Speaker 1: 00:01 [inaudible] Speaker 2: 00:10 episode 150 that's a lot of episodes. It also means it's a lightening round. So that means we had to pick a bunch of topics, assigns James. But I think we did alright. Usually it takes us 45 minutes to take a bunch of topics today. We did it in 30 I'm very proud of us and we had a lot of great questions. We did it in 30 including some technical difficulties. So really 10 minutes. To be honest. My bad. Yeah, I'm traveling through the south right now. I'm just doing a road trip and headed to New Orleans. But right now I'm on summer on the Mississippi River. I don't even know. It's a cool town for reals. Yeah, cause usually I'm on the road but it's awesome when you're on the road. So I hope they have some fun and yeah, this one, honestly I put out some tweets asking people for lighting topics and questions and honestly our listeners came through and usually we get one or two but we got like 10 so we usually do six topics, five minutes each. Speaker 2: 01:09 But we picked out eight topics. We probably won't be five minutes each on all of them, but we will limit them to five minutes each. But some of them are like a one minute. Yup. Shane's, you're, you're, you're removing my structure. However, will I know when to shut up about a topic? I will, I'll tell you in Zencaster I'll say she'll stop talking. Okay. Sounds good. This is going to be a great episode. I can tell already. Um, so are we just going to dive into it? Do we have any news for anyone? Let's just dive in. Let's go for it. Yeah. Our first one came from one of our patrion supporters and from Twitter, David Sharp. Uh, he asks how about getting that first professional coding job without a cs or what's the cscs degree in computer science? Computer Science. Yeah. I was actually a little nervous about this question because there's so many ways to go about it, but the truth is I just don't have personal experience. Speaker 2: 02:06 Um, I have a degree, so usually I was able to at least get interviews, but I have been on the hiring side and my first reaction to this one, uh, James was make friends with people with jobs already and have them help you get in. Unfortunately, I've seen that that's usually just the best route. If you're doing this, we can talk more about things individuals can do, but I think honestly the truth of the world is that's how things work. Find a friend. I don't necessarily know if how much it helped me, I guess. I think back in the day at least, you know, when I started 2005, 2007, I guess I got my first job or so I'm not sure if that's what really got me into the door. I was in school at the time and we were forced to do internships and this was kind of a good segway. I didn't my degree yet. I Speaker 3: 03:00 was a student, uh, but I was grinding hard to become a game developer and I was working at gamestop down in Arizona and out of a happenstance, one of the directors at a small independent game studio walked in. I told them that, hey, you know, I'm studying to be a game developer. I go to this school or whatever. And he goes, hey, we're looking for interns. And I jumped on it. And that was my entry into the software development world, professional software development world. Now before that though, I had been grinding a lot. I had made websites, I've been building the desktop applications and showcase pieces. We didn't have the world of open source at the time, the modern day open source of get hub. But that led me to have something onto my resume immediately after I graduated. But even before I graduated, I mean, I don't know if getting those jobs, you know, are doing, doing the degree was as impactful as the career experience. So having a career experience of building those things. Um, even though I did it all for free, basically was, was beneficial I guess. Speaker 2: 04:12 Uh, I was gonna say that there are multiple stages to a hiring process and some things, uh, that engineers in the team are in control of other things. They're just not. For example, I was hiring a once upon a time and, uh, we had an HR department and the HR department did the very first screening of people. And so it was basically HR department gave me a list of people that I could then phone, interview and talk to meet. Personally, I don't care so much about a degree because like you, I worked as a programmer in high school. I started companies with a friend in high school. This is all long before I got a degree and I was qualified to do many jobs at that point. So as I'm interviewing someone, I don't care about the degree, I just want to see, um, some kind of experience and capability and all that. But the truth is, and the really real world, there's HR departments with idiotic based requirements. Uh, I had a friend that couldn't even get an interview at Microsoft because he had an only a B overall GPA and he had a degree, but it wasn't a good enough one. You know, it's terrible. I hate HR. Speaker 3: 05:23 Yeah, and every company is going to be different. I think that's what you're sort of pointing out. My Buddy Justin, I worked for, he was in school and he ended up not finishing because he got a great job opportunity to go work at this printer software company, which then got acquired. Then I worked with him. Now he went to go work at Amazon. Now he's at twitch and managing tons of people, so those are like that. That's you know, I don't know if that's complete luck. There's definitely a lot of luck involved there and I think I had a lot of luck involved too, but in the world of open source is getting to those projects. One thing that you can do is like if you're very, and building projects is like sharing those projects. I think you're right on the connections is there's people out there send them their