300 multiple choices

Welcome to Go Time. This is a very special episode. This is episode number 300. So today we’re doing something a little different from our usual content. We’re having a full panel episode with our co-hosts, with all of our hosts… And we’re talking about the past of Go Time, the current present, and our plans for the future. So joining me live is Jon Calhoun. How are you doing, Jon?

Good, Kris. How are you doing?

Doing well. It’s a cold day here in New York. But besides that, doing pretty good. Joining me as well is Johnny Boursiquot. How are you doing today, Johnny?

Hello, hello. Good to be back for another year. Yeah, it’s also very cold here in Maryland. I’m a little further South than you but very cold still. We got some snow over the last couple of days… So yeah, enjoying it.

Yeah, I was surprised to see snow in New York as well. We’re “Oh, it’s cold, and there’s snow now. This is weird.” And also joining us today is Ian Lopshire. How are you doing today, Ian?

I’m doing great, except for that 20 degree walk with my dog this morning. That part wasn’t great, but… Yeah, happy to be here. I’m excited about this episode.

So hello, viewers - or I guess listeners, not viewers; you probably can’t see us right now. But listeners, this is Kris, from the future… I guess the past for you, but the future from when we recorded the episode. It’s kind of hard sometimes to get everybody, the whole six people on a podcast at the same time… Schedules are tough, especially since we’re trying to - you know, as you’ll learn later in the podcast, trying to get more content out to all of you… So Angelica and I decided to have a conversation, roughly answering the same kind of questions, talking about the past, the present and the future… And these little sections are going to be kind of stitched into the rest of the podcast. And I’m sure our wonderful editors will have come up with some fantastic transition audio to help you differentiate when it’s the four of us in the past, and the two of us in the less past… It’s gonna be a fun time now. So Angelica, how are you doing today?

I’m good, I’m good. I’m just pottering along with life, staying positive as the snow pulls down outside my window in New York… So somewhat idyllic, but also not enough snow to really do the snow angel frolicking outside vibe that I was hoping for.

Yeah, especially not in the streets of New York. That’s not really –

No, but I wanted to have my singing in the rain moment, except in the New York snow… And then gracefully fall into the rubbish bins… [laughter] But I’m good, I’m good. I’m excited to chit-chat a little bit about Go Time, and the future, and to reflect. I love it. We’re doing a retrospective.

Yeah, it’s a meta episode. The thing I kind of took away from the main recording is that we are just kind of talking about the kind of inside baseball, “Oh, this is how everything happens, how everything gets made.”

300 is a big number.

Yeah, it’s quite the milestone… And I believe that it’s also 300 episodes over eight years… With I think a little bit of a break in between, as we kind of switched from the original crew to the current crew… But yeah, 300 episodes; super-exciting. How do we all feel about this this milestone? Is there any kind of initial thoughts you want to throw out there?

This is Sparta! It’s 300, right? So… [laughter] I kind of had to, you know?

That took me a second, actually… I feel a little bit stupid about that.

It took me longer than it should have as well… [laughter]

Come on, guys, it’s not that old of a movie.

I mean, I did tell you that I was sick today, so… I’m gonna blame it on that, even though I probably still wouldn’t have…

I have no excuse.

I probably would be in the same boat as you, but I just – I’m gonna use that as an excuse.

I mean, Johnny, you say it’s not that old of a movie… 300 came out in 2006. That was 20 years ago almost…

Dang…! Are you telling me there are some people who might be listening to this podcast who weren’t born yet at that time?

Yes. Yes, Johnny.

Wow…!

I suppose I was 12…

What?!

So if you, listener, also missed out on that reference, do not feel bad. It was quite a while ago, but…

Yeah, yeah. But yeah, do go and watch it, so that you get the reference. It’s a good one. It’s a good movie.

Yeah. But 300 - it’s a pretty big milestone, yeah. Jon, Ian, do you have any initial thoughts on it?

I don’t know, 300 episodes is a lot of talking about Go. I’m honestly not sure how we managed that, but I’m happy it’s still going.

I want to say I’m not sure how we manage it without repeating topics, and then I go through and realize that we occasionally do repeat topics… But a lot of times it’s not terrible, because there’s new things to discuss, and new technologies, and all that stuff changes… So it’s one of those - at first, I’m “Man, how do you do 300 without repeating?” But I don’t think it’s so bad, now that I’ve looked at them.

[00:06:13.02] Yeah, especially over - you know, an eight-year period is a pretty long time. So even a topic, kind of, as you mentioned, that we talked about in 2016 or 2017, lots is going to have changed with it; with pretty much everything that we talked about between then and now.

This is tech, right? So even though we’re very – well, I mean, at this point the adjacent topics to Go, whether it be systems engineering, or services, microservices and nanoservices, whatever it is, we talked about a lot of different things. Queueing theory… I mean, we’ve touched on a lot of different things, topics that are adjacent to Go within the community. And sometimes we even go completely outside the realm of tech. I remember one episode that we had was about neurodiversity within the community. So that was completely off the beaten path.

So I think every now and then we do expand on a topic, go deeper on a topic, some topics we’ve had have been super, super-technical… And then sometimes we go in the complete opposite. So I think that speaks to the breadth and depth of the show, which I’m hoping, honestly, even though we’re definitely making some changes this year - I don’t take that for granted, right? Because that just shows that we’re able to sort of touch on a lot of different topics, and based on the numbers that I’m seeing for our listenership, people are still chiming in and sort of listening to every podcast. They’re very consistently listening to every podcast. Now, I’m sure some episodes, some folks more than others… But over eight years, we still have people that have been listening to the show for eight years. So that’s amazing. And the number of listeners continues to grow year over year. I think that speaks to the quality of the show, and its durability, and staying power.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I think it’s interesting that our first episode that we did, Go Time number one, and the last episode we did of last year, had about the same listenership. So we kind of – at least we’ve been consistent over the years. We haven’t fallen off, or anything. So that’s definitely an exciting thing. When you hear about things lasting a long time - it happens with meetups, it happens with podcasts - I think people are like “Wow, you’ve been doing it for this long. How do you hold it together like that?” And it’s a testament to the panel, and to also Changelog for doing such a great job producing it, that we’re still doing so well, and we have such a high listener base.

Yeah, definitely. Shout-out to the Changelog team. Those folks are super-supportive. Jerod is probably our touchpoints, sort of day to day kind of thing, and he’s super-supportive of the show. Whenever we get a chance to talk with Adam Stack - super-supportive. So these folks are behind the show 100%, and that makes a huge difference. So definitely shout-out to them. If you come across them at a conference or something that, they’re always hanging out at open source conferences and things, and always having – they have lots of other shows as well, for those who didn’t know. We are one of many shows in the Changelog portfolio of shows, so definitely check out their other offerings as well. These are very cool people to know, and they do such a great job of supporting us and others in the community.

But Johnny, when you were talking about the staying power of the podcast… It’s wild to me as well that people still go back and listen from the beginning, all the way through. I’ve talked to countless people that are like “Yeah, I started listening”, and they started at episode one, which to me is a little bit wild, because you think about like conference talks and stuff… I don’t know of any people that are like “Oh, I want to go back and listen to all the GopherCon talks from the first year”, because they generally just assume that’s not going to be useful information.

[00:09:52.11] Now I want to go look at the first year’s GopherCon talks. I think that could be an interesting experience.

It’d be awesome to analyze patterns and how they’ve changed over time… Like, which things people proposed, and then you see them go out of style, and something else comes in… Because there’s definitely been some of those things, that have either faded or changed over time. I think functional options are one of those ones that got really popular, and then kind of got overused, to the point that now people are kind of against them, in many cases.

You’re not wrong. I still write Go every day; I’ve been writing Go everyday, pretty much for the last - I can’t remember… Like six, seven years. But I find myself thinking – like, [unintelligible 00:10:27.27] decision, I’m like “Should I use a functional argument style for this thing?” I’m like “Nah… Just a good old, plain old struct will do.” [laughs] “I think this thing is overused.” And I look back at my code, I’m like “Yeah, I’ve kind of use that everywhere.” I’m “Yeah, I don’t feel like setting up all that boilerplate, and… Yeah, a struct will do.” [laughs]

I still remember – because I attended the first GopherCon, so I remember there was this one point – I don’t know why it sticks in my mind so much, but there’s this one talk that they had… And the speaker had this one line of like “We don’t have time to throw exceptions”, and the whole audience just clapped… Because it was back in the day, when people were like “Why doesn’t Go have exceptions? What’s this error handling?” and everybody in the community was just like “No, we have good error handling.” And it was just kind of this epic line… But there was just – that initial GopherCon was so fantastic, with Kelsey Hightower stepping in as MC kind of right in the middle of it… There were so many things. And that has a connection to us as well, because the folks that started GopherCon also started this podcast. So we come from the same lineage there. And it’s amazing that GopherCon also has had staying power over the years, even through the pandemic and everything. So…

Fun fact that you mentioned that. I was originally – I almost made the roster for the very first group that hosted the podcast. But For various reasons, it didn’t happen… But that original OG group - I was totally behind them. Every time a show came out, I would listen, and everything else… And eventually, I got [unintelligible 00:12:05.08] to join the panelists, and I was like – I always think about that sort of situation as if I had gotten my hopes up and didn’t get the part, so to speak, to use a theatre terminology… If I auditioned and I didn’t get the part, I could have been all sort of pissed and bitter about not getting on… But to me, it was the opportunity to actually have a show that is dedicated to Go, that is dedicated to something I love doing. It was such an honor to even be considered… And basically, I saw that as “Wow, okay, so Go is coming into its own. Go is getting popular. We have a conference for the language, we have podcasts now, we have tons of blog posts, we have YouTube videos…” That’s how you know the language, the technology has a community behind it.

So I was super-psyched when I saw that. That was sort of a major data point for me. And basically, I was like “Okay, I made the right bet. From a career perspective, I made the right bet in picking this technology, and then trying to master it.” So that kind of reminded me of that original panel… Shout-out to those folks, too.

I remember meeting some of them at my first GopherCon, and kind of being starstruck.

Yeah, and I don’t think many folks know who these people are. So we had Carlisia, we had Erik St. Martin…

Brian Ketelsen…

Brian Ketelsen, yeah… And then we had one more. Who was it? Was it three? Was there only three?

I think the original was just three.

