Supper Club × Katherine Mello on Liberal Arts → Coding, Bootcamps, and Sustainability

I sure hope you're hungry.

Oh, I'm starving.

Wash those hands, pull up a chair, and secure that feed bag, because it's time to listen to Scott Tolinski and Wes Bos attempt to use human language to converse with and pick the brains of other developers. I thought there was gonna be food, so buckle up and grab that old handle because this ride is going to get wild.

This is the Syntax supper club.

Welcome to Syndax, the podcast with the tastiest web development streets Out there. Today, we've got a really good one for you. We've got Catherine oh, it's so it's Catherine Mello. Right?

That is correct. Although some people call me Kat, but either one is totally fine.

We got Catherine Mello on from Tangible today, which is a, company that kinda works in the carbon and building space. I'll let her explain it a a a lot better than than I'm doing here.

The cargo's up. Yes. Yeah. Exactly.

Welcome, Catherine. Thanks so much for coming on. Thank you so much. It's great to be here. Yeah. So, You sent us a message, I don't know, a couple months ago and said, hey. I've been you're a big fan of, of the podcast and whatnot. I've been listening for a while or kinda just chit chatting about Stack and and front end framework and and whatnot. But, like, the company that you work for seems really cool. So you wanna, like, start there. Just give us a a quick rundown of, Like, both like, what did it what what is your position there as well as, like, what does the company do? Yeah. Absolutely.

But first, I just wanna say thank you guys so much for the podcast.

I listen to a lot of podcasts and there's really great ones out there, but I feel like there are so many that are Great material, but the most boring delivery.

But somehow you guys do like the content is excellent, but you guys are also, like, relatable and funny, and it's, like, Never a dull moment, so thank you so much. Oh, good. Honestly, like, Scott Yeah. Wasn't that kind of why we started it, though? We're just like, there's so many

Geniuses that are boring and Yeah. We're mediocre, but kind of funny.

I I think that was, like, in our initial document was, like, we wanna make It's fun, the types of topics that we like to teach and talk about. So, yeah, thank you. I'm glad that comes across all the time. I think the last time I was, like, Actually, walking down the street with my headphones laughing out loud was the

the spooky web dev stories when you were like, and that's the Five creepy crawlies out of check. And then the conversation about, like, Canadian candy really, Struck me because my sister-in-law

is Canadian, and she has had that conversation about the candies. So, Yeah. That was good. A lot about Canadian anything. Just getting a chat with one here. Honestly, I was just gonna say is, like, I could do an entire show on the subtleties, subtle differences between the US and can obviously, there's some big ones, but there's lots of little ones. What's up with that? Bag milk. Alright. Let's talk about this. So not all of Canada, just Ontario and a couple pockets here and there. Our milk comes in 1.3 liter bags.

It's disgusting for some reason. Bag. Like a I don't know. Like a like a just a like a Satchel, a pouch.

Yeah. And then you everybody everybody here has, like, a, like, a jug, and then you put the The bag in it. It actually, the nice thing about it is it doesn't take up a lot of space in your fridge.

But the annoying thing about it is that, like, people who don't know how to cut the bag Just cut it way too big, and then it pours everywhere. Awful. I'm every time we go somewhere that has jugs, I'm like, this is the way. Why don't we do that? Doesn't feel, like, sustainable. You're not, like you can get your your

milk in a glass, I suppose, if you're wanting the most sustainable route there. But It's not. Yeah. It's true because, like, when

when I was a kid, there was kids in school that would you get your your sandwich in, like, a milk bag, and their their parents would cut the top off And stick use it as, like, a, like, a alternative to just, like, a single use plastic.

Yeah. But then, like, you could tell, like, like, they're, like, kinda, like, They had that, like, glaze of milk on them. Yeah. Oh. Yeah. It's gone. Nasty.

Wait. There's gonna be some And really, like, people who hate milk who are probably gonna stop listening at this point. Luckily, I don't mind it. I'm not a huge fan. Yeah.

So, yeah, Canada. Anyways, thank you so much. I'm glad that you enjoyed the podcast.

Yes.

Okay. So, yeah, I can talk about Tangible and my story. Yeah. I'll start with tangible. So I'm the founding engineer.

I've been working at Tangible Materials for since June, so half a year. Awesome.

The story of how I got there is Funny, but, what we do essentially is, we are bringing sustainability to the world of building construction.