stuff. I love when people send me their open source projects, stuff that they're working on. If it's relevant, reach out, send those dms, send an email to people like I know Hanselman he retweets and I've retweet people that are like, Hey, I'm looking for a job, blah blah blah. And they, we send them a resume like, you know, we, we look at it first and then retweet that. So it's definitely worth doing and, and, and trying to land your first job. Speaker 2: 06:27 I liked what you said there because I don't want to give the advice, like just go use all your time and contribute to open source software and hope that someone will come along and recognize your grant work and all that truth is, that's not going to happen. But if you get a PR into a pretty prominent repo, then you just email those people and those people would be like, hey yo looking for a job. Help me out here. So I think that that's a great way, honestly to introduce your someone and get a successful prn. You don't have to devote your whole life to this project, you know, just do something significant to a good and then ask for a job. Simple as that. Simple, simple. It sounds so easy. Nevermind onto the next. Okay, I got, I got this James Ready. So we did an episode on dependency injection and we got the greatest reply about it and I believe the opening sentence was, we all know that dependency injection is hype. Yes. That's just felt like a great way to reflect upon what we said in a previous episode. So James, begin reflection. Speaker 3: 07:31 Ah, well yes. You know, so Glen, who wrote this email into us at merge conflict out of them, he said, you know, the Xamarin forms dependency service dot get, it's like very simple. Like you know, it's cross platform, it's simple, it's clean, it's easy to understand where if you go into the asp.net model, it takes over your entire APP. And I've been going back and forth with it. You know, the I, I love, there's dependency services, dependency injection, constructor injection. There's all these different things that go into it. I guess I'm just not a, as, I'm not, I've never been super against it. I just always wanted something official that felt like a stamp of approval. And if it's built into the platform of how I'm learning that platform, then it's very helpful. So for instance, with uh, asp.net, it's literally how you build that type of application. Speaker 3: 08:22 So as you're learning it, it's just part of how the framework works, uh, whereas everything else just sort of bootstrapping onto it. So even with all that, you know, hosting stuff, and I did an entire build presentation on it, um, at a build one of our theater sessions of using all that with Xamarin apps. Do I think that's perfect for every application? Probably not. You know, you can pick and choose how complex or how or how not complex or how simple you want this stuff to work. But it always comes down to is it adding value in saving you time at the end of the day? Is it going to create you maintainable code that you want to own and that you want to support and that you want to onboard new developers onto that code base and how they will then learn it. And I think that that is more important than his DUI hype is constructor injection is dependency services. What is the right thing to do? It's, hey, what is the right thing for you to do to have maintainable code that you want to support a longterm going on many, many years from now. That's how I look at it. Sounds like you're running for office. Speaker 2: 09:32 Um, yeah. I like, I was, I was kind of thinking about what you were saying about the stamp of approval and it was just kind of thinking in my head like what do I consider a stamp of approval? And the truth is it's not officially stamped with the, you know, the, the gilded stamp with the swirlies and the nice stuff until, until it's a part of the language. You know, when they, when they add DII support into the c sharps back as then we have syntax support for this thing that we're just cramming in right now. I think that's when I would find it. But I get you, when you say your stamp of approval is Microsoft? I'm not sure. Yeah. Um, I, I don't really look toward that. I think the biggest thing with the Dui is just how viral it is. So you could start with a little bit, then it grows out of the code into a bigger spot. All of a sudden your whole framework, your hope mentality, your whole design is based around dependency injection. And so like you said, it's just how it's a engineering decision. How much is it helping me, how much is it weighing me down? And that often comes down to, is it a complicated DII library or is it a simple one? Is Xamarin forms or is it whatever math. What does asp.net use? I guess it's math, right? Speaker 3: 10:48 No, it's not. Not Math anymore. Asp Dot. No, it has its own dependency injection zone. All new. So it does not do any assembly scanning or anything like that as his host builder model. It's very nice. Right, Speaker 2: 11:01 right. I forgot. Yeah. So it's completely independent. Okay. Yep. And then Speaker 3: 11:05 so there's our spectrum. Xamarin forms the asp.net to Matthew, you know, pick your spot on that spectrum. Yeah. Uh, you know. Yep. Yeah. Like you said, pick your spot. That's all it is. Whatever you like. And you know, don't be mad at people if they use it, if they don't use it, you know, you can make fun of it like I do in jest, but at the end of the day, if someone's using that stuff, the in their code, I mean, it's fine. It's your code. I don't care. Right. Fine. Um, anything else? Uh, no. I just like, I don't care. I don't care. It sounded a little passive aggressive. I mean, because someone's going to call me out and then they're going to say, James, you obviously care. And