We're Back! Ion, Twitter Monetization, The Triangle Company, and Weather Updates
Oh, no. Did I put you in a weird spot? You you feel uncomfortable. Because just like 2 of your friends, you it's like mom and dad are fighting. Is this weird?
Adam:I don't know.
Dax:It's cold here this week. I had to put see that see if there's a jacket On my on my chair, I had to wear a jacket.
Adam:Oh, yeah? In Miami?
Dax:It was 55 degrees this morning, which is
Adam:55 degrees. Which is freezing. It's literally not.
Dax:From my perspective, it's freezing. It's crazy. Again, I spent, like, what, 25 years in the northeast. Yeah. You know, winters, whatever.
Dax:Never felt great about them, but it was, like, you know, Fine.
Adam:Just whatever.
Dax:It dropped to 55 after, you know, a year and a half of being in Florida. And, like, my ears hurt. I'm, like, kinda sick. It's just, like, my body's,
Adam:like, dying. It is amazing how much we adapt. Like I mean, do the people live in Minnesota, and they're, like, walking around in shorts outside, and it's minus 14 or whatever. It's Part of it.
Dax:My favorite thing that someone pointed out once was in the winter, when it, like, becomes starts to get a little bit warmer, let's say it gets, like, 60 something degrees, You're, like, super happy going out in shorts and, like, really excited. But then in the summer, when it becomes fall and it goes to 60 something degrees, You like putting on a coat and a scarf and
Adam:Totally different perspective.
Dax:Yep. Yeah. It's just all subjective.
Adam:Yeah. I went for a walk, and it was 24 degrees morning. So I don't wanna hear about your 55. I know. 55.
Adam:55. That's amazing.
Dax:Frank sent a video right before, Which made me laugh. It's just him, like, it's just him, like, walking through, like, ice beam, like, oh, it's so cold. And you just hear the wind, like, Blasting and, you know, it's like 10 degrees.
Adam:Yeah. 55. Oh, my word. I did spend the winter in Florida, so I I know How? It's like, oh, chilly.
Adam:Yeah. A chilly 60 degrees this morning.
Dax:The 2 weeks of cold we get every year.
Adam:Yeah. But that's when everyone comes down to South Florida. It's like, It's really cold in the northeast, so people come down there and enjoy moderate temperatures. The snowbirds.
Dax:My mom and my brother are coming, tomorrow, actually. And I sent them a screenshot being, like, it's cold this week. And they're, like, Is it? Because, like, the range was, like, 60 to 75, like, every single day Yeah. The next week.
Dax:And to me, it's, like, Not great weather, but for them, the alternative is, you know, 20 degrees. So It
Adam:just occurred to me, we took a month off. We came back, and we're talking about the weather.
Dax:We've we've gotten we've really bad this out. This is
Adam:the 3rd time we've tried to start this episode. If this fails and the recording doesn't work, We're just gonna
Dax:come back in the days again.
Adam:Maybe never again. Yeah. We can go
Adam:we can go that way.
Adam:How you been? We I feel like we haven't talked. We I mean, we've talked, but it's been very, like, work. It's like, I need things from you because of SST. It's not been just hanging out.
Dax:I've been good. It's been a lot of just work stuff, really, because we're trying to push Ion out. We're actually trying to get it out today. A little
Adam:Are you serious?
Dax:Beta preview for people. Yeah. The only contract that's in there is the Next. Js one.
Adam:Oh, right.
Dax:So I don't think so. That's the most complicated contract. So if we can get that working, then everything else is It's simpler? Yeah. But, yeah, we're we're pretty excited about it.
Dax:We, we keep, like, pushing it further and further, and It really feels like finally we can say that the product is gonna be a reflection of of our skills. Whereas before, we just had, like
Adam:Yeah.
Dax:Such an artificial ceiling in every single dimension that we wanted to improve things. Like Do
Adam:do you wanna give some context and back up a little bit on Ion? Because There may be people who don't follow you on Twitter Yes.
Adam:And
Adam:haven't seen anything about it.
Dax:Yeah. So, we at SST, which is a Framework for building applications, on AWS. We're working on a new version of it, basically, and we're code naming it Ion. The key thing that we did is Previously, we were built on top of AWS CDK, which is a very AWS focused infrastructure as code tool. It's like built around deploying stuff in AWS.
Dax:We've been building on top of it for 2 years, just discovered all sorts of problems and and issues with it. And we try to work around as much as we can, and we're really at the limits what we can do. So we said, okay. We need to swap out our core engine, and we wanted to tap into the the Terraform ecosystem and kinda access the wide range providers that are there, one, that are, like, well maintained because Terraform is huge and people like, so many people use it more than more than CDK. And 2, like, it gives us the ability to expand beyond just AWS, like, potentially anything.
Dax:And we also discovered Pulumi, which is a Kind of a layer on top of Terraforma in a lot of ways. So we've added a swapper engine with that, and we're we've just been able to do every single thing that we've always wanted to do. Our deployments for Next. Js just keep getting faster and faster. Like, what when you when you deploy this already, like, make a change, It's like down below 10 seconds now to get Wow.
