Podcasts about Isri

Finding what you love doing beats chasing money every time. Today on the IC-DISC Show, we're talking with John Sacco, owner of Sierra International Machinery, a trailblazer in the recycling industry. Starting as an agri-packaging business, John transformed the company into a recycling equipment powerhouse, moving from marketing Italian made machines, to designing their own balers and conveyors, and now offering a comprehensive range of recycling equipment with renowned service quality. He's been a lifelong industry advocate. Serving as past ISRI chairman and creating the "Repurposed" docuseries on Prime Video, a series showcasing how 75% of new American steel comes from recycled materials. Activities that help companies recruit talent by highlighting the environmental benefits of an industry often misunderstood by policymakers and the public. It's a great conversation revealing how critical recycling is for disaster recovery, processing debris, and supplying rebuilding materials. Listen in to hear why John believes finding your passion, as he did at age 59, brings more satisfaction than any bank account.     SHOW HIGHLIGHTS We explore Sierra's transformation from a leader in agri-packaging during the 60s and 70s to a pioneer in recycling machinery, sparked by the introduction of an Italian machine in the 1980s. John discusses the significance of Sierra's involvement with trade associations like ISRI, now REMA, emphasizing the role of advocacy in correcting industry misconceptions and celebrating milestones such as serving as chairman. John and I delve into Sierra's innovative marketing approach, highlighting their docuseries on steel recycling that unexpectedly gained popularity on Prime Video, enhancing the industry's image. He addresses the broader industry challenge of attracting and retaining talent, drawing parallels to Mike Rowe's advocacy for essential yet undervalued jobs. We highlight the environmental advancements in the U.S. steel industry, including its leadership in recycling and the significant role of recycled aluminum in the automotive sector. John shares advice on prioritizing passion over profit, emphasizing personal growth and the rewarding aspects of the journey, including attending industry conferences and personal milestones. He reflects on Sierra's collaborative team effort in expanding product offerings, driven by customer needs and market opportunities, while maintaining a strong reputation and high-quality service.   Contact Details LinkedIn - John Sacco (https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-sacco-8a8a1b10/) LINKSShow Notes Be a Guest About IC-DISC Alliance About Sierra International Machinery GUEST John SaccoAbout John TRANSCRIPT (AI transcript provided as supporting material and may contain errors) John: And there's a lot of misconceptions about our industry. So staying involved is, you know, I've done it and that's kind of why I've also done a lot in regards to the docuseries on our industry and stuff like that. Dave: Good morning John. How are you today? John: Doing good. Doing good, that's awesome, not bad. Dave: How are you today Doing good? John: Doing good. That's awesome, not bad. How are? Dave: you doing Dave. That's good, I'm doing great Now are you a? Native of California. John: Yeah, I was born and raised in Bakersfield, California. Dave: Oh, wow, Okay. So did you grow up around the scrap business? John: Well, actually I grew up more in the agri-packaging side of Sierra. We used to have a company called Sierra Bag and we used to supply agri-packaging products. We were at one point the leader in selling bagging and ties to the cotton industry. Years ago in the 60s and 70s, there used to be over 2.2 million bales a year of cotton grown in the San Joaquin Valley and we used to sell the bagging and use bags and make potato bags and onion bags. We had the recycled materials facility but I really wasn't involved with that. I was more involved during the summers as a kid working in the bag plant. Dave: Okay, so how did the transformation then go on your end to where you get more involved in the recycling space. John: Well, it started when my dad had found a machine out of Europe, out of Italy, and he thought that the market in America could use these machines. Which he was right. And at 19, by late 1985, his partner, 42 years, a buddy of his, who he met during World War II, was, he was ready to retire, he had some health issues and he was just ready to call it quits. And so, in early 1986, what he did was sold the Jagger packaging, bought his partner out and had me start marketing the machines. So, not knowing a whole lot about Ferris and non-Ferris, quite frankly, I was forced to learn it kind of on the fly and getting involved with selling the equipment. Dave: Okay, and did you get involved with the company right after you graduated from USC? John: I did. For two years I was on the agri-packaging side, traveling around to potato sheds, onion sheds, selling the products that we had, and then in 85, started going to the cotton gins. Also, we held a at the time a patent on the cotton module which when they harvested cotton in the field they'd make these big well, for lack of a better word a big log of cotton before they sent it into the cotton gin and we had a tarp for it into the cotton gin and we had a tarp for it. So when it if it rained because the harvesting of cotton was late September, early October and so if it rained it could ruin the grade so we had this cotton module cover and we had a patent. So we sold a lot of those throughout America to the cotton industry. Dave: Okay, and then it was shortly after that that you got more involved in the recycling machinery. John: That's correct. Yeah, when my dad sold all the agri-packaging in 86, all of that went away. So that was when he wanted me to market the machines, because I had taken marketing at USC. So I just basically said, hey, market these machines. Dave: That's what I've been doing ever since and there's a little more to it than that because at some point you all started developing your own machinery. Is that correct, that's? John: correct. We you know our clientele base also was in need of two-ram balers for the processing of non-ferrous materials, you know, aluminum, copper, and also in the fiber industry for paper. And so we decided to start building two-ram balers and hired an engineer who was at the time unemployed and got involved and built a plant down in southern Georgia and expanded today. So we finished, we opened up in October of 2008 and building two ram balers and conveyors for the metal side and also the waste sector. So that's grown nicely over the years. Dave: That is great. And then you guys have expanded your product offering. Then beyond that to other aspects, right? John: That's correct. Yeah, so you know, for recycled materials facilities we offer a wide variety of products from 2-ram balers, conveyors, shears, shear balers, portable balers, grapples and material handlers, so it's a wide variety of equipment that can go into a lot of different aspects of the waste sector and the recycled material sector. Dave: Okay, and then at some point, you became involved in the Trade Association. Was it ISRI then, or was that? John: Yeah, it was ISRI back. It was in the late 1990s that I got involved and you know I got involved, I enjoyed and it was fun for me on a personal level and then in two I was elected to be secretary-treasurer of at the time it was ISRI. It's now REMA, the Recycled Materials Association. So I did that stint, you know, as secretary-treasurer and you move up to chair, and I was chairman in 2011, 2012,. But have stayed involved with the Trade Association because I believe in having a strong voice for an industry in the states and in, you know, in the nation's capital. You know policymakers don't really know what we do and there's a lot of misconceptions about our industry. So staying involved is you know there's a lot of misconceptions about our industry. So staying involved is, you know, I've done it and that's kind of why I've also done a lot in regards to the docu-series on our industry and stuff like that. Dave: Okay, I can't believe that it's been 12 years ago. 13 years ago I guess that you were the chair. I think that's when I first met you in San Diego, I think on the aircraft carrier at a social function. John: Yeah, when we met on the aircraft carrier, that was 2010. Excuse me, that was 2000. Yes, it was 2010. And that was the final night party of ISRI at the time on the USS Midway, and at that party I was officially at that moment, the chairman of ISRI. So yeah, as long as it was, it does seem just like yesterday, david, and it was a great party. But yeah, it just seems like yesterday. Yeah, the sound of it is a long time ago. Dave: Wow, yeah, the time does go by. Now I'm curious, as your product line expanded, I'm curious was that more of a case of you just saw an opportunity and that's kind of what drove it, or was it more your customers coming to you saying, hey, we really need help in this area. Would you guys develop something? Or is it a mix of the two? John: Well, it's a little bit of everything. I have a great team here and the people at the time who was on the team, you know, said well, we should get involved with this type of equipment because we have a need for it. You know our customer base asked for it and you know I won't take the credit for it and you know it's I won't take the credit for it because in the end it's a team here at Sierra and you know I have a brother involved who's my partner now, his son, my nephew's involved and so over the years it's just it's about discussing what we can do, how we grow. How do we you know you got to grow your revenue. How do we grow it? And by adding different products into the mix. And then the manufacturer out of Italy, the Tabarelli family, they have a wide, they had the material handler. So we just started just a couple years ago starting to really, you know, push into that market and you know we'll gain our traction. It takes a little time but it's a team effort here and it's just a lot of people have. You know my general sales manager has been with us since 1988. And you know he has a lot of great ideas as well. So, as a team, we've worked together to develop the products we needed to come into the market. And what's really unique is when you deal with our company. There's, like I say, a wide variety of equipment that you can handle or you can purchase from Sierra and that we service. So we have the ability to sell a lot of different machines, yet we have the ability to service each and every one of those machines with the same intensity. So it's been good. Dave: No, that's excellent. With the same intensity, so it's been good. No, that's excellent. Do you? Is it that aspect of that ability to you know service, all that equipment? Is that one of the main reasons your clients choose you? What's the feedback you receive from your customers, as far as you know why they end up choosing you? John: Well, there's a lot of reasons. We have built, you know, a really good reputation and we work on it every day to improve. In our service department we carry the parts and we have the technicians, but we also have a very high quality piece of equipment. Series repurposed season one, season two really tells the story of our industry and, as the former chairman of israel, now rima, I keep advocating for the industry with what I do with our social media and you know, when you have two seasons on prime video, people notice that. So there's a lot of things involved. We have good people, we try to do the right thing at all times and that's our motto the Sierra way is the right way. It's not fancy. So I think there's a lot of things that we do that enhance our image and you know people like to do business with us because of all the above. You know, is it just one thing? You know, one customer may like the service, one customer may like our advocacy, which I've heard. A lot of people like our equipment per se, and there's just a lot of things that go into it. So I think it's multifaceted, dave, and it's just not one item. We try to just try to build everything we do, improve our marketing, our brand, improve our service. You know that's our motto is to try to get better every day. We don't want to be the best, we just want to be better, because being better is a journey that every day, if you come in the office and you say how can we be better, you don't rest on what you did yesterday. So it's, you know, we got a good culture, we got great people. You know our technicians also are a great face to the company, our salespeople as well. So I think it's just a multitude of things. Dave: Well, that's an insightful answer. I appreciate that. As far as that docuseries, I've always been curious what's the story behind that? Did you just wake up one day and say you know what I want to be on TV, or was it a little different than that? John: Oh, it's a lot different than that. Interesting how it all came about. A gentleman I've worked with Darren Doan for over a decade on creating content and stuff we've done together. We had this idea back I don't know 22, early 22, to do a thing called the Sierra Summit. We were going to bring in Mike Rowe and the top 100 metal processors in America have this big event and the Ukraine war broke out and what happened with that is a lot of processed steel out of Europe was handled through in Ukraine and our supplier of the Shears, portable balers, had a supply chain issue plus a pricing increase. That was dramatic. And so we decided well, we better keep our powder dry and not spend this money for the summit. And so about a month later things you know, the steel market for europe started settling, and I don't know. I just had this idea of doing this docuseries on steel making being made from recycled steel and start changing the narrative, because I got tired of hearing the word junk, waste, trash. And I think that was one of the biggest obstacles to our industry. And I don't know, I've been in front of the camera with my social media posts, so being in front of a camera didn't bother me. But telling the story of a steel mill using recycled steel as the raw materials coming from out facilities like our own here at Sierra was a fun thing. So I thought, well, you know, we could put our equipment in this, we can tell the story. We're going to advocate for the industry, we can get this out there. I never had any intention of getting it out to Prime Video. My whole intention was to tell a fun story in a cinematic way that people would like and find entertaining and educational. And it turned out to be just that. And so we did season two, where we actually what we learned from season one. So then we weren't focused on the output of rebar at cmc and the construction projects needing rebar, so we showed a lot of projects that had rebar. And where did the rebar come from? So you backtrack it all into the recycled materials and so, uh, it just kind of grew from that. I don't mind being in front of a camera, you know, wanting to be in front of a camera or not minding it, or I think are two different things, but the fact is that I enjoy creating the content. It's fun for me to get into a steel mill. It's fun to tell the story, to talk to people and you, you know, when I released the series, there's so many people who've used it to show their families what they do. You know there's so many people who don't understand what our industry is about. And then you got schools and you know companies using it, even like SAB they were season one. They used it for recruiting and safety and telling their story and CMC is the same as well as telling their story of how their steel mill is really the foundation of infrastructure, because you have to start with rebar and any hospital and school and manufacturing plant. You've got to start with rebar in any hospital and school and manufacturing plant and you know you got to start with rebar and rebar comes from recycled metal, so it's a good story and they've been able to educate people to draw, you know, to attract and retain talent. Our industry isn't the sexiest, so it's shed a light on our industry that our industry actually is doing more to reduce CO2 emissions than any other industry in the world today and it attracts people who want to do something good for the mother earth and have a good paying job at the same time. Dave: That's awesome. Did that surprise you when, like CMC and some other companies, use that as like a recruiting and education of themselves? John: No, that was part of my sales pitch to them. Dave: Okay, okay. John: I knew, for whatever reason, why I knew that our industry has we have an image problem this I know, and it was still there. And attracting and retaining talent is a struggle, and it's not just our industry. If you talk to any facility, any company in America today, they all have the same issues. You know, I've just finished filming at the Toyota Motor Plant in Troy, missouri, where they make cylinder heads and their number one issue is attracting talent in the mechanics. They can't find them. And steel mills same thing. Every industry in America is struggling to find talent, and so I know that if you don't tell your story, if you don't make your company look cool, who wants to come to work for you? Dave: Yeah yeah, it seems like Mike Rowe is kind of on a similar mission from a little different perspective, really trying to encourage, you know, more people to come into the trades. John: Well, mike Rowe, yes, and you know, look, mike Rowe is an incredibly successful human being and you know, he has to show. You know, dirty jobs and I think kind of that's what we are. We're dirty jobs but we're networked. You know, I don't say we're essential. Essential is a COVID word that the government used to pick winners and losers. You know, you go to the hospital, david. Do they take your essential science or do they take your vital science? Sure, they take your vital science, right. So our industry is vital for the health of the nation. You don't build a hospital with us, right? You know, if you build a hospital, expand a hospital, you got to start where, on the ground floor, you have to start with the foundation, and that starts with rebar that starts. That comes from our industry. You want to build a school? Same thing. You want to build a highway. You know the steel used in the highway. You know, when you think this, 75% of all new steel in America is made from recycled steel Three quarters, that is a monstrous percentage and it's only growing. And you know another thing that is vital to national security is a vibrant steel industry. Okay, you don't build Navy ships with plastic. You don't build a military without steel, right? So you better have a very vibrant and strong steel industry, at the same time saying that America's steel industry is the cleanest steel industry in all the world. Over 75% of our steel mills are EAS electric arc furnace steel mills that use recycled steel to make new steel. Well, why is that important One? We're producing the steel a country needs for our infrastructure, for our military, healthcare, education and our farming and food industry. We also do it in the cleanest way, because recycled steel at EAF reduces CO2 emissions in the 60 percentile. And now that there's more micro mills coming online, more straight line casting of products and steel mills, with the new mills coming online, which reduce the energy consumption and reheating and continuous casting, so you're actually starting to see the numbers improve versus the BOF furnaces that you see that are heavy in China and India and Russia and Europe, south America yes, there are new EAFs going to those parts of the world, but their main steel production comes from the integrated steel mill that uses coking coal and iron ore, which is far greater pollutant, gives us far greater CO2 emissions. So not only is our steel industry vibrant in the United States, we are the cleanest in all the world. So we really are leading the way and I think people. That's kind of why I want to tell the story because people don't. You know we did man on the streets. You know you get me started on this, but you know people don't know steel's the most recycled item in America today. People don't even know what a steel mill is. They don't even know where new steel comes from. You drive a car. You don't have any idea. The majority of the metal in that car comes from recycled steel or recycled aluminum, for that matter. So people don't know this. So it's been kind of fun telling the story with Repurpose and we're getting ready to. We just finished filming everything we need for season three of repurpose. It's going to be on aluminum recycled aluminum and our focus will be on driving the auto industry okay, because you know this, david, that you cannot build an aluminum motor block transmission housing or casings differential casings with virgin aluminum I did not know that. Dave: And it has to be made from recycled aluminum. John: So see this. People don't know this and why is that? because of the alloys, the strength of the material. To take virgin aluminum and then make all, put in all the additives to make the motor block the strength, you, um, you can't do it. So they use recycled aluminum, and you know toyota is a big user. And also recycled aluminum, you know it goes into the light weighting of um automobiles, which gives you much greater miles per gallon and you know produces co2. So again, people don't know this and so I'm enjoying telling the story and getting it out there. Dave: I can tell you have a real passion for the education and helping change or improve the image of the whole industry. John: Well, I think that our policymakers, like in California, we have a real problem in the state of California the automobile shredder they want to deem it hazardous waste facilities and that's just not fair. It's not accurate to recycle for recycling in its own right, but it's hugely detrimental to the raw material supply chain for our industry here in america. That makes all these products that we need. You know we talk about when you take it in the life of an automobile, what do you do with it? And the end of life of an automobile. When you shred it, you gain the, the steel, the aluminum, the copper, stainless and plastics. And what do you do with that? You recycle it and that gets repurposed into new steel, new aluminum, new copper products, new stainless, and it's so. You know. It's just detrimental because our image, because I'll guarantee you, if you walk the halls in Sacramento and you told people, do you know the car you drive that has aluminum transmission housing, that has the aluminum motor block can't be made with virgin aluminum, they wouldn't know that. And this is part of the education process and I think once people know more about what our industry is, they'll realize how vital we are and that's really been a lot of fun for me and you know season three, as we're getting ready to do it gonna use. You know our facility here in bakersville is. You know where we process aluminum? We bail it in the bailers we make. And it's a lot of fun to be able to say the bailers we sell, that process that bail aluminum, are made from steel that comes from recycled steel from ssab. That we did in season one. So it really shows the circularity of our industry and what real sustainability really is. You know it's a buzzword and people, quite frankly, just have no clue what it really means. So I'm trying to bring out the real identity of our industry and try to really change the narrative because it needs to be changed. Once we were heroes during world war ii by supplying the mills with all the metals they needed to fight tyranny, and now we're the bad guys. Dave: Um, that's, we got to get back to being the good guys again I agree, could I mean I, you know just general building anything in California has become more challenging and regulatorily limited. Do you think somebody could even put in like a new shredder operation today, or would it just take? Them Wouldn't even be able to do it Because it's considered hazardous waste Is this considered hazardous waste? John: Yeah well, it's just the process. Nobody, you know, it's just a really crazy process, but you know you reminded me of something. So we have these just absolutely horrific, devastating fires in LA right, and we saw the whole Pacific Palisades and Altadena, the Pasadena area just devastated. What industry is going to rebuild those neighborhoods? Dave: Yeah, the steel industry. John: Well, so when you clean up these neighborhoods and we have a new piece of equipment down there processing the metals and sending it down to a company at Long Beach to process, it's our industry that's going to rebuild these neighborhoods. We're cleaning it up because what's what is left after the fires? Metal products, and all these metal products are being processed and going to be repurposed and sent to mills, steel mills, aluminum copper foundries, and all this new material that they're making from that raw material is what's going to go into rebuilding these neighborhoods. And you can't rebuild a neighborhood without us because we're the raw material suppliers for all that stuff that goes into the housing from the rebar, from the foundation, steel stuff. Now you're going to see a lot more steel being used in the manual in the building of houses in this area because of the fire. What about appliances? You don't build appliances with plastic. Easy-bake ovens aren't how you build refrigerators and ovens and toasters and coffee pots. And all the copper that's going to go into the electrification of these neighborhoods will have 36% recycled copper content into it. All the window panes that'll have aluminum windows and brass, you know, forurposing in it, getting into the consumers to make new products so you can rebuild, wow that's. I haven't thought about that for a second. Dave: Yeah. John: You know. And so the policymakers need to hear this. They need to understand that this is what we do. They need to understand this the most vital. Because, let's say, we don't exist in California. Well, what would you do with all that material? Can't ship it to China. China doesn't take containers of steel anymore. They don't buy bulk loads of steel anymore from the West Coast of the United States. They don't. That's just a misnomer. People, oh, you're sitting in China. They don't, that's just a misnomer. People, oh, you're sitting in China. No, we're not. And people think that, again, it's the ignorance Not calling people ignorant in a negative way. They just don't understand what we do. They don't understand where our materials are going, and I like to say CO2 emissions have no borders. So if Our materials are exported to an EAF steel mill somewhere maybe Malaysia, vietnam, korea, japan, if you will Well, our materials are also going into EAF. So what is that doing? It's reducing CO2 emissions. So our raw materials, be it used here in the US or be it used anywhere in the world, is actually helping to reduce the CO2 emissions in the world. Sure, actually helping to reduce the CO2 emissions in the world? Sure, you know, aluminum reduces CO2 emissions and energy consumption in the 90 percentile, copper's in the 80 percentile. You tell me an industry that's doing that today. You can't the recycled material industry. It's our raw materials that we process. So this is why this narrative, this is why these type of conversations, hopefully are heard by people who will now understand. Wait a minute, I've got this industry all wrong. Dave: Yeah, yeah. No, that's your your passion for trying to educate as many people as possible. It really shows through and you can see it really. It really drives you, so I appreciate it. Well, I can't wait to see season three. I can't believe how the time has flown by. Just wrapping up, I have just three remaining questions. John: Yes, sir. Dave: One is in your role with Sierra. What gives you the most satisfaction and enjoyment? John: Great question. Well, I think we have some great people here and I enjoy the people in the company I've seen in our, for instance. This is an example only and this is, you know, this could be had in every department, but we just have some really high quality people who really are fighting for the same cause. You know fighting, I call it fighting for the same right. And you know I get great satisfaction seeing these young kids who are growing. You know are technicians, for instance, who are growing, who've committed themselves to this culture and you see them growing and they're growing in their abilities and they're growing in their pay scales and you see their cooperative nature and how nature and how they have the can-do spirit. That gives me great pleasure. I enjoy doing this content as well. This gives me great pleasure making the REAP series. So those are my answers to that. Dave: That's great. That's not surprising. So the second of the three is imagine if you had a time machine and you could go back and give some advice to the 25-year-old John. What advice might you give with the benefit of hindsight? John: look, I didn't find what I really loved doing until I was about 59 years old. I'm 63, okay, so find what you love doing, that that beats money all day long. Yeah, and the money I just think, chasing money. You know it's great. You know I mean sure it's. You know I've done well, I'm not gonna begrudge it. But I think the one who smiles and is happiest wins the game of life, not the one with the biggest bank account. I look at Warren Buffett a guy worth just oodles and oodles. I've never seen that dude smile. He is just a grumpy old man. That's my perception of him, my point. And maybe he is a gregarious guy in person, but God, his persona is just grumpy. And my point to you is money doesn't buy happiness. Sure, it makes misery more tolerable, as my dad used to say. But I would tell a 25-year-old me stop chasing money and find happiness through what you love doing. Dave: A great answer. So the last question is is there anything that we did not discuss today that you wish we had? John: Well, no, I you know, I think, david, you know your, your company, with what you do, with your IT desk and helping with consulting. You know that's important. You know there's so many facets of our industry that people can improve upon, and I guess what we didn't talk on are areas in which how can an individual who sees this and is in the recycled materials industry capitalize on stuff that they don't know exists and what you do? I mean, I get what you do and so how do people really, where do they go to learn more about this industry and how they can improve their business? You know there's a lot of things that can be done. You got to be careful how you say this, because you know taxes are burdensome, especially when you live here in California. How can you have a legitimate business concern that can reduce your taxes legally? Because you know avoiding taxes is one thing, evading is illegal. You go to jail for evading taxes, and so you know it's hard because I'm not an accountant and I don't understand the whole time. But there's so much more, I think, for people to learn about our industry and I think, david, with what you're doing, with your setting up companies that are exporters, to understand the benefit of the laws that are out there for companies that export. People need to learn more about that, and I think that's you know. I wish I could have touched more on it. I don't know it like you do, but it is something that I think that's what I would say is to help people learn. There's other avenues to make your business grow and save some of your money, and when you save legally on taxes, you're saving money, so you can invest that in your company. Dave: No, I appreciate you mentioning that. And you know, my most satisfying part of my role is helping our entrepreneurial clients, you know, increase their after-tax income. It's really just. It's such a privilege to be, you know, kind of in the stands watching these amazing entrepreneurs do their magic. And you know, we have scrap metal clients who have, you know, the last decade have, you know, increased their business 10X. And I'm not saying that's because of the IC disc, it probably has little to do with it, but it's just a great. It's just very enjoyable to see the best and the brightest entrepreneurs, just, you know, do their magic. So that's why I love, why I'll be at the REMA conference in May. I can't spend enough time with those people. It's a blast. Well, john, thank you again for your time and I look forward to seeing you in San Diego in a couple of months. John: I presume, yes, sir, I'll be there. I'll be coming for my son's graduation at TCU, so I'll arrive. I'll miss some of the governance you know, as a former chair you're always involved with that but I'll be there for the show and I'll have my. My son is will be a graduate and I will have no more kids going to school. Dave: That's awesome. Well, that's also a landmark event. Well, hey, john, thank you again for your time. I really appreciate it, Thank you. Special Guest: John Sacco.

