Side Projects w/ Joe Tannenbaum
00:06.73
Chris Morrell
All right, welcome back to Overengineered, the podcast where we ask the question, what's the absolute best way to do things we already have a perfectly acceptable solution for? Today, I am here with Joe Tenenbaum again, and we have a perfectly acceptable podcast called Overengineered, and yet you insist on wanting to start your very own podcast.
00:30.89
Chris Morrell
And so either I'm gonna talk you out of it or I'm gonna talk you into it.
00:30.96
Joey Tannenbaum
Yeah.
00:33.97
Chris Morrell
We're gonna see what happens. Um, Oh, I, I definitely, I didn't do this for like two years because of that.
00:35.93
Joey Tannenbaum
It feels a little, it feels a little embarrassing, doesn't it? To be like, I should talk and people should listen. Is that, do you get that at all?
00:51.57
Joey Tannenbaum
Okay.
00:51.85
Chris Morrell
This, this podcast, like I think I put in the two years so that you can do it next week.
00:53.88
Joey Tannenbaum
So I should hold off for two years is what you're saying. I have two years before the seed of the idea versus actually implementing the idea. Is that is that what you're basically saying?
01:06.20
Joey Tannenbaum
Great. Perfect. Sold. I'm sold. That sounds great.
01:10.74
Chris Morrell
No, i I mean, I do think that there's like sort of an interesting or a worthwhile question around like sort of, you know, whose voices need to be out there.
01:22.22
Chris Morrell
And like, I think it's it's worthwhile to sort of like ask yourself ask yourself the questions about like, you know, what am I doing? Why am I doing it? whom am I doing it?
01:33.38
Chris Morrell
You know, and I think I eventually came to terms with just like
01:33.75
Joey Tannenbaum
Yeah. Yeah.
01:39.28
Chris Morrell
It was very freeing to just kind of be like, this podcast is just for me, you know, like, and, and hopefully other people get value out of it.
01:44.14
Joey Tannenbaum
Sure. Yeah.
01:47.47
Chris Morrell
But like, I want to make a space to have these conversations for myself. And I'm not trying to do anything else with that. You know what I mean?
01:57.59
Joey Tannenbaum
That's kind of how I feel. I feel like my developer friend group has exploded over the last year. I know so many more people and I was like, how do we take this to the next level? I want to actively have conversations with people.
02:12.49
Joey Tannenbaum
and about what they're doing. And im that's it. And i there's a part of it that's like, well, you can just talk to people, and you don't have to publish it. But I think that there's enough people doing enough interesting things that it merits putting out there for the other side of the equation, like the people who are actually doing the thing.
02:27.22
Joey Tannenbaum
you
02:27.96
Chris Morrell
And the podcast, like podcasting is a really convenient format. You know, it kind of gives you structure. It gives you a time and a place. Um, you know, because there's a chance that people are listening, like you're a little bit more cognizant of what you're saying.
02:35.78
Joey Tannenbaum
Yep.
02:43.58
Chris Morrell
You maybe, you know, think through things a little bit more like it, it, I think it elevates the conversation, you know, it, it puts a little bit more pressure on in a good way.
02:44.40
Joey Tannenbaum
Yeah.
02:49.68
Joey Tannenbaum
Yeah. People, people bring a little bit of a different game to having that type of conversation than just like a, Hey, let's grab coffee and catch up conversation.
02:59.62
Joey Tannenbaum
And if you're having a conversation about the same thing that you would have been talking about anyway.
03:00.15
Chris Morrell
Yeah.
03:04.40
Joey Tannenbaum
Yeah, I agree.
03:04.97
Chris Morrell
Right. Yeah. And there's room, there's certainly room for both, like grabbing a coffee is awesome too, but, uh, you know, especially like in the world we are in right now where so many people are, you know, working remote, working from home, working from a place that is, you know, in our case, it's only a a couple hours away, but it's still like, I'm not going to be in New York every day, but we can get on, on, uh,
03:28.66
Chris Morrell
Zencaster and chat for an hour right now, you know?
03:31.20
Joey Tannenbaum
Right, exactly, exactly.
03:32.72
Chris Morrell
Yeah.
03:34.13
Joey Tannenbaum
Yeah, it's something I've been kind of rolling around for a while and then I was like, yeah, but what is it?
03:38.52
Joey Tannenbaum
Am I just, am I just shooting the breeze with somebody? Like, I don't know what that looks like. And then, uh, I was listening to actually another podcast. I was listening to syntax and they were, how dare, I'm so sorry.
03:47.88
Chris Morrell
How dare you.
03:52.41
Joey Tannenbaum
I'm cheating on you, that other podcast, but I was on a run and I was listening to syntax and Wes was talking about his hack week project or whatever. And I was just thinking like, man, I love. I love just hearing the stories about like, I tried this thing.
04:05.51
Joey Tannenbaum
It was a goof around. This is what I took away from it. Next thing. And I was like, I should just do that. That's the angle. I should just do a whole podcast where I just interview people about their side projects and you can like pull things from the graveyard of your of your you side project folder or you can say like this is what I'm working on now.
04:22.82
Joey Tannenbaum
Or I noodled with this for 10 minutes. I figured out the thing I wanted to figure out and this is what I took away from it. Like I'm interested in all of that. And I think
04:31.15
Chris Morrell
Yeah. Yeah.
04:32.44
Joey Tannenbaum
Those are fun conversations. It also opens up like, okay, well, what are you interested in? tickles your brain? What problems are you facing that merited ah ah a side project of some
04:42.92
Joey Tannenbaum
I wanna know all that stuff. So yeah, I think that's i the angle I'm gonna go with.
04:44.77
Chris Morrell
Yeah.
04:47.65
Joey Tannenbaum
And think I'm never, ever, ever gonna run out of guests because we all do this. So here's a bajillion. i I think you are quoted as saying you could basically be an entire season yourself.
04:58.98
Joey Tannenbaum
So I think, you know.
04:59.63
Chris Morrell
Oh, I've already threatened you with what, like seven or eight episodes, right?
05:03.18
Joey Tannenbaum
Well, legal action. Yeah, you've threatened me with legal action if you're not the solo guest for an entire season. and So my lawyer will be in touch.
05:11.71
Chris Morrell
I, I really liked the idea.
05:14.11
Joey Tannenbaum
Yeah, I'm into it too. It gets me excited. It's what I want to talk about. It's what I want to hear about from people. So I'm interested in it, yeah.
05:19.36
Chris Morrell
Do you think that like this, this like interest right now was like, it's coming out of like coming back from layer con at all, like just the amount of just.
05:33.89
Chris Morrell
you know, to, to overwhelm perhaps, but like, you know, the amount of just like getting to interact with other nerds, like talking about things that they're interested in so much fun. And then you come back and it's like normal life and you're like, where's, where's my like four hours of shouting about event sourcing, you know?
05:45.13
Joey Tannenbaum
Yeah, yeah.
05:51.91
Joey Tannenbaum
There was a bit of a come down. Like the first week back, I was just like, I was kind of riding high. I was like very energetic and I was like, my brain was on fire.
05:57.57
Chris Morrell
Yeah.
05:59.29
Joey Tannenbaum
And then I guess it would be, is it two weeks out now? Is this the second week out? No, I guess we're three out.
06:03.37
Chris Morrell
It might be even more, it's a little while.
06:05.51
Joey Tannenbaum
Who knows, but yeah, it was a little bit of like, oh, no no normal life again. Okay.
06:09.86
Chris Morrell
Mhm.
06:10.22
Joey Tannenbaum
Well, I guess, you know, we're just building CRUD apps and stuff, you know, that's cool. So I guess there is a little bit of like, yeah, there's a little, I just want to know what people are doing.
06:21.15
Joey Tannenbaum
I want to know what like gets them jazz and nothing gets you more jazz than the side projects. Cause that's your little baby. That's your, that's your thing you're working on, you know?
06:28.70
Chris Morrell
Yeah. Yeah.
06:29.94
Joey Tannenbaum
Yeah.
06:30.25
Chris Morrell
So what do you, do you have any thoughts about like format or structure? Have you given that thought at all? Do you want to talk about it? I don't know, but, uh, we can workshop.
06:38.51
Joey Tannenbaum
I don't know yet. I think there's are some bits in there. you don't have a name for it, one of the bits could be, let's jazz on a name for a little while.
06:45.34
Chris Morrell
I love that.
06:46.62
Joey Tannenbaum
How many domains do you own? Because for how many side projects, we get a rough estimate?
06:49.62
Chris Morrell
Oh.
06:54.00
Joey Tannenbaum
I'm not really sure yet. I have a side note that's just random thoughts I've had. But goingnna we're going to work that out on the fly maybe a little bit.
07:01.26
Chris Morrell
Yeah, I like that.
07:02.72
Chris Morrell
Everyone. I mean, everyone has that. That is kind of like a fun bit. Everyone has like a couple of domains sitting around that like, okay, don't get, don't, don't you dare get me started on domains because you'll, you'll regret it.