Right. Well, now I remember it. The very first idea was to have four. I would have been the fourth. But when we decided to do three panelists, that’s when I got cut down. [laughter] That’s what I’m remembering. Now I’m remembering the details. Oh, you’re bringing up a traumatic experience for me, man… Thanks. [laughs] But yeah, those three, the OGs; those were the three. Yeah, and they did such an excellent job for well over a year, right? If I recall correctly. So I’d have to go back and look at the roster of the podcasts to see when was the last time they were

together.

[00:14:12.23] They’ve got at least 70 episodes, I think.

That’s a lot.

That’s over a year, so…

Yeah. Looking at the back catalogue, there’s just a whole lot. And Jon, when did you kind of come into the podcast, to Go Time?

I was a guest back with the original cast… And I remember – it was all very new to me, so my mouth was really dry, and I was really nervous… One of those “Do I take a shot beforehand?” type thing… Which is very weird, to Go from that to hosting, and now I don’t think twice about it, I guess… So yeah, it would have been – I guested on one of the earlier… Not earlier; maybe the 60s, one of those episodes… And then whenever they were redoing it with a whole new set of hosts, I joined at that point.

That was one of the major changes… And speaking obviously about the topic du jour, right? So every once in a while, we kind of make some changes to how the show is sort of run, who the panelists are, and things of that nature, just to keep it fresh, but also to work with the logistics of today’s – what people have in terms of time, and availability, and capacity… So year after year – so just because somebody is willing to doing a show for a year or two doesn’t mean they’re going to always be available to do it, right? So every time there’s a change in the roster - and we’ve had a few at this point - then that’s usually the reason why you start hearing more from people that maybe you didn’t hear a lot from previously, but now you’re hearing a lot more from them. So as the roster changes, as people become more available, less available, these are the kinds of changes we make. And these are some of the changes we’re making this year, right, Kris?

Yeah, yeah.

300 episodes… That’s a huge milestone. It’s exciting. How are you feeling about it?

That’s a lot of episodes, it’s a lot of talking. It’s super-impressive. I mean, the fact that we have so much content to talk about, and that our wonderful listeners keep listening to us, and the wonderful people who create the show keep on coming up with intriguing and weird topics… Some very odd topics that we’ve done, but have been oddly brilliant, and then some that have just been kind of staples of the show… Like checking in on updates to the Go language is always wonderful and great… So I think we’ve done a lot of cool stuff, and I think, as someone who’s pretty new… Newish. I don’t know whether I’m allowed to say I’m a newish host. I think it’s been like, what, two years? Three? Has it been four years?

It’s been – yeah, because you and I… You, me and Natalie joined at the same time. And it was after GopherCon in 2020…

Yeah.

…when Jerod was like “Hey, y’all want to be hosts?” So yeah, it’s 2024 now, so this is gonna be our fourth year on the podcast. Yeah, at the end of this year will be four.

I feel like I’m still finding my host feet… But I clearly should have got better over that time, so… Here’s to this year. [laughs]

Here’s to this year, yeah. And you’re not the newest host, right? We’re in the middle. We’ve got Ian as the newest host, and I think – I think Johnny and Jon joined around the same time. And maybe Mat… They were all kind of that first cohort, and then there’s us, and then there’s Ian.

So I wanna linger on the past for a hot minute, and I want to ask you guys a couple of questions about episodes we’ve done. So which are the episodes that you have liked the most? You can just have one, you can have two, have a couple… But Jon, I’ll start with you. What are your favorite episodes?

So I was thinking about this, and for me it’s a little bit hard, because there’s the episodes that I like creating, and then there’s the episodes I like listening to… And they sometimes overlap, and sometimes don’t, which - hopefully people like the ones that I wouldn’t necessarily listen to. Like, it’s hard to judge my own episode when I’m listening, because I feel like if I’m like “Oh, that’s a good episode, but I’m involved”, so it’s a very hard thing to get right.

[00:18:17.21] But traditionally, I think the two types of episodes I really are either ones that are a little bit more off the beaten path… So we did one with the guy who created Templ, and I really enjoyed that, because it was somebody who was doing something that’s not really the norm. Not only did they create a template library, but it was compiled, they created a language server, they did all these things that were just not normal. And it was really cool to talk with him about that experience, and that process, and what drove them to do all those things… And to also encourage other people that you don’t necessarily have to follow the same path that everybody else is taking when you’re building a library, or doing whatever you’re doing.

The other type of episode that I’ve really liked are the ones that are more like deep-dives on subjects. As an example, there was one where we had the author of a networking book, and we did more of a deep-dive on TCP/IP, how the protocol works, and more of that. And it wasn’t incredibly focused on Go specifically, but I think it was something that every Go developer benefits from learning from and learning about… So I really liked those deep-dives. But I will say, like we’re talking about the podcast changing and things that, those episodes tend to be incredibly hard to create, because there’s a lot of digging into things, and research, unless you just want to take an author of a book and really rely heavily on them to do a lot of the work. So those ones, while they’re really fun and really great to listen to, in my opinion, they are very hard to create, because you don’t just get to hop into an interview with somebody. You usually have to have a rough idea of how the technology works, so you can come up with good questions that dive into all sorts of different details of it.

I think I was on both of those episodes. So you’re also saying episodes I’m on, which is… [laughter]

I mean, there’s other ones, too. I love the ones that focus more on how a solo developer – or things a solo developer would appreciate… Which - I recall Mat did one, and I forget who else was on it, about the solo Gopher. And I like the ones that don’t necessarily dive into technologies that are enterprisy, but it’s like “How can a small group, or one or two people actually take advantage of Go, and get the most out of it?” So I think that probably falls more into the off the beaten path a little bit too, so… Sorry, Kris, I couldn’t let you have that. I had to find [unintelligible 00:20:21.10]

You know, Ian and I also did a solo gopher episode… [laugh]

I think it was called “The solo gopher.”

That’s probably the one I’m thinking of. Why was I thinking Mat did that one?

I feel like Mat probably did an episode like that. When you have 300 episodes, it’s sometimes hard to keep it all well aligned, and all that. Alright, Johnny, what are your favorite episodes or favorite episode?

Well, naturally, every episode I’m on are my favorites… [laughter] But in all seriousness, recency bias plays a role here, but I definitely liked last year’s “Seven deadly sins of Go.”

That was fun.

…that I did with Mat Ryer, and - I forgot his name again… Jon something. I’ll find it in the roster. But it was – were you on that one, Kris?

I was on that one, yes.

Right, yeah. It was the four of us. Yeah, it was – I think what I tend to like about those shows is that… Personally, I don’t take myself too seriously in certain scenarios, but when I come in expecting to have fun on a show… You know, we’re all joking around, and the commentary is flowing, and… Like, we’re talking about technical stuff, but it doesn’t have to be dry. It doesn’t have to be so completely esoteric, and people are just mentioning weird facts, and stuff like that… And that’s all well and good too, and for those that are sort of really hardcore geeks, and really to dive deep into the technical stuff, that’s totally cool, and hopefully we offer some of that, too. But I think the episodes I have the most fun on are the ones where the jokes are flowing, we’re all basically – we have some banter… And it just makes it fun.

[00:22:09.00] People have come to me at conferences and said “Hey, I listened to that show, you guys were so funny. I was walking my dog and something I was cackling laughing on the path, while people were looking at me weird, but they didn’t know I was listening to you guys on a podcast show.” Hearing stuff like that is amazing… To just know that you’re listening to something technical, but somehow it’s bringing some level of joy in your life while you listen to these voices… I mean, it’s kind of cool. So yeah, definitely those kinds of episodes.

And I also always enjoy the “What’s new in Go version blah-blah-blah” episodes. We usually have a special guest for those episodes. I think for the last three or four episodes it has been Carl Johnson, who basically comes back over and over again to help walk us through, “This is what’s new, this is what’s changing in the language. These are the quirks they’ve addressed.” And for Go 1.22 we plan on doing just that as well. So I definitely enjoy those; they keep the community up to date on what’s what, what’s coming, what’s changing, what do they need to be on the lookout for…

So I think overall it’s just really having fun in the episodes; the ones where we’re laughing a lot - I think you’ll probably find that those have a lot of listener numbers, because we have fun. If we’re having fun, our audience is having fun.

Yeah, that’s for sure. I do love some of those just really loose, kind of go with the vibe, go with the flow episodes. I think Mat is really good at doing some of those, just kidding around and joking about stuff…

Break: [00:23:37.18]

Okay, Ian, what are your favorite episodes?

Yeah, so I went through the back catalogue earlier, picked out a couple of my favorites… And the pattern that came out of it is I love the episodes where we’re talking to an expert that you can just tell cares about what they’re talking about. I think my favorite of those was “Who owns our code.” The name’s escaping me, but the lawyer that was on that episode, you could just tell he knew what he was talking about, and he cared about it.

And we also did one on Go in biology, where a guy had just created a whole biology ecosystem in Go. And you could also just tell he cared, and knew what he was talking about. And also the ones with some of the Go team members… There’s one where Filippo and Roland talk about what’s new in the crypto libraries. And just again, they care about it; they’re excited to talk about it, and that makes me excited… And I don’t know, it’s kind of inspiring to just continue to increase my knowledge.

So Kris, how about you? What were your favorite episodes?

I mean, this kind of leads into my next question, which was gonna be about what episodes have you gone back and listened to the most… But I think one of them is - maybe personal bias, but one of the first episodes I hosted was about maintaining your code… And I’ve gone back and listened to that episode at least three or four times. I think it was me, and you, Johnny, and Sam Boyer… And I think maybe somebody else?

I was on that one.

Yeah, it was on writing actually maintainable code. That was a series. I think we had a series on that, right? Didn’t we have like two or three episodes on that?

[00:26:11.01] Yeah. I think that was either the first or the second episode in that miniseries that I did on maintenance. And this was about maintaining not just your code, but also your life, and a whole bunch of other stuff. But I remember that was just such a – it was weird, because I was just like “Oh, I’m a new host and all of this”, but I was worried that it wouldn’t come through as well… But it’s definitely when I have gone back and listened to it, and I’m like “Oh no, this is actually a pretty good episode.” And I just love going back and listening to it. So it’s definitely those, that one…

And I really also like the episodes where we’re talking about Go, but not super-directly. Either talking about like the community, or struggles that we face as software engineers in general, that can then be related back to Go pretty easily… Those are definitely my favorite two types of episodes.

Which episodes have you liked the most? Which topics have you really enjoyed either producing, or listening to, or hosting, or any of that?