In this episode, I chat to Brian Shine, CEO of Manitoba Corporation, Chairman of the Canadian Association of Recycling Industries (CARI) and a former Chairman of the Recycled Materials Association (ReMA).With all the turbulence around tariffs, this is a point in time conversation where we explore how the latest US and retaliatory tariffs are impacting metal recyclers and consumers across the US, Canada and Mexico, and how they may be impacted in the long term if this is the new status quo.In today's episode, we talk about:

In this episode, I chat to Andy Cohen, Vice President of Raw Material Purchasing and Sales at Metal Conversions. More importantly for this episode, Andy is Event Chair for REMA's The Show 2025 taking place this May in San Diego.Andy has been in the scrap metal industry for nearly two decades and has attended countless ReMA events and held various different roles as part of ReMA. He's introducing whole lot of new things to this year's event and is looking to break all the records!Whether you're a regular at the annual event, or you're thinking about going for the first time - this episode is for you!In today's episode, we talk about: 

In today's episode, I'm joined by Sean Daoud.Sean started out as a scale operator and has worked his way up through the ranks to become the Vice President, Treasurer, Director and Shareholder at PNW Metal Recycling.Last year he was awarded the ISRI (ReMA) Young Executive of the Year and he was recently elected as the Secretary/Treasurer of ReMA - congrats Sean!He has over 15 years of industry experience, an MBA in Finance, and is an all-round great guy.In today's episode we talk about:Combining data and gut feelBeing boots on the groundManaging key person riskLeading by exampleFinancing growthAnd much more!WHO IS STU KAGAN ANYWAYS?25 years in the metal recycling game and still learning and growing...I learnt from the best and worked my way up from yard labourer to Executive Director of Trading and Operations for the largest metal recycler in sub-Saharan Africa. Responsible for 4,500 employees, 85 sites, and the overall profitability of a multi-billion dollar operation.I brought my breadth and depth of knowledge to bear and co-founded the fastest growing, most-loved, and most awarded metal recycling company in New Zealand. No small feat in a country where people are outnumbered 4:1 by sheep (spoiler alert: sheep don't produce much metal waste).I thought it was time that tech worked for our industry, so I took all of my experience as an operator and trader and leveraged that to build THE killer scrap app, Buddy. That's right - built for scrappies, by scrappies.Father of two crazy-awesome boys. Husband to Lisa. Under 9 rugby coach. YPO member. Lifelong learner. Mentee. Mentor. Chief dog walker. Committed Stoic. Undefeated dance-off champion.COME SAY HI ON LINKEDINhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/stukagan/

In today's episode, Born Scrappy host Stu Kagan and his wife and business partner Lisa join John Sacco for a candid convo about their latest recycled metals venture, Buddy.Buddy is a relationship-led recycled materials marketplace built for scrappies, by scrappies. And it launched recently at ISRI 2024, where this episode was recorded.In today's episode we talk about:Starting over in a new countryBuilding a metal recycling coMaking hard decisionsDealing with setbacksThe Buddy launchAnd so much more!If you liked this episode, you can hear more from John Sacco on Pile of Scrap wherever you get your podcasts.YouTube - @SierraInternationalMachinerySpotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/4zlieQqEd8AUlMe0NpteZo?si=a24ac961e9514a78Apple - https://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=1473656821To find out more about John Sacco:https://sierraintl.com/https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-sacco-8a8a1b10To find out more about Buddy:www.tradebuddy.ioWHO IS STU KAGAN ANYWAYS?25 years in the metal recycling game and still learning and growing...I learnt from the best and worked my way up from yard labourer to Executive Director of Trading and Operations for the largest metal recycler in sub-Saharan Africa. Responsible for 4,500 employees, 85 sites, and the overall profitability of a multi-billion dollar operation.I brought my breadth and depth of knowledge to bear and co-founded the fastest growing, most-loved, and most awarded metal recycling company in New Zealand. No small feat in a country where people are outnumbered 4:1 by sheep (spoiler alert: sheep don't produce much metal waste).I thought it was time that tech worked for our industry, so I took all of my experience as an operator and trader and leveraged that to build THE killer scrap app, Buddy. That's right - built for scrappies, by scrappies.Father of two crazy-awesome boys. Husband to Lisa. Under 9 rugby coach. YPO member. Lifelong learner. Mentee. Mentor. Chief dog walker. Committed Stoic. Undefeated dance-off champion.COME SAY HI ON LINKEDINhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/stukagan/

On this special live edition of A Scrap Life: Generational Courage, Brett is joined on the ISRI 2024 main stage by his dad Rod Ekart and longtime business partner/friend Jay Robinovitz to have an in depth conversation about family businesses. Produced by Recycled Media.

