329: I Am Not a Linter!

I Am Not a Linter!!

[00:00:00] Intro: Tired. So tired, Overtired.

[00:00:04] Jeff: Hello everybody, this is Overtired. I am your host, Jeff Severns gunzel. I’m one of your hosts. Uh, our. Second of three hosts, Christina Warren is in New York, seeing Taylor Swift, which is, I don’t know if there’s a, if there’s a more perfect term than on brand, but if there is, then let’s just, uh, let’s just imagine that I’m saying that word.

[00:00:26] Um, and then it, it’s Brett Terpstra, the two of us. Wait, so I,

[00:00:29] Brett: I’m the third of three hosts, even though Christina is gone, I’m still in third place. I

[00:00:33] Jeff: just, I, you know, I got excited about saying the Taylor Swift thing just to, you know, it’s, it’s not nothing to do with, uh, preference or actual rank or

[00:00:43] Brett: hierarchy.

[00:00:44] Since you came aboard, there has been significantly less Taylor Swift talk overall, um, which I personally don’t mind. Like it still comes up. Yeah. But, uh, but there have been episodes of this [00:01:00] podcast that have been all about Taylor Swift. Right, right. Longtime listeners will know that there’s a reason that our tagline was Taylor Swift podcast.

[00:01:10] Jeff: Yeah. Completely. Yeah, it’d be good. Uh, it’d be a good bit if we just dedicated one of these where it’s you and me to Taylor Swift and we didn’t say anything. We’d have to really work. I think we’d have to do some prep work, but I think we could pull it off

[00:01:23] Brett: to, to not say anything about Taylor Swift. No.

[00:01:25] Jeff: To only talk about Taylor.

[00:01:26] Taylor Swift. Oh. Only talk about Taylor Swift. Only talk about Taylor Swift. Why can’t I say her name? Taylor.

[00:01:33] Brett: Shania. Shania.

[00:01:35] Jeff: Yes. I was Shania eating it all together. I know they’re very different. So here we are. Here

[00:01:40] Brett: we are. Brett.

[00:01:41] Mental Health Corner

[00:01:41] Brett: Um, how’s your mental health, Jeff?

[00:01:44] Jeff: You know, I can talk about something that was just lovely for my overall professional mental health this last week. Um, we’re starting a new project. Uh, it’s a research and evaluation co-op that I’m part of. Um, we’re [00:02:00] starting a new project with a new client and, um, it’s basically many months of designing an evaluation and then hoping maybe we get the contract to do the evaluation. So we’ll see. Okay. Um, it’s, it’s an unusual contract for us anyway. It’s one that is with a, a client that is, um, sort of in the league that we have not previously, um, engaged with.

[00:02:22] Uh, and so, um, they do everything in a much more sort of orderly, professional way than most of our clients. Like, we have to use Microsoft Teams, which otherwise I’ve never had to use. Sure. Um, and there are all these other things, like when you submit a budget, there’s a template for it, which is not something we usually have to deal with.

[00:02:39] There’s just, there are protocols because this is such a large organization that, um, are unlike anything we’ve dealt with in the past and we’re super adaptable. But like, it’s, it’s very new. So, so we decided we were gonna hire a. A project manager. Um, because in the past how we’ve worked, were like little rogue evaluation groups, you know, two to five of us, [00:03:00] and we just kind of like make do with our combined skills.

[00:03:04] But we realized that, um, this might be one where our combined skills and our combined personalities don’t necessarily, um, like meet the bar. And so we’re like, and I’ve always wanted to work with a project manager. I think that’s just like a fantastic idea if it’s the right person. Right. Project managers are like copy factorors sometimes.

[00:03:23] They’re so obsessed with their own sort of toolbox that there’s absolute rigidity and no fluidity or flexibility. Like with copy factorors, I’ve, I’ve had experiences. Most of my experiences have been fantastic cause I love to be factored. In any way possible. I just love people saying, no, do it this way, and then giving it a shot.

[00:03:43] Right. But if it can’t be like a conversation Yeah. Then it’s really tough. But anyway, um, you know, I’ve had copy factorors who for instance, forget that there is a such thing as voice, right? Yeah. And so, yeah, we can do it all by the book, but then we lose the voice, whether it’s mine or whoever we’re factoring.