Dax:To get it out. Previously, this was like a several minute process. So it just kinda shows you the gap that That exists. Yeah. Basically, it just gave us full control over a lot of things we didn't have control over before, so we can tune it to our exact use case.
Dax:And then beyond just the performance stuff, there's just feature wise, there's just so many, like, cool things that we can do now and so much has been simplified. So, yeah. Pretty excited about it. And, yeah, we're gonna get this, like, alpha release out. And then in January, hopefully, get, like, A full, like, practical release out that people could could actually use.
Adam:Yeah. Like, it what is the long tail here? Because as someone who doesn't use Next. Js site, I use AstroSight and, like, normal API stuff, is this, like, the next few months? Most everything is moved over?
Adam:Is it, like, A long term project of migrating stuff and maybe some of it never gets migrated. What should I expect? Am I gonna be using Ion this year? Mean, next year. Yeah.
Dax:I think the contracts will actually pretty be pretty fast. I think at this point, like, a lot of the work was, one, us learning this new engine, just understanding exactly how it worked, making mistakes, kind of figuring out our design for it. But the Next. Js site comprises of, like, Everything else that we do, like, it has, you know, all obviously, all, like, the CDN stuff and it also has all the Lambda function stuff, but also has, like, a queue in it for ISR. It also has, like it just has, like, every single thing.
Adam:Mhmm.
Dax:So I think the Getting to parity with SSC today with the rest of the constructs will probably be pretty fast at this point. Like, maybe another month. Like, the Dev mode with live Lambda, like, that might be a little bit of work, but I don't see this taking super long. I feel like we can get to pretty much everything that we have Already today in, like, a month or 2. Wow.
Dax:It's sometime in January. And then from there, we can kind of jump forward to All sorts of things that we don't have now.
Adam:Yeah. No. This is exciting. Yeah. Because that that is the one thing, like, SSC is a in terms of developer experience, it's so great.
Adam:It's so feels so modern in a world speaking of AWS, it doesn't feel modern, in terms of, like, web dev, if you come from that background. But did, like, the CloudFormation piece, the the piece that you guys can't do anything about, historically, just feels like this, Yeah. This thing you're waiting on all the time.
Dax:Maybe, like, drop back down into Yeah. The ancient world. Mhmm.
Adam:Yeah. Yeah. So it's very exciting to think This could get better real soon.
Dax:Okay. So I have, like, a, like, a really grand theory about this, which is kinda funny. So I've noticed myself, I used to be, like most days, I would have, like, extremely long stretches of time where I was hyper productive and, like, Not distracted at all. Once I switched to doing all this CloudFormation serverless stuff, all that suddenly started to become a lot more difficult. And I'm really convinced it's because several times throughout the day, I'm waiting on CloudFormation, which is which can be anywhere from, like, 1 to 10 minutes.
Dax:Yep. And it just gives me opportunities to get distracted, and that just becomes a habit. And over time, it just kinda stacks on, like And so it just kinda brings you to a bad place. So I feel like this is gonna fix my whole life. Wow.
Dax:That's the hopes that I have for I mean,
Adam:I I see the logic that gets there. I do I've I think I've chalked up some of that to just getting older and more distracted, and there's more going on on the Internet. We've talked about that. But the CloudFormation piece can't be ignored because it is a meme within, like, the AWS Twitter community. We all joke about, like, We spend half our day waiting on cloud formation.
Dax:Yeah. It's it's a gateway to getting distracted. Like, when you're in the zone, what interrupts you? It's cloud formation.
Adam:Yeah. It's like you you all the feelings of guilt, like, when it's when it starts deploying and I know it's gonna be a few minutes, I'm like, I'm gonna check my email. I'm gonna do this. I'm gonna do that. There's no sense of, like, I'm breaking out of the thing I should be focused on.
Adam:Because, like, I can't do anything about it. I'm waiting, And it's gonna update, and then I'll get back to it. Yeah. Once that's gone, that's gonna be a a a reality call or a wake up call sort of like, yeah. I have to stay focused on things.
Adam:Like, my development environment is no longer in my way.
Dax:Yeah. And that's, like, the critical thing of Like, the fundamental thing about good developer experience is a fast feedback loop. That's like that's the only thing you really need to do well. And if you can do that well, everything else kinda falls into place. So, We did that with live Lambda.
Dax:That kind of brought fast feedback loop to functions, but then everything else is still kind of slow. So, Yeah. It's it's it's also annoying for me because now that I see all of this, I still have projects. All my all my projects are on SST, like, the non Ion version currently. Yeah.
Dax:And now I just hate hate them because I want the new thing so badly, and I wanted to switch to it already.
Adam:But today, I mean, today, the Next. Js construct, like, the people are gonna be able to use SSC. And if you if you use the Next. Js construct, And that's mainly all you do is you deploy your Next. Js site in AWS.
