well, I w. Leon Adato (29:46): Wait, wait, this isn't snacks. I was hungry. Doug Johnson (29:48): No, exactly. It was kind of like, it was like that. I was told later that I shouldn't have done that, but it was okay. You know, I wasn't going to go to hell, but, but then it got weirder and weirder as time went on. And so I made the mistake of reading to the end of the book, Leon Adato (30:04): Uh huh. Doug Johnson (30:04): And now we're back to the philosophy major thing. Leon Adato (30:07): Yeah, uh huh right. Doug Johnson (30:07): And so they came in the next time and I said, um, you don't actually believe that God is, that Jesus has God, do you? And they went, well, blah blah blah, I said, no, apapapa, this is a yes, no question. And so that was the end of me with the, uh, Jehovah's witnesses. And, uh, when we went to another church, uh, we went one Sunday morning and, you know, the place where you sign your name and, and we just lived across the way. And I said, uh, I said, lamb in search of a shepherd. And next day, [knock on door sound] pastors says, how could I not come to your door after that? So, and, and so I was discipled there and, you know, as time has gone on, I've learned more and been discipled by different people and irritated multiple denominations, but, you know, uh, have worked well. Leon Adato (30:59): Yeah, that's, it's an incredibly on brand for you. So, you know, Doug Johnson (31:02): Well, it is, I mean, it's, it's been, it's been fun even when I've been wrong. I've been right. There was there, there was a time when I was teaching a Sunday school class, and this was when I was traveling 45 minutes to a church that was having some trouble, you know, we had moved. Leon Adato (31:16): Uh huh. Doug Johnson (31:16): And so I ended up running late, you know, it's just cause it was a long drive. And the, as I'm going into my Sunday school, getting set to teach my Sunday school class a little bit late, the elder posts, says that it's irresponsible for you to be late, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I said, I've got a class to teach. We'll talk about this later, went in, taught my class, went home, searched scripture, Leon Adato (31:40): Uh huh. Doug Johnson (31:40): Sent him a thing and said, I searched the Bible. The only thing, only time I ever saw somebody arriving late was when Samuel arrived late, and, uh, Saul went ahead and did the sacrifice ahead of time because he wasn't willing to wait. And the elder apologized to me. So, so I knew we were okay. Leon Adato (32:01): There you go. Doug Johnson (32:01): So, and so over a period of time, I've been church, I've been, God help them. I've been deacon in a church or two, you know, I mean, can you imagine, Leon Adato (32:10): What were they thinking? Doug Johnson (32:10): I don't know, I've been, I've been a worship leader. Oh, I can remember once as worship leader, I was there and I was leading us, but I lost the melody. And so the organist go ahead and, and really knocked out the melody. And I said, here I am in front of the whole church. I rely on the kindness, strangers, Thank you, Blanche Dubois. Leon Adato (32:38): Right. Doug Johnson (32:41): So that's been, my, that's been my journey. Leon Adato (32:44): Amazing. Both, you know, both the technical and the religious journey has been, uh, Epic in many ways. Um, I think what's interesting about that is that given both the variety and also the duration of it, and yeah, I did just call you old. Um, the, you know, Doug Johnson (33:06): I'm not old, I'm durable! Leon Adato (33:06): Right. Durable, experienced, seasoned, like an old cast iron pot. Um, so I, I think that the, the number of times that the opportunity to blend these two very compelling, very consuming parts of our lives together, um, you know, becomes equally memorable. So, uh, both on the good and the bad, let's start off with the challenging part, you know, have you ever, have there ever been times when blending your religious life observances and your technical obligations or life has created a, a particular challenge for you and how did you overcome it? Doug Johnson (33:47): Um, yes. I mean, it pretty much has to be a conflict or. Leon Adato (33:53): Right. Doug Johnson (33:53): What you don't have conflict. Where's the story. Come on now. Leon Adato (33:57): Right. Doug Johnson (33:57): Yeah. I always tell people when they had a really bad vacation, they went, Hey, you got good stories. Nobody wants to hear what a wonderful time you had, They want to hear everything that went wrong, but I can, I mean, I can remember that I had a consulting firm, um, for a long time where I was doing accounting software and I can remember a couple of different occasions where, uh, I ran into when the one place he went, uh, so, uh, I need to have some, uh, I need to have some inventory disappear. Can you make that happen? Leon Adato (34:30): Okay. Doug Johnson (34:31): And I'm going, I don't think we need to work together anymore. You know, it's just like, yeah. I mean, could I have done it? Absolutely. I mean, do I, you know, I knew, I knew the accounting software well enough that I could have made it, made that happen. But in fact, I was actually played by somebody once. Um, he, well, he thought, anyway, a friend of mine had a company. He had a guy who was managing his company. So I got in there and the guy said he had done a bunch of test, uh, test transactions. And could I move the, could I get the just test transactions needed to get re needed to get them off? And so I did move them off, but I moved them off to the side. Leon Adato (35:10): Uh huh. Doug Johnson (35:10): It turns out the guy was embezzling, Leon Adato (35:13): Right. Doug Johnson (35:13): They weren't they weren't test transactions. They were real transactions. And so I got to, uh, uh, be an expert witness in his trial. By the way, if you ever want to know how boring your life is, be an expert witness. I could see the people nodding off as I'm describing accounting software. Leon Adato (35:33): Yeah. Being an expert witness in a technique. Yeah. In a, in a computer accounting fraud. Doug Johnson (35:37): Oh yeah, Exactly. It was bad, but you know, it was so in that was a case where I was played, but of course, uh, you know, I, I covered for it. So I was able to actually, you know, the guy went to jail and he should have no. So just the way it was, uh, I, I can remember being in another place where looking, you know, looking at his stuff, um, there was no way that he had, he could afford the boat, that he had a picture on the wall of, Leon Adato (36:05): Uh huh. Doug Johnson (36:05): Based on what I was seeing here. So only thing I could figure out was he was laundering funds somewhere. It was the kind of business that would have been good for that. So I let that, that's again, a case where I went. Yeah. I think I need to let this client go. So. Leon Adato (36:20): There you go. Okay. So, uh, that's, that's sort of the challenging side on the good side. Has there ever been a situation where the blend of technology and religion has really turned into something surprising and kind of delightful? Doug Johnson (36:34): It's sort of a yes and a no? I mean, I, the nice thing about being able to do what I do is that I, I am able to go ahead and help out non-technical organizations with technical stuff that they should have. So there's been things that I've been able to do for various and sundry, different organizations that I've been involved with. Keeping in mind that I actually made an active choice not to do religious or church software relatively early on, because I knew that if I did it to make my living, I would ended up hating my brothers and sisters in Christ. Leon Adato (37:12): Right. Doug Johnson (37:12): As a volunteer, as a volunteer, it was okay. But if I. Leon Adato (37:15): Yeah. Doug Johnson (37:15): Had to make my living that way, there was just no way that that was going to go ahead and work. Leon Adato (37:19): It doesn't people who love to cook and decided to open a catering company. And not only do they hate to cook now, they also hate people. Doug Johnson (37:26): Yeah. Pretty much how it all works out. Yeah. I've done a few catering gigs, but yeah. I don't want to make my living that way. Leon Adato (37:33): Um hmm, yeah. Doug Johnson (37:33): So yeah. And I love to cook. Um, the best part of it for me is that technical stuff is very, uh it's. Yes, no. I mean, you really have to, I I've got a client that every time something happens, he goes, boy, that's weird. And I'm going, no, it's not weird. We just don't know why. Leon Adato (37:56): um hmm. Doug Johnson (37:56): Right. Leon Adato (37:56): Right. Doug Johnson (37:56): I mean, it's like, computers are really, there's always a really good reason why they're having a problem. Right. And you taking that same logical philosophical, uh, bent that I have. Leon Adato (38:10): Uh huh. Doug Johnson (38:10): It works really well for me. Christianity does make sense. I mean, Leon Adato (38:15): um hmm. Doug Johnson (38:15): Pascal, the mathematician it's, it's called Pascal's, uh, gambit or whatever it is. But he basically said, if I'm a Christian and I am wrong, what have I lost? If I'm a non-Christian and I'm wrong, I've lost everything. So it, it, for me, Christianity works both from a logical and a systematic thought basis. Um, that, that appeals to me, and. Leon Adato (38:43): Um hmm. Doug Johnson (38:43): It's the same thing on the technical side, you can always work through a computer problem may take you forever, but. Leon Adato (38:48): Right. Doug Johnson (38:48): You know, but, but, but it there's always an answer there somewhere. It can be ridiculously difficult to track down, but it's always there. Leon Adato (38:58): Nice. Doug Johnson (38:58): They sort of play off against each other sort of nicely that way. Leon Adato (39:02): Wonderful. Okay. So this is the lightning round. Are there any final thoughts? Any lessons you want to share before we wrap this up? Doug Johnson (39:10): One of the things that, uh, sort of bugs me about Christians in general. Leon Adato (39:15): Uh huh. Doug Johnson (39:15): Is we believe, as Paul said here in, you know, here in earth, great. Uh, I die. I go to heaven even better. Okay. Leon Adato (39:25): Uh huh. Doug Johnson (39:25): Why do Christians? Why are Christians so afraid of death? Why are we so afraid of dying? Leon Adato (39:30): Hmm. Doug Johnson (39:31): It's just, it's silly. I mean, I understand that there's an unknown there, but if we believe what we say, we believe then we should be, Sweet! I actually said that once we were in, we were in a thing. Leon Adato (39:46): Oh god! Doug Johnson (39:46): we were in, we were. Leon Adato (39:47): Not at a funeral, please Doug, not at a funeral. Doug Johnson (39:48): No, wait wait, it wasn't a, Oh, by the way, I give great funerals. I give great funeral, just so you know, I've been asked to do several eulogies and I give great eulogy, but I have people laughing until I have them crying. Leon Adato (40:02): Aww. Doug Johnson (40:02): Every time I'm good at it. But in this case, we were in a meeting and the guy was the guy who was leading was blah, blah, blah. And he was going, so, so you leave here and you walk out the door and you accidentally step in front of, step in front of a truck. And I went, sweet! And he went, that is the first time anybody's ever said that. And you are completely correct. Leon Adato (40:25): Okay. Doug Johnson (40:25): Well, it is. I mean, if you think about it, I mean, golly, no pain, no suffering. And you're with God, come on. How bad is that? Leon Adato (40:34): Right. Doug Johnson (40:34): That's not bad at all. So the, that's, that's one of my big beefs with, you know, in general, if we believe what we say, we believe we should not be so afraid of death, that's the whole point. But there you are. Leon Adato (40:49): Got it. There you go. All right. As always, it is a delight to talk to you even when we're not recording, but when other people get to share in this, uh, Whoa on them, I guess. I don't know. It's uh, but we had a good time. So thank you for joining me as always. Doug Johnson (41:06): I appreciate it. And I will see you. I will be up there in September, by the way. Leon Adato (41:11): Woo hoo! Up in Cleveland, in September picking the right. Oh, wow. That's that's not next month. I, it, time has no meaning for me anymore. Doug Johnson (41:19): Sorry I know, It is pretty much, no, it it's my 50th, uh, high school reunion a year and a half late. Leon Adato (41:25): Well, yeah, of course it is yeah. Doug Johnson (41:28): But so yeah, Leon Adato (41:30): Because 2020 is just a big blank spot on the calendar. Doug Johnson (41:33): Oh, it didn't happen. 2020 nah. Didn't happen. No. Oh, well, all right. Well, I can't wait to see you. Thanks again. New Speaker (41:40): All right. Talk to you later. Leon Adato (41:42): Thanks for making time for us this week, to hear more of technically religious visit our website, technically religious.com, where you can find our other episodes, leave us ideas for future discussions and connect us on social media.