[00:03:59] [00:04:00] And with project managers, I’ve had the experience where it’s like, okay, guy come in with this tool and you all have to learn this tool. And like, that’s the death of almost all project managers, right? Is when you try to force a tool. I would love to force a whole suite of tools with the teams I work with.

[00:04:14] Brett: The, the death is when you force a tool and then change your mind. Yeah, that’s true too. And you’re like, actually now we’re gonna use Asana for everything.

[00:04:22] Jeff: Exactly. Asana. Yeah. I’ve been, I’ve been down that road. Not, not, uh, voluntarily, but, um, so anyway, it, we put out, we had to hire this person in like a week, so we had to like, You know, get all the applications, do the interviews.

[00:04:35] We did 11 interviews Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. And um, what was so awesome about it was I have been working with a very, like limited group of people on a project for like six years. And so it’s always been the same faces, the same work styles. It’s been fantastic, but it’s been a long time and I’ve been excited at the prospect of working with [00:05:00] other people in our co-op and just having a different experience overall.

[00:05:04] So we put this out there and because we’re like a social justice base, like systems change, uh, organization, a lot of people that come to us or that we reach out to, to work with us. Get excited because the thing they’re doing doesn’t always mean that they get attached to like social justice type work or change making work.

[00:05:25] And um, and so that makes for a really cool relationship cuz it’s people, you’ve, this happened with you right? I remember you saying this, like, you were like, Hey, I’m happy to apply my skills to something about like juvenile justice and like helping kids or whatever. Like, um, so, so we got people like that and, and we just, what was amazing is like almost everybody, even the people that were totally wrong for the job, they were all like, inspiring to me.

[00:05:48] They all said something that I was like, oh my God, I’ve never thought about that that way. Um, and, and so it was just, it was lovely to see that there are people out in the world that think differently. There are that think like me, [00:06:00] um, who I, I wouldn’t have otherwise been able to. Connect with. And it made me really hopeful.

[00:06:05] Like there were people that aren’t gonna get this job, that were already going to be reaching out to about other work, you know? Um, and so it just felt good. It just felt good to expand and remember, like it’s not just me in my tiny office. Um, and, and I’ve been like that since way before the pandemic. Um, It was cool.

[00:06:22] I don’t wanna work in offices with any of these people, but I’m like really excited, um, to, to be kind of learning about, like a way of thinking about work. Um, and I think it’ll solve, they’re just natural conflicts that that come up when you don’t have a project manager. Like somebody will naturally sort of acquire or almost take a little more power than others.

[00:06:44] Um, some people who maybe think or talk differently or react differently, um, maybe they take more time to sort of gather their thoughts, end up being, um, you know, sorted below the people that are really quick. Um, and so for me, having a project [00:07:00] manager. Is exciting because I think it can really, like, it can, it can help us to kind of live out our, like our equity goals, which we do a pretty good job of in our organization overall.

[00:07:10] Um, we are just kind of a, we’re a diverse organization, not in a forced way at all. Um, but because we’ve just managed to kind of find our people. Um, and so anyway, that just felt good. It felt good. I got excited about work and I’ve been pretty, I’ve been pretty kind of like rote about work for a while. Um, so that just, that feels good.

[00:07:31] Um, it was still hard to do all those interviews and get all my other deadlines met, so it caused a little stress too. But that was nice and I’m really excited to working with. I’m really excited to be working with new people. Um, so new spirits

[00:07:44] Brett: nice. Now I’m worried that I might be one of those overly rigid copy factorors.

[00:07:50] Jeff: Oh, you think so? No, no, no. Copy factoring requires rigidity. I, you, it, you have to be a bit of a fascist. Like there’s no way around that. Like, I want to be [00:08:00] clear, like it’s a little tiny trip wire that you can hit, you know, and you have such a natural sense of voice anyhow. Yeah. That, um, and it’s, but why do you, why do you think that?

[00:08:11] Why do you think maybe you, well,

[00:08:13] Brett: so in my current job, uh, for a while there I was basically copy factoring and, um, we were using markdown. Via a GitHub workflow for the factoring. And I was very strict about like my, my like markdown syntax and, and using GitHub properly. And like, I’m good with like, I understand voice, like it’s, it’s if something was written, even if it’s not a voice that I think is like perfect.

[00:08:52] I, I understand like this author has a voice and, and I can work with it. So I’m mostly, mostly focused on [00:09:00] grammatical and spelling stuff when it came to the actual copy. Yeah. But as far as the tools wedge, I was, I was a bit, a bit strict.