07:18.06
Chris Morrell
But I feel like everyone has a couple of domains in particular that have been like maybe sitting around longer that they're not willing to get rid of, you know, it's like,
07:27.58
Joey Tannenbaum
Okay. So that was one of the bits is like, what's your white whale side project? Like what's the one you can't let go and you return to every once in a while and you rewrite it in the new framework you're using right now.
07:31.62
Chris Morrell
Mm hmm.
07:37.44
Joey Tannenbaum
We're like, what, what is that for you? Because we all have one or two of those floating around and I would love to know.
07:39.98
Chris Morrell
Yep.
07:45.09
Joey Tannenbaum
What can't you let go of and what domain have you held on for way too long?
07:48.92
Chris Morrell
Right. Well, I think those, I think those can be two different things too.
07:49.96
Joey Tannenbaum
Yeah.
07:52.25
Chris Morrell
Cause it's like, what's the one that you've started and never fit, like started and never finished a bunch of times, but also what's the one that you've never been able to start, but you also haven't been able to let go of, you know, like those are kind of two different questions, right?
08:06.96
Joey Tannenbaum
because the domain is so juicy or like, I know what I would build for this and I think it's valuable and yet I can't even like dive in.
08:14.03
Chris Morrell
Right. I, I, I liked the idea nine years ago and I've liked the idea at renewal every year since, but I still haven't like.
08:19.71
Joey Tannenbaum
Okay.
08:25.20
Joey Tannenbaum
I've liked the idea nine exact times. I, you know, I don't know if I, I don't know if I have one of those. I don't know if I fell down to a domain that didn't, that didn't belong to something that didn't kick off at all.
08:35.15
Chris Morrell
Interesting.
08:39.62
Joey Tannenbaum
Do you have, do you have?
08:40.29
Chris Morrell
Oh, oh, dozens.
08:43.15
Joey Tannenbaum
Really?
08:44.51
Chris Morrell
Dozens, at least.
08:45.40
Joey Tannenbaum
Huh.
08:46.47
Chris Morrell
So I use a couple of, you you know I'm kind of in between a couple of different domain registrars, and but I have enough that I have my domains tagged as either active or just an idea.
09:02.30
Chris Morrell
as well as other tags, but, uh, there are, there are, yeah, many that are just, I think this is a great idea.
09:03.46
Joey Tannenbaum
Gotcha.
09:10.96
Chris Morrell
Maybe someday I'll build it, but I've never even like Laravel nude anything.
09:13.63
Joey Tannenbaum
And you've never put pen to paper on that. That's, wow.
09:16.82
Chris Morrell
Yeah.
09:18.32
Joey Tannenbaum
Laravel Nude is a different site.
09:18.45
Chris Morrell
Yeah.
09:20.54
Joey Tannenbaum
That's a different site.
09:23.76
Chris Morrell
That's the, uh, that's upcoming in Australia.
09:26.97
Joey Tannenbaum
That tag received an adult content tag. That was me.
09:33.30
Chris Morrell
Oh, man. Yeah, like.
09:35.72
Joey Tannenbaum
Anyway, that's the bit. That's the idea. And I think I'm into it, and I think it could last forever if I wanted to. Because I don't know, especially people who are have side projects that are attaching to hardware, I'm fascinated with
09:48.12
Joey Tannenbaum
you know i I've never done it, and I think it's awesome.
09:47.13
Chris Morrell
Oh, yeah.
09:50.48
Chris Morrell
The number of like receipt printers that I've seen on my Twitter feed in the last like four months or whatever, I love it.
09:55.79
Joey Tannenbaum
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
09:59.52
Chris Morrell
You know, it's just like...
09:59.88
Joey Tannenbaum
Did you see Andrew Skyman?
10:03.30
Chris Morrell
Schmellian or... Yeah.
10:06.41
Joey Tannenbaum
it's Just like an hour ago, fired up a dot matrix printer that he's letting people just fire stuff to.
10:06.72
Chris Morrell
Sorry, Sorry, Andrew.
10:11.15
Chris Morrell
Yes.
10:12.48
Joey Tannenbaum
And I'm like, yeah, dude, that's awesome.
10:12.97
Chris Morrell
It's so much fun. So much fun.
10:15.49
Joey Tannenbaum
Like, great. I love that stuff.
10:17.42
Chris Morrell
I was talking to Ben Holman last episode of the episode before about this. And have been saying like, I really want to connect like PHP through a serial interface to something, right?
10:30.48
Chris Morrell
Like i i I want to do a project where not only am I working with physical hardware, am I'm using PHP specifically to control physical hardware. Cause I think a lot of those projects
10:41.79
Joey Tannenbaum
Okay.
10:43.68
Chris Morrell
you end up using an Arduino or, you know, some other language that's maybe arguably more suited to it. And that's the right thing to do.
10:50.51
Joey Tannenbaum
Okay.
10:52.99
Chris Morrell
But I've just always been curious, like, there's got to be some, some, some way, you know, some arcane method that's existed in PHP for the last decade and a half that like, lets you do that, you know?
11:07.63
Joey Tannenbaum
Like what's, what's a good example of that? Like, what is, what are you, what are you thinking about? I need something more concrete.
11:13.59
Chris Morrell
I, that, that's the thing I don't know either.
11:14.75
Joey Tannenbaum
I don't know.
11:17.87
Chris Morrell
I have no idea what it would be. I just think it would be interesting to use specifically use PHP, like to do something that's not, you know, not over like a network protocol, but is actually like activating pins that are like, you know, like doing some physical thing.
11:35.72
Chris Morrell
That's like where you're really getting down to the low level.
11:36.19
Joey Tannenbaum
You want to do something, the low level. Yeah. Okay.
11:39.42
Chris Morrell
Yeah.
11:40.06
Joey Tannenbaum
That's fascinating. Um, if you figure that out, I'm all ears. I, I, yes, I'm, I'm in.
11:45.57
Chris Morrell
That'll be season two.
11:46.05
Joey Tannenbaum
Sure. Yeah. Season two, we are controlling hardware at the lowest level possible via PHP. Uh, yeah, we'll, we'll say that for season two and you'll have all of season one.
11:57.66
Chris Morrell
Yeah.
11:58.61
Joey Tannenbaum
That's a, that's a lock.
11:59.35
Chris Morrell
Right.
11:59.61
Joey Tannenbaum
That's a contract.
11:59.95
Chris Morrell
Right.
12:00.09
Joey Tannenbaum
Yeah.
12:00.31
Chris Morrell
Yes.
12:00.82
Joey Tannenbaum
Yeah.
12:00.90
Chris Morrell
That's already under contract.
12:01.91
Joey Tannenbaum
We've agreed.
12:01.94
Chris Morrell
Yeah.
12:03.04
Joey Tannenbaum
Unfortunately. Yeah.
12:04.53
Chris Morrell
Uh, um,
12:10.45
Chris Morrell
God, I had something for you. I don't know. I was, I was thinking though, okay, let me, let me pitch you. I'm going to pitch you one of my, one of my domains that I never, never have, haven't used yet.
12:20.58
Joey Tannenbaum
Okay.
12:20.71
Chris Morrell
You tell me if I should renew it next year.
12:23.07
Joey Tannenbaum
Okay.
12:23.90
Chris Morrell
All right. The domain is this, this has never been touched.
12:24.66
Joey Tannenbaum
This is under idea. So this has never been like, nothing's happened with it.
12:29.07
Chris Morrell
Yeah.
12:29.64
Joey Tannenbaum
Okay.
12:30.53
Chris Morrell
Uh, the idea is sassy wig software as a service is what you get.
12:39.16
Chris Morrell
It's such a silly name. Uh, at the pitch is basically a service that handles, uh, like landing pages, sign up all the marketing stuff.
12:41.78
Joey Tannenbaum
Stop right there.
12:54.02
Chris Morrell
And you just have basically a single API that you use within your application to determine is this person a paying customer and on what plan. And you don't have to do any of the like marketing site, any of the newsletter, any of the, you know, e-commerce, SaaS registration, any of that stuff.
13:19.20
Joey Tannenbaum
Okay. So you're dealing with the hosted API to do all the heavy lifting and then you implement the app specific stuff yourself is what you're saying.
13:26.58
Chris Morrell
Yeah, you just build the app. Yep.
13:28.40
Joey Tannenbaum
Okay. So it's almost like hosted auth plus, plus, plus, plus, kind of in a way.
13:29.52
Chris Morrell
And
13:33.28
Chris Morrell
Plus, plus, plus, plus, plus, yeah.
13:35.07
Joey Tannenbaum
Yeah. Yeah.
13:35.76
Chris Morrell
And I think of it as like not, it's not hosted auth because it would be, but it would be, I would think of it more as just like, I think a lot of times when I have like a side project, I mean, this, this is a side project that was, that specifically came out of the need of other side projects.