I'm like, yeah man, maybe I'm just over it. I, my days of caring of, of have gone. So it just made me laugh under the next wall. This isn't really an answer, a question from Andrew, but we can give our impressions. He's at Xamarin test cloud, which what he really means is just Ui testing because Xamarin test cloud is not a product anymore. It's APP center test. That's the evolution there. But um, I guess we've talked about Ui testing. I don't know what all Andrew wants us to talk about on Ui testing, but what are your thoughts on Ui testing? Speaker 2: 12:15 Frank James, I feel like my thoughts are where they were about five years ago where I'm like, Gosh, I wish I did Ui testing. Gosh, wouldn't that be great if I, if I could run a suite and know if my apps were working? Uh, I'm still far behind. James. I feel bad. I have a few projects that had like these calabash script's in them and then I remember that I have no idea how to use calabash anymore. And then I had a few Ui libraries, but they had bad dependencies, some to some other codes. So I deleted those. In other words, I'm a complete mess and, but I'm going to stand by it. I wish I had these tests, so I don't know what it is. I don't know if I need different offering tools. I don't know if I need different playbacks systems, but there is some barrier remaining personally for me that's preventing me from writing these tests and I honestly don't know what that barrier is. What does it change? Tell me time this time. Is that it? Is that all it is? It's just resources. Classic. Yeah, that's all. Speaker 3: 13:17 Well, it's two layers because you have to write your unit tests and then you had to add onto your Ui tests. And this isn't specific to mobile. This is all Ui testing. Ever. When I worked at Canon, we had an army of individuals that were tasked with doing Ui automation and we spent so much money and got literally no value out of it from what I can Speaker 2: 13:38 possibly channels. Also known as Windows Vista. We did the same thing. Ah, our, our test teams were huge and vast and we had sophisticated tests with sophisticated databases and they were doing sophisticated stuff. It was great. And in the end I was like, Gosh, I think we should've just manually tested this thing. Yeah, you, Speaker 3: 14:02 it's, it's, it's impossible to do UI automation for every single possible scenario and every single part of your Ui if it's evolving and changing because as soon as it changes, you have to update. That test has to be a part of the process as a developer and I think that was always the problem is we would pass the APP onto the test team and then we would go and change something and then like here's the new thing and they have to change everything instead of it being built into the process. But I do like Ui tests. I'm in the same boat as you. I wish that I had more Ui tests and just to solve and check common scenarios. So maybe I have five or 10 that are running automatically whenever I do it. I don't need an army of a hundred or 500 Ui tests, but a smoke test would be nice cause it is problematic as UI shift and change and adjust a nonstop, you have to update those tasks. Speaker 3: 14:56 You have to do your due diligence. Luckily I will say we are in a way better place than we were five, six, three, two, one years ago for automation because now with at least Xamarin forms, if you're doing in there, even ios and Android, it's by itself. They're just very simple properties that will propagate down. It's like built into the frameworks now. Just like accessibility more than ever. And Ui testing automation more than ever. They've kind of been built in so they're easier to add on if you want to add it on. Just depends. But I think for a solo developer I will say is I'm a solo developer and your solo developer, it is hard to try to create product and say when is it good enough to ship as it when I have a hundred Ui tests as I want to have to Ui tests or kind of just ship it right now cause I've played around with it and I've Beta tested it with people. So it's kind of get to pick and choose. Speaker 2: 15:46 Yeah. And I don't want to whine, but I'm going to wine. Um, my apps are tricky to Ui tests because a lot of them are touched based and multitouch based. So do I have a test for one finger, two fingers, eight fingers. Um, I can't just say when this button clicks, make sure this databases query, do you know that's not how the test works. I have to say moved at this coordinate dragged down, put another finger down, move to this core net. And you know, that's just not fun. So I'm thinking definitely need to get back to the, um, good tests for quarter days. I think we are making good progress on tests, recorders at one point in time. And then it all just kind of fell behind I think. Um, yeah. Yeah. I'm going to blame tools. That's it. It's the tool's fault, not time and resources. It's the tools I need. I need better tests. Recorders. Speaker 3: 16:40 Yeah. Probably a better test for yeah, better tests. Recorders would be good because there is one for android. They have one and Ui, the [inaudible] Xamarin Ui test recorders. I don't even know where it's at. They were going to open source it at some point. But um, yeah, and I don't even know if there is any frustrate ios. Like I don't even know how people do that with Xui Ui test. Speaker 2: 16:58 Yeah. It's tricky to be honest because um, for example, some of my apps open with the um, Ui document browser, it takes over the main part of your apps. So I'm barely running any code when the APP first starts up. That's good cause it starts up quickly. But it's bad because it's hard to add Ui test to that unless the Ui Tessa operates at the Os level. And for that I think I would have to use x code and I kind of