Adam:The Ion piece will pervade everything you do with SSC, like your whole CLI is replaced. That how it works?
Dax:Yeah. The CLI is written in Go now, which also made it a lot faster. There's so many things there we we could optimize. It doesn't require NPM at all. Like, you just install the CLI on your computer, and it can just do everything.
Dax:No Packages, no nothing. Everything is built into the CLI. We do have, like, JavaScript code that we ship, But we actually pack it into the binary, so it's not like it's, like, fetched it again from NPM. Yeah. Yeah.
Dax:Yeah. There's lots of cool things like that where we made it so it's just a CLI and a small config file, and you're good to go.
Adam:This is awesome. Very excited. Okay. So what else is going I mean, been going on? That's SST World.
Dax:Yeah. I feel
Adam:like you've been all over Twitter just, like, making the rounds.
Adam:I feel
Adam:like you blew up and got way more famous just in the month we took off. I had to get back on the podcast before you decided you were too big for me.
Dax:You you that's a case? Maybe.
Adam:I mean, I don't know. It feels like you you're you're a part of every conversation. You're starting most of them. I
Dax:don't know. I mean, just reflective of me spending the most time on Twitter Anyone? Yeah.
Adam:When you said you've just been really busy working, I'm like, just I guess Twitter does count. That is
Dax:it's part of your work,
Adam:which is funny.
Dax:Yeah. I I do feel yeah. I do feel like myself has been getting, like, the floor of the amount of visibility my stuff gets is is different now. And I definitely feel like I also feel that in the replies in terms of, like, the random people replying to me. But, yeah, obviously, the the thing we're referring to the past 2 weeks is just me, like, slamming Vercel on the head.
Adam:Yeah. That there's been a lot of that. Yeah.
Dax:Yeah. Do
Adam:you wanna talk about that some more on a podcast setting? Or are you tired of talking about Versace? No. No.
Dax:I will. Triangle company? Because there is, yes, Triangle company. Okay. You know what I love?
Dax:So I've been referring to Versacell as Tryon Company, and I've been hoping that it sticks. I've been getting people replying to me Angrily upset about something I'm saying. And even they're referring to it as trial companies. I'm like, it's working. I win.
Adam:It's working.
Adam:That's Funny.
Dax:Yeah. So next I'm trying to get to stick is top g for Guillermo.
Adam:I saw top g. That's Yeah.
Dax:It's funny. I wonder if he even gets
Adam:a smile out of that.
Dax:No. He doesn't. No. Definitely too serious. So, Basically, what I realized a couple weeks ago was I talked to so many people that are, they're kind of doing stuff In this industry for other people, like people that either run other open source projects or, like, they have developer tool companies or, like Yeah.
Dax:Everything. It's a wide, wide spectrum of, like, all kinds of people from pure open source to commercial companies, like, doing all kinds of things. Every single person in private has annoyance and beef With Triangle Company, everyone is, like, upset and annoyed and, like, vaguely wishes they would go away. Yeah. For all for all this the same reasons that everyone feels, which is, like, you know, they just create a ton of noise, and it's just very it is a very annoying player to have exist Yeah.
Dax:Okay, in private. But a lot of them don't feel super comfortable saying anything in public, which makes sense because, you know, conflict is annoying. We wanna avoid it. Yeah. Just like this on on the baseline of just, like, there's friction to have conflict.
Dax:Yep. But then also, like, you know, some sometimes they do somewhat have some kind of relationship with this company or you know, it's complicated.
Adam:It's complicated. Yeah. They go to the invite only parties,
Dax:that kind of stuff. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. So but so but then I realized, like, you know what?
Dax:Like, This is actually not a good situation because, Vercel just takes advantage of this. And they say whatever they want, And they always frame it in, like, a very, like,
Adam:PR driven.
Dax:Yeah. Authoritative way where it feels like if you you can't really, like, Argue with them really. They make you feel unreasonable very quickly.
Adam:Mhmm.
Dax:So it's like this weird asymmetry where, like, they just get to do whatever they want, and everyone just kind of upset in private. And I was like, let me just what happens if I just, like, crack this? And I just Yeah. Instead of being subtle, I'm just a 100% straightforward. Here's exactly how I feel.
Dax:That's what I did 2 weeks ago or, like, I guess it was last week. And I'm not gonna stop. I'm just gonna keep doing this because it's weird. Everyone's, like, kind of self censoring themselves and no one, like, really Says what they're feeling. Yeah.
Dax:And I'm hoping this can, like, drive people to feel more comfortable saying it without having to, like It's so funny. Like, I see this all the time, and this is this is, like, a big success of their DevRel team. Whenever someone has a problem with them, like, not even category people I'm talking about is a user of Vercel. Yeah. They feel compelled to, like, decorate everything they're saying with compliments.
Dax:Like, so I saw a reply in one of my threads or Somewhere where they were, like, oh my god. Vercel is so great, and I, like, love you guys, and you guys I think everything you guys do is is great, But I haven't been able to deploy to my site for 3 weeks. And it's like, this is not this is like a very reasonable thing to be upset by.