13:35.59
Joey Tannenbaum
Okay.
13:57.71
Joey Tannenbaum
Of course.
13:58.83
Chris Morrell
When I have a side project, the idea of actually like,
14:05.05
Chris Morrell
turning it into a viable thing that maybe people would pay for is such a bummer. I just want to build the thing, you know?
14:11.21
Joey Tannenbaum
Yeah, man.
14:11.32
Chris Morrell
And so, right?
14:11.96
Joey Tannenbaum
I agree. I agree.
14:13.02
Chris Morrell
I just thought, what if you could just literally like install
14:17.12
Chris Morrell
Like literally composer install something and, and there's this middleware and like you don't do anything else, you know, it's like now.
14:26.84
Joey Tannenbaum
He just built the app and everything else is there for you.
14:28.09
Chris Morrell
Yeah. The middleware like just checks like ah ah a token on the request and then sets a session, sets up the session, like. makes one API request out to sassy wig when someone like connects to see if that token is valid and then turns it into just a regular LFL session, right? Syncs their account automatically for you periodically.
14:53.32
Chris Morrell
register some sort of webhook automatically so that like when they make a change on their account, you immediately get that cash bust and get the new account info. I just think it'd be really cool to be able to just offload all of that.
15:08.78
Chris Morrell
Because for a lot of things, it really is. It's just one landing page with a signup and some comparison form at the bottom and like signup for a newsletter.
15:17.26
Joey Tannenbaum
Yeah, yeah.
15:17.94
Chris Morrell
There's not much to it.
15:19.88
Joey Tannenbaum
Right.
15:20.62
Chris Morrell
Um, and it would let you potentially take like an idea and like, see if anyone would pay for it. You know, like it's not going to be this, it's not going to be, you know, for it to be a viable business, you would have to be able to like kind of eject out of it.
15:28.09
Joey Tannenbaum
Yeah.
15:34.72
Chris Morrell
Once you proved out the theory, um, which I don't know exactly how that would work.
15:37.39
Joey Tannenbaum
Right. It's sort of for like kick starting something less so for like an actual product is what you're saying.
15:40.78
Chris Morrell
Yeah.
15:43.41
Joey Tannenbaum
So it's like,
15:43.53
Chris Morrell
Yeah.
15:44.59
Joey Tannenbaum
Yeah, I look I think there's Right, but then that already trips my like this is weird thing in my brain like this is short-term I'm gonna collect a bunch of people in here and do this stuff and then I'm gonna say Peace and like just drop this product that is sort of core to a lot of things about my business immediately You know saying like that's odd to me it's it's it's good for somebody i don't think it's good for me i think i'm uh i'm what i would call a hard pass on that but i do understand i would build that for myself internally in order to spin up like you were saying like all of these like that would be amazing to just have like a standard mechanism to just reach for every time i want to like
15:45.63
Chris Morrell
I don't see using it for a long time.
15:53.53
Chris Morrell
Yeah. Yeah. That's it. It's odd.
16:18.93
Chris Morrell
Yeah.
16:26.95
Joey Tannenbaum
Cause we all know that like, or I don't know, maybe I should speak for myself. When I build these things out, it's like you solve the core problem and then everything past that core problem I find to be immensely boring.
16:37.91
Joey Tannenbaum
Like I don't want to do a marketing site.
16:38.42
Chris Morrell
Yep.
16:40.26
Joey Tannenbaum
I don't want to deal with like off. I don't want to do it. Like none of that is interesting to me.
16:43.10
Chris Morrell
Yep.
16:44.54
Joey Tannenbaum
I just, I'm like, Oh, I did that thing.
16:45.01
Chris Morrell
Yeah.
16:45.98
Joey Tannenbaum
And that's why they just die by the wayside because I i don't want to do the rest of it. I don't want to do the last 10% that is launching the thing, you know?
16:53.85
Chris Morrell
Yeah. And that's why it's like, cause obviously cashier and spark and like breeze and all these things get you a lot of the way there theoretically, but in practice it's like, I don't.
17:08.95
Chris Morrell
that it still is a barrier. It undeniably is a barrier, right? There's something there.
17:13.26
Joey Tannenbaum
Yeah.
17:14.56
Chris Morrell
And, and yeah, it's just like, uh, okay.
17:18.33
Joey Tannenbaum
Unless we start selling starter kits for Laravel Sat, I'm just kidding, I would never do that.
17:25.06
Chris Morrell
I'm going to be honest. I hate starter kits just as in general.
17:27.42
Joey Tannenbaum
So do I, I mean, it's not, yeah.
17:29.68
Chris Morrell
What's, what's your take starter kits?
17:30.02
Joey Tannenbaum
Well, well I think the vast majority of starter kits are opinionated to the person that started them.
17:36.19
Chris Morrell
Yep.
17:36.97
Joey Tannenbaum
So it's like very, their world, which is fine and merited, but I don't, 99% of the time, not what I want. And B, they're not well-coded.
17:44.33
Chris Morrell
Yep.
17:46.51
Joey Tannenbaum
It's not a great kit. And they're not really customizable in a way that's reasonable. So I kind of end up with this thing that's somebody else's vision that I have to adhere
17:53.39
Chris Morrell
Yep.
17:57.79
Joey Tannenbaum
I don't know. I'd rather... I've rolled my own starter kits. I mean, Bellows that I built was my personal starter kit that I could just wire up depending on the project that I needed.
18:01.17
Chris Morrell
Mm hmm.
18:08.49
Joey Tannenbaum
But I, and I tried to make it flexible for everybody, but I was, but it's not, it's more of an orchestration tool, less of like a starter kit. It's like, what do I want my standard project to look like?
18:16.75
Chris Morrell
Mm hmm.
18:19.77
Joey Tannenbaum
These are the packages, these are the files that, you know, that is more appealing to me than plopping a bajillion files, half of which I probably don't actually need in my project and then deciding what to do from there.
18:22.39
Chris Morrell
Yeah.
18:29.84
Chris Morrell
Yeah.
18:31.70
Joey Tannenbaum
I find that very unappealing. I would never personally grab a starter kit.
18:37.24
Chris Morrell
Yeah, I feel like that's such a big thing in the JavaScript world in particular. And it was, I don't know, just such a turn off to me when I was doing more JavaScript was just like, it felt like that was the expected sort of like path is just like, okay, you're just going to pick some random person's like Git repo and clone it.
18:59.67
Chris Morrell
And now you're just like kind of bought in to the decisions they've made up until that point.
19:04.38
Joey Tannenbaum
Yeah. Yeah.
19:05.98
Chris Morrell
Right.
19:06.13
Joey Tannenbaum
Yeah.
19:06.79
Chris Morrell
Like, cause you're not, you know, at a certain point you're not going to like get improvements to their starter kit. Right. So you don't get any of the advantages of like someone else's figured things out and they're going to keep figuring things out.
19:13.44
Joey Tannenbaum
No.
19:16.76
Joey Tannenbaum
Great.
19:19.34
Chris Morrell
Um, but you have all the downsides of now I'm beholden to some, someone else's decisions, you know?
19:19.66
Joey Tannenbaum
Great.
19:25.93
Joey Tannenbaum
and you're ultimately the one maintaining it. You have to then maintain this app that you might not even understand.
19:28.07
Chris Morrell
Yeah.
19:32.45
Joey Tannenbaum
My definition of starter kit for me is Jetstream is a great starter
19:32.03
Chris Morrell
Yeah.
19:36.95
Joey Tannenbaum
It gives you the off, it gives you teams, it gives you a pretty core set of things that are reasonably customizable out of the box, and then I can start making decisions from
19:47.43
Joey Tannenbaum
That's as much of a starter kit as I almost ever want. I wanna pull things in,
19:50.40
Chris Morrell
Yeah.
19:53.01
Joey Tannenbaum
Yeah, I don't know. So our kids are so personal. That's what it is.
19:55.94
Joey Tannenbaum
It's like they're so personalized, the person who decided to put them out there and people have bad opinions. Like it's not, you know, it's like the people, they don't always, they're not always the people that should be making those decisions.
20:08.29
Joey Tannenbaum
I should say.
20:09.34
Chris Morrell
Even if it's not, I mean, you know, I was just, someone just asked me, no, someone
20:12.28
Joey Tannenbaum
That was very negative. I don't know why I just decided to just like dunk on that so hard, but I don't know. It just doesn't look appealing. Yeah.
20:20.82
Chris Morrell
was asking on the, uh, the, the Laricon, uh, telegram chat, like about, um, package templates, you know, sort of a starter kit for package essentially.
20:32.72
Chris Morrell
Right.
20:32.98
Joey Tannenbaum
Yeah, yeah.
20:33.67
Chris Morrell
And someone asked me about mine and I was like, you are welcome to use it, but like just know that I didn't build this for you, right? Like this package template is there so that I can quickly spin up packages for myself.
20:42.27
Joey Tannenbaum
Right, right.