have a policy I not using x code. Oh boy. How tough times and that Speaker 3: 17:30 test world. Yeah. Well onto the next question. This is a long one. We split it into two from Michael Shot the Cheyenne. That's how I'm going to go with, uh, we try to figure out what exactly it seemed like two questions at least. So the first one we're calling it modern language teaching slash. Usage because he said as android and Ios, new features at a quick pace and divergent language slash features, I'm assuming the move to swift, the move to Kotlin, right. So they're are moving and also then those concepts of how those apps are structured are different and also c sharp and.net are moving. Obviously we're moving in a down at five world. We're moving into a c sharp eight world and we're adopting these things. How can developers stay on top of things or train up new people? Speaker 2: 18:15 Yeah, I like this one because it gives us a chance to talk about c sharp. Aight. I love, you know me, I love new languages, but I uh, there are scary things about c sharp, a um, one being that they added a lot of syntax changes that I absolutely love and adore and I know I'm going to use them and I worry about how many other people are keeping up. Will they be able to read the code anymore or will it start to look like jibberish just because the languages is at eight years old? No, it's not much older than that, but it's on version eight and you know, it changes over time. I think most people think it's of c sharp back at its, you know, version five days. It's version four days. What do you do James? Um, my current policy is I want to use these new syntax features and so I'm just going ahead. The industry moves, it's just how computer, it's just how software engineering the industry works. Times change, languages change. I think that we're lucky that we're able to still use c sharp over such a long time. If you're unlucky. And switching from Java to Kotlin or, uh, what objective c to swift, I guess that's a bit harder than just having to adapt to a few new c sharp eight features. Speaker 3: 19:33 Yeah. To me this, funnily enough comes to tooling because visual studio, um, there re factoring and intellisense support for the new features helps me learn them. So when I think about how the developers stay up on it, it's surprisingly turning on the latest. So to visual studio 2019 says opt in and say, give me the latest, if you have preview, I think you can even get to these shark bait. And I know visual studio for Mac is getting c sharp eight soon. Um, at least preview support for it on the, we talked about that recently at build, but I have that on and that helped with the c sharp seven one, two, three, four things that they did or how many versions they did. Because I would turn that on and then I would say give me recommendations. I just want to use the latest features. Speaker 3: 20:23 And visual studio would give me a little pops ups to say, you can do this, you can do this. So I started learning a lot about the pattern matching about the lambda expressions and eventually you just start adapting to all those things as you code. So you, it's muscle memory. Your muscle memory is hard to break when you're in a specific pattern. But once you start to see it in your own code and why and how, then that really helps. So I thought that was really good. I didn't really read a C sharp seven book or anything like that, but there are some good blog posts that guide you through. So to me that was really good that the tooling can make a dramatic difference in learning these new concepts, but also be known. It's okay not to use the crazy new hotness, right? I mean, it's okay. It's okay to be yourself. Don't you know, Speaker 2: 21:11 I don't know. I don't know. I'm really curious. Uh, personally I want to know what the uptake is going to be for the null reference support. This is where you put question marks after your types to say that this can be null and all of a sudden you get the million. Yeah, you're in. I, I'm in. Who else is going to be in? I'm really, really curious. Um, because it seems a little bit split on Twitter and even worse for the people who are in James, like you and me, there's a little bit of a holy war going on where it's our, do you prefer a question? Marks are exclamation points. Like I say, never, never use the exclamation point. Other people are like always use the exclamation point, so I think I'm really excited to see c sharp eight release just to see how the community adapts to it, but yeah, to, yeah, I think you got to keep up. It's tough, but it's worth it in the end. It's not that hard. Learning is fun. Look at it that way. Speaker 3: 22:11 Yeah, learning is fun. While while people debate over whether or not they're going to use all that crazy knoll and not know stuff. Let's take a quick break and thank our sponsor this week. Tellerik yes, the good friends over at tellerik progress had been working crazy hard on brand new features to bring you awesome Ui components for all of your applications. Whether you're building a website, desktop application or mobile application, they have an amazing Ui toolkit for you. In fact, they just launched a teller who I for Blaser. I'm a huge blazer fan. I love it. Client side, c sharp web razor templates everywhere. I love it. So now you can get all the rich beautiful web components for plays or applications. Additionally, if you're building the Xamarin applications, which I am, and you are a, you can get all over, they're brand new and beautifully optimize a central controls. Speaker 3: 23:02 They have awesome built in visual studio templates so you can get access to all of them are right away. And of course they support Ios, android and UWP and Xamarin forms. You can get all sorts