Adam:And Yeah.
Dax:They've just been able to Craft this thing where people feel afraid to, like, not be pinned as, like, a Vercel hater or whatever. So Yeah.
Adam:Oh, I've seen that. I know exactly what you're talking about.
Dax:Exactly. So it's it's just it's like this weird dynamic, and I think everyone feels even people in like, there's obviously, it's this competition. Like, we're in a space, and there's competing views and and projects and everything. But I think everyone would feel better if they just kind of went away in a lot of ways.
Adam:Yeah.
Dax:So if you're a user of Vercel and you're happy with them, You don't want you you obviously also don't want this. You don't want the rest of the industry feeling like, I wish they would go away. Right? Yeah. But yeah.
Dax:And, you know, to be honest, they're very easy to to poke because
Adam:It's just like your relationship with AWS. Like, you you get to, like, just say what you actually think, And they're very, like, polished on their end and inauthentic. And it just the the contrast,
Dax:I don't know. They
Adam:can't apply really. Yeah. They can't yeah. They they do have that very for being a startup, I guess I mean, they're a startup. They do have a very, like, stodgy, inauthentic, Professional, like, persona on social and everywhere else.
Adam:I don't know if that's
Dax:just No. They've all gone through PR training. You can see it. And I feel like I I even remember the shift. And I hate I hate all that PR training stuff because
Adam:I'm insane. It's I
Dax:Yeah. It's there's there's, like, the obvious part of it, which we like. It just sounds fake. But then the part I don't like is a lot of it is just weird traps and tricks to, like, move conversations away in, like, an Fairway. Like, if someone complains Yeah.
Dax:Make them feel bad about being a complainer and then talk about something else. Right? That's like Yeah. It's it's usually stuff like that, which, you know, I just cannot stand. But it's very effective.
Dax:Like, it's it works. I mean, you can see it all the time. Yeah, like, they just make so much noise. Like, I just I'm just sick of them being, like, we are the people you go to for performance. Like, we are the best performers.
Dax:People everything we do is pushing performance. And all I did was post a recording of their own app. And if that is, like if that causes controversy, then that's A problem. If a recording of me using your product causes controversy, like, that's that's not my fault.
Adam:Yeah. Right. Can I can I chime in on the The SPA verse whatever, server rendered? I think, like, it's all just current limitations in in terms of, like, developer ability or an experience or the tooling. Like, ultimately, there is a best.
Adam:Right? Like, native apps like, if you ignore the initial download time of a native app, it just is better. Like, it's better. It feels better. Using it is better.
Adam:Right? And, eventually, tooling, I feel like everything gets out of the way and everything every app can be that good No matter what type of app or site it is. Right?
Dax:Yeah.
Adam:Are there fundamental differences in some products and they should be done a certain way? Or shouldn't it ultimately all feel that good? Regardless of how it's done, should they should all end up feeling that good. Like, the stuff you post, it's just just, like, super fast Client side stuff happening. Everything should get there.
Adam:That that's objectively better. Right?
Dax:Yeah. And that's why I posted that poll asking people right after I posted the during the whole SBA The debate, I posted the thing asking what what generally feels better to you, a native app or a web app? And, of course, Almost everyone said a native app. And I was like, well, native apps are all effectively SPAs, like, architecture wise. Yeah.
Dax:So why do they feel better? It's clearly not because most Apps have this, like, initial data fetch problem Yeah. Thing that, like, actually has harps on. Yeah. I think the the key thing a little bit what you said is if you ignore initial download time.
Dax:So there's a whole category of products out there where ignoring initial download time makes a lot of sense. There's some where that doesn't make any sense. And it's to be honest, it's for apps that nobody uses. If you don't go to an app often, initial download time is a big problem. So Yeah.
Dax:Yeah. Like, if you are buying a shirt from some company and they make you download an app, that's a terrible experience.
Adam:Sure.
Dax:If you want everything Next. Js does is probably optimized for that, and I'm sure it works great. If I'm ever building an e commerce thing, I'm probably gonna go use that because It's probably really fantastic for all that stuff. But then the other category of things, which is probably what pays most of our bills and pays people's salaries, is VAS applications, like productivity applications, stuff that drives business. Initial download or initial cost It's, like, so negligible there.
Dax:And, yeah, everything should just feel like a native app. And at some point, I feel like we I do remember, like, for years, I remember the web being, like, we can be as good as native. We can be as good as native. Keep trying to, like, close that gap, close that gap, close that gap. Mhmm.
Dax:Then at some point, I don't know what happened. I think I looked away for, like, a little bit, and then that, like, goal just disappeared. Like, people aren't talking about That at all anymore. They're talking about, like, websites and how to make your website load initial load faster and, like, yeah, it just doesn't make any Sense of me for the things that I work on.
Adam:Yeah. I guess, like, I don't know if if how I posed my if I even posed a question. I don't know if what I said
Dax:Made any sense.
