mergeconflict250
James: [00:00:00] Welcome everyone to episode 250 of mergers conflict. This is your weekly entertainment technology development, mobile thingy with myself James Monson manual, and my best friend in the entire world. Frank Krueger Franks. How's it going, buddy? 
Frank: [00:00:24] Uh, great. Have you told Danny that because I'm pretty sure you traded, uh, sides and Danny is your favorite person in the world.
James: [00:00:33] Let me tell you a secret, Frank, I everybody's my favorite person in the whole world. Um, I've been, I've been so much love to spread around. Yeah. Whenever I have people on the Xamarin show or anything like that, I'm always like my best friend in the entire world and this and that. And then we started doing these podcasts internally at Microsoft, like me and like leadership team and stuff like that.
And I got nominated because I know how to do podcasting on occasion. Um, I'm I'm okay. I'm okay. Uh, and. I've been doing some with Amanda, Amanda silver. And it has been really, really fun, but I open up every podcast. I go, you know, welcome back to a blah, blah, blah. I know the name of it. I'm like my best friend in the entire world, Amanda silver.
And she laughs every time. And uh, I told her on the two podcasts ago, I go, I go, I hope that one day it will be reciprocated because I'm like, you're already, you're already my best friend, Amanda, but maybe one day. I will be your best friend. We'll see it. We got to get there. You gotta you'll it's built on trust.
Yeah, we gotta get there. Well, I'm working slowly one podcast at a time, Frank. 
Frank: [00:01:35] Yeah. I don't think he should be. So she'll do it maybe in 30 years or something. You got to build up that trust. I was kind of hoping you had said a best friend in the whole world Satya. So I'm looking forward to that podcast moment.
James: [00:01:48] I will be very excited whenever I get to meet, uh, Satya. Um, if I ever get to present, I have a few colleagues that have gotten to present, uh, to Satya and it seems joyous. Um, I have another few other friends. I worked at Amazon and got to present to Bezos. And that seems, I mean, it seems stressful, but you know, it seems awesome too.
Frank: [00:02:07] I would totally do the BFF thing for both of them. I have no shame. 
James: [00:02:12] I think ethic is as part of my natural cadence when I, when I do those types of engagements. So I got to do them. And Frank, you've been my best friend for 250 of these beautiful, absolutely amazing podcasts. Um, thank you for being, 
Frank: [00:02:25] I'm not into numerology, but for some reason I really love the two 50 number.
It's a good number. Solid. Yeah. Yeah. I like it. Congrats, James. Somehow we did it. 
James: [00:02:37] I think the problem that I have with a year is that it's 52 weeks. Why is it 52 weeks? It feels like someone though. Oh, we got 14 extra days knowing your end around, you know, why couldn't it have been 50? That seems like a great, great number.
It was like podcasts would align, you know, I don't know. No, you know, they try to 
Frank: [00:02:58] metric calendar. At one point, the French did when the metric system was invented. They also came up with metric time at the same time. But, um, people went insane. It was something like a 10 day week because they wanted everything to be based 10, the simplicity, the beauty of the metric system.
But I forgot why, but it was basically like, people just weren't getting enough time off basically. So everyone's like no more with the metric time. And, um, we, we have our calendar because we're a weird old civilization that just keeps using the same old calendar we've been using forever. People hate change.
James: [00:03:34] That's why. Yeah. We can't get rid of daylight savings time. So it was like, come on. Yeah. 
Frank: [00:03:39] Change the month system at this point, let alone, we can't even change it. Stupid daylight savings time. 
James: [00:03:44] Well, It is, I was at 250, which means it's also a lightning topics. Lightning talks, lightening thingies, which means we're going to cover a bunch of topics submitted by you, our listeners.
And we're going to actually just do a bunch of them and not necessarily limit them to five minutes. So they may be three minutes, two minutes, one minute, 30 seconds, or maybe six minutes, seven minutes. And we'll see how it goes. But before we get there, let's thank our amazing podcast sponsor this week. So we can just keep rolling through everything.
Sync fusion. Yes. Sync fusion is back this year and all. The time for your applications, that basically everything you need, you want to make an app. They got everything you need, you need controls, you need charts and graphs. You need calendars, you need Excel. Or I was doing Excel integration today. And one of my applications, I kid you not sync fusion.
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Frank: [00:04:52] Oh, well, thank you. Sync fusion. I love having them as a sponsor and I love all their stuff. Oh, that Excel stuff and their evaluator, they have just like a calculator built in there. You can just use that. 
James: [00:05:03] I like calculators. I like calculus. I was doing some, I was doing some Excel math today. I was parsing a, I was parsing a daytime string into a daytime Excel saddle, if you will.
I did like first and I did some splitting. It was, it was a mid, I used mid. 
Frank: [00:05:22] That is some classic Excel. I remember writing my first birthday. How old are you? Calculator and Excel. And having to do that stuff. Oh, good times. Sorry. 
James: [00:05:32] You so good. What a good go get up. Get good app. All right. Let's Oh, right. Break it down.