So I wanna just, like, hit you guys with some fun stats. It feels cool. I like the stats.

Yeah. I was absolutely, like, Astounded by when I first started learning about this space.

Okay. So buildings are responsible for 40% of all All greenhouse gas emissions globally Build. Wow.

Building materials themselves are responsible for, like, approximately 11% of greenhouse gas emissions.

And then concrete itself, just that particular material is somewhere between 4 8% of global Greenhouse gas emissions.

So if you look at, like if you think about emissions In the building space, there's 2 types. There's operational carbon and then embodied carbon. So operational carbon being, like, HVAC, keeping the lights on, all that stuff that happens, like, by using a building.

And then the other, category is embodied carbon.

So that's all the carbon associated with, like, extracting or mining materials, bringing them to the manufacturing plant, the manufacturing process, which probably involves a lot of heat and such transportation to the construction site and construction. So So it's just like this giant upfront carbon cost.

So historically, traditionally, there's been a lot of focus on operational carbon and, like, Reducing your operational carbon impact and, like, more sustainable lighting and stuff like that. Yeah. Not as much focus on embodied carbon, so that's Kind of where we come in right now.

Our product is a Searchable database of sustainable building materials, so that could be, like, carpeting, that could be Carpeting, other flooring, insulation, timber, like, all stuff like that.

And you can like, there's, like, You know, filtering and searching and, sorting and all that good stuff that's in a lot of applications.

But everything on our, website is less than 50% or less than 50% in terms of average,

Carbon impact in that particular product category. What about you? Like, what is your story, and how did you you end up there? Yeah. So,

My story starts, I guess, in college.

I majored in French literature. Nice.

And then I made a total 180, basically.

So I actually I really do like learning languages, so that wasn't like, that was, in That was true to myself to have majored in French. Like, it was actually something I enjoyed, but it was also because I didn't know what the hell else to do. And they're like, alright. It's end of sophomore year. Declare a major.

And then I spent the summer after senior year just applying to things that did not sound interesting, Just, you know, like generic liberal arts major things that I could apply to.

So then I took a step back and I was like, okay, what are my options here? And I remembered that I had taken 1, like, intro to computer science, like, Python course that I actually really liked. But since it was, like, my senior year, I didn't, like, even consider it up something I could do.

But then I started her Hearing whisperings of coding boot camps, and I was like, oh, okay.

I mean, not ideal to have spent all that money on 4 years of college in something unrelated and then spend more money. Yeah. I did it too. Something else, but I classic story. Yeah. If I could go back, I think I would double major in a language And then computer science, but here we are.

But, yeah, so I went I moved to New York City, Went to Fullstack Academy. It's like a 3 month JavaScript based, full stack, obviously, coding boot camp, and I ended up Staying for 3 more months to do their teaching fellowship, so essentially like a TA opportunity, which was awesome. I always tell people I don't know what it would have happened if I just, like, did the normal 3 months because I think the 1st time I went through the program as a student,

It was purely exposure. Like, this was a foreign world to me. Oh, yeah. And it was the 2nd time of, like, having to be a TA that I was like, oh, I think I understand what's going on now. Oh, so you you basically did the boot camp twice. The first time as a student, 2nd time as, like, a, like, a helper helping the Students that are are going through it on the 1st time? Yes. Exactly. That's really smart. Well, honestly, that that's Yeah. That's a great way to sort of nail down what it is that you're you're learning because it takes, You probably know this more than 2 times to to really get something set in stone, so that that's actually kinda cool.

Would you recommend, like, Like a boot camp to people as well? We get this question all the time, and I've taught boot camps in the past, and I have nothing but good experiences.

Maybe not nothing but, but I have lots of good experiences of students. Yeah. I got a I got a DM this morning from a guy who I grew up with 15 years ago, and he said, I just hired somebody because you taught them in a boot camp, like, 7 years old. This is wild. Not because of me, but, obviously, they have skill set. But, what do you think? Are boot camps worth it? In my case, 100

I with the caveat that I'm sure, like, there's varying qualities across the different ones, especially since they've exploded.

But, yeah, mine was a great experience.

I realized, like, especially not being the type of person who grew up, like, Into video games and working on computers, like, I am definitely missing, like, a ton of, like, low level Well, data structures, all that, like, knowledge that I would have gotten if I was a CS like major. So I there's definitely, like, spots that I'm missing that they just can't cover In 3 months, you know, stuff like, writing tests and stuff we covered, but I still feel like, You know, a lot of that you have to learn on on the job no matter what.