All super heroes have an origin story. And, *so do nerds*. Many of us can remember back to that moment when we realized that there was magic in the world - magic that we could be part of; and, magic that we could help create. This week, we get personal with the crew and learn more about where they came from, what kind of stuff makes them tick, and what it is that they love about being web application developers. This Part 1 of a two-part series. Part 1 includes Tim and Ben. Part 2 will include Carol and Adam. *Triumphs & Fails* * *Adam's Triumph* - He moved mountains of data using "pivot tables" in Google Sheets in order to build summaries of his newly-rolled-out test coverage at work! He's a hair's breadth away from fully converting his codebase over to an open-source platform. * *Ben's Triumph* - He totally built something without JavaScript ! I know, it sounds crazy: in the age of Single-Page Applications (SPA) and JavaScript frameworks, reaching for JavaScript is the default. But he managed to build something useful with just HTML and CSS ! * *Carol's Triumph / Failure* - She just passed the 4-month mark at her new job, like a boss! But, she been a little bit down in the mouth, concerned that she's not getting enough done and that she's not learning enough. She managed to turn the week around, however, getting some productive "Design Buddy" work (think "pair programming" for the planning phase) done. * *Tim's Triumph* - He checked his old Coinbase account from 2015 and the $15 he left in there is now worth $85. He's about to wine and dine himself! *Notes & Links* * :target ( https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/:target ) - CSS selector that matches elements whose id matches the URL fragment. * Coinbase ( https://www.coinbase.com/ ) - a place to buy, sell, and manage your cryptocurrency portfolio. * Lost Passwords Lock Millionaires Out of Their Bitcoin Fortunes ( https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/12/technology/bitcoin-passwords-wallets-fortunes.html ) - New York Times article about a millionaire who has two more chances to remember his password for quarter-billion in Bitcoin. * Google Sheets: Pivot tables ( https://support.google.com/docs/answer/1272900 ) - creating and using pivot tables in Google Sheets. * Aqua Data Studio ( https://www.aquafold.com/aquadatastudio ) - a versatile database IDE with data management and visual analytics for relational, cloud, and NoSQL databases. * ELIZA ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ELIZA ) - an early natural language processing computer program. * Zork ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zork ) - one of the earliest interactive fiction computer games. * Kaypro ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaypro ) - a computer manufacturer from the 1980s known for their line of rugged, "luggable" computers. * dBase ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DBase ) - one of the first database management systems for microcomputers. * CP/M ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CP/M ) - an early operating system. * Ultima Online ( https://uo.com/ ) - one of the first MMO (Massively Multi-player Online) games. * Adobe ColdFusion ( https://www.adobe.com/products/coldfusion-family.html ) - a modern web development language. * Lucee CFML ( https://www.lucee.org/ ) - the leading open-source CFML application server / engine - it's so good you might just freak out! * Sierra Entertainment ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sierra_Entertainment ) - game company famous for King's Quest, Space Quest, and Leisure Suit Larry. * Hackers ( https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0113243/ ) - one of the best movies in the computer / hacker genre - Hack the planet! * X-Files ( https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0106179/ ) - 1990s tv drama about the FBI's paranormal phenomena research - the truth is out there ! * QBasic ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QBasic ) - an early programming language and interpreter. * TI-82 ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TI-82 ) - a programmable calculator. Follow the show! Our website is workingcode.dev ( https://workingcode.dev/ ) and we're @WorkingCodePod on Twitter ( https://twitter.com/WorkingCodePod ) and Instagram ( https://www.instagram.com/workingcodepod/ ). New episodes weekly on Wednesday. And, if you're *feeling the love* , support us on Patreon ( https://www.patreon.com/workingcodepod ). Your heart matters.

Today we're going to cover the software that would become Microsoft Office.  Microsoft Office was announced at COMDEX in 1988. The Suite contained Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. These are still the core applications included in Microsoft Office. But the history of Office didn't start there.  Many of the innovations we use today began life at Xerox. And Word is no different. Microsoft Word began life as as Multi-Tool Word in 1981, when Charles Simonyi was hired away from Xerox PARC where he had worked on one of the earlier word processors, Bravo.  He brought in Richard Brodie, and by 1983, they would release it for DOS, simplifying the name to just Microsoft Word. They would port it to the Mac in 1985, shortly after the release of the iconic 1984 Macintosh. Being way more feature-rich than MacWrite, it was an instant success. 2.0 would come along in 1987, and they would be up to 5 by 1992. But Word for Windows came along in 1989, when Windows 3.0 dropped. So Word went from DOS to Mac to Windows.  Excel has a similar history. It began life as Multiplan in 1982 though. At the time, it was popular on CP/M and DOS but when Lotus 1-2-3 came along, it knocked everything out of the hearts and minds of users and Microsoft regrouped. Doug Klunder would be the Excel lead developer and Jabe Blumenthal would act as program manager. They would meet with Bill Gates and Simonyi and hammer out the look and feel and released Excel for the Mac in 1985. And Excel came to Windows in 1987. By Excel 5 in 1993, Microsoft would completely taken the spreadsheet market and suddenly Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) would play a huge role in automating tasks. Regrettably, then came macro viruses, but for more on those check out the episode on viruses. In fact, along the way, Microsoft would pick up a ton of talented developers including Bob Frankton a co-creator of the original spreadsheet, VisiCalc. Powerpoint was an acquisition. It began life as Presenter at Forethought, a startup, in 1983. And Robert Gaskins, a former research manager  from Bell Norther Research, would be brought in to get the product running on Windows 1. It would become PowerPoint when it was released for the Mac in 1987 and was wildly successful, selling out all of the copies from the first run.  But then Jeff Raikes from Microsoft started getting ready to build a new presentation tool. Bill Gates had initially thought it was a bad idea but eventually gave Raikes the go-ahead to buy Forethought and Microsoft PowerPoint was born.  And that catches up to that fateful day in 1988 when Bill Gates announced Office at COMDEX in Las Vegas, which at the time was a huge conference. Then came the Internet. Microsoft Mail was released for the Mac in 1988 and bundled with Windows from 1991 and on. Microsoft also released a tool called Inbox. But then came Exchange, expanding beyond mail and into contacts, calendars, and eventually much more. Mail was really basic and for Exchange, Microsoft released Outlook, which was added to Office 97 and an installer was bundled with Windows Exchange Server.  Office Professional in that era included a database utility called Access. We've always had databases. But desktop databases had been dominated by Borland's dBase and FoxPro up until 1992 when Microsoft Access began to chip away at their marketshare. Microsoft had been trying to get into that market since the mid-90s with R:Base and Omega, but when Access 2 dropped in 1994, people started to take notice and by the release of Office 95 Professional it could be purchased as part of a suite and integrated cleanly. I can still remember those mdb files and setting up data access objects and later ActiveX controls! So the core Office components came together in 1988 and by 1995 the Office Suite was the dominant productivity suite on the market. It got better in 97. Except The Office Assistant, designed by Kevan Atteberry and lovingly referred to as Clippy. By 2000 Office became the de facto standard. Everything else had to integrate with Office. That continued in the major 2003 and 2007 releases. And the products just iterated to become better and better software.  And they continue to do that. But another major shift was on the way. A response to Google Apps, which had been released in 2006. The cloud was becoming a thing. And so Office 365 went into beta in 2010 and was launched in 2011. It includes the original suite, OneDrive, SharePoint, Teams for chatting with coworkers, Yammer for social networking, Skype for Business (although video can now be done in Teams), Outlook and Outlook online, and Publisher. As well as Publisher, InfoPath, and Access for Windows.  This Software + Services approach turned out to be a master-stroke. Microsoft was able to finally raise prices and earned well over a 10% boost to the Office segment in just a few years. The pricing for subscriptions over the term of what would have been a perpetual license was often 30% more. Yet, the Office 365 subscriptions kept getting more and more cool stuff. And by 2017 the subscriptions captured more revenue than the perpetual licenses. And a number of other services can be included with Office 365.  Another huge impact is the rapid disappearing act of on premises Exchange servers. Once upon a time small businesses would have an Exchange server and then as they grew, move that to a colocation facility, hire MCSE engineers (like me) to run them, and have an amplified cost increase in dealing with providing groupware. Moving that to Microsoft means that Microsoft can charge more, and the customer can get a net savings, even though the subscriptions cost more - because they don't have to pay people to run those servers. OneDrive moves files off old filers, etc.  And the Office apps provided aren't just for Windows and Mac. Pocket Office would come in 1996, for Windows CE. Microsoft would have Office apps for all of their mobile operating systems. And in 2009 we would get Office for Symbian. And then for iPhone in 2013 and iPad in 2014. Then for Android in 2015.  Today over 1 and a quarter billion people use Microsoft Office. In fact, not a lot of people have *not* used Office. Microsoft has undergone a resurgence in recent years and is more nimble and friendly than ever before. Many of the people that created these tools are still at Microsoft. Simonyi left Microsoft for a time. But they ended up buying his company later. During what we now refer to as the “lost decade” at Microsoft, I would always think of these humans. Microsoft would get dragged through the mud for this or that. But the engineers kept making software. And I'm really glad to see them back making world class APIs that do what we need them to do. And building good software on top of that.  But most importantly, they set the standard for what a word processor, spreadsheet, and presentation tool would look like for a generation. And the ubiquity the software obtained allowed for massive leaps in adoption and innovation. Until it didn't. That's when Google Apps came along, giving Microsoft a kick in the keister to put up or shut up. And boy did Microsoft answer.  So thank you to all of them. I probably never would have written my first book without their contributions to computing. And thank you listener, for tuning in, to this episode of the history of computing podcast. We are so lucky to have you. Have a great day. 

