Are Software Developers Like Movie Producers, or Are We Software Engineers?
There, like, a criteria where you can only say engineer if you wear a hazmat suit at work or something? What what is
Dax:the with this. I was gonna buy you a hazmat suit.
Adam:Oh, I would love it, please. It's one of those deals where credit card got swapped, like, new card details, and I forgot to fix it.
Dax:Okay. Have you seen that thing now where the details just get updated automatically?
Adam:No. What is this?
Dax:I actually find this annoying. So before, if you change your credit card numbers, every single place that stored your credit card would just break, and they wouldn't be able to charge you again. And you have to go manually, like, re opt in to everything, which is annoying.
Adam:I think I've I've been through that twice, I think, in the last year from with, like, the Brex and then, like, Mercury swapped out my card.
Dax:So yeah. Yeah. And I and I lose my credit cards, like, so often, so I'm constantly dealing with this. But one benefit was it was always a clean way to, like, do a reset and, you know, like, get rid of subscriptions automatically and and all that stuff. But now there's a feature in, like, the payment protocol world where credit card issuer can just push new card details.
Adam:Interesting.
Dax:And stuff just gets updated everywhere. And a lot of times, it's stuff that I don't that you have no control over. So people just get your new info, and they can keep charging you. I love it. That's super annoying.
Dax:Yeah. I know.
Adam:Feels like the payments people are in cahoots with the subscription people.
Dax:Yeah. I think it's because the, like, failed charges just have, like, a cascading set of, like, costs through the whole system.
Adam:Mhmm.
Dax:But they're all really incentivized to, like, to make this all very smooth. But now you just lost the ability to, like, yank your stuff from everywhere. Kind of annoying.
Adam:It is annoying. I don't approve. I don't know who's behind it.
Dax:The Worldpay.
Adam:World what's Worldpay?
Dax:Yeah. It's it's one of these companies that no one has, that you never hear about, But they're like they're like they process, like, a lot of the payments in the world, and everyone integrates with them. Like, Stripe integrates with them to offer their services.
Adam:I'm not a conspiracy theory guy. Well, maybe I am. But that just sounds like the kind of thing people would get real conspiracy theory about. Like, it with a name like Worldpay, it just sounds like dark, I don't know, underpinnings of everything.
Dax:Giant company that ran and and there's only 2 companies in that category, them and someone else. And, yeah. Like, if there's a company underneath Stripe
Adam:Mhmm. And I've never heard of it, that's kinda wild.
Dax:Yeah. Exactly. We did an integration with them at my previous company, and it was pretty crazy. They gave us a manual with their protocol. And, of course, our protocol isn't like, here's an HTTP API with, like, JSON payloads.
Dax:It's like some some binary format. Yeah.
Adam:Exactly. Yeah.
Dax:And we had just we had, like, implemented it in Elixir. And it was actually a lot of fun because it's a kind of work that I don't know if you know how sometimes there's work that's tedious but simple and in a way it can kind of be satisfying because you're just, like, mindlessly doing a task over
Adam:and over. There's, like, a very known target. Like, you know exactly what you're doing and what your target is. Yeah. I love that.
Dax:Yeah. Like, sometimes you're, like, cleaning up a code base where you're just, like, changing everything in the exact same way. Mhmm. And sometimes I like spending time doing that, but even though it's a waste of time and, like, probably AI could just do all that stuff instantly for me. But it's almost like meditative.
Adam:Yeah. I Casey and I have talked about this a lot. I actually love monotony. Like, I will take a task that she just gets so bored immediately and can't, like, stomach doing it, and I will nerd out for, like, 2 hours doing it. Like, there was a time we were cleaning.
Adam:We're helping a friend, like, renovate a house, and they had, like, paint on these windows. And I just sit there and scrubbed that paint off for, like, hours, and I loved every second of it. Something about, like, super mind numbing tedious tasks, I get off on. I don't know why.
Dax:That's that's I mean, it's great to know someone like you then.
Adam:Yeah. Yeah. I feel like I've definitely used it in my career with software. Like, there's been things where I'll just brute force it. I don't care.
Adam:Like, I'll just sit there and do the thing that, like, is the dumb way, but it takes forever. And other people are like, there's gotta be a smarter way. Nope. Just do the dumb thing over
Dax:and over that way. Yeah. Yeah. That's good to know because, you know, for our secret project, there's gonna be some of that. Mhmm.
Dax:Are you looking forward to that part?
Adam:I actually am. I had that thought yesterday. I was like, man, I hope I get to do the thing that you probably all don't wanna do. I, I don't know how this isn't giving it's not giving any way. This is totally unrelated.
Adam:But, SatMuse, we we spent, like, 40,000 doll I don't remember. We spent a bunch of money on sending out, like, a 1,000 swag boxes. Mhmm. And we couldn't find a vendor. This was, like, 8 years ago.
Adam:We couldn't find somebody that would make a good t shirt, a good hoodie, like, a nice little card, and put it in a nice box and send it to people for us. So we ordered yeah. Altogether. Like, a shrink-wrap, like, perfect delivered package. So we and stickers too, I think.
Adam:So we order all the individual components, and I boxed a 1,000 swag boxes in my garage and sent them all over the place. I did the ship station thing, and I was just just sending out, like I did, like, 35 boxes on my porch every morning for the mail guy to come get, and it went on forever. Eventually, I think the last few hundred, I had some people, like, college people came over, and I paid them to just, like, box them for me because I was so burnt out. But I had my mom here. Like, we were all just in the garage packing swag boxes, and
Dax:I loved every second of it. So Liz is very similar, and I feel like because she loves, like, the tangible aspects of, like, getting work done. And, obviously, you know, being our age, she's basically never had to do that for work. Like, her work has always been this abstract digital thinking thing. So I think, like, a great end state for her would actually be, like, running a physical business.
Dax:And I think that's, like, really where Gillette gets a lot of satisfaction from. And and I and I get it too. Like, sometimes I see some, like, a well run small business, and I'm like, oh, there's just something so, like you can just see it. You can, like, see it and feel it and touch it, that we don't get to have as much.
Adam:I'm telling you, after that experience of the swag boxes, I have forever wanted to have some kind of, like, small Internet business where we ship stuff. I want Casey to make stuff. She's very artistic. I've, like, tried to push her, like, let's do anything. I just want her to do shipping parts.
Adam:Let me do the logistics. I have so much fun with that for some reason. It's so dumb and, like, there's probably ways to outsource it and not have to think about that stuff, but I loved it. Yeah. Something about it.
Dax:Yeah. Liz's parents have a construction business, and they mostly do kitchens. And it's just so crazy because, one, their jobs have a start and an end, and it's, like, clear. It's like they get a job, they do it, and they can take a picture of the final thing. And there's no question of, like, are we done or not?
Dax:Did it come out good
Adam:or not?
Dax:It's just so straightforward, which is very different from everything I've worked on because it's, like, infinite and evolving forever, and there's no beginning or end. And
Adam:Yeah. Projects can end, but software is is never done, is it? You're just always Casey and I talked about this yesterday on a walk.
Dax:Oh, really?
Adam:There's something else I said, like, oh, it's never done. Like software, it's never done. I can't remember what the other thing was. But, yeah. Yeah.
Adam:Our job is just kind of like just chipping away. It's like you have to be okay with that for a decade. Just like chip away on stuff that may never, you know, get to a point where you're happy with it or where it's considered complete.