But, yes, wonderful experience. I made a lot of friends. The instructors were great.

Very inspiring. Lots of hard work. I was lucky enough after, after boot camp, after the fellowship, when I was looking for jobs, There happened to be this guy James who, was running a dev shop, and he, for some reason, had the, like, Open mindedness and non risk aversion to higher boot camp grads. Right. Yeah. So there was this kind of, like, stream of People who are graduating, they would pull someone else in from full stack. So one of my friends was, connected me with him, and that was my 1st job. So I I will say that I feel very grateful for someone who had, you know, the, I don't know. Yeah. Just like the Open mind is not maybe not the right word, but, like, the willingness

to take a risk on boot camp grabs. Yep. Courage. I suppose. Yeah. Yeah. Saw that a lot as well when I did the boot camp is there was a couple companies that would just just constantly hire and, like, you you look. Like, this is I this was probably 8 years ago, and you look at them now, and a lot of these folks are much smarter than me. And I I think a lot of people realize, like, Instead of trying to find somebody who already knows all of this stuff, like, let's take a gamble on 7, people who are new to this and probably a couple of them, especially if someone's really good at personality and and character.

Probably some of these people will turn out to be very good developers, and it's kinda like this, Talent scout area,

you know? Exactly. Sometimes you just need to convince 1 person that you can do the work.

That'll set the whole thing in motion. It's like what I was telling my bosses, like the cofounders of Tangible about, like, I've never been in, like, a position to be in charge of hiring, but, like, now that I am involved in the engineering hiring, it's like, okay. We don't need them to know Django. We don't need them to no react. We need them to, like, have ideally, like, no JavaScript or Python, not not even necessarily that, but, like, Have the willingness and track record of learning something. That's really all you need. Right? Oh, totally. Yeah. Yeah. I remember my first

My 1st gig, you they just put me on a Drupal site, and I'd never seen Drupal. I didn't know anything about it. I hardly wrote any PHP before this, but, they trusted me to do it. And next thing you know, you're you're cranking them out because you you gained that experience on the job. So did did you do anything special to, Like convince them that you could do the work initially in your 1st gig. So the 1st gig that you got like was there anything That you did

to to to make yourself stand out, I guess from other boot camp devs as a person who could learn things? Well, actually, I think I recall my boss, James, saying, like, in retrospect, after I knew him better, like, oh, yeah. I definitely sought out the people who had done The teaching fellowship because he found that they had, like, the combination of technical skills and soft skills. So I think that Gave me a leg up. Yeah. Yeah. I'm sure. But then on the job, I will say, like, I have, I think, a slow learning curve, so I don't think I necessarily was, like, Making myself stand out in the beginning, but then once I got, like, the momentum, then I was, like, very, like, very productive and, like, toggling features and whatnot, and it was my 1st and I think only experience where, like, out of the blue, my boss is like, I'd like to give you a raise. Yeah. And I was like, oh, great. I guess I'm doing alright.

I love hearing stories like that. It's it's amazing that some people can just pick out Good devs like that.

I'm just looking at the full stack, academy website, and this is something that I've seen with Several other boot camps as they are going a 100% online.

I'm curious. Yeah. It's it's it's wild, and I've talked to a few people, and they said, like, COVID has changed the world. Like, people don't want to come to Toronto or New York or whatever to do this thing. They wanna learn from Ohio Or or something like that. Like, what were your thoughts on that? Like, I always thought, like, there's nothing better than being able to sit beside somebody on a couch And show them how CSS works when their thing is broken. Like, was the in person part important for you? I think

Absolutely.

I am just remembering right now, like, the 1st time we did it. So we have the way the classes were structured, we had a lesson, and then we had a workshop that we Prepared with someone to work on through the the workshop assignment.

The 1st time we did HTML and CSS, I just, like, burst out in tears because it was So unfamiliar, and I could not make the site look like we were supposed to. So, yeah, to have someone to sit there and be like, no. It's okay. Even though he knew what was going on and I didn't. But, yeah, beyond, like, stuff like that, like, for learning purposes, Absolutely. I think it's important. It keeps you engaged, for 1. Like, are you gonna pay more attention if you're sitting in a physical space where the teacher can see you, Or if you're, like, in your bedroom with, like, I don't know, your guitar next to you. Yeah.