20:50.24
Chris Morrell
And like I built it in a way that's pretty generalized. And I think there's some very cool things about how it works. Like I, I really, it has like a very cool, um, GitHub action that runs the first, like when you clone it and essentially like based on your organization and repository name, like renames all of the like generic stuff into like, you know, proper composer or namespace and stuff.
21:14.03
Joey Tannenbaum
Super slick.
21:16.84
Chris Morrell
So like, there's some advantages to using it, but like, there's a lot of stuff in there that's just like, I want this specific PHPCS fixer config in all my projects. So I'm gonna like put it there.
21:29.16
Chris Morrell
It's decidedly not right for most other people, probably.
21:32.83
Joey Tannenbaum
You're like, I'm not accepting PRs on this.
21:35.13
Chris Morrell
Just to be clear, yeah.
21:34.35
Joey Tannenbaum
Just a heads up. Like I will not be changing this. Yeah.
21:37.57
Chris Morrell
You're not coming in here and making me use spaces. I'm using tabs forever.
21:44.51
Joey Tannenbaum
And I, and that's great.
21:45.59
Joey Tannenbaum
And I respect that you figured out what you wanted, you figure out what your workflow look like, and you build something that adhered to that. And now you're moving at the speed of light. I think that's great.
21:54.96
Chris Morrell
All right, Joe, so should I should I just let sassy wig die? It sounds like maybe I should just I've held on to it for a number of years. I don't know why.
22:03.36
Joey Tannenbaum
You've wasted, wasted, i what, $20 a year?
22:03.28
Chris Morrell
Oh, oh. Ten, tens of dollars.
22:06.07
Joey Tannenbaum
I don't know how much, tens of dollars? I think that one's dying on the vine. I don't think that one's coming to light.
22:10.54
Chris Morrell
Oh, no.
22:12.34
Joey Tannenbaum
Sorry, dude.
22:13.54
Chris Morrell
All right. All right. That's fine. I have 100 more. Don't worry.
22:19.05
Joey Tannenbaum
I mean, it fully sounds like a fun wig shop online, like a fun wig e-commerce shop, like hair wig.
22:24.64
Chris Morrell
Uh-huh.
22:25.80
Joey Tannenbaum
That's what it sounds like.
22:27.11
Chris Morrell
Yeah.
22:27.33
Joey Tannenbaum
So there's your first barrier to entry.
22:30.68
Chris Morrell
Or you lean into it and that's the logo is just like a super sassy wig.
22:34.53
Joey Tannenbaum
It has to be the logo if you're gonna do this. I think legally it has to be. It doesn't make sense any other way.
22:42.20
Chris Morrell
All right. So what's a, what's a side project? What's, do you have any side projects that you've been working on that aren't, uh, terminal, terminal nonsense?
22:51.55
Joey Tannenbaum
Yeah, I, yes, a bajillion. I have a side project that actually got shut down this year, which was been running for a long time and making tens of dollars a month for years and years and years.
23:04.31
Joey Tannenbaum
But had an actor website builder for the longest time.
23:06.42
Chris Morrell
Hmm.
23:10.00
Joey Tannenbaum
Actors would come to me and say, like, can you build me a website? And I'd be like, that's really silly.
23:13.08
Chris Morrell
Yeah.
23:14.93
Joey Tannenbaum
I don't want to, like, no, I don't want to build you a website. Cause it's like, you need the same things. You can do those same things anywhere. But they found the existing solutions too confusing.
23:22.35
Chris Morrell
Yep.
23:24.83
Joey Tannenbaum
That was the constant refrain. and So I built a CMS that was very specific to what they needed.
23:30.07
Joey Tannenbaum
you know, got, you know, I don't know, a couple dozen people on there over the years. It's not. It's like nothing. But after a while, it just, you know, the maintenance of at all, which was barely happening, it was not worth it. And I decided to to drop it. So that was that was one my personal white whale, which I'm not building mostly because there is a large there is a fairly large buried entry, which is basically I have this thing. It's a domain I've held on to for a very long time. It's tidy inbox. OK.
23:58.53
Chris Morrell
Mmm.
24:00.08
Joey Tannenbaum
So yeah, this is a personal problem and I don't know how universal a problem it is, but it's the way I like to do things where I love Gmail filters, but I want to run Gmail filters as like a cron job and I want to be able to like run specific searches that
24:00.43
Chris Morrell
It's a good one.
24:10.50
Chris Morrell
Mm-hmm. Okay.
24:20.36
Joey Tannenbaum
allow me to then take actions on those searches on the schedule that I determined. So for example, this is a USPS shipping notification email.
24:30.35
Joey Tannenbaum
I don't need that for more than probably five days. So if I see one in my inbox that's over five days old, you can delete it.
24:39.80
Joey Tannenbaum
The one that I use quite commonly is if I star messages and they're in my inbox, I want you to mark them as unread again at the beginning of every day, so they just pop back to my attention even more.
24:51.62
Joey Tannenbaum
So there's these little workflows that, and so at first, as you should, I built a Google Sheet and I had all these rules in it, and then I wrote a Google Script that embedded in the Sheet that did this for me.
24:51.58
Chris Morrell
Oh, interesting. I like that.
25:06.65
Joey Tannenbaum
And it it worked great, and it did the job.
25:06.66
Chris Morrell
Interesting.
25:10.39
Joey Tannenbaum
But I was like, I would love to generalize this into something anybody could sign up for, to define your own rules, connect it to your Google, and enroll.
25:16.44
Chris Morrell
Oh my God.
25:18.70
Joey Tannenbaum
Connected to your Google is the tough bit.
25:21.62
Chris Morrell
Yeah.
25:21.96
Joey Tannenbaum
That's the buried entries. I think that process is, I've dealt with the Apple, Google through Play Store and App Store by building apps, and that is,
25:33.59
Joey Tannenbaum
unfun, I would say, I mean, it's like really, it's really unfun. And I hear that the, the Google app approval process for like integrations into stuff like Gmail is a little stringent. And like, I don't, I don't really know what that looks like.
25:45.93
Joey Tannenbaum
And I don't know what the, you know, it's like a lot of work. This is like a not casual, you know, project. So I, I don't even know what the interest is, but I know I would use it all the time and I would be very happy with it, but, uh,
25:53.19
Chris Morrell
right.
25:59.30
Joey Tannenbaum
Yeah, that's been the white whale that I returned to. rewritten it probably four times over the years. I came up with my own sort of like Boolean Boolean search structured thing that that adheres to the Google Gmail search, advanced search
26:06.74
Chris Morrell
Yeah, I mean.
26:15.44
Joey Tannenbaum
I've built the Boolean interface, but where it's at a condition, nest a condition.
26:19.45
Chris Morrell
Yeah.
26:20.24
Joey Tannenbaum
I built that 100 times over at this point.
26:23.10
Chris Morrell
Oh my God, that's my favorite.
26:24.36
Joey Tannenbaum
Yeah, is it your favorite? It's kind of fun. There is something fun and sort of recursive about that that is that enjoyable.
26:31.81
Chris Morrell
Well, it's just, I mean, it tickles, it tickles all the right things because it's like, I am building a thing that can do anything. Right.
26:39.97
Joey Tannenbaum
Yeah, yeah, it's the most flexible thing.
26:40.67
Chris Morrell
Or I'm, I'm trying to get as close to a like universal interface as possible. Right.
26:48.66
Joey Tannenbaum
Yeah, yeah.
26:49.35
Chris Morrell
Like that is what like a rule builder essentially is. It's just like. Like how can I make this as it, as like flexible as possible?
26:59.72
Chris Morrell
Like with, yeah, all the nesting and the ands versus the ors and the like, you know, different, um, comparison operations and like all that stuff. Yeah.
27:10.31
Joey Tannenbaum
And also, when you're searching on specific fields, you offer the correct field type for those fields, which is also very satisfying for some reason.
27:10.38
Chris Morrell
It's, it's a fun space to be in.
27:16.93
Chris Morrell
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
27:25.13
Joey Tannenbaum
It's like a dropdown of your labels, because you're comparing against labels. So me just offer you the labels so you don't have to type them.
27:30.73
Chris Morrell
Yep.
27:31.08
Joey Tannenbaum
It's just silly things like that that are so simple. like bringing like a tiny amount of joy to my heart. Like when I implement them, it just feels like the right kind of magic or convenience, you know, there's something lovely there.
27:43.44
Chris Morrell
I wouldn't say they're simple, but they are very satisfying.
27:46.40
Joey Tannenbaum
Well, when you offer somebody something that they're expecting and they're not even thinking about it to expect it, like they're just like, this is in in that and simple from the user's perspective complex from behind the scenes.
27:46.96
Chris Morrell
Yes.
27:53.80
Chris Morrell
Yeah. Okay. Simple in that way. Yes. Yes. Yeah. Yeah.
27:59.40
Joey Tannenbaum
Yeah.