What'd you get? We, we, so we got two tweets. I put out a tweet and then you did a retweet, a quoted retweet, and we both got separate answers. So we're going to go back and forth based on Hugh. You. Actually decided to respond to and 50, 54 and four. So they both, they love as equally. Frank is what I'm seeing here in here.
Frank: [00:05:57] It's not a, it's not a competition, James, but this one, this is a good one. This is a programming language, one coming in from Thomas. Hi Thomas. So ask the question. Is there space in.net for a language between C sharp and F sharp? Like TypeScript or Python functions on their own outside of classes, if you really want them, but not fully at sharp functional.
And I say, of course, there's room for that kind of stuff. Um, one of the things I love most about that net too, is it's pretty easy to write compilers and things for it. So there's definitely room there. Often during my Twitch show, I love to talk about, um, I would do like an F sharp, the good parts, because I've sharp has become quite a very large language.
And personally, I don't use all the bits. So I've always thought about like a Frank tailored version of F sharp or something like that. But I think that, um, we are seeing, I think the question's interesting because the two languages are definitely sharing a lot of features these days. Um, C-sharp just got a lot of immutable niceness with.
Records and pattern matching and just, you know, tightening up the syntax, uh, the new switch statement. I kind of love that new switch statement. It's a lot like the F sharp match statement, but they're fundamentally deep down very different languages. And it's just neat that their feature sets are emerging like that.
So there is room for that. Um, I'm going to let you chime in now just on your opinions on all that, but I want to come back and say how I actually feel though. 
James: [00:07:30] There's a language in between those days called VB. Those are the three languages of, of Donnette. Frank did well. Uh, I mean, they're all, they're VB very popular, very, very popular languages, fully supported.
I think that there's plenty of room for new languages, just like there's many room for languages outside of.net or people to transpile and to run into dotnet too. It depends on what you're trying to get out of it for me. You know, what I've really always appreciated is that these different languages have their own flavors of.
What are custom tailored for what they're really, really good at? Um, I always think like F sharp as a functional language is very good at like machine learning and AI and in different functional type things. It can do everything right. You can do anything in any of these languages, but there's, there's tailoring learning C sharp being a general purpose.
Language has been modernized and it's familiar and it's intuitive. I think for many people coming from other programming languages, it's very inviting, um, for coming in. So the problem with any of these languages is sort of what you just said is that they've been growing over time and there's a lot of series of different, um, versions of source code out there with different things that can only progress so far.
So if you had a new programming language, which we've seen all the time, you get to introduce. All those things by default. So imagine if everything was nullable by default, you know what I mean? Like, wouldn't that be amazing because it was introduced in V1 of the programming language. That's, uh, um, always kind of fancies me about these new programming languages that come out, but then over time, the stuff will get built on top of it.
But again, I don't know, but you can always do something. Is there, I guess there's there is there space in the market for another programming language in dotnet to grow. Bigger than those three programming languages. That may be as a question. And I'm going to say probably not, but who knows? 
Frank: [00:09:28] Yeah, I see. I don't want to put a limit like that on it because that's what, like 20 years old at this point and C-sharp is 20 years old and the runtime is still good.
It's still getting moved around to different platforms or anything. And I feel like if, you know, if not, if dot-net is going to be here for another, at least 10 years, probably another 20 years. And so will there be another language by that point, maybe? Yeah, possibly not see sharp could keep advancing, who knows, or things might get even weirder.
Who knows what runtimes will look like in 20 years. But I wanted to go back and give another shout out to, um, there's a book called, uh, I think it's elements of programming style. One of the neat things about it is they use like eight different. Programming styles, imperative programming, functional programming, object oriented programming.
And for others, I can't think of off the top of my head, um, to write essentially the same program and they use the same programming language Python, but these like seven or whatever, distinct styles of programming, and it's really informative and enlightening to see, um, See what a programming language actually is.
So you have to make some decisions on what kind of style that is. And I would say it's fun to mix the styles. Like Scala tries to mix them, but you can get very muddy also when you mix things. Now, me personally, I think, um, if there is to be a new.net language, I don't think it, it should not be like a rust or it should not be a Swift.
It should not be one of these incrementally. Different than C sharp, sharper F sharp. Those are in my opinion, not advancements on programming languages. We've pretty, we've stagnated a lot in programming languages right now. So I would like to see larger, um, problems tackled my personal pet peeve is that we are still designing programming languages for batch processing.
Take some data. Uh, do some computations on it and spit some data out that is functional programming. That is essentially all programming it's object oriented programming from a high level view, but it's not what a UI program is anymore. It's not what a web server is anymore. Nowadays data is constantly changing.
We need to change programming languages to understand that we're going to be rerunning these computations constantly, and it should find the correct deltas. It should find. Hidden cashing points. It should be a lot more sophisticated. So I want to see. Better programming languages. I'm not interested in, you know, a C sharp that I don't know, remove semi-colons that'd be great.
Yeah. I don't care. You're 
James: [00:12:09] not changing anything. You're not looking for the Python of C-sharp is what you're saying. Um, No. I, I agree the, the, the, the cool part, like, that's why I said if it was fundamentally coming out and trying to solve some of those problems for specific workloads, and it is a common language runtime.