Totally. You know, engagement. Also being able to just ask somebody, hey. Is this dumb? Is what I'm doing right now not smart? Is this, like, Am I on the right track here?

Yeah. I don't know. Yeah. Me Rather than having to, like, drop an email to the instructor or something. Yeah. Just just like the feedback loop. Response time. Yeah. Yeah. I think a lot of those problems could probably be solved with, like, software, but there's nothing that like, I remember many times Teaching. Somebody would be like, like, I made this error, and somebody would hear that from across the room, be like, Make sure that you have your selector as plural instead of singular, and they're like, oh, that was it. You know?

Yeah. Also, the, the other component is social. Like, I came to New York for that. Obviously, New York City is not known as the most welcoming place. So So just to have these people to, like, hang out with, go to lunch with, and then they also had, like, on Fridays, I think we had actual, like, games, which were fun.

And, yep, I stayed ended up staying in New York for, like, 6 years, and I never thought I would live in a city. So, like, I think that speaks to the their ability to build community, you know, And which is lost largely when you're online. Totally.

Sadly. Cool. Hey, let's, let's start talking about tangible again.

Did were you Passionate about, like, sustainability before getting into that space or once you got into that space, is that, what awoke you to some of these issues. Yeah. I was definitely

interested in simultaneously interested in learning about it and terrified of what it Entails for the future. Really? I think the first time I can recall about having sustainability be something I thought about was in middle school. I, like, Started the great bridge green team where we just, like, picked up recycling because it needed to be done.

More recently, At the start of COVID, I started, like, a remote, book club with my family and friends, Which was a nice way to, like, get together. We read the 1st book we've read was called All We Can Save, a collection of essays about sustainability.

All the authors are women. And then the next one we read was called Braiding Sweetgrass, also recommend.

So, yeah, I was definitely interested in it. In fact, the story of how I heard about Tangible is funny because I just I guess this must have been, like, Early or spring of this year, I get a text from my brother, we need to talk, which is not a normal text I get from my brother. So I called him. He's like, okay. So Adi, who's his wife, the Canadian one, Adi's friend just called me because they're looking for an engineer. So I took the, Like, I had a call with her and, they said they were looking for a software engineer with at least 5 years of experience who's interested in data vis, Which I am and I can talk about, and the environment. And he was like, alright. Cool. Let me refer to you refer you to my sister because those 3 points are, like, Spot on exactly, like, what I was looking for.

And, actually, I always told myself I would never ever work at a startup Unless it was something I was, like, really passionate about because I just don't think that the trade off would be worth it unless you're like, oh, I am

Really invested in what I'm working on rather than, like, I'm putting in so many hours, and I don't give a crap about what I'm building. Yeah. Yeah. Do you find that as being, like, a big Motivation driver for your work, like, the fact that it it is, like, important to you but also important to the world. Does that, like, make what you do on a day to day basis

Feel, a little bit more important? Yeah. I think so. I won't say, like, it's it's not always easy to be engaged in the big picture because sometimes you're focused on like, Oh, I'm like, I just really need to figure out how this, like, used drag and drop hook works. Yeah. You know, like, in that moment, I'm not thinking about The environment, but, like, yeah, I think because I care about it and because I think we're building something that can really have an effect, It just makes my general motivation higher, whether it's, like, me, like, trying to spend an hour, Yeah. Doing research on the domain, like, I blocked out an hour for that each week or working on this feature x. Like, no matter what it is, I just have that baseline higher motivation for sure. Let's talk about your background in data fizz as well. I was

that's actually something that is Kinda missing from this podcast. We don't talk about it all that much. A couple episodes on d three, I think.

And data visualization.

Yeah. I feel like if you guys do talk more about data vis, you'll find that it's one of those things that you, like, Open the door and then, like, everything is like you'll just realize it's just, like, huge world.

You're be wary of what you're uncovering.

Yeah. So, actually, the the 1st job I got that I was telling you about, it was a dev shop. So we worked on with a bunch of clients for either a month or a few months, Built apps or websites.

And the one of the last things I worked on, I don't even remember what the product was, but I was told to build, like, some super simple Pie charts or something. I don't bar charts.

And I probably could have used not d three for that, but I found out about d three, and I started using it. I just thought it was so cool, like, the way that It was, like, different from normal JavaScript, like this, like, interesting way that you even the code itself looks I don't know if you guys have used it, but it's, like, very vertical.