Dax:Yeah. And even things like movies that are, like, a very creative abstract expression, those also are very you're done with the movie. It's done and it's shipped, and it's never gonna change again.
Adam:Yeah. Do you ever wonder, like like, the movie industry? So there are people who like, producers who know exactly what it takes to, like, plan, budget. And I know they do, like, they have big budget overruns and time frame overruns, but, like like, they generally know, here's how you put together a team and you make a movie. Do you ever wonder, like, how much our process and software differs?
Adam:And, like, are we just completely terrible at the, like Mhmm. Setting a budget and timeline and then building it compared to other industries? Like, would they just laugh at us if they sat in the room while we did scrum meetings or whatever? Like, do you know what I'm getting at?
Dax:Yeah. I think about this all the time, and I think I've for whatever reason, in the last year or so, I've been obsessed with this exact concept. Because I think we me and Liz had some conversation where we were talking about how, you you know, sometimes a good director just has a flop and it just feels like purely the director's failure. But then you think about how complex making a movie is, and it's and then it feels impossible that there's even any good movies at all because, like, it's so complicated. Like, one day of filming is coordinating so many people.
Dax:And if one person messes something up, it's like a crazy budget overrun. Everything cascades, one after the other.
Adam:Or the weather. Like, they have a day where they can't shoot outside because yeah. There's just so many factors.
Dax:And and if you're filming in a specific location, like, you have a fixed amount of time to get everything you need done. And then Yeah. And then there's a whole, like, post process and the visual it's it's, like, mind bogglingly complicated. And then you realize, how is there even how do, like, movies even ever get done?
Adam:It's Yeah.
Dax:It's insane. And the other thing that's also kind of crazy is you you if you, like, look at directors that have, like, a breakout moment, they'll usually go from making a small movie to being given, like, a $100,000,000 movie. And I'm like, this is such a of of course, they have, like, a 1000000 people around them that have experience that are helping them, but it's still really crazy to go from like, have that many resources under you, like, pretty much overnight.
Adam:Huge responsibility to, like, get it all right. Yeah. If you've ever watched, like, watched the credits all the way through after a movie, just the number of people involved in making one movie. Yeah. And there's tons of good movies.
Adam:Like, it's not like a rare thing that there's a great movie that comes out. So people are, like, moving this many people in the same direction and producing amazing works all the time. And then you look at software, and it kinda feels like we're a bunch of idiots. I don't know.
Dax:Yeah. I know. We rarely produce anything good. It's pretty rare.
Adam:There's, like, few really good, like, software that you can point at and be like, that's a benchmark. Yeah. Before we get off the movie thing, I've got this amazing theater now where it's completely done. We're finally finishing touches. It's all it's perfect.
Adam:It's amazing.
Dax:You traumatize your child in it. Yes.
Adam:Yeah. Yeah. We watch Jurassic Park. That's a terrible idea. But we watch, like, every Friday, we have a movie night with the family, and we're watching just, like, every Pixar movie or whatever.
Adam:We're going through all the kids' movies. And then when my wife and I watch something, she only likes stuff that's funny. Like, there's no good movies that are funny. I don't know if you know that, but, we're just constantly sifting through terrible comedies. When I wake up early on a weekend, I wanna watch a movie that's actually good.
Adam:Sorry. Sorry, Casey. And I wanna watch something that's, like, you know, like one of the greats or something. And I don't know how to find those. Is there, like, a list that I could just systematically work through?
Adam:I don't wanna waste time. Like, I have only so much time on this earth to watch movies, and I wanna make sure I'm, like and even when Casey and I sit down, we'd love to just have a curated list so we're not spending 20 minutes looking for a good movie.
Dax:Just so I have spent so many, so many hours, like, working through this exact thing. I'm not even gonna tell you what to do. Just ask me. Just literally just come and ask me, like, what you're in the mood for.
Adam:I'm just gonna say, what what should I watch this weekend? Yeah. Maybe go and tell me what I should watch this weekend.
Dax:And and I'll tell you. Yeah. Okay. So another thing you can
Adam:No. I'm literally asking you right now.
Dax:Yeah. Oh, well, but do you have, like, any kind of, like, feeling or, like, you know?
Adam:Yeah. I like I mean, generally, I like like critically acclaimed, like, I like epic movies. I like kinda like thrillers. So I think of movies like, Inception, like Thinkers, where you're just like
Dax:That that's good. Let's start with Inception. Have you seen all of Christopher Nolan's movies?
Adam:I don't think so. I have them all. I don't think that's okay. Just watch all Chris that's a way to filter. Just go by the director.
Dax:Just start with Inception and go, like, backwards and forwards, like, around something there. So Dunkirk, if you want a, like, a war movie, that's the
Adam:I haven't watched a war movie in a long time. I used to love, like, same power.
Dax:Is amazing. And on your theater, it has, like, one of the best sound Oh. For for good sound, that's, like, a fantastic movie. I remember seeing it in theaters and, like, I can still, like, remember how the sound felt, like, physically in my body.
Adam:That's awesome. Okay. So Dunkirk's my next movie. I'll watch it this weekend, maybe.
Dax:I personally really, really like The Prestige.
Adam:Oh, I like The Prestige. Yeah. I've seen it.
Dax:Have you seen it? Okay. So it's, like, like, personally, like, it's, like, my like, one of my favorites. Just I just
Adam:like the substance in there. The other one. The illusionist.
Dax:Both those movies came out and they're, like, the same like within a year of each other.
Adam:The same basic movie. Are there, like, there's a very similar plot? Have you
Dax:noticed this happens in Hollywood a lot? Like, you'll see, like, 2 movies come out around the same time that are, like, almost about the exact same topic.
Adam:Yeah. How's that going?
Dax:I always wonder what's the back story. I've seen this happen so many times that there must be some, like I I wonder if it's something like 2 studios were bidding on a script and one studio won, and the other one was like, no. Like, we still need to make that type of movie. And they're, like Gotta
Adam:make that movie.
Dax:Yeah. Just got, like, the b version of it. Yeah.
Adam:That's awesome. Everyone that got turned down in casting, they're picking them up, like Yeah. The second best of everything.
Dax:Yeah. I guess it's like maybe like a financial calculation where oh, you know what it is? It might be that same weird thing where have you noticed I mean, this might be a little bit more prevalent in cities where you'll see 2, like, stores that do the same. There were 2 restaurants that serve the exact same type of food all cluster in the same location. And you're, like, why is this the case?
Dax:So I when I lived in New York, for a little bit, I lived in Hell's Kitchen.
Adam:Wait. What? What's Hell's Kitchen? It's a
Dax:it's a neighborhood in It's a neighborhood in New York. I guess that sounds crazy to someone
Adam:Okay. Yeah.
Dax:That hasn't heard that before. I live in Hell's Kitchen, which is just a very normal neighborhood. You lived
Adam:at a restaurant? What is it?
Dax:Is that
Adam:a reality TV show with, like, that one chef that gets mad? Sorry.
Dax:I keep Wait. What is that? That that is There
Adam:is like a Hell's Kitchen, I think. Isn't that like a TV show? Probably a stupid one.
Dax:Something like that. Yeah. It's either Gordon Ramsay one. I forgot what his show was called. Anyway, a block away from me, there are literally 3 Thai restaurants, like, within like, right next to each other.
