The Kids These Days Don't Know How To Do It Right 👴
Oh, are we team Vercel now? Do we love Vercel? That's what you're doing? You're shifting? I'll just follow you.
Dax:We were talking about how, like, we would definitely take, if they wanna pay us, we'll do it. Yeah. Let's do it. We we had a joke that, we would take a sponsorship from them for terminal to do their conference, and we would just send cardboard cutouts.
Adam:How are you?
Dax:Not great. I think I'm sick.
Adam:Is that why you went home early?
Dax:No. Sorry. My brain is, my brain's slow. Okay. Liz's sister was watching Zuko, and she had to go home a day early.
Dax:So
Adam:gotcha. I had
Dax:to go home a day early. But I think I was sick the whole time I was there pretty much because as soon as I got to Dallas, I felt kinda off. And then from Tuesday, I was like I don't know. I felt this weird phase where I was like, I feel like I could be sick, but I could also just not be sick.
Adam:Yeah. My my throat was sore that first morning after we went and kinda hung out with the Laravel people. I think that was Yeah. Just it's the bar thing. It's like it's smoky.
Adam:It's loud. You're yelling at each other. But then it does make you question the whole time, like, am I actually sick? It's possible.
Dax:Yeah. I was confused by that. But I think I definitely am sick because I there's, like, a taste I get in my mouth in the morning
Adam:when I'm sick.
Dax:And I and I taste it. So
Adam:yeah. Yep.
Dax:So that's that sucks.
Adam:But, successful trip to Dallas, would you say? That was fun? Yeah.
Dax:It went really well. Everything went really smoothly, really, as far as I know. I wasn't too involved in setting up the stream, so I don't know if there was, like, chaos there. But it came out good.
Adam:It it was yeah. The the color temperature and all that. Like, I just it drives me crazy when, like, I don't get it all right. And it was like trying to warm up but also get the stream going. I would like to to not do camera stuff anymore.
Adam:I think I wanna retire from knowing knowing anything about cameras.
Dax:Yeah. For the next thing, let's just let's just rent everything.
Adam:Yeah. That would be great. Just seeing all those professional crews walking around and thinking, like, they're gonna do a better job, and they're probably not that expensive. I don't know. Man, carrying my bag full of equipment around the airport was brutal.
Adam:I literally have calluses on my fingers just from, like, a day of carrying that bag around.
Dax:Yeah.
Adam:It's insane. It's heavy.
Dax:Yeah. And I guess when we rent the person to do it, it's not like we're renting the equipment separately, so it's probably pretty cheap overall.
Adam:Yeah. I would think so. Yeah. Did we give any context? We streamed a basketball game in Dallas.
Adam:Normal work activities. Just things, you know,
Dax:average sports betting. Basketball players. How does that feel?
Adam:Hey, we won too. How about that?
Dax:Yeah. We're we're, we're winning professional basketball players.
Adam:Yeah. I feel like we just retire now, 1 and o, on our, our basketball career. Like, the terminal team never lost and never will lose because we will never play again.
Dax:I just like this idea that we'll, like, accept the challenge for any sport from anyone.
Adam:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We just do a tour of all of them.
Dax:That'd be amazing. Sport you guys wanna play us in? We're we're down to try it.
Adam:Yeah. I feel like we'd be pretty good at other thing. It worked out perfectly that there's 5 of us, and basketball requires 5 people. How fun was that, though? Like, just the collection of people on the court is just pretty crazy.
Adam:Like, all these people you know from Twitter, all their faces are very familiar, and you're running around, like, banging into each other playing basketball. It's just a different experience. Won't have that weekend, probably. Yeah.
Dax:Yeah. It was funny because we had a, so we used Transistor for all our podcast stuff. And Yeah. And, Jack was there. Is his name right, Jack?
Adam:Justin? You were close.
Dax:Justin. Sorry. Justin. Justin Jackson.
Adam:Yeah. Yeah. So the Jack. Yeah.
Dax:Justin Justin was there. Mhmm. He scored a point on our team, which was great. Yep. Yeah.
Dax:So it's just funny to see everyone in these situations that they a lot of them were like, I haven't played basketball in in 20 years. So just put them in a situation they thought they never did.
Adam:Somebody on the other team that they were having the like, that had never played. They were having to explain that you dribble. You can't take steps without dribbling. Like, they'd never played.
Dax:Oh, really? Wow. That's pretty crazy.
Adam:But then there was the guy on their team, I'm blanking on his name, CEO of Laravel, whatever. I'm I'm blanking. But he played college basketball. Tom. He was clearly
Dax:I could tell he wasn't try he wasn't what it felt like to me was he was holding back the first half because it maybe would be, like, a little unsportsman or maybe he felt like
Adam:it would
Dax:be, like, unsportsmanlike. But then, like, the last, like, 4 minutes, you scored, like, every point for them.
Adam:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He kinda took over.
Dax:Was like, yeah. I was like, okay.
Adam:Competitive if you've played competitive basketball, like, especially in college, I feel like, yeah, something's gonna kick in, and you're gonna be like, screw this. Yeah. He said it was 99, though. Like, he hasn't played since 99 college basketball. Are you serious?
Adam:Like, 9 like, 1999. Isn't that crazy? Basketball.
Dax:Are you serious?
Adam:Like 9 like 1999. Ain't that crazy? I mean, he said he had played, like, 5 years ago maybe, but, like, college was something.
Dax:For that?
Adam:Yeah. I thought so. I didn't
Dax:think it was that long ago.
Adam:I know. It's crazy. We're all getting so old.
Dax:He's, like, 45? Wow. Okay. He's really good.
Adam:All the gray beards
Dax:are all
Adam:just aging.
Dax:It is kinda random that everyone on our everyone on the terminal team, like, is base level pretty athletic. It's, like, pretty random, especially for a group of random software engineers.
Adam:You know? Yeah. What's that about? I did feel like we are, like, kind of, like, good at this. We could probably, like, play sports as, like, a side thing for a while, and
Dax:Yeah.
Adam:We still got some legs on us. Yeah. It was surprising. Like, Teej clearly plays a lot of morning basketball. Prime just throws his body at everything.