[00:09:08] Jeff: But don’t you think that you’re in a context, you’re in a sort of programmer, you know, power user context, aren’t you?

[00:09:15] So it feels like you can, you should be able to get away with being strict about that.

[00:09:19] Brett: I would think so. Because I, I’ll tell you what I got. I got very frustrated.

[00:09:24] Jeff: Did you? I did. What was the thing that was most frustrating?

[00:09:28] Brett: Um, just when basic markdown syntax couldn’t be adhered to. Um, I mean like very synt things that, that didn’t work.

[00:09:39] Like they were just wrong. And, and I repeatedly would fix them and, and add comments saying, please take care of this in the future. And like I have some niggles like, um, like white space in markdown documents. Like always putting a line break [00:10:00] before a list element? Yes. Or a line break after a headline and things that just make readability of the markdown itself easier.

[00:10:07] Even though super important, you can get away with it in a lot of cases. You can get away with not doing it. Like I set up a style guide and I was like, here are the rules. And repeatedly the rules weren’t followed. And then I wrote some custom plugins and created my own syntax for a few things. And, and people never, um, assimilated the information to make them work properly.

[00:10:35] So I spent a lot of time correcting liquid, liquid syntax, and it, it, I’m glad I’m past that part of my job. Do

[00:10:45] Jeff: you ever just, did you ever scream in a meeting? I am not. No. No. Listen. Not. Did you ever scream in a meeting? Did you ever scream in a meeting? I am not a linter. Uh, I

[00:10:54] Brett: did not. Episode title. I did not. I, I would complain to Elle on our nightly [00:11:00] walks. I would tell her how annoyed I was with, you know, an individual or my team in general.

[00:11:07] Um, but I always maintained a very diplomatic, uh, persona. In those, yeah. In those proceedings. Yeah. Yeah. I, uh, I’m, I’m, I’m, I think I would, like, I applied for a managerial position a little while ago, and I don’t have a lot on my resume, um, that is actual management positions. Yeah. But I have fallen into that role enough times that I feel like I could do the job.

[00:11:41] Yeah. Uh, whether or not I actually want to is another question, but I feel like I make a good, I’m, I’m good at dealing with people, uh, and ordering people around without ordering people around. You know what I mean? Right. Right.

[00:11:57] Jeff: Yeah. Man, I, I, [00:12:00] um, I don’t do a lot of factoring now, but I, I generally am. I generally consider myself a good factoror, not copy factoror.

[00:12:07] Um, I really love working with people’s, uh, text. Sure. I love trying to sort of, I love making changes that they like. Sure. I don’t mind it if they don’t like it, but I, I would like to, what I, what I want to be when I’m factoring is someone who like, um, is sensitive enough to the voice that I can take it on for a minute.

[00:12:29] Yeah. Right. Yeah. Um, not steal it, just take it on for a minute. I remember we used to, in the punk planet magazine days, um, our approach to interviews was we would take the full transcript, And, and I know there are people who are listening who are gonna like slam their fists on the table and you probably work in a newsroom and that’s why I don’t work in newsrooms anymore.

[00:12:53] Um, but we would take the entire, um, q and a and we would rewrite our questions if we needed to, cuz [00:13:00] the, the, the absolute priority was readability and what we would hear over and over. I remember this happened with a Micons interview that Dan, our, um, the, the founder of Punk Planet had done.

[00:13:11] John Langford was like, I’ve never sounded that articulate or like I, and I actually learned something. I, I interviewed Ian Mackay of Fugazi Sure. Who always seems to give a great interview, right? Like he’s, I don’t know if you used to read interviews with him, but like, if you’re in punk rock, like if you have a punk rock history, you’ve read some Ian Mackay interviews.

[00:13:30] Yeah. And you’ve appreciated the kind of nuggets. Well, I, I’m sorry, Ian, I’m sorry. I love you so much, but you were a fucking mess. And there was a point at which he was telling me about a a a a. Game they play on tour where like you look at like, uh, uh, Ford Explorer or something like that, and you just add, um, anal before it’s like anal explorer.

[00:13:53] And he went on about this for quite a while. This was an interview about, about digital music streaming and whether or [00:14:00] not discord would ever play ball with iTunes. That’s how long ago it was. Right. And I remember just being like, this is not how I imagined this would go. And so when I factored it, sure enough, like the quotes I pulled out were amazing.