Dax:Now that this makes no sense. Like, why would you open up a sec like, another competing Thai restaurant next to the first one? But there's this theory I don't know if we talked about this before, but there's this theory that someone explains where imagine a beach, like a rectangular beach. Yeah. And and you've probably heard of this before.
Dax:The No. Oh, you have it? Okay. Imagine a rectangular beach. There's 2 ice cream vendors.
Dax:Okay?
Adam:Uh-huh.
Dax:They need to place their cart somewhere on the beach. Maybe 1st day, one goes all the way to the left, one goes all the way to the right.
Adam:Uh-huh.
Dax:The guy on the left realizes, okay, if I move 10 feet to the right, I can I can, like, be closer to more people? And, like, if you just play this forward, they both end up right in the middle of the beach next to
Adam:each other.
Dax:Yeah. Because that's, like, this the optimal place for everyone to be. So I think this type of not this literal effect, but that this type of thing shows up, I think, in a lot of places where if there's already a movie that's being made of this topic, it's gonna be in the air and, like, you kinda benefit from having adjacent movie even if the same thing counterintuitively.
Adam:So I actually have a very, related story, or just like the idea of retail site selection. One of the first things I worked in my career worked on when I was freelance was this guy from Wharton. He was, like, just graduated Wharton, and one of his professors this was, like, 2,009, so it was a long time ago. His professor was, like, the statistics professor at Wharton, and he made this it was like an auction based ML model, and it they we called it the black box. But it was basically, like, you put in a bunch of data, and it makes predictions.
Adam:Right? Just I mean, it's early days ML, maybe. I don't know what early days is. Maybe it was in the seventies. Who knows?
Dax:Did you work on OpenAI?
Adam:Is that
Dax:where you're at the time?
Adam:No. No. That's not where I'm going. But his he they were taking it and trying to commercialize it with retail site selection. So they had this crazy giant database of census data, and it wasn't just, like, all the census data.
Adam:It was, like, forecasted. Some company, like, forecasted census data even in the future. And we would take we actually had a working prototype. I don't remember what happened at the end, like, why it didn't take off. But he had, like, early customers.
Adam:They were basically like it was like Crunch Fitness was trying to figure out where do we put gyms? Can we take all the data about the population in an area and decide if we're gonna plop a new location down, where should that be? And it it found some really interesting stuff, like places where there was a high demographic or high number of firemen were, like, good locations based on because they had, like, a 100 locations all over the US, and they could take the data from those, the sales data, and kinda figure out, like, what's driving more sales. Anyway, I couldn't not talk about that after you just said something about, like, choosing a location.
Dax:That that's that's exactly the same thing. Your example of firemen is funny because I think that's actually the opposite because and there's always talk about this.
Adam:And their
Dax:fire Yeah. We always talk about this because because, when we walk around our neighborhood, we walk by the firehouse a lot. And we look in there, and we're and both of us, like, just acknowledge that If you're a man, that when you look in there, you're just, like, that is the life I want. It's just a bunch of guys that are all friends
Adam:Just working out.
Dax:And then they're just, like, working out with music, and there's, like, big giant space that have, like, no limits. And it's just like Yeah.
Adam:That's kinda a lie.
Dax:Male like, the ideal male fantasy is is to be a fireman. So they don't need a Crunch Fitness. They have something infinitely better.
Adam:No. Yeah. They've got the gym in the that's a great point. You know, gym inside. Maybe that's why the company didn't take off.
Adam:We we had bad assumptions.
Dax:The, It's funny because probably around the same time so I spent a little bit of time in ad tech. Not a little bit. Like, maybe 2 or 3 years in ad tech, and this was in the mid 2010 to 2013, 14, 15, something like that. Yeah.
Adam:I needed someone to blame. So we'll talk about that a little bit. I'm glad to know it's your fault.
Dax:Yeah. Continue. So this was a crazy era because this was when data started to explode. Like, we all had mobile phones. We're all doing a lot more stuff on the Internet.
Dax:And there was, like, no boundaries on any any of this stuff. Like, nobody was thinking about any of this stuff. So there was a company that shared I think they were on the floor above us. And they were working on these beacons, basically, that they would put all over New York City, like, in other in stores. And people's phones are constantly searching for Wi Fi networks.
Adam:Oh. And
Dax:when they search for a Wi Fi network, you can pick that up and you can get their MAC address. So you can literally track
Adam:Oh my word.
Dax:Like, where people are consistently moving. And it's like an incredibly it's an incredible data set because you basically understand movements in a city, and there's, like, so much so many interesting things you can do with that. And, obviously, they were like, the most interesting thing we can do with this is, like, something with ads or something something, like, stupid like that. Yeah. But then I remember, like, a couple years later when I was, like, not involved, like, I wasn't anywhere near this company, Apple announced that they were gonna randomize the MAC address every time it made a request.
Dax:Oh. And I think to most people, it's just like, what the fuck? Like, what a random ass feature. But this just completely killed Destroyed that feature. Entire entire industry.
Dax:And then, like, a year or 2 after that, I was in this I was part of this Angel group and, someone was pitching their, their startup. And they had this really cool visual. It was meant to it was meant so they were trying to sell the security system type thing to, like, big campuses, like, big office campuses or universities and things like that. So if you need to, like, evacuate people in some kind of situation, you get a live visual of where everyone is using the same system. And I was like I asked him about the MAC address situation, and he, like, refused to give a straightforward answer because I I knew it just could not work.
Dax:Like, I knew the explicit detail why it didn't work. And, none of the other angel investors were technical, so they just thought I was being annoying. And
Adam:I and
Dax:I did not go in on investment, and I I don't think that company worked out either. But, yeah, this this MAC address thing is just simple fix, but it blocks all of that.
Adam:Yeah. Apple's kinda been on the forefront of, like, screwing the ad agencies for a while. Right? They did the other thing where you have to explicitly, like, opt in to being tracked. What was that?
Dax:Yeah. That one more recent. Okay. So with all this stuff, there's always, like, how far should you go with protecting the consumer this way, and how much of it is actually kind of, like, just redirecting the money somewhere else. Yeah.
Dax:I am I don't like a lot of that stuff, but that thing that they did where, like, apps like Instagram couldn't they had, like, much lower fidelity tracking after that change. Yeah. It, like, broke a lot of small businesses because that was that mechanism of being able to hyper target people on Instagram just lowered customer acquisition costs for, like, so many small businesses selling things. And I just remember that year, like, so many companies were posting, like, we're gonna go out of business. Like, we have no way to reach our customers now.
Dax:Like, it just kind of broke that space. So Yeah. It's it's, like, it's not a net bad thing. And ads on Instagram, like, I don't use Instagram, but, like, when I go check it out occasionally, they're so good. I'm, like, these these ads are content.
Dax:Like, I would just have an app that just showed me the ads and nothing else. Because they they do a good job.
Adam:Casey jokes that, like, when they talked about the Instagram got busted for, like, listening to your mic when it wasn't supposed to or something. Like, she'll pick up her phone and just say, like, man, I wish I had a good whatever. Because she wants the ads to be targeted to her. Like, she's trying to find things. The Instagram ads are the best way for her
Dax:to find the product
Adam:she's looking for. So she would just, like, speak around her phone. But there is some truth to that. Like, ads, as a consumer, aren't all bad. Like, sometimes it's nice to just be, like, served the thing.