If you go back all the way back, right. It all piles into bits. And the CLR is, is able to process these languages. And that's why there's three of them that are there. And there's a new standard. And obviously the C-sharp standard thing that the team put out there getting all the eczema stuff, all this stuff.
I don't, I don't know anything about it, nor do I really, you know, no. Um, I guess it's important, but, uh, there's there's standards on these things, so it's all possible. Frank, everything is possible, but it could be the Frank Krueger language, the K K sharp Kruger sharp. 
Frank: [00:12:55] Oh, is that what it is? I always struggle with the name.
Uh, my get hub is full of programming language attempts because what drew me to the CLR was it's so easy to write a compiler for I've written. Ten-ish compilers for the CLR now. So that's not the issue. The issue is I want to contribute something that advances the state-of-the-art not just repeats what we've been doing for the last 30 years.
James: [00:13:19] Yes. All right, here we go. Three rapid fire. I got like rapid fire, three questions over here for multiple people. So rapid fire. Quick answers from this for Danny. All right. This one, actually, this is a little bit harder to answer, but it says what's the best platform for a desktop app. I mean, that's generic to build one, to run one.
Frank: [00:13:38] Well, I don't know. For a desktop app. I mean, we did a whole episode on windows stuff, but, um, what is my favorite? Uh, Oh, uh, Danny, best. Come on. We need some, we need some criteria's here, James, cover this. I gotta think. 
James: [00:13:57] I don't know, I just have always gone whatever the default is and what covers your best, whatever.
I don't know. Like the new default will be project reunion with when you whined, like that's that's great. Um, Donna Maui will probably be my default for anything desktop. Cause it covers my stuff. They're all valid. Go live. Okay. Here's the answer goes in another episode. Number two. Um, what are your top three MVVM frameworks rank.
Frank: [00:14:20] Top three MVV am. Yeah. I am going with Xamarin forms, Xamarin forms, Xamarin forms. Yeah, 
James: [00:14:33] I've used, um, I just use the base, you know, I'm S I'm playing, I'm playing generic James over here. I just, uh, like my, my peanut butter on bread. 
Frank: [00:14:45] I've stated on multiple episodes. I like simple code, but I I'm feeling embarrassed right now, but I make very concrete decisions to keep my code simple.
So when it comes to frameworks, I don't use any because UI frameworks today are far more advanced than the pro form frameworks I ever used as a little kitty programmer. So I already feel like everything's already been written for me. I'm just filling in the blanks. 
James: [00:15:09] Yeah. And you know, a lot of the MVVM frameworks, they, their specialties are in and around like the testability and the enterprise scale of it.
That's not what I build. And to me, a lot of those things are built into it. And actually when you think of Donna and Maui, everything interface based first, and it's using the new host builder stuff, I don't know. It's just so good at the things I used to use in the password. MVVM light because I had like helpers, but I mean, I use my helper library, but that's not a framework.
And. I use 
Frank: [00:15:38] your helper library. So I'm replacing my number one with whatever James has helped her library is called. I don't even know what it's MVVM helpers, right? 
James: [00:15:44] That's what it is. Yeah. They're helpers from DVM. Yeah. It's like four 
Frank: [00:15:48] classes. It's 
James: [00:15:49] perfect. It's pretty. It's pretty fair, right? Yeah. Uh, all right.
Uh, and in fact, you know, if I could go back in time, I would rather, instead of those being an, a DLL, I would just plop down those files for you, like SQL. I used to do, because then you could just make them year-round, it'd be perfect. Um, yeah. All right. Well, good question from Danny. We haven't, we've talked a bit in past ones, but it's 2021.
He wants to know a flutter has any merits. 
Frank: [00:16:13] Oh, Um, yeah, absolutely. Um, uh, I would say flutters merits are it's cross platform. This, I believe that they are doing all what we used to call owner, draw rendering where the, the framework itself is doing all the renderings. So it's the old Java promise write once, run everywhere, kind of old promise.
Um, that's fantastic if you're into that kind of app. Um Hmm. Uh, they also have like some kind of hot reload thing. But overall, I'd say it's proven itself. It's lasted this long, but I still don't trust it. 
James: [00:16:50] Does it because you don't trust it or you don't trust Google? 
Frank: [00:16:53] I don't trust Google, not a particular fan of dark.
The programming language that they created. Dart does exactly what I was complaining about before. It's just another programming language from the last 30 years. It hasn't introduced any new concepts that are interesting, which is really kind of sad because one of my favorite programming language designers, Gilliad, brah, is on that team.
Uh, he worked on Java. He works on new speak, worked on, um, small talk back in the day. Oh, wow. So really good credentials, but, um, big Google doesn't always have the most artistic things to come out of it. 
James: [00:17:26] Uh, I think all. Every single framework out there has merits. I mean, neuro also wouldn't exist. Um, you know, Y uh, whether you're using react native or you're using Cordova, or are you using flutter or using Xamarin or you're using, you know, Donna Maui, are you using the base platforms?
Everything has merit Avalonia whether in whatever you went on to use, right. They all have merit. They're all great. Um, based on your needs, like, if you are. In the need for what that framework delivers, and you are wanting to use the tools and the libraries and the language support that you get in those different frameworks, then, then perfect.