Adam:It's like a stream. Like, Prime stream is such a perfect embodiment of, like Right. His his personality and how he plays sports as well, it turns out.
Dax:Yeah.
Adam:And it's also just good hanging out. Like, we don't get to do that a whole lot in person.
Dax:Yeah. I thought it was cool because, you know, no one I don't think anything remotely like this gets done at conferences. So definitely first of its kind. And, yeah, it'll be cool to see what else we can whip up for the stuff coming up rest of the year.
Adam:We've just been throwing ideas around for how do we top the basketball game. There's lots of cool ideas floating around.
Dax:Well, not just a basketball game. Then we hold hold the Lambo stuff.
Adam:Oh, yeah. So we rented a Lambo. I forgot. We spent, like, a few hours with a Lambo and took all kinds of funny videos. I can't wait for those to start coming out.
Adam:Does somebody have all the footage now? Are people editing?
Dax:I think I think TJ uploaded it into the Slack, I think. I didn't check because I was I was flying when he did that. But, yeah, we gotta get those out. It's, yeah. And that also we have the top.
Dax:Like, we just gotta keep surprising people, which is which is hard. But Yeah. Right. It's really fun.
Adam:How about Bighin Bach? I love that guy. I didn't know
Dax:He's so
Adam:pretty. I like that. The best. Like, the first one he walked in the room, like, first meeting him, I'm like, I don't know. I don't know if I'm gonna get along with this guy.
Adam:Like, it's just he was a lot. But then you just appreciate him more and more, I feel like, as you spend time with him. I love that guy.
Dax:Yeah. He can,
Adam:like, make everyone everything. Yeah. He's just so helpful and yeah. Love that guy. And then you learn that, like, he sends so many tweets to teach and prime.
Dax:He's he's playing a ghostwriter. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I gotta get on I gotta get on that,
Adam:Yeah. No kidding. I'm not gonna find loop. I think he's got enough ideas for more than just Teej and Prime. Yeah.
Dax:Yeah. And what's also cool is, he's so I have a few friends that are in this specific space as well, like that art and tech
Adam:intersection. It was
Dax:really big in, like, the 20 mid 20 tens, especially in New York. They're, like, giant dedicated companies where all they would do is do one off crazy, like, tech installations
Adam:for
Dax:different different clients. Yep. He's super into that world, and, yeah, it's obviously way crazier now than it was back then. But he's got just so many ideas that we could just take and do for our stuff because, like, he just knows stuff that's happened in, like, other spaces, and we can, like, map that to ours.
Adam:Yep.
Dax:So I'm like, just send me all of your ideas. Like, I will just build every single one.
Adam:Yeah. I love it.
Dax:Yeah. He's cool. He's great. It's great.
Adam:Yeah. It was a it was a good conference. I felt like my Twitter timeline I haven't been on Twitter as much lately. But opening it at the conference, it was just it was taken over by all these things going on.
Dax:Yeah. So I remember Laracon last year, and it definitely wasn't this noisy. Like, I remember, like, a few pictures of Aaron floating around. It seemed pretty quick, but this year, it seemed like
Adam:Yeah. Do you think we did did we do our part here? Did we help boost awareness with our shenanigans? Yeah.
Dax:I mean, I saw at least several tweets that were like, do I need to start learning PHP now? And that's, like, the the metric for me. If, like, random people are just, like, having FOMO.
Adam:If we're giving random, like, React influencers FOMO, that's that's the goal.
Dax:Yeah. So I think we did our job.
Adam:Cool. Yeah. What's next? What's next for Terminal? Oh, we also sell coffee, by the way.
Adam:You're interested in some Terminal coffee. Let's throw it to our sponsors. I'm just gonna say stuff like that because Chris does fun stuff when I say things like that.
Chris:This episode of How About Tomorrow is brought to you by Dax getting stuffed in a basketball game.
Adam:Oh, I think he he was that a stuff, Scott? Oh. Did he get stuffed? Oh. In the audience.
Chris:And also buy Terminal Coffee, which you can order at terminal.shop. And while we cannot confirm nor deny that the coffee contains the sweat of Prime, we can confirm that it does contain the tears of Dax as evidenced by him getting stuffed in the basketball game. Be sure to get amazing tasting coffee that's ethically sourced through your command line at terminal.shop. Now back to the show.
Adam:Terminal Coffee though. We sold a bunch of artisan coffee online, some in in person. Mhmm. I feel very low energy. Do you feel very low energy?
Adam:I mean, you're sick.
Dax:I'm I'm yeah.
Adam:Listen, it's gonna be tough. I feel like we're both just kind of, like, reeling from the last few days.
Dax:What else? We met Bash in person. That was the first time for me.
Adam:Oh, really? Oh, I met her at, TwitchCon. At TwitchCon? Are you going to this year? I thought I was going to, but I feel like and I even bought a ticket.
Adam:I just I feel like I should reserve all my travel for terminal things.
Dax:Terminal stuff. Yeah.
Adam:Yeah. We're gonna be going to stuff enough that, like, I can't throw in extra stuff that doesn't really add to that.
Dax:Yeah. Yeah. I feel the same way. Yeah. So we're we're trying to play another one for terminal in November.
Adam:Is that secret? Can we say where it is, or is it we should probably wait?
Dax:I just don't know. Like, this is not confirmed yet, so I don't wanna say. It's it's gonna be in New York, which, yeah. Liz keeps pushing me to make that one happen because she wants to
Adam:Just to go to New York?
Dax:She wants to go hang up.
Adam:Where do I wanna go? Let me see. Are there tech conferences in Southern California? I do I haven't been to LA in forever.
Dax:I've been to California in a while, so I would I would have to enjoy that.
Adam:It's like
Dax:I would too. Is it because, like, there's tech stuff going on in California all the time that they don't do conferences there? Because, like
Adam:There are conferences, like, I I guess, in SF. I hate saying SF.
Dax:But aren't there?
Adam:Like, there's what? There's, well, you know, it's been a while. I I know, like, when like, Theo living there and people would be going to his apartment and stuff because they're going to some tech conference.