[00:14:12] Like, and they were un, they were unfactored. Like when he gets to his point, it’s fantastic. I don’t mean to pick on Ian Mackay. I just feel like for all the years he spent yelling at people from the stage, I can, I can like speak to him directly from, from my stage. Yeah. And I love you and you changed my life and all of that stuff.

[00:14:29] But anyway, like that’s how we used to do interviews and like, I, I brought that to factoring in other contexts where it’s like where you actually are a little more allowed to do that, right? Like if it’s someone’s writing, you can kind of move things around. I loved that. I loved it. Yeah. But, um, yeah,

[00:14:44] Brett: I, that’s all so, like Systematic, most of the interviews I’ve done in my life were for my old podcast Systematic, and there were plenty of interviews over a few hundred episodes that definitely I [00:15:00] would’ve liked to have.

[00:15:02] The, the kind of liberties you can take in text. Yeah, you don’t necessarily have, uh, well, you can if you have the time in audio, but it pretty much, like, I could cut things out, but to like rearrange and like fill in quotes, you know how like in copy factoring you can write what someone said in quotes and then add, you know, in brackets or in between, you can kind of fill in and you can add sick.

[00:15:33] Um, right.

[00:15:34] Jeff: Yeah, thanks. That’s usually when I’m feeling like an asshole

[00:15:40] Brett: or, or a note, an factoror’s note. And, uh, you don’t get that, you don’t have a lot of those liberties in, uh, an audio interview, which, uh, there were definitely cases where I would’ve appreciated that. But

[00:15:55] Jeff: anyway, yeah. I love, I actually love, um, factoring audio.

[00:15:58] It is so incredibly time [00:16:00] consuming. It’s so fascinating to essentially factor text that you can’t see. Yeah, and it’s also amazing. Um, when I was working in radio, this, this happened a lot when I was producing like three minute stories. It’s like you start to be able to kind of read the wave form, right?

[00:16:12] Yeah. Like, it’s not like you, you know the words, but you can kind of, well, you could, some words you can start to recognize like, like, and, um, you know, everyone has their, their tick. But yeah, I find that kind of fascinating. Anyway, how about you? How about you? Let’s, uh,

[00:16:24] Brett: that’s all. Um, yeah. Uh, things are going really well on, uh, on my current med regime.

[00:16:33] Um, I. Had, we’ve talked about, I believe, uh, some of the problems I had with getting my Vivance and yeah. Um, I had gotten through most of the hoops through which I had to jump, uh, now that my psychiatrist has moved to a private practice, um, but they had a urine drug panel [00:17:00] requirement and, um, I didn’t know exactly what they were testing for, but I’m, I’m 90% drug free, um, except for some that I actually use for mental health.

[00:17:12] Right, right. Um, which I’m not at liberty to talk about, but, um, apparently I’ll just say psilocybin doesn’t show up on a 10, 10 panel urine test. Interesting. Uh, so that wasn’t a concern for me and everything else was, Gonna be fine, but it took them like two weeks to get the results to my doctor. Um, so I had this, she went ahead and gave me like two weeks at a time until we had this figured out.

[00:17:44] Uh, but now everything is clear. I am, I’m good to go. Uh, future vivance refills should not be nearly as much hassle as I went through to get set up with this new one. Um, so that’s good. [00:18:00] One thing that I have found has been really good for me lately is hiking. Um, we have, so we have this, uh, landmark in our town called Sugarloaf.

[00:18:12] It’s a, a sandstone. Butte on top

[00:18:16] Jeff: of, is there, are there any bluegrass songs on

[00:18:20] Brett: Mountain? Oh, I’m sure. We host the Bluegrass Festival. I’m sure it’s been done. Um, but, uh, um, we, there’s a newish trail that goes up to Sugar Oak and it takes about 30 minutes, um, mostly uphill to hike up the bluff up to Sugarloaf.

[00:18:41] Um, and then, uh, yeah, you can like touch the rock and then head back down. So it’s, it’s about an hour round trip and I’ve been trying to do that once a week and it has been, Really good for me. I’m building up cardio, uh, [00:19:00] endurance and it’s helping my mental health and we’re still going for walks in the refuge.