Welcome to the History of Computing Podcast, where we explore the history of information technology. Because understanding the past prepares us to innovate (and sometimes cope with) the future! Today we're going to look at an often forgotten period in the history of computers. The world before DOS.  I've been putting off telling the story of CP/M. But it's time. Picture this: It's 1974. It's the end of the Watergate scandal. The oil crisis. The energy crisis. Stephen King's first book Carrie is released. The Dolphins demolish my Minnesota Vikings 24-7 in the Super Bowl. Patty Hearst is kidnapped. The Oakland As win the World Series. Muhammad Ali pops George Forman in the grill to win the Heavyweight title. Charles de Gaulle opens in Paris. The Terracotta Army is discovered in China. And in one of the most telling shifts that we were moving from the 60s into the mid-70s, the Volkswagen Golf replaces the Beetle. I mean, the Hippies shifted to Paul Anka, Paper Lace, and John Denver. The world was settling down. And the world was getting ready for something to happen. A lot of people might not have known it yet, but the Intel 8080 series of chips was about to change the world. Gary Kildall could see it. He'd bought the first commercial microprocessor, the Intel 4004 when it came out in 1971. He'd been enamored and consulted with Intel. He finished his doctorate in computer science and went tot he Naval Postgraduate School in Monterrey to teach and developed Kildall's Method, to optimize compilers. But then he met the 8080 chip.  The Intel Intellec-8 was an early computer that he wanted to get an operating system running on. He'd written PL/M or the Programming Language for Microcomputers and he would write the CP/M operating system, short for Control Program/Monitor, loosely based on TOPS-10, the OS that ran on his DECsystem-10 mainframe.  He would license PL/M through Intel but operating systems weren't really a thing just yet. By 1977, personal computers were on the rise and he would take it to market though calling the company Digital Research, Inc. His wife Dorothy ran the company.  And they would go into a nice rise in sales. 250,000 licenses in 3 years. This was the first time consumers could interact with computer hardware in a standardized fashion across multiple systems. They would port the code to the Z80 processors, people would run CP/M on Apple Its, Altair's, IMSaI, Kaypro, Epson, Osbourne, Commodore and even the trash 80, or TRS-80. The world was hectic and not that standard, but there were really 3 main chips so the software actually ran on 3,000 models during an explosion in personal computer hobbyists.  CP/M quickly rose and became the top operating system on the market. We would get WordStar, dBase, VisiCalc, MultiPlan, SuperCalc, Delphi, and Turbo Pascal for the office. And for fun, we'd get Colossal Cave Adventure, Gorillas, and Zork.  It bootstrapped from floppy disks. They made $5 million bucks in 1981. Almost like cocoaine money at the time. Gary got a private airplane. And John Opel from IBM called. Bill Gates told him to. IBM wanted to buy the rights to CP/M. Digital Research and IBM couldn't come to terms. And this is where it gets tricky. IBM was going to make CP/M the standard operating system for the IBM PC. Microsoft jumped on the opportunity and found a tool called 86-DOS from a company called Seattle Computer Products. The cool thing there is that used the CP/M Api and so would be easy to have compatible software. Paul Allen worked with them to license the software then compiled it for the IBM. This was the first MS DOS and became the standard, branded as PC DOS for IBM.  Later, Kildall agreed to sell CP/M for $240 on the IBM PCs. The problem was that PC DOS came in at $40. If you knew nothing about operating systems, which would you buy? And so even though it had compatibility with the CP/M API, PC DOS really became the standard. So much so that Digital Research would clone the Microsoft DOS and release their own DR DOS. Kildall would later describe Bill Gates using the following quote: "He is divisive. He is manipulative. He is a user. He has taken much from me and the industry.” While Kildall considered DOS theft, he was told not to sue because the laws simply weren't yet clear.  At first though, it didn't seem to hurt. Digital Research continued to grow. By 1983 computers were booming. Digital Research would hit $45 million in sales. They had gone from just Gary to 530 employees by then. Gangbusters. Although they did notice that they missed the mark on the 8088 chips from Intel and even with massive rises in sales had lost market share to Unix System V and all the variants that would come from that. CP/M would add DOS emulation.  But sales began to slip. The IBM 5150 and subsequent machines just took over the market. And CP/M, once a dominant player, would be left behind. Gary would move more into research and development but by 1985 resigned as the CEO of Digital Research, in a year where they laid off 200 employees.  He helped start a show called the Computer Chronicles in 1983. It has been something I've been watching a lot recently, researching these episodes and it's awesome! He was a kinda and wicked smart man. Even to people who had screwed him over.  As many would after them, Digital Research went into long-term legal drama, involving the US Department of Justice. But none of that saved them. And it wouldn't save any of the other companies that went there either. Digital Research would sell to Novell for $80 million in 1991 and various parts of the intellectual property would live on with compilers, interpreters, and DR DOS living on. For example, as Caldera OpenDOS. But CP/M itself would be done.   Kildall would die in a bar in Monterey, California in 1994. One of the pioneers of the personal computer market. From CP/M to disk buffering the data structure that made the CD, he was all over the place in personal computers. And CP/M was the gold standard of operating systems for a few years.  One of the reasons I put this episode off is because I didn't know how I would end it. Like, what's the story here. I think it's mostly that I've heard it said that he could have been Bill Gates. I think that's a drastic oversimplification. CP/M could have been the operating system on the PC. But a lot of other things could have happened as well. He was wealthy, just not Bill Gates level wealthy. And rather than go into a downward spiral over what we don't have, maybe we should all be happy with what we have.  And much of his technology survived for decades to come. So he left behind a family and a legacy. In uncertain times, focus on the good and do well with it. And thank you for being you. And for tuning in to this episode of the History of Computing Podcast. 

“Ho curato mio padre con un integratore di vitamina D!” il racconto fake di Nadia virale sul web Torna a diffondersi a macchia d’olio, attraverso le condivisioni degli utenti dei social network italiani più in uso, il racconto di Nadia; una raccolta di post, una sorta di diario aggiornato quotidianamente che spiega come la ragazza si occupa del padre 68enne e con la sindrome di Alzheimer. “Due fiale da 100.000 Dbase” così Nadia decide di curare il padre; con un integratore di vitamina D - come tanti si trovano in farmacia - che in pochi giorni già mostra evidenti miglioramenti di salute; “Ha ripreso a parlare e mi riconosce!”. Come ogni fake news che si rispetti, anche quella di Nadia colpisce al cuore, facendo leva su drammi familiari fin troppo diffusi e speranze a cui le persone si aggrappano per affrontare la sofferenza quotidiana; come quella di vedere un proprio caro affetto da una malattia neurodegenerativa come quella di Alzheimer. La morale della favola? La vitamina D può guarire. Niente di più incompleto e falso. La vitamina in questione, infatti, non protegge il cervello dalle malattie neurodegenerative - come si ipotizzava in passato - ed a dimostrarlo ci sono innumerevoli studi clinici e preclinici condotti a proposito. Secondo il Centro per la Ricerca sulle Neuroscienze dell'Università di Adelaide e dell'Università del Sud Australia non ci sono prove effettive sulla capacità di contrasto né tantomeno sulla cura. La vitamina D è fondamentale per la nostra salute e comporta tanti benefici, ma la storia di Nadia è solo un’illusione, una falsa speranza che deve trovare consolazione solo in un laboratorio di ricerca e non sui social network.

В 16 выпуске радио шоу РИТМ с эксклюзивным гостевым миксом у нас побывал MSDOS! //// In the 16th issue of the RITM radio show with an exclusive guest mix, MSDOS visited us! Tracklist: 01. Command Strange - In Circles 02. mSdoS ft. dBase - ??? 03. Furney - Larougi 2017 04. Margaman - Searching 05. mSdoS - Show u the dark 06. Margaman - Midnight 07. Fly - Montjuic (Muwookie mix) 08. mSdoS - Sun Rising (Insom remix) 09. Critycal Dub - Reckless 10. Alibi - Trunk feat. MC Coppa 11. Radicall - Vostok 12. Soul Connection and AKA - Intra Soul 13. mSdoS ft. dBase - Love Song 14. mSdoS & Greekboy - Stratosphere

В 16 выпуске радио шоу РИТМ с эксклюзивным гостевым миксом у нас побывал MSDOS! //// In the 16th issue of the RITM radio show with an exclusive guest mix, MSDOS visited us! Tracklist: 01. Command Strange - In Circles 02. mSdoS ft. dBase - ??? 03. Furney - Larougi 2017 04. Margaman - Searching 05. mSdoS - Show u the dark 06. Margaman - Midnight 07. Fly - Montjuic (Muwookie mix) 08. mSdoS - Sun Rising (Insom remix) 09. Critycal Dub - Reckless 10. Alibi - Trunk feat. MC Coppa 11. Radicall - Vostok 12. Soul Connection and AKA - Intra Soul 13. mSdoS ft. dBase - Love Song 14. mSdoS & Greekboy - Stratosphere

В 16 выпуске радио шоу РИТМ с эксклюзивным гостевым миксом у нас побывал MSDOS! //// In the 16th issue of the RITM radio show with an exclusive guest mix, MSDOS visited us! Tracklist: 01. Command Strange - In Circles 02. mSdoS ft. dBase - ??? 03. Furney - Larougi 2017 04. Margaman - Searching 05. mSdoS - Show u the dark 06. Margaman - Midnight 07. Fly - Montjuic (Muwookie mix) 08. mSdoS - Sun Rising (Insom remix) 09. Critycal Dub - Reckless 10. Alibi - Trunk feat. MC Coppa 11. Radicall - Vostok 12. Soul Connection and AKA - Intra Soul 13. mSdoS ft. dBase - Love Song 14. mSdoS & Greekboy - Stratosphere