27:59.49
Chris Morrell
Yeah.
28:00.07
Joey Tannenbaum
Yeah.
28:00.33
Chris Morrell
Yeah. I think you're right. I think, I think that's another thing about the rule builder is just like, uh, it is a UI that most people kind of know what to expect.
28:13.50
Chris Morrell
And, uh, if you get it right, they will find it wholly unremarkable. Right.
28:21.37
Joey Tannenbaum
Exactly.
28:21.53
Chris Morrell
But.
28:22.41
Joey Tannenbaum
Yes.
28:23.22
Chris Morrell
The work to get there is so all encompassing. Yeah. Yeah.
28:29.07
Joey Tannenbaum
But so satisfying to get right.
28:29.21
Chris Morrell
It's an interesting. Mm-hmm.
28:31.48
Joey Tannenbaum
Like you, when you're interacting with it and it gets to that point, which I've now done like probably four times, I'm like, yeah, there it is.
28:32.34
Chris Morrell
Yeah.
28:35.02
Chris Morrell
Yep.
28:39.81
Joey Tannenbaum
That feels good. That feels right.
28:41.77
Chris Morrell
So if you're working within the constraints of the Gmail filtering stuff, why not just use Gmail filters?
28:41.92
Joey Tannenbaum
Yeah.
28:47.52
Joey Tannenbaum
Mm-hmm.
28:50.80
Joey Tannenbaum
Clarify what do you mean?
28:52.12
Chris Morrell
Well, if you're, if you're like logic builder is kind of working within the constraints of the existing Gmail filtering, um, you know, uh, Boolean logic, uh, couldn't she just put that, like write that filter in Gmail and just run it in Gmail?
29:08.09
Joey Tannenbaum
Yeah.
29:17.05
Joey Tannenbaum
Yes. Yes. You're saying don't build the builder, like search in Gmail for what you want and then plop that search into a a the app.
29:27.01
Chris Morrell
Oh, no, no, no. I'm just saying like, if your apps rule building logic is kind of like a subset or equivalent to the Gmail rule logic, right?
29:39.44
Joey Tannenbaum
Mm-hmm.
29:40.29
Chris Morrell
Is that what you're saying? Maybe I'm misunderstanding what you're saying.
29:44.40
Joey Tannenbaum
So, i okay, let me say it back to you. What you're saying is there is, when you like search in Gmail, there's that advanced dropdown with like all the stuff you can do. Is that what you're referring to?
29:53.96
Chris Morrell
Well, there's that advanced thing and there's like, you know, keywords and, and rules around parentheses and pluses and all that stuff like, um, and like, no, no.
30:01.55
Joey Tannenbaum
Why, right, right. So, right. So you're saying, should I utilize something that they're doing in my?
30:09.91
Chris Morrell
Um, I guess like, uh, I think I'm saying like Gmail's filters, like already do all that stuff.
30:10.23
Joey Tannenbaum
Oh, okay.
30:18.57
Chris Morrell
Right. So if I wanted to say, uh, but I guess. Yeah, like can't I go into Gmail and set a filter that's like if the message is starred and is older than, and is read and is older than one day, mark it as unread?
30:38.10
Chris Morrell
No, you can't do that.
30:38.85
Joey Tannenbaum
No, filters only work on incoming messages the message comes in.
30:44.92
Chris Morrell
Oh, okay.
30:43.82
Joey Tannenbaum
So I want to run this once a day, once every five minutes, twice a day, every day at
30:46.32
Chris Morrell
Okay.
30:50.31
Joey Tannenbaum
want to run it like a cron job, but I want to use it in the style of filters.
30:52.72
Chris Morrell
Interesting.
30:55.13
Joey Tannenbaum
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
30:55.61
Chris Morrell
Right. Okay. Okay. That makes, it it yeah. I mean, God, that would be awesome.
31:00.41
Joey Tannenbaum
OK, I'm building it.
31:00.93
Chris Morrell
Uh, build it. Yeah. I, have you ever used the, um, the app maelstrom?
31:08.30
Joey Tannenbaum
No, that sounds so familiar though, what is that?
31:10.93
Chris Morrell
It's, it's pretty cool. It connects to your ah ah inbox. I think you can, I think it was originally a Gmail only I think, but I think now you can do like office 365 and all of them, but it essentially just like has a ton of different heuristics where it's like, okay, you have 700 emails from like this mailing list. Like, do you want me to just archive those? Or like you have 10,000 emails from this one sender that are still in your inbox. Like, do you want to just archive those? Like it's just,
31:40.55
Chris Morrell
It just has a bunch of different ways to just look at the aggregate status of your inbox and just offers to sort archive big bulk chunks of it.
31:51.37
Joey Tannenbaum
It's smart.
31:51.63
Chris Morrell
It's not the same thing, but it's ah ah every once in a while.
31:55.38
Joey Tannenbaum
It's sort of tangential.
31:55.14
Chris Morrell
Back when I...
31:56.30
Joey Tannenbaum
Yeah. I get the connection though. It's the same.
31:58.57
Chris Morrell
Yeah.
31:59.25
Joey Tannenbaum
Yeah. Yeah.
32:00.14
Chris Morrell
I used to try to get my inbox tamed and now I just turn off the number on everything and just accept that it is whatever it is.
32:00.25
Joey Tannenbaum
Things you may not see at a glance.
32:10.90
Joey Tannenbaum
I mean, same. But this is, this is part of the reason i would like to have all miss things. I would like to have things resurface that are, you know, inherently important or that, you know, I want to clear the noise, but it's so noisy.
32:20.52
Chris Morrell
Yeah, yeah.
32:23.05
Joey Tannenbaum
So noisy.
32:23.46
Chris Morrell
Yeah. There are some interesting apps that have been trying to do this. And I, I tried, um, I want to say it's called air mail or something like that. One of, one of them that like, and it's, it's neat, but I ended up finding myself, like, it just was a little, it was just clunky enough that I ended up kind of, I don't know.
32:32.60
Joey Tannenbaum
Yeah. I did air mail for a long time. Yeah.
32:48.56
Chris Morrell
Um, just not enjoying using the app. The functionality was very cool.
32:57.75
Joey Tannenbaum
Yeah.
32:57.93
Chris Morrell
It was just like, okay, you're giving me Gmail shortcuts, but they're not quite right.
33:01.29
Joey Tannenbaum
Great.
33:03.26
Chris Morrell
And every time I hit Y to archive and you haven't implemented that or like, you know, J and K don't always go up and down, but sometimes I do, you know, like little things like that just started nag me.
33:12.46
Joey Tannenbaum
Yeah.
33:16.30
Chris Morrell
And, uh, yeah, I, I,
33:18.09
Joey Tannenbaum
Every, every desktop client I've ever used has just enough friction that makes me go, well, I'd rather just do this straight in Gmail.
33:22.10
Chris Morrell
Yep.
33:25.77
Joey Tannenbaum
And then they also, you know, create these like wackadoo folders in my Gmail that I don't, it's like, you know, air, L-mail in brackets slash snooze, because it's their snooze mechanism, not like the, you know, I, that stuff is, that's not for me.
33:33.42
Chris Morrell
Yeah. Yeah.
33:38.59
Joey Tannenbaum
I, I want the more quote unquote native experience of Gmail if I'm going to do it.
33:42.16
Chris Morrell
Mm hmm.
33:45.19
Joey Tannenbaum
Yeah, that's the white whale. That's the one I'll probably always come back to and tinker with every once in a while. I think about it all the time.
33:53.73
Chris Morrell
That's fun. I like it. Yeah.
33:55.45
Joey Tannenbaum
Yeah, yeah.
33:56.73
Chris Morrell
Um, what, do you think that you will, have you had any thoughts about, like, are you going to try to aim for, like, do you want to do 30 minute episodes or do you want to just like talk until you you're done?
33:56.99
Joey Tannenbaum
We'll see.
34:11.92
Chris Morrell
Like
34:13.30
Joey Tannenbaum
I think it's probably about a 30-minute episode. I wanted to be pretty get in and get out, but valuable in between. like I want to know, what were the hard parts? Why did you give up? Why did it succeed? most importantly, what did you take away? Was it that you learned to go from this? Or was it that, oh, this API is a monster to work with, and these are the reasons why? are I just want to know. what came out of it.
34:39.44
Joey Tannenbaum
That to me is almost more interesting than the side project is like, what did you, what little nugget did you take away that you'll carry to the next thing?
34:39.50
Chris Morrell
Yeah.
34:47.65
Joey Tannenbaum
That's fascinating to me.
34:47.89
Chris Morrell
Right. Right.
34:49.41
Joey Tannenbaum
Yeah.
34:49.87
Chris Morrell
Yeah. I've been, I can't remember if I've talked about this on the podcast, but like I've been thinking about this idea of like, have this very visual idea, which is obviously great for a podcast, and I haven't quite figured out how to represent it.