Adam:But I think about, like, our use case. We have a big website, I would say. It's not really an app. And we mostly get people That come for a short amount of time from Google, and they get some information from our site, and maybe they come back. That's that's what keeps us running.
Adam:But, like, when I think about How our site it's not a big initial download. It's not a a spa. It's like clunky, multipaged navigation. That's really suboptimal. Like, it it would feel as good as a local app in an ideal world, and it would have all the benefits of loading fast.
Adam:Like, somehow, you gotta do both at the same time. And we're not there yet. Like, we're not doing all the right things. But I just think, like, I can acknowledge Even our site, it'd be better if it was all client side rendered and if it was, like, fast on the front end. Like, regardless of How people get to it and how Right.
Adam:What they expect. Like, there there's still room for improvement. And I feel like everything's ultimately driving toward That that spa like experience.
Dax:Yeah. Yeah. And even
Adam:for us and It's just kind of limitations.
Dax:Even for us, that all applies in the other direction too. Right? So All of my stuff is extremely client heavy, and that's great. It has all the stuff you're talking about. But there are some experiences that are bad because they're client heavy.
Dax:The example I gave is, if you get an alert for an issue and you click it, you're gonna see Like a spinner while, like, the client side data sync happens and gets a new issue and then renders it. That experience should be Server side rendered. That would make things a lot better. But I imagine it's similar to you guys where, like, like, 95% of our flow is handled fine with our primary approach. And we will eventually get to, like, the last 5% with, like, mixing an SSR and it's part of the reverse for you guys.
Dax:So, yeah, you have to Use everything. That was kind of my initial point with it all. Like, I just don't like this consistent thing that you hear from Triangle company, which is We launched a new acronym. If you use the acronym Literally, literally, did. Your sites are gonna be great.
Adam:And I'm pretty plugged in. I don't know if you remember what the new acronym is. ISA. What is it? T p what is
Dax:it? PPR.
Adam:PPR? Points per reception. I'm a fan I'm a fantasy football player, so p PPR it means something. I'm sorry. Can't just repurpose it.
Adam:I guess that overlap, that Venn diagram is not that large, Like, people who care about modern web rendering and football.
Dax:And to be honest, nobody really understands PPR. I guarantee you, like, very few people will get it. Only reason I understand that I've
Adam:read a few things, and I still don't.
Dax:Yeah. It's funny to me because this is like it's like held up as his holy grail. And if you step back, like, from the way they're talking about it and look at what it is, it just delivers, like, a stupid shell faster. Like, you're talking about this stuff, like, it's so amazing. Like, you get to see a useless shell faster Than you would have otherwise.
Dax:Amazing. Great. I get to see my navigation that I can't do anything with that I didn't come here to see. Like, is that that's what I'm talking about. Like, why are we this is why are they, like, Push they're on the throne of this, like, performance and, like, great experiences and all this stuff.
Dax:And it's just like
Adam:Yeah.
Dax:The stuff they're talking about is so relevant. Not impressive at all?
Adam:Yeah. I feel like they can't they can't actually highlight how great their thing is, their new thing, Without just comparing it to the previous new thing they made.
Dax:Yeah.
Adam:Because, like, this is better than ISR. Look at these reasons. It's like, wait a minute. But it's not good. Like, it's not a big deal.
Adam:Yeah. Just because it's a lot better than the last thing you did doesn't make it worth getting this excited about as a Twitter sphere.
Dax:Yeah. And a lot of their stuff is solving their own problems. Like, the PPR thing Exactly.
Adam:Like, they made the problem.
Dax:Yeah. And they failed. Exist because they can't In the Versailles architecture, they they can't render at edge. So they they do this whole, like, step build at, like, statically computed at at build time. And they pitch it like that's, like, Crazy performance benefit, but you're saving, like, 1 millisecond compared to something that can render Edge.
Dax:So it's and, again, it took me a very long time to even, like, pull that apart understand that. So I just hate the amount of noise that it creates, that I'm forced to spend time, like, digging into noises. I get asked questions about this stuff. And then Yeah. Just over and Over and over and over.
Dax:At some point, we guys are like, this is kind of a joke. Like, we can't let these just like, drag them drag everyone through this over and over again.
Adam:Yep. Yeah. This stuff does matter. Like, people there's a lot of people on the periphery who are not super plugged in.
Dax:Mhmm.
Adam:I
Adam:know from, like, my time in consulting, The amount of clients that have some vague idea about, like, we should use this because I heard it's really good. Like, that comes up, and then I spend energy, like, explaining For what they're doing, like, this is good or this is good, and you could do either, and it's not that big a deal. But they're dead set on using
Dax:Yep.