That that's that's up your alley. I think when it comes to. Obviously react, react native. I'm not a web developer. So being checked that off, I'm just not, not my world. I'm just not a web developer. Blazer feels a little bit more familiar to me now that I understand razor binding and syntax, but, um, I'm, I'm still a, uh, client developer at heart with my C sharpened.
XAML driven binding, and my love and passion there. I don't like CSS. That's my problem. Again, dart. I think it's the same thing as I feel like with at least react and react native, you can use your JavaScript skills everywhere, dart, like you were saying. Um, of course, if you can do anything in dark in flutter, then, then you're good.
Right. But if you want to then reach into other things that maybe is like my major issue with it again, I've been a C sharp developer for a long time. And I think that the advantages of C sharp and.net and things that are happening with dotnet six, for example, um, Um, hot reload everywhere and every careful, careful.
Frank: [00:19:09] Oh, there's a next topic. Hey, okay. Okay. I'm going to pause you because that's the next question. So this is rapid Brown. Number two, I got a two record round questions from Clifford and I'm going to start, James, what most excites you about dotnet six and Maui? 
James: [00:19:28] Well, Donna Maui, I would say is the new rendering architecture and the.
Just, it, it makes it feel as though all of the learnings and customer research and data given back from seven plus years across platform development are all being merged into this, you know, mega, uh, framework. That's solving a lot of the problems with images and SVGs and app icons and splash screens and hot reload and all this stuff.
The biggest I've ever done at six for me. You know, besides Don Moe launching in that with the next gen versions of iOS and Android, is that the team is enabling how reload everywhere, including in C-sharp code inside of the like runtime and in the latest preview, preview three, they in turn this on for blazer applications as the first one, which means you hit a five and no matter what you're doing, even in your code, you just.
You know, write code and it just works and reloads immediately. And, um, that's really cool to me. That's probably one of my, my big wins and I'm very excited for how about you, Frank? 
Frank: [00:20:43] That, that is super cool. Um, I've worked on so many plugins trying to do exactly that, so that's definitely excited, but that, wasn't what I was thinking of because I'm so.
So boring, James, you know, what I'm most excited about is the silly unified projects with the multi targeting frameworks. I know it's small, but I feel like I took a survey on Delfi, the programming language. I was always, uh, I called it Delphi, uh, back in the day. And I think I took a survey in like 1998 and they asked, would you like it?
If you had a single project file that allowed you to compile for a windows and Linux and Mac. And I'm like, yes, I would like that. I would pay many dollars for that. And I feel like I've been waiting for that feature since 1998. So I am very excited for that to be coming, but on a more, um, What I actually actually am excited about is Matt catalyst.
Oh yes. Yes, he has. He has, because I make my living off of Apple. It's just how it is. So, um, I am super excited to be able to focus all my attention on one app framework, UI kit, specifically, Danny asked about what is your favorite desktop framework? I mean, my answer is app kit because I love writing Mac apps, but.
At the same time. I didn't want to answer that because I really don't want to be writing app kit anymore. I want to be using Mac catalysts. So that's my, 
James: [00:22:13] my, my favorite desktop platform. UI kit. Yeah. I 
Frank: [00:22:17] mean, seriously, that is my favorite because an iPad is a desktop. I hate to break it to y'all, but it is so it just snapped multi windowing and it even is now, um, 
James: [00:22:29] I do like the one thing that was in, um, In, uh, uh, Rich's blog post for pre-vis three, which is they've improved interface, checking and casting by up to 40%.
And we're talking in the. Nanoseconds, they're measuring this in the fraction of nanoseconds on these things, which is pretty cool, actually. 
Frank: [00:22:51] Yeah, it's actually a little sad how interfaces work and.net. It's one of the less elegant. Parts of the runtime, because basically any object can implement any interface.
So they have to create these insanely large lookup tables to make any of that code proficient. And so I think it's always just a little pet peeve. I think in the back of the runtime people's heads, they're always just like, how can we make interfaces faster? So that's great. 
James: [00:23:19] Got it. All right. They're all 
Frank: [00:23:20] exciting.
We have another, those were pretty quick. So here, here. This is a, this might be a little tougher. Where do you see mobile development in five years? Time, James. 
James: [00:23:31] Exactly the same. I, I, I, that was my answer. I think we're Pete. I think, you know, we talked about this like a year or two ago and I was like, I'm over, I'm over mobile.
I'm over smartphones, right? That was 
Frank: [00:23:45] a great episode. Everyone go back. I was so afraid of what James was going to say in that episode. So please go find the one where James said I'm over it. 
James: [00:23:54] It's the same, you know, I we'll have, uh, we'll have better support for, um, tablets, uh, especially an iPad. It'll be easier to build and will be.
It'll be easier to build the, a richer cross-platform mobile. Applications that run across desktop tablet and phone because these frameworks, all of them are now taking into consideration where seven years ago they were taking more into consideration. Just the phone, right? If you look at down at Maui, it has an entire windowing system built into it.