35:05.86
Chris Morrell
In my mind, it works visually, but I haven't actually been able to make the graphic yet, but I have this idea of
35:12.08
Joey Tannenbaum
Okay.
35:14.77
Chris Morrell
If you're looking at something in 2D space and it's just a line and you see a start and a finish, and your experience is going from start towards finish and then stopping and going back and forth and never making it to that dot that is finish.
35:21.04
Joey Tannenbaum
Okay.
35:25.12
Joey Tannenbaum
Okay.
35:33.67
Chris Morrell
That can be ah our experience as developers. is You start to feel bad about starting a bunch of things and never finishing them.
35:43.13
Chris Morrell
The idea that I want to kind of convey is
35:50.30
Chris Morrell
I'm trying to think of that as a spiral and not a line. That if you expand that experience into 3D space, as it were, that you're actually spiraling upwards towards more capacity and more proficiency and more knowledge.
36:09.04
Joey Tannenbaum
Yeah.
36:09.27
Chris Morrell
And like, it's only if you kind of look at it in just like a single, like on a single plane that it looks like, you know, sort of a waste of time.
36:21.96
Joey Tannenbaum
Yeah, the way, I haven't envisioned it that way, but when you say that, and if you kept it 2D, in my mind, that line just keeps getting longer and longer because you just are always, you always know more, right? So like that that same project that you did that you never finished 10 years ago and took you four days,
36:44.35
Joey Tannenbaum
would probably take you an hour nowadays because you're just so much further in that journey. But like that finish line, that goalpost just keeps moving because you just keep learning more.
36:54.23
Joey Tannenbaum
So you'll never, there's no finish. When are you finished with software development? There's infinity things to learn, right? um And especially as it progresses, I can't even see the line.
37:04.72
Joey Tannenbaum
I don't even know where the finish line is. It's not visible from where I'm sitting. And I think that's, That's, I mean, for me, that's why I love doing this. That's why I think a lot of people love doing this is because you can just keep growing and you can just keep figuring this out and there's always more problems to solve.
37:21.99
Joey Tannenbaum
And I, the spiral is interesting. I like that. Although I thought you meant it first spiraling down and I was like, oh God, I hope not. Like that's, that's depressing. But ah ah yeah, yeah.
37:33.14
Joey Tannenbaum
I guess the spiral, like you're growing up and it just keeps, it keeps going. Yeah.
37:38.53
Chris Morrell
Yeah.
37:40.37
Joey Tannenbaum
That's the whole deal. If I had to do a job where I had it figured out and I was just doing that job every day, I don't know what my life would look like.
37:41.97
Chris Morrell
Yeah.
37:48.67
Joey Tannenbaum
That would be be a tough eight a tough eight hours a day.
37:51.01
Chris Morrell
No, for sure.
37:52.37
Joey Tannenbaum
Yeah.
37:52.58
Chris Morrell
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we were talking about this a little bit on, on Twitter, but like, uh, it's, it's so relevant. Like, ah ah you know, I think the, um, the rule builder that, right.
38:05.38
Chris Morrell
Like I'm sure that the fourth rule builder that you built was significantly better than the first. Right.
38:10.55
Joey Tannenbaum
Oh my gosh.
38:10.82
Chris Morrell
And like, even if you've scrapped it four times, like there may come a time when you build the rule builder, that is like exactly what you need for the project that you're working on.
38:11.07
Joey Tannenbaum
Yeah.
38:21.98
Joey Tannenbaum
Yeah.
38:23.27
Chris Morrell
and you'll have a really solid sense of how to build it and you'll have all those things that you didn't like so much about the last implementation that you can fix this time around.
38:24.64
Joey Tannenbaum
Yeah.
38:36.43
Chris Morrell
Yeah, I think about that a lot. the The thing that I had said on Twitter that I think about is just this idea that this approach to building software where if you can't finish something within a the rule is that you throw the entire thing away and start again the next day with slightly better scope, slightly smaller
38:51.90
Joey Tannenbaum
Yeah.
38:57.100
Chris Morrell
a slightly better idea how to approach it. And like you just keep on doing that until you can get it done in the day. Um, and that idea has always really been in, I've never done it, but it's, it's always been really interesting to me. And I can, I can see inherently why someone would propose that approach because a hundred percent I have things that like I've taken stabs at. Yeah.
39:25.87
Chris Morrell
a dozen times over a dozen years, and each time maybe what I come to doesn't feel quite right, but I i know I'm heading in good direction for it. Or or like in the case of a project that I finished a couple of years ago, I i i remember just having this experience of it being something that I had been thinking about for probably seven, eight, nine years like sort of just mulling it over and maybe taking like an hour and a half to five hours stabs that just like sort of fiddling with it and then just like just walking away from it knowing like no this I'm not there yet and then like yeah one week I just sat down and it like I had that experience of it just like
40:00.07
Joey Tannenbaum
Yeah.
40:10.69
Joey Tannenbaum
I'll never look at that again. That's done to me. Yeah. Yeah.
40:18.89
Chris Morrell
flowing out of me, you know what I mean?
40:19.80
Joey Tannenbaum
Oh, it's a mess.
40:20.35
Chris Morrell
And it was just like, it came out, it was perfect, ah you know, quote unquote perfect.
40:21.02
Joey Tannenbaum
It's a mess. Yeah. Yeah.
40:24.68
Chris Morrell
But, you know, it just came out and it was exactly what I wanted. And I, you know, I know that that experience, like, it wasn't like it just came to me in a dream, right?
40:35.34
Joey Tannenbaum
Great.
40:35.86
Chris Morrell
I had been working on it for almost a decade thinking about it.
40:36.30
Joey Tannenbaum
Right.
40:40.01
Joey Tannenbaum
Yeah.
40:41.28
Chris Morrell
Thinking about, yeah, yeah.
40:41.00
Joey Tannenbaum
It had been cooking for a very long time and now it came out fully formed. Yeah.
40:45.45
Chris Morrell
Yeah. And side projects, I think are a good way to like sort of enact that experience. Like if you, cause you might not be able to do that, like on your, your main gig, either, you know, the place you work doesn't sort of make space for it or the project that you work on doesn't, you know, kind of support it or whatever it is.
40:56.20
Joey Tannenbaum
Right.
41:04.66
Chris Morrell
So a lot of times you have to kind of take it into your own hands.
41:09.55
Joey Tannenbaum
I do that sort of cooking a lot. like won't even let myself code sometimes. like I do this a lot on runs. I code in my head on runs all the time.
41:19.54
Chris Morrell
Mm.
41:19.81
Joey Tannenbaum
I'm literally like, it's this, then it's this. And I'm envisioning... like pseudo-ish code but like actual code at some level and like you know looking at the branches and like trying to figure out like okay if i did this then there's this then there's this and you kind of map it out and then you just let that i just let that sit for like a day and then i redo it on the next run and inevitably on the next run i go oh but that doesn't work if i do this so i need to like blah blah blah and i'll switch that out and i i do this maybe four or five runs in a row and
41:26.99
Chris Morrell
Okay.
41:35.28
Chris Morrell
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
41:49.08
Joey Tannenbaum
It's at the point where it's like mentally working, then I go, okay, well, now let's write some code. And that code like cruises out of me. That is like, i I don't know why I like working that way.
42:00.53
Joey Tannenbaum
And I like thinking it through not looking at a screen a lot. Like I really, I really enjoy that.
42:05.64
Chris Morrell
Hmm.
42:09.38
Joey Tannenbaum
There's something very satisfying to me about that.
42:11.96
Chris Morrell
Huh.
42:12.51
Joey Tannenbaum
I, you're, you're looking at me like I am a lunatic, lunatic, but, but I, it's.
42:16.32
Chris Morrell
No, no, no, not at all. ah That is really fascinating to me.
42:20.83
Joey Tannenbaum
Yeah, it's the way, I don't know.
42:22.27
Joey Tannenbaum
It's the way I like to think about hard problems is actually most of the time not looking at the screen. Yeah.
42:29.51
Chris Morrell
Okay, so I'm curious. ah This is gonna be an exercise for you and for the listener. So, okay, close your eyes.
42:35.36
Joey Tannenbaum
Oh no. Okay.
42:37.97
Chris Morrell
Picture a table and picture a ball on the table and then a hand reaching out and pushing the ball off the table. Okay? All right, now open your eyes and ah tell me what color was the ball.
42:47.70
Joey Tannenbaum
OK. Here's red.
42:53.65
Chris Morrell
Okay. Yep, so there are sort of two distinct experiences of that exercise. Either you know certainty what color the ball was, or you have no idea what color the ball was.
43:08.86
Chris Morrell
And i I am in the other camp.
43:07.78
Joey Tannenbaum
Oh.
43:12.21
Chris Morrell
When I quote unquote visualize something, it's more thinking about the idea of the thing, I don't see, I don't really see pictures in my brain.
43:26.42
Chris Morrell
So the idea of like trying to actually imagine real code is very foreign to me.