Adam:X, which maybe isn't good for what they're doing, but because the loudest voices in the room continue to beat certain drums. I don't know. It is annoying. The thing
Dax:I told them straight up was, like, you're putting the burden on other people to provide clarity. Like, you just say all this stuff that makes no sense and, Like, thousands of people are now dealing with, yeah, going through that and trying to convince people of, now, here's what it actually means. The other thing that I found interesting about this, because I was able to actually connect with some people that also are super into building snappy client side applications. So there's app, Which I've actually come across before prior to them even, replying to and they, like, replied to one of my tweets or quote tweeted it or something Talking about their own app. It's called Fey app.
Dax:I think it's f e y a p p.
Adam:Wait. Say it again. F e y
Dax:Yeah. F e y app dot com. Okay.
Adam:I don't know why that was so hard for my brain to follow. Yep.
Dax:Yeah. I think they're like wildest dreams that replace, like, the Bloomberg terminal. It's a good financial Oh. Research Yeah. Tool?
Dax:Mhmm. But it's built in the style of these amazing client side apps. Like, super fast, super like, unbelievably fast. Keyboard shortcuts for everything, like, crazy productive. Really, really impressive.
Dax:And they were talking about, like, hey. Like, we're choosing SPA also for all these reasons. And look at our literal Like, look, you can go look at it and try it. And they talk about how, like, we are using Next. Js.
Dax:We're not, like, using any of the server side stuff, like, with
Adam:Yeah.
Dax:Purely a a client renter thing. And, and Guillermo is replying in the thread, like, arguing with them, and they're literally, like, Well, like, we did it. Like, here's our app, and he's like, no. You can't do like, it's just like the the the like, she's denying reality. Like, there's an app right there being, like, This work for making money.
Dax:Like, is our product? And he's like, this doesn't really work. And it's like, what why? Like, why is this an interaction that needs to be had?
Adam:There there was Time, like, when Next. Js just doing, like, a SPA with Next. Js was sensible and even, like Yeah. Not frowned upon from Vercel.
Dax:Like the Vercel dashboard is in This far?
Adam:Yeah. Yeah. Like, it was just
Dax:a good it
Adam:was just a better default than create react app or whatever. Like, it was just a better bundler slash whatever. And then, yeah, over the last few years, Next. Js has just become this, like, very opinionated about, like, the server side of everything and how Bites flow in what order
Dax:Yeah.
Adam:To the client. Yeah.
Dax:And and it just reflects their customer base, which are Which is not reflective of our industry, I think. Their customer base is like media, ecommerce type situations, and Yeah. That's a big industry, and they should serve them. But, like, It doesn't apply to the rest of us. I think it's it's time.
Dax:I think there's, like they had their time, and I think everyone's kinda sick of them under the hood. And, you know, I mean, their time's passed.
Adam:Speaking of kinda sick of talking about them right now. Let's talk about other, news and things that have happened on Twitter. I've got 2 things I wanna call out, Things I saw on Twitter, and I wanna hear your opinion.
Dax:But we could
Adam:do something else if you'd rather first.
Dax:No. Go ahead.
Adam:Okay. First, have you seen fascinating on Twitter? Like an account called fascinating. And it posts really fascinating things. Like facts?
Dax:They're like
Adam:Pictures. Like events in history, like people, things that happened.
Dax:I don't think I've seen that.
Adam:Have you not seen this? It just in the last week or so, 2 weeks maybe, it started cropping up on my feed. Because I use the for you. Like, I don't know if that's frowned upon. I don't know.
Dax:No. I use for you. I use
Adam:I feel like I'm making, like, a political statement. Like, I use I use the for you tab. People have strong opinions about But I just started getting this, like, fascinating. And and I remember hearing things about how, like, Twitter prioritizes, Like, time you spend staring at tweets and the replies and then the ad model and all that. And then there's, like, the the actual monetization, like, People who the creators getting money from time spent looking through replies.
Adam:Well, it's turned into a cesspool Of, like, you click on a fascinating tweet, because I click on every single one of them because they're not, like, short enough in a tweet. You have to read more. And then the replies are full of the same handful accounts, That post even more fascinating things. Some of them related to the original, some not at all. And I end up in, like, a 25 minute, Just, like, one fascinating tweet that's just sent me down a 25 minute rabbit hole.
Adam:I'm, like, on Wikipedia reading about these situations and these stories. It's It's taken over my Twitter usage, and I wonder how many people this has happened to and, like, how much money is fascinating making.
Dax:I don't know. You're just in a state of constant fascination.
Adam:Yeah. They've just they've tapped into something. They've prayed on my reptilian brain, and I cannot get out of the replies. But it's like this is the same, Seriously, the same handful accounts. Somebody's gonna hear this, and they've had this experience.
Adam:Yeah. The same handful accounts that they'll reply with, like, a one up. It's like, The fascinating tweet was, this person did this thing on this date in 1962. And then the reply tweet We'll be like, but what you didn't know is so much more important and so much cooler. It's like they're doing this on purpose to each other.
Adam:I don't know. It's it's wild. You gotta look it up.