Join me for a fireside chat with SA Recycling's George Adams & Sierra Recycling's John Sacco live from ISRI 2024!In this episode we chat about:Cleaning up our act Why you lose $ when you stockpile Our biggest challenge as an industryWhen to collaborate with competitorsWhy there will be scrap shortages in the futureWHO IS STU KAGAN ANYWAYS?25 years in the metal recycling game and still learning and growing...I learnt from the best and worked my way up from yard labourer to Executive Director of Trading and Operations for the largest metal recycler in sub-Saharan Africa. Responsible for 4,500 employees, 85 sites, and the overall profitability of a multi-billion dollar operation.I brought my breadth and depth of knowledge to bear and co-founded the fastest growing, most-loved, and most awarded metal recycling company in New Zealand. No small feat in a country where people are outnumbered 4:1 by sheep (spoiler alert: sheep don't produce much metal waste).I thought it was time that tech worked for our industry, so I took all of my experience as an operator and trader and leveraged that to build THE killer scrap app, Buddy. That's right - built for scrappies, by scrappies.Father of two crazy-awesome boys. Husband to Lisa. Under 9 rugby coach. YPO member. Lifelong learner. Mentee. Mentor. Chief dog walker. Committed Stoic. Undefeated dance-off champion.COME SAY HI ON LINKEDINhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/stukagan/

It's another Metal Monday, and Brett and Nick are in Las Vegas for the #isri2024 convention! The markets are up and copper is on fire! Tune in to hear what the guys are looking forward to at the show. If you'd like to be on an episode of A Scrap Life or Betts on the Future at ISRI, stop by booth #1935! Produced by Recycled Media.

In today's episode, I'm joined by Jay Robinovitz.Jay is the CEO of Alter Trading and was definitely born scrappy! He has been in the scrap business all his life and is retiring at the end of this month. His experience in the industry is second to none and he is an incredible storyteller.In today's episode we talk about:Losing $5m as the ship leaves the dockFocusing on the little thingsNot wasting a recessionThe best equipmentTurning inventoryAnd so much more!WHO IS STU KAGAN ANYWAYS?25 years in the metal recycling game and still learning and growing...I learnt from the best and worked my way up from yard labourer to Executive Director of Trading and Operations for the largest metal recycler in sub-Saharan Africa. Responsible for 4,500 employees, 85 sites, and the overall profitability of a multi-billion dollar operation.I brought my breadth and depth of knowledge to bear and co-founded the fastest growing, most-loved, and most awarded metal recycling company in New Zealand. No small feat in a country where people are outnumbered 4:1 by sheep (spoiler alert: sheep don't produce much metal waste).I thought it was time that tech worked for our industry, so I took all of my experience as an operator and trader and leveraged that to build THE killer scrap app, Buddy. That's right - built for scrappies, by scrappies.Father of two crazy-awesome boys. Husband to Lisa. Under 9 rugby coach. YPO member. Lifelong learner. Mentee. Mentor. Chief dog walker. Committed Stoic. Undefeated dance-off champion.COME SAY HI ON LINKEDINhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/stukagan/

In today's special sustainability masterclass, I interview Robin Wiener.Robin is the president of ISRI and has been in the industry for 34 years, so she's seen it all. Together with ISRI and other industry players, Robin is a driving force shaping the sustainability narrative and practices for the recycled materials industry. There's no one more equipped to have this conversation with than Robin.In today's episode we talk about:Documenting sustainabilityCarbon emissions trackingWhat we can do todayISRI 2024 ExpoAnd so much more!WHO IS STU KAGAN ANYWAYS?25 years in the metal recycling game and still learning and growing...I learnt from the best and worked my way up from yard labourer to Executive Director of Trading and Operations for the largest metal recycler in sub-Saharan Africa. Responsible for 4,500 employees, 85 sites, and the overall profitability of a multi-billion dollar operation.I brought my breadth and depth of knowledge to bear and co-founded the fastest growing, most-loved, and most awarded metal recycling company in New Zealand. No small feat in a country where people are outnumbered 4:1 by sheep (spoiler alert: sheep don't produce much metal waste).I thought it was time that tech worked for our industry, so I took all of my experience as an operator and trader and leveraged that to build THE killer scrap app, Buddy. That's right - built for scrappies, by scrappies.Father of two crazy-awesome boys. Husband to Lisa. Under 9 rugby coach. YPO member. Lifelong learner. Mentee. Mentor. Chief dog walker. Committed Stoic. Undefeated dance-off champion.COME SAY HI ON LINKEDINhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/stukagan/

Join John Sacco as he discusses the importance of the recycled materials industry, addressing the common misconceptions and the negative imagery associated with the term "scrap." Emphasizing the need for rebranding and using precise language to positively change the industry's public perception. Sacco highlights the unveiling of the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries' (ISRI) new name (happening in Las Vegas) at their convention, April 15-19th, as a step towards this goal. Making parallels between the recycled materials industry and other essential but "dirty" industries like agriculture, construction, and healthcare, arguing that these industries are indispensable despite the dirt and hard work involved.

On this episode of A Scrap Life, Brett is joined by Jennifer Betts, CEO of Recycled Media, to promote ISRI, which takes place April 15th - 18h in Las Vegas. Produced by Recycled Media.

In today's episode, I chat to Jason Glei and Brianna Gianti to get the inside scoop on ISRI 2024!Jason is is the VP of Marketing at ISRI and Brianna is their VP of Memberships.If you want to make the most of ISRI this year, you're not going to want to miss this!In todays episode we talk about:The craziest sights at an ISRI eventWhat's new at this year's expoWhat talks not to missPrivate partiesWhat to packAnd much more!WHO IS STU KAGAN ANYWAYS?25 years in the metal recycling game and still learning and growing...I learnt from the best and worked my way up from yard labourer to Executive Director of Trading and Operations for the largest metal recycler in sub-Saharan Africa. Responsible for 4,500 employees, 85 sites, and the overall profitability of a multi-billion dollar operation.I brought my breadth and depth of knowledge to bear and co-founded the fastest growing, most-loved, and most awarded metal recycling company in New Zealand. No small feat in a country where people are outnumbered 4:1 by sheep (spoiler alert: sheep don't produce much metal waste).I thought it was time that tech worked for our industry, so I took all of my experience as an operator and trader and leveraged that to build THE killer scrap app, Buddy. That's right - built for scrappies, by scrappies.Father of two crazy-awesome boys. Husband to Lisa. Under 9 rugby coach. YPO member. Lifelong learner. Mentee. Mentor. Chief dog walker. Committed Stoic. Undefeated dance-off champion.COME SAY HI ON LINKEDINhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/stukagan/

In this episode, I chat to George Adams. George is the CEO of SA Recycling and has been the driving force behind its incredible growth over the past 40 years, growing it from $10m to around $4b in annual revenue.SA Recycling is currently the largest scrap metal recycling business in the US, processing over 5 million tons of recycled metal every year with about 3,100 employees across 140 locations in 16 states.In this episode we chat about:A day in the life of George AdamsBuying the right equipmentIncentives & BonusesInventory controlAnd so much more!WHO IS STU KAGAN ANYWAYS?25 years in the metal recycling game and still learning and growing...I learnt from the best and worked my way up from yard labourer to Executive Director of Trading and Operations for the largest metal recycler in sub-Saharan Africa. Responsible for 4,500 employees, 85 sites, and the overall profitability of a multi-billion dollar operation.Brought my breadth and depth of knowledge to bear and co-founded the fastest growing, most-loved, and most awarded metal recycling company in New Zealand. No small feat in a country where people are outnumbered 4:1 by sheep (spoiler alert: sheep don't produce much metal waste).I thought it was time that tech worked for our industry, so I took all of my experience as an operator and trader and leveraged that to build THE killer scrap app, Buddy. That's right - built for scrappies, by scrappies.Father of two crazy-awesome boys. Husband to Lisa. Under 9 rugby coach. YPO member. Lifelong learner. Mentee. Mentor. Chief dog walker. Committed Stoic. Undefeated dance-off champion.COME SAY HI ON LINKEDINhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/stukagan/MAKE BETTER TRADES WITH LESS EFFORTVisit www.tradebuddy.io to find out how...

Hi! I'm Stu Kagan, welcome to Born Scrappy. My goal is to spark more industry collaboration through sharing the experiences and learnings of industry greats through my podcast. So if you are a scrap metal exporter and you're ready to up your game by standing on the shoulders of giants - this one's for you! SEASON 1 / EPISODE 22FEATURING “GUEST” STU KAGANIn this episode, you'll find me on the other side of the microphone.  The person doing the interviewing and asking the questions will be my amazing wife and business partner, Lisa. So you'll get to meet her for the first time.In the episode, we chat about: ·         What to look out for when dealing with a new buyer·         Being firm but fair when trading·         When in doubt, get on a plane·         Having a bold vision·         And so much more! WHO IS STU KAGAN ANYWAYS? 25 years in the metal recycling game and still learning and growing… I learnt from the best and worked my way up from yard labourer to Executive Director of Trading and Operations for the largest metal recycler in sub-Saharan Africa. Responsible for 4,500 employees, 85 sites, and the overall profitability of a multi-billion dollar operation. Brought my breadth and depth of knowledge to bear and co-founded the fastest growing, most-loved, and most awarded metal recycling company in New Zealand. No small feat in a country where people are outnumbered 4:1 by sheep (spoiler alert: sheep don't produce much metal waste).  Father of two crazy-awesome boys. Husband to Lisa. Under 8 rugby coach. YPO member. Lifelong learner. Mentee. Mentor. Chief dog walker. Committed Stoic. Undefeated dance-off champion. COME SAY HI ON LINKEDIN https://www.linkedin.com/in/stukagan/ 

On this episode of A Scrap Life, Brett is joined by Jason Glei, vice president of marketing for ISRI to discuss marketing and the metals industry. Produced by Recycled Media.

In this episode, I'm joined by Michael Goldstein. Michael is the VP of Operations at Alter Trading and is destined to one day run this huge family metal recycling business. Mike has also become my best online mate that I've never met. So I expect this will be quite fun! In the episode, we chat about: ·         Why keeping your word is so important. ·         Buying and selling in the same market ·         The book you need to buy right now ·         And so much more! WHO IS STU KAGAN ANYWAYS? 25 years in the metal recycling game and still learning and growing… I learnt from the best and worked my way up from yard labourer to Executive Director of Trading and Operations for the largest metal recycler in sub-Saharan Africa. Responsible for 4,500 employees, 85 sites, and the overall profitability of a multi-billion dollar operation. Brought my breadth and depth of knowledge to bear and co-founded the fastest growing, most-loved, and most awarded metal recycling company in New Zealand. No small feat in a country where people are outnumbered 4:1 by sheep (spoiler alert: sheep don't produce much metal waste).  Father of two crazy-awesome boys. Husband to Lisa. Under 8 rugby coach. YPO member. Lifelong learner. Mentee. Mentor. Chief dog walker. Committed Stoic. Undefeated dance-off champion. COME SAY HI ON LINKEDIN https://www.linkedin.com/in/stukagan/

In this episode, I'm joined by Dawhal Shah. Dawhal runs Metco Ventures and is the previous President of the Non-Ferrous Board of the BIR.  In the episode, we chat about: ·        How to get better prices with less volume than your competitors·        Losing a large deposit…and getting it back·        How a crisis helped form the MRAI·        Expected growth in India ·        And so much more! WHO IS STU KAGAN ANYWAYS? 25 years in the metal recycling game and still learning and growing… I learnt from the best and worked my way up from yard labourer to Executive Director of Trading and Operations for the largest metal recycler in sub-Saharan Africa. Responsible for 4,500 employees, 85 sites, and the overall profitability of a multi-billion dollar operation. Brought my breadth and depth of knowledge to bear and co-founded the fastest growing, most-loved, and most awarded metal recycling company in New Zealand. No small feat in a country where people are outnumbered 4:1 by sheep (spoiler alert: sheep don't produce much metal waste).  Father of two crazy-awesome boys. Husband to Lisa. Under 8 rugby coach. YPO member. Lifelong learner. Mentee. Mentor. Chief dog walker. Committed Stoic. Undefeated dance-off champion. COME SAY HI ON LINKEDIN https://www.linkedin.com/in/stukagan/

In this episode, I'm joined by Sebastien Perron. Sebastian is the Vice President of Recycling Procurement at Wieland and has been involved in trading at Sims, Alpert and Alpert, and American Iron and Metals.In the episode, we chat about: ·        Why following your gut can create the best opportunities·        Working at the biggest companies in the industry·        The difficulties of post-acquisition integration·        How persistence can get you what you want·        And so much more! WHO IS STU KAGAN ANYWAYS? 25 years in the metal recycling game and still learning and growing… I learnt from the best and worked my way up from yard labourer to Executive Director of Trading and Operations for the largest metal recycler in sub-Saharan Africa. Responsible for 4,500 employees, 85 sites, and the overall profitability of a multi-billion dollar operation. Brought my breadth and depth of knowledge to bear and co-founded the fastest growing, most-loved, and most awarded metal recycling company in New Zealand. No small feat in a country where people are outnumbered 4:1 by sheep (spoiler alert: sheep don't produce much metal waste).  Father of two crazy-awesome boys. Husband to Lisa. Under 8 rugby coach. YPO member. Lifelong learner. Mentee. Mentor. Chief dog walker. Committed Stoic. Undefeated dance-off champion. COME SAY HI ON LINKEDIN https://www.linkedin.com/in/stukagan/