of good things like a pdf viewer control, popup controls, doc lab and all so much more. It's built right individual studio 2019. Just go get it. If you want to learn more, just head over to tellerik.com that's it. Tell her [inaudible] dot com they have a products button. You'll see everything that they possibly support. The thanks to Telerik progress for sponsoring this week's episode of the pod. Speaker 2: 23:34 Thank you. [inaudible] and speaking of Android, James, I'm excited for this one. Um, I guess this is part two of the question and not just keeping with languages, but James, how do you keep up with android? We talk about the support libraries all the time. We talk about, it's just like every year android changes. How James, how, Speaker 3: 23:56 yeah, so android is in a transition. So, uh, Michael was asking, it's so hard to understand where we're at in the new features like android, android, x, at bundles, all these things like Xamarin is evolving really quick. And here's what I mostly say, just ignore all of it. Just ignore all of it. It doesn't matter. None of it matters. It's frank. It doesn't matter until it matters. So stop like stop. You didn't even need a timeline because it doesn't matter until it matters. Um, in to be honest with you, it is really important to kind of know the underlying base platform. So I do follow Google io and the android Dev days that they do, um, very in depth. And Google does document android x, jet pack support libraries, Google play services, Firebase, all these things heavily. But there is a lot to it. And even in the world of dub dub, dub dub is not just Ios, it's all of the other things in and around, um, in and around what apple has. Speaker 3: 24:56 So I think that what's really important from a point of view of android is that you shouldn't really worry too, too much about it until we blog about it or do something else about it. Um, but let me go into a little bit of depth here. Okay. Because what's important with android acts is that they're breaking all the support libraries into little tiny things, uh, at bundles will automatically split up your app and do all these things. Andrew Idexx is a big undertaking. The XAMARIN team already has bindings up and ready and open source building, and that's going to be a long process and we're going to be working hard with all the library creators to update everyone, just like Google did when they had to update and had to have tooling built in for it. It's going to be a pain and a little point, but at the same time, you know, it's going to be a slow migration. Speaker 3: 25:47 Even right now, Google will say, oh, 80% of the apps, uh, the top applications are using jet pack and android acts and maybe they're using one or two libraries are, or maybe they're forced to for instance. Um, but a lot of those packages are still preview. We have a little bit of time on it and it will really be when Xamarin forms essentials and our core packages upgrade and we'll have a rollout package all for that. That makes a lot of sense if done correctly and we'll be onboarding soulfully be a smooth transition. Um, and that's Kinda like how I kind of see it done. Speaker 2: 26:21 James. I only understood about 50% of the words you just used there. Uh, I feel like I'm such a dinosaur. Um, my solution to this problem is program against the android 14 API. I mean it's got buttons and text boxes on more. Do you need for an APP? But I appreciate everything that you said. Ah, I just got schooled. It is Speaker 3: 26:44 a lot. It is a lot. And that's why if you're onboarding, it's not, it's not like a Xamarin Prom. It's not an android prom, it's just things evolve over time and get more complex. Because the world of android is now across all of these form factors in foldables and devices are more powerful and devices have crazy not chosen. All of these things. And you don't want to blow your app because you need so much more than ever. And one funny thing I'll, I'll go off. I probably already used my five minutes, but when you think about a brand new framework, like in the beginning of Ios and Android, it was also easy. It was just very simple, right? I mean, when Xamarin forms came out, it's very simplistic. It couldn't do everything, but it did this one thing. You know these things really well, you know, some new frameworks that come out, they're all shiny and new and then two, three years later they've added all this stuff because people need the power, they need so much more. And that sort of becomes the flaw and benefit at the same time. Speaker 2: 27:39 Wow. Yeah. And while you got me on the foldable devices, so I really do want to support those. So I guess I'm going to have to bump up from API 14, you know the, the, the truth is I just had um, right click on solution, update all new J's and then I say a little prayer. That's Frank's technique. Speaker 3: 27:59 Yeah. Say a little. Prefer you. All right frank. Somebody asked, Dave asks, how did we meet each other? How do we meet it? Speaker 2: 28:07 Oh yeah, I, I've, we've talked about this a few times so we'll just give a quick answer here. I went to a, it was Xamarin at the time. Was it James? Yeah, it was salmon and they had what is now a defunct program, a drink up. Remember that name, terrible name. This is when we were associating beer and getting really drunk with having a good time meeting your programmer friends. It just, it never really worked out. It was even when we don't meet up with alcohol, that's what it was. Yeah. Which is good because I think we were chit chatting at the bar and I usually, it takes me a drink or soda talk to a stranger. So I met, I met US Speaker 3: 28:47 ranger at a bar. That is what happened. Speaker 2: 28:50 It is. It totally is. No, I think someone