Dax:That was NextConference.
Adam:Was it just NextCon? Oh, maybe it is just NextConference. Yeah. Maybe. I think they're having another conference.
Adam:I don't know. I heard maybe something about it. Sorry.
Dax:Nice.
Adam:Oh, are we team Vercel now? Do we love Vercel? That's what you're doing? You're shifting? I'll just follow you.
Dax:We were talking about how, like, we would definitely take, if they wanna pay us, we'll do it. Yeah. Let's do it. We we had a joke that, we would take a sponsorship from them for terminal to do their conference, and we would just send cardboard cutouts.
Adam:Oh, that's good. Oh, I love it. Yeah. I guess maybe there aren't a lot of tech conferences in San Francisco, but definitely not in, like, Southern California, which is where I'd rather go. I don't wanna go to the Bay Area.
Adam:That place sucks. LA. I mean, I just don't like it. I don't know. There's just like it's not very clean.
Adam:And there's like
Dax:Oh, the city? Yeah. The city is
Adam:Yeah. The city is selfish.
Dax:That's where it is now. It is. Yeah. I mean, it's it's like a beautiful place, you know
Adam:Yeah. I guess.
Dax:Geographically? I like
Adam:to go to the Ferry Building. And, there's this place called Mariposa's. This is bakery. And they have these vegan pop tarts. They're like plum flavored.
Adam:They're so good. I call them pop tarts. They're like,
Dax:what would that be called? Strudel.
Adam:A strudel. Yeah. They're pop tarts. I mean, come on.
Dax:It's like whenever you travel anywhere, you just get some vegan
Adam:I really do. Vegan pastries. It's kind of, like, my weakness. I just travel to get vegan pastries.
Dax:Yeah. There's a lot of vegan pastries in my neighborhood too.
Adam:Yeah? Tell me more. Okay. Anyway. Oh, we might come to Miami, by the way.
Adam:Really? What? Casey, there's a volleyball camp. I don't remember. December?
Adam:I think December. Oh, you
Dax:guys should do it. That'd be really fun.
Adam:Yeah. It's like she there's these camps they have all over the country. And it's like when one intersects with something that would be like, hey, we could go see Dax and Liz. It's like it's a good reason to pick that one. So, yeah, I'll let you know.
Dax:But we hope we hope to
Adam:do that. Yeah. That'd be great. It's actually in South Beach, but it's still be fun.
Dax:Yeah. You guys won't you guys won't stay there. But Yeah.
Adam:No. We'd stay closer to you, and then we could just drive across the bridge or whatever.
Dax:Which, you know, is not gonna have a lot of traffic this time because I know it was crazy during, React Miami.
Adam:Was that just special circumstances that React Miami lined up with something where traffic was really bad or just time of year?
Dax:It must have been the conference because I literally like, I live here, and I consider myself close to the beach over there. Like, it usually, like, a 50 minute drive. Yeah.
Adam:That was was it the Emerge Americas? The LinkedIn conference? I guess so.
Dax:Whatever the hell that is. This Emerge Americas conference just, like, blows my mind because
Adam:It really does.
Dax:It's so big, and then you see everyone there. And you're just like, who are these people? And, like Yeah.
Adam:They're all in suits.
Dax:And, like, Tom Brady, like, somehow spoke there. Like, it's big enough to get Tom Brady to speak there. But, like and it's it's, like, in Miami of all places, like, I just don't get it at all.
Adam:I don't get it. Yeah. What's been going on in tech? What else did we miss while we were doing real life stuff? It's so funny to say, like, IRL.
Adam:Like, oh, that's my IRL friend. Like, Teej came with Sam. Like, this is my IRL friends. Like, we're all real life friends, just not, like, in person friends, but not enough.
Dax:What is going on in tech? Is anything going on
Adam:Or in life. Forget about tech. Who cares anymore? I just don't care anymore. I think the more people talk on Twitter, like, technical topics, the less I care.
Adam:I care nothing about anyone's technical takes. I just don't. Like, I'm sure someone cares. I just I can't even anymore. I can't pretend.
Adam:Like, your technical takes on Twitter are just I don't no one cares. No one cares. Oh, there's been so much stuff going on. Yacine has been, like, attacking
Dax:Oh, yeah.
Adam:All the people, that we associate with, and they've been attacking back. Wait.
Dax:What do you mean attacking all the people?
Adam:I mean, like, going after, just like It was
Dax:just you seen the Theo fighting.
Adam:Was it just you seen the Theo? I thought there were other people.
Dax:Whipped up Cody also was in there.
Adam:Whipped up Cody. I don't really know him, I guess. Then there's, like, DHA topping in and being like, Told you, complexity sucks.
Dax:Yeah. It's
Adam:been it's been a lot of Twitter drama.
Dax:That's definitely a good example of a conversation where I generally just felt like I don't I actually just don't wanna even get involved in this at all. Yeah. I really don't like it now. Talking to each other.
Adam:It keeps coming up, like, this this, yeah, complexity versus, like, VPSs or whatever. I'm just tired. I don't care. Either side sounds
Dax:And nobody is ever shipping anything?
Adam:Exactly. What are they I don't know. I saw you say something about that, and I had to think about it deeply for a moment. Like, are there a lot of people shipping? They just don't talk?
Adam:So the people who are talking
Dax:These people that are always, like, arguing about, you should be a VPN, you should be whatever. It's like, I have never used your product. Yeah. Like, I I've never used any of your products.
Adam:What is, like, one notable product that is, like, shipped on a VPS?
Dax:I mean, I'm I'm sure there are. It's just that, like, for the volume of people talking about it, I would expect a proportionate volume of products, and there is not.
Adam:So okay. So let's define VPS. Because I feel like lots of large companies manage their own infrastructure. Like, they don't use
Dax:I mean, EC 2 is a VPS.
Adam:Okay. Right. So, like, there's this association, though, with VPS. There's kind of a connotation that it's like a DigitalOcean droplet. It's cheap, and it's whatever.
Adam:It's not using one of the major cloud providers. Don't you think? There's there's it's like, I know
Dax:I think the implication is that you just they highlight how cheap it could all be. And obviously, EC 2 is not cheap in terms of compute. Yeah. On its own.