In this episode, I'm joined by Anshul Gupta. Anshul owns and runs PGI, a leading ferrous and non-ferrous metal recycling and waste management company in the UAE.PGI is both a processor and a global trader of recycled metal, with operations across the Middle East, Far East, South East, Europe, UK and Africa. In this episode we chat about:·        Training your traders·        Collaborating with competitors·        Making sure there's always an exit clause·        Making the decision to expand during tough times·        Working with your buyers to get preferential pricing·        And so much more! WHO IS STU KAGAN ANYWAYS? 25 years in the metal recycling game and still learning and growing… I learnt from the best and worked my way up from yard labourer to Executive Director of Trading and Operations for the largest metal recycler in sub-Saharan Africa. Responsible for 4,500 employees, 85 sites, and the overall profitability of a multi-billion dollar operation. Brought my breadth and depth of knowledge to bear and co-founded the fastest growing, most-loved, and most awarded metal recycling company in New Zealand. No small feat in a country where people are outnumbered 4:1 by sheep (spoiler alert: sheep don't produce much metal waste).  Father of two crazy-awesome boys. Husband to Lisa. Under 8 rugby coach. YPO member. Lifelong learner. Mentee. Mentor. Chief dog walker. Committed Stoic. Undefeated dance-off champion. COME SAY HI ON LINKEDIN https://www.linkedin.com/in/stukagan/  KEYWORDS:scrap metal, metal recycling, born scrappy, stu kagan, anshul gupta, PGI, PGI Group, scrap metal trading, BIR, ISRI  

In this episode, I'm joined by Zhenbin Han. Zhen is purchasing manager at renowned Chinese copper processor Jintian. Zhen got his bachelor's degree in civil engineering in China and his MBA in Germany, where he's lived for over 10 years now.  In this episode we chat about:·        Whether buyers prefer formula or spot pricing·        Adapting to new rules and regulations·        Dealing with buyers in a new market·        Why quality consistency is key·        And so much more! WHO IS STU KAGAN ANYWAYS? 25 years in the metal recycling game and still learning and growing… I learnt from the best and worked my way up from yard labourer to Executive Director of Trading and Operations for the largest metal recycler in sub-Saharan Africa. Responsible for 4,500 employees, 85 sites, and the overall profitability of a multi-billion dollar operation. Brought my breadth and depth of knowledge to bear and co-founded the fastest growing, most-loved, and most awarded metal recycling company in New Zealand. No small feat in a country where people are outnumbered 4:1 by sheep (spoiler alert: sheep don't produce much metal waste).  Father of two crazy-awesome boys. Husband to Lisa. Under 8 rugby coach. YPO member. Lifelong learner. Mentee. Mentor. Chief dog walker. Committed Stoic. Undefeated dance-off champion. COME SAY HI ON LINKEDIN https://www.linkedin.com/in/stukagan/

In this episode, I'm joined by Siddarth Parolia. Sid has 20 years' experience in the industry. He has helped shape and grow the intergenerational Nihon Ispat, a prolific Indian non-ferrous brokerage. In this episode we chat about:·        Being picky with your counterparties·        Keeping your eyes and ears open·        Optimising your trading strategy·        The limitations of tech·        And so much more! WHO IS STU KAGAN ANYWAYS? 25 years in the metal recycling game and still learning and growing… I learnt from the best and worked my way up from yard labourer to Executive Director of Trading and Operations for the largest metal recycler in sub-Saharan Africa. Responsible for 4,500 employees, 85 sites, and the overall profitability of a multi-billion dollar operation. Brought my breadth and depth of knowledge to bear and co-founded the fastest growing, most-loved, and most awarded metal recycling company in New Zealand. No small feat in a country where people are outnumbered 4:1 by sheep (spoiler alert: sheep don't produce much metal waste).  Father of two crazy-awesome boys. Husband to Lisa. Under 8 rugby coach. YPO member. Lifelong learner. Mentee. Mentor. Chief dog walker. Committed Stoic. Undefeated dance-off champion. COME SAY HI ON LINKEDIN https://www.linkedin.com/in/stukagan/

In this episode, I'm joined by Natalia Zholud. Natalia is in charge of global trading at the TRM Group, a non-ferrous trading company which has had some incredible growth over the past few years. Natalia also represents Eastern Europe on the Non-Ferrous Board of the BIR.   In this episode we chat about:·        What to do when your buyer stops receiving material from the country you're buying from ·        Why you shouldn't be afraid to ask for help·        Metal marketplaces in the future·        Independent mediation·        And so much more! WHO IS STU KAGAN ANYWAYS? 25 years in the metal recycling game and still learning and growing… I learnt from the best and worked my way up from yard labourer to Executive Director of Trading and Operations for the largest metal recycler in sub-Saharan Africa. Responsible for 4,500 employees, 85 sites, and the overall profitability of a multi-billion dollar operation. Brought my breadth and depth of knowledge to bear and co-founded the fastest growing, most-loved, and most awarded metal recycling company in New Zealand. No small feat in a country where people are outnumbered 4:1 by sheep (spoiler alert: sheep don't produce much metal waste).  Father of two crazy-awesome boys. Husband to Lisa. Under 8 rugby coach. YPO member. Lifelong learner. Mentee. Mentor. Chief dog walker. Committed Stoic. Undefeated dance-off champion. COME SAY HI ON LINKEDIN https://www.linkedin.com/in/stukagan/

In this episode, I'm joined by Elinor Feuer. Elinor is the Founder of Chilanga, a non-ferrous and dirty precious metals trading company. Elinor sits on the non ferrous board at BIR and currently heads up the Swedish Association for Scrap Metal. In this episode we chat about:•How to reduce risk so you can sleep at night•What it's like to have started in 2008•What it takes to go on your own•Why you need to have grit•And so much more!WHO IS STU KAGAN ANYWAYS?25 years in the metal recycling game and still learning and growing…I learnt from the best and worked my way up from yard labourer to Executive Director of Trading and Operations for the largest metal recycler in sub-Saharan Africa. Responsible for 4,500 employees, 85 sites, and the overall profitability of a multi-billion dollar operation.Brought my breadth and depth of knowledge to bear and co-founded the fastest growing, most-loved, and most awarded metal recycling company in New Zealand. No small feat in a country where people are outnumbered 4:1 by sheep (spoiler alert: sheep don't produce much metal waste). Father of two crazy-awesome boys. Husband to Lisa. Under 8 rugby coach. YPO member. Lifelong learner. Mentee. Mentor. Chief dog walker. Committed Stoic. Undefeated dance-off champion.COME SAY HI ON LINKEDINhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/stukagan/

In this masterclass, I'm joined by John Sacco. John was the first real content creator in our industry and is a massive advocate for recycled materials.John grew up in the recycling world and is currently the owner of Sierra International. Over the past few years, while hosting the podcast A Pile of Scrap, as well as creating the docuseries Repurposed, John has become the face of our industry.In this episode we chat about:·        How he became the most prolific advocate and lobbyist for recycled materials·        Three things we can start doing today to help our industry·        The things we should stop doing immediately·        Why it's important to post on social media·        What it means to be an advocate·        And so much more! WHO IS STU KAGAN ANYWAYS? 25 years in the metal recycling game and still learning and growing… I learnt from the best and worked my way up from yard labourer to Executive Director of Trading and Operations for the largest metal recycler in sub-Saharan Africa. Responsible for 4,500 employees, 85 sites, and the overall profitability of a multi-billion dollar operation. Brought my breadth and depth of knowledge to bear and co-founded the fastest growing, most-loved, and most awarded metal recycling company in New Zealand. No small feat in a country where people are outnumbered 4:1 by sheep (spoiler alert: sheep don't produce much metal waste).  Father of two crazy-awesome boys. Husband to Lisa. Under 8 rugby coach. YPO member. Lifelong learner. Mentee. Mentor. Chief dog walker. Committed Stoic. Undefeated dance-off champion. COME SAY HI ON LINKEDIN https://www.linkedin.com/in/stukagan/

In this episode, I'm joined by Chris Greenfield. Chris is the Vice President at American ingot maker, The Federal Metal Company. While Chris wasn't born scrappy, you wouldn't think that's the case.In this episode we chat about:• Why your competitors aren't your enemy• How to find out if a buyer is trustworthy• The characteristics of a top supplier• When a "no" isn't really a "no"• Staying stoic • And so much more!WHO IS STU KAGAN ANYWAYS?25 years in the metal recycling game and still learning and growing…I learnt from the best and worked my way up from yard labourer to Executive Director of Trading and Operations for the largest metal recycler in sub-Saharan Africa. Responsible for 4,500 employees, 85 sites, and the overall profitability of a multi-billion dollar operation.Brought my breadth and depth of knowledge to bear and co-founded the fastest growing, most-loved, and most awarded metal recycling company in New Zealand. No small feat in a country where people are outnumbered 4:1 by sheep (spoiler alert: sheep don't produce much metal waste). Father of two crazy-awesome boys. Husband to Lisa. Under 8 rugby coach. YPO member. Lifelong learner. Mentee. Mentor. Chief dog walker. Committed Stoic. Undefeated dance-off champion.COME SAY HI ON LINKEDINhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/stukagan/

In this episode, I'm joined by Rick Dobkin. Rick is the chief commercial officer at Shapiro Metals and has been in the metal recycling industry for about 35 years now.In this episode we chat about:·        How he got out of a bind when they couldn't sell their stock·        The need to always develop new partners·        Why listening is a key skill when trading ·        Getting through the tough times ·        Not becoming complacent·        Being purpose-driven·        And so much more! WHO IS STU KAGAN ANYWAYS? 25 years in the metal recycling game and still learning and growing… I learnt from the best and worked my way up from yard labourer to Executive Director of Trading and Operations for the largest metal recycler in sub-Saharan Africa. Responsible for 4,500 employees, 85 sites, and the overall profitability of a multi-billion dollar operation. Brought my breadth and depth of knowledge to bear and co-founded the fastest growing, most-loved, and most awarded metal recycling company in New Zealand. No small feat in a country where people are outnumbered 4:1 by sheep (spoiler alert: sheep don't produce much metal waste).  Father of two crazy-awesome boys. Husband to Lisa. Under 8 rugby coach. YPO member. Lifelong learner. Mentee. Mentor. Chief dog walker. Committed Stoic. Undefeated dance-off champion. COME SAY HI ON LINKEDIN https://www.linkedin.com/in/stukagan/

Robin Wiener, president of the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries (ISRI), joins the conversation to explore the evolution of the circular economy and how the role of recycling will evolve. Today's recycling infrastructure is closely aligned with the waste management system. There are growing signs that the reuse of products is essential and that recycling services can be built into the product lifecycle as the last step when no more reuse is possible. But the challenge recyclers face, along with the rest of us, is the limited range of choices in recyclable materials used in products and packaging. Consumer goods and packaging companies must simplify their designs, abandoning hard-to-recycle materials that cannot be processed by the equipment currently available in local recycling facilities.Recycling has gotten a bad rap in recent years, and only sometimes for good reasons. Robin explains that when we talk about the overall plastic recycling rate, which is an abysmal five to six percent, we miss that some materials, like PET beverage bottles, are collected and processed at much higher rates. Many materials can be collected at even higher rates when states put deposit programs in place to encourage their return for recycling. For now, each of us can look closely at products before we buy them to understand whether we can recycle them when finished using them. You can learn more about ISRI at https://www.isri.org/

In this Masterclass, we focus on marketing for metal recyclers with Jen Betts. Jen has taken the industry by storm over the last few years, and you can see her on stage at most events you go to. You may also know Jen as host of the metal recycling podcast, Betts on the Future. Her experience in metals and her passion for marketing are a great combination for our industry, and I always have a great time chatting to her. In this episode we chat about:·        Why social media marketing is like eating your vegetables·        Marketing to attract your next great hire·        Top 3 marketing tips for metal recyclers·        Marketing on the global stage·        How to take on the big guys·        Educating the masses·        And so much more! WHO IS STU KAGAN ANYWAYS? 25 years in the metal recycling game and still learning and growing… I learnt from the best and worked my way up from yard labourer to Executive Director of Trading and Operations for the largest metal recycler in sub-Saharan Africa. Responsible for 4,500 employees, 85 sites, and the overall profitability of a multi-billion dollar operation. Brought my breadth and depth of knowledge to bear and co-founded the fastest growing, most-loved, and most awarded metal recycling company in New Zealand. No small feat in a country where people are outnumbered 4:1 by sheep (spoiler alert: sheep don't produce much metal waste).  Father of two crazy-awesome boys. Husband to Lisa. Under 8 rugby coach. YPO member. Lifelong learner. Mentee. Mentor. Chief dog walker. Committed Stoic. Undefeated dance-off champion. COME SAY HI ON LINKEDIN https://www.linkedin.com/in/stukagan/

In this episode, I chat to Autumn Barnes. Autumn has been trading metal for almost 25 years now and spent 20 of them at Sims.As the Director of North American Containerized Ferrous Trading, she currently holds the role of Vice President of Trade at the United Metal Solutions Group. In this episode we chat about:Mentorship Surprise shipmentsPicking up the phoneHonouring your agreementsCollaborating with competitorsAnd so much more!WHO IS STU KAGAN ANYWAYS?25 years in the metal recycling game and still learning and growing…I learnt from the best and worked my way up from yard labourer to Executive Director of Trading and Operations for the largest metal recycler in sub-Saharan Africa. Responsible for 4,500 employees, 85 sites, and the overall profitability of a multi-billion dollar operation.Brought my breadth and depth of knowledge to bear and co-founded the fastest growing, most-loved, and most awarded metal recycling company in New Zealand. No small feat in a country where people are outnumbered 4:1 by sheep (spoiler alert: sheep don't produce much metal waste). Father of two crazy-awesome boys. Husband to Lisa. Under 8 rugby coach. YPO member. Lifelong learner. Mentee. Mentor. Chief dog walker. Committed Stoic. Undefeated dance-off champion.COME SAY HI ON LINKEDINhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/stukagan/

In this episode, I chat to Matt Kripke. Matt has been the owner and operator of the metal recycling company Kripke Enterprises for almost 30 years now.Not only does Kripke Enterprises run their own metal recycling facilities, they also have a coil sales division in Tennessee, as well as a trading office based out of Florida.In this episode we chat about:•Why a lose-lose can be a win in the long run•Bringing solutions instead of problems•Conferences and collaboration•The case for using a broker•The power of a heads up•Firing your customers•And so much more!WHO IS STU KAGAN ANYWAYS?25 years in the metal recycling game and still learning and growing…I learnt from the best and worked my way up from yard labourer to Executive Director of Trading and Operations for the largest metal recycler in sub-Saharan Africa. Responsible for 4,500 employees, 85 sites, and the overall profitability of a multi-billion dollar operation.Brought my breadth and depth of knowledge to bear and co-founded the fastest growing, most-loved, and most awarded metal recycling company in New Zealand. No small feat in a country where people are outnumbered 4:1 by sheep (spoiler alert: sheep don't produce much metal waste). Father of two crazy-awesome boys. Husband to Lisa. Under 8 rugby coach. YPO member. Lifelong learner. Mentee. Mentor. Chief dog walker. Committed Stoic. Undefeated dance-off champion.COME SAY HI ON LINKEDINhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/stukagan/