You know what I'm saying? Yeah. Like, you do the data binding. Yeah. It feels very,

I mean, it it feels very cumbersome, I guess, is the the nicest way I could say that.

Yeah. Fair enough. I've always reached for libraries that wrap d three just because Yeah. I'm not doing anything outside of what everybody else is doing, Pie chart and whatever. Make change the color to yellow if I really need to.

But

I'm just loving that Wes is his his big needs are Doing a pie chart and changing the color to yellow.

Yellow pie charts are a big part of the demo. Totally. Absolutely. Pie charts, bar charts.

And, like, yeah, you can definitely use rappers for all that stuff. The the roles I had after that, I got to do much more Custom visualizations, which definitely you needed, like, d three for.

But yeah. So I I did, like, that little tiny project with data viz enough to spark Interest. And then I saw this job, like, magically open up at WeWork, actually, for a data visualization engineer.

And they didn't really when I ended up interviewing, they didn't really need me to have experience in data vis. It was more so, like, Strong experience in engineering with an interest in data vis. So it was, like, the perfect opportunity to get into that. I worked there And did some data viz. I did, like, this cool project with, like, a growth model that we built this thing called a stream graph, that animated and was very interactive, and then ended up working on something I never would have expected, not That data is related, but data related where we ended up my boss and my teammates started something called Data Cult, Which was like this data boot camp where we traveled, around the globe to teach our, like, internal WeWork employees how to use data better. So it took This unexpected turn, but then the next job I had, got back very, heavily into Dataviz.

It was, a company called Zaxis.

My team was called Copilot, and it was advertising technology.

So the first thing I got to work on there was this Visualization of a bidding model. So it almost looked like this giant snowflake, like and it was dynamic. So, like, how however your algorithm happened to, like, Favor different features and, bid, bid the ads based on how those features were performing. It could create a very different looking snowflake, but that was also very custom extremely custom interactive so d3 was very clutch for that as well Yeah. Is d three really the the, library in that space still like that is like the the one to use and learn? Honestly, I feel like I've gotten a little bit, like, my blinders on with it because I know there's other stuff going on, especially in, like, The three d realm of stuff.

Because, like, you've got, like what is it called? 3 JS, right, in WebGL, Which I've only done a few tutorials in, to be honest.

So that's why I do not refer to myself as a data because there's all these blind spots I still have and need to.

Yeah. There as I referenced before, like, there is this whole world of, I'm sure you guys have been on Observable to see all the that awesome stuff, like, all these examples of people Using Databiz, but it's also like, the format of it is, it's like a Jupyter Notebook sort of, where you have these, like, code blocks and, it's reactive and all that good stuff. Oh, this is cool. Easy to just duplicate someone else's and customize it. Oh, I've never seen this before. This one before. Guys seen this before? No. No. It's Observable

observable hq.com.

It's kinda yeah. You're right. It's like a like a notebook with live coding inside of it.

That's cool.

Yeah. So we had a data vis, designer at my last company. I worked with him, and we would collaborate on these. So I would, You know, we would either do, like, run a SQL query to get the data. We a sample of the data we needed ourselves, or if it was complex, we'd ask, the data scientist for help, then we would, like, throw that into the notebook, and I would write some code to, like, get it up and running, and then he would tweak it. It's, like, really good for, collaboration. And then once that was done, I'd, like, extract it in, like, we were using React. So, you know, d three in React is its own like, we could talk about that for a while too, but I would bring that that code and make it neater and fit it into our code base,

basically. Nice. I it's funny. I I didn't think I had been to this site Or had seen this before, but in my history was this Okay Lab color wheel. I'll I'll make sure I have the link in the show notes That like, I think this really illustrates what's cool about this, but, I I just thought I just thought this was, like, so neat. Catherine, I'm sorry. I don't have a way to send this to you right now, but, I'll have it on the links in the show notes. But it's it's basically like a color wheel, little app here. I I don't know. This is really neat, Visualization.

I'm I'm super impressed with this. Oh, I love that. I love when the when you can explain something using interactive tools That is awesome.

I just finished watching the WeWork, TV show, and I just looked up the dates. You were working at WeWork during all the chaos. What was that like? Are you allowed to talk about that?

The rapid decline and fall. Yeah. I will, say that it was a wild time to work there, in contrast to a lot of people on the data team, I was actually highly insulated from the chaos, which was I'm grateful I'm grateful for that, But it was still stressful in certain ways, but I will say I would not take any of it back because It was such a wild ride. And like I said, I got to, like, go to Shanghai. I got to go to Mexico City for this data call thing.