Adam:And it's it's an AWS thing. So, like, you're not spiritually aligned with the crowd that's, like, the $5 VPS crowd. Right? Yeah.
Dax:I but I think at this point, the war has gotten so large that they're, like, recruiting everyone they can. So they're like I gotcha. Like included. Because because now I do see people say, like, just get a server on Petsner or AWS or whatever. I I I see that I get included.
Adam:Okay. So they include AWS. Yeah. They're just opposed to well, that's the thing. Like, the $5 VPS crowd is sort of, like, really angry at the Vercel and, like, Netlify layer of cloud abstraction, which I also think is stupid and won't exist in 5 years.
Adam:Or if it does, it'll look very different. But that's not where we live. We talked about this at least offline.
Dax:No. Yeah. But that's what I'm saying. I just feel like this group doesn't ship anything because so someone asked me the other day. I was talking no.
Dax:And that joke post I made where I was like, Vercel rules because I was one of the flip sides now because everyone is on the anti Vercel side
Adam:Mhmm.
Dax:Which is, like, mostly a joke, but a part of me is, like, so tuned to just do the opposite that I'm just, like, maybe I should be pro Vercel. Someone replied being like, hey. What's your recommendation for I'm if I'm building something that is not gonna go viral, like, how would you think about whether I use a VPS or serverless or something? Right? And I replied being like, I just don't work on anything that I don't think will go viral.
Dax:Like, what's the point of
Adam:Yeah. Why work on something that yeah.
Dax:Yeah. So I'm like, I that like, I don't know what perspective you have at all for that kind of thing. So, like, I don't know what decision to do. But they pressed me on it, and I was like, here's actually what it comes down to. Like, whenever this stuff comes up, people, like, design an architecture from scratch.
Dax:They're like, you should buy VPS and then spin this up and do it as though this is, like, the only thing you're ever gonna work on.
Adam:Mhmm.
Dax:Yeah. I could do all that. I know how to do all that. I've done all that in the past, but I don't want one thing I'm working on to look radically different than another thing I'm working on just because it, like, was smaller. At this point, like, I just pick a capable platform that works whether I'm making something really simple or making something really complicated.
Dax:That way, all my apps look similar and work in the same way because, especially when you're working on a lot of things, the context switching of technologies is sucks. And I think people can feel this when, like, they maybe tried out, like, solid on some project and then all their projects still in React and then switching between 2 sucks. And now that also on the infrastructure layer. So for me, like, yeah, I don't I don't really consider those other options because I do have big things that I'm managing that do need AWS. So everything else might as well be there.
Adam:Yeah. And it doesn't feel like and I'm sure people have said this before, but it doesn't feel like extra work once you It's
Dax:not extra work. Once you know it. Yeah.
Adam:It's like, I hate the idea that, like, just ship a thing as fast as you possibly can. It could be a piece of junk, but, like, ship it so you can move on and make money or whatever. It's like, it doesn't take me more time to ship something with this stack that works for anything than it does. Like, I don't know what shortcuts I would take that actually save me time by using some other stack or some simpler thing. And a
Dax:bunch of other stuff comes up. It's like, okay, now it's in production. I guess, because the server, I do need to monitor stuff, then I have to go set up Datadog, and I have to do all these things. I'm just I've done the all this stuff in the past. I just don't wanna do that again.
Dax:So that's that's what I'm saying. Like, I don't know if these people are actually building anything. Like, see how my answer was very scoped to other stuff I'm doing in, like, my life and stuff. I can't, like, I can't speak without that context. And a lot of these people make these recommendations without that stuff.
Dax:So I'm like, yeah. I don't know. I don't think they're actually building anything.
Adam:Yeah. What about on the other side? Do you think anyone's building anything with Vercel Slop?
Dax:No. I don't think so either.
Adam:Maybe there are
Dax:actually, no. To be fair, there are companies there are products I use that I go.
Adam:It's like cal.com. That's that's a big one. Or did they move off or sell?
Dax:I don't use cal.com. But I use, I use TypeFully, which is like,
Adam:Oh, that's a Twitter thing. Yeah.
Dax:I just use it for analytics because they have, like, the best looking analytics page for that stuff.
Adam:You don't you don't use it to write your your thread boy threads?
Dax:No. And I did see them in this conversation arguing why they use whatever. But it's just like I just don't I don't know. I just really don't care. And I think what's been really freeing for me, I don't know if I said this already, just the shift that SSC has taken, I feel so not pinned to any kind of way of building.
Adam:Yeah.
Dax:So even more so, I, like, don't care at all. Because, like, I'm not biased anymore about wanting people to build a certain way because it lines up with ST Primitives. ST Primitives now cover everything. So Yeah. Yeah.
Dax:I'm just like, whatever. Just tell me what you wanna do, and I'll do it. And I have no opinion on whether it sucks or not, you know.
Adam:Can I just say, when you're sick, you have, like, the deepest, richest voice for a podcast ever? I need you to be sick more. It just sounds really nice on the headphones. I'm sure the listeners will agree.
Dax:I know. I I've had this thought before, and I think I can maybe fake it when I,
Adam:Oh, there you go.
Dax:I don't know.
Chris:I think
Dax:you should pay attention. Vigen has a really great voice too.
Adam:Oh, he does
Dax:that, like, voice
Adam:Yeah.
Dax:Like, newscaster voice or whatever.
Adam:Uh-huh. I just wanna I wanna do stuff with Vigen now. Like, whatever his little brain comes up his big brain comes
Dax:up with. His weird brain comes up with.
Adam:Yeah. He's so into, like, some very specific things. And, like, I can't imagine anyone knows more. You know what he reminds me of? I meant to say this to him in Dallas.
Adam:In the movie Dune or the books, whatever, the guys that can calculate what are those called? The, you know, like, calculating
Dax:things? Yeah. Yeah.
Adam:Yeah. Yeah.
Dax:Yeah. He's like that, but with, like, with, like, with, like, Internet lore. Yeah.