And also what do we know happened in iOS? What 13 there's a whole, we talked about a whole episode on the. The window seem delicate thingy. Right. And, uh, um, I think they'll just be better, but as far as what it changes today, I can almost guarantee that in five years from now, I could also still create my, my cadence.
And it would, it would still be probably the same. Um, maybe the Bluetooth will be faster. I Bluetooth LTE 7.0, 
Frank: [00:24:55] I dunno. Dot net 11 preview four just came out with C-sharp 8 million in it. That I, I kinda, it's a little sad, but I have to a hundred percent agree with, um, there is nothing on the horizon right now, and that's a little bit sad.
Um, there are no advancements in programming languages happening. I'm sorry to be such a downer there, but it really, there there's nothing going on there. Um, machine learning's coming up, but honestly it just doesn't apply to every app out there. Uh, I would always like to see, you know, more sensors, that kind of stuff.
I think that's always what kind of separates mobile from other things as the kind of neat hardware you can pack on a device, but we have definitely plateaued and some kind of functionality like that. So I don't see any big advancements coming up. Maybe that means it's, we're perfectly due for it. That would be wonderful.
I would love a disruption. Honestly. I would love it disruption, but I just don't see it coming 
James: [00:25:57] well, just imagine if someone was like, Hey, five years ago, someone said, how do you see desktop development changing? I don't know. It's pretty much good. I don't know. I mean, I, I don't, I mean, Someone's like, Hey, you, uh, do you have a brow, like go back to Chrome version?
Wild. What do you think Chrome will look like 10 years or now? I don't know about the same. Um, you know, I mean, I don't want to down the downplay, you know, Clifford's question here. However, I do think five years, I don't know if we'll be there yet. I think that we'll just see more trends of other technology pieces.
Like we've talked about the podcast. So I think we'll see more virtual reality, more IOT, things like that. More mixed reality. Will they peak like mobile in five years? I don't know. Not, not quite yet. I don't think we're going to be there yet. I will only be 40 and technology moves fast, but I don't think it moves as fast as we think it does sometimes.
Frank: [00:26:51] Yeah, it's funny getting perspective. Like I keep glorifying the days of visual basic and Delphi and all that stuff. And I look back and I realized that was only like a five or six year period. Like things were moving so much faster back then compared to how they are today. Um, Uh, I, I I'm hopeful for more wearable stuff.
I'm hopeful for more IOT. The one sad thing about IOT is everyone keeps creating these very closed sandboxes, but we're, we're getting integrations. I don't know what the full. Oh, what role does mobile play in an IOT world? What world is, what role does IOT play in a mobile world? I don't fully understand that myself aside from we keep creating these terrible remote control apps for IOT devices on mobile.
I hope those go away. So I hope we find some refinement there, or at least some standardization I'm always up for more wearables. Um, I don't know some kind of like cool led socks. I'm here 
James: [00:27:54] for that. I want to say here also, I'm not, I'm not mad or upset or I don't think it's a bad thing that, that this is happening because when you remind me of 10 years ago, how fast everything was moving, it also meant I was rewriting my application every year and a half because everything in Android and iOS was changing so rapidly.
I mean, this is the truth. I mean, Things do change, but I like now I'm building for more things and I needed to change less often in a way. 
Frank: [00:28:22] I hope that you caught the very hopeful tone in my voice, because for software developers, when hardware and platforms are stable, that's when we can really refine our craft.
We need that stability to create good apps. I have no problem with, um, the current plateau or stagnation, whatever you want to call it. Peak, peak peak UI kit. I don't know what to call it. Um, Yeah, disruptions are you, you never see a disruption coming. That's why there are disruption, but I feel like we're in a very comfortable spot, especially.net, everything.
These days, we have a lot of good choices to choose from. So I'm optimistic about the next five years, but I really don't think much is going to change. 
James: [00:29:07] No. Yeah, no, and that's okay. I'm down for it. Like I said, it will depend on what Google and Apple and Microsoft do in this space. But from what I'm thinking is I'm thinking that it's going to be relatively similar.
Um, but we'll see, we'll see how it goes. All right. How about this one? Frank we got, um, whether you think the Phoenix suns are going to take it this year, that'd be my good friend, Jesse Bearden, best friend in the world. Jesse. Uh, I think about this. I 
Frank: [00:29:39] think about the songs. I love this. I love this. I had to bring up a stats sheet because I do not follow the ball's basket, but, um, I do like the game I used to, I I'm a big nerd.
I used to play the saxophone and I used to play in a college pep band. And so I've been to like, Oh, a lot of basketball games, I think more than a lot of other B roll. So I, I liked the game. I especially liked basketball because it's quick. Now I know absolutely nothing about these teams, but I will say this, the sun seemed to be in second place and their conference or whatever they do in basketball.
And they seem to have, um, My whole thing in sports is regression to the mean, if a team is excelling, but they don't normally Excel, chances are they're not going to do well. If a team is doing well and they normally do well, chances are they'll continue to do well. So I feel like the sons are in a very good position because the team above them, I can't remember their name.
They look like they're on a bit of a little bit of a luck streak. And luck runs out. So I'm giving it to the sons. What about you? 