Adam:Maybe not if you're impulse buying it, but, like, you're looking for a thing. And sometimes, ads help direct you in the right direction towards the thing that you want. Yeah. The ad industry is a hot mess.
Dax:Right.
Adam:Like, the tech side of it
Dax:Uh-huh. Terrible.
Adam:Comp as a person involved with a consumer facing website that makes most of our money off ads. I cannot get over like, who works at these plate? Well, apparently, you work there. Who who is writing the the code that, like, a 1,000 network requests immediately? Like, you drop this little thing, an embed, like an Iframe, to put this ad, and this ad network's gonna sell whatever slots on this thing.
Adam:I cannot get over the network activity, the amount of JavaScript running in the browser, how much it all just breaks. Like, those JavaScript snippets are just crashing constantly, and then they're breaking our page. I mean, there's just so many things about that picture that I can't figure out. Is it a bunch of, like, 12 year olds? Who who works these ad agencies?
Adam:And I'm sorry if I just offended you if you work there. But, like, why? Why do you have to do all that? Why are there so many network requests? Yeah.
Adam:Why is there so much JavaScript?
Dax:I think that space is really weird because so the reason I left was at some point I mean, I was also young, so I should I should have just been switching industries anyway. But more specifically, if you take a step back, there's basically 2 parties in the whole thing. There's someone with ad space and someone with something to show in the ad space. And there are, like, a 100 middlemen in between, like, doing every little step of that process.
Adam:Yes.
Dax:And it's such, like, a broken, terrible industry because most of those companies suck and shouldn't exist. There's just, like, a weird history that created all this fragmentation. And I think that's a lot that's probably gone away because, for non web stuff, like, for app stuff, a few companies just kind of entirely won. Mhmm. But on the web, yeah, there's still this huge clusterfuck of of little companies.
Dax:So you have, like, terrible stuff like you're describing. But in other ways, there's also some of the craziest highest performance things you'll ever see because those are real time bidding slots. So when an ad slot becomes available, there's, like, this process to, like, have a bunch of companies bid for that spot in real time and play something there.
Adam:And drop it on the page in real time.
Dax:So, like, on the back end, there's some, like, crazy performance work that's done to, like, make all that possible. So when you partner with a company, you have requirements that they need to respond in x amount of latency. So then if you have if you're one of those companies and you have a data provider, the data provider needs to respond faster than that so you can make your decision. Yeah. But I think it's just one of these things where the front end side of things, like, just nobody tried or, like, cared about that side because they just didn't think they didn't really understand that it mattered as much.
Dax:Yeah. It's terrible though. I'm surprised it hasn't gotten better.
Adam:Why don't people on the front end try? Maybe if you're a front end developer, maybe try more. Try try harder. Try a lot. Try try stuff.
Adam:Maybe just anything else. Front end sucks. Sorry.
Dax:It's like yeah. It's like they put all the work to make everything so perform and efficient, and the last step, they just kinda undo all of it.
Adam:Yeah. All of it. Yeah. Yeah. I hate it.
Dax:Yeah. So I had this thought the other and you were saying talking earlier about how do people in other industries, like, laugh at ours. And this thought occurred to me the other day where I was, like, you know, I've been in software for a while. I got into it just on my own without, like, really needing anything besides, like, the urge to get into it And I realized I could be doing something very different in the next 10 years. Like, when I'm done with the phase of what I'm currently working on, I still have, like, you know, 25 years of career or so left.
Dax:And I'm thinking, like, I might actually do something very different. Not, like, very, very different. Like, I'm not gonna go become a piano player, but
Adam:Or, have a ranch. That's what everybody says. They're gonna be become a farmer or something.
Dax:No. Yeah. No. No. No.
Dax:I'm definitely still gonna do stuff in tech, but I think I really wanna go into something that's harder, because I genuinely believe that software is easy compared to a lot of this stuff. I think it's a great place to learn a lot of good principles that carry over to everything. But I'm thinking, like, the next phase of whatever I do, it might actually be very different from writing software. I don't know where it's gonna be, but I wanna, like, try to do something that's more in the physical world, like, more more difficult.
Adam:It is interesting. Like, I've just always had this assumption that I would not do this until I'm 65. Like, something about I don't know if it's the industry, if it's software development. It just it's hard for me to look at, like, our parents' generation and how they had a typical, like, work 35 years then retire. It's hard to imagine that scenario in my career.
Adam:I don't know what it is about it, but I I'm I'm with you. Like, I've constantly had the feeling that this is a limited run, and then there's some next thing in life. I don't know what that is.
Dax:Yeah.
Adam:But, yeah, I I you see it kinda play out with a lot of software developers. Like, they become they kinda climb to, like, senior or whatever, I don't know, big companies call it, staff engineers, whatever. Yeah. And then they, like, get into other stuff. They're speaking.
Adam:They're like, the content creation draw is real. Like, the pipeline of junior developer to senior developer to has a mic anchored to his desk is like a thing. And I feel like there's a reason for that. I don't know exactly what the mechanism is. But
Dax:No. Yeah. And I'm I'm thinking, like I think what's good is with the skills you have, you can go into in a lot of different directions. Like, I can see myself, like, getting into manufacturing and, like, thinking about and understanding, like, what are the big problems in manufacturing that are not solved. You can see how it's, like, very related to software.
Dax:It's all about automation and
Adam:Yeah.
Dax:And stuff like that. But, yeah, I I as obvious as it is so I wasn't thinking like you. I wasn't thinking, like, oh, I'm gonna be just doing something different. I just thought, yeah, I'm gonna be be writing software for a very long time. But something unblocked in my head.
Dax:And as simple as it is, I'm like, oh, yeah. I can learn something new. Like, why can't I become as good Yeah. In manufacturing as I am in software? Like, nothing there's really no difference.
Dax:And, yeah, like, I think that's that sounds, like, really appealing to me.
Adam:I I mean, I love learning new things. I feel like that's why I fell in love with software development. It's just all the learning you get to do as part of this career. And I feel like I'm always chasing that high of, like, learning a new thing. So I could definitely see that turning into a different profession even by accident.
Dax:Yeah.
Adam:Did your dad your dad was a software developer. Did he retire as a software developer? Like, he did the the whole thing?
Dax:Sort of, and I guess, but but also no. And I guess this is I guess, to some degree, I've I've understood this for a while because I've seen him. So he was, he started out he went to school for electrical engineering, actually. Mhmm. Randomly I
Adam:wanted to do that, by the way. I wanted to be, like I want to work at Intel and wear the hazmat suits. That was my goal. That's all I knew. I was, like, those guys look so badass.
Adam:I just wanna be in that suit walking around doing whatever they do at Intel.
Dax:You know what's crazy? There's a massive shortage of people that know how to do
Adam:that. Really?
Dax:And because chip manufacturing has continued to become super important, there's, like, a lot of opportunity in that field.
Adam:Oh, that's super cool, actually, to work at Apple and, like, work on the m chips. I mean, I'm I'm trying to, like, go from writes terrible JavaScript on the front end to knows something about chip architecture and the connections. Like, I don't know if I can jump in at this point in my career, but that does sound super fun. Like, if you could just transport into a different career.
Dax:Yeah. So he, he got he was an electrical engineer. And I think I remember him telling me the story, and maybe I might butcher it. But he was saying that he was getting a he so he worked for a newspaper in India. And he used to work on, you know those, like, billboards that change, like, the flip ones where they, like, the the news billboards?