told me that, hey, this is James James and we should yeah, that you're not a total weirdo and you might have some ideas on it. Awnage introduced us. Is that who it was? Okay. We, we, oh yeah, honest, well everyone knows you because uh, we've been doing this for how long now? Like five years. Something. Five years. Not, not podcasts, but the meetup in the podcast. Yeah. Whatever. Yeah. Yeah. Two Speaker 3: 29:17 team after the friends. We've been friends for a long time. That that's a true statement and yet it was out there and we had known each other. I knew you because I was using your software, SQL lite dash net and that is how I knew. And then we talked about preferences for awhile. We became good friends. I had just moved to Seattle. I told this story because I was doing a pitch for you recently and, and I told the story about how we met and how you helped sort of break the Seattle freeze and they are so warm and inviting and just like really nice, honest person to talk to and, and uh, that's why we're still friends to this day. Speaker 2: 29:52 So, well that in the preferences it was kindred spirits because we are like cross platforms hard. I'm like, yeah, it is hard. I can't even do settings. Right. And you're like I can't even do settings. Right. Yeah. So we bonded over the pain of cross platform settings I think, which was really fun. Yeah. Fun Times. So now that was a nice light topic. Now we're going to get into a little bit heavier topic and this is what are we all going to do now that Xamarin you is gone. Um, do you want to give an update James? Because to be honest, I don't always follow exactly what's going on in the docks and certification worlds. So what's up with the Xamarin? You, Speaker 3: 30:34 so Xamarin, you obviously it was a Xamarin program that moved over to still be Xamarin. You, you could become a certified developer. It was not a Microsoft started any at all. Right? It wasn't an official Microsoft because Microsoft has official cert programs for certain things. I've never gotten one ever. I did get through the Xamarin one, uh, but it moved over and then Microsoft instead of having all of these different like Mba courses in these blah blah blah, they said we're going to put everything together in one place and call it Microsoft learned. So when you go to microsoft.com or learned.microsoft.com or microsoft.com/learn one of those too, I think it's docs.microsoft.com/learn that will be completely free online training. And what they did is they took about 20 courses and they're going to continue to build these out that we're on Xamarin University and move them into Microsoft to learn. Speaker 3: 31:31 So now you can go through all of the training, get all the badges and all the things. There is no certification and there like that and go through all the training courses for not only Xamarin but.net Azure, all the things, uh, for free. It's all for free, completely for free, which is really, really nice. And they're going to continue to build out that infrastructure. The difference is that there's no live training things anymore, but now you can just do it on your own leisure and on, on your own time. And I know a lot of those amu instructors are, are doing twitch streaming and you know, still doing different courses and things like that for fun and whatnot. So that will sort of live on. But yeah, it's just there, it's free. Uh, everyone learns different I guess. And to me this is exciting. I think it's, people are like, oh, it's sad, it's going away, but it's actually exciting to me because now more people than ever, we'll have access to free training. That's really world class. Um, yeah. And because a lot of the other things are paid, like even pluralsight has played or play paid or linkedin learning, things like that. And those are good alternatives with those are different types of material instead of this is really kind of training by doing and I kinda like that. Speaker 2: 32:43 I'm glad to clarify that because my only understanding of what happened was that yeah, the materials from Xamarin, you got transferred over to this Microsoft learn. But I wasn't sure if it was at one time transfer who was operating this and that. But yeah, you can't argue with free. That's pretty awesome. I haven't seen too many of these videos now I'm going to have to totally check them out and see what's going on. But I did, I did get a question from a friend recently and I had an answer, but I'd like to say it and get your opinion and they were asking this side topic, our certifications in Microsoft products and in this case office products. So like word, excel, access, our certifications still relevant today. And my answer was maybe not as much as they used to be in the past, but whenever I was hiring people I was always looking for anything to differentiate people from each other. Honestly, it's kind of that terrible where you want to see these things and I think I would definitely give someone a few points for having certification. What do you think about all of that? This again, Speaker 3: 33:52 I don't know. Uh, I am imagining that it, it is a differentiator because it allows you to put something else to stand out. Um, I'm looking like I'm the learn website. There is a cert for certification thing and there's a Microsoft cert for Azure developer associate. There's one for Microsoft office, three 65 something. Speaker 2: 34:18 Uh, Microsoft. Microsoft usually has a bunch of certificates. I even got to help write the certificate exam for the windows phone. That was quite fun. Got To hang out for a week and write an exam. But um, I, to be honest, I just don't keep up with it that much anymore. That's why I was curious what you were thinking Speaker 3: 34:37 either. I mean, anything is good. I