In this episode, I chat to Michael Pawlowski.Michael is Founder and Chairman of the Oryx Stainless Group.Oryx has been trading for over 25 years and they are currently one of the largest buyers of stainless in the world.In this episode we chat about:·        How to sell when the markets are down·        How to become a better trader ·        Being careful who you choose·        Why trading is like marriage·        Knowing your counterparty·        And so much more! WHO IS STU KAGAN ANYWAYS?25 years in the metal recycling game and still learning and growing…I learnt from the best and worked my way up from yard labourer to Executive Director of Trading and Operations for the largest metal recycler in sub-Saharan Africa. Responsible for 4,500 employees, 85 sites, and the overall profitability of a multi-billion dollar operation.Brought my breadth and depth of knowledge to bear and co-founded the fastest growing, most-loved, and most awarded metal recycling company in New Zealand. No small feat in a country where people are outnumbered 4:1 by sheep (spoiler alert: sheep don't produce much metal waste). Father of two crazy-awesome boys. Husband to Lisa. Under 8 rugby coach. YPO member. Lifelong learner. Mentee. Mentor. Chief dog walker. Committed Stoic. Undefeated dance-off champion. COME SAY HI ON LINKEDINhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/stukagan/

In this week's episode, I chat to Brett Ekart about Entrepreneurship.Brett is one of the most well-known personalities in the metal recycling industry.But Brett's strength isn't only in scrap metal. He is a serial entrepreneur owning businesses like United Metal Recycling, TV Pipe Supply, United Hauling, Tire Reclaim, United Storage, Recycled Media, Copper Reclaim and more. He also hosts two scrap-related podcasts, A Scrap Life and Recycled Idaho.In this extended episode, we discuss things like:• What's better than a lemonade stand to learn about business• What things can and cant be taught• Why failing is so important• Why unlike sport, we can all win• And so much more…WHO IS STU KAGAN ANYWAYS?25 years in the metal recycling game and still learning and growing…I learnt from the best and worked my way up from yard labourer to Executive Director of Trading and Operations for the largest metal recycler in sub-Saharan Africa. Responsible for 4,500 employees, 85 sites, and the overall profitability of a multi-billion dollar operation.Brought my breadth and depth of knowledge to bear and co-founded the fastest growing, most-loved, and most awarded metal recycling company in New Zealand. No small feat in a country where people are outnumbered 4:1 by sheep (spoiler alert: sheep don't produce much metal waste). Father of two crazy-awesome boys. Husband to Lisa. Under 8 rugby coach. YPO member. Lifelong learner. Mentee. Mentor. Chief dog walker. Committed Stoic. Undefeated dance-off champion.COME SAY HI ON LINKEDINhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/stukagan/

In this episode, I chat to Jurgen Van Gorp. Jurgen has 23 years experience in metal recycling and currently holds the position of portfolio manger of raw materials for Aurubis Group. He's also a member of the Non-Ferrous Board of the BIR and is an active speaker and panelist at various recycling conferences globally.In this episode we chat about:• When to walk away from a short term gain• The inaugural Born Scrappy boxing bout• Advice that has stuck for 23 years• The times they are a-changin'• You have to work for it• And much more!WHO IS STU KAGAN ANYWAYS?25 years in the metal recycling game and still learning and growing…I learnt from the best and worked my way up from yard labourer to Executive Director of Trading and Operations for the largest metal recycler in sub-Saharan Africa. Responsible for 4,500 employees, 85 sites, and the overall profitability of a multi-billion dollar operation.Brought my breadth and depth of knowledge to bear and co-founded the fastest growing, most-loved, and most awarded metal recycling company in New Zealand. No small feat in a country where people are outnumbered 4:1 by sheep (spoiler alert: sheep don't produce much metal waste). Father of two crazy-awesome boys. Husband to Lisa. Under 8 rugby coach. YPO member. Lifelong learner. Mentee. Mentor. Chief dog walker. Committed Stoic. Undefeated dance-off champion.COME SAY HI ON LINKEDINhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/stukagan/

In this episode, I chat to Michael Lion. Michael has been in the metal recycling industry for 55 years. He pioneered scrap metal into both China and Korea.He was chairman of Sims Metal Management Asia and their head of global Non Ferrous.He is currently Chairman of BIR's international trade council and is the host of its topical show "The Challenge".In this episode we discuss:- Optimising your trading strategy- Becoming a preferred supplier- Making value judgements- Pioneering new markets- Deal plot twists- And plenty more...WHO IS STU KAGAN ANYWAYS?25 years in the metal recycling game and still learning and growing…I learnt from the best and worked my way up from yard labourer to Executive Director of Trading and Operati ons for the largest metal recycler in sub-Saharan Africa. Responsible for 4,500 employees, 85 sites, and the overall profitability of a multi-billion dollar operation.Brought my breadth and depth of knowledge to bear and co-founded the fastest growing, most-loved, and most awarded metal recycling company in New Zealand. No small feat in a country where people are outnumbered 4:1 by sheep (spoiler alert: sheep don't produce much metal waste). Father of two crazy-awesome boys. Husband to Lisa. Under 8 rugby coach. YPO member. Lifelong learner. Mentee. Mentor. Chief dog walker. Committed Stoic. Undefeated dance-off champion.COME SAY HI ON LINKEDINhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/stukagan/#scrapmetal #metalrecycling #scrapexporter

Host John Sacco and ISRI Chairman Brian Henesey discuss the challenges, opportunities, and goals of ISRI and the recycling industry as a whole. Highlighting the importance of recycled materials, the need for advocacy, and the importance of increased member engagement for the betterment of the industry, Brian Henesey's goal is to promote the value of recycling to regulators, policymakers, and the public.

Host John Sacco sits down with the talented young minds of the ISRI 2023 JASON Learning Project. The winners – Barbie Lin, Ashvin Saini, Yaesung Kim, and Bailey Maltese – delve into their creative processes, motivations, and aspirations behind their designs. Although they're already making huge strides in the world of recycling, we get to be all ears for what the next generation plans for their futures!

Bruce Blue, ISRI Lifetime Achievement Award Winner and President of Freedom Metals, Inc., joins the podcast at the 2023 ISRI National Convention to discuss the changes he's witnessed in the recycling industry over the years and the importance of spreading awareness about the industry's societal impact. By delving into a few personal experiences of his, he highlights how each experience has further reinforced his gratitude for life and his dedication to the betterment of ISRI.

On this episode of A Scrap Life, Brett's down in Nashville for ISRI's spring meeting. In this podcast he sits down with David Palvere to discuss his start in the industry and the evolution of Genesis Attachments.

On this episode of A Scrap Life, Brett's down in Nashville for ISRI's spring meeting. In this podcast he sits down with Mikey Foon of Admiral Metals to talk about his experience working in a family business, his passion for getting the younger generations involved in the industry and what it's like to operate in a market such as Detroit.

On this episode of A Scrap Life, Brett's down in Nashville for ISRI's spring meeting. In this podcast he sits down with Matan Rosenberg of Northern Ohio Scrap Service to discuss his upbringing in the industry, working with family and alternative paths to success that don't necessarily include college.