Dax:So he used, like, build those or, like, work on those. And he was getting lunch, and some one of his friends just showed up on a motorcycle because everyone in India is a motorcycle. And he was, like, get on. There's it was, like, some company from America is, like, hiring software engineers. Like, come, let's, like, get a job.
Dax:It's just, like, so, like, random and flip it. Yeah. And my dad did a lot of software as part of, like, at least firmware programming as part of his electrical engineering degree. And he actually liked that stuff a lot more than the rest of it. So he just, like, jumped on, and then they went.
Dax:And he, like, got this job, writing software. And so he became a software engineer. And this was this crazy era where to write software, you had, you could only write the software in DOS, and you had this giant manual to that, like, told you how to write it for, like, Windows. So you write the software in DOS, then you would, like, reboot into the into, like, the whatever version Windows was and then test your software. If it didn't work, you have to, like, reboot back, and then it was a crazy cycle.
Dax:Yeah. So you, like, you, like, really read the book to make sure you're getting everything right. But he did that for years and progressed all the way into, like, what modern software looks like. But around 2007, he joined a hedge fund.
Adam:Alright.
Dax:Yeah. So he was you know, led a lot of the software work there, all the data engineering work there, but became very good and, like, understood the financial side a lot more and the trading side a lot more
Adam:Yeah.
Dax:And got super into that. He's retired. He, like, retired from that job now, and he works for himself now, but not as a software engineer, really. He now works as a trader. He, like, trades his own money.
Dax:And he obviously uses software engineering to Yeah. Automate a lot of that, but, he got good at 2 things. And I think that's critical to have, like, a very special career that you need to get good at 2 things.
Adam:2 things. Interesting. And
Dax:I like it.
Adam:JavaScript and TypeScript. Would that count? Or I'm not good at either. I'm like
Dax:Yeah. 1st, get good at one thing. And if you can somehow pull that off, then you gotta get good at the second thing. But once
Adam:you get
Dax:to the second thing, I think you're done.
Adam:Yeah. Okay. I just gotta get 2.
Dax:Yeah. So he he so he did switch, but it you know, it's kinda similar what what I'm talking about. Like, there was a pathway to going to the next thing because he could use his expertise and the thing he knew to, like, get work in that field and then become an expert in that field. So I think there's pathways to do that. And for whatever reason, I wasn't considering it.
Adam:Like in software, just taking our skills and applying them to basically any industry because they all have software problems. Like, you could really, like, hard pivot into something different, but take all your skills with you. Like, I'm gonna run an e commerce business, and I know how to use technology to make that better or whatever.
Dax:Yeah. Yeah. And even, like, Liz's parents' business, they spend a lot of their energy on things that are solved problems. But, you know, it's just it's it's it's not it's not something that they can really adopt or, like, learn or change their workflows. It just doesn't make sense.
Dax:But if we, like, took over that business, you know, we'd run it very differently. And, yeah, stuff like that, again, when it's in the physical world, like, it's it's not especially with all this, like, question mark around what is the future of software with with AI. Mhmm. Building a kitchen, that's I don't see anything that's gonna help with that anytime soon.
Adam:It's gonna be a bit before, yeah, before the robots are doing that. Yeah.
Dax:Right. So I think that's also got me, like, thinking a little bit more broadly. Yeah. It's weird. I feel like my whole life, I've just been very conservative, and over time, I've just been open to crazier and crazier paths, and I've kinda learned to, like, do that.
Adam:Embrace the chaos. That reminds me of a tweet that's very related, that you tweeted 18 hours ago. It says, don't worry. AI is not going to take your job coding. Do worry.
Adam:It'll probably kill the business you work for first. If you didn't predict predict or think about this, figure out why and fix it. It's what will save you. See, I hate when you do a cryptic tweet like this, where you have to have, like, iq1000 to understand the last line, and the last line, something ominous, like, it will save you. And I'm like, what will save you?
Adam:I don't know how to save me. I gotta save me. Could you please explain so I can save myself?
Dax:I have I have I'd had this observation, and I struggle to put it into a tweet that really expressed it. So I went with something that, like, kinda captured it, but it was a little bit more open ended. The observation I had is for years, I've always been annoyed with engineers because they focus just on, like, the code and they, like, are so uninterested in everything else around it that, like, even the next thing over, like, product or design, and, like, forget about, like, business or Yeah. Everything else. So I've always wanted people to, like, expand how they see their role, but there's, like, no.
Dax:My role is code. Mhmm. So, of course, when AI comes out, if you take that mindset and you see AI, you're just, like, oh, my god. They're gonna, like, make make AI that writes code for me. That that that writes a code I'll be writing and, like, that's where they focus their fears.
Dax:But to me, that's a wrong way to focus on it because when I, like, play some of this AI stuff out, I mostly see it eliminating a whole category of businesses that we assume make sense and will continue to exist.
Adam:Mhmm.
Dax:And that I feel I can see that happening before like, it it, like, doesn't matter that it could write the code for you if the code doesn't even have to be written anymore. Yeah. So what I find interesting is engineers are a lot of engineers are not seeing that dynamic. And the fact that they're not seeing that dynamic just overexposes them to this problem because if they were if they thought more broadly and they're able to think about more things besides just the code, they have all these opportunities that they can they could jump onto that, like, avoids AI, like, kind of limiting their opportunities. So it's this, like, weird, like, circular thing.
Dax:And it's, like, hard to articulate, but, yeah, just obsession over code. If you're obsessed with code, you just think the end state of AI is that it's gonna be writing code as opposed to really, it's gonna figure out a way to, like, not have to write most of the code. That's kinda how I see it playing out.
Adam:Is this why you're gonna move to something else? Are you afraid of AI changing the landscape of business so much that you'd rather get into something more physical?
Dax:Yeah. I mean, if I place it forward and, of course, playing a prediction game like this is hard. I don't know if you saw my longer thread I wrote on, like, I gave the example with OpenTable.
Adam:Oh, yeah. Yeah. I saw that one. Mhmm.
Dax:Yeah. So I was just trying to, like, play some of this this stuff forward. And when I do, I mostly don't see the need for a lot of, like so if you take for granted, okay, AI is gonna get better. Let's say it gets, like, not, like, crazy better, but, like, much better. Yeah.
Dax:I see a whole category of, like, b to b SaaS and, like, SaaS in general, like, not really being needed anymore.
Adam:The traditional, like, spreadsheet replacement apps?
Dax:Yeah. Just just, like, all these, like, things that were basically approximating what AI can do perfectly. Yeah. I see those going away. I've already even before all this, I've already felt kind of pessimistic about the SaaS category because I think a lot of it really was just running on top of, like, traditional, like, enterprise sales efforts versus, like, genuinely useful product.
Adam:Mhmm.
Dax:Plus, like, I think, like, the the whole, like, self hosting thing is also chipping away at, like, hosted SaaS and and all of that. So I've already felt negative about SaaS, and then now I see AI, and I'm, like, okay. That, like, accelerates us even more. Yeah. So, yeah, I don't know if the SaaS industry is gonna be the same as what it was or if it even makes sense for that and if a lot of the jobs and opportunity came from working for those types of companies, yeah.