guess it depends where you're at. If, if you're, if you, if you think it's going to help grow your career or help distinguish you, then yes. But I've never gotten one, so I don't, I don't know. I never got the room mic that I went to the Xamarin University one, but I was already working at Xamarin, so I don't know. I don't really know if that helped me. You do any better at Xamarin and even though I worked at the company, so, Speaker 2: 35:03 so what we're saying is that the knowledge is the important thing and the certificate is probably sugar on the top, but neither of us have been hiring much lately. So we'll find out. Speaker 3: 35:13 Yeah, I mean if someone came, I guess it comes down to like if someone came up to me and they're like, ah, here's my cert, but I've never built anything, ever done anything or I don't have a cert, but look at this beautiful application that I built all by myself and here's all the source code and we can go through it and I can do that. That, that might be more important to me. Um, in general. But again, if you had two people and one at a cert, then I don't know. I think the doing is what's important. But again, I'm not a hiring manager, so I guess that is, Speaker 2: 35:43 yeah, I don't know. Ah, we're a little out of our league, but yeah, everything, everything's worth it. At least y'all, you know, really refine your knowledge if you get the certificate. So just consider it a personal test if they're not too expensive. Speaker 3: 35:58 Yeah, I'd love, I love our listeners thoughts too. I know that one thing, I was talking to the Zam, you are a team and now the Microsoft learned team and they were saying that, you know, all of those are like by demand, right? So I think if people really want the Cert, you shall let Microsoft know like, Hey, I want a cert for, you know, for excel or I won it for Xamarin. I want it for Ewp or whatever you want it for. I let them know and they have a whole board. And like you said, people do it. I didn't, I didn't know how in depth the cert process was until someone explained it to me. Now I don't know if I can talk about that because I didn't ask them if that was public knowledge. So I walk talking about it, but I do know it's a pretty advanced type of thing. Speaker 3: 36:37 So, um, anyways, um, all right. Last one. This was from a while ago in our discord, which anyone can join too and I haven't been in there for a long time, but we did open it up. So there's like 200 people that have been in and out of it, so I should probably check it out. Um, uh, B o nine nine one three or two, I'm not sure who, what's his name is asked. It's hard. Hard to pronounce. Bali nine three. I want three. Uh, it was how do you work? You seem to get a lot done. So what he means by this was top apps, scripts automate, stuff like do you, how do you plan side projects? You keep to do lists, things like that. So I figure that'd be a good one to close on. Speaker 2: 37:19 Yeah, I've, I love productivity stuff. I really liked this question. I think it's very vague and that's why I liked it. So I took it when I first read it of, um, how do you physically get moving like in the morning, like working. So yes, I have tasks for this. We all have tasks lists, we have billions of tasks lists. So obviously you have those, but how do you actually like get into it? And I, yeah, the fun part, Huh? It's like coffee, more coffee, more coffee. Um, in my world, um, I have two kinds of modes. One is I'm working on a big feature and I'm only partially done with it and I'm laser focused on that feature and that is my absolute most productive time ever where I know what I'm doing and I'm just getting it done. And I love it because I turned into an absolute hermit. Speaker 2: 38:13 I turn off all notifications and I'm like, people, this is more important. My work is more important than you. And I get a lot done. So I unfortunately work in bursts like that. The harder times in my life are aware. I have a giant task lists and I'm working through a task list and I don't really want to be working on any of it. And in that case I motivate myself by just saying do three tasks and you can go for a walk to five tasks and you can order a pizza. I'm like, I'm literally bribing myself to get through the task list. Speaker 3: 38:48 Do you ever do that? Yeah, I, well I ha I use to do now, which is a Microsoft App, which is how many track my day a lot better. And I sort of have a goal of almost zero inbox. And what it does is at the end of the day, like the next day clears your task list, but if there's like a button that says see the stuff that you didn't finish and then you can add it back to your day. So it's sort of like look at this stuff you didn't get done that you have to add to your list yet again. So instead of it just being an ongoing list that's there forever for like your day, um, cause you can make less. But this is like your day, you can add stuff that's short lived. And uh, my goal is to try to clear that off. I mean, I like the task based oriented type of like I get this reward. Speaker 3: 39:40 Uh, I don't know. This has changed so much for me over the years where I think I was like, you, I get out of bed, you know, make sure I, you know, have a breakfast, make the coffee, do the shower, get the clothes on, you know, kind of prep my day. I used to follow like a Hanselman quote where he said like, never read email before noon. I tried that. That doesn't work very well. Um, it's a great idea, but it's a good recommendation. Never read email before noon, like why doesn't matter. Um, and try to get stuff done early on. Um, I would say that I've failed in so many areas of trying to organize things to get things done. But one thing I'm really good at to a detriment is a task switching. So