Panel Charles Max Wood Special Guests: Joe Eames Joe is both into JavaScript Jabber and Adventures in Angular. Tune in to My Angular Story Joe Eames to learn more about his journey into getting where he is now. When he was 16, Joe had a class in high school which required him to go to the University of Utah. Everyday he took half day in high school and traveled to the university to attend class. Since he was up there, he thought that he needed a job to earn money for dates and stuff just like any other kids. He worked in a movie theater, but got suspended because he had an argument with his boss. He looked for another job, and landed onto one in the university where he was studying. He did data entry and dBase maintenance. That was his first programming job. When he turned 19 and graduated from high school, Joe served 2 years in LDS mission. When he came back, he worked in a restaurant for 5 weeks, but moved to Portland because of some knee problems. He spent 2 years there. When he came home, he needed a new job. He found a technical job in a computer company which did data entry. He got hired and was assigned in doing wiring and the like. One manager came to his manager asking for one programmer for a project. Since he was available and had a background on programming, he was recommended for the job. He was then handed with FoxPro books, and started reading them as a head start. He bought a couple of JavaScript books back then. Then there came an emergent technology which he found so cool and awesome called DHTML. Some people in his office were doing it, but he was confused about it. He kind of got it, but he didn't really do much with it. For years he has been doing dot net and programming. He got to the point where he wanted to do something different. He enjoyed doing web technology stuff, but he wanted to get heavier into JavaScript. He decided to leave everything and pursued his profound interest for JS. To hear the rest of My Angular Story Joe Eames, download and listen to the entire episode. Get in touch with Joe and learn more about him by following him on Twitter. Don't forget to let Joe know you heard about him on Devchat.tv's Adventures in Angular My Angular Story! Joe on Twitter If you're short on time, here are the highlights of My Angular Story Joe Eames: How did Joe get into programming? (00:45) His journey to JavaScript? (06:15) How Joe came to Angular? (15:47) Experience as JavaScript Jabber panelist? (21:16) The birth of NG conference? (27:11) Joe's current projects? (39:36) Picks: Joe's  Costa Vida NG Cruise Charles' Pick: Air BNB 

Panel Charles Max Wood Special Guests: Joe Eames Joe is both into JavaScript Jabber and Adventures in Angular. Tune in to My Angular Story Joe Eames to learn more about his journey into getting where he is now. When he was 16, Joe had a class in high school which required him to go to the University of Utah. Everyday he took half day in high school and traveled to the university to attend class. Since he was up there, he thought that he needed a job to earn money for dates and stuff just like any other kids. He worked in a movie theater, but got suspended because he had an argument with his boss. He looked for another job, and landed onto one in the university where he was studying. He did data entry and dBase maintenance. That was his first programming job. When he turned 19 and graduated from high school, Joe served 2 years in LDS mission. When he came back, he worked in a restaurant for 5 weeks, but moved to Portland because of some knee problems. He spent 2 years there. When he came home, he needed a new job. He found a technical job in a computer company which did data entry. He got hired and was assigned in doing wiring and the like. One manager came to his manager asking for one programmer for a project. Since he was available and had a background on programming, he was recommended for the job. He was then handed with FoxPro books, and started reading them as a head start. He bought a couple of JavaScript books back then. Then there came an emergent technology which he found so cool and awesome called DHTML. Some people in his office were doing it, but he was confused about it. He kind of got it, but he didn't really do much with it. For years he has been doing dot net and programming. He got to the point where he wanted to do something different. He enjoyed doing web technology stuff, but he wanted to get heavier into JavaScript. He decided to leave everything and pursued his profound interest for JS. To hear the rest of My Angular Story Joe Eames, download and listen to the entire episode. Get in touch with Joe and learn more about him by following him on Twitter. Don't forget to let Joe know you heard about him on Devchat.tv's Adventures in Angular My Angular Story! Joe on Twitter If you're short on time, here are the highlights of My Angular Story Joe Eames: How did Joe get into programming? (00:45) His journey to JavaScript? (06:15) How Joe came to Angular? (15:47) Experience as JavaScript Jabber panelist? (21:16) The birth of NG conference? (27:11) Joe's current projects? (39:36) Picks: Joe's  Costa Vida NG Cruise Charles' Pick: Air BNB 

Panel Charles Max Wood Special Guests: Joe Eames Joe is both into JavaScript Jabber and Adventures in Angular. Tune in to My Angular Story Joe Eames to learn more about his journey into getting where he is now. When he was 16, Joe had a class in high school which required him to go to the University of Utah. Everyday he took half day in high school and traveled to the university to attend class. Since he was up there, he thought that he needed a job to earn money for dates and stuff just like any other kids. He worked in a movie theater, but got suspended because he had an argument with his boss. He looked for another job, and landed onto one in the university where he was studying. He did data entry and dBase maintenance. That was his first programming job. When he turned 19 and graduated from high school, Joe served 2 years in LDS mission. When he came back, he worked in a restaurant for 5 weeks, but moved to Portland because of some knee problems. He spent 2 years there. When he came home, he needed a new job. He found a technical job in a computer company which did data entry. He got hired and was assigned in doing wiring and the like. One manager came to his manager asking for one programmer for a project. Since he was available and had a background on programming, he was recommended for the job. He was then handed with FoxPro books, and started reading them as a head start. He bought a couple of JavaScript books back then. Then there came an emergent technology which he found so cool and awesome called DHTML. Some people in his office were doing it, but he was confused about it. He kind of got it, but he didn't really do much with it. For years he has been doing dot net and programming. He got to the point where he wanted to do something different. He enjoyed doing web technology stuff, but he wanted to get heavier into JavaScript. He decided to leave everything and pursued his profound interest for JS. To hear the rest of My Angular Story Joe Eames, download and listen to the entire episode. Get in touch with Joe and learn more about him by following him on Twitter. Don't forget to let Joe know you heard about him on Devchat.tv's Adventures in Angular My Angular Story! Joe on Twitter If you're short on time, here are the highlights of My Angular Story Joe Eames: How did Joe get into programming? (00:45) His journey to JavaScript? (06:15) How Joe came to Angular? (15:47) Experience as JavaScript Jabber panelist? (21:16) The birth of NG conference? (27:11) Joe's current projects? (39:36) Picks: Joe's  Costa Vida NG Cruise Charles' Pick: Air BNB 