James: [00:30:42] I'm gonna go with the Cleveland Cavaliers because, um, that's my hometown of Cleveland. If it's not Cleveland, I'm ending with the Seattle. Supersonics I think they may take it this year.
Oh no, there's not. We don't have it. 
Frank: [00:30:57] Okay. You're killing me here. I'm like, I've, I've heard of that team. Was that like from the seventies? Eighties. 
James: [00:31:03] Okay. I think we have, well, we have like those, the Supersonics didn't go. I mean, they played a key arena. Not too long ago. I mean, it's gotta be 10, 15 years ago.
It couldn't be that long ago. I guess, man, I guess I've been in Seattle for a long time. I've seen storm games in the key arena. Um, but yeah. Um, but yeah, I would say the calves, I think the calves are going to take it all the way. I don't even know, uh, who's on the team or anything. You're not always trying to get out.
I don't have nothing. I'm a season ticket holder for the, um, the Sounders Seattle Sounders soccer team, a football, if you're over anywhere else in the world. And, uh, I don't even know who is on our team. I don't know anything. I tried to buy tickets for. The first games are socially distant. It was impossible.
And they're like, we're putting five tickets on sale. Like, that'll be great. I'm in a queue of 5 billion. Um, but we'll see how that goes. Um, all 
Frank: [00:31:51] right. Uh, wait, I just have to bring, I have not heard of any of these teams. Uh, wait, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna, no, I'm stopping myself right here because the moment I name a team, I'm going to offend someone.
So I am stopping. I wish everyone. Good luck. All of you, Western conferences. Not you Eastern conferences while I was, I 
James: [00:32:13] was, I mean, I was 
Frank: [00:32:16] okay. I'm sticking to the, I'm sticking to the question. Okay. I know nothing about your footballs. 
James: [00:32:21] Okay. Seattle storm is w WPA. We have a team in Seattle 
Frank: [00:32:26] WMC for those games.
I like those guys, 
James: [00:32:28] Seattle Sounders. That is soccer. Cause it's on the sound. The sound Sounders 
Frank: [00:32:35] sound footing. 
James: [00:32:37] Jeez, Louise Phoenix. It's very hot live there. Worked with Jesse at Canada. Very hot sons. Get it. Um, Oh, 
Frank: [00:32:46] got it. Now I figured. Yeah. I mean, if you train in terrible hot weather, you're going to be healthier, just naturally healthier.
Then where does the jazz, where are the jazz from? Is that Florida, Utah? Utah. Oh, um, 
James: [00:33:00] Hmm. Well, I don't know any more. They move around all the time. Is that the 
Frank: [00:33:02] salt thing? Oh, okay. That's good. Okay. Top jokes. I'm stopping myself 
James: [00:33:08] and he was, I love basketball. Basketball is one of the most fun games to go to besides soccer and my personal opinion.
Um, problem with basketball is that those games can go really long. Like two minutes can last a half an hour. I 
Frank: [00:33:20] disagree. I like basketball mostly because it's quick. You're in and out. It feels like a hockey game. They're reliably short. And someone's always scoring. 
James: [00:33:29] That's just, someone is always growing with soccer.
Someone is always running and the thing was soccer. Frank is the games, the matches. They're always 90 minutes. I mean, sure. There's a few minutes here and there. And the Halftime's always 15 minutes. So it's like when you go to a Seattle Sounders game or any, any soccer game you're in and out in two hours, it's like, you always know it's two hours or maybe you guys take the light rail.
Like maybe you're riding your bikes now as a bigger deal. But you know, this is the whole thing anyways. That's what I'm going to go for. Uh, what do we have next, Frank? 
Frank: [00:34:02] Oh, Oh, Oh, um, Hm, Hm, Hm, Hm. This one really only applies to me. So I'll just answer. How was I was Frank getting along with the 3d printed, balanced bot and AI not, well, I got that Lumo, um, robot, and I just want to give another shout out to the Lumo because I twisted my ankle this week, James and.
I kind of walk around because the ankle didn't want to walk. And I ended up using my Lumo to get around because oddly enough, I'd been practicing, balancing on one foot and anyone who's twisted, an ankle knows you basically just hop around on one foot. There's not much else that you can do. Um, so I found oddly enough, That the Lumo was very controllable and stable enough to get around with a twisted ankle.
And I thought that was super cool because it was a bit of modern technology enabling because normally you would use crutches. Right? I don't have any crutches. So I was kind of. Just hopping around on one foot, but, uh, getting onto a little like segue, like device, if you're comfortable with balancing on your other foot, turns out that was a really good way to get around.
So I wanted to give a shout out to, although I have not advanced my robotics at all. I am very, very much interested in, uh, personal mobility now, not just for funsies, but for practical application. So I'm kind of doubling down and I also just spent. A ridiculous amount of money for a book. It's a classic book written in 1986 by Boston dynamics.
People from MIT press. It's very hard to get ahold of it usually is on Amazon for around $900, too much title. Yeah, I know. Uh, the book is called legged robots that balance, or like robots to bounce, depending on which part of the country you're from. It's a fantastic book. And I used to have to drive up to Canada to read it, but it finally came down on price on Amazon and I scooped up a copy.