43:25.56
Joey Tannenbaum
Fascinating. Fascinating.
43:35.86
Chris Morrell
That's, that's what that look was.
43:38.41
Joey Tannenbaum
Wow, that's fascinating.
43:40.71
Chris Morrell
it
43:40.100
Joey Tannenbaum
Do you have wait so but but you have abstract pictures or not no pictures. There's no visualization at all.
43:48.71
Chris Morrell
It's not, yeah, it's just not really, it's, it's not, um, it's just a thought. I don't know how to describe it because it's just a thought. It's just that it's, I can think about a table with a ball on it, but like, if you ask me what color the ball is it, the ball is just the idea of a ball on a table being pushed off by a hand. Like it's just the idea of the thing.
44:11.14
Joey Tannenbaum
I, yeah, that's so fascinating. I actually used to, I think, I don't know, is it synesthesia when you associate colors with, with things? Is that what it is?
44:20.06
Chris Morrell
Oh, maybe I'm not sure.
44:22.19
Chris Morrell
Yeah.
44:22.76
Joey Tannenbaum
Okay, there's a word for it. I think that's the word. But I've done that for a very long time where used to do tap. I used to teach tap dance in high school.
44:32.23
Chris Morrell
Yeah.
44:33.68
Joey Tannenbaum
And so i I was tapping a lot and I would associate subconsciously colors with the different things we were doing. And so as we were doing a routine or something, it's like a light show in my head.
44:45.36
Joey Tannenbaum
But I'm not thinking like, this is red, this is yellow, this is green.
44:45.62
Chris Morrell
Interesting.
44:48.68
Joey Tannenbaum
It's just sort of like how my brain was firing while the action was going on.
44:52.86
Chris Morrell
Right.
44:53.10
Chris Morrell
This, like, this is a red thing, right?
44:55.50
Joey Tannenbaum
Yeah. And I didn't think about it until somebody talked about that and I was like, Oh, I do that.
44:56.06
Chris Morrell
That's, that was what it is. Interesting.
45:00.76
Joey Tannenbaum
I didn't even like, so I wonder if it's associated with that too, because like specifically it was like a red ball on the table and then this like semi giant hand pushing the ball towards me off the table.
45:13.72
Joey Tannenbaum
But it's, that's fascinating. I am. Do you, you hear a voice in your head?
45:17.02
Joey Tannenbaum
Do you talk to yourself?
45:18.19
Chris Morrell
I this is the other one that is kind of a line between people.
45:19.97
Joey Tannenbaum
Oh,
45:21.79
Chris Morrell
I don't have an internal monologue. Do you?
45:26.44
Joey Tannenbaum
Yeah.
45:27.44
Chris Morrell
Yeah.
45:27.80
Joey Tannenbaum
Oh yeah. I think it's the only reason why I can do this weird coding in my head.
45:31.35
Joey Tannenbaum
Cause I'm like talking to myself in my head.
45:33.98
Chris Morrell
Yeah, I have no idea what that experience is
45:36.48
Chris Morrell
I have this conversation with people from time to time because it's like, You're so distinctly on one or the other side of both of those things that like the idea of another person having a different experience is so foreign. Yeah.
45:50.51
Joey Tannenbaum
Yeah, I don't know what, I don't know. Yeah, it's like, I can't even comprehend what, okay. So when you think about, like, if okay, when you're having like a memory, when you're remembering something, is there a visualization associated with that? Or it's a little, it's still pretty abstract or it's...
46:11.37
Chris Morrell
Uh, yeah, I'm, I'm just, it's, it's really, it's, it's very conceptual. It's like, uh, I can think, I can remember, I can remember a thing.
46:24.21
Chris Morrell
Um, but it's, it's like, it's a memory. It's a different thing. I don't, I don't know. It's a, it's just a different, different experience of it.
46:30.57
Joey Tannenbaum
Man, I'd love to tap into that beautiful brain of yours and see what's going on.
46:31.66
Chris Morrell
Yeah.
46:34.44
Joey Tannenbaum
I'm so, I'm so intrigued. That's awesome.
46:37.18
Chris Morrell
I know that I'm in the minority on both of those
46:37.31
Joey Tannenbaum
Wow.
46:41.03
Chris Morrell
I think most people have an internal monologue.
46:39.75
Joey Tannenbaum
Are you?
46:42.87
Chris Morrell
I believe that's true. And I think most people ah ah visualize like specifically. i I don't think that there's any specific like research in it, but I'm pretty sure that I read that that's majority.
46:52.78
Joey Tannenbaum
Yeah.
46:55.28
Chris Morrell
Yeah.
46:56.41
Joey Tannenbaum
fascinating fascinating uh
46:57.68
Chris Morrell
Yeah. But, uh, yeah. So when, when you were talking about running and picturing code, I'm just thinking, I was just sitting here thinking like, what would that even look like? I have no idea how you would, how you would do that.
47:12.62
Chris Morrell
Like from, yeah, you've got a little editor in your braid.
47:14.67
Joey Tannenbaum
it looks like my i guess it i guess like it looks like my editor it looks like code with like Yeah, I've got a little editor in my brain, I guess.
47:21.62
Chris Morrell
That's so funny.
47:23.37
Joey Tannenbaum
I guess I.
47:23.75
Chris Morrell
That's so funny.
47:25.24
Joey Tannenbaum
Yeah, I guess that's what it looks like. That's that's.
47:26.91
Chris Morrell
That's cool. I mean, it's, it's cool. I mean, I think it's funny because I actually think that, I think that people, I, I, this is me just like making this up. I have no authority to to say this, but I i i think, I think that people have are, have the same process, but just different experiences of it.
47:42.26
Joey Tannenbaum
Oh, yeah.
47:44.85
Chris Morrell
Because can think about code. can think about how I'm going to solve a problem.
47:49.35
Joey Tannenbaum
I hope so.
47:53.70
Chris Morrell
And I can be intentionally pondering like how I'm going to solve a specific problem, but it's just like my experience of it is much more in the abstract.
48:06.84
Chris Morrell
It's not specific code, it's just like the ideas of approaches, I guess, is how I would describe it, you know? Like I can imagine like, well, I could, you know, I could either take this approach here or that approach, but it's not like I'm picturing the code, it's just like I'm thinking,
48:14.06
Joey Tannenbaum
Yeah.
48:24.88
Chris Morrell
Like the difference between a match statement and like multiple if statements. Like I can, I know what those two things are, right? Those two ideas are. can't, like if I try, no, I actually can't picture them.
48:39.32
Chris Morrell
That's, that's a little bit disturbing. I feel like I, I want to say that if I try hard, if I try hard, I can, but I literally can't.
48:41.92
Joey Tannenbaum
You can't picture the word if.
48:50.06
Chris Morrell
That's actually, that's, this is the first time I'm realizing this Joe and it's a little freaking me out.
48:56.26
Chris Morrell
I can't picture the word if now.
48:57.13
Joey Tannenbaum
I don't know, because I'm on the other side of the table, I don't know. I can't imagine that experience. It is unfathomable to me.
49:06.64
Joey Tannenbaum
And it is almost like concerning. Like I'm like, is Chris okay? Like is there...
49:16.23
Chris Morrell
The funny thing is it's the same for me.
49:18.36
Joey Tannenbaum
I know, I know, but I know I'm right is the difference.
49:17.86
Chris Morrell
It's like, how do you, how does a person survive?
49:21.78
Joey Tannenbaum
You know what I mean?
49:22.04
Chris Morrell
How, how is it possible to go through life with a voice at your head?
49:22.38
Joey Tannenbaum
Like I...
49:26.10
Chris Morrell
I can't imagine that. Like that would be so distracting. I can't even begin to imagine what that's like.
49:32.25
Joey Tannenbaum
Well, I'm in control of the voice at some level. It's not like it's, you know, sometimes it's a little chatty, but I'm the one sort of thinking the thoughts.
49:42.22
Chris Morrell
Uh, I don't know.
49:44.84
Joey Tannenbaum
Okay, wow, we are different people as the moral of this story.
49:46.04
Chris Morrell
It's just really funny. All right. Well, this has been the, uh, the brain tangent. Yeah. Oh, how do we even, oh, it's yeah. Yeah. So picture jogging, picturing code.
49:57.17
Chris Morrell
That's so funny. Yeah.
49:59.76
Joey Tannenbaum
It's effective for me. I don't know.
50:01.53
Chris Morrell
Yeah, I mean, I think I definitely think that there's a lot to be said for like walking away from something and and like taking some time.
50:09.96
Joey Tannenbaum
Absolutely.
50:10.19
Chris Morrell
I find that like I while I will like actively think about things, I think that for me, it's I rely on my subconscious a lot more.
50:20.46
Chris Morrell
I'll like just let it go and walk away from it and like.
50:22.66
Joey Tannenbaum
Yeah, yeah.
50:24.95
Joey Tannenbaum
Sleeping is huge. Just let it just sleep on it.