Adam:With, like, memes and lore. Like, you can just tell you anything. Yeah. Let's go drive a crazy kid. Think of the name of it.
Dax:Here's the other thing that we also found. So after you left, you know how whenever any kind of drama happens and it gets deleted, someone's always posting screenshots of
Adam:it? Yeah. Yeah.
Dax:He's a guy that just always taking a screenshot right away.
Adam:The screenshot. Like He's
Dax:like he's the archivist. He's got just screenshots of everything. Yeah.
Adam:I can see his reaction when he sees something like that. Oh, hang on. Yeah. Exactly. Screenshot.
Adam:Okay. Got it.
Dax:He's he's the person that's just yeah. He just has everything saved from, like, any, like, drama you can query him about. He'll, like, produce the the artifacts for you.
Adam:I I have I have wondered that before. Like, who are these people that take screenshots? I also wonder, like, when you see really funny memes, like, who are the people that make these things? And it's also vegan. It's people like vegan.
Adam:Like, they just have that brain you you can, like, show them any random, like you know, like these, like, cartoon images people post of, like, a certain face? Yeah. Like, the Wojak or there was one I can't remember it. It was one of the Yacine responses, I think. It's like this kinda black and white drawing of a guy.
Adam:Yeah. I think it was his response to Adamrakis. And, like, I I just knew when I saw it, like, Began will know what that's called. He knew immediately. And, like, I didn't even show it to him.
Adam:I just described it to him. He's like, oh, yeah. Yeah. He's he really is, like, one of those things in dudes.
Dax:Yeah. He just I think he thinks physically lives on the Internet.
Adam:That's what
Dax:it feels
Adam:like. For real? Yeah.
Dax:His address is the Internet. There was some tech stuff that happened this week, so I was refreshing my memory on Hacker News stuff. Instant DB, which has been, like, announced for a while and, like, kinda in being worked on. I think it's, like, officially public now.
Adam:Instant what'd you call it?
Dax:Instantdb.com. It's another entrant in the Local First category.
Adam:Okay. And Is it is it good? I feel like you're you're good.
Dax:I haven't been able to dig into it too much. I think my initial look at it, it looks very similar to, Replicache plus the Replicash back end that they're now deprecating.
Adam:Okay.
Dax:So, yeah, it's it's it's kinda like a I think I I still put there's just it's funny how crazy influential Firebase is. Like, I realize there's so many companies where I describe them as, oh, they're trying to be like a Firebase, but this can mean, like, so many different things. So this is like a Firebase in that it is a client side library that can, like, talk to a back end that you don't need to build. Yeah. But they went really hard on all the local first stuff.
Dax:So being able to, like, sync all data locally, create queries that are live updated, like, all all of those things. But just, like, I guess, taking a step back, it's just it's pretty wild to see how much more attention this space is getting. Like, there's more and more entrants. Like, these are, like, legit efforts. They're not, like, one off little things.
Dax:Like, the people behind this have worked pretty hard on on all of this, and it seems pretty polished and pretty deeply integrated with, the things I mean, they're obviously focused on React.
Adam:Yeah. But then 0 is, like, a new way of doing all this. I really wanna understand better what 0 is.
Dax:Yeah. So so I think the Replicast team have have experimented with a few different extremes, and they're kinda, like, trying different approaches on this.
Adam:Mhmm.
Dax:The first was a client side only library. So this is just something that exists on the front end. You implement a back end endpoint that it can sync with. And that's what I'm using currently with all my projects. Then they went to the extreme of, okay, obviously, setting up that back end endpoint yourself is complicated.
Dax:So let's put a full back end as a service thing that, like, fully owns all of your data, and you can just plug any Replicache front end into it. And that was called, reflect.
Adam:Okay.
Dax:They ultimately decided not to continue with that, and they're, like, sun setting it at some point. Now they're trying a different angle, which is kind of in between of the 2. They give you, basically a container that can sit in front of your database and serve a Replicache application, a Replicache front end. But you still have your own back end, like a very normal looking back end that has, like
Adam:Mhmm.
Dax:Can serve other things like, you know, just it's like for for, like, a more, like, realistic app that's not just Replicache.
Adam:Yeah. Like, you own your database. You Yeah. All of that. Does it work with any database?
Adam:Or how yeah. What does it work with?
Dax:It will. But right now, it's post the first version is gonna be Postgres specific. Yeah. But the underlying architecture is pretty simple. Like, the only database specific part is, the replication layer between the database and their server.
Adam:Mhmm.
Dax:So they'll they'll implement that for every database they wanna support.
Adam:And that's what 0 is. That's we're talking about 0.
Dax:Okay. Yeah. What's cool about that is because so I built our endpoint thing for Boomi, for SST, for, for Radiance. I could spend, like, a year on that if I wanted just to make that endpoint better, faster, like, more features, etcetera. But they're basically doing that.
Dax:So it allows for so many cool things where you can just, like, drop components on a page, and it knows what queries that component needs. And if you're running this through SSR, it'll actually fetch it all, server side rendered.
Adam:So 0 includes front end components. Is that what you're saying?
Dax:It includes integration or it's planned to include, like, integrations with front end frameworks. Right? So if you Okay. You basically can, and it's if you've ever looked at GraphQL relay, it's kinda similar.
Adam:Yeah. Yeah.
Dax:If you It,
Adam:like, batches up the queries and
Dax:Yep. Exactly. So if you have a component that's like user component, you can say, like, what data you need from the
Adam:Mhmm.
Dax:Your data store to fill this user component. Then on s there's, like, an SR hook. So when it's SR ing, it'll resolve all of those from, like, this replica cache layer. Mhmm. So it'll actually get SSR ed.
Dax:But what's on the front end, this data starts getting synced locally and saved.
Adam:If there
Dax:are components you have not visited for a while, they start expiring out of the cache. So if it's like save the data for a component for your user profile, because I looked at it
Adam:Yep.
Dax:And I haven't looked at it again in a week, it'll, like, rotate out. And that's a historically, that's been, like, really manual to configure rules on Yeah. Yeah. How long to keep data, how to, like, move this slide this window around. So they've just built a way to do this all completely automatically.