And so I'm very excited to learn 1986 technology for balancing robots. 
James: [00:36:15] I was born. It was a great year. Um, All right, let's get into this topic. This is a particular James' topic. Um, as we all know on the podcast, I'm along on to two things, uh, Microsoft stock long and doge coin. Those are the two things that I'm on in this world.
Uh, dos what a historic run today, uh, in the last 24 hours doubling in value from. 6 cents in the floor to write now about 14 cents. Now, who knows by the time this podcast comes out, that means that my 64,000 dos have dramatically gone dramatically, dramatically, dramatically gone up in value. Uh, and I should have bought more a long time ago, but this guy we thinking Frank and someone was also asking about GPU's, uh, as well.
And I didn't watch the latest, uh, AMD GPU thing, but, uh, cryptocurrency, I watched a. Video on YouTube about how to mind Bitcoin on a game boy. And it was, it was revolutionary. It would take about, um, I think it was like, uh, 5 trillion years to, to mine Bitcoin ever game boy, but doze coin with it's. Um, the blocks are always, there's a, there's a lot of doge in the world to be given out in mind, if you will.
And, uh, it had me thinking about like, Oh, maybe I should just start mining dos for fun. Am I computer? Like, I don't have a rig. I don't have anything like this, but my thing is I started researching how to mind things. And one, I don't even know how this, I, I don't, I still you're hashing stuff and you're checking stuff.
I don't quite understand it. But then also why is everything on the internet about cryptocurrency? Like super shady?
Frank: [00:37:58] This is, this is a two-hour episode at you. This is the lightning round. Okay. Um, yes. Yes. Um, there are definitely people that hate the coins and people who love the coins. It's really create, created quite a controversy in the tech world. Hasn't it congrats on your doge coin? Um, I was worried that you're going to quit the podcast that you were announcing something there, but Nope.
Sounds like you're staying in. Okay. So every coin, when it's designed people come up with, how do you validate the ledger? How do you validate the transaction, the smart contracts, whatever you want to call that junk, the blockchain. Someone's got to validate it. You have to incentivize people to validate it.
And what is the incentive? The incentive is you get a coin. If you successfully. Um, well, there's multiple parts to this, but whatever, I'm trying to keep it simple. And so it's all just what rules do they come up with? How hard do they make it to Val? Or how hard do they make it to create tokens for? And how hard do you make it to validate those tokens?
And every coin is different. You know, that's why, when I laughed, when you said Bitcoin, because they're proof of work that they designed, they designed that to get exponentially harder as time went on. And that's why Bitcoin goes up in price. They designed it to go up in price. It's that simple? Yeah. Well, and a market and crazy humans trading on a market.
So it's not simple, but don't let me, don't let me use the word simple there. Uh, but other things like doge coin have different proofs of work. I don't, I don't remember the details of dos, so I can't speak to it. Why does it seem shady? Um, because it's, it's like all investment gambling. It is all of that because you're doing things on probabilities because the value of these coins is not a pure market and demand system.
It's weirder than that. It's a lot more complicated than that, but I tend to see when I'm I say this without cynicism, but it's going to sound like the most cynical thing you've ever heard. I believe all economies are pyramid schemes. There's always someone at the top. And so I don't have any discomfort with any of these coins because I have a very simple view of all economic systems.
Um, why does it seem shady? Because no, one's got your back. No, one's going to hold your hand. You can lose a fortune in it overnight. Um, but that's pretty much possible with any financial transaction system. So everyone, if you're interested in it, do a lot more due diligence than listening to some rando on a mobile development podcast about what you should do 
James: [00:40:35] with it.
Yeah. I'm not a miner myself. I've been thinking about mining the doge. Um, however, do you really need like a mining rig? Can I, could I just mine on my computer, Frank? 
Frank: [00:40:48] Uh, for the new coins you can, but for the older coins, the proof of work is substantially hard enough that you cannot. Now what people do instead is they share time.
So you can become a member of a group who are all trying to mine a coin. Hmm. So you're trying to generate a valid yeah. That's when you're pooling. And in that case, you can use any hardware you want. You're just going to get a fractional amount of the pool. You know, whatever computational power you devote to it.
So that's why you see people creating huge computational, Briggs, even, even someone with like you could have of a room of computers at this point, and you still can't get a Bitcoin, right. It's that hard these days for a Bitcoin. So even those computers tend to get pooled together. Now, if someone creates a new coin, yeah.
You can definitely get on that bandwagon. But that coins probably, you know, it's going to it's price. It's going to fluctuate all over. Who knows how it's going to do with that. As in. An incredibly speculative market, but good fun part is you get to make your own coins like that coins mine, and then you put it on a floppy disk and then you forget your encryption password and you lose it.
James: [00:41:56] That's true. Like there's, there's magical. I don't even, I, I just have purchased some dos, but I was thinking just for fun. But then I was thinking maybe the best route is to. Like, you know, create a VM locally into install this software on, because it seems so shady. Like just randomly download this thing from this 
Frank: [00:42:14] thing.