I mean - and I promise I’m not saying this is the first one just because it’s you, Kris… But the series that kind of you spearheaded, different guests, somewhat different topics around maintenance, and maintaining your code etc. I loved listening to those… Firstly, because I think they were just really well structured, really interesting episodes, but secondly, because they were applicable outside of Go. So I would say, as we’re talking about my favorite episodes in Go, I think they skew in three categories. I think the first is the maintenance series; episodes that talk about tech concepts, concepts that are applicable to broader technologies, or for engineering, but can be applied to Go, or are talked about in the context of a Go project, the Go language etc.

For example, again - I feel weird saying episodes that I liked, but I didn’t like them because it was me hosting them, I liked them because of the guests… But one that I did more recently about event-driven systems and architecture, I absolutely loved. One, because it was applicable broader than just Go, but mostly because I had Chris Richardson on the show as one of the guests, as well as Indu… And they both just knew so much about the topic. And my hope is that with episodes like that, where we have two experts, and then we have bluntly me, who is more of a newbie asking these questions, listeners will be able to return to that episode… It’s evergreen, and they can learn, they can explore about a baseline concept.

Also, the episodes I love the most are the ones where I am sitting and live on the podcast learning about things I don’t know, weirdly… And I enjoy the episodes where I go in and I’ve got experts, and I am going in going “Oh, I don’t really know that much about this topic.” But I just get to ask all the fun questions. I love those the most.

And the other side is the ones that really go into Go. So I mentioned kind of in the intro a little bit as we chatted the ones that talk about specific improvements, new versions of Go, new features… I think there was an episode, maybe much earlier in the year, about - I think it was a deep-dive into the Go stack, or go infrastructure… I loved that, because I think both for more newbie gophers, but also for more seasoned Go engineers, who might not actually understand the weeds of Go, I think it’s really interesting. So I liked that.

[00:29:43.16] I’m trying to think back… There were so many great episodes. Oh, I also love the episodes that are talked about in the context of tech, but bring up more societal questions in my mind, i.e. the – actually, you were on with me; the “Who owns our code” two-part series that we did, with Luis Villa, I believe, the tech lawyer, who came on and spoke with us about ownership in the law, but also in technology. I think that for me - one, it was just interesting as a new interesting concept to explore with an expert, but two, I think it brought a lot of questions about ownership, about if you work for a company, what is your time and effort that they’re paying for, and what is the work that you’re doing that is your own? I’m actually hoping - spoiler alert - that we can do another episode, perhaps with Luis again, or with someone else, talking about the concept of ownership in machine learning and AI… Cheekily, which I can’t say much about, but especially given the ongoing lawsuit that the New York Times filed against Open AI. I think that’s a really interesting conversation to have, and I think it’s gonna become a more and more interesting conversation to have when it comes to ownership of data in this more kind of Open AI and the machine learning future that we have. So I’m excited – I loved that in the past, that episode about who owns our code; I think that topic is only gonna get more interesting with the developments we’re seeing in technology.

Yeah, I definitely agree. That was – one of those two episodes we did were some of my favorites, for sure. Just getting to talk about this kind of thorny, deep question that we have. I feel like it’s something that at a surface level feels so obvious, but when you actually dig into it, you’re like “Oh, actually, this is a really challenging question to answer.” And there’s so much to it. And yeah, once again, with the whole – especially that New York Times lawsuit… I think I’ve listened to a bit [unintelligible 00:31:44.26] other rumblings of people saying “Oh, this could completely destroy the way that AI works.” Or “It could just be a way to actually make things financially viable.” There’s all sorts of angles on it. It’s truly those early days, where we don’t know much. So yeah, being able to really get to those topics I think is so much fun to do on a podcast.

Exactly. Talk about developing stories, and new things where we can just “How do we think this is gonna go?” “I don’t know, it could go all these different ways.” I think new technologies is where I think Go Time episodes do the best, in my opinion… When we’re talking about new things that not very many people have experimented with, but if we get someone on the podcast who has experimented with X, Y, Z technology, new package, new way of doing things, I think it’s a great way to open up that technology and those learnings to the broader Go and tech community, or whoever wants to listen to Go Time, which could be anyone.

I guess we can wrap this into one question, really… Are there any episodes that you guys go back and listen to kind of multiple times, or have listened to multiple times? And are there any episodes that when someone’s like “Oh, you have a podcast? Great, I want to listen to you?”, are there any episodes you recommend to people to be their introduction to Go Time?

Not to beat a dead horse, but that “Who owns your code?” episode is the one I send to people. I’ve listened to that probably three times… A lot of things you just never think about in that episode, that you’re like “Oh, maybe I should be thinking about this stuff.”

I will say, Kris, oddly enough, the first episode I was on was the one that I’ve probably listened to, or did listen to the most… But for different reasons. It was because I was so nervous I was gonna look dumb as a guest that I listened to it like three times, looking for where I need an edit, or something… No, but it turned out fine. It’s just I think one of those things when you’re nervous about something new you do a lot… But whenever I recommend it, for whatever reason, I probably tend to lean towards episodes where I’m not in it, because it’s just a weird thing recommending something that I hosted… Not that there’s anything wrong with it, I just think for whatever reason mentally I’m just like “Ah, if I looked like an idiot in that episode, I don’t want to recommend it”, and then let that happen.

[00:33:59.11] But a lot of it just depends on the person and why they want to listen to Go Time and what they’re interested in… So if I have somebody who is a full-time Go developer, obviously I don’t want to introduce them to an episode that’s like “How to structure your Go code”, and things that. But if it’s somebody who’s very new to Go, which a lot of times that’s the type of people I’m communicating with, then episodes like that can be really useful, because it’s like, this dives into those questions you’re really looking to answer… And it’s a good place to start before you go to other resources.

So I guess I’m lucky enough that I just interact with a lot of people who are getting into Go and new to the whole community, so I can oftentimes sort of tailor that response as “Oh, this is an episode that you would really enjoy to get started”, and almost all of those people end up being like “Oh, now I listen to all the episodes.” But it’s just a cool thing that you can – we’ve done so many episodes that you can almost point to an episode for any topic.

Johnny?

I don’t listen to anything with myself in it, honestly… If I would go back and listen to it, I’m like “That sounds dumb. Why did I even say that?” I’ll start beating myself up… So for that reason, I spare myself with the self-flagellation and I just don’t bother listening to myself after things. Heck, nine times out of ten I don’t even watch recordings of myself for talks I give. I’m just too self-critical. That’s a weakness of mine, it’s something I need to work on personally; I need to seek therapy for that, or something, but I just don’t like to do that. If I do, I’m genuinely just like identifying “Okay, what parts do I need to improve on?” I’m consuming it very critically, and trying very hard not to beat myself up over words I misspeak, or if I say something wrong, if I get a fact incorrect, or something like that. I’m being very sort of methodical, just studying so I can actually do better next time, kind of thing. But not really to enjoy it, to be like “Oh, you did a pretty good job.” I almost never tell myself I did a good job on a recording.

Just a note on that… There are so many times I’ve recorded an episode and I’ve been like “I sounded so stupid.” And then you go back and listen to it, and our editors do such a good job cutting out the pieces that make you sound stupid. I’ve been amazed on multiple occasions.

That’s true. They do such a great job.

It also makes me want to ask Johnny - you have a course on O’Reilly, right?

Yeah, I do live trainings on O’Reilly. I have a course on LinkedIn learning, and I’m working on some new stuff as well.

Did you ever get through and edit one of those?

No. The editing process? Oh, they tear it apart.

But did you do it, or did they do it?

No, they do it.

Okay. I was gonna ask how you manage that, because I feel like that’s another area where you’re trying to make sure it’s right, and it’s really hard to not be so critical on yourself that you’re like “I need to redo this.” And if you keep doing done it all the time, you just spend so long recording.

Oh, I’ve done it. I mean, don’t get me wrong… When I send in, when I’m doing screen recordings to send it in, like I did you know from my last LinkedIn learning course, the course itself is - I don’t know, two hours long, or something. And I kid you not, I must have spent like five times that recording, or rerecording, editing… That’s even before I send it to them for them to do their thing, right? So I’m pre editing the damn thing before I send it to them, so that they can clean it up even further. And they tell you “Don’t bother. Don’t do that. We’re gonna take out all that stuff.” I’m like “No, I don’t want people see me do this.” So I’m gonna pre-edit it, and send it in… And then you can clean up what I didn’t get. [laugh] So yeah, it’s a complete – it’s a mess. I’m a mess.

[00:37:38.21] Yeah, I think I have an advantage here, because I have edited a lot of video and audio in my life, so I’m kind of used to the process of slicing and dicing things… But I also don’t really listen to episodes that I’m on, mostly because I’m like “Oh, well, I was there, so I remember everything that happened. So I’m going to use [unintelligible 00:37:55.27] to listen to something that I’m not on.” But I feel like there’s also times when I will just – I think this happened a couple of weeks ago on the Kafka episode, when there was just a long string of things I was saying, and then partway through I was like “I don’t think I’m making sense. I don’t know where I started this, I don’t know where I am, so I’m just gonna try to end it…” And then I do, and then I go back and listen, and I’m like “Actually, no, that was actually pretty coherent.” I don’t know how that happened, but it was like a word salad that just came out. But that’s the kind of stuff that I’m like “Oh, man… Oh, no…”

Something I realized is listening is way easier than talking… And what I mean there is, like you said, that word salad. It’s hard to keep that all in your head, but as a listener, it’s just, you know, start to finish, it’s so much easier to parse the concept.

Yeah. And Johnny, I don’t think we got an actual recommendation. I think we just got a “I don’t listen to episodes that I’m on.” [laughs]

Yeah… Which is why if somebody said “Hey, which episode should I start with?”, I’d be like “Start with the last one, and work your way backwards, or browse the catalog on Changelog and see if something speaks to you.” Because I really don’t have – I don’t think I have a favorite episode. I think it’s any episode where I remember having a good time, having fun, laughing… I might not be able to tell you which episodes those were, because I try to have fun on every recording, every episode… But whichever ones we were having fun on is the one that I’d say start with. So find something that speaks to you, and start there. Work your way back.