50:26.19
Chris Morrell
Yeah, yeah.
50:27.09
Joey Tannenbaum
Like at some point it'll kind of pop in. Your brain will be working on that in the background and and it'll it'll come through. Yeah.
50:33.83
Chris Morrell
Yeah. Yeah.
50:34.62
Joey Tannenbaum
Yeah.
50:35.07
Chris Morrell
Just like jolts out.
50:37.24
Joey Tannenbaum
Yeah. And also, ah know, like we said earlier, just wiping this light clean, just starting fresh because you might be just too intertwined, right?
50:43.68
Chris Morrell
Yeah.
50:47.11
Joey Tannenbaum
Like it's just too, you've locked yourself into this one way of doing it, or you're kind of lost in the weeds a little bit and just clearing this light and going, okay, if I just started this over again with the knowledge I have now, even if it's right away,
51:00.51
Joey Tannenbaum
it's gonna be better and you're gonna end up in ah different place.
51:00.84
Chris Morrell
Yeah, for sure.
51:03.40
Joey Tannenbaum
And that always is effective for me.
51:05.65
Chris Morrell
I just had such an interesting experience of that. I was up against a problem with verbs. There's one feature that has been sitting around and I haven't quite landed on the way to solve it.
51:18.45
Chris Morrell
And there was just like this little thing that was bugging me. And all of a sudden I just, I just had this moment of like, Oh my God, this approach is just absolutely totally wrong. We need to like trash it. And it, and, and it was just really interesting to notice that like.
51:35.58
Chris Morrell
The reason why the approach was wrong was because it was adjacent to another problem where that approach was absolutely right. It just got caught up in, okay, we're doing it that way for the one thing, so we're going to do it that way for the other thing.
51:45.98
Joey Tannenbaum
Yeah, yeah.
51:54.16
Chris Morrell
In hindsight, it's like, oh my God, this is obviously not the right way to do this thing. and
51:59.00
Chris Morrell
The other approach is much simpler and solves almost all the problems that I was running into. Uh, but it, it's, it was just like really interesting to look back and see, uh, yeah, my brain just got stuck on one idea and just couldn't see, just couldn't see the obvious better solution.
52:09.17
Joey Tannenbaum
Yep. Yep.
52:18.31
Chris Morrell
Yeah.
52:18.48
Joey Tannenbaum
So often it's just valuable to say, well, what if this is completely wrong? Like assume that this is completely wrong.
52:22.51
Chris Morrell
Yep.
52:24.64
Joey Tannenbaum
Where do we go from?
52:24.83
Chris Morrell
Yep. Yeah.
52:25.32
Joey Tannenbaum
Like, how do we start over? Where do we go from here?
52:27.91
Joey Tannenbaum
That's a super effective question to ask when you're stuck.
52:31.57
Chris Morrell
Yeah. Yeah. Or even if you're not stuck, like I think, I think sometimes the risk is even worse when you like are just kind of like barreling down the like highway, you know, just not like, well, no, when, when you're like just doing it, you just have, you have a solution and you're just doing it and it's fine.
52:32.63
Joey Tannenbaum
Yeah.
52:43.34
Joey Tannenbaum
Yeah. This is doing it wrong the whole way.
52:55.51
Chris Morrell
Sometimes that is even worse than being stuck because you're just like,
52:58.70
Joey Tannenbaum
Yeah.
53:00.05
Chris Morrell
You're just, you're just doing it wrong and not thinking about it. You know, like if you stopped and let yourself be stuck for a minute, you'd come to the solution right away.
53:03.67
Joey Tannenbaum
Yep.
53:08.56
Chris Morrell
Uh, but you're not, you know?
53:08.59
Joey Tannenbaum
Totally. But if you keep muscling through, you'll never get there.
53:11.20
Chris Morrell
Yeah. Yeah.
53:12.20
Joey Tannenbaum
Yeah. Absolutely.
53:13.44
Chris Morrell
Yeah. That's funny. Oh, all right.
53:16.33
Joey Tannenbaum
Oh, man.
53:16.93
Chris Morrell
So when's, when's, uh, when's the first episode of side projects coming out? Come on. Like, uh, September 20th or
53:22.20
Joey Tannenbaum
I think I think I'm gonna... What are you talking about? i think...
53:28.49
Chris Morrell
This episode probably won't even be out by September 20th, Yeah.
53:33.44
Joey Tannenbaum
Um, I think I'm going to take a week and like try to iron out like what it looks like and what a loose structure looks like. I'm not going to overthink it a lot. I just want to have fun conversations. Um, and the fact that people are coming with things that they're enthusiastic about, I think will take care of itself a lot of the time.
53:48.65
Chris Morrell
Yeah, for sure.
53:49.57
Joey Tannenbaum
But, uh, yeah, so I'm going to give it a week model over, go on some runs, figure it out. And then, uh, yeah, I think of the week after that, I'm going to, I'm going to pick a couple of people and think you're going to be one of them if you're down for it.
54:01.52
Joey Tannenbaum
And we're going to, we're going to talk about some side projects.
54:02.12
Chris Morrell
For sure. Dude, I have so many side projects that like are, are like so interesting to me. And I would happily talk about for ages. You're going to, you literally are going to have to kick me off.
54:16.65
Joey Tannenbaum
Not a problem. Well, I'm bashful about that.
54:19.20
Chris Morrell
Do you, one thing this just popped in my head.
54:23.24
Chris Morrell
Like I always have a song stuck in my head. That is one thing. Do you.
54:27.61
Joey Tannenbaum
I have rhythms stuck in my head all the time. I'm always, always, always it's, it's like to, to, uh, my wife's dismay.
54:31.02
Chris Morrell
Interesting.
54:38.61
Joey Tannenbaum
I'm always drumming on something or like, you know, it's constant.
54:41.77
Chris Morrell
Yes.
54:42.35
Joey Tannenbaum
And she has to sometimes be like, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, can you, can you chill for a second? I'd be like, Oh yeah. Yeah. Sorry. I didn't realize that was happening. That's it's just always rhythms in my head.
54:49.30
Chris Morrell
Yep.
54:51.04
Joey Tannenbaum
Yeah.
54:51.12
Chris Morrell
Yeah.
54:51.28
Joey Tannenbaum
Yeah.
54:51.83
Chris Morrell
I get yelled at a lot for like sort of humming or singing without knowing that I'm doing it.
54:52.15
Joey Tannenbaum
Yeah.
54:56.59
Joey Tannenbaum
Yeah, yeah.
54:57.48
Chris Morrell
Yeah. Interesting. Well, there we go. One way that our brains are alike.
55:00.55
Joey Tannenbaum
There's there's there's the overlap.
55:02.55
Chris Morrell
Yeah.
55:02.68
Joey Tannenbaum
There's the Venn diagram, the center of that Venn diagram.
55:06.51
Chris Morrell
Well, this has been so much fun.
55:06.52
Joey Tannenbaum
Dude, this was a pleasure. Thank you for having me on.
55:09.13
Chris Morrell
Yeah, we'll, uh, we'll have to check in, in a little while and find out how, how things are going.
55:09.34
Joey Tannenbaum
Yeah, yeah.
55:15.49
Chris Morrell
Um, and, uh, yeah, I don't know anything.
55:15.56
Joey Tannenbaum
Sounds good.
55:23.02
Chris Morrell
I do the whole, I'm supposed to do the like, hole. Is there anything you want to plug or anything that, you that like all that stuff, you got anything for me?
55:31.09
Joey Tannenbaum
Yeah, I got it.
55:31.62
Chris Morrell
You're going to.
55:32.05
Joey Tannenbaum
I'm going to plug the podcast. I'm going to plug the the the new podcast.
55:35.32
Chris Morrell
Yeah. The new podcast that doesn't exist yet.
55:36.96
Joey Tannenbaum
I think it's going to be called Side Project. I think I like that. It's simple.
55:40.74
Chris Morrell
Are you, uh, you're, you're going to their kind of you, right?
55:41.28
Joey Tannenbaum
Side. Good.
55:45.40
Chris Morrell
Is that your next, so you'll go see Joe layer kind of you.
55:45.69
Joey Tannenbaum
Yes. Yes, Larry. ah day Good Good day.
55:48.59
Chris Morrell
Yeah.
55:51.07
Joey Tannenbaum
That didn't sound right coming out.
55:51.71
Chris Morrell
Good day.
55:52.53
Joey Tannenbaum
Good day. There we go.
55:55.05
Chris Morrell
Uh, nice.
55:55.25
Joey Tannenbaum
I'm looking forward. That'll be a good time. It'll be fun.
55:58.01
Chris Morrell
All right, man.
55:58.49
Joey Tannenbaum
Yeah.
55:59.65
Chris Morrell
Well, until next time.
56:01.62
Joey Tannenbaum
Sounds good. See you later, man.
56:03.12
Chris Morrell
So yeah.