[00:19:05] So last week we did Sugarloaf on Sunday and then did the Wisconsin wetlands on Monday, and we saw, uh, a hundred Goslings. It was like, They were probably two weeks old, most of them. Um, so like the trails were just covered with like lines. Like you’d have like the mom in the front and the dad in the back and like six to eight goslings between them.

[00:19:34] That’s amazing. And they would like cross the trail and hop in the water and like slowly escape from the invading humans. Um, and we saw swans and it was the, uh, first dragonfly hatch. Oh, nice. So were, yeah, like as you walk down the trail, like just dragonflies popping out of the trail TV outta your way.

[00:19:53] And, um, I’m looking forward to the damsel fly hatch. I hope we catch that cause. Ooh, [00:20:00] like the sides of the trails turned blue with all of these dams supplies. Oh my God. Wow. And it’s, yeah, it’s really fun. I have a great time. Uh, so that was a very rewarding, uh, morning in the wetlands and it stuck with me all week and.

[00:20:17] It is an experience like that, just getting out and seeing nature. Like even aside from the mental health benefits of exercise, which are, you know, strong and well proven. Uh, but just seeing like natural phenomenon really sticks with me and gives me like a lot of, um, pleasure through, through the whole week afterward.

[00:20:43] Uh, so that’s been really good for me.

[00:20:45] Jeff: That’s great. And I would say that 95% of our listeners probably have no idea how stunningly beautiful the part of Minnesota you are in is. Yeah,

[00:20:56] Brett: it’s stunning. It’s, if you think of Minnesota and you think, [00:21:00] uh, Iowa landscape, you haven’t been to southeast Minnesota, which is just all bluffs and valleys and, and green and so, and rivers and lakes and it’s fantastic.

[00:21:15] Yeah.

[00:21:15] Jeff: It’s truly incredible. Um, I really should just come down to visit you. Yeah. I, I don’t know why I haven’t done that yet.

[00:21:22] Brett: You should. There we, I just found out about a new nine mile trail, uh, that I’m looking forward to checking out, but Nice. So many good. We like the whole singer Trail system is nine miles of bluff trails a lot.

[00:21:39] Uh, open to mountain biking, uh, but all open to hiking and it’s, it’s fantastic. I’ll show you around. These mountain

[00:21:47] Jeff: bikers are just insane. I don’t understand how they aren’t all dead. I like, I wanna know the mortality rate of, of mountain bikers that used those crazy trails.

[00:21:57] Brett: Back in high school. I raced mountain bikes.

[00:21:59] [00:22:00] Did you? And yeah. And, and I would race all through Iowa, Wisconsin, Minnesota. Dang. And honestly, it was always great to come home because our trail systems are, we have, uh, Long, long uphill climbs with crazy downhill runs. And then most of the larger loops have something called suicide trails. Sounds good.

[00:22:27] That’s great. Which like when you get to the peak, instead of taking the rounding, uh, like kind of path down to the bottom, you can go straight down the hill, like straight down. And it is, it is suicidal. And

[00:22:41] Jeff: is there, is there some kind of emergency mental health provider at the top of the hill before you go down?

[00:22:47] Negative And just a quick, just a quick evaluation before you get

[00:22:51] Brett: down there. And they’re often in deep enough that you would have to get a helicopter if you had a serious injury. You’d have to be like airlifted out. [00:23:00] Yeah, it is. It’s very dangerous. Yeah. Um, but you know, at your own risk, I guess.

[00:23:07] Jeff: Yeah.

[00:23:08] You’re immortal at that point. Um, definitely not at this point.

[00:23:14] Brett: Yeah. No. We got our bikes fixed up. Uh, just spent $150 repairing bikes that had sat in storage for too long. Wow. So just yesterday, Elle and I started g getting out for bike rides and uh, it’s, you can go eight miles is too far for me to walk.

[00:23:35] I’m not gonna do an eight mile hike. Yeah. Know Me neither. But an eight mile bike ride, that’s a

[00:23:39] Jeff: different story. That’s a nice, that’s a nice ride. Yeah. That’s awesome. Um, I, I think we should do a sponsor, but before we do that, um, I wanted to just let everybody know that we are going to a sort of reduced schedule for the summer.

[00:23:56] We’re gonna be going every other week, starting today, starting with this [00:24:00] episode, and then in August we’ll be launching season four Yep. Of the Overtired podcast. Maybe we’ll even have a new tagline.