Yeah. I think my recommendation is something similar. A recent episode I feel like is a good place to start. Also, it’s like at the top in most podcast players, and things, so you can just click it… I remember sitting with my friend, and he was like “Oh, you’re on a podcast?” I was like “Yeah, I’m on a podcast.” And he’s like “Oh, what’s the name of it?” “It’s Go Time.” And he looks it up, and then he starts planning it, and then he just somehow randomly scrolls to some part in it, and my voice starts coming out of his phone. And he’s like “Oh, that’s you.” And I’m like “Yes, it’s me. But also, how did you manage to scroll to a random part and it’s me talking?” It’s also a little bit of self-consciousness there, of being like “Do I talk too much?”

[laughs] No matter where I scrub in this thing, it’s you talking, Kris…! What’s going on…? [laughs]

So are there any episodes that you’ve gone back and listened to multiple times/that you would recommend to people who ask about the podcast? Like “Oh, you’re on a podcast? Cool. What episode should I start listening to?”

I think there are two that spring to mind… I think I’m gonna get their titles a little bit right, but I’m sure if you google it, it’ll be something… There was one that I believe you did, that was about simplicity within code, and overcomplicating code… I’m trying to remember what it was called. Anyway. But that was really great, because it was talking about a concept that applies, again, to Go developers and non-Go developers. But also, I go back and listen to that one a lot, partly because I just think I enjoy listening to; it’s a good conversation. But secondly, just because I think in general, as a person, but also [unintelligible 00:41:07.07] my engineering team, and other engineering teams, it’s easy for us to overengineer and overcomplicate… So I like that episode, just because it’s a good reminder of “Okay, let’s actually think about simplicity, versus overcomplicating, versus overengineering.” I just think it’s a good reminder.

If I’m being completely honest, an episode that I listen to, or I tell people to listen to pretty often, mostly when they find out that I’m on Go Time as a host, is the first episode I ever did… Which I think you were on with me. Partly because I’m like – they’re like “Oh, we love you. We love the podcast. It’s great.” I’m like “I was freaking out the first time I did it. Don’t worry.”

[00:41:49.16] Guests will be like “Oh, Angelica, it seems like you’re very comfortable.” I’m like “Haha! No…” And I’ll have them listen to that first episode. It was a great episode, I want to be clear… But it’s so clear how nervous I was… And my voice is so high pitched, that I’m like “Oh my gosh, I sound like a squeaky toy.”

But also, the first episode I did was on diversity. I can’t remember the title, but it was the one where you had done a brilliant talk at GopherCon 2020, it was also the same year that Johnny had done his GopherCon talk, where he put those really powerful images up on the screen, of all of the people of color who came to GopherCon, and [unintelligible 00:42:30.26] it was not very many people at all… And we sat and we chatted about that. And I think what excited me most about that episode was - and it’s one of many that we’ve done since, and before that had been done, where we discussed something that is societal, but is hugely relevant in the tech community, and it’s important to keep revisiting… And I loved that episode, which actually - spoiler alert; I’m looking to the future - is an episode that I would really us to do more of, in terms of that type of episode, talking about things that are more societal or psychological-based, but are deeply ingrained in the technical community. So I’m hopeful that we can maybe do more of those.

I mean, I think Go Time should always be rooted in the technology, rooted in talking about – but I would like (spoiler alert) looking to the future… Our hope for this year is that we can either [unintelligible 00:43:26.11] or bring in more of that kind of conversation to more technical conversations, or we can just have more of those kind of episodes. But I think those two were the ones that sprung to mind.

Okay, so that’s the past, right? That’s where we’ve come from. So now let’s talk about the present. I think we can, we can as Johnny alluded to earlier, kind of bring up some things have been happening with the show, that are causing us to do some rethinking, some restructuring… I guess, first of all, our listener base - y’all are absolutely fantastic. You’ve been coming back week after week after week. The numbers have been great. That’s the message that we all feel, that’s the message we’re getting all from Changelog… However, you may have noticed that we’re a little light on sponsors right now. And Jerod and Adam brought this up on I think the most recent Changelog & Friends episode. Or I guess when this airs, it’ll be the Changelog & Friends from two weeks ago, mentioning kind of alternative sourcing models, potentially a job board, potentially something else… So it’s kind of like where we are right now, kind of rethinking where the show is, and where we’d it to go in the future. So I guess we can kind of talk about that, and we can talk about how you all feel at the moment… We can also talk about some of the logistical changes that we’re making to the show, which I’m pretty excited about, and some that we’ve already done, that I think are going pretty well… So there’s a whole mess of things in there to talk about. Someone just pick up and run with it.

I think one thing that might be useful here is just some context, that while a lot of us people making – we aren’t making the show to make money. All of us are not doing that. But in reality, the editors – we’ve spoken highly of the editor several times… That process of editing an episode, and turning it into a good podcast that doesn’t have lots of random noises, that makes us not sound as bad as we think we do, I guess, at times… All of those things take effort, and they have to pay people to do those things. So a lot of the times when we talk about sponsorships and that sort of stuff, I think it’s worth noting that it’s because of all those extra costs that get thrown in there, that that stuff tends to be important… Not because we’re all trying to make a bunch of money, or something. Not that there’s anything wrong with people trying to make money, but I will definitely say that if your goal is to make money, hosting the Go Time podcast is not necessarily the way to do it. [laughter]

[00:45:54.15] There are better ways…

Yeah. This is not a thing that we all do as hosts as a main way to get money into our pockets, that’s for sure.

But I will say though, this beats writing a book… [laughs] At least you get to have fun coming on a show, and talking about – but yeah, writing a technical book, and with any publisher, honestly, it’s a labor of love, and love only. You don’t get paid for those either. So…

I’ve heard great reasons for doing it, but none of them have ever been money. If you’re in another country and trying to get a visa in the US, sometimes writing a book is a great way to turn you into an expert in that field, and things like that… Which I guess technically could lead to more money. But it’s never been like “Oh, you just get paid a bunch by the publisher.” I’ve never heard that one.

Yeah, it’s definitely the same for us here. We do this for our love of Go, and our love of the community. And just, you know, produce good content, have fun, say some crazy things, have some very unpopular opinions sometimes, of course…

So if we do get a sponsor - which, we are looking for sponsors, obviously - the money won’t be towards lining the hosts’ sprockets. It’s gonna be for logistics, getting the shows editing, and all that good stuff.

Yeah, exactly. And we’re also thinking up new ideas for how to sustain, not just Go Time, but also the whole Changelog network. Because obviously, relying on sponsors, especially in these kind of times we have all of these layoffs in tech, and all the other things happening, you definitely want to kind of diversify your income stream. So if you listeners out there have any ideas, you’re like “Oh, this is a perfect idea for how we could support Go Time, or support all the Changelog podcasts”, definitely hit us up in Slack, send an email, and do any of those things. We’re always open to hearing from our wonderful listeners. Same goes with episode recommendations. If there’s anything you really want to hear, make sure to send that to us.

Oh, I have a recommendation… I think we should do a show on layoffs. The non traditional – well, I think it can be semi-technical, but we can try and find people within the Go community that have been laid off, and that way we can keep it Go-centric… But that is one of the things that affects us, right? We’ve had shows around sort of the softer, the people aspect of things before, and I think that’s something that is affecting a lot of our colleagues out there. So maybe - yeah, I’ll throw my hat in the ring as a recommendation for a future show, something about layoffs.

Yeah, that does seem like a timely and very apt thing, especially just having something to listen to, have other things to hear if you’re going through it yourself. I think the main Changelog podcast has had - I’m gonna butcher his name, but Gergely Orosz… And he comes back every year to talk about the state of the tech market, and this last one was about the state of kind of layoffs, and what tech companies are doing, and all of that. So having that type of content – and I think also Justin Garrison a couple of weeks ago had the Silent Sacking Amazon episode, which was great… So sometimes it’s good to have something to just listen to to be like “You’re not going through this alone. There’s a whole bunch of people experiencing this”, unfortunately. Ian, do you have any thoughts on the present, on the things happening, on the developments with Go Time?

Yeah. I mean, well, having a sponsor - not having a sponsor isn’t great. I do think it’s kind of lit a fire under us a little bit. I think we’re more organized now than we’ve ever been, more committed to getting episodes out every week, more in communication with each other, and just planning episodes better… No, I think I’m just excited about this next year.

And I’ll definitely say - I think part of that organization comes from the fact that we almost need to rotate the panelists every once in a while… Because I know myself as an example - last year I was kind of burnt out and wasn’t on that many episodes. And sometimes you just either need a break, or you’ve got to bring in new people who are eager and excited to organize and to host a bunch of episodes, and to lineup a bunch of guests… Because like we’ve said, it is a lot of work at times to get all that done…

[00:50:05.09] So I agree it’s definitely lit a fire under us a little bit to do that, but that’s one of the reasons why when you see panelists come and go and things like that, it’s almost always because people get busy with life, and you need somebody else who has that time and flexibility to really focus on organizing episodes.

Yeah, that’s one of the nice aspects of having seven of us that are panelists on this show, is that we can more easily kind of rotate through and spread it out. I think that is also why the show has had such good longevity over the years, is because we can kind of shift and move around the people who are hosting. And if you listener have noticed any of us disappear for a while, as Jon said - you know, sometimes life happens. Most of the time we do come back, which is always exciting. It’s always fun to be like “Ah, I’ve been gone for a while, but I’m back now! Hurray!”

But yeah, one of the big changes we’ve started making - we held our first one, we have our second one in the books, is that we’re doing - for a little kind of behind the scenes meta of how Go Time gets made - we’re doing writers’ rooms now, which is a thing borrowed from the television industry. We kind of all get together in a big meeting, we kind of brainstorm episode ideas, and kind of dispatch them for people to pick up and carry forward… Which I don’t know if there’s other podcasts that are doing something similar to this, but it’s definitely one of the things that’s excited me about this year, is that we actually started doing them… And the first one went so great, and we’re actually going to have another one. Because the first two are always the toughest to set the pattern of how to start doing things…

So yeah, how are you feeling about the show in this moment? What are your feelings about it, what are your emotions? How do you feel?