Dax:Like, I don't I don't I don't like I don't feel excited about investing more in that category b to b to that category. Yeah. So if I'm at a point where I'm, like, thinking about investing in something else, yeah, I just realized I could think really broadly. Like, it doesn't have to really be so narrow of of just software.
Adam:Am I a software engineer? We've said that word a few times now. Yeah. And I know there's some debate about what it is to be an engineer, specifically. You've watched me code.
Adam:Am I an engineer? Because I use that word. I think I use that a lot because it sounds the smartest. I'm an engineer. Just sounds way better than I'm a web developer.
Dax:Would you say I'm an engineer if you were talking to people that, like, build buildings? Or would you call yourself a developer?
Adam:Well, I would say software engineer
Dax:because it's different.
Adam:But is there, like, a criteria where you can only say engineer if you wear a hazmat suit at work or something? What what is the
Dax:obsessed with this. I was gonna buy you a hazmat suit. I would love it, please.
Adam:Do you do you view, like, software developer, software engineer, software what else? Architect I don't know. There's all kinds of words people use, and I guess they are different roles. I don't know. I've only worked at startups, so I'm so dumb about this stuff.
Adam:But do you think engineer is like a prestigious title that you should only use if you, like, went school or something? I don't know.
Dax:Here's what I here's what I feel. Like, I get why there's a question about this word. But to me, there are certain principles and ideas and, like, skills, like, meta skills that you learn by being an engineer. They're important to being an engineer. Like, the way you solve problems, like, understanding things like avoiding like, having good judgment around avoiding complexity, like, finding really simple solutions to
Adam:Mhmm.
Dax:Problems and, like, what type of solutions are brittle, what types of solutions work well. And though all those meta skills, you can definitely learn from just working on software all day. So, yeah, I get why we call them software engineers. I also get why, you know, people that work on things that need to be way more precise aren't, like, find it weird that we call ourselves software engineers. Yeah.
Adam:If you watch me on Twitch and you're like, you work on satellite software or something, you're, like, yeah. You're not an engineer, sir. I'm sorry.
Dax:Yeah. It's but it's it's also like, did you I'm, like, trying to remember this and I, like, can't really understand. When did, like, web development become, like, the entirety of what you thought about?
Adam:Like, if I think of software the broader software industry, I just think about web development. Is that what you're saying?
Dax:Yeah.
Adam:And when when does that happen for me? Yeah. It is really all I think about. Is it the Twitter? Is it, like, the more you're on Twitter, the more you'll just think about the little mission?
Adam:I'm not
Dax:even talking about Twitter. I'm talking about the little work I do and the jobs that I had looked for and, like, the skills I'd offer. Like, it's always web I mean, of course, there's there's always back end stuff. But at the end of the day, all that stuff was just built to power some Web stuff. Thing.
Adam:Yeah.
Dax:When did that happen? I feel like we, like, accidentally got super narrow, and I didn't even realize that was happening.
Adam:You're saying, like, you know the other, stuff exists, that there are lots of software developers not working on web related stuff, but it just completely like, you have to think hard about it to even acknowledge it. Like, it's kinda gone out of your mind?
Dax:Yeah. I think partly. But I also think just genuinely as an industry, all of software just genuinely became web development. Like, a large percentage of it has.
Adam:Yeah. Well, is it like that situation where the it's the only thing anyone talks about, but there's, like, the 90% of people still, like, working on WinForms apps or something in, like, offices? Is that still a thing, or is that gone away? Because I literally don't know. I don't know if there's
Dax:Well, I'm saying if you if you look at the biggest companies created in the last 10 years Mhmm. Of course, all all of them have native apps. And I'm gonna bucket native apps and web apps kinda under the same category because they're all, like they're, like, saying they're the same. There's, like, a back end and it, like, serve something and the front end consumes it. Like, the architecture is roughly the same.
Dax:Like, literally, as we're talking about this, someone just post in the chat, why solid over quick? Just like the randomest question, of course, about web development. This
Adam:Yeah. Well, maybe you could help me. I I'm I'm struggling here. I don't know if you can tell. Maybe you could help me by, like, telling me what are the other categories of software.
Adam:If there's web software, what else is there?
Dax:I don't think there's much else. Like, of course, there's, like, firmware software. Of course, there's stuff that runs on embedded devices. And, of course, there's stuff that, like, purely operates back end stuff because there's, like, there's no point of having a front end for it.
Adam:Like, the whole banking world is just like a bunch of old code talking to each other.
Dax:Back ends talking to each other. Yeah. Yeah. So, of course, there's all of that. But, like, most of us work on stuff where there's, like, a back end and there's a UI.
Dax:And, like, it seems like the whole industry has been built around that's what we ship, and that's what's useful, and that's what's needed in the world. And that's that might that might be generally true. That might be what's needed in the world, but something I think the observation I had was it feels weirdly narrow. It feels, like, so simple and narrow. Like, there's just a back end and a front end and that's it.
Dax:And, like, every single software in the company, like, that's all they need to ship. Yeah. It, it feels weird that it's it's just that.
Adam:So one clarifying question here to make sure I'm really understanding. Do you think that is reality that most of us are working on with stuff? I do
Dax:think it is reality. Yes.
Adam:Okay. Not just your perception.
Dax:Because if you look at jobs if you go look at software jobs, most of them are asking for this type of thing to be built.
Adam:Web stuff.
Dax:Every startup is like, we have this bold innovative idea that can truly change everything, but all it needs is a back end and a front end, you know.
Adam:Yeah. I I remember tweeting, what did I tweet? Something about cloud computing eating something. I don't know. It was something that was, like, a bold claim about, like, we should all just probably be building on AWS or something.
Adam:And there was a guy who's, like what is his name? I forget his name, but he's, like, the creator of UML documents or something. He, like, he created something a long time ago.
Dax:Yeah. Grady Grady
Adam:Grady.
Dax:Or something.
Adam:He tweeted and he's, like, yeah, that's a great view if you think the whole world is just web development, but, like, what about people writing software for satellites? He literally used that example, the satellite thing. And I guess in my mind, I assumed, oh, yeah. I just have this very narrow view of the world, but, like, 90% of software development is actually all this, like, systems level stuff happening on devices and, mainframes and whatever. But the we just talk mostly about web development because it's the, I don't know, the gateway into software development.
Adam:But that's you don't think that's true? You think it's actually mostly people working on web development?
Dax:Yeah. I think so. Because when I just followed the money. That's all I did. I just followed the opportunity and followed, like, what had the biggest numbers.
Adam:Mhmm.
Dax:And, yeah, this back end and front end is the thing that had the biggest numbers and the thing that was the most in demand. Yeah. Okay. And it's crazy how I'm just saying it's I'm, like, truly surprised at how most problems in the world seem to be solved by that combination of things. You would think it's, like, more varied or more diverse, but, yeah.
Dax:It's it's not. And I
Adam:Do you think AI changes that?
Dax:I think so. Yeah. You had
Adam:tweets that kind of allude to, like, maybe not as many front ends in the future, that kind of thought?
Dax:Yeah. I think one of the last things that'll ever be built and I actually think Vercel is working on this because I I I've seen some, like, teasers from Jared that feels like they like, he's kinda put together this same idea. I think one of the last things that'll ever be built is to surface UIs dynamically, in the most useful way possible and UIs that are perfectly accessible, like, implement everything correct.
Adam:Mhmm.