Like, there were some really cool experiences. I met awesome people, like, but I also watched the TV show.

And I will say I was gonna say, yeah, I didn't. But Accuracy

is, scary. Really?

Yeah. It's such a wild ride. I hope that any more detail, but the acting was impeccable. Oh, yeah? Wow. Yeah. It's a it's a good watch. If you if you're out there and you have not watched this,

this is definitely a good watch. I also watched the, The Dropout. Did you guys see that one? Totally.

Similar startup

story. Yeah. Yeah. That was great. Yeah. I'm definitely gonna have to watch this one tonight. Scott always I Don't watch stuff until Scott or listen to stuff till Scott tells me about it, and then I I do it. So That's fun. Thanks, Wes. I'm, I I am a purveyor of,

high quality

Yeah. Stories, I suppose. Wait. What's what's the reverse of that, though? What is it that Wes has to suggest before Scott will try it?

Smart home things? I don't know. Yeah.

Smart home or

or, yeah, electrical engineering, anything. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Just Excellent. Some stuff, I think. Oh, the other thing I wanted to mention about DataViz, by the way, before I forget is, If anyone is interested, there's, there's something called the Data Visualization Society. I think the website's just Data Vis Society.

Data visualization society.org.

They have, like, this whole Slack channel. There's, I don't know how many members, but there are a lot. They have, like, a conference each year.

I think, Elijah Meeks, that big d three guy, Mike Bostock are involved in it.

It's the place this is the place to be if you wanna get involved in database. They have, like, a job board. They have a literary magazine, which is really cool.

They they recently turned it into a physical magazine that you can order.

All good stuff. And then also, I wanted to mention that, you know, beyond, like, Cool graphs or color wheels or whatever. Like, Dataviz is now being I mean, I'm sure you guys know because you, like, watch the news. Like, it's being Highly when you read the news, it's being highly integrated into, like, data driven narratives, like New York Times articles. You know? Those Yeah. Incredible these days, like, scrolling, animations. Like, it's if you take data and put it into a Or you if you have a data visualization or data in general, you can communicate. It's like the picture worth a 1000 words. We had several journalists

Come through the boot camp, and not because they wanted to be coders, but because, like, a skill of being a journalist is being able to Do Dataviz, and and that's pretty much all they're in. Mhmm. One of my like, I have, like, a list of people I would love to have on the podcast, and on that list is Somebody from 538 who does all the Mhmm. Political commentary. I'm Canadian, so it's, Not really up my alley, but I just it's just amazing to see all the graphs and and visualizations that they create to

Clearly explain what is happening. And I think in politics in general, like, every single year or every single every single election that happens, The the DataViz stuff is always changing and always evolving. They're doing, like, really amazing different grafts or whatever. But, I mean, I I was thinking about this the other day with that whole, during the the last election. They have, like, the whole the needle thing that was like a big cultural thing. It was like a cultural thing. But at the end of the day, it was just a data vis that somebody probably put together in In no time. And then next thing, everyone's just watching this this needle.

I I think that's amazing. If you're out there and you're wondering, like, What can I do as a developer to stand out in any sort of way? Picking like a a niche to dive into And become like a part of like, DataViz is is probably a good idea to make yourself stand out because, like, do you wanna be one of 20,000 1,000,000,000 React devs looking for a job, or do you wanna be somebody who has d three experience and can build these neat things or, Understand data vis in a way. I think that that's, like, a a big key to getting you to stand out just a little bit in this, in the job hunt right now. Definitely. You know what? I was thinking about that the other day because when you're building software,

there's always this like, Oh, let's make this responsive and accessible.

It's like, okay, we accessibility itself should be its own job. I feel like If you became an expert in accessibility, I feel like that would put you, like, so high, assuming the companies you're applying to have an, an interest in doing that, which they should.

Yeah. I feel like accessibility is a great example of that. Yeah. Totally. Yeah. Just about anything you can specialize enough in And make your stand out make yourself stand out as long as it's a skill that people need. Like, I don't think becoming the Marionette and backbone JavaScript person at this point is the the way to go. But database is something that I think is going to be One of those things that we'll continue to gain in terms of needs out there just based on what people are doing nowadays and the types of graphics you can produce. Mhmm. Or like you mentioned, three d, three d on the web. Probably something else you could specialize in as well. I think the thing that draws me the most to DataViz is that it's This combination of so many fields, it's data science,

engineering, psychology, design. Like, There's much, much literature just about how graphics can be deceiving or how people, Like, certain, visual channels, humans are better at processing, width and height instead of, like, angle or, like, I don't know. There's just so many different channels of translating the data, and humans are better at perceiving some over others. Yeah. Totally.