I’m very proud. I think Go Time is such a wonderful way to connect with the broader Go community… But two, I feel like I’ve seen so much growth in the hosts that joined when I first joined, but also in the team’s ability to collaborate, and ability to kind of feed off of each other in conversation… I also think - which we’ll get into, I’m sure - a lot of the processes and new structure that we’re bringing to how we do Go Time this next year is only going to help its progression… So I think it’s just a lot of pride, and also excitement, because - we kind of touched on this in my prior answer… The tech space is always really interesting and constantly changing, but I think this year there’s just so much going on, and so much new technology, new thinking, new practices, that I think are going to come to head or really explode, that I’m excited to see where we go. But I’m also very apprehensive, because I’m like “Oh, Angelica, you need to start thinking about interesting, cool episodes.” [laughter]

Well, yeah… I mean, as our listeners who just listened to the present segment of the first recording know, we are doing a whole bunch of restructuring… There’s the struggles we’re going through right now with the - you know, we need sponsors, but our listener base is great… And once again, all reiterated again, listeners - you’re all wonderful, and I’m so glad that so many of you are here, that we’ve been able to sustain such good numbers for so long… But I know that one of the things I’m excited about, which I assume is something that you’re also excited about, is these writers’ rooms that we’re doing.

Oh, yes. That’s what I’m super-excited about. So this is how – I feel bad, because I wasn’t at the original recording of the episode, but I don’t know how much has been told already. But no, so arguably, actually the writers’ room is the part of the new structure, the new things we’re putting in place… And I say “we”, the new things that Kris is working really hard as our gopher-in-chief to help steer the ship forward on. They probably won’t say that themselves, but I will - it’s the writers room. Because it’s all of us hosts getting in a room, chit-chatting about “Right, what do we have planned for the next month or so? What do we want to do? What do we want to talk about?”, brainstorming…

[00:54:14.29] And for me, the reason it’s so great and why I’m excited about it and I have no doubt it’s going to make Go Time better, is for two reasons. One is it’s going to mean that we’re going to get our ducks in a row. We are going to know what we’re going to talk about, and when. We’re not going to have two episodes back to back about the same topic. We’re going to be able to ensure a diverse range of voices; we’re not going to have one person hosting every single week for four months… Which - I’m shocked; I wouldn’t mind that. I wouldn’t mind hearing Johnny every single day. But for those of you who maybe want a diverse range of voices, I think that’s gonna be awesome.

Also, as the kind of somewhat type A in me, I love an organization that has a plan, that knows when and where I need to be… But the other part is that I feel like one of the things that stresses me out the most as a Go Time host is thinking about interesting topics. Who should be on the show? What should we talk about? …and even if an idea I have is interesting or not.

So for me, what I’m most excited about personally is coming into that room and being able to just like spitball. Like “Hey, I’ve had this idea.” Or “Hey, I’ve seen this new package and technology. Is it worth – maybe we should dig into it. Does anyone think it’s interesting enough to do an episode on it?” And really structure our episodes and building the content we bring to you all in a way that is collaborative. Because I think everyone brainstorming an idea - it’s inevitably going to be better, than if just Angelica’s brain is trying to think about on her own.

Yeah. The writers rooms - I’m so glad with how the first one went, and I’m so glad we have another one scheduled… Because that’s the – I mentioned this in the main part of the show, but that’s the thing I’m always scared of, is when you have a good idea like this, and it’s like “Okay, does it actually become a thing?” Or is it just something that we talk about, where it’s just like “Oh, we should really go do that…” And yeah, actually picking up and scheduling things is one of those things I think helps a lot.

Interestingly, we didn’t really mention in the main show that I kind of have this new role of being the – we don’t have titles or anything for it yet, but kind of the pseudo, I guess, organizer of Go Time now. We have our wonderful producer, Jerod, who is super on top of the whole Changelog side of things… But we as a group had decided “Hey, we probably need one of us to kind of step up and kind of, at least do the scheduling, do the kind of light guidance, so that we aren’t just seven gophers running around trying to make a whole bunch of content.” Just doing a little bit more planning, a little bit more of that.

But yeah, it’s always so worrying to me when it’s like “Oh, are we actually gonna be able to carry through with this idea?” Because I know I have a whole bunch of ideas of like how we would structure planning, and I was like “Oh, I don’t know, are we actually going to be able to produce these episodes? There’s a whole bunch of stuff up in the air…” And a lot of it has really started to come together, and it’s really exciting to me that we might actually be able to start producing more than just one episode per week, and be able to use that space to create new and more interesting types of content.

No, exactly. I think the other part is that if I have an extremely interesting idea, and I’m like “Yeah, but I don’t think I’m the right host for this episode. I think there’s a much more well-equipped host in our Go Time host arsenal”, then I’m excited to come to the writers room and be like “Hey, I have this really interesting idea that I think is awesome, but I don’t want to host it, because I don’t think that I’m the right person. I want to be a guest on it. Kris, I think you would be a brilliant host for this.” Or vice versa, because I try my best to be more of a facilitator and not take up all the space on my episodes… I kind of prefer to just sit back and facilitate the conversation, and give the guests [unintelligible 00:58:03.10] If there’s something that I just really want to babble about, I’d be like “Hey, Johnny, I really want to babble about my thoughts on the use of Go in art. Can you be a host, so that I can babble without feeling bad?” [laughter]

[00:58:19.01] Yeah, it’s something that we’ve definitely needed for a long time, and I’m excited that we finally have it. And yeah, we’ll see how things shape up. As I said in the other segments, listeners, we’re always here for your feedback. So if you’re like “Man, Go Time this year, these episodes are just so much better”, let us know. Give us that feedback. Or if you’re like “I don’t know, I liked some aspects of the old way you did things”, let us know that, too. We really want to have that feedback, to really know “I don’t know, is this the right direction? Do we need to shift course a little bit? How should we be thinking about and seeing all of this stuff?”

And in that vein, now that we have more structure, I would also reemphasize to you all - if you have episode suggestions or asks, like “Please, could you talk about this topic, X, Y, Z?”, please submit them. We are looking at them on a regular basis in terms of episode ideas. So if you have an idea that you want us to talk about, or a topic, or some thing that you’ve seen, that you don’t know very much about, and you want to learn more about, hit us up. Submit an ask, and maybe we can make it happen for you.

Any other comments or thoughts about the present before we move to the future?

I think - and this might be a good transition to the future… I think we have – I’ve mentioned this many times. I think we have an awesome host of hosts, group of hosts… And I think everyone brings a really interesting, different perspective, in terms of the episodes they put together, their style of hosting, their style of episode etc, etc. But that being said, transitioning to the future, I’m really excited at the potential of exploring how we can more intentionally either collaborate together as hosts. To get new voices on the podcast is my mission for the next year. I want new people, new guests, different levels, different experiences… I mean, I’m always trying to do that on episodes, but I think setting the intention that I want to get new gophers, people who have been in the community for a very short amount of time, or have been in the community for ages, but just have never had a more public forum that they’ve expressed themselves on subjects they’re wanting to. Live your best lives, gophers who do not want to be in any kind of public forum… But if you are a gopher who would like that, but maybe you haven’t had the opportunity, or you don’t know how, or you’re nervous… I love talking to people who have great ideas, and then I go “Oh, have you ever thought about talking about this really cool idea that you talk about really well on like a podcast, or submitting a talk?” and they’re like “Oh, no, I could never do that.” And then I’m bringing them on the podcast, and they leave being like “Oh, my gosh, I didn’t know I could do that.” And kind of reenergize… Yeah, so I’m excited about that.

So I’m super-excited about those, but I’m also excited about what that means for the future, as you were saying, Ian, the higher level of consistency in our episodes; because I’m sure, listeners, if you are - you know, like Jerod, who has a whole bunch of podcasts you’re listening to, and you have specific slots, there have been some times when Go Time is just missing a week or two here. We’re definitely working hard this year, and making sure that we can ship episodes consistently. Get one out every week. So if we do you wind up in your regular rotation of podcast episodes, which - thank you so much for putting us in that position - we want to do right by you, and actually stay in that rotation, and we actually give you an episode every week. We’ll try our best to do that.

[01:02:04.12] So yeah, with that, I think we can turn to the future, and the exciting things that we’re going to talk about. This episode is titled, at least tentatively, “300 Multiple Choices”, which for you HTTP nerds out there is the status code of when the server gives you multiple choices of what representation you want back for a specific resource that you’ve queried… Which I think is apt for where we are right now as a podcast, because we have multiple choices of how we move forward, and we would really to solicit the input from our listeners as to what kind of content you want to hear. So I think it’d be fun for this party episode to just go over what a couple of those things are. Maybe what our favorite thing that we’re going to try and start doing is.

I know for me, one of my – I guess I have two top ones that I like. I’m super-excited about the prospect of doing more game shows. We’ve done a bunch of them in the past, we’ve done Gopher Says - or Gophers Say? I never remember if it’s Gophers Say or Gopher Says. Either one. It’s the Family Feud style “survey says” sort of thing. Those are super-fun, and hopefully we’ll be able to come up with some new game shows. If you have any ideas, send them over to Jerod. He’s our game show savant that we have.

So I’m super-excited for that, and I’m super-excited to try and get some more miniseries going, because I think those are nice little – it gives you a little bit more than a single episode on something, and we have some plans and ideas about how to make those more impactful in the future. So that’s what I’m excited about. Johnny, what excites you for the future of content that we’re gonna do?

I wanna strike a balance between the deep technical dives, and the not-so-deep technical dives… With a sprinkle of fun added on whichever one we’re doing. So I do know that part of our audience does enjoy sort of the non-technical content. We’ve had talks on managing people, we’ve had talks on sort of mental health and related things, we’ve had lots of different things. And we’ve also had deep technical conversations. I know some people prefer one side versus the other. So I think whichever direction we go, I think we should try – whether it’s within the same episode, or different kinds of episodes, we should definitely sort of cater to both kinds of audiences, to make sure that we’ve got a little something for everybody.

Yeah, I definitely agree with you on that, the balance. And I feel our writers’ rooms will help us with that… Because for reference, for our listeners out there, the way it used to work is we’d all kind of come up with our own ideas, and for a while there’d be one or two people planning out a whole bunch of episodes… And now that we’re kind of doing this kind of collaborative thing, we have more ability to be more consistent, not just with shipping episodes, but also with what those episodes will be, to make sure that we can get that better mix of content, so we can kind of have a wider purview of the things we’re talking about.

Yeah, just to slide in on that a little bit… I think I’m excited for episodes this one, where it’s just panelists, and we can just come up with something and talk about it. I think in the past, with the model we had where everyone had to come up with an episode, and we were kind of independent, this writer room process - I think we can really do more episodes where it’s just collaborative discussion about a topic, right? It doesn’t need to be a special guest. And these are really fun to make, so I hope they’re also fun to listen to.