An interview with Antonio Ribeiro, package author and master of StackOverflow Laravel. Rio de Janeiro Laravel-News interview TDDD Stats Tracker Antonio on Twitter Antonio on StackOverflow Antonio's web site Version Google2FA Firewall Pascal Delphi "Concourse" (?) Antonio's photography Editing sponsored by Tighten Transcription sponsored by LaraJobs Matt Stauffer: [music] Welcome back to The Laravel Podcast, this is your host Matt Stauffer. Today I'm going to be talking to someone whose name I struggle with, Antonio Ribeiro. He's the master of Stack Overflow Laravel and much more. Stay tuned. [music] Welcome back to the Laravel podcast, season three. I'm your host. I wanted to say I'm your favorite host but I'm your only host so that'd be kind of cheating. Like when you only have one kid and you say "I'm your favorite kid". I'm your host. I'm one of your hosts. No, I'm the only host. See? Matt Stauffer. That's me. I'm the guy talking to you. Joining me is someone who a lot of you have probably learned from at some point in your life but you often haven't associated that you're actually learning from him. This is the master of Stack Overflow Laravel. That's what's going on here. And I think a lot of people have no recognized that this is actually a thing. We'll get into this in a bit. His name, in Portuguese, is pronounced in such a way that I'm going to totally massacre it. So I'm going to say it and then literally the first thing I'm going to ask him to do is say it the way it's actually supposed to be said. So, Antonio Heb ... Ribeiro. No see, it's totally failed. Say your name for us. Also, what I'd love for you to do is just give us a picture of who are you, what are you about, when you meet someone for the first time what do you tell him about what you do, and then where are you? And then I'll get started in asking some questions. Antonio Ribeiro: Hi Matt. My name is Antonio Ribeiro. Matt Stauffer: Howdy. That's how badly I pronounced it. Antonio Ribeiro: No, no. The second time you say it was really cool. Matt Stauffer: It was a little better? Antonio Ribeiro: I'm from Brazil, originally. I work in Brazil and I work for a company outside Brazil. I lived in Europe for four years or five years. I don't remember exactly how much time. I lived in a city everybody knows. I think everybody knows. It's Rio de Janeiro. It as difficult as my name to say. Matt Stauffer: Rio de Janeiro. [Said with intentionally strong American accent] Antonio Ribeiro: Exactly. I work for the Brazilian government. Specifically, the state legislature in Rio. So I'm a public service. I do six hour per day of public serving. Of work. And after-hours, I do a lot of work. I work for another company. Now, I'm not exactly working for them but I'm available for them. I love the program and that's why I got into Laravel so quickly and maybe had some success in Stack Overflow. So I started my programming life when I was 12, I think, in Switzerland, in a big department store working with computers that were in the store. I was amazed about computers. I got a job when I was 12, 13. Matt Stauffer: You got a job when you were 12 years old working on computers? Antonio Ribeiro: No, not working on computers. I got a job delivering groceries for a store. Matt Stauffer: Oh okay. Antonio Ribeiro: To buy a computer. Matt Stauffer: Oh nice! I was going to say. That's still impressive. Man, you're getting right into it here. You've heard this before and you know that I'm gonna ask about your whole background. But let me pause for just one second because what I want to make sure that I have is ... I want to have context for why it is that I'm talking to you. And like I said, the whole point of this version of the podcast is to get to know the people who everybody knows but maybe they don't know who they are. Also, to get to know the people that nobody knows but they might have benefited from. I think you're in the second box. So, the reason that I originally met you is because I started Laravel. I don't know if you and I started at the same time or not ... So actually before I go any further, what version of Laravel was it when you first started getting really involved? Antonio Ribeiro: 3.2. Yeah, 3.2. Matt Stauffer: Yep, so you showed up there just a little bit before I did. I remember in the early days, and especially in the middle days, every time I'd come across everything in Stack Overflow, you would always be the answer. It's just consistently over and over. And I'm looking at this and you have 59,000 reputation on Stack Overflow. If anybody doesn't know, that's a very, very, very large number of answers. Who knows how good their ideas are here of how many people he's reached but it is telling me that he's reached 3.7 million people with his answers in Stack Overflow. Antonio Ribeiro: Wow. I didn't know that. Matt Stauffer: Right! And the large number of them are in Laravel. His top tag is in Laravel and then he's got Laravel 4. He's got 1,000 posts in Laravel that he's interacted with. Or that maybe even he's created. So there's a lot. There's a lot going on here. He's in the top 0.3% in Stack Overflow and I'm only saying that, not because that makes you worthwhile or not worthwhile, but that was the reason that we originally connected. Now, since you've made a couple repositories in a couple packages for Laravel, the most recent ones that have come up have been your tracker, the Stats Tracker. Then the Test-Dashboard? Is that what it's called? I'm trying to remember what it's called. Antonio Ribeiro: Yeah. I call it TDDD now. Matt Stauffer: Oh, it's got a new name. So TDDD. Antonio Ribeiro: Yeah. TDDD. Matt Stauffer: Got it. Also, the one I've tweeted out a little bit recently is that you have Version. Which basically allows you to pull the version of your Laravel application into your app based on any number of criteria. One of which being the Git tag, which I was super interested in. But it seems like you got a lot more in those. Do you even know how many packages you have? Antonio Ribeiro: No. I'm not sure, really. I have, I think, five or six really popular packages but I have like 150 repositories in my account so I don't know. Matt Stauffer: Yeah. So you're big on Stack Overflow. You've got a lot of packages. You are also are a Twitter presence here and there. Just like a few of the other people we've talked to so far, you're not someone, at least in the US or Europe, where everybody knows you and everybody knows your name. I don't know the Brazilian Laravel community quite so well so is that different either in Brazil or Rio? Do you guys have a really strong community there that you're really invested and involved in? Or are you kind of solo with this? Antonio Ribeiro: Yeah. I'm kind of solo because it all started for me in Stack Overflow. Matt Stauffer: Got it. Antonio Ribeiro: And in English, which is not exactly a language I used to speak. So I decided to go deep in this Stack Overflow thing but it was way before I discovered I was ranking on Stack Overflow. Matt Stauffer: Yeah. Antonio Ribeiro: So, I did not really contacted people in the Brazilian Laravel community but we got in touch via IRC when Taylor was still very frequent. I don't know if they are now because I'm not very frequent now. Matt Stauffer: Not so much, no. Antonio Ribeiro: I know some people of the Laravel community, Laravel.com.br, which is the website but I just saw that they kind of let it down. Unfortunately, the last posts on the websites- Matt Stauffer: 2016. Antonio Ribeiro: 2016, yeah. One of these days, someone asked me if I was going to do a Laraconf Brazil actually. I didn't even know that it was happening so- Matt Stauffer: Right. Antonio Ribeiro: I just say, "I'm sorry." Matt Stauffer: Yeah, so you're relatively disconnected. Antonio Ribeiro: Yeah. Matt Stauffer: I want to get your whole backstory but I want everybody to have the context for what we're talking about here. Do you use Laravel in your day job? Antonio Ribeiro: Yes. Yes. Of course. Everything we do for the government, now, is done in Laravel. Matt Stauffer: Cool. Antonio Ribeiro: Mostly everything. I am a lead of a very small group of developers and we work primarily in Laravel. Laravel and VueJS. Matt Stauffer: Oh, very cool. Did you get in VueJS pretty early last summer or is it something you're jumping into more recently? Antonio Ribeiro: No, no. Pretty early Matt Stauffer: Okay. Cool. Antonio Ribeiro: Almost when Taylor started to talk about it, I got in. Matt Stauffer: Nice, very cool. It's interesting because I just googled your name so that I could throw your website into the show notes and found that you had done an interview on Laravel News. I try to read those beforehand so that I can make sure I'm not covering the same territory and I had never read that you've done that. I had no idea that happened. So, excuse me, I didn't do the research I should have done. But that's fine because I still have plenty of questions and curiosities. Okay. So, you are doing Laravel in your day job but you're also doing some stuff on the side. There's various level of folks who you're working with. You're in Stack Overflow English early. You're somewhat connected but it's been a little while with the Laravel Brazil community. One of the reasons I asked that is because my book has been translated into two or three languages and Brazilian Portuguese is one of them. I was pretty surprised by that because that takes a pretty big commitment for somebody in the community to have decided that it's a group they want to target. I was wondering if there's some huge Brazilian Laravel community that I wasn't aware of. It sounds like at least there at some point was but it, at least the one in Rio, might have gone a little quiet for a little while. Antonio Ribeiro: Yes, I think the community to large but they are not very connected. Matt Stauffer: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Antonio Ribeiro: I think they are more connected in the PHP community than in the Laravel community. Matt Stauffer: Got it. That makes sense. Okay, so before I got to your life story, I want you to give me a pitch real quick on the TDDD and then if there's any other one package that it's just really your favorite package or your favorite contribution to Laravel. I don't know if Stats Tracker or something else but first, tell me about TDDD as if I'd never heard of it before. Then, do you have any other packages that you really love and that you want to share with everybody? Antonio Ribeiro: Well, TDDD is becoming an app actually. It's an app for helping people do TDDD. Basically, you are writing tests. If you write tests before or during or after you are coding- doesn't matter. You can use it to help you test your app during development. You make a change in your code, it will run all your tests. If you do a change in one of your tests, it will run that test particularly. It's basically that. We have some other things it does. It is able to link all the lines of your failures so you can click a link and it will open your PHPStorm, or your Sublime Text, or VSCode. It doesn't matter what editor you are using. I just added code coverage to it so you can also see the code coverage there. It's basically that. You can add as many projects as you have. You can use whatever code editor you have. If you have a project which you have tests in JavaScript, in PHP, in any other thing, you can add as many suites you want to add on it so it's very flexible. I use it all the time. I think it's the package that I'm using the most these days. Matt Stauffer: Okay, very cool. Is this an app where you think that if anybody's doing TDD in Laravel, they should just be using TDDD? Or is it more for specific contexts and not for others? Antonio Ribeiro: No, everybody can use it. If you are using TDD in Laravel or PHP or you can use it in Ruby. It's very open. I think it's a good one to use because Freek has a package almost like it but it's for the command line. Matt Stauffer: Okay. Antonio Ribeiro: The difference for me is that I keep a monitor ... I have three monitors here. I keep a monitor with it and while I'm coding I'm looking at the monitor and seeing if anything is broken with the code that I'm writing. It's very handy. Matt Stauffer: That's really cool. I asked for one other package that is really big for you. I know you've been working on Version recently but I also know that Stats Tracker is one of your more popular ones. If you had one more of your packages that you think people should check out, which ones at the top of your brain? Antonio Ribeiro: I like, very much, Google 2FA but I think there are other options and people are using Authy which you can blend into Laravel very easily. I think Firewall is a package that people should look at. Matt Stauffer: Yeah, I use Firewall. Antonio Ribeiro: You use Firewall? Matt Stauffer: Yeah. I had basically written a crappy version of Firewall and then you can out with Firewall so I just switched over to using your package so ... Could you give like a high-level introduction to what Firewall is? Antonio Ribeiro: Firewall is basically something you put in front of your app to protect it. It's like a real firewall. The difference, of course, is that you cannot rely on Firewall for everything but you can rely on it for things like someone trying to exploit your app. A Firewall will be better on that but if someone tries to hit one route 50 times, it will warn you about them and it can block the person or block the country. It's very flexible in this way too. I like it because one of these days I found someone in Denmark trying to exploit one of my end points so it's cool. Matt Stauffer: Nice. Some of the things that Firewall can do is it black lists and white lists, it allows you to block people really easily. It also does some detection, like you were saying. It does some intelligent detection to find people causing problems. It's also got a couple other cool features. One of the things I liked was, you can basically send everybody on the whole site to a "Coming Soon" page except people with white-listed IP addresses. So there's a couple other tools that are in the same vein of Firewall but are not just for security purposes. Some of them are for access purposes as well. It's really, really fast. I think I remember looking at some other packages and they would add 50 to 100 milliseconds and your GitHub page says 10 milliseconds which is really basically negligible on most sites. Alright, so I have given a little bit of the high-level introduction. Who you are and what ... People may have heard of your or they may have seen your stuff before and not have always known. We're about to jump into the history of who you are but I wanted to point one thing out which is that for the longest time, I had difficulty remembering what your name was because you have an "I" in front of it in your twitter handle. So it says "iantontio" and I would always think, "His name is Iantonio or" ... But then I would remember there's a Carlos somewhere in there and I'd be like "Is it Ian Carlos" and I always had a lot of trouble. I've always wanted to tell you the "I" has been so confusing to me. Alright, so. Antonio Ribeiro: Sorry. Matt Stauffer: No no, you're fine. You said, when you're 12 years old you were in Switzerland? You were living there at the time and you got into computers and so you got a job delivering stuff so that you could have enough money to ... But what I'm curious about is, how did you actually get into computers in the first time? I don't want to go too far down this road but I will mention that there's a little more gray in your beard than there is my beard. Maybe I'll just say that. So at this point you were not discovering the same computers that I was discovering when I was 12 years old. What did it look like for you to learn about and get interested in computers and what were those first computers you were getting interested in at that point? Antonio Ribeiro: Commodore VIC-20 was the first computer I touched with my own fingers. People were talking very much about Commodore 64, I think. I wasn't able to use one but after some time I got back to Brazil. I went first to France. I was there for some time. Then I got to Switzerland, some cities in Switzerland. Then I got back to Brazil and I decided to do a course. I was 18, I think. Then I was really amazed by Apple computers and the first PCs in Brazil. I think it was that. Very early in computing, here in Brazil, I got catched by them. Matt Stauffer: Yeah, yeah. At that point, there were actually classes that you could be taking. You weren't having to teach you on your own, right? Antonio Ribeiro: Yes. Mostly, yes. That was my whole life because first I try a course to get classes and it was not very good because I was already reading a lot about computers and about programming. Then I got to try class of a friend of my father which basically gave me a book and a computer and told me to learn by myself. I was basically self-taught my whole life. Matt Stauffer: Was that Commodore 64 that you were working with at that point then? Antonio Ribeiro: No, at that point it was an Apple 2. Matt Stauffer: Oh okay. So I assume you were learning how to use the machine but were you learning coding, like AppleScript at that point? Or what were you learning at that point? Antonio Ribeiro: First, it was basic and then I got to dBase. You know dBase? Matt Stauffer: No, I've never heard of it. Antonio Ribeiro: Oh yeah. It's like a language for querying databases. Matt Stauffer: Oh okay. Antonio Ribeiro: It was not exactly a language. Then there was Clipper. I think Clipper is a little bit more popular that dBase. Matt Stauffer: I've never heard of Clipper either. dBase and Clipper. Okay. Antonio Ribeiro: Yeah, so those were the languages that I started to learn. Then after doing this course I went to a company to work for them but work and learn. It was more like a friend than a boss. There we started to work with C. Not C++ yet. This was before. We were building a translation system in Clipper and C. Matt Stauffer: Translation meaning translating languages. Antonio Ribeiro: Exactly. It was trying to translate from six different languages but it was like changing words, not really- Matt Stauffer: It didn't understand syntax. It just replaced one word with another? Antonio Ribeiro: Yeah, basically that. After, we started to translate to switch sentences and idioms and things like that. Matt Stauffer: You understood how to do the parsing well enough to write all that? Were you actively involved in writing those translation layers? Antonio Ribeiro: Yeah, it was not exactly a parsing. It was like, try to get the meaning in the sentence and just switch words. Matt Stauffer: Okay. Antonio Ribeiro: Really rudimentary I think. Matt Stauffer: Mm-hmm (affirmative). I'm trying to get all the age ranges here. You said when you got to Brazil you were taking courses so was that university when you got back home? Antonio Ribeiro: No. It was during high school. Matt Stauffer: Oh, okay. Was this job doing the translation layer, were you also still in school at that point? Or was that out of school? Antonio Ribeiro: Yes, yes. I was working then and studying at the same time. Always. Matt Stauffer: Okay, so what was your degree that you were seeking? Antonio Ribeiro: Some years after I got to do university here. I have a degree in computing. Matt Stauffer: Got it, yeah. It sounds like computers have been a thing for a very long time. The first thing you mentioned about when you were younger is getting into computers when you were 12 years old. I know that you're interested in photography and I feel like you've mentioned dancing at one point so I know you have some other things. Are those going as far back as computers, as well? Or have you sort of always been ... Computers is one of your biggest hobbies since the early days? Antonio Ribeiro: No. Both dancing and photography are things that I started five years ago, eight years ago. Eight years ago photography and five years ago dancing. At that point my wife had the dance classes. We are seven years together so seven years of dancing and eight years of photography. Matt Stauffer: That's amazing. What sort of dancing was it? Antonio Ribeiro: Samba. Do you know samba? Matt Stauffer: Yeah, yeah. I can't do it but I know what it is. [laughter] Antonio Ribeiro: Samba, rock-and-roll. We call it differently here but it's like rock-and-roll. And salsa. Matt Stauffer: My wife is a dancer and I'm one of the worst dancers of all time. She's like a professional dancer and I'm a klumbling, bumbling idiot so it's a very fun pair. I know the words even if I don't know how to do anything. So five to ten years of photography, five to ten years of dancing, but this computer thing goes the whole way back there. Was it weird that you were 12 and you were into computing and it wasn't as much of a cultural phenomenon ... I mean, a 12 year old kid that's into computers today is just no big deal. Being a 12 year old in the 90's, for me, was a little bit weird. I get the sense that you were in the 12 year old more in the late 80's or something like that. Was it culturally strange in Switzerland, where you were, or was this a normative thing? Was it normal in Brazil? Was it weird in Brazil? What, culturally, was it like being that into computers that young? Antonio Ribeiro: I think it was completely different for people to know that I was excited about something nobody knew at the time. It was very, very expensive. In Brazil, a computer- it was like buying a car or two. My mother didn't want me to go to that path because she didn't believe very much in the power of a computer. I had to be an engineer or something like that. Matt Stauffer: Yeah, yeah. Antonio Ribeiro: So I asked her to buy me a computer and she basically said no, of course not. Matt Stauffer: Of course not. What are you talking about? What was it that interested you so much about computers when you were 12? What was the thing that you saw or the possibilities that you saw or did you see a specific thing happen and you say, "I want to be able to do that"? What was it Antonio Ribeiro: I think it was exactly that. Infinite possibilities. Matt Stauffer: And you were able to figure that out? That early? Antonio Ribeiro: Yeah, I think so. For a lot of time, in that department store, I was just trying to figure out what the thing was about. I was able to play with it and to write things and to create small programs. It was really cool. Matt Stauffer: I learned basic but you said, this was the Commodore 64, or VIC-something, or I don't know. What were you writing at that point? Antonio Ribeiro: VIC-20. Matt Stauffer: Yeah, 20. What were you writing in at that point, when you were really getting started? Antonio Ribeiro: I don't remember. I was just copying stuff from magazines and then changing words and changing functions. Matt Stauffer: And seeing if you could control things, yeah. Antonio Ribeiro: Yeah. Matt Stauffer: Very cool. When you were back in Brazil, you started studying things. You got the job translating. It seems like you were always had multiple fingers in multiple pies, as the expression goes. What was your goal then? Did you have a goal other than just to do more stuff with computers? Antonio Ribeiro: Learning was always my goal. Even today. What happened there ... Actually I was working for another company in Brazil before going to that job. There I learned to write a little bit more of Clipper and when I go to the company of the translation, I decided I was able to do the translation system in a different way. What we had at the time, it was a software that was plugged into a editor like Microsoft Word. It was not that, it was another editor. It was able to get the words from the editor and write words in another language. So I decided to build an editor which was able to translate at the same time. Matt Stauffer: Oh my gosh. Like a Word Perfect type thing. Antonio Ribeiro: Yeah, exactly. Before Word Perfect. Matt Stauffer: Oh god. That's no big project or anything like that. No big deal. [laughter] Okay so how'd that work for you? Antonio Ribeiro: I was young and I had no idea- [laughter] Matt Stauffer: That's fantastic. How long did that dream last? Antonio Ribeiro: That dream come true. Matt Stauffer: You actually built one? Antonio Ribeiro: Yeah! It was released and it was sold to a lot of people. Matt Stauffer: It was you working alone? Antonio Ribeiro: For some time, yeah. Until I got everything almost done, it was me in secret. Then it became a project from the company. Matt Stauffer: Oh okay. So the company that you were working for sort of absorbed it and then they released it but it was your work originally. Antonio Ribeiro: Yeah but for the company. I was working there. Matt Stauffer: Sure. What I'm hearing you say is- Antonio Ribeiro: Nobody knew exactly what I was doing but I was working there. Matt Stauffer: What I'm hearing you say is that at a relatively young age, you built a word processor from scratch that was live-translating from one language to another that was released and purchased by many, many, many people. Antonio Ribeiro: Yes. Matt Stauffer: No big deal. No big deal. You just do it in your sleep, ya know? [laughter] We've talked about your work there. You released that thing. What was next after that? I assumed you worked there for a little while. You said you started there when you were in school so what was the next big move whether being done with school or being with that company or geographic move- what was the next thing that went from there? Antonio Ribeiro: No big moves. I went from one job to another because I was always seeking something new to do, something new to learn. When I was 21, my girlfriend got pregnant so I got married. Things got a little bit different because I was not working for learning anymore. I was working for money. Matt Stauffer: For providing, yeah. Antonio Ribeiro: To provide. I went to university when my daughter was already born. Then I went and worked for another company of a big friend. Then I stayed there for five or six years and then around 1998 I decided to move completely to a completely different life and built a webhost company. There I working for a company. I was trying to get into the public serving. I was doing a concourse, I don't know how to say that in English but you have to do a test to enter to public serving. Matt Stauffer: Like a certification? Antonio Ribeiro: No, it's like ... I don't know exactly how to say that in English. Matt Stauffer: Okay. Antonio Ribeiro: It's a concourse. You have a lot of people competing for a position in the company. Matt Stauffer: Oh, it's almost like a competition and you have to get a better score on an exam, or something like that? Antonio Ribeiro: Yeah, that's it exactly. Exactly like that. I don't know if you have that in US. Matt Stauffer: I'm sure that concept exists where multiple people are competing for the same promotion. I don't know if it's such a normative thing where we have a word for it though. That makes sense though, what you're saying. Antonio Ribeiro: I got a position; we built the company, me and Anselmo, my partner. The company was doing a lot of things and we were also working for another company rebuilding their system. They have the system written in Pascal. You know Pascal? Matt Stauffer: Mm-hmm (affirmative). I don't know it but I know what it is. Antonio Ribeiro: Actually, TurboPascal at the time and we decided to move everything to Delphi. Matt Stauffer: Okay. Antonio Ribeiro: Me and him, basically, he wrote a 20 year old software into Delphi. Matt Stauffer: Wow. Antonio Ribeiro: That was our greatest move at the time, I think. The company had a lot of clients and nobody knew exactly how to build things for Windows, at the time. Everybody was still working on DOS. The company had five or six different big softwares including a healthcare system using Pascal and everything running DOS. We had to move to Windows because DOS was dying at the time. I think it was almost dead. Matt Stauffer: Yeah. Antonio Ribeiro: That was a really big move. For that move, why we decided to go in this path was because they offered us part of the company. Matt Stauffer: For rewriting all those systems? Antonio Ribeiro: So we had 20% of the company and 13 years ago this move and everything switched and the software was working, they basically cut us off the contact. Matt Stauffer: But you had 20% of the company at that point, right? Antonio Ribeiro: No, not anymore. We lost everything. Matt Stauffer: Oh my gosh. Antonio Ribeiro: That was 2013. It was exactly when I decided go web. We were not web anymore. Actually, the whole problem was we were talking to them that we needed to go to the web. Move everything to the web as fast as we could because everybody else was already there. Matt Stauffer: Right. Antonio Ribeiro: So, they say to us, "No, we cannot do that now" and just cut us off. End of story. Matt Stauffer: I don't wanna go too deep into money issues but if you own 20%, did they just force you to sell your shares? I don't know how that worked legally. Or was it more of an agreement where that was a little more casual. Antonio Ribeiro: Yeah, that was the problem actually. We had no contract. We had no shares. We had nothing. It was basically friends doing something really big together for 10 years or 13 years. They just stopped giving us money and end of story. Matt Stauffer: I don't mean to at all preach in the face of something difficult that you're going through but my business partner, Dan, and I have found that since the beginning of us starting the company together we said, "you know what, we have each been burned in this similar way at some point in our lives. Where we go into business with friends and just hugely regret it later". Because you're working with friends you don't do the same level of protection that you might've normally done otherwise and so what we decided to do as we started our company was to be very legalistic. Even more than you might be with someone that you don't know so that at no point do we get to a point where our friendship is on the rocks because of those tensions. Because everything's explicitly spelled out. But obviously we had that after having been burned multiple times just like you were on that one. So I know how that feels although I don't think to the level that you experienced so I'm sorry. That's not fun. Antonio Ribeiro: Yeah. Matt Stauffer: How did you guys recover from that? That's a hard hit. What did you do next? Antonio Ribeiro: I was lucky because I had two different jobs. The job I still have now, working for government, I had it because it will basically give me money for the rest of my life. Matt Stauffer: Right. Antonio Ribeiro: So I lost 50% of what I was making at the time but that's not really bad. Matt Stauffer: It's not the end of the world. Antonio Ribeiro: I had to move from the apartment I was in. A lot of things happened in my life but I survived. And him too. So it's okay. Matt Stauffer: Okay. I like the attitude. The hosting provider, is that still going on? Because you've mentioned working for the government. You've mentioned working for the translation people. Then you switched jobs to other people. You're mentioned these folks who you had the 20% with but you don't anymore. You mentioned the hosting provider that you created. I'm not always fully following who you work for at any given moment so you're definitely still working for the government because you just told me that. Are you still doing this hosting thing? Antonio Ribeiro: No, not anymore. Matt Stauffer: Oh okay. Antonio Ribeiro: We had to close everything because- Matt Stauffer: Oh I'm sorry. Antonio Ribeiro: The money that we were making with the other company was providing a lot of things, including the hosting company that was not very profitable at the time. Matt Stauffer: Got it. Antonio Ribeiro: So we closed it. Very fast. Matt Stauffer: When you said hosting company, the first that came to my mind was your were running some servers and you were renting out shared hosting but you've never actually said that. What sort of hosting were you renting and what sort of folks were your clients? Antonio Ribeiro: Exactly that. The hosting company started because we knew a little bit about internet. We saw some hosting companies doing really bad things in the market and we decided to get one client of ours, which was not exactly that company that was our partner, and build a site for them. For that we needed a good webserver so we learn a lot of Linux at the time, Debian Linux, build a server, got a home internet connection, discovered how to make things happen to get a DNS up, Apache mail server ... So we learn everything in three months and we got it up. Matt Stauffer: Geez. Antonio Ribeiro: Got it all up and the company was online, working- Matt Stauffer: You said home internet server. You were able to get a fixed IP address though, right? Antonio Ribeiro: Yes. Afterwards, yeah. We started with an IP address. Actually, our tests were all doing at home. Then we got an IP address in an office of a friend in downtown so it was that. After that, we moved our server collocation inside the center and got more servers and the thing got really big. Matt Stauffer: Right. Was it just the two of you remoting into those servers in the collocation center or did you start having other folks working for you as well? Antonio Ribeiro: Not in the webservers company. It was only me and him. Matt Stauffer: Okay. What do you use for hosting now for your side projects? Are you a Linode guy or are you hosting your own stuff? Antonio Ribeiro: Yeah, I host everything in Digital Ocean using Laravel Forge. Matt Stauffer: Yeah. Antonio Ribeiro: Except for my backups that are on Amazon. Matt Stauffer: I do the same thing. I know my way around a basic Linode server or an Nginx and Apache and stuff like that but I'm not to the point where I could be running my own hosting service. It's interesting to hear someone who has such a depth of experience in hosting still choosing. Saying, "Hey this is the easiest way to do it so why not". Antonio Ribeiro: Yeah. Matt Stauffer: So that was 2013. Those things shut down. Since 2013, obviously you've mentioned that the last time the Laravel meet-up was going was in 2016 and you said at that point you had already kind of stepped away a little bit. What have the last four years been like? What have you been working on? Obviously you're still spitting our packages and I'm guessing you're still answering questions on Stack Overflow, although I have not looking at how recent your most recent was. What else are you up to? What are you most interested in? What have you been learning and excited about learning recently? Antonio Ribeiro: I'm learning JavaScript now. Matt Stauffer: Okay, got it. Antonio Ribeiro: I got into VueJS very early but I did not move my thinks to VueJS. Right now everything I do is Laravel, back end API, VueJS front end. Matt Stauffer: Got it. Antonio Ribeiro: The past four years, I was basically learning, doing some jobs and some websites for one or another people or company. Doing some contracting work. Everything is small. Two years ago we started to build things in the government using Laravel so it got really big. I have at least five sites and two mobile apps using Laravel. One of the sites, we have a voting system for young congressmen in Rio de Janeiro. Matt Stauffer: Cool. Antonio Ribeiro: Yeah. My company, it has a program for young congressmen so every year we have all the schools in the state, the students, trying to become young congressmen. We have a big voting, I think in July, and then they go to be a congressman for a week. Creating bills and voting bills in and afterwards those bills usually become a real state bill. Matt Stauffer: Really? Antonio Ribeiro: Yeah really. Matt Stauffer: Wow, that's fascinating. And a little bit terrifying, but mainly fascinating Antonio Ribeiro: [laughter] Everything is done with our real congressman so it's cool. Matt Stauffer: So, you built that. I assume you're using View Router and Laravel is really just basically spitting out the view initialization and then the API but none of the front end of those applications is actually built by Laravel? Or is it more of a mix? Antonio Ribeiro: Oh, no. The APIs, Laravel, the front end, is usually view. Particularly this one is not 100% view yet because it has one year and a half. But it basically VueJS. Matt Stauffer: Stepping outside of coding a little bit, I am going to admit that I am an extraordinarily, commonly ignorant American when it comes to most things Brazil, Portuguese, and even Rio. I've seen a couple movies. I watched City of God a whole bunch of times. My sister lived in Rio for a year and my book was translated- Antonio Ribeiro: Oh yeah? Matt Stauffer: Yeah, she's obsessed with Portuguese. When I went home for Thanksgiving a couple of weeks ago, she had been at the bank after coming back from a year living in Brazil and she heard two people speaking Brazilian Portuguese. She walked up, she said "Excuse me, are you from Brazil?" And they look at her like she's a crazy person. They say "Yes, we just moved here and we're setting up our first bank account". She said, "Let's be friends!" And so they and one of her other random Brazilian friends were over at my family's house for Thanksgiving and my son does capoeira so he was like doing the capoeira plays back and forth with one of the guys who does capoeira. I have this very tiny, tiny, tiny side influence that is bringing more than average amount of Brazil into my life but I really know very, very little about the city. I know very little about the country. I know very little about the language. So as a total American idiot who doesn't know anything, let's start with Rio. What aspect of Rio do you feel like, if someone were to visit, they just needed to take in? Obviously, there's a couple specific tourist sites but what aspect of living there and being there do you think is really interest and unique relative to other similar countries that you would really want people to know about? Antonio Ribeiro: Yeah, I think if you are coming to Brazil you have to come blend. The people are the best. We are, I'll not say "cool", but we are good. We are warming. We love to chat, to be with people, to laugh. Knowing the city is something that will happen really fast if you know people here because, of course, you can go to tourist sites. It's easy to get a book and go to tourist sites but to eat food, if you like food, to eat good food. To know amazing restaurants and not very known restaurants. You have to know people. You have to make friends here. And its very easy to make friends in Brazil. Really, really easy. Matt Stauffer: I like that. Talking about food, if there was one food that you would want everyone to try, what would it be? Antonio Ribeiro: My American boss was in Brazil last week. I got them to eat a lamb. There is a very good lamb here in Lapa. I don't know if you know the name. Matt Stauffer: No. Antonio Ribeiro: It's a very popular part of the city where you can find a lot of bars opening at night. Friday and Saturday you go there and you will probably see like 200 persons. 200,000 persons in that part of the city. It's really very crowded. So the lamb. Matt Stauffer: So, if I were go to and I were to visit, I would need to get lamb. I would make friends with people. Get to know ... And honestly that's one of the most commonly known things about Brazil. It's just wonderful. A lot of the stereotypes also have to do with parties and fun and entertainment and Carnival and all that kind of stuff. Are there any stereotypes or any common misconceptions you think that people have about Brazil and Brazilians that you think aren't true that you want to dispel? Antonio Ribeiro: Probably, people think that Rio in particular is too dangerous to know. Of course, it's dangerous. We are living in dangerous times. But it's not like that. You can come here and you will be safe. It's not like something bad will happen as you as you touch the soil. Matt Stauffer: Walk out the door, right. Antonio Ribeiro: It's safe here. It's a good place to be. Matt Stauffer: Cool, I like that. We're a little short on time but I want to make sure that we touch into the other things that you're really passionate about. We've got dancing and photography cued up. I do want to ask before I go into those two, am I missing anything about you? Is there an aspect of who you are or what you've done, a part of your story or anything, that I've just completely missed that you really want to make sure people get the chance to hear? Antonio Ribeiro: Not at the top of my mind, I don't think so. Matt Stauffer: Okay, so let's talk photography. Antonio Ribeiro: Probably yes, but nothing I can remember. Matt Stauffer: Alright, let's talk photography. What got you into photography? What sort of things do you primarily focus on photographing? How much is it actually a part of your life right now? I know it has been as some point, is it still? Antonio Ribeiro: Yeah, I got into photography because I love to make photos. I'm very technical with everything I do so I like very much to program my camera. Matt Stauffer: Are you a manual-mode kind of guy? Antonio Ribeiro: Yes, yes. I do all the time. I love to take pictures of people. This may be what I do the best. Matt Stauffer: Uh-huh. Antonio Ribeiro: I got known in the photography world by taking pictures of shows and nature. Matt Stauffer: Like music shows? Antonio Ribeiro: Music shows, yeah. Because of the dancing, which is the other, I got to the music of the city. To know a lot of musicians, to be with musicians. I have at least two great friends in music here in Rio. I got to photograph them. Today I think their photos in Facebook and Twitter are my photos. Matt Stauffer: When you go straight to your website, you see photography right in there. Is the background of your website, is that a photo you took? Antonio Ribeiro: Yes. Everything, yes. Matt Stauffer: That's gorgeous. It doesn't look real. I assumed, even though I knew you did photography, I assumed you must not have taken them because they're so beautiful. I'm really impressed with this. Antonio Ribeiro: All of them. You're talking about which one? Matt Stauffer: Well, the first ones that came up the last few times I went were a couple of the view of Rio from above. Then, obviously, I'm sure you're aware it keeps cycling through photos. These are incredible photos. Do you consider yourself a professional photographer? Antonio Ribeiro: Yes but I don't make money from photography. I have some professional work, three or four, but I'm not really into it. I'm not photography too much these days. Photography takes a lot of time. You have to really stop and look at the photo. Retouch sometimes. That takes a lot of time too. It's time consuming so I don't have that time now. Matt Stauffer: Yeah. It's mildly offensive that you can say that you don't even have time for photography and you don't do much and then your photos are this good. I'm just going to tell you that right now. Antonio Ribeiro: Yes. I agree. Matt Stauffer: Yeah, this is really beautiful stuff. Folks who are listening, definitely check it out. Of course this will all be in the show notes. Okay so, do you and your wife still dance a lot? Antonio Ribeiro: We dance a little bit. Not as much as we would like to dance and we are not in the dance classes anymore. We were in the beginning of the year. We went back to the dance classes but our lives are getting too crazy to be there, to go to class every week at such time. It's hard. It's hard for us. Matt Stauffer: Yeah, absolutely. Especially when you have a family. There's just a lot of obligations that come from family and come from work and everything like that. I'm finding that I haven't picked up a lot of my hobbies. Somebody asked in the Laravel advent "What are your hobbies" and I laughed and I said, "Keeping my kids alive". There's just times when, if everybody's alive and fed at the end of the time and the house hasn't burned down, I'm considering it a win. Cool. Well, we're coming up on time. I know I said is there any high-level aspects of your story that we haven't covered but are there any projects or any frameworks or any packages or any conferences or meet ups that you'd like to plug, you want to talk about, or you want to make sure people know about? Antonio Ribeiro: No, I don't think so. I'm basically trying to get into my packages a little bit more. I'm trying to rewrite Tracker from scratch. Matt Stauffer: Oh cool. Antonio Ribeiro: Yeah, because it's getting old. Codes is really ugly to look at right now. I think I have changed as a coder in the past years. Matt Stauffer: It's a couple years old, right? Antonio Ribeiro: Yeah, yeah. It's like two or three years old. I think it was the first big package that I wrote and people really like it. I think I have to give some love to the package again. Matt Stauffer: Yeah, yeah. It's this thing where we look at our old code and we can't imagine how we ever wrote like that but it's still our baby. I like it. It's hard every time. It's hard to cut off talking when I have so many more questions but I feel like we've covered a really good chunk. We made it from at least age 14 until today, even if we probably missed a lot of interesting digressions we could have taken. Thank you so much for your time. It was a ton of fun talking to you. I love getting to learn about you. Thank you for the contribution you make, especially because often you're making those contributions ... Again, I don't want to say nobody knows who you are or anything like that but you're consistently helping. Getting a good Stack Overflow score means that you have helped a huge number of people. You've helped me many, many, many times. So, for the tireless work that you do helping people in our community- thank you very, very, very much. Antonio Ribeiro: Thanks for having me and thanks for inviting me do this interview. And thanks for your blogging too because your blog posts are helping me all the time as well. Matt Stauffer: I love it. Well, I promise that I'm gonna do my best to actually writing them again. I'm in the same pit as you where anything other than the day job and keeping my family alive have really dropped. But my hope for 2018, let's get back into doing these side things and working on our packages and our blogs. Antonio, thank you so much for your time. Everybody else, see everything you need in the show notes. Just go to laravelpodcast.com and we'll see you next time. [music]