Let's talk about your stack. I know you're you're asking us, like, should I use React? And we already have our back end. So what is the stack, at tangible, and and, like, what challenges have you hit with that?

Yeah. So, yeah, when I reached out to you guys, I was trying to Convince my bosses to let us use Svelte basically because I've used React for so long, which I love, but I had been wanting to learn Svelte.

So what we landed on was, okay, you can use Svelte for the marketing external website tangiblematerials.com because it's, You know, it's actually we didn't really need much JavaScript at all except for the join the waitlist page, so I was able to, like, Right. Essentially, one Svelte component, if that's even the right word. But so I got to, like, dip my toes in, like, as we Add more stuff to the external page, like a jobs page and stuff, then I'll get to use it more.

And then I'm using React for The, the, like, the application itself, when I joined, So we had we have a back end contractor, and he had built everything with Django. So, like, the server side templates that Django provides and all that, it became pretty apparent that we needed to, use a front end framework, and set that up sooner rather than later because, like, staying on full sec, well, in a full sec, Django is the right word, but you know what I mean.

Just using Django render. Yeah. Yeah. Server side rendering was not gonna be great for the longevity of The product.

So my first task was to switch everything over to client side rendering with React.

Yeah. And then the back end's Jinko, Python. Cool. So do you have do you have to write Python as as well to to set up API endpoints, or is that somebody else's Domaine.

Yeah. I've definitely, rekindled the back end side of my full stack knowledge, by getting Having to build out some back end features, which I think is really important if you're gonna be the quote founding engineer to be able to work across the whole Product, technical stack. But, yeah, we do have we do have our back end contractor. He just, he has another job, so he's not able to put in, like, full time hours by any means. So, yeah, it's been fun to I'm rolling my eyes because it's been fun to work on it, but I have A hatred. Maybe that's too strong. I do not like the Django docs. I think they are lacking Yeah. In many ways. Yeah.

I, I, you know, I I had a a moment in my dev career with Django Docs back in the the before the Python 2 to 3.

I don't even know, like, what the status of that is anymore. But either way, like, I went to learn Django and, you know, I I just the initial get up and running did not work. This is a while ago. So, and then I went to the IRC channel. I said, hey. I try knew that they're getting started, and I should be, I'm getting this error. And the people in the IRC room were so rude to me, and they were just like, that's because you're using this version and not that I'm like, I've I'm just following the getting started. If, if you're getting started doesn't work, like, what am I supposed to do here? Like, I'm just trying to learn this thing. And for some reason, That put me off Django for the rest of my life. I I'm like, no.

I'm not like anti Django, but I'm I'm just you know what? I'm just gonna stay away from it, Even though I'm sure it's a perfectly fine platform. Do you do you like working in Python though,

besides the Django docs? I'm certainly not as fluent in it as JavaScript.

On the one hand, it's kind of cool To be able to, like, maintain, like, another you know, be, like, bilingual or whatever.

On the other hand, it's like I know that I'd probably write Code faster if our back end was dropped, like, if it was Node.

I don't know. I think in terms of the fact that I like continual To to be continually learning like, you know, everyone does, it's it's nice to, like, be like, okay, gotta go to dive into the documentation for this Python thing or this Django thing. So I think it's, like, a good challenge.

But I'm curious for you guys, like, if someone was Total greenfield project, what would be your go to back end recommendation? I mean, I guess this is a JavaScript podcast.

Yeah. Yeah. I think it'd be no surprise. I'd probably pick TypeScript. Yeah. Yeah. Like like, you mean specifically, like, stacks and and CMSs and all that stuff? Yeah. I guess the whole stack, But it all I know it's highly dependent on, like, what the product is, so this is a hard question to answer.

Yeah. It it honestly is. It's like, I I would say TypeScript, all across the board.

Probably a node back end right now is is is the one.

Really focus on Probably from the get go, think about, writing it with the standard web APIs, like the request response so that it can be edge, serverless, whatever.