[00:24:08] Brett: Yeah, who knows, maybe who, maybe something not Taylor

[00:24:11] Jeff: Swift related or maybe we’ll all have Taylor Swift tattoos and, and it’ll feel like Yeah.

[00:24:15] You know, let’s just continue to, to, to merge with her. We’ll, we’ll have some

[00:24:18] Brett: meetings. We’ll confer.

[00:24:19] Sponsor: Factor

[00:24:19] Jeff: Yeah, some meetings and confer. Uh, so what do you think? Good time for a sponsor. Yeah. All

[00:24:24] Brett: right. Do, so I actually, last time we did this sponsor, you weren’t here and you were the one person that I thought would most appreciate this sponsor based on your feedback from the free samples they sent.

[00:24:39] So do you want to do this read?

[00:24:41] Jeff: Yes. I wish I still had the, I had saved the boxes of the ones I love the most, but I think I can speak to the quality of them. Um, alright, so our, our sponsor this week is factor, uh, this spring. You need nutritious, convenient, me, not just this spring. You always need nutritious, convenient meals to energize you for warmer active days and keep you [00:25:00] on track reaching your goals.

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[00:25:57] Brett: keto [00:26:00] ketosis,

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[00:27:16] Jeff: meals.com/ Overtired 50 and use code Overtired 50 to get 50% off your first box. That’s code Overtired 50. And that’s the number 50, not spelled [email protected] slash Overtired 50 to get 50% off your first box. And, and I’ll just say we got a free box and um, I was truly surprised. Like it w first of all, it was way less packaging than some of the other options I’ve noticed.

[00:27:44] Um, but like it tasted fresh and it was flavorful and it had more than just two sort of layers of flavor. Like microwave things often can, yeah,

[00:27:55] Brett: yeah. I’ve sub, I’ve subscribed to meal plans cuz like the convenience of [00:28:00] microwave meals can’t be beat. Um, like I appreciate meal kits that let me do some cooking, but that takes half an hour.

[00:28:08] Right. And. And part of the convenience of a meal plan is not having to spend so much time on food. So these microwave meals are great, but this is the first time I’ve ever had microwave meals that actually impressed me and didn’t feel like a major compromise. Um, yeah. Yeah. They were, they’re

[00:28:27] Jeff: delicious.

[00:28:28] And, and like also, it’s pretty rare that you can satisfy all four members of our family and, and Sure. This did and, and, um, yeah, and, and also like, I mean this is, let’s, this is kind of separate from the read here, but just to say like, my spouse and I have often joked and it’s not a joke fucking dinner again.

[00:28:46] Like, seriously, this happens every day. Um, so it’s always something easy is always welcome. Anyway, um, so yeah, that’s that, that’s that. Get your box, get your box of food, [00:29:00] 50% off free,

[00:29:01] Brett: separate food. Separate from the read. I want to say. I don’t know what factors, um, Employee treatment policy is they’re now owned by HelloFresh, which has done too much union busting for me to accept them as a sponsor.

[00:29:21] Um, and I don’t know if Factor is completely separate from that as far as their employee treatment goes. So if it comes to light, that factor is union busting, we will probably cease to have them as a sponsor and issue an apology. Um, but for now, based on the research I’ve done, these guys are okay.

[00:29:45] Jeff: Despite making everything Wes and not theys. Yeah. Right. Ours and not theirs. There’s, there’s some pronoun issues Yeah. In this read. All right. Anyway, um, okay. So I have a couple, I was [00:30:00] rolling over cables on my floor. I have a couple of, um, of topics. Uh, I think, um, and I wanted to, I wanted to start with one.

[00:30:08] Skills Assessment

[00:30:08] Jeff: I, I got to thinking. As I often do, I, I sort of marvel at, at your coia of skills. Um, and as, as we’ve talked about on, on episodes before, the sort of, uh, graciousness of the tools you build, um, they, they, I know that, you know, the ones that I use, which is most of them, um, really helped me with my, my sense of, um, just my sense of control.

[00:30:34] Um, I can, I can really just kind of lose a sense of centeredness when I’m working, especially if I’m working on projects with like three different clients in a day. Um, and so brought your tools or even just the philosophy of them helped me a lot. So even if I’ve fallen off of the Terpstra wagon on some tool I used to use all the time, um, The sort of general philosophy [00:31:00] behind it.