Jackie D'Elia has had a long career in web development and programming. For the past several years she has been an independent WordPress developer, primarily on the Genesis platform. During the last year, Jackie has been a regular member of our Saturday podcast panel. We talk to Jackie about her experiences in web development, and what it takes to become a top-quality front-end / WordPress developer.   Jackie D'Elia Design https://jackiedelia.com/   Rethink.FM: The forward thinking podcast for WordPress and front end development https://rethink.fm/   ==================   Our episode this week is sponsored by LiquidWeb. Liquid Web is offering a 33% discount for your first 6 months of managed WordPress hosting. Head over to https://LiquidWeb.com/wordpress and use the code WPTONIC33 at checkout for your discount.   ==================   Table of Contents for Episode 177   0:00 Podcast intros. 2:22 Jackie's origin story into web development. 6:40 How is the WordPress community stack up compared to other web communities? 9:00 Jackie discusses her journey through WordPress, and her current setup for developing sites. 13:32 How does Jackie block out time for continuing her web learning? 17:41 What are some of the things Jackie has changed in her processes since starting her podcast, Rethink.fm? 18:59 The desktop mindset, and why agencies don't follow a content-first or mobile-first process. 23:12 Has Jackie encountered any resistance to being a web developer as a woman, or as a person of a particular age? Why these are strengths and not weaknesses. 25:50 Pros and cons between a hosted e-commerce and hosted e-commerce site. Jackie's advice for e-commerce from 10 years of running a business. 30:27 How is Jackie handling the increasing use of JavaScript in WordPress? Her recommendations for integrating JS into a website. 37:09 Jackie's methodology for staying focused. 41:10 The difference between working with a team as opposed to working by yourself. 43:48 What advice does Jackie have for solo consultants trying to make it in freelancing? 45:54 What percentage split does Jackie network among, between prospects and colleagues? 48:48 Podcast outros.   ===================   Links mentioned during the show:   dBase https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DBase   Thesis http://diythemes.com/   Genesis Framework http://my.studiopress.com/themes/genesis/   PostCSS https://github.com/postcss/postcss   DesktopServer https://serverpress.com/   Novell NetWare https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NetWare   Team Treehouse https://teamtreehouse.com/   Lynda from LinkedIn https://www.lynda.com/   Know The Code https://knowthecode.io/   Multiple Intelligences Self-Assessment https://www.edutopia.org/multiple-intelligences-assessment