Yeah, how the sausage is made, with Ian. [laughter]

Well, maybe not as inside baseball as this one, but you know, where we just talk about a topic, instead of having a special guest on, or… I know we already do that, but…

It’s not common.

Yeah, it’s not common.

[01:05:53.14] I had that on my list, too. In the past – it’s not like we felt like you have to have a guest, but it’s definitely been the first thing you do with a subject, has been look for a guest that we can bring on. And part of that’s because we want to bring new people in to speak about subjects, and get lots of different, varying opinions. But it is kind of exciting to think about “How can we mix in a few episodes that are just panelists?”, whether it’s a fireside chat, or a game show, or something like this, where we just pick a topic and we’ll talk about it… I’m excited about those ones.

I think another one that I’d like to – if we can find ways to do it, it’d be fun to also do some more episodes that are more like debates, or like opposing views on something, to bring in two different people who have kind of opposite ends of the spectrum, and are viewing things from different ends, and see what things they agree on, which things they disagree on… Because somebody just reached out to me recently about one of those, and I think that’s one of those ones that it’s easy to think there’s one way to do stuff, but when you see two experts in the field, who have very differing views on something, it’s kind of enlightening to realize “Okay, it’s not just a binary, one way or the other type thing.” There’s lots of middle ground.

Yeah, that sounds like fun. I’m always up for having a debate, a little conversation of opposing viewpoints. And I feel like a bunch of episodes Johnny and I are on, a lot of them become slightly – not polar opposite views, but slightly different views of things… And I do you feel like that enhances things a little bit. Because there’s that habit of when – it’s like an echo chamber at some point, if everybody agrees on something, and it’s just kind of like “Oh, but what about the –” not necessarily the other side, but what about other perspectives? The writer in me is like “There’s more than two sides. There’s an infinite number of sides.” Everyone has their own perspective, and I’m like, let’s surface some more of that, for sure.

I also have this kind of miniseries idea, and I’d love to hear from you listeners about what you think about this… Because usually, when we do have guests on the show, they are experts on something, and there’s obviously us, and we’re not – we’re, I guess, experts in our own way… But I had this idea of having a little series; I don’t really know what to call it yet… Maybe Tales From the Hoard, or Tales of the Concurrency, depending on how – because you know, I think it was at GopherCon this past year that Russ Cox was like “We should call a collective noun for gophers a concurrency.” So I think that’s kind of catching on…

But the idea would be to have regular old listeners hop on the show with us, and kind of talk through what their experience with Go has been, and how they got started, what advice they might have for other people… Just as a way to get some other voices out here, not just the experts. I think it does help, because we’re not special people; we’re just regular people at the end of the day, and so are the experts we have on. And I think there is that barrier… Because when you’re a speaker, or when you host a podcast, all of a sudden it’s like “Oh, you’re super-special now.” It’s like, no, we’re just regular folks, and you too can be a regular folk on a podcast, or giving a talk, sort of thing. So yeah, if you think that’s a good idea, let us know, give us some feedback, in email, in Slack, and wherever.

I disagree with you, Kris. I think I am special. [laughter]

Okay, Johnny, you can be special.

Thank you.

We’ll allow that.

I’d say probably the main difference between us and somebody new on the show is how nervous they are. That’s probably the main difference.

Yeah. I still remember the first time I was on the podcast, it was as a guest… And I remember I was trying so hard to get my apartment as quiet as possible, so that my mic would sound good… But I didn’t even have a real mic, so I was just using my laptop mic… And it was a whole thing; I was just so nervous… And I kind of go back now and I hear the audio quality and I’m like “Good mics are an important part of this”, but it’s also like “I don’t think anybody really cares.” They just kind of want to hear what people have to say.

Oh, people do care about your audio. Your video can be crap. But your audio - it’s got to be good. [laughs] It’s gotta be good.

[01:10:10.28] I’m not saying you can have terrible audio, but if you don’t have –

We don’t want to chase guests off, Johnny…

If you don’t have an SM7B, or a really nice microphone, it’s okay. You can still come on and it’ll be fine. Our editors will do great work with the audio.

My microphone and software just shows up as “Microphone.” So… [laughter]

It’s just generic. It’s just a generic brand… [laughter]

I don’t think I sound terrible, though…

No, you sound good right now.

You sound good.

Yeah.

Probably because you don’t have your microphone backwards, like that one time… [laughter]

That did happen…

“Why does he sound so far away?” That’s because you have it upside down, Ian…

We were literally like “Ian, why…?” It was backwards. It wasn’t an upside down. So…

Same difference, right? [laughs]

Upside down might have been –

Sometimes the polar patterns on microphones are a little hard to ascertain. But yeah, so even us on the podcast, dear listeners, sometimes make goose. I’ve definitely – there was one episode, and I think it was a good episode too… There’s a clip of it on YouTube Shorts, or maybe it’s on TikTok, of me saying something real good, but I’ve accidentally selected the audio from my camera, instead of my microphone, in Riverside… So it just sounds like I’m in this cavernous room, and it just sounds so bad. Why didn’t anybody tell me that my audio was bad…?

[01:11:45.08]

And I guess now we’re back with me and Angelica. I assume there was some nice little audio thing, and then there’s a whole other segment, and now we’re back with us… But for us, no time has passed, because of the magic of recording and editing. But yeah, at the end of that, at the end of the present segment, you were talking about getting new gophers on, and that was actually one of the things that I was excited about for the new types of content. I in our first writers’ room pitched this idea of in general just doing more mini series, but one of the miniseries I want to do was just kind of - once again, I still don’t really know the name for it… Like “Tales From the Hoard”, or “Tales of the Concurrency”, or something like that, of like “Let’s get some regular gophers, not big name people, not us”, but someone who’s just like “I’ve been reading Go for a while. I don’t have a high profile”, and have them on to talk about, their experience with Go, what advice they would have for people in the community, and all that sort of stuff… And that feels like it aligns really well with what you were just talking about, with that whole idea of “Let’s get more voices. Let’s use this platform we have to kind of help elevate other people in whatever way we can.”

For sure. I think that’s awesome. I also think – I think this was in our first writers’ room that we chatted a little bit about this… For those of you who aren’t in the Gophers Slack, please, join Gophers Slack. I love Gophers Slack, because it’s just this random outbursts of “Oh, look at this cool project I did. Oh, have you read this article? Oh, have you done this thing? Oh, look at this! Has anyone ever thought about generating an image of a cow using Go?” It’s a wonderful, just rich, conversational oasis that I would love for us to pull from.

I think it’s similar to yours, it’s like “What’s happening in Go Slack? What’s the chit-chat in the community? What’s some random thing–” It’s almost like a – what’s that account? Like “Things I’ve heard on the streets of New York…” Like the randomest things. Maybe some sort of “Heard on Gophers Slack”, and then a discussion. But I think really pulling – we have such a rich community, and we do pull from the community a lot, but I think being more intentional and actually having, as you said, voices who are not the top known gophers; just regular day to day people who write Go, who are part of our community, and kind of elevating them I think will be awesome.

[01:14:24.09] I think the beauty of Go Time is that we can be at those many levels. We can have people who are just joining the Go community, we can also get the Russ Cox’es of the world on the podcast… I think the beauty is that we can bring all those different voices together, and I think we’re uniquely placed to do that on the podcast, and I’m excited to try and intentionally do that more.

Yeah, for sure. That should actually be like a fun little segment that we can have, of just like “Overheard on Gophers Slack.” It’s just like what interesting things have people been up to, have people have been saying. There’s some prime candidate channels for that, too. The Dark Arts channel is always fascinating, the types of things that people are trying to do. You’re like “Oh, that is some dark arts right there.”

Yeah.

Yeah, is there any content or any guests that you think we should bring back? I know you mentioned bringing back Luis Villa, which would be absolutely great. I’ve enjoyed so much the episodes that we did with him. Having that conversation with him was fantastic. But any other types of content – I mean, guests?

I mean, I’m on a mission to try and find uncommon uses of Go. Weird and wonderful ways that Go is being used. So I think I’d love to – and things that aren’t broadly applicable. Things that are like one-time use cases, like “I built an automated dinosaur that does X, Y, Z every time I open my desktop, and it’s built in Go.” For no apparent reason, but it’s just a bit fun.

On a more serious note - and I think I keep saying this, because you can tell, it’s the topic… I’ve spoken like a typical corporate girly… It’s ML and AI. I’m just excited to think through, in the writers’ rooms, how we can bring unique, interesting takes on this extremely impactful, awesome topic. Because there’s a lot of noise around ML and AI, there’s a lot of interesting conversations being had… But I really am excited to think through with the rest of the hosts in our writers’ room how we can bring interesting topics, interesting uses of AI and ML to the broader population, but also specific to Go. Like, thinking through how is Go playing into this space. Is Go ever going to be able to compete with some of these other languages when it comes to large language model writing, data processing required for these kinds of operations? Big question mark. And I think having those conversations - and I guess maybe unpopular opinion, but I don’t know whether we’re doing it on unpopular opinions… Like, I don’t know, how well Go is set up to operate in that world, effectively. And I really would to dig into that.

Yeah, I’m curious as to like – because you know, it’s easy to be hyper-fixated on what the hype cycle is currently occupied by… I’m interested of “Well, what happens when the hype cycle inevitably moves on?” Which I think everybody right now - because we’re in the hype cycle - is just like “The hype cycle is not going to move on.” But I don’t know, I’ve said this before; it’s been an unpopular opinion before. It’s just like, Bitcoin and cryptocurrency was also the huge hype cycle that everybody was talking about, and it’s now been replaced with AI. And before that – there’s always a hype cycle, and there’s always something.

[01:17:56.10] I think there’s a lot of interesting things that come out of the – like, once the hype cycle has moved on, you’re left with these technologies, of like “Well, what can you actually do with these technologies? What are interesting applications of them?” I think that’s happening now with blockchain and how people are thinking about blockchain in kind of new and novel ways. Or even the components or the concepts of a blockchain, irrespective of the implementation of it. And I think that AI as a space has the same sort of potential, where it’s like once we can actually really kind of get into the nuance of it… So I feel like that’s kind of what follows those big hype cycles, is the hype cycle is the lack of nuance, and that lack of nuance allows us to imagine literally anything. And people doomerize it, people are super-excited about it, but everybody is just like – there’s a whole lack of nuance around most of it. And then you start getting a lot of that nuance, and the hype comes down, and you start being like “Oh, these are the interesting places where this technology can actually go.”