Dax:So it'll be pretty nice.
Adam:Pretty cool.
Dax:And they just sent me, like, their reference architecture on how, you would deploy this into your AWS account or wherever. It is, like, a little complicated. There's, like, simple versions of it. There's more complicated versions of it, but it's not bad. Like, self hosting this is, like, not gonna be too hard to work.
Adam:I wonder, like, if it's a container, is it pretty like, does it match with SSDs, like Yep. Cluster thing? Yeah.
Dax:But we're actually gonna build a component for it.
Adam:Oh, nice. So just drop in to an SSD app. That's so cool. I love that it's a you guys have the ability to to go that level of abstraction. Like, here is a replica 0 component, and everything is done.
Dax:Yep.
Adam:And it works with your infrastructure. It creates your infrastructure. Yeah. Like, front end frameworks can't do that. They don't have that power.
Dax:Yeah. So but anyway, the thing that the reason I brought this up in the first place is instant DB thing. This is the first time in my career where I can finally check the box if I was early to something.
Adam:Oh. Because I remember first time you were early? I feel like that's not true.
Dax:No. I think it's true. I think to, like, pass the threshold of being, like it's funny because sort of. If I was really early on it, I would have built it. So I wasn't that early.
Dax:But I would say this is the earliest I've ever been to something because I've seen I remember talking about this, like, years ago when, like, SSR was a thing everyone was talking about, and nobody was, like, nobody knew what I was talking about. And now I see tweets every week where someone's like, wait, I tried this local first thing. Like, woah. How is this not, like, the future of everything? Yeah.
Dax:Like, people we know too. So I'm like, oh, yeah. I finally feel like I've, like, witnessed that shift, and it feels good. Yeah. Yeah.
Dax:So the next next goal is to be early enough where, you know, you, like, invent the thing. Yeah.
Adam:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. How long has Replicash been? Like, how long ago did he start that?
Dax:Must be, like, 5 years now.
Adam:5 years? Yeah. Yeah. It does feel like the best applications in a browser are going to be local first. It's like any trade offs that there are, like, oh, you're not like, that just needs to be solved.
Adam:Like, you need to get the best of both worlds. You need to if you need to server render stuff for whatever reasons, SEO or whatever else, like, we gotta just solve that problem. But there's no way, like, a a multipage app, like, using any one of the SSR frameworks is going to approach the quality of a local first app without I guess I guess anything could be done with just enough effort. But, like, local first gives you that, like, amazing application feeling. Everything's insent.
Adam:Everything feels really good. Feels like you can solve the SSR stuff, and it sounds like it already is being solved more easily than, like, an SSR framework can figure out how to make, like, the local first thing make it feel local first.
Dax:Yeah. It's a got a scope for them Yeah. Exactly. To address that.
Adam:Because I think about this all the time with statmias. Like, oh, we don't have much interactivity. But then we keep adding more. It's like, oh, we need to sprinkle in this interactivity. And it's like, at the end of the day, it doesn't feel very good because we don't have really good tools, to kind of like make that all feel instant and smooth.
Adam:It's like we started with the SSR and that kinda constrains a lot of what we can do. So, yeah, I I do I think the future is like local first with figuring out all the other things that you need to figure out. But start from that foundation because it's just gonna feel better.
Dax:That thing that you guys went through is something that I feel like shows up a lot where early on in a project, you're like, oh, the shape of this project is pretty simple. And because it's simple, we can adopt this constraint that would, like, really simplify things for us across the board.
Adam:Mhmm. And
Dax:then all the things you hope to never need, you, like, eventually start to Slowly need.
Adam:Yeah. Yeah. And and this
Dax:is similar to that, like, the VPS conversation where it's like like, if you have any amount of experience, you've just gone through that thing over and over where you just don't want to start from the simplest thing Yeah. And just, like, go through that pain of, like, rewriting over and over. And I think we see, like, a lot of where how ST is positioned is, like, specifically around this. Yeah. We have simplified components, but we know that you're eventually going to break out of those and need weird configuration.
Dax:Yeah, more. Yep. Yeah. And designed specifically around, like, our whole framework is designed around the idea of being able to do that, whereas a lot of these SaaS services are designed around the bet that you'll never need to you'll never need to do that. Because with a SaaS service, the moment you need to break through to that stuff, the product becomes extremely ugly.
Dax:It just, like, really breaks down and, like, kind of defeats the purpose of using it in the first place. But, yeah, everyone eventually just always needs it. I guess it just always happens.
Adam:Yeah. Yeah. This goes to, like, the Twitter drama. Yacine kind of, like, pointing out the thing that he's angry about, being that it feels like the modern, SaaS slop, I guess I'll call it, in honor of his coining it, that slop. He just keeps saying the word slop.
Adam:That he feels like they're, like, trying to convince new engineers that they're too dumb and they'll never figure it out. I've heard you say similar things, like, not trying to lump you in with the scene, that, like, you agree with everything he says. Don't wanna get you canceled. But the, the idea that there's this whole wave of, like, dev tools companies that are, like, trying to simplify in a way that just, like, people aren't learning things they should probably learn anymore. Or new engineers that are coming into the field.
Adam:It's kinda like trying to shield them from something that would be valuable lessons to learn. Do you agree with all that?
Dax:Yeah. I think this falls in the category of something that's very confusing for me, which is, yes, I agree with everything there. But it also sounds a lot like what you always hear, which is the kids these days don't even know how to do x.
Adam:Yeah. It's true.
Dax:And and you remember being a kid, and you remember, like, quote unquote kid. And you remember, like, the grown ups saying stuff like that. And, you know, it may be a lot of it turned out to not matter. So I think I let that, like, kind of check myself to some degree. But I also see this other thing where people, like, see a pattern, and they apply it, like, way too aggressively.
Dax:Like, yeah, this does look like that, but it could it's also different.
Adam:Like Yeah. If I think about, like, our early career, there could have been the generation before us looking at us writing our Java and our c sharp and whatever and being like, this this generation hadn't even learned assembly or they're not even writing stuff in c anymore. And I've got my whole career and hadn't had to do either of those things. So, like, it's possible that this whole wave coming in now will never have to know how to manage a server or manage, lower level stuff like, I don't know, NGINX and whatever else.