Dax:So are you, like, okay with this in your life? Are you gonna block them? Are you gonna
Adam:I don't know. Yeah. I I the other day, I thought, like, I should just, like, Click a button. I'm sure there's a button here in Twitter where I can say, I don't wanna see fascinating tweets anymore. I don't wanna see them because it's just I'm spending too much time.
Dax:The thing that's making me laugh so hard is, whenever you say Fascinating? I don't think of it as, like, the username of it.
Adam:You think of it as it's not.
Dax:I just I don't wanna see tweets that are fascinating at all.
Adam:I mean, generally, I don't. I don't wanna
Dax:see anything fascinating ever again.
Adam:Like, unless it comes from my friends on Twitter. Yeah. I think I do. I need to cut it out of my life because it's it's a lot of time spent. I don't I feel like I don't see anything From you guys anymore because I'm just reading these stupid historical facts.
Adam:Yeah.
Dax:Against your will.
Adam:Against my will.
Dax:Well, it's funny because the other thing I have noted, well, one the thing you described sucks. I hate it. And Yeah. One of the things I liked about Twitter historically has been the stuff that just, like, leverages your brain like that, like, on Instagram and other places wasn't as prevalent on Twitter. Now, it's like we have to dodge it on here too.
Adam:I feel like it's it's gotta be a product of the monetization. Like, they figured out they can make a lot of money doing these, and people read them. It's like it's working.
Dax:Do they really make money from Twitter paying them, though?
Adam:I don't know. I mean, they get a lot of whatevers on each impressions or whatever.
Dax:If if they, like, get A 100 x of views I do, and they're getting paid a 100 x as much as I am. Like, I I guess that is significant money. I don't
Adam:yeah.
Dax:I don't know.
Adam:I don't know who's behind these accounts. It's not like A big media company. So it might be just an individual, and it's like, this is a great
Dax:That sucks. The other thing I've noticed, which I hate, is And this is on any post that goes big, especially if it's funny, if it's some kind of, like, funny meme, whatever it is, the replies are all just completely unrelated Other things. Other, like Yeah. Videos or whatever. And I hate it because, like, I wanna see people, like, replying to the original thing with clever
Adam:stuff. That's funny. Just one 5
Dax:is relevant, and the other 4 is completely unrelated. And I don't know I don't know where that popped up out of I think that's, like, also kinda new and since we're already in.
Adam:I think it's It's all been part of the shakeup. Like, I I agree. And I think, like, TikTok, they've got the, like, hilarious comments thing down. Like, I look at my wife's TikTok.
Dax:Right. Exactly.
Adam:It's like every you go to the comments because you know they're just gonna be hilarious, and they are. Yeah. And there's no bit of unrelated Anything there. But Twitter's definitely turned into, like, some kind of monetization game that people have figured out on the creator side, and it's annoying.
Dax:Oh, you know what? I think in TikTok, it's actually kinda simpler because it's like, a like, a TikTok post and then just pure text Replies. Right? You can't, like, embed another video
Adam:in there. There's no media.
Dax:Yeah. Which doesn't really make sense for Twitter to be that constrained, but don't know. That's kinda what allows for Yeah. Stupid thing.
Adam:It just feels like an abuse of something. And it's unfortunate because Twitter didn't use you feel that way?
Dax:Do you I guess it might just be because I I I really thought I mean, I was worried about the monetization thing. I didn't expect Twitter to even have enough money to, like, Give out to the point where this would create a problem. Yeah. But the thing I always forget is dollars are worth different amounts in different parts of the world.
Adam:So That's true. Yeah. Creators in India can afford
Dax:Yeah. Like, exactly. Yeah.
Adam:So it's Yeah. Yeah.
Dax:That probably makes a difference. Yeah. It's it's annoying.
Adam:I'm sorry that Call that India. I don't know if that felt offensive to you.
Adam:I don't
Dax:know. It's true. You laughed.
Adam:Dog goes
Adam:a long
Dax:long way in India.
Adam:It does. Assuming Elon's paying the same dollars all over the world. I don't know.
Dax:Oh, that's a good well, I guess they would have to, like, fake it. But you have to, like, Reach.
Adam:Oh, you could, like, be an American account. But like Yeah.
Dax:Like all the dollars are coming from the advertisers at the end of the day. So Right. It has to be a percentage of whatever the advertisers are paying. You'd have to reach American accounts Yeah. Yeah.
Dax:Yeah. For that.
Adam:The other thing I saw on Twitter that I wanted to ask you if you saw, this is just like yesterday, I think. A little new school versus old school. Did you see the Theo and DHH back and forth?
Dax:Yeah. I did.
Adam:Yeah. That was funny.
Adam:It was
Adam:a good time. So I may have missed even some of it. I don't know if more has happened. I think the last thing I saw was Theo calling out, this is the guy that skipped rails comp because there are other people keynoting. I don't know if there's any reply from DHH since then.
Dax:But Yeah. That's a yeah. I don't know. So DHH is the latest you've been
Adam:talking about. Did I put you in a weird spot? No. No. No.
Adam:You feel uncomfortable?
Dax:No. No.