[00:31:00] It’s just like, let’s, let’s create order, um, where there is chaos, not pretending that the chaos doesn’t exist. That’s actually a quality of your tools that I think is, is undersold. Um, it accepts the chaos, uh, and tries to work on top of it, dance on the chaotic waters, if you will. Um, anyway, I’m, I’m going going so, so far into this bit, I was wondering if you had one skill that you could kind of snap your fingers and then apply to the, the kind of work you’ve always been doing, what would it be?

[00:31:34] Huh?

[00:31:39] Brett: I. Like skill, like a, like a programming

[00:31:43] Jeff: skill. It could be a skill or it could be like all of a sudden you are very good at thinking about and, and applying that thinking to, you know, whatever, thinking about a thing.

[00:31:55] Brett: Yeah. Um, a thing that I would like to think more about [00:32:00] would be, um, future, future-proofing code.

[00:32:06] Mm-hmm. Um, and I’ve gotten way better at it. Mm-hmm. Um, I’ve gotten way better at writing code that other people can easily, um, manipulate and, and, uh, contribute to. Yeah.

[00:32:18] Jeff: Take actually y you’re kind of defining now what, um, future proofing means, but go further into your definition of that.

[00:32:24] Brett: Well, so write, yeah.

[00:32:26] Writing maintainable code, I guess is how I would phrase that. Um, writing code that. A lot of the stuff that I’ve done has been based on APIs. Uh, take Twitter for example. Um, like a lot of the tools that I wrote around Twitter, suddenly no longer work. Yeah. Um, and writing code in a modular way that it’s easy to say, uh, substitute, uh, activity pub or whatever Blue Skies API is called, um, [00:33:00] to make it as modular as possible so that can easily be transformed when some, when something underlying breaks or, you know, like a a, a coding language like Ruby or Python goes through a major upgrade, um, make it code that’s easy to retrofit.

[00:33:21] Into, uh, new requirements. And that’s, so it’s, it’s a talent I’ve, I’ve been developing, but definitely one that I would like to, if I could just snap my fingers and be good at something, that’s what I would like.

[00:33:36] Jeff: Okay. So then distinguish for me, I think, you know, we can all intuit what that looks like in terms of comments, you know Yeah.

[00:33:43] Which I wanna talk about in a minute. But like, I’m very interested in, in what that means in terms of writing the code itself. Like what, what are the qualities of code? You’ve said modularity is one, right? Yeah, yeah. That is future proof. It

[00:33:57] Brett: is, it’s modularity. It’s, um, [00:34:00] like when I first start working on something, I tend to write these long spaghetti scripts, like all in one file.

[00:34:09] Uh, not broken up well into functions, um, but by, by breaking it up into smaller methods and functions, um, that aren’t. That are, that can serve as like a single point of failure, uh, means that you can just update one function. And everything else will work, um, by properly reusing code and by, by making every action into a modular piece.

[00:34:42] Then when something breaks, like say for example, you have a function that performs an API call. If you, if that API call is in the script itself and, and, uh, repeated multiple times [00:35:00] factoring, if that API changes, factoring becomes a hassle. Whereas if you call out to a single function that makes the API call, um, and maybe takes parameters, that can change what the API call is.

[00:35:16] Um, then if something changes in the api, you can just factor that one function and everything continues working.

[00:35:24] Jeff: Um, I would. I would imagine too, that taking that approach means that if somebody, let’s say that there’s a brand new language called Zu, uh, in, in 15 years and, and somebody who’s really good at Zul goes to look at your Ruby work and it’s, and it’s, and it’s built exactly the way you’ve just described it.

[00:35:43] It must be easier to apply it to your own thing. Because you’re kind of going, oh, I see he’s doing this here and then this. Yeah. Yeah. I’ve

[00:35:50] Brett: done some work lately. Trans translating Ruby into type script. And definitely, um, the, the more [00:36:00] modular something is, the easier it is to grok exactly what’s happening in a method and to rewrite it in a new language.

[00:36:09] And it would be nearly impossible to convert something that was just one huge function that did everything. Uh, yeah. And you have to convert it like line by line, but you don’t know exactly how things relate to each other. And yeah, the more modular you can make it, the easier it is to translate between languages.

[00:36:29] Jeff: Okay. So, so then beyond comments, I’m wondering, so I think a lot about this with, um, We talked about it last week, like when you’re using ai, like how do you denote that, right? And how do you denote it in a way that has the best chance of surviving into the future? But like, even separate than that, I’ve started to realize that, you know, with things moving so fast, like even as metadata, I would like to add a paratitudeh of context, you know?