Dax:Well, I think the thing that I think if I have to draw a differentiation, a lot of the tech the simplification that happened in our era allowed for a lot more to be done, like, a lot more software to be written. Like, it didn't really give up a lot of capabilities. Right? Like, if you think about something like garbage collected languages, like, that allowed for all sorts of things to be built where garbage collection was fine. Yep.
Dax:Whereas with this modern stuff, it feels more like they've defined a very, very narrow kind of application, and they've hyper optimized for it. And I feel like I I I can't see, like, here's, like, why 10 x or a 100 x amount of software will be written because of these tools. And maybe it's obvious that, like, ahead of time, but I think looking back, that's a difference. Like, that's why, like, the quote unquote old timers were wrong because these tools helped a lot more software be built.
Adam:Yep. Yep.
Dax:I don't know if that'll happen with this generation of stuff. It feels like you'd actually here's here's what it feels like. I think the difference between c and a garbage picked language is, like, a 10 x improvement or, like, a 100 x improvement. It's, like, a massive, massive improvement. Yeah.
Dax:Whereas this generation of stuff is positioned the same way, but I feel like it's, like, 50% better. It's, like, it's, like, maybe 2 times better.
Adam:I mean, like, Vercel for me is, like, it's like CICD, which just feels like a commodity at this point. I mean, like, people are that was the initial big thing. It's, like, I can just push to GitHub and not think about it. It's, like, yeah, you can do that with, like, 15 services now. Or, like, even the underlying stuff, it's getting easier and easier to do that with.
Adam:Do you agree
Dax:with that? Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. It's like it doesn't feel it's like a little better, you know?
Adam:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Is that the nature of, like, diminishing returns or something with progress and techno? No.
Adam:Technology historically just goes up real big.
Dax:Yeah.
Adam:It's like a curve that keeps getting more impressive. Right?
Dax:No. This is we'll see who ends up being right on on all this, but from where I'm sitting, I feel like this world doesn't understand what, like, venture, you know, is at all. And I've been talking about this a bunch of tasks.
Adam:Testing it. Yeah. I've seen it on Twitter. Even since
Dax:People will build something that is a little bit better, and they'll think that this is a venture scale thing. And it'll also be very noncontrarian. It'll be following, like, the trend that everyone else is doing. Where I'm like, one, as an investor, like, you know that all your returns are gonna come from a single company that, like, goes huge. And no company ever does that by, like, following the trend or making something incrementally better.
Dax:Like, it's so binary. If you're just building a nice business for yourself, like, like, that's fine. But these all these companies are in the venture scale category. I'm just like, what is everyone doing? Like, like, we've all read the same books.
Dax:We've all I mean, Jay pointed out this this out the other day. He's like, yeah, we know Power Law exists within companies. Like, a few companies end up really winning, but it exists inside investors also. Like, only a few VCs really get it, and only a few VCs really actually win. So that's probably what we're seeing.
Dax:Like, as weird as it is, like, I don't think a lot of these PCs understand this. I'm like, why are you betting on these, like, incrementally better products? Like, what where's, like, the wild contrarian bets? Like, it's just and that that's that to me, it feel it feels weird. Like, this is, like, the industry that's supposed to talk about that a lot or the the industry that where there's, like, so much reading material about thinking that
Adam:way. Yeah.
Dax:But everyone just like, oh, yeah. This seems like, you know, the next incremental step, and incremental steps tend to work. It's not like they're like, oh, this is gonna, like, be a total bust. They tend to, like, at least work a little. And we're just, like, down for that.
Dax:They're not, like, no, we gotta, like, actually do something that's crazy different.
Adam:Mhmm. Like, I'm gonna make a hosted Postgres service. It's gonna be amazing. Yeah. It's
Dax:like there's a trend of databases then and now we're gonna, like, join. It's just like everyone's everyone still thinks in terms of trends. Like, there's and I I said this thing the other day too where people talk about trends like it's the weather or, like, like, there's, like, wind blowing, and they're, like, oh, like, the wind is blowing. We gotta, like, put up our sail.
Adam:Yeah.
Dax:And they, like, see trends that way. That's not what is a trend is. A trend is someone, like, dragging the world into, like, a new thing. Like, you you you're not there to, like, capture the trend. You're there to, like, make the trend and push it.
Dax:But VCs talk entirely in terms of trends because they're never the ones making the trend. Yeah. So I can see how that affects founders.
Adam:Oh, it's the the dev tools wave. I mean, just how much money was flowing into dev tools. There's always some hot sector in VC world that just gets way too much money poured into it. Yeah. And we're still we're gonna watch the unraveling of that in dev tools for a while.
Adam:Right?
Dax:The thing I'm pointing out though is this way of think I get why VCs see it from this way because that's the only thing they can latch on to. But I think it's infecting the founders too who should, like, try try to resist that. Like, I keep I always think back to when the Clerk CEO responded to you because you were like, oh, why like, can you, like, make your pitch to me of why I should use Clerk? And he responded to you with an essay full of, like, graphs and charts and Gartner research and trend. And, like, he and he did this again recently last week where they're like he's like, here are the shifts in the market, and here's how we're gonna be positioned to take advantage.
Dax:It's just like
Adam:Yeah.
Dax:That shit does not go venture scale. Like, that approach just does not doesn't do it. Yeah. Yeah. But it's weird to me.
Dax:I'm like, how is this is this is the thing we're supposed to be doing. Like, we all signed up to be a venture scale company. This is the one thing we have to be doing. Why is no one doing it?
Adam:So are there examples, like, you you I feel like you see so many examples on this the wrong side of this where they're not taking big bets. Are there examples that you admire that did take big bets, like, that are active startups that you feel like actually chose the right size kind of thing?
Dax:Can you Yeah. I mean, I I think it's there's a very simple way to measure this. Right? I think people have a really tough time separating there there's 2 dimensions. There's how likely are they to be right?