Luca Casonato is the tech lead for Deno Deploy and a TC39 delegate. Deno is a JavaScript runtime from the original creator of NodeJS, Ryan Dahl. Topics covered: What's a JavaScript runtime How V8 is used Why Deno was created The W3C WinterCG for server-side JavaScript Why it's difficult to ship new features in Node The benefits of web standards Creating an all-inclusive toolset like Rust and Go Deno's node compatibility layer Use cases for WebAssembly Benefits and implementation of Deno Deploy Reasons to deploy on the edge What's coming next Luca Luca Casonato @lcasdev Deno Homepage Deploy Showcase Subhosting Fresh web framework The anatomy of an Isolate Cloud Deno Users Netlify Edge Functions Deno at Slack GitHub Flat Data Shopify Oxygen Other related links Cache Web API V8 (JavaScript and WebAssembly engine) TC39 (JavaScript specification group) Web-interoperable Runtimes Community Group (WinterCG) Cloudflare Workers (Deno Deploy competitor) How Cloudflare KV works CockroachDB (Distributed database) XKCD Standards Comic Transcript You can help edit this transcript on GitHub. [00:00:07] Jeremy: Today I'm talking to Luca Casonato. He's a member of the Deno Core team and a TC 39 Delegate. [00:00:06] Luca: Hey, thanks for having me. What's a runtime? [00:00:07] Jeremy: So today we're gonna talk about Deno, and on the website it says, Deno is a runtime for JavaScript and TypeScript. So I thought we could start with defining what a runtime is. [00:00:21] Luca: Yeah, that's a great question. I think this question actually comes up a lot. It's, it's like sometimes we also define Deno as a headless browser, or I don't know, a, a JavaScript script execution tool. what actually defines runtime? I, I think what makes a runtime a runtime is that it is a, it's implemented in native code. It cannot be self-hosted. Like you cannot self-host a JavaScript runtime. and it executes JavaScript or TypeScript or some other scripting language, without relying on, well, yeah, I guess it's the self-hosting thing. Like it's, it's essentially a, a JavaScript execution engine, which is not self-hosted. So yeah, it, it maybe has IO bindings, but it doesn't necessarily need to like, it. Maybe it allows you to read the, from the file system or, or make network calls. Um, but it doesn't necessarily have to. It's, I think the, the primary definition is something which can execute JavaScript without already being written in JavaScript. How V8 and JavaScript runtimes are related [00:01:20] Jeremy: And when we hear about JavaScript run times, whether it's Deno or Node or Bun, or anything else, we also hear about it in the context of v8. Could you explain the relationship between V8 and a JavaScript run time? [00:01:36] Luca: Yeah. So V8 and, and JavaScript core and Spider Monkey, these are all JavaScript engines. So these are the low level virtual machines that can execute or that can parse your JavaScript code. turn it into byte code, maybe turn it into, compiled machine code, and then execute that code. But these engines, Do not implement any IO functions. They do not. They implement the JavaScript spec as is written. and then they provide extension hooks for, they call these host environments, um, like environments that embed these engines to provide custom functionalities to essentially poke out of the sandbox, out of the, out of the virtual machine. Um, and this is used in browsers. Like browsers have, have these engines built in. This is where they originated from. Um, and then they poke holes into this, um, sandbox virtual machine to do things like, I don't know, writing to the dom or, or console logging or making fetch calls and all these kinds of things. And what a runtime essentially does, a JavaScript runtime is it takes one of these engines and. It then provides its own set of host APIs, like essentially its own set of holes. It pokes into the sandbox. and depending on what the runtime is trying to do, um, the weight will do. This is gonna be different and, and the sort of API that is ultimately exposed to the end user is going to be different. For example, if you compare Deno and node, like node is very loosey goosey, about how it pokes holds into the sandbox, it sort of just pokes them everywhere. And this makes it difficult to enforce things like, runtime permissions for example. Whereas Deno is much more strict about how it, um, pokes holds into its sandbox. Like everything is either a web API or it's behind in this Deno name space, which means that it's, it's really easy to find, um, places where, where you're poking out of the sandbox. and really you can also compare these to browsers. Like browsers are also JavaScript run times. Um, they're just not headless. JavaScript run times, but JavaScript run times that also have a ui. and. . Yeah. Like there, there's, there's a whole Bunch of different kinds of JavaScript run times, and I think we're also seeing a lot more like embedded JavaScript run times. Like for example, if you've used React Native before, you, you may be using Hermes as a, um, JavaScript engine in your Android app, which is like a custom JavaScript engine written just for, for, for React native. Um, and this also is embedded within a, like react native run time, which is specific to React native. so it's also possible to have run times, for example, that are, that can be where the, where the back backing engine can be exchanged, which is kind of cool. [00:04:08] Jeremy: So it sounds like V8's role, one way to look at it is it can execute JavaScript code, but only pure functions. I suppose you [00:04:19] Luca: Pretty much. Yep. [00:04:21] Jeremy: Do anything that doesn't interact with IO so you think about browsers, you were mentioning you need to interact with a DOM or if you're writing a server side application, you probably need to receive or make HTTP requests, that sort of thing. And all of that is not handled by v8. That has to be handled by an external runtime. [00:04:43] Luca: Exactly Like, like one, one. There's, there's like some exceptions to this. For example, JavaScript technically has some IO built in with, within its standard library, like math, random. It's like random number. Generation is technically an IO operation, so, Technically V8 has some IO built in, right? And like getting the current date from the user, that's also technically IO So, like there, there's some very limited edge cases. It's, it's not that it's purely pure, but V8 for example, has a flag to turn it completely deterministic. which means that it really is completely pure. And this is not something which run times usually have. This is something like the feature of an engine because the engine is like so low level that it can essentially, there's so little IO that it's very easy to make deterministic where a runtime higher level, um, has, has io, um, much more difficult to make deterministic. [00:05:39] Jeremy: And, and for things like when you're working with JavaScript, there's, uh, asynchronous programming [00:05:46] Luca: mm-hmm. Concurrent JavaScript execution [00:05:47] Jeremy: So you have concurrency and things like that. Is that a part of V8 or is that the responsibility of the run time? [00:05:54] Luca: That's a great question. So there's multiple parts to this. There's the part, um, there, there's JavaScript promises, um, and sort of concurrent Java or well, yes, concurrent JavaScript execution, which is sort of handled by v8, like v8. You can in, in pure v8, you can create a promise, and you can execute some code within that promise. But without IO there's actually no way to defer time, uh, which means that in with pure v8, you can either, you can create a promise. Which executes right now. Or you can create a promise that never executes, but you can't create a promise that executes in 10 seconds because there's no way to measure 10 seconds asynchronously. What run times do is they add something called an event loop on top of this, um, on top of the base engine and that event loop, for example, like a very simple event loop, for example, might have a timer in it, which every second looks at if there's a timer schedule to run within that second. And if it does, if, if that timer exists, it'll go call out to V8 and say, you can now execute that promise. but V8 is still the one that's keeping track of, of like which promises exist, and the code that is meant to be invoked when they resolve all that kind of thing. Um, but the underlying infrastructure that actually invokes which promises get resolved at what point in time, like the asynchronous, asynchronous IO is what this is called. This is driven by the event loop, um, which is implemented by around time. So Deno, for example, it uses, Tokio for its event loop. This is a, um, an event loop written in Rust. it's very popular in the Rust ecosystem. Um, node uses libuv. This is a relatively popular runtime or, or event loop, um, implementation for c uh, plus plus. And, uh, libuv was written for Node. Tokio was not written for Deno. But um, yeah, Chrome has its own event loop implementation. Bun has its own event loop implementation. [00:07:50] Jeremy: So we, we might go a little bit more into that later, but I think what we should probably go into now is why make Deno, because you have Node that's, uh, currently very popular. The co-creator of Deno, to my understanding, actually created Node. So maybe you could explain to our audience what was missing or what was wrong with Node, where they decided I need to create, a new runtime. Why create a new runtime? (standards compliance) [00:08:20] Luca: Yeah. So the, the primary point of concern here was that node was slowly diverging from browser standards with no real path to, to, to, re converging. Um, like there was nothing that was pushing node in the direction of standards compliance and there was nothing, that was like sort of forcing node to innovate. and we really saw this because in the time between, I don't know, 2015, 2018, like Node was slowly working on esm while browsers had already shipped ESM for like three years. , um, node did not have fetch. Node hasn't had, or node only at, got fetch last year. Right? six, seven years after browsers got fetch. Node's stream implementation is still very divergent from, from standard web streams. Node was very reliant on callbacks. It still is, um, like promises in many places of the Node API are, are an afterthought, which makes sense because Node was created in a time before promises existed. Um, but there was really nothing that was pushing Node forward, right? Like nobody was actively investing in, in, in improving the API of Node to be more standards compliant. And so what we really needed was a new like Greenfield project, which could demonstrate that actually writing a new server side run. Is A viable, and b is totally doable with an API that is more standards combined. Like essentially you can write a browser, like a headless browser and have that be an excellent to use JavaScript runtime, right? And then there was some things that were I on top of that, like a TypeScript support because TypeScript was incredibly, or is still incredibly popular. even more so than it was four years ago when, when Deno was created or envisioned, um, this permission system like Node really poked holes into the V8 sandbox very early on with, with like, it's gonna be very difficult for Node to ever, ever, uh, reconcile this, this. Especially cuz the, some, some of the APIs that it, that it exposes are just so incredibly low level that like, I don't know, you can mutate random memory within your process. Um, which like if you want to have a, a secure sandbox like that just doesn't work. Um, it's not compatible. So there was really needed to be a place where you could explore this, um, direction and, and see if it worked. And Deno was that. Deno still is that, and I think Deno has outgrown that now into something which is much more usable as, as like a production ready runtime. And many people do use it, in production. And now Deno is on the path of slowly converging back with Node, um, in from both directions. Like Node is slowly becoming more standards compliant. and depending on who you ask this was, this was done because of Deno and some people said it would had already been going on and Deno just accelerated it. but that's not really relevant because the point is that like Node is becoming more standard compliant and, and the other direction is Deno is becoming more node compliant. Like Deno is implementing node compatibility layers that allow you to run code that was originally written for the node ecosystem in the standards compliant run time. so through those two directions, the, the run times are sort of, um, going back towards each other. I don't think they'll ever merge. but we're, we're, we're getting to a point here pretty soon, I think, where it doesn't really matter what runtime you write for, um, because you'll be able to write code written for one runtime in the other runtime relatively easily. [00:12:03] Jeremy: If you're saying the two are becoming closer to one another, becoming closer to the web standard that runs in the browser, if you're talking to someone who's currently developing in node, what's the incentive for them to switch to Deno versus using Node and then hope that eventually they'll kind of meet in the middle. [00:12:26] Luca: Yeah, so I think, like Deno is a lot more than just a runtime, right? Like a runtime executes JavaScript, Deno executes JavaScript, it executes type script. But Deno is so much more than that. Like Deno has a built-in format, or it has a built-in linter. It has a built-in testing framework, a built-in benching framework. It has a built-in Bundler, it, it like can create self-hosted, um, executables. yeah, like Bundle your code and the Deno executable into a single executable that you can trip off to someone. Um, it has a dependency analyzer. It has editor integrations. it has, Yeah. Like I could go on for hours, (laughs) about all of the auxiliary tooling that's inside of Deno, that's not a JavaScript runtime. And also Deno as a JavaScript runtime is just more standards compliant than any of the other servers at Runtimes right now. So if, if you're really looking for something which is standards complaint, which is gonna like live on forever, then it's, you know, like you cannot kill off the Fetch API ever. The Fetch API is going to live forever because Chrome supports it. Um, and the same goes for local storage and, and like, I don't know, the Blob API and all these other web APIs like they, they have shipped and browsers, which means that they will be supported until the end of time. and yeah, maybe Node has also reached that with its api probably to some extent. but yeah, don't underestimate the power of like 3 billion Chrome users. that would scream immediately if the Fetch API stopped working Right? [00:13:50] Jeremy: Yeah, I, I think maybe what it sounds like also is that because you're using the API that's used in the browser places where you deploy JavaScript applications in the future, you would hope that those would all settle on using that same API so that if you were using Deno, you could host it at different places and not worry about, do I need to use a special API maybe that you would in node? WinterCG (W3C group for server side JavaScript) [00:14:21] Luca: Yeah, exactly. And this is actually something which we're specifically working towards. So, I don't know if you've, you've heard of WinterCG? It's a, it's a community group at the W3C that, um, CloudFlare and, and Deno and some others including Shopify, have started last year. Um, we're essentially, we're trying to standardize the concept of what a server side JavaScript runtime is and what APIs it needs to have available to be standards compliant. Um, and essentially making this portability sort of written down somewhere and like write down exactly what code you can write and expect to be portable. And we can see like that all of the big, all of the big players that are involved in, in, um, building JavaScript run times right now are, are actively, engaged with us at WinterCG and are actively building towards this future. So I would expect that any code that you write today, which runs. in Deno, runs in CloudFlare, workers runs on Netlify Edge functions, runs on Vercel's Edge, runtime, runs on Shopify Oxygen, is going to run on the other four. Um, of, of those within the next couple years here, like I think the APIs of these is gonna converge to be essentially the same. there's obviously gonna always be some, some nuances. Um, like, I don't know, Chrome and Firefox and Safari don't perfectly have the same API everywhere, right? Like Chrome has some web Bluetooth capabilities that Safari doesn't, or Firefox has some, I don't know, non-standard extensions to the error object, which none of the other runtimes do. But overall you can expect these front times to mostly be aligned. yeah, and I, I think that's, that's really, really, really excellent and that, that's I think really one of the reasons why one should really consider, like building for, for this standard runtime because it, it just guarantees that you'll be able to host this somewhere in five years time and 10 years time, with, with very little effort. Like even if Deno goes under or CloudFlare goes under, or, I don't know, nobody decides to maintain node anymore. It'll be easy to, to run somewhere else. And also I expect that the big cloud vendors will ultimately, um, provide, manage offerings for, for the standards compliant JavaScript on time as well. Is Node part of WinterCG? [00:16:36] Jeremy: And this WinterCG group is Node a part of that as well? [00:16:41] Luca: Um, yes, we've invited Node, um, to join, um, due to the complexities of how node's, internal decision making system works. Node is not officially a member of WinterCG. Um, there is some individual members of the node, um, technical steering committee, which are participating. for example, um, James m Snell is, is the co-chair, is my co-chair on, on WinterCG. He also works at CloudFlare. He's also a node, um, TSC member, Mateo Colina, who has been, um, instrumental to getting fetch landed in Node, um, is also actively involved. So Node is involved, but because Node is node and and node's decision making process works the way it does, node is not officially listed anywhere as as a member. but yeah, they're involved and maybe they'll be a member at some point. But, yeah, let's. , see (laughs) [00:17:34] Jeremy: Yeah. And, and it, so it, it sounds like you're thinking that's more of a, a governance or a organizational aspect of note than it is a, a technical limitation. Is that right? [00:17:47] Luca: Yeah. I obviously can't speak for the node technical steering committee, but I know that there's a significant chunk of the node technical steering committee that is, very favorable towards, uh, standards compliance. but parts of the Node technical steering committee are also not, they are either indifferent or are actively, I dunno if they're still actively working against this, but have actively worked against standards compliance in the past. And because the node governance structure is very, yeah, is, is so, so open and let's, um, and let's, let's all these voices be heard, um, that just means that decision making processes within Node can take so long, like. . This is also why the fetch API took eight years to ship. Like this was not a technical problem. and it is also not a technical problem. That Node does not have URL pattern support or, the file global or, um, that the web crypto API was not on this, on the global object until like late last year, right? Like, these are not technical problems, these are decision making problems. Um, and yeah, that was also part of the reason why we started Deno as, as like a separate thing, because like you can try to innovate node, from the inside, but innovating node from the inside is very slow, very tedious, and requires a lot of fighting. And sometimes just showing somebody, from the outside like, look, this is the bright future you could have, makes them more inclined to do something. Why it takes so long to ship new features in Node [00:19:17] Jeremy: Do, do you have a sense for, you gave the example of fetch taking eight years to, to get into node. Do you, do you have a sense of what the typical objection is to, to something like that? Like I, I understand there's a lot of people involved, but why would somebody say, I, I don't want this [00:19:35] Luca: Yeah. So for, for fetch specifically, there was a, there was many different kinds of concerns. Um, one of the, I, I can maybe list two of them. One of them was for example, that the fetch API is not a good API and as such, node should not have it. which is sort of. missing the point of, because it's a standard API, how good or bad the API is is much less relevant because if you can share the API, you can also share a wrapper that's written around the api. Right? and then the other concern was, node does need fetch because Node already has an HTTP API. Um, so, so these are both kind of examples of, of concerns that people had for a long time, which it took a long time to either convince these people or, or to, push the change through anyway. and this is also the case for, for other things like, for example, web, crypto, um, like why do we need web crypto? We already have node crypto, or why do we need yet another streams? Implementation node already has four different streams implementations. Like, why do we need web streams? and the, the. Like, I don't know if you know this XKCD of, there's 14 competing standards. so let's write a 15th standard, to unify them all. And then