We have a great panel of WordPress educational experts and developers this Saturday, Morten Rand-Hendriksen from Lynda.com, Kim Shivler, from Whiteglovewebtraining, Jackie D’Elia from  Jackie D’Elia Design and our co-host John Locke from Lockedown Design. What are the various resources that we have used before? What are the websites, books, seminars, conferences, and courses that we recommend? Show Table of Contents 0:00 Intros 3:03 WordPress story #1: The Future of eLearning by Chris Lema. http://chrislema.com/future-of-elearning/ 29:44 WordPress story #2: Apply for the Kim Parsell Memorial Scholarship from the WordCamp US 2016 blog. https://2016.us.wordcamp.org/2016/10/03/apply-for-the-kim-parsell-memorial-scholarship/ 40:16 Main Topic: Resources for Continuing Your Web Education 40:52 What resources would you recommend to someone who is a total beginner at web design and development? 44:50 Learning the web in the early days vs. learning web design and development today. 48:46 Some great resources for learning web design and web development 57:24 Know what your end goal is, and know what the job market for web design and development looks like. 1:01:44 John recommends some books and sites for learning web design and development 1:03:17 How long does it take to start making a living from web design and development? 1:04:48 Jonathan recommends some books and courses for WordPress development 1:08:32 Why Jackie uses Genesis for WordPress development and some recommended resources for learning WordPress development. 1:12:16 Jackie lists some resources for learning PHP and JavaScript 1:15:02 Kim recommends some resources for learning databases and MySQL. 1:17:34 Podcast outros.   =========== Links and websites mentioned during the show:   Wes Bos http://wesbos.com/courses/ Zac Gordon: JavaScript for WP https://javascriptforwp.com/ https://www.wp-tonic.com/podcast/104-zac-gordon-wordpress-educator/ Treehouse https://teamtreehouse.com/ The App Design Handbook and Designing Web Applications by Nathan Berry http://nathanbarry.com/books/ Vi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vi Code School https://www.codeschool.com/ Codecademy https://www.codecademy.com/ Judi Knight https://twitter.com/judiknight https://newtricks.com/ LinkedIn Learning https://www.linkedin.com/learning/ Lynda https://www.lynda.com/ dBase https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DBase Guil Hernandez on Twitter https://twitter.com/guilh Know The Code https://knowthecode.io/