Dax:If you can do that, you just have one app. You have one app that can do anything. Like, an end state
Adam:You can interact with all the yeah.
Dax:An end state of all this could be that, every problem is solved like I said, right now, every problem is solved by a back end and a front end and a bunch of engineers, like, gluing stuff together. Mhmm. In the future, every problem could just be solved by a database. The database still needs to exist because you need a physical way to organize data on a physical medium, like a disk and retrieve it efficiently. So database could still exist and some kind of AI talking to that database to, like Mhmm.
Dax:Take input from the world, structured, unstructured, whatever it is, store it in a way in the database that can retrieve later in a useful way. Item later, like, surface it as a UI. Because every problem can be solved by that combination of things. The front end there's only one front end in the world. It's a front end that can surface whatever these various AIs are.
Adam:Or just it's the front end with a with a text box that streams in text. That's all. We just need to chat with our systems. That's it.
Dax:Well They
Adam:already did it. Chat chat chat. Openai.com. No. I hate I hate the idea of, like, streaming in text, and that's, like, the way we interact with this stuff.
Adam:It's just
Dax:think a lot of things that works for, but if you think about, like, calling a cab and needing to see like, calling an Uber and needing to see where your driver is, like, on the map, like, a text version of that is not gonna be better.
Adam:No. Right. Oh, that's interesting to think of that UI just being dynamically on the fly built up based on some underlying system.
Dax:Yeah. If it can figure out, given what's happening given what the user wants, is asking for, and given I know what the data says, I know the right way to surface it. And you don't need people, like, manually mapping those over and over, often poorly.
Adam:Yeah. No. That's making sense. I I like that feature. I mean, that sounds fun as a consumer.
Adam:It's kinda what I mean, the v zero thing Vercel did is sort of, like, trying to take, like, dynamically build up UI. And I know that's different. That's more from, like, a software developer authoring an app.
Dax:Right. But that that that's a good step stepping stone to this.
Adam:Yeah. I do hate every time I build a UI, and I'm like, am I seriously gonna have to do this with a forum and the whole thing and, like, repeat the same garbage I've had to make a 100,000,000 times in my career? If AI could just make accessible UI, that'd be fantastic.
Dax:Yeah. Exactly. And it feels like that is achievable even with the current quality of AI. It feels like it's a coordination problem of, like, piping it together in the right way and being Mhmm. Like, doing that well.
Dax:Yeah. So I wonder if, like, that's one possible end state. And it's, like, AI plus database thing is something I've also been thinking about because that accounts for most back ends as well. You just need to make sure stuff that's happening in the physical world is making it into a database. If the AI can translate between those two things, that's most of what engineers' back end job is.
Dax:It's, like, you have some real world domain. You, like, understand how it works, create a schema for it, make sure that when stuff happens, it gets put into that schema.
Adam:Mhmm.
Dax:Yeah. So, like, the ends I don't know. I keep saying end state, but when I say end state, I mean, this is as far as I can, like, see in the craziest Yeah.
Adam:There is no end Yeah.
Dax:To software.
Adam:As we
Dax:talked about in the beginning. Yeah. Even with AI, there is no end. It'll be interesting. But there's still a lot of work to be done to get there.
Dax:And even when it so even when it's there, like, there are still problems remaining. Yeah. And so the question is, like, what will still need to exist? And you try to build that today instead of waiting for that future. Just assume that future happens and then try to build what it needs today.
Adam:Yeah. I'm screwed. I'm not predicting anything. I'm not ahead of anything. It's it's all going downhill from here for me.
Adam:My career is on the downward trajectory.
Dax:There's a there's a guy here in Miami, Aaron White, and he's starting a company. And he's super into all this stuff. A lot of what I just brought up was from me talking with him. Yeah. He's looking at everything that's going on, and he's like, okay.
Dax:I'm gonna make one assumption, which is someone builds a really great thing that can go work on anything. Like, work on a lot of stuff, like, as good as a human does. What problems still exist? And his answer is so funny. His answer is, when there is a company that has been around for a 100 years, some, like, consumer goods manufacturing company, whatever it is Yeah.
Dax:They're one of those giant big enterprise companies, and they're, like, oh, we can hire, like, this AI thing to work for us. The problem they're gonna have is, all of our systems are old and stupid. How do we onboard this AI as an employee? We need to give them a laptop. We need to give them access to the VPN.
Dax:We need to give them, like, all this stuff so they can do the work. So he's building that. He's not building AI or trying to make AI better. He's trying to create the ultimate onboarding experience that if you can onboard AI
Adam:as an employee. Yeah.
Dax:Yeah. As an employee, like, what are all the stupid, annoying problems you're gonna run into? And that's what he's just, like, running straight towards.
Adam:Yeah. That's a great idea.
Dax:They could fail if AI just dies and does not work out. But if it does work out, then, like, yeah, he's he's in the exact right zone.
Adam:I love it. Now, he's gonna have a bunch of competitors from all the people who listen to our we got a very entrepreneurial listenership, I think. Yeah. I
Dax:don't know if I liked this idea, but
Adam:People are already asking questions in chat. Does he charge per seat, or what exactly is the business model? Let's talk.
Dax:Well, it is funny. Like, you think about, oh, this stuff is gonna eliminate everything, but there's all these stupid problems that are still remaining that'll be around for decades.
Adam:That that's what, Sam Altman said. Right? That we're that AI is gonna take jobs, but we're gonna create new jobs.
Dax:Yeah. Well, I think the thing he said was, it's gonna get created, and we're all gonna be like, woah. And then we're just gonna kinda go back to business as usual. Because the world is so slow, it just does not change quickly.
Adam:Yeah. And it's like the watching something grow, like, you don't really notice as you grow and change over time because it's slow and gradual.
Dax:Oh, yeah. Exactly. It's it never feels dramatic. Like, there's still companies that are, like, slowly moving, like, shutting down their databases and moving them onto AWS still. And this isn't possible for, like, so long, but the companies are still just figuring it out.
Dax:So
Adam:Mhmm. The world is slow. Can I can I talk about something that has nothing to do with any of this, and it's basically, like, none of this matters? I don't I don't know where I'm gonna go with this. But if this show is anything, it's us talking about what's on our mind.
Adam:And I would be basically faking this entire episode if I didn't talk about this because it's all I've thought about for, like, 4 days. Oh, god. So are you are you nervous?
Dax:Yeah.
Adam:The I just I've not really been on Twitter because I mean, I've been on I've like, every morning for a bit. We had, like, a mutual friend. I don't know if you know, if you know Zach.
Dax:Oh, yeah. I I know. I know what you're talking about.
Adam:Yeah. So somebody that lost a child, their youngest of 5. They had a house fire. A horrible situation. And, I can't I can't think about anything else this week.
Adam:I've basically been as little productivity as I could have, just the thought of his situation and what he's going through. And I I don't know. It makes me think about, like, how hard it is in today's age to be connected to so many I feel like there's so many tragic situations I'm aware of that I wouldn't have been aware of before the Internet. And that's not like this isn't, like, poor me that I had to hear about this situation. This is like, I don't know how to navigate life when I know about every war that happens and every, you know, terrible situation in a family.
Adam:Or, there's been people who died in our circle. I mean, like, there's in the last year, we've lost some people. Dev streamers, like, that's very specific. That's a tiny niche and still, like, tragedy, and we're all interconnected with this globalized society now where you know about all this stuff. And it's impossible to, like, navigate it.