at the end we just have 15 competing standards. Um, so I think this is also the kind of concern that people were concerned about, but I, I think what we've seen here is that this is really not a concern that one needs to have because it ends up that, or it turns out in the end that if you implement web APIs, people will use web APIs and will use web APIs only for their new code. it takes a while, but we're seeing this with ESM versus require like new code written with require much less common than it was two years ago. And, new code now using like Xhr, whatever it's called, form request or. You know, the one, I mean, compared to using Fetch, like nobody uses that name. Everybody uses Fetch. Um, and like in Node, if you write a little script, like you're gonna use Fetch, you're not gonna use like Nodes, htp, dot get API or whatever. and we're gonna see the same thing with Readable Stream. We're gonna see the same thing with Web Crypto. We're gonna see, see the same thing with Blob. I think one of the big ones where, where Node is still, I, I, I don't think this is one that's ever gonna get solved, is the, the Buffer global and Node. like we have the Uint8, this Uint8 global, um, and like all the run times including browsers, um, and Buffer is like a super set of that, but it's in global scope. So it, it's sort of this non-standard extension of unit eight array that people in node like to use and it's not compatible with anything else. Um, but because it's so easy to get at, people use it anyway. So those are, those are also kind of problems that, that we'll have to deal with eventually. And maybe that means that at some point the buffer global gets deprecated and I don't know, probably can never get removed. But, um, yeah, these are kinds of conversations that the no TSE is going have to have internally in, I don't know, maybe five years. Write once, have it run on any hosting platform [00:22:37] Jeremy: Yeah, so at a high level, What's shipped in the browser, it went through the ECMAScript approval process. People got it into the browser. Once it's in the browser, probably never going away. And because of that, it's safe to build on top of that for these, these server run times because it's never going away from the browser. And so everybody can kind of use it into the future and not worry about it. Yeah. [00:23:05] Luca: Exactly. Yeah. And that's, and that's excluding the benefit that also if you have code that you can write once and use in both the browser and the server side around time, like that's really nice. Um, like that, that's the other benefit. [00:23:18] Jeremy: Yeah. I think that's really powerful. And that right now, when someone's looking at running something in CloudFlare workers versus running something in the browser versus running something in. it's, I think a lot of people make the assumption it's just JavaScript, so I can use it as is. But it, it, there are at least currently, differences in what APIs are available to you. [00:23:43] Luca: Yep. Yep. Why bundle so many things into Deno? [00:23:46] Jeremy: Earlier you were talking about how Deno is more than just the runtime. It has a linter, formatter, file watcher there, there's all sorts of stuff in there. And I wonder if you could talk a little bit to the, the reasoning behind that [00:24:00] Luca: Mm-hmm. [00:24:01] Jeremy: Having them all be separate things. [00:24:04] Luca: Yeah, so the, the reasoning here is essentially if you look at other modern run time or mo other modern languages, like Rust is a great example. Go is a great example. Even though Go was designed around the same time as Node, it has a lot of these same tools built in. And what it really shows is that if the ecosystem converges, like is essentially forced to converge on a single set of built-in tooling, a that built-in tooling becomes really, really excellent because everybody's using it. And also, it means that if you open any project written by any go developer, any, any rest developer, and you look at the tests, you immediately understand how the test framework works and you immediately understand how the assertions work. Um, and you immediately understand how the build system works and you immediately understand how the dependency imports work. And you immediately understand like, I wanna run this project and I wanna restart it when my file changes. Like, you immediately know how to do that because it's the same everywhere. Um, and this kind of feeling of having to learn one tool and then being able to use all of the projects, like being able to con contribute to open source when you're moving jobs, whatever, like between personal projects that you haven't touched in two years, you know, like being able to learn this once and then use it everywhere is such an incredibly powerful tool. Like, people don't appreciate this until they've used a runtime or, or, or language which provides this to them. Like, you can go to any go developer and ask them if they would like. There, there's this, there's this saying in the Go ecosystem, um, that Go FMT is nobody's favorite, but, or, uh, wait, no, I don't remember what the, how the saying goes, but the saying essentially implies that the way that go FMT formats code, maybe not everybody likes, but everybody loves go F M T anyway, because it just makes everything look the same. And like, you can read your friend's code, your, your colleagues code, your new jobs code, the same way that you did your code from two years ago. And that's such an incredibly powerful feeling. especially if it's like well integrated into your IDE you clone a repository, open that repository, and like your testing panel on the left hand side just populates with all the tests, and you can click on them and run them. And if an assertion fails, it's like the standard output format that you're already familiar with. And it's, it's, it's a really great feeling. and if you don't believe me, just go try it out and, and then you will believe me, (laughs) [00:26:25] Jeremy: Yeah. No, I, I'm totally with you. I, I think it's interesting because with JavaScript in particular, it feels like the default in the community is the opposite, right? There's so many different ways. Uh, there are so many different build tools and testing frameworks and, formatters, and it's very different than, like you were mentioning, a go or a Rust that are more recent languages where they just include that, all Bundled in. Yeah. [00:26:57] Luca: Yeah, and I, I think you can see this as well in, in the time that average JavaScript developer spends configuring their tooling compared to a rest developer. Like if I write Rust, I write Rust, like all day, every day. and I spend maybe two, 3% of my time configuring Rust tooling like. Doing dependency imports, opening a new project, creating a format or config file, I don't know, deleting the build directory, stuff like that. Like that's, that's essentially what it means for me to configure my rest tooling. Whereas if you compare this to like a front-end JavaScript project, like you have to deal with making sure that your React version is compatible with your React on version, it's compatible with your next version is compatible with your ve version is compatible with your whatever version, right? this, this is all not automatic. Making sure that you use the right, like as, as a front end developer, you developer. You don't have just NPM installed, no. You have NPM installed, you have yarn installed, you have PNPM installed. You probably have like, Bun installed. And, and, and I don't know to use any of these, you need to have corepack enabled in Node and like you need to have all of their global bin directories symlinked into your or, or, or, uh, included in your path. And then if you install something and you wanna update it, you don't know, did I install it with yarn? Did I install it with N pNPM? Like this is, uh, significant complexity and you, you tend to spend a lot of time dealing with dependencies and dealing with package management and dealing with like tooling configuration, setting up esent, setting up prettier. and I, I think that like, especially Prettier, for example, really showed, was, was one of the first things in the JavaScript ecosystem, which was like, no, we're not gonna give you a config where you, that you can spend like six hours configuring, it's gonna be like seven options and here you go. And everybody used it because, Nobody likes configuring things. It turns out, um, and even though there's always the people that say, oh, well, I won't use your tool unless, like, we, we get this all the time. Like, I'm not gonna use Deno FMT because I can't, I don't know, remove the semicolons or, or use single quotes or change my tab width to 16. Right? Like, wait until all of your coworkers are gonna scream at you because you set the tab width to 16 and then see what they change it to. And then you'll see that it's actually the exact default that, everybody uses. So it'll, it'll take a couple more years. But I think we're also gonna get there, uh, like Node is starting to implement a, a test runner. and I, I think over time we're also gonna converge on, on, on, on like some standard build tools. Like I think ve, for example, is a great example of this, like, Doing a front end project nowadays. Um, like building new front end tooling that's not built on Vite Yeah. Don't like, Vite's it's become the standard and I think we're gonna see that in a lot more places. We should settle on what tools to use [00:29:52] Jeremy: Yeah, though I, I think it's, it's tricky, right? Because you have so many people with their existing projects. You have people who are starting new projects and they're just searching the internet for what they should use. So you're, you're gonna have people on web pack, you're gonna have people on Vite, I guess now there's gonna be Turbo pack, I think is another one that's [00:30:15] Luca: Mm-hmm. [00:30:16] Jeremy: There's, there's, there's all these different choices, right? And I, I think it's, it's hard to, to really settle on one, I guess, [00:30:26] Luca: Yeah, [00:30:27] Jeremy: uh, yeah. [00:30:27] Luca: like I, I, I think this is, this is in my personal opinion also failure of the Node Technical Steering committee, for the longest time to not decide that yes, we're going to bless this as the standard format for Node, and this is the standard package manager for Node. And they did, they sort of did, like, they, for example, node Blessed NPM as the standard, package manager for N for for node. But it didn't innovate on npm. Like no, the tech nodes, tech technical steering committee did not force NPM to innovate NPMs, a private company ultimately bought by GitHub and they had full control over how the NPM cli, um, evolved and nobody forced NPM to, to make sure that package install times are six times faster than they were. Three years ago, like nobody did that. so it didn't happen. And I think this is, this is really a failure of, of the, the, the, yeah, the no technical steering committee and also the wider JavaScript ecosystem of not being persistent enough with, with like focus on performance, focus on user experience, and, and focus on simplicity. Like things got so out of hand and I'm happy we're going in the right direction now, but, yeah, it was terrible for some time. (laughs) Node compatibility layer [00:31:41] Jeremy: I wanna talk a little bit about how we've been talking about Deno in the context of you just using Deno using its own standard library, but just recently last year you added a compatibility shim where people are able to use node libraries in Deno. [00:32:01] Luca: Mm-hmm. [00:32:01] Jeremy: And I wonder if you could talk to, like earlier you had mentioned that Deno has, a different permissions model. on the website it mentions that Deno's HTTP server is two times faster than node in a Hello World example. And I'm wondering what kind of benefits people will still get from Deno if they choose to use packages from Node. [00:32:27] Luca: Yeah, it's a great question. Um, so I think a, again, this is sort of a like, so just to clarify what we actually implemented, like what we have is we have support for you to import NPM packages. Um, so you can import any NPM package from NPM, from your type script or JavaScript ECMAScript module, um, that you have, you already have for your Deno code. Um, and we will under the hood, make sure that is installed somewhere in some directory globally. Like PNPM does. There's no local node modules folder you have to deal with. There's no package of Jason you have to deal with. Um, and there's no, uh, package. Jason, like versioning things you need to deal with. Like what you do is you do import cowsay from NPM colon cowsay at one, and that will import cowsay with like the semver tag one. Um, and it'll like do the sim resolution the same way node does, or the same way NPM does rather. And what you get from that is that essentially it gives you like this backdoor to a callout to all of the existing node code that Isri been written, right? Like you cannot expect that Deno developers, write like, I don't know. There was this time when Deno did not really have that many, third party modules yet. It was very early on, and I don't know the, you either, if you wanted to connect to Postgres and there was no Postgres driver available, then the solution was to write your own Postgres driver. And that is obviously not great. Um, (laughs) . So the better solution here is to let users for these packages where there's no Deno native or, or, or web native or standard native, um, package for this yet that is importable with url. Um, specifiers, you can import this from npm. Uh, so it's sort of this like backdoor into the existing NPM ecosystem. And we explicitly, for example, don't allow you to, create a package.json file or, import bare node specifiers because we don't, we, we want to stay standards compliant here. Um, but to make this work effectively, we need to give you this little back door. Um, and inside of this back door. All hell is like, or like everything is terrible inside there, right? Like inside there you can do bare specifiers and inside there you can like, uh, there's package.json and there's crazy node resolution and underscore underscore DIRNAME and common js. And like all of that stuff is supported inside of this backdoor to make all the NPM packages work. But on the outside it's exposed as this nice, ESM only, NPM specifiers. and the, the reason you would want to use this over, like just using node directly is because again, like you wanna use TypeScript, no config, like necessary. You want to use, you wanna have a formatter you wanna have a linter, you wanna have tooling that like does testing and benchmarking and compiling or whatever. All of that's built in. You wanna run this on the edge, like close to your users and like 30 different, 35 different, uh, points of presence. Um, it's like, Okay, push it to your git repository. Go to this website, click a button two times, and it's running in 35 data centers. like this is, this is the kind of ex like developer experience that you can, you do not get. You, I will argue that you cannot get with Node right now. Like even if you're using something like ts-node, it is not possible to get the same level of developer experience that you do with Deno. And the, the, the same like speed at which you can iterate, iterate on your projects, like create new projects, iterate on them is like incredibly fast in Deno. Like, I can open a, a, a folder on my computer, create a single file, may not ts, put some code in there and then call Deno Run may not. And that's it. Like I don't, I did not need to do NPM install I did not need to do NPM init -y and remove the license and version fields and from, from the generated package.json and like set private to true and whatever else, right? It just all works out of the box. And I think that's, that's what a lot of people come to deno for and, and then ultimately stay for. And also, yeah, standards compliance. So, um, things you build in Deno now are gonna work in five, 10 years, with no hassle. Node shims and testing [00:36:39] Jeremy: And so with this compatibility layer or this, this shim, is it where the node code is calling out to node APIs and you're replacing those with Deno compatible equivalents? [00:36:54] Luca: Yeah, exactly. Like for example, we have a shim in place that shims out the node crypto API on top of the web crypto api. Like sort of, some, some people may be familiar with this in the form of, um, Browserify shims. if anybody still remembers those, it's essentially. , your front end tooling, you were able to import from like node crypto in your front end projects and then behind the scenes your web packs or your browser replies or whatever would take that import from node crypto and would replace it with like the shim that was essentially exposed the same APIs node crypto, but under the hood, wasn't implemented with native calls, but was implemented on top of web crypto, or implemented in user land even. And Deno does something similar. there's a couple edge cases of APIs that there's, where, where we do not expose the underlying thing that we shim to, to end users, outside of the node shim. So like there's some, some APIs that I don't know if I have a good example, like node nextTick for example. Um, like to properly be able to shim node nextTick, you need to like implement this within the event loop in the runtime. and. , you don't need this in Deno, because Deno, you use the web standard queueMicrotask to, to do this kind of thing. but to be able to shim it correctly and run node applications correctly, we need to have this sort of like backdoor into some ugly APIs, um, which, which natively integrate in the runtime, but, yeah, like allow, allow this node code to run. [00:38:21] Jeremy: A, anytime you're replacing a component with a, a shim, I think there's concerns about additional bugs or changes in behavior that can be introduced. Is that something that you're seeing and, and how are you accounting for that? [00:38:38] Luca: Yeah, that's, that's an excellent question. So this is actually a, a great concern that we have all the time. And it's not just even introducing bugs, sometimes it's removing bugs. Like sometimes there's bugs in the node standard library which are there, and people are relying on these bugs to be there for the applications to function correctly. And we've seen this a lot, and then we implement this and we implement from scratch and we don't make that same bug. And then the test fails or then the application fails. So what we do is, um, we actually run node's test suite against Deno's Shim layer. So Node has a very extensive test suite for its own standard library, and we can run this suite against, against our shims to find things like this. And there's still edge cases, obviously, which node, like there was, maybe there's a bug which node was not even aware of existing. Um, where maybe this, like it's is, it's now standard, it's now like intended behavior because somebody relies on it, right? Like the second somebody relies on, on some non-standard or some buggy behavior, it becomes intended. Um, but maybe there was no test that explicitly tests for this behavior. Um, so in that case we'll add our own tests to, to ensure that. But overall we can already catch a lot of these by just testing, against, against node's tests. And then the other thing is we run a lot of real code, like we'll try run Prisma and we'll try run Vite and we'll try run NextJS and we'll try run like, I don't know, a bunch of other things that people throw at us and, check that they work and they work and there's no bugs. Then we did our job well and our shims are implemented correctly. Um, and then there's obviously always the edge cases where somebody did something absolutely crazy that nobody thought possible. and then they'll open an issue on the Deno repo and we scratch our heads for three days and then we'll fix it. And then in the next release there'll be a new bug that we added to make the compatibility with node better. so yeah, but I, yeah. Running tests is the, is the main thing running nodes test. Performance should be equal or better [00:40:32] Jeremy: Are there performance implications? If someone is running an Express App or an NextJS app in Deno, will they get any benefits from the Deno runtime and performance? [00:40:45] Luca: Yeah. It's actually, there is performance implications and they're usually. The opposite of what people think they are. Like, usually when you think of performance implications, it's always a negative thing, right? It's always okay. Like you, it's like a compromise. like the shim layer must be slower than the real node, right? It's not like we can run express faster than node can run, express. and obviously not everything is faster in Deno than it is in node, and not everything is faster in node than it is in Deno. It's dependent on the api, dependent on, on what each team decided to optimize. Um, and this also extends to other run times. Like you can always cherry pick results, like, I don't know, um, to, to make your runtime look faster in certain benchmarks. but overall, what really matters is that you do not like, the first important step for for good node compatibility is to make sure that if somebody runs your code or runs their node code in Deno or your other run type or whatever, It performs at least the same. and then anything on top of that great cherry on top. Perfect. but make sure the baselines is at least the same. And I think, yeah, we have very few APIs where we behave, where we, where, where like there's a significant performance