[00:36:55] Um, and or I I was wondering in your case, like, [00:37:00] is it, is it useful to comment, is it useful in the comments to say, Hey, I made this, you know, I made this thing to call this, you know, this particular a p i, this was this version of the p i and it was done in this year. Yeah, yeah, for sure. This month of this year, you know, I mean, work

[00:37:18] Brett: that’s usually discernible like a well-written p i has its version number in the rest u r url.

[00:37:24] I was gonna ask about that. So it’s, it’s usually pretty easy to discern, um, in cases where that’s not true. Absolutely. Uh, like denoting what version of the API you’re using, like, that’s for me, like comments. You can explain literally everything that happens in a function. And if you use like chat g p t to write your comments for you, it will, it will explain everything the function is doing and it will explain how each parameter is used, which is, I mean, [00:38:00] thorough, but when I’m reading somebody else’s code, I’m usually doing it with enough knowledge to glance at a block of code and understand what it’s doing and how it’s doing it.

[00:38:13] Um, and the comments for me should just serve to, um, it should be like one or two lines that denote. Here’s, here’s what I did here. Maybe some comments within the function saying, you know, to do or fix me, or explaining why something is an unexpected way. Um, I really like yard. Um, I don’t know if you’re familiar with yard.

[00:38:40] No. What’s

[00:38:40] Jeff: yard? Uh, is it, is it uh, part of

[00:38:42] Brett: Zu? It’s a documentation syntax use, uh, I think only for Ruby, but, um, it’s a lot like JS Doc or other, I’m sure there are things in Python that are similar, but you can write the comments out and then run. A yard [00:39:00] processing on it and it turns it into documentation.

[00:39:03] Oh. Uh, so what you see is the name of the method, a description of what the method does, and then a description of every parameter it takes, and, and then it tells you what it returns, you know, an object or a hash or whatever.

[00:39:18] Jeff: I’ve often wondered with comments like, where, I’m sure everyone’s different with this, but where do you draw the line between, okay, I am, I am only going to address people who have a sort of implicit skillset, um, that, that would cause them to be reading this code in the first place.

[00:39:33] Like, yeah, that’s, how do you think about that? That’s a

[00:39:35] Brett: good question. Like in this age of AI, that we are very suddenly in very suddenly, um, I don’t think it’s necessary to over document anything because any coder, even if they’re fresh to a language, can now ask chat g p t to explain code to them. Yeah, and it will do that.

[00:39:58] And you could put that all in the [00:40:00] comments, but I feel like. I don’t know exactly where the line is, but there’s a limit to how much is actually useful when someone could just select a code block and say, explain this to me.

[00:40:12] Jeff: Right, right. That’s true. Yeah. I think the only, and this hardly ever happens in comments, but it certainly does happen in comments.

[00:40:19] The only, the only thing that you could add is voice. Yeah. Right. Like, which isn’t necessarily that important, but it’s like, well,

[00:40:28] Brett: yeah, in code comments, you don’t. Yeah, you don’t have voice. I, I find voice annoying. Yeah, I do. I

[00:40:34] Jeff: I do too. When I’m reading code, I don’t, you know. Yeah. But I, but it’s like, uh, you know, if you really zoom in on a silicone chip, there’s usually these little etchings that are like, there’s Pacman, or it’s like something silly that’s way, way deep in there.

[00:40:47] Um, that’s fun, but that’s different. That’s an Easter egg. Most people just can’t see that. Yeah. That’s an Easter egg. Exactly. Um, okay, I have another related, like, uh, what if you could question that’s related to [00:41:00] last week. I talked about, um, being so happy to have found a Firefox extension that merges windows.

[00:41:06] Um, because I, I spray tabs and windows, uh, indiscriminately into the crowd, um, every day on my monitors. And, and I know with like sublime text, I’ve taken advantage for so long on being able to just merge all the tabs into one window. Um, cuz I, I just like, for whatever reason, like if I’m in a big hurry, it’s just straight to a text factoror, even though I’ve got.

[00:41:30] Envy ultra running. That’s where all my texts, you know, that’s where it all lives. But like I just go to sublime text. So anyway, one of the, one of the kind of reasons that thatR