Adam:Because just like of your friends.
Dax:Because me and DHH are best friends.
Adam:It's like you it's like mom and dad are fighting. Well, no. Just DHH hero of yours, Theo friend of yours, is this weird? I don't know.
Dax:DHH, my my former hero.
Adam:Oh, right. Right. You have a complicated relationship. Yeah.
Dax:Very complicated relationship with DHH. Yeah. So Lacing has been talking about is, Once, which is his idea that people wanna pay for software just once and get out of this
Adam:Oh, is that his?
Adam:I saw a reference to that, and I didn't know. I heard about it once. Yeah. And That's a good domain.
Dax:2, the thing he's trying to do yeah. He has it. He's got it.
Adam:Yeah. He does.
Dax:The second one is the bundle list thing where, like, you just ship your exact file tree. Yeah. JavaScript file tree, and then you just, like, pipe it in over a single connection and kind of seeing how far you can go with that. Like with everything with DHH, I think He's not wrong. It's just true in a very narrow if you, like, constrain the world to a very narrow place, like, what he's saying makes a lot of sense and is true.
Dax:Yeah. And I think people struggle with that. Both people that are against him, both people that are, like,
Adam:like
Dax:what he's doing. People like what he's doing, then they just try to, like They think it applies way broader than it does. People don't like what he's doing and can't see that it does make sense within, like, a smaller context. So yeah. That that was funny, though, to see them go back and forth.
Dax:I think, to be honest, I don't like That when people pull up, like, aren't you the guy that blah blah blah? Like, I don't really like that because it wasn't related to the
Adam:Oh, yeah. Sure.
Dax:To the
Adam:There's a name for that, isn't there? I I think there's a name for that.
Dax:Yeah. It's just and the other thing is I'm I kind of My whole interpretation of that RailsConf thing was, like, I think people reduce it to he didn't get to keynote, so he's, like, annoyed, he's gonna skip the whole thing as protest because he's he didn't get enough attention. Yeah. But to me, I think what was happening was that was during the time where base camp was just getting, like, Fried left and right for all the stuff that they were doing, and he felt that it was annoying or unfair that rails, the thing he created, is, like, Caving to this other external pressure that he's, like, kinda an unfavorable character. So I can see why why in his Point of view after, like, a year of that being like like, fuck this.
Dax:Like, you're gonna take this away from me for that reason?
Adam:It it's probably more complicated than it seems on the surface. Yeah.
Dax:Yeah. I don't blame I don't blame him too much for that. Like, that's annoying. I hate I hate when people get removed from the stuff that they created. It happens very often.
Dax:I mean, Sam Altman thing also was, like
Adam:Oh, yeah.
Dax:An example of that. So, yeah, it just I don't know. It's it's it is complicated. I just I DHL is not a person. Just wish he would go away.
Adam:Think it
Dax:would be better if he wasn't around?
Adam:Yeah. Yeah. I did. I saw that interaction. I was kinda like, oh, like, it's I can't imagine having strong opinions about this bundling stuff, like, seeing Theo tweet that stuff.
Adam:And then I saw another DHH tweet, like, right after that. Just, like, ended up on DHH's profile. And it's like talking about his cloud cost savings. I was like, you
Dax:I was like, okay. I get it. Go after him, Theo. Yeah.
Adam:That idiot.
Dax:I saw this morning. Did he post it as AWS bills going down?
Adam:Yeah. Yeah.
Dax:Good for him. It's great. Good for him. It's great when you have a business that's not growing anymore. You find a way to Base connection.
Adam:Nobody uses Basecamp. Sure.
Dax:Yeah. I mean, someone said the other day I think it was was it was it Ian? He was saying that he's got such a big following that anything he says is gonna sell, and he can point to it to say, like, look. It worked.
Adam:Oh, yeah.
Dax:Yeah. Which is, you know, that's I think that is kinda the cycle. Like, enough people just follow him blindly, and Yep. Everything he do gets confirmed because of that. I'm looking forward to being at that phase where I can just confirm anything I say by the end.
Dax:Look, these people did it. Yeah. Okay.
Adam:This is gonna be a really abrupt ending to our first episode back, but I have to pee really bad. Because you bounce around. Have a phone call. Yeah. Can you tell?
Dax:Alright. Really. We're excited to be back.
Adam:We are excited
Dax:to be back. Thank you. Miss this.
Adam:I do too. Even if we don't publish them, I'd be excited just to do this and pretend like we have a podcast yet. We're gonna publish them too.
Dax:Yeah. Amazing.
Adam:Once a week. We're gonna try once a week.
Dax:Just Yeah.
Adam:A little better quality versus quantity. A little more, Substance in each episode, maybe?
Dax:It might not work. It might just be the same amount of quality, but not less of it.
Adam:So Less of it.
Dax:We're playing with the knobs. We'll figure out the right knobs.
Adam:Yeah. Yeah. We'll try. Okay. I'm gonna go pee.
Dax:Alright. See you. Yeah.