And I think that Go as a language, it’s positioned in a special place, and I think it is – I mean, as the language of the cloud, I feel like it’s gonna play a role in all of this, but a different role, a complementary role. So I don’t think it’s gonna be the language you use to necessarily write large language models, or do the things that other languages are currently good for. But I think it’s going to be somewhere in there, probably playing a very foundational part. Kind of like with the cloud. Go is certainly not – you don’t have to write all of your services in Go. In fact, you might not even write Go in general, but most definitely, it’s all over the place in the cloud world, and in that whole thing. So I think there’s space.

But yeah, it’d be super-interesting to explore that on the podcast, and have people in… I think it was – I don’t remember who brought it up, but someone brought up the idea of not necessarily debate, but different viewpoint episodes, where you bring in people that have not necessarily opposing views, but differing views, and you have a conversation. I think that would also be interesting in this space, but also just in general for us as a Go podcast, because there’s a lot of things in Go where it’s like “I don’t know, the answer is it depends.” There’s two episodes basically of this on Changelog & Friends. There’s the “It dependencies”, and then there’s an “It depends” with me. So listeners, if you like that kind of “I don’t know, the answer is It Depends”, go over to Changelog & Friends and listen to that.

So there’s that… And the other thing that I’m excited about, slash subject to me bringing this up in our next writers’ room is the idea of Go Time as a learning tool. For those of you who don’t know me, and those of you who do, I am a massive advocate/I’m always thinking “Is this accessible for the newbie?” And when I mean the newbie, I don’t mean new to go, I mean like they have never written a line of code in their life newbie. They are learning Hello World newbie. Or they can just stand up a super-simple Hello World website with Go as the backend. And thinking through how, given that we’re more open to experimenting with like having video and audio, having audio that has a little bit more structure to it, as opposed to the more discussion-based that we do for most of our episodes, I’m excited to think through and really brainstorm with the group how and if it’s appropriate for us to have episodes like “Let’s talk through this basic concept. Learn with your Go Time hosts this new thing, this new concept.” Working off of some of our - again, shameless plug - wonderful hosts own work that they do in their lives; thinking about learning new concepts, exploring new concepts. There might be a host who has a very intriguing forum that you can check out to learn about things…

[01:21:56.22] [laughs]

Hint-hint, nudge-nudge, Kris…

Hint-hint, nudge-nudge…

Shall I go on…?

One day I will actually announce my exciting announcement, but today is not that day, so…

I know. Gotta keep these Go Time listeners on their toes. But no, that’s what I’m really interested in, is how can we use Go Time as a forum to teach and to learn? Is there a possibility for us to - I hate to say it, but is there a way for us to talk through code? Is there a way for us to think through a concept in a way that maybe we don’t need the visuals, but by making sure that we’re structured, we’re speaking slow…? It’s just something I’m playing with, that I think could be a really interesting, new avenue for Go Time to think through.

Yeah, I like that. I’m definitely excited. It gives me a lot of excitement for the future. We have all these great ideas… And I was talking with Jon, and Johnny, and Ian, there was so many other hilarious ideas in that same respect… I mean, the listeners would have just heard this, but there’s this whole idea of like “I don’t know, should we have like a Pimp My Code sort of thing?” Like you submit your code and we tell you how to fix it, and how to make it better, or what’s bad with it…

I like that.

There’s all sorts of fun ideas that we can at least try and see how they land. I’m, once again, super-excited that our new structure will actually be able to give us the ability to kind of take on some more risky content. Maybe we record an episode and it just doesn’t do well, or we don’t think it’s good enough to put out, so we’re like “Okay, well, we can scrap that episode and we’ll still be okay.’ That’s the type of freedom that I think as creative people we really need.

Alright, so with that, do you have anything else you want to say about the future of the podcast, or anything that you’re excited about?

The future of the podcast… The future of the podcast is bright, beautiful, and filled with butterflies and rainbows. I’m ready, I’m excited. It’s gonna be great. We have a ragtag group of wonderful hosts and gophers all coming together, and I’m excited for us to turn from a somewhat of a tapestry of ideas and episodes, each unique but individual, to somewhat more of a Picasso, all splattered together and merged into a beautiful mosaic of magic brilliance.

Wait, speaking of TikTok, one of the editors reached out to me late last year and said “Hey, do you want to get on TikTok so you can defend an unpopular opinion? People are saying stuff.” I’m like “TikTok? [laughs] I’m 44 years old, man… TikTok?”

[unintelligible 01:24:38.23]

I mean, hey, for those who are my age and older, and if you TikTok, that’s cool. That’s fine. No qualms about it. But it’s one of those things where I’m like “There’s a threshold.” That’s what I’m telling myself, like “There’s a threshold. At some point I have to stop trying to use things my kids are using, and stuff.” TikTok didn’t make the cut-off with me. So I’m like “Nah, let them talk.”

Do you think the threshold is age-based? Do you think it’s age-based, or the fact that you have kids and how old they are?

You know, that’s a good point. I think it might be because - probably because of my kids, I think…

Because I think if you didn’t have kids and you had more time, you might be like “Yeah, I’ll try that.”

Yeah the “If I had more time” part - that probably would have affected it as well. But yeah, the kids being on it probably is the – if my kids are finding something popular and they’re engaging with it, that tells me – I’ll check it out, because I’m a parent, I have to see what they’re consuming… But beyond that, I’m not going to start using it myself. To me, that’s the threshold; if they’re using it, if that’s something that my kids do, then that means it’s not for me. I’m not the demographic for it. I’m not the target audience.

There are some very old people on TikTok, Johnny.

[01:26:02.03] I’m sure there are. I’m sure there are. There will always be outliers, there will always be special cases. That’s fine. I recognize that. But I’m not one of those. I’m okay with that.

Although you are on TikTok, just not your own TikTok.

[unintelligible 01:26:12.10]

Changelog has posted – you know, I thought I was keeping a real low profile; I haven’t posted anything on TikTok or anything like that… And then I think someone pinged – yeah, Jason might have pinged me as well, being like “Hey this thing on TikTok…” I’m like “Wait, you have videos of me on TikTok? What do you mean [unintelligible 01:26:30.09] Oh, there’s a lot of videos with me talking on TikTok.

So to that point, Kris, I’ll say that there’s also a lot of people who update their computer every time that an update comes out… And I am definitely not one of them at this point. So it’s different people.

So you’re a security risk.

That’s exactly what I was thinking. [laughter] The SRE in me is like “Hm…”

I get them eventually… It’s more than major ones. Like, I’ll do all the small ones that are security updates. But when it’s like “Hey, go to this whole new version of the OS”, I’m like “I don’t know about doing that as an early adopter.”

Yeah, I mean… I did that a couple of weeks ago and I thought everything was fine, except for the part where macOS decided to eat up all the – or APFS decided to eat up all my disk space and not give it back and lose it, which I don’t know how it happens with a file system… But then I actually tried to get on an episode - I think it was the Kafka episode a couple of weeks ago - and nothing was working. And I was like “Oh, I upgraded my computer and everything broke.” It’s like “Ah, great…” So I feel like there are good reasons not to upgrade to the latest major OS.

Look, just buy a new machine. When the new OS comes out, just buy a new machine with that OS on it. Okay? That’s the upgrade cycle, alright? If it’s patches, you’re fine. Whereas if it’s a new OS version, just get a new machine. [laughs]

Johnny, have you seen the prices of Apple products?

Well, yeah. How much time have you spent trying to recover from an OS upgrade? I don’t know, that adds up, too. Just saying.

I mean, it does, but… [laughs] I guess if you’re trading them in, it could be a little bit better… Still, some of these Apple products… Alright, so back from that tangent. So yeah, I think we’re kind of at the end here. So we’ve talked about the past, and we’ve talked about the present, we’ve talked about the future… Is there anything else in these areas we want to talk about? Any new segment ideas?

[unintelligible 01:28:27.14]

Like the universe where you were on the original Go Time, and you’ve been doing it for eight years straight?

Oh…! Oh, you had to put your finger in it. [laughter]

Well, you brought it up…

Alright, I know what my unpopular opinion is gonna be… [laughter]

I mean, it’s more and more sounding like we’re going to have a – once every quarter we’re gonna have a roast episode or something… Because I feel we’re very heavily going down that path…

Ooh…! Oh, I’m up for that.

I just feel like it could be taken very poorly.

The Roast of the Gophers…

Gopher Roast…

Especially if it’s like “We’re gonna roast these open source libraries”, or something. Meant to be in fun, but I could see it coming very badly…

Oh, that will get you canceled, Jon.

I know. [unintelligible 01:29:17.07]

That sounds like so much fun, but no…

No, it has to be people that we know better…

Volunteers.

Yeah. Like, send us your library, so we can roast it.

Oh, that’s a great idea. Listen, listen, listen, we should definitely put that on Twitter, TikTok, and wherever else that kids are on these days… Ask them “Hey, would you be up for sending us your library, so we can roast it?” And we can literally go through them, like “Look at this idiot. Not capturing the shadowed variable right there. Firing off goroutines with the same value for this variable…” Just go through and just completely demoralize somebody… [laughs] Just for the record, I’m not saying we do that. I’m just saying, in an alternate universe, since that’s what we’re talking about, and the alternate universe, we could totally tear down somebody else’s code… In order to learn from it, obviously, right? Not just to be mean.

[01:30:22.17] Yeah… It’d be like those shows you have, where you’re like “Okay, we’re gonna rip the thing apart so you can grown.”

So you can learn. Yeah. So you can grow from it.

Yeah, so you can get better.

I’ve always wanted to see a video or a show where people do those take-home interviews, and then roast each other… [laughter] I don’t know, I feel like you learn a lot from that.

Oh, man…

These are some ideas…

Not necessarily good ones, but… [laughter]

They are fun; I don’t know if they are good.

They’re dangerous in the sense that you have to have the right person, with the right tone and personality to pull it off. Otherwise, it just comes across as very mean.

Right, right.

Yeah. Don’t do this in text in a pull request. [laughter]

Yeah, sarcasm really doesn’t translate well in text, you know? It really, really, really doesn’t help.

Yeah, that’s… So yeah, listeners though, if you’re liking these ideas, let us know. Or if you want to volunteer your own library to get roasted in good fun.

Suggest a show. Put your library in there and we’ll let you know if it’s roast-worthy.