Adam:No. Like, when the war in, like, when Russia invaded Mhmm. Ukraine, that situation sucked for a few days. I know I remember, like, just not knowing how to think about that or how to handle that situation, but it was less, relatable for me. And this sounds I don't know.
Adam:Maybe this sounds terrible, but, like, we've never, in America, had that situation. I don't know how to relate to that. But when somebody loses a child and I can't, for 4 days, hardly get anything done because I just can't stop thinking about this is like a fear of mine. Like, to to lose a child is, like, the ultimate fear. And then to think about this person who does basically exactly what I do.
Adam:Like, they're me Yeah. Just in a different place here in the country, and their little daughter has white hair like my little 4 year old and looks kinda like my 4 year old. That's all I can think about. And now I don't know, like, I I I feel like I wanna do something because it's like you just feel so bad in that situation. And what do you say?
Adam:And we all kinda, like, respond and say things, but it's like, I don't know. I just feel like mental health is so hard in 2024 because we we just expose so much more tragedy than is that true? Am I making that up? Or are we just exposed to way more of this than we would have been 50 years ago?
Dax:Yeah. I mean, so I I don't have kids, but I've I'm told by every single person that has one, like, once you have kids, you just see your kid every time you see something
Adam:Uh-huh.
Dax:Bad happens and that happened. I I I can totally relate to that because I've had things in my life where it kind of follow that similar pattern. Like, I have a friend, who's Palestinian. And, like, whenever he sees all the news, he just sees his daughter in, like, every single thing. And that seems impossibly difficult and hard.
Dax:Yeah. I don't to be honest, I don't know. It's like this stuff is, bad stuff happens. Like, horrible stuff happens. You you can kinda see like, you can take something from it, like, the way he's handled all of it and the way he's been able to be, like, coherent.
Adam:So yeah.
Dax:The way he's, like
Adam:So what? You know,
Dax:he still has, like, you know, 4 other kids and his and his and his wife to they're all going through it together. So, like, seeing all that is really really sad, but in some small way, it's like, you know, a little inspirational.
Adam:Oh, for sure.
Dax:Just like witnessing, like, the strength of someone in a situation like that. But, yeah, overall, it's just, like, extremely negative.
Adam:That is the the positive side is sort of the reminder. It's the Steve Jobs thing. Like, once he knew he had cancer and all of the mortality came crashing down for him, He had those famous there was a famous quote. Right? Just like basically, his whole mentality was was different after that because you're just you're gonna die.
Adam:And, like, why not make the most of the time? This sounds so cliche and so cheesy, but that's all I can think about for 4 days.
Dax:It is what it is. Yeah. It is what that is. Yeah. Yeah.
Dax:It's crazy. And if you I mean, if you if you've seen some of the studies they do with hallucinogens and people with terminal illnesses, that's actually where they're trying to get people to. Because a lot of people obsess over,
Adam:things that The anxiety of it?
Dax:Yeah. And they there's kind of waste of time they have left. Like, they, like, obsess over, like, oh, can I stop this or slow this down or other stuff? And when people get those treatments and they end up in a better place, a better place tends to be, just really genuine genuinely, like, making the most of the time they have.
Adam:Mhmm.
Dax:Yeah. I don't know. I I'm I'm personally actually very bad at this topic. Like, whenever this kind of thing comes up, like, Liz always makes fun of me for it. Like, I just just do not, like, wanna think about it.
Dax:Like, I'm kinda, like, similar to you where I I can relate to what you're saying because my approach to all this is somewhat cowardly. It's I just avoid I try to turn off the
Adam:clock or avoid the thing
Dax:that makes me think about it or whatever. I know there's maybe a better place I can get to, but I just don't have I just don't have it in me to, like, work through that. So, yeah, I I totally get what you're saying.
Adam:I feel like that's that's mostly what I've done. This one, I did not do a good job of keeping it out of my head or something. I didn't have my defenses up. But, yeah, that's my approach. I I just don't I don't wanna think about any of it, and it's it feels like I don't know.
Adam:That's not very supportive or something, but, like, how can we all support everybody at all times? There's terrible things happening constantly all over the place. It it comes back to, like just like it feels weird to be to carry on, like, normal when people are suffering, when there's bad things happening. But it's like that's always happening. It's literally always happening.
Adam:And in this age, where we always know what's going on all over the world, how do you operate normally ever? If if you're going to, it might as well be every day because you know what I mean? Oh, sorry.
Dax:I had to I I I accident I shouldn't have read chat. I accidentally read
Adam:Oh, no.
Dax:Read Paul's message. It was actually easier to be in Ukraine than it was to read the truth But, yeah, it's I I don't know. It's like and sometimes I get this feeling of, like, you, like, truly understand how, like, weird and, like, crazy, like, being alive is. It's just this weird trippy thing. Like, none of it really makes sense, and then all this stuff is happening randomly and just, like, very chaotic.
Dax:And I feel like that's in moments like this, it's kind of the feeling that I have.
Adam:Mhmm.
Dax:And I think it's the truth. I think in those moments, like, the illusion is broken. Like, your understanding of, like, the progression of, like, your life and, like, the things that happen, they happen in this order. Like, you see stuff like this and it's kinda, like, completely shatters
Adam:Mhmm.
Dax:That. Everything feels surreal and, like, you're in a dream or something. I've definitely been feeling that way. I've been getting that feeling, like, a lot more. Yeah.
Dax:But, yeah. I don't know. There's there's no answers here. It's just
Adam:There's no answers. Yeah. No. This is kind of a downer.
Dax:Weird and crazy and
Adam:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I guess, I really do need to go. This is kind of bad timing.
Adam:This this recording was sandwiched between 2 things for me today. So I guess we're ending on this note. This is I'm sorry that I I brought it down for the ending. But it's maybe it's a good reminder for somebody. You're gonna die.
Adam:You know? Sorry. That's that sounds so dark. But, like, make the best of it, you know? Wake up and make, apple or something.
Adam:I don't know. I I got nothing. There's no there's no good way to land this plane. But it's on my mind, and I don't I don't know how to to cope or deal with this kind of stuff. And it's ever present.
Adam:It's just gonna constantly be hitting us.
Dax:I think the way I think about it is it's almost like insurance, you know, like, when something bad happens, like, it comes out of everyone's thing and pays for the bad thing. I kinda see that in this way, like, this bad thing happened and we're, like, obviously, one family is paying for it the most.
Adam:Mhmm.
Dax:But it also hurts all of us and I think that's that's good. That's like, that's just the way it works. That's a cost. Like, we all we're all paying some of it together.
Adam:There there's some amount of support that the collective can can provide in sort of helping to uplift in those situations too. Yeah. Yeah. We should put a link in the show notes for the situation and and how people could help if if anybody wants to to
Dax:help. Yeah.
Adam:Okay. Well, that was, sorry. That was a downer on What was that? Otherwise, very upbeat and futuristic in whatever episode.
Dax:Yeah.
Adam:I gotta go. I'm gonna actually be streaming. I'm gonna turn on the stream and I'm gonna go for a workout. And you guys can watch me get a pump on.
Dax:Nice.
Adam:That's there's a transition. Nice transition. Nailed it.
Dax:You should be crying during a workout.
Adam:Yeah. Alright. Alright, Sacks.
Dax:See you. See you.