John Petersen has been developing software for over 20 years. It all started when, as a staff accountant, he was asked to get involved in a system upgrade to replace an old IBM Series 1 computer (about the size of a large refrigerator!). Those first programs were written in Clipper in the summer of 1987. Since that time, tools he has used include dBase, FoxBase, Visual FoxPro, and Visual Basic. An early adopter of .NET, he then decided to go to law school. After practicing law for a few years, John realized that technology was a lot more interesting than the law. Today, John focuses on ASP.NET development and is having more fun than ever solving problems for clients. John is a Practice Director for Custom Application Development at Neudesic, a Microsoft Gold Partner and the Trusted Technology Partner in Business Innovation. A 9-time recipient of Microsoft's Most Valuable Professional (MVP) Award, John is currently an ASP.NET/IIS MVP. John is also an ASP Insider and is the INETA Mentor for Pennsylvania and West Virginia. John is the author of several books and is a frequent contributor to Code Magazine and DevConnections Magazines. John holds a BS in Business Administration from Mansfield University, an MBA in Information Systems from St. Joseph's University, and a JD from the Rutgers School of Law – Camden.John Petersen has been developing software for over 20 years. It all started when, as a staff accountant, he was asked to get involved in a system upgrade to replace an old IBM Series 1 computer (about the size of a large refrigerator!). Those first programs were written in Clipper in the summer of 1987. Since that time, tools he has used include dBase, FoxBase, Visual FoxPro, and Visual Basic. An early adopter of .NET, he then decided to go to law school. After practicing law for a few years, John realized that technology was a lot more interesting than the law. Today, John focuses on ASP.NET development and is having more fun than ever solving problems for clients. John is a Practice Director for Custom Application Development at Neudesic, a Microsoft Gold Partner and the Trusted Technology Partner in Business Innovation. A 9-time recipient of Microsoft's Most Valuable Professional (MVP) Award, John is currently an ASP.NET/IIS MVP. John is also an ASP Insider and is the INETA Mentor for Pennsylvania and West Virginia. John is the author of several books and is a frequent contributor to Code Magazine and DevConnections Magazines. John holds a BS in Business Administration from Mansfield University, an MBA in Information Systems from St. Joseph's University, and a JD from the Rutgers School of Law – Camden.

In today's Daily Podcast we hear about Mexican and Philippine authorities’ investigations into voting database compromises. Ransomware continues to circulate, and we learn something about the increased sophistication of phishing. Point-of-sale crooks race against US EMV adoption. We take a look at the SecureWorks IPO and the long interest in some leading security stocks. Joseph Opacki from PhishLabs explains the growing sophistication of phishing schemes, and Benjamin Yelin from the University of Maryland Center for Health and Homeland Security tells us about mobile security and Stingrays.

The brothers discuss some experiences since they last talked. The brothers discuss some experiences since they last talked. Follow-up: Royal Tyrrell Museum, Tyrell Corp, Blade Runner, TV Show: Humans, more early computer memories, IBM Clone, Apple ][, 20 GOTO 10, DBASE, Scrolled bunny, pornographic games, Leisure Suit Larry, The Teacher and the Apple, simulated rape, different vein, accidental poo porn, renting video games in the 80s, making diskettes writable, parents are now listening to our podcast, week in threeview, lowkey week for Leif, feeling the baby kick, pixie sticks, successful 12yr old party, disney, woodworking, growlers, beer, raspberry pi arcade cabinet, retropie, slicks and slides, galaga, roms roms roms, super mario 2, dad and the axe, chains and screwdrivers and banging on walls, police, subway, unlimited refills, knocked over the birdfeeder, stolen girlfriends, angry parents, danforth tech, rolled for our docs, king eddie boys, dropping out, moving across the country, CNE, Canadian National Exhibition, butter sculptures, rob ford melting, stalin, scary rides, rollercoaster, pirate ship, long thighs, rotor, scrambler, swings on chairs, oak bay tea party, rotor v2, small hands smell like cabbage, austin powers, ace ventura

Show zero of Next Without For covers the dBase III Plus 1.1 database programming environment.

Nous discutons avec Karell Ste-Marie de son expérience avec Azure. Son entreprise vient de terminer la transition de leur produit Idealink, qui est offert maintenant “On Demand” sur Azure. Karell Ste-Marie est Officier Technique Principal (CIO) chez BrainBank Inc qui compte d'important clients tel que Johnson and Johnson, Blue Cross Blue Shield, Northwestern Mutual et d'autres de même importance. BrainBank Inc utilise la platforme .NET pour ses produits et depuis peu offre le produit Idealinksur le cloud avec Azure. Depuis son initiation a la programmation sur un Apple II+ avec 32 Ko de RAM, Karell a travaillé sur diverse platformes et programmé en Basic, DBase, Clipper, Turbo Pascal, Visual Basic, SQL et VB.NET et Azure. Liens Azure Actualité: Microsoft cuts Windows Azure cloud storage prices