it's a detriment because I do this in my personal life away too much. Speaker 3: 40:33 But you can see when I'm twitch streaming my muscle memory of being able to switch tasks from doing like a podcast to a note taking to a code to booking something. Like I am just constantly switching contexts nonstop and it's like terrible, right? So I'm like constantly doing, not necessarily five things at once, but I'm constantly saying as soon as I like, you know, finished on the day, move next and next and next, next. And sometimes I'll get something to 80%. I'm like good enough. Next thing go right. So the, the task lists at least helps me stabilize that. But I do have a hard time just cause I, I can never really remember what all I'm supposed to be doing cause I have like too many projects going on at one time. So how do I organize my life? I have no freaking clue. Frank. It is a freaking love and mad show over here. Speaker 2: 41:27 I love that you're finding the downsides of being able to um, contact switch like that because I cannot, I, I joke that I can only do two things a day. Like, I can work in the morning and then go out with friends at night or you know, whatever. Oh, only two events in the day. And that includes like working on an app versus working on email or working on open source. So I could work on two different projects that day but not go out with friends. You know, it's a balancing act. It's just two things. I can't context switch or if I do, I don't get anything done. Essentially I need to focus in on something. And I, I, I, I've gone a little hipster James, I'm a little embarrassed to tell, to tell how I actually do things these days. I always found for some reason that I just do well with paper. Speaker 2: 42:16 And so in the past when I needed to go into like a crunch mode, like I really wanted to ship an APP, I would make paper lists of things and cross them out and star them and that kind of stuff. And I realized that I just actually liked that system. So I ended up buying um, a notebook and I just by hand write out the lists of the features and bugs that I want to fix. And an APP, it's identical to get hub. I don't know what it is, it's, it's the separation from the computer perhaps that makes me more comfortable with it. But the part that I really enjoy is, and this used to be a problem that I had is a problem everyone has. As your list gets long, it's almost by definition and it grows unbounded and you'll never be able to catch up with it. Speaker 2: 43:01 You're always going to have more ideas than you have physical time for. And but what I've found is I enjoy still reading through that list. And so every morning that I want to work on something, I'll read through the long list and may pro there'll be some start items by every, almost at least a few times a week I'm reading through every item and deciding if I really want to work on it and I have no problem deciding after a week or two I'll just cross it off and say I'm not going to do that at all. And I don't know, I don't know how that's different from using get hub issues, but for me somehow it just works for me personally. Huh. Speaker 3: 43:40 Yeah I like that. Uh, and I, I wanted to kind of change to be more project oriented and I tried using one note and that didn't work very well. And then I tried to use to do, but it's almost not enough. And then you know, to doing a Trello board that seems like too much, cause I have too many things I wish I could focus in on, be a little bit more productive. Speaker 2: 44:05 Like you're kind of accomplishing things. You know what the deal is with paper and at first it starts simple. I just put a number just so I know how many items are there and then a one sentence description. It's a, it's a get hub issue title. I don't put a description. I don't put screenshots. I don't put a priority. I don't care about any of that stuff. All I want is a good title that captures the idea, but the nice thing is you have a pen in your hand. You can circle things, you can underline things, you can accentuate things. If I want to prioritize, I can put a giant star next to it and unavoidable unmissable star. I like the flexibility of paper, which is making me think I should just be using an iPad with an apple pencil for all of this now. New App idea. Speaker 3: 44:50 New App idea. I like that. A sketch notes. That's sketchy. Sketch notes. Well, we did it. That's it. We're done. How do you feel about it? We got it all done. Speaker 2: 44:59 That was a lot of topics. I was a little nervous when you're like, yeah, let's just do eight, but that was fine. I think, I think we said some half intelligent slash useful things. Speaker 3: 45:09 Well, I think so. I think so. I think we crushed it. So Speaker 2: 45:13 confidence. Yeah. Well, thank you all for listening. We always have fun with these lightning talks and we always definitely look forward to them even though I complain at the beginning, I always complained at the beginning, so thank you. Speaker 3: 45:26 Well thanks everyone for your awesome, awesome questions. A frank, thanks for doing this from the road. I'm sure we'll record some more from the road, so I super duper appreciate it. But yeah, thanks everyone for tuning in. Um, of course you can, you know, leave us your feedback. How are you being more productive? Are working throughout the day. Go to merge conflict RFM. There's links to our Twitter account, to our patrion feed, to the email, to our discord, all the things right there. Of course, thanks to our sponsor this week, tellerik progress and all the way things you go to [inaudible] dot com to learn more. That's going to do for this week's emerged Speaker 4: 45:58 like until next time. I'm James Montoya. Magno I'm frank. Thanks for listening.