No, no, this software, this software is very high quality. And in most cases it's very readable. Like the whole point of these is to create a trust system. So I would not worry at all about that kind of stuff. I'd worry a lot more about how much electricity am I using in that kind of stuff. Um, No, the, the, the coins out, the big coins out there, I would not worry about if some person on get hub, put up a brand new repo, and it's all very hard to read C code.
Maybe I wouldn't trust them, but like those coins been out for ever. Now that code has been scanned over and over and over many eyes on it. Okay. And a lot of times these coins will publish algorithms. So there can be multiple implementations of the same coin. 
James: [00:43:04] Okay, got it. Does it makes more sense? Um, I will try to find a link to the game.
Boy. One, it was quite, quite excellent. The, uh, 
Frank: [00:43:14] you are not going to get any, I mean, if you did a smaller coin, you could probably work off of that. There is something neat coming up, um, in the world of like distributed media sharing, there is a protocol called library. Have you seen that one? L B R Y. It's kind of neat.
It's using the blockchain to build media sharing. So it's building like a decentralized YouTube, essentially a website you want to go to is something like, um, odyssey.com and search for LBR Y or Odyssey. Uh, those will show you like a front end to it. Um, the way that you create a channel on it is you have to pay for a channel.
And basically you want to leave a comment. You pay for a comment. You want to buy a video, you pay for it. And a coin they created the coin is called LBC. That is separate from the network that is separate from the media. Right. But they're all based around this one coin and you absolutely can go mine that coin.
That means using a lot of CPU stuff to validate the transactional record of LBC. Or you can just go to a website like, um, a coin exchange, like bittrex.com or Coinbase or something like that. And you can use Fiat currency like us dollars to, uh, Transactionally by some of these coins or you can mine them yourself.
It's a crazy new world. I, you know, I agree sometimes the stuff seems very weird and scammy, but at the same time, there is a whole. Technical culture being built around this tech, this technology, I'm sorry, I'm using that word too much. And I believe if you want to keep up, you at least have to learn about this stuff.
Maybe a bubble will burst, but I don't know. I feel like these coins and especially these smart contracts, I hate that terminology, but whatever. Um, I think they're going to be around for awhile. 
James: [00:45:10] Yeah, I don't think they're going anywhere. We just saw Coinbase light up on the stock market today and do very, very well.
And, uh, Coinbase themselves as an API first company is also very fascinating play in the, the mining, uh, or just the cryptocurrency market itself. I, again, I feel as though I wish I would have learned, I've talked to many of my colleagues that were, were learned much more about this earlier on in life than I did.
Uh, and you know, I bought some dos many, many years ago and just as a, as a fun kid, I was like, I got 20 bucks here, 50 bucks here, whatever you noticed on some money. And I, we love TV news, but I'm also also. The problem with many of the cryptocurrencies are so expensive and it judge a lot of other people were thinking like doge itself, even though it is a more of a meme coin, not to be confused with meme the coin, um, that's, uh, you know, a 10 cents here or a dollar here for a coin makes a lot of, um, a lot of sense.
And there are coins out there that are actually tied to the U S dollar. Uh, I've been learning about too. So th th the world of coins are very, very fascinating and I'm no means an expert, but I do want to kind of. Yeah, 
Frank: [00:46:19] well, it's fun. It's, it's a wild West. Yeah. It's a new market. And it's interesting for just that reason.
I heard a stat that there's something like 12 new coins a day. So like, I don't know if you want to call it a bubble or a wild West or how you want to interpret any of that. But obviously we are in a ridiculous growth, uncontrolled growth spurt right now. I personally hope. Hope that like nations don't get involved.
I don't want to see that kind of stop, but there has to be there. There's no system. Let me rephrase. There is always negative feedback in a system. It's just, at what point do you find that negative feedback? And I'm curious where that is here. 
James: [00:46:58] All right. What else you got for me, Frank? Anything else? 
Frank: [00:47:01] I think that's enough.
I think we did like 800 topics in 46 minutes. 
James: [00:47:06] I think. So I want to thank everybody for tuning in for all of these years. And as Frank said, previously, we're going to keep going for another. Tell him, tell him I'm old. I'm old, I'm already old. So I guess tell him older and keep going, going. So Frank. Let's me quit one day, but it's not going to be for at least 15 to 25,000 years.
As long as I can about get doge, we're going to keep podcasting. So, um, that's my, 
Frank: [00:47:31] that's my staple. I now know I'm getting us like these cool femme on the waist Christmas cards this year. It's going to be amazing. I'm in, 
James: [00:47:39] I'm in, uh, well, I do want to thank everybody and of course, thank you, Frank, for singing by my side all of these years.
And, uh, I wish you the best of getting well, you're just gonna, like you said, anyway, we're in a small accident, many accidents, please. Get it better. I was want to thank all of our Patriot subscribers through all of the years, ones that are with us. One of them that have gone that have come, that have come back.
We appreciate all of your support through all of these years. And for every single person that's hopped in our discord channel, tweeted us on Twitter, or just simply listen to a podcast. Thank you for being with us on this journey, but that is going to do it for episode 250 of merge conflict. So until next time.
Hi, I'm James Monson Magno. And I'm 
Frank: [00:48:21] Frank Krueger. Thanks for listening.