Front end framework, I would probably say Svelte or React. Those are those are probably the the bit not the big 2, but those are probably what I would say, to take a look at of of them.

And then CMS, there's just There's so many out there. I think it really depends on what kind of application. If authentication and all that stuff is important or custom Inputs is really important to you or marketing slices and stuff is important. There's there's just so many ones out there. And that's a frustrating thing for people in the JavaScript world is that you literally have to piece it all together.

There's I guess, like, Redwood is probably the one exception to that or are couple exceptions where just take take all of our suggestions and just build an app. Stop fussing with it.

But you know what? What you know what? The stack that I've been really liking the most recently is Supabase with, SvelteKit. Because with SvelteKit for me, you get everything based on the HTTP stuff. You get, progressively enhanced forms. You get the server side rendering. You all the you can run it on Edge or wherever you want. Right? Mhmm. But with Supabase, kinda covers everything else. You get authentication.

You can get a GraphQL API out of it, but you can just straight up use Supabase in their functions.

You you get role management. You get Image uploads and buckets and stuff like that, and you can self host if you want. So for me, like the stack

that I'm most excited about using day to day is Supabase and Svelte get together. Alright. Do you guys know the story behind the name? Because all I can hear is a Nicki Minaj song when you say that. Oh, yeah. And isn't her yeah. Her song

is I I don't know her song. Superbeach. Oh, is that is that the name of her her song, actually? Yeah. I would sing it, but nobody wants that. Yeah. I think of, like, there's, a Stetsasonic song called Supersonic Supersonic.

And that's all I think about, which is heavily sampled in all it's a popular media ad. Yeah. The base part is obviously it's it's meant to be a open source Firebase alternative.

So, like, that that's where the base part comes from and supas.

I'm sure there's some nod to some, Some popular reverent pop pop culture reference, which is always a mistake when you're coding. Like, I remember when I was teaching callbacks, we would have the call me maybe function, and, like, I've always regretted that, and I'm thankful callbacks are gone. Credit that. I always You know? Because it's it's funny for, like, 6 months, and then After that, you're like, how dated is this content? You know? Like, I that was a rule we put in when we were doing boot camp content. It's like, don't put, pop culture references in the docs because it comes outdated very quickly.

Yeah. Well, it's you Oh, that's so funny. Yeah.

I have a question. Have do you have any thoughts or have you ever looked into, like, host sustainability of hosting a website? We've had questions about that as well. You mean, like, the energy efficiency of the servers or something like that? Like, people are like, where do I host my website Where it's not being, like, run on somebody firing coal into a furnace. Oh my god. That's such a good question, and I

Know nothing about it, but I will say one of the jobs I was or, like, one of the companies I was interested in and at least talking to the People who worked there due to a connection from my old job is called, scope 3.

So they are tackling, carbon emissions in

advertising. Oh, okay.

So, yeah, supply chain emissions And, you know, factoring in the exactly the type of energy efficiency you're talking about, building core Internet infrastructure Systems yeah.

So they are probably the people to talk to about that, but, you know, you make a good point and, you know, People companies like ours should be able to, what is the expression, walk the talk. So I think the more that we can, like, No. Learn and, like, act on stuff like that, the better. Maybe that's a,

a secondary, place you can branch off after building materials is solved, like

Yeah. Once we solve all that, the 40% of carbon emissions are Yeah. Right. Yeah. Then you can go to digital building tools. Yeah. Perfect. Let's get into the supper club questions.

What computer and keyboard are you using? Remember how I said I'm, like, for being a software engineer, not super, like, hardware knowledgeable at all, so I'm using a What's the biggest MacBook right now? Seventeen 16 inches? 16, I think. Yeah. 16.

16, The darker gray space gray? Is that the right one? And just like the normal old you guys tell me what this is. The normal old, I'm not Fancy it all. Oh, but I will say this is this is sneaking into the sick pic territory, But I really like my standing desk. Oh.

It's the up the uplift desk. Yeah. You guys know those ones? The customizable oh, they're so cool, and then they come with, like, the balance board things. Oh, you have a Oh, that's cool. A balance board. Can you Kick flip that. So when you pick out all the, like, the type of wood you want and stuff, you get, like, 3 extra accessories.

So I have, like, this drawer that attaches to the bottom, and I picked the the balance board thing. So, you know, practicing for Snowboarding season? Yeah.

No. It's it's it's nice, though. Man, that actually would be But, yeah, that's my I have the most basic,