degradation in Deno compared to Node. Um, and like we're actively working on these things. like Deno is not a, a, a project that's done, right? Like we have, I think at this point, like 15 or 16 or 17 engineers working on Deno, spanning across all of our different projects. And like, we have a whole team that's dedicated to performance, um, and a whole team that's dedicated node compatibility. so like these things get addressed and, and we make patch releases every week and a minor release every four weeks. so yeah, it's, it's not a standstill. It's, uh, constantly improving. What should go into the standard library? [00:42:27] Jeremy: Uh, something that kind of makes Deno stand out as it's standard library. There's a lot more in there than there is in in the node one. [00:42:38] Luca: Mm-hmm. [00:42:39] Jeremy: Uh, I wonder if you could speak to how you make decisions on what should go into it. [00:42:46] Luca: Yeah, so early on it was easier. Early on, the, the decision making process was essentially, is this something that a top 100 or top 1000 NPM library implements? And if it is, let's include it. and the decision making is still short of based on that. But right now we've already implemented most of the low hanging fruit. So things that we implement now are, have, have discussion around them whether we should implement them. And we have a process where, well we have a whole team of engineers on our side and we also have community members that, that will review prs and, and, and make comments. Open issues and, and review those issues, to sort of discuss the pros and cons of adding any certain new api. And sometimes it's also that somebody opens an issue that's like, I want, for example, I want an API to, to concatenate two unit data arrays together, which is something you can really easily do node with buffer dot con cat, like the scary buffer thing. and there's no standards way of doing that right now. So we have to have a little utility function that does that. But in parallel, we're thinking about, okay, how do we propose, an addition to the web standards now that makes it easy to concatenate iterates in the web standards, right? yeah, there's a lot to it. Um, but it's, it's really, um, it's all open, like all of our, all of our discussions for, for, additions to the standard library and things like that. It's all, all, uh, public on GitHub and the GitHub issues and GitHub discussions and GitHub prs. Um, so yeah, that's, that's where we do that. [00:44:18] Jeremy: Yeah, cuz to give an example, I was a little surprised to see that there is support for markdown front matter built into the standard library. But when you describe it as we look at the top a hundred thousand packages, are people looking at markdown? Are they looking at front matter? I, I'm sure there's a fair amount that are so that that makes sense. [00:44:41] Luca: Yeah, like it sometimes, like that one specifically was driven by, like, our team was just building a lot of like little blog pages and things like that. And every time it was either you roll your own front matter part or you look for one, which has like a subtle bug here and the other one has a subtle bug there and really not satisfactory with any of them. So, we, we roll that into the standard library. We add good test coverage for it good, add good documentation for it, and then it's like just a resource that people can rely on. Um, and you don't, you then don't have to make the choice of like, do I use this library to do my front meta parsing or the other library? No, you just use the one that's in the standard library. It's, it's also part of this like user experience thing, right? Like it's just a much nicer user experience, not having to make a choice, about stuff like that. Like completely inconsequential stuff. Like which library do we use to do front matter parsing? (laughs) [00:45:32] Jeremy: yeah. I mean, I think when, when that stuff is not there, then I think the temptation is to go, okay, let me see what node modules there are that will let me parse the front matter. Right. And then it, it sounds like probably ideally you want people to lean more on what's either in the standard library or what's native to the Deno ecosystem. Yeah. [00:46:00] Luca: Yeah. Like the, the, one of the big benefits is that the Deno Standard Library is implemented on top of web standards, right? Like it's, it's implemented on top of these standard APIs. so for example, there's node front matter libraries which do not run in the browser because the browser does not have the buffer global. maybe it's a nice library to do front matter pricing with, but. , you choose it and then three days later you decide that actually this code also needs to run in the browser, and then you need to go switch your front matter library. Um, so, so those are also kind of reasons why we may include something in Strand Library, like maybe there's even really good module already to do something. Um, but if there's certain reliance on specific node features that, um, we would like that library to also be compatible with, with, with web standards, we'll, uh, we might include in the standard library, like for example, YAML Parser, um, or the YAML Parser in the standard library is, is a fork of, uh, of the node YAML module. and it's, it's essentially that, but cleaned up and, and made to use more standard APIs rather than, um, node built-ins. [00:47:00] Jeremy: Yeah, it kind of reminds me a little bit of when you're writing a front end application, sometimes you'll use node packages to do certain things and they won't work unless you have a compatibility shim where the browser can make use of certain node APIs. And if you use the APIs that are built into the browser already, then you won't, you won't need to deal with that sort of thing. [00:47:26] Luca: Yeah. Also like less Bundled size, right? Like if you don't have to shim that, that's less, less code you have to ship to the client. WebAssembly use cases [00:47:33] Jeremy: Another thing I've seen with Deno is it supports running web assembly. [00:47:40] Luca: Mm-hmm. [00:47:40] Jeremy: So you can export functions and call them from type script. I was curious if you've seen practical uses of this in production within the context of Deno. [00:47:53] Luca: Yeah. there's actually a Bunch of, of really practical use cases, so probably the most executed bit of web assembly inside of Deno right now is actually yes, build like, yes, build has a web assembly, build like yeses. Build is something that's written and go. You have the choice of either running. Um, natively in machine code as, as like an ELF process on, on Linux or on on Windows or whatever. Or you can use the web assembly build and then it runs in web assembly. And the web assembly build is maybe 50% slower than the, uh, native build, but that is still significantly faster than roll up or, or, or, or I don't know, whatever else people use nowadays to do JavaScript Bun, I don't know. I, I just use es build always, um, So, um, for example, the Deno website, is running on Deno Deploy. And Deno Deploy does not allow you to run Subprocesses because it's, it's like this edge run time, which, uh, has certain security permissions that it's, that are not granted, one of them being sub-processes. So it needs to execute ES build. And the way it executes es build is by running them inside a web assembly. Um, because web assembly is secure, web assembly is, is something which is part of the JavaScript sandbox. It's inside the JavaScript sandbox. It doesn't poke any holes out. Um, so it's, it's able to run within, within like very strict security context. . Um, and then other examples are, I don't know, you want to have a HTML sanitizer, which is actually built on the real HTML par in a browser. we, we have an hdml sanitizer called com or, uh, ammonia, I don't remember. There's, there's an HTML sanitizer library on denoland slash x, which is built on the html parser from Firefox. Uh, which like ensures essentially that your html, like if you do HTML sanitization, you need to make sure your HTML par is correct, because if it's not, you might like, your browser might parse some HTML one way and your sanitizer pauses it another way and then it doesn't sanitize everything correctly. Um, so there's this like the Firefox HTML parser compiled to web assembly. Um, you can use that to. HTML sanitization, or the Deno documentation generation tool, for example. Uh, Deno Doc, there's a web assembly built for it that allows you to programmatically, like generate documentation for, for your type script modules. Um, yeah, and, and also like, you know, deno fmt is available as a WebAssembly module for programmatic access and a Bunch of other internal Deno, programs as well. Like, or, uh, like components, not programs. [00:50:20] Jeremy: What are some of the current limitations of web assembly and Deno for, for example, from web assembly, can I make HTTP requests? Can I read files? That sort of thing. [00:50:34] Luca: Mm-hmm. . Yeah. So web assembly, like when you spawn as web assembly, um, they're called instances, WebAssembly instances. It runs inside of the same vm, like the same, V8 isolate is what they're called, but. it does not have it, it's like a completely fresh sandbox, sort of, in the sense that I told you that between a runtime and like an engine essentially implements no IO calls, right? And a runtime does, like a runtime, pokes holds into the, the, the engine. web assembly by default works the same way that there is no holes poked into its sandbox. So you have to explicitly poke some holes. Uh, if you want to do HTTP calls, for example, when, when you create web assembly instance, it gives you, or you can give it something called imports, uh, which are essentially JavaScript function bindings, which you can call from within the web assembly. And you can use those function bindings to do anything you can from JavaScript. You just have to pass them through explicitly. and. . Yeah. Depending on how you write your web assembly, like if you write it in Rust, for example, the tooling is very nice and you can just call some JavaScript code from your Rust, and then the build system will automatically make sure that the right function bindings are passed through with the right names. And like, you don't have to deal with anything. and if you're writing go, it's slightly more complicated. And if you're writing like raw web assembly, like, like the web assembly, text format and compiling that to a binary, then like you have to do everything yourself. Right? It's, it's sort of the difference between writing C and writing JavaScript. Like, yeah. What level of abstraction do you want? It's definitely possible though, and that's for limitations. it, the same limitations as, as existing browsers apply. like the web assembly support in Deno is equivalent to the web assembly support in Chrome. so you can do, uh, many things like multi-threading and, and stuff like that already. but especially around, shared mutable memory, um, and having access to that memory from JavaScript. That's something which is a real difficulty with web assembly right now. yeah, growing web assembly memory is also rather difficult right now. There's, there's a, there's a couple inherent limitations right now with web assembly itself. Um, but those, those will be worked out over time. And, and Deno is like very up to date with the version of, of the standard, it, it implements, um, through v8. Like we're, we're, we're up to date with Chrome Beta essentially all the time. So, um, yeah. Any, anything you see in, in, in Chrome beta is gonna be in Deno already. Deno Deploy [00:52:58] Jeremy: So you talked a little bit about this before, the Deno team, they have their own, hosting. Platform called Deno Deploy. So I wonder if you could explain what that is. [00:53:12] Luca: Yeah, so Deno has this really nice, this really nice concept of permissions which allow you to, sorry, I'm gonna start somewhere slightly, slightly unrelated. Maybe it sounds like it's unrelated, but you'll see in a second. It's not unrelated. Um, Deno has this really nice permission system which allows you to sandbox Deno programs to only allow them to do certain operations. For example, in Deno, by default, if you try to open a file, it'll air out and say you don't have read permissions to read this file. And then what you do is you specify dash, dash allow read um, maybe you have to give it. they can either specify, allow, read, and then it'll grant to read access to the entire file system. Or you can explicitly specify files or folders or, any number of things. Same goes for right permissions, same goes for network permissions. Um, same goes for running subprocesses, all these kind of things. And by limiting your permissions just a little bit. Like, for example, by just disabling sub-processes and foreign function interface, but allowing everything else, allowing reeds and allowing network access and all that kind of stuff. we can run Deno programs in a way that is significantly more cost effective to you as the end user than, and, and like we can cold start them much faster than, like you may be able to with a, with a more conventional container based, uh, system. So what, what do you, what Deno Deploy is, is a way to run JavaScript or Deno Code, on our data centers all across the world with very little latency. like you can write some JavaScript code which execute, which serves HTTP requests deploy that to our platform, and then we'll make sure to spin that code up all across the world and have your users be able to access it through some URL or, or, or some, um, custom domain or something like that. and this is some, this is very similar to CloudFlare workers, for example. Um, and it's like Netlify Edge functions is built on top of Deno Deploy. Like Netlify Edge functions is implemented on top of Deno Deploy, um, through our sub hosting product. yeah, essentially Deno Deploy is, is, um, yeah, a cloud hosting service for JavaScript, um, which allows you to execute arbitrary JavaScript. and there there's a couple, like different directions we're going there. One is like more end user focused, where like you link your GitHub repository and. Like, we'll, we'll have a nice experience like you do with Netlify and Versace, that word like your commits automatically get deployed and you get preview deployments and all that kind of thing. for your backend code though, rather than for your front end websites. Although you could also write front-end websites and you know, obviously, and the other direction is more like business focused. Like you're writing a SaaS application and you want to allow the user to customize, the check like you're writing a SaaS application that provides users with the ability to write their own online store. Um, and you want to give them some ability to customize the checkout experience in some way. So you give them a little like text editor that they can type some JavaScript into. And then when, when your SaaS application needs to hit this code path, it sends a request to us with the code, we'll execute that code for you in a secure way. In a secure sandbox. You can like tell us you, this code only has access to like my API server and no other networks to like prevent data exfiltration, for example. and then you do, you can have all this like super customizable, code in inside of your, your SaaS application without having to deal with any of the operational complexities of scaling arbitrary code execution, or even just doing arbitrary code execution, right? Like it's, this is a very difficult problem and give it to someone else and we deal with it and you just get the benefits. yeah, that's Deno Deploy, and it's built by the same team that builds the Deno cli. So, um, all the, all of your favorite, like Deno cli, or, or Deno APIs are available in there. It's just as web standard is Deno, like you have fetch available, you have blob available, you have web crypto available, that kind of thing. yeah. Running code in V8 isolates [00:56:58] Jeremy: So when someone ships you their, their code and you run it, you mentioned that the, the cold start time is very low. Um, how, how is the code being run? Are people getting their own process? It sounds like it's not, uh, using containers. I wonder if you could explain a little bit about how that works. [00:57:20] Luca: Yeah, yeah, I can, I can give a high level overview of how it works. So, the way it works is that we essentially have a pool of, of Deno processes ready. Well, it's not quite Deno processes, it's not the same Deno CLI that you download. It's like a modified version of the Deno CLI based on the same infrastructure, that we have spun up across all of our different regions across the world, uh, across all of our different data centers. And then when we get a request, we'll route that request, um, the first time we get request for that, that we call them deployments, that like code, right? We'll take one of these idle Deno processes and will assign that code to run in that process, and then that process can go serve the requests. and these process, they're, they're, they're isolated and they're, you. it's essentially a V8 isolate. Um, and it's a very, very slim, it's like, it's a much, much, much slimmer version of the Deno cli essentially. Uh, which the only thing it can do is JavaScript execution and like, it can't even execute type script, for example, like type script is we pre-process it up front to make the the cold start faster. and then what we do is if you don't get a request for some amount of. , we'll, uh, spin down that, um, that isolate and, uh, we'll spin up a new idle one in its place. And then, um, if you get another request, I don't know, an hour later for that same deployment, we'll assign it to a new isolate. And yeah, that's a cold start, right? Uh, if you have an isolate which receives, or a, a deployment rather, which receives a Bunch of traffic, like let's say you receive a hundred requests per second, we can send a Bunch of that traffic to the same isolate. Um, and we'll make sure that if, that one isolate isn't able to handle that load, we'll spin it out over multiple isolates and we'll, we'll sort of load balance for you. Um, and we'll make sure to always send to the, to the point of present that's closest to, to the user making the request. So they get very minimal latency. and they get we, we've these like layers of load balancing in place and, and, and. I'm glossing over a Bunch of like security related things here about how these, these processes are actually isolated and how we monitor to ensure that you don't break out of these processes. And for example, Deno Deploy does, it looks like you have a file system cuz you can read files from the file system. But in reality, Deno Deploy does not have a file system. Like the file system is a global virtual file system. which is, is, uh, yeah, implemented completely differently than it is in Deno cli. But as an end user you don't have to care about that because the only thing you care about is that it has the exact same API as the Deno cli and you can run your code locally and if it works there, it's also gonna work in deploy. yeah, so that's, that's, that's kind of. High level of Deno Deploy. If, if any of this sounds interesting to anyone, by the way, uh, we're like very actively hiring on, on Deno Deploy. I happen to be the, the tech lead for, for a Deno Deploy product. So I'm, I'm always looking for engineers, to, to join our ranks and, and build cool distributed systems. Deno.com/jobs. [01:00:15] Jeremy: for people who aren't familiar with the isolates, are these each run in their own processes, or do you have a single process and that has a whole Bunch of isolates inside it? [01:00:28] Luca: in, in the general case, you can say that we run, uh, one isolate per process. but there's many asterisks on that. Um, because, it's, it's very complicated. I'll just say it's very complicated. Uh, in, in the general case though, it's, it's one isolate per process. Yeah. Configuring permissions [01:00:45] Jeremy: And then you touched a little bit on the permissions system. Like you gave the example of somebody could have a website where they let their users give them code to execute. how does it look in terms of specifying what permissions people have? Like, is that a configuration file? Are those flags you pass in? What, what does that look? [01:01:08] Luca: Yeah. So, so that product is called sub hosting. It's, um, slightly different from our end user platform. Um, it's essentially a service that allows you to, like, you email us, well, we'll send you a, um, onboard you, and then what you can do is you can send HTTP requests to a certain end point with a, authentication token and. a reference to some code to execute. And then what we'll do is, we'll, um, when we receive that HTTP request, we'll fetch the code, it's spin up and isolate, execute the code. execute the code. We serve the request, return you the response, um, and then we'll pipe logs to you and, and stuff like that. and the, and, and part of that is also when we, when we pull the, um, the, the code for to spin up the isolate, that code doesn't just include the code that we're executing, but also includes things like permissions, and, and various other, we call this isolate configuration. Um, you can inspect, this is all public. we have public docs for this at Deno.com/subhosting. I think. Yes, Deno.com/subhosting. [01:02:08] Jeremy: And is that built on top of something that's a part of the public Deno project, the open source part? Or is this specific to this sub hosting

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