Dax:Yes or no? And the other dimension, which is totally unrelated, which is a part of people have trouble understanding is if they are right, how big is the impact? So people tend to couple isn't the one dimension. So when they see that a company is likely to be right, they just assume it's gonna be a big impact. Mhmm.
Dax:When they see a company has low likelihood to be right, they assume it's gonna be low impact. But, really, what you actually look for are companies that have a low likelihood of being right. But if they are right, it's gonna be a massive massive impact. Yeah. So we were talking about Replicash earlier.
Dax:Right? Their bet is the whole web is being built incorrectly, and the right way to build it is this totally other architecture.
Adam:Mhmm.
Dax:Is that actually gonna happen? I don't know. Very low chance that it will. But if it does, like, they're just gonna win That's huge. Yeah.
Dax:Like, way more than anyone else. Right? Yep. And to me, like, nothing is worth working on in venture scale if you can't frame it in that way. Like yeah.
Dax:So there are not a lot, especially in in dev tools. And dev tools tend to be, like, pretty incremental. Outside of dev tools, there's obviously a ton.
Adam:Yeah. I'm sure. Yeah.
Dax:That is the state of our space. We're quite boring, I think, fortunately.
Adam:We are quite boring. Yeah. I'm quite bored. I'm bored with much of the discourse. And it's that helped me kinda get off of Twitter and not be that active right now.
Adam:I which I I get, like, there's a lot of other benefits to Twitter, just the memes and the hanging out or whatever. I am there's the Fantasy Football League. I mean, that's on Twitter. So I'm excited for that. We're drafting tomorrow, actually, I think.
Adam:Turns out Turk listens to our podcast and he thinks I am cheating because I talked about my secret weapon last time. So if you're still listening, Turk, I love you. That's all. I just like you. You're the best.
Adam:Thanks for running the league.
Dax:Did you see how viral Turk went this past week?
Adam:Oh, no. Did he?
Dax:He had a tweet with, like, a 150,000 likes.
Adam:Oh, my
Dax:It was so impactful that it showed up in Google search trends.
Adam:What what was the tweet?
Dax:I can't say it out loud because, Oh, okay. He he translated computer science into Norwegian, and it's quite a funny translation.
Adam:Okay. I feel like I've seen more, like, mega viral tweets lately. Like, I don't know if they're just showing up in my feed more, but, like, numbers that I don't remember seeing, like, a year ago on a single tweet. And it feels like it's happened within our little, like, corner of Twitter. You know what I mean?
Adam:Like, people we know. I know I've seen Theo has had at least 1 or 2 really giant Did
Dax:Vic had one recently?
Adam:Vic. Yeah.
Dax:Yeah.
Adam:I think I saw that. I've never had
Dax:an engine go that big. It's pretty wild when people pull that off.
Adam:Oh, that's I can't imagine what you're, like, notify I guess you don't get notifications at that point. Like, you're
Dax:just
Adam:checked out.
Dax:Once stuff leaves our bubble, it goes crazy.
Adam:Mhmm.
Dax:Oh, speaking of going viral, I think Elon said that they are going to do a refresh of the Twitter algorithm, like, GitHub repo.
Adam:Oh, has it never changed? I I haven't checked back in. Has it never changed since the first time that they update?
Dax:So he said that he said that it's like the word 30,000 was there. I don't know if it's, like, 30,000 lines or 30,000 changes. I don't know what it is. And they're gonna be they're gonna be updating it. And they said they made, like, a lot of changes recently.
Dax:Because they were talking about how they're trying to make it so it's fine. They were like, we're trying to make it so banger tweets go big even if it's not from a big account. And I'm like, it's a funny way to phrase it, but, like, yeah, that's actually what you want. You just want the best content to go big even if it's from a smaller account, which I see how that's challenging.
Adam:Don't they say that about TikTok? Like, that TikTok has that going for it?
Dax:The most customizable algorithm in the world is TikTok. Yeah.
Adam:Oh, really?
Dax:Their stuff is so wild. I just I don't even understand how it's so good. I don't use it at all, but, like, when people I see people describe it or I see people using TikTok, I'm just like, how does it know this well?
Adam:Yeah. Is it scary to you? Like, is there, like, a China thing that's scary or something? I don't know.
Dax:What it feels like to me is it feels like there's so much content being produced that it's almost it's hard to differentiate the the app knowing what you like and just, like, generating it for you in real time from, like, it just finding con because there's so much content being generated constantly. So there's, like, by accident, enough content for you
Adam:Yeah.
Dax:Being generated every single day. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And it's so wild.
Dax:Because and it's just so obvious, but I it never clicked for me before. Like, I don't use these apps much, but, like, my Instagram, for example, it shows me a bunch of Doberman videos because I have one. I I love the Oatmans, and that's that's what I'll watch. Yeah. And I I had this weird I I realized already, I had this weird perception of it where I'm, like, oh, like, I'm watching all these videos, and I'm, like, running out of Doberman videos to watch and, like, because I've seen so many of them already.
Dax:Yeah. And it didn't click for me that, oh, but there's, like, always new videos being made of Dobermans because there's always more Doberman puppies. There's always, like Yeah. You know, more situations. And I'm, like, I'm really never gonna run out of this.
Dax:They're, like, making more than I can consume. And that was different from the way that my head had understood it before. I was, like, there's a fixed amount of videos out there, and I'm like slowly consuming them all. And eventually, I'm not really gonna have any. But Yeah.
Dax:Yeah. It's just weird to understand that scale.
Adam:That's infinite. There's some infinite content. Yeah. I love to hear Began talk about content. I'll never hear the word content again without thinking of Began now.
Adam:Alright. Well, I really have to pee. And I feel like maybe this is just not gonna be as long. I feel like we're both, like, need a nap or something, maybe. This is like the lowest energy bucket.
Adam:I get to be a breakfast.
Dax:I, Yeah. Yeah.
Chris:You should
Adam:probably do that.
Dax:As great as my voice sounds for podcasting.
Adam:It sounds amazing, but, yeah, it's probably we're in and out too. Yeah. It's been fun as always.
Dax:Okay.
Adam:Get well. Get well soon.
Dax:See you. See you next.