“Rate my library”, you know…

Yeah. Or Pimp My Lib. Yo…! [laughter] We’re gonna have Xzibit come on the show…

What would that even look like?

…just help us pimp a lib, you know what I mean? [laughs]

Are we gonna take an application with 10 users, and we’re gonna be like – we’re gonna scale it up to 20 servers, and do all these random things with it? [laughter]

Sprinkle some goroutines wherever we can… You know? “Yeah, this could work…”

Some goroutines here, some channels there… Some overuse of reflection and generics over there…

Yeah, man… Yeah, yeah.

These sound like they could be interesting hybrid game shows… Just a little bit of fun. Alright, alright, so before we move on to unpopular opinions, assuming – I mean, Johnny already said he has one, so we’re good to go. Assuming that we’re gonna go into unpopular opinions, any last words about Go Time, multiple choices, or our futures out there? Any closing words, closing thoughts?

We need sponsors. Step up. Or get your employer to step up. Wherever you can go to that has cash, that has money, tell them we need some of it.

Yeah, that’s true. We do need sponsors. Or other ideas for financially supporting the show. Alright, and with that, then we’ll go to Unpopular Opinions.

Jingle: [01:33:27.14]

There was something I was thinking about today… It’s kind of hot off the presses unpopular opinion… But I think that we need to retire a lot of the words that we use, and come up with some new ones. Because I feel like the ones we have have just gained so much cruft around them. I think good candidates for this are words like API, in the distributed systems world things like CAP, or consistency… Not saying that we should jettison these ideas; the ideas are good, but I think they’ve evolved to the point where the word we used to use to describe the thing describes too many things. So we need new words to replace those things and kind of individually identify what the thing we’re trying to talk about is.

In the world of distributed systems, talking about convergence instead of consistency. Because I think when people hear consistency, they think of a whole bunch of different things, and they get confused. But I think convergence is kind of more clear what you’re talking about, and gives us new space to kind of redefine those things. Or with CAP, instead of trying to beat CAP, thinking about kind of the wider purview of distributed systems. And with APIs - well, the whole API landscape is just so…

API is such a vague one though…

I was saying about this today, because I’ve been reading – I’ve finally finished reading through the REST dissertation, and reading the Hypermedia Systems book… I’m reading a whole bunch of stuff, and I’m just like “Man, our use of the word API is just…” It’s like, everything’s an API. What isn’t an API? Everything’s become such an – it’s like, this word doesn’t mean anything anymore. We need to retire them and get some new ones. Also, that frontend/backend, we need to jettison that nonsense as well.

Oh… What? What do you call the frontend and the backend?

Well, I think we should jettison the words, because I think that – and this is probably another unpopular opinion… But I think that before - and a lot of this is informed from the REST dissertation… But before, frontend and backend was in this same trust domain. So it was like, you’re writing frontend, but it’s within the same codebase and within the same kind of server process as the backend. So if you think like Rails, or you think of any of the PHP frameworks, you’re writing frontend code; you’re writing HTML and CSS and JavaScript, but you’re in the same trust domain of the server. You’re not like an external entity calling an API to just grab some stuff. But now, with the way that we’ve changed things, we have React and all these frontend frameworks - they exist not in the same trust boundary, not in the same organizational boundary as the backend, or as the server is. So you can’t necessarily trust – like, it was fine before to make an SQL query from “frontend”. You probably shouldn’t, for a variety of reasons, but it’s not a dangerous thing necessarily to do. But if you were like “Oh, I’m gonna make an SQL query for my React application”, people will be like “What are you doing that’s not okay?” And the reason it’s not okay is because you’re in a different trust domain now.

So I think the thing that we’re doing has shifted, but we haven’t shifted our language. So we have to kind of recognize that it’s like “Oh, we have these kind of applications that are using our servers, but it’s not necessarily frontend/backend in the same way anymore.” Because I think there’s now multiple applications too, so it’s better to think about it as – one of my friends put up the word “application engineering”, and thinking about the applications and the different applications you have.

Also, I think it doesn’t really help when we have microservices, which also have the same kind of trust domain issue, where it’s like they actually exist in a different trust domain. That’s the point of microservices. So I think backend kind of clumps all of those things together, when it’s like actually, there’s a whole variety of stuff happening back there. And the same issue with frontend.

So I think we need some new words… The stack that we started with back in the days, back when we had the LAMPStack, and all of that - that’s not what the world looks anymore. We have a very different-looking world, so we should get some new words, some new terms that better describe what we have, and give us the right kind of view of the system in our mind. So I think when we say backend/frontend, I think it’s really easy to think “Oh, these two things are two pieces of the same system, and we should think about them as part of the same organizational zone and trust zone, and all of that”, and it’s really not.

[01:38:00.01] So I’ll challenge that notion by saying that I don’t think we need new terminology for old things. I think we need new terminology for new things. But for older things that have become ambiguous, you need to disambiguate with context. So when you tell me frontend, you’re not telling me it’s the frontend to the different services, a.k.a. a load balancer. You’re telling me it’s the user interface frontend. So rather than confusing me and talking about frontend within this context of a purely backend services kind of thing, whereby you’re expecting me to understand that you mean “Oh, you mean the frontend, the thing that fronts the services? You mean the load balancer?” No. Give me the context and say “Hey, no, no, no. I’m talking about the user interface. The thing that the user is going to interact with.”

So there’s already words… We’re the ones screwing up the whole nomenclature. There’s already words to describe what it is that we want to describe, we’re just overloading those terms. So when somebody tells me a frontend to the servers, I’m like “That’s a little confusing. Can you just call it the load balancer, please?” Or something like that.

So I don’t mind – depending on who I’m talking to and the context, I can sort of bring the clarification so that we’re all on the same page by basically saying “Hey, can we use this terminology instead? That way everybody who doesn’t have all the context for this thing understands what it is that we’re talking about when we relate this thing outside of this organization?” Just use the appropriate term. So I don’t want to bring up yet new terminology for the same old things.

But I think that’s kind of like my – new terms are not to be newly created words, but just better ways of describing the things; new ways of describing the things that we [unintelligible 01:39:43.03] Basically what you’re saying, where it’s like “Okay, you said the word frontend… What do you mean? What frontend? In what context, in what way?” So we want the more specific… I guess the way to put it would be we need more specific words than what we generally use, and I think that’s just a – it’s just a factor of time, really. Yeah, I think it made sense for a long time to call it frontend and backend. I think there was a very long tail, where those terms were very clear about what you were talking about. But I think somewhere along that line, somewhere in the last 10 years we’ve moved away from that, where now it’s like the frontend and backend don’t necessarily describe things as well as they did… And there’s a whole bunch of people that don’t want to identify as a frontend or backend person. They say “I want to be an engineer” or “I want to be this specific thing. I want to be that specific thing.”

So I think we need a broader set of terms to use to add that nuance. Because yeah, as I said about consistency. I don’t think we should get rid of the word consistency, or the underlying concept. I think we need to do a little rearranging of the words that we associate with concepts, so we have an easier way to disambiguate things without trying to [unintelligible 01:40:50.12] and describe what we’re saying with other messy words.

And then we will immediately overload those words and we’ll be in the same spot.

Yes, that’s how language works, Ian. [laughter] I mean, this is not like “I think we should come up with new words and then we’re done.” No, this is what it looks like to evolve language. It’s like, you make new words, those words, – or you reuse old words, then you kind of evolve them, and then those words get overloaded, so you make new words… So that’s the nature, especially with an industry that’s evolving, like ours. I just think we haven’t been doing that, so we’re just kind of stuck. We’re overloading too many of the old words. I mean, that’s how API got to be where it is. API used to be something I’m programming against, it used to be this very specific library sort of thing, and now it’s just kind of like “Oh, no, it’s anything that vaguely looks like you’re programming against it is –” I think it’s gotten to this kind of literal sense of the word. So…

[01:41:51.24] I’m sure part of that is that people are communicating via text messages, like Twitter or stuff that far more often, so you have less room to write as much as you’d want to for context, necessarily. Twitter’s an example; if you’re trying to write a JSON Web API or something, versus just API. Well, that’s a good way to save 8-10 characters, so it’s like “Alright, I’m gonna go ahead and just write API.”

I also think as you get new people in, those people don’t necessarily learn about the history. I think this is related to my unpopular opinion from the Kafka episode, is that as you get new people in, those people don’t learn the history, so they don’t understand the things, especially the things where like those things are bad. So sometimes people don’t understand why those things are bad, and they wind up reinventing them, or whatever.

I think there’s this whole renaissance of server-side rendering, and I think most of us that were around in the early 2010s, or in the late oughts or mid-oughts are like “You mean all of the frameworks we had? Like Rails, and Drupal, and basically anything with PHP or – any of these things, you’re just rendering everything on the server? I mean, we’re doing that again?” “Oh, I guess so. Yeah.” It’s like we have a – I don’t know if it’s a… I just don’t remember us calling it server-side rendering back then. But that’s a new term that we have, that’s…

I agree with you that we didn’t really need a term for it, because it was just – that was the way it was. It was like a dynamic page versus a static page was kind of the real differentiator. Whereas now, if you say dynamic page, nobody really knows if that’s a JavaScript page that’s rendered in the browser, or if it’s something that’s done on the server, but either one can be dynamic.

This sounds like it could be a whole episode.

I’m not sure that would make my favorites, so…

[laughs] Tell us how you feel, Ian.

Once again, we really like going down that road [unintelligible 01:43:39.24]

My bad, my bad. I’ll try to lighten it up.

It’s okay, I kind of roasted you earlier with that microphone comment, so… [laughter]

It’s all in good fun. It’s all in good fun.

Alright, so my unpopular opinion is the handle in your toaster, when you put bread in your toaster to toast it, when you push that down - that’s your application programming interface. That’s your API. [laughs] For the same reason; your steering wheel - that’s your API for your car. No?

I see it. I see it.

So for reasons that would be like a whole series, I actually agree with you, Johnny… Because I have this whole thing that I’m developing that I’m starting to write about, of what is computing, and where does computing exist. So yeah, no, those are interfaces that people use to interact with their – I don’t know if programming is the way we necessarily think about it. That’s kind of borrowing terminology from digital computers and applying them to non-digital computers… But yeah, it serves the same purpose.

I mean, you get behind the wheel of a modern electric vehicle these days… I mean, everything is through that damn dash, the damn iPad in the middle of the screen. You’re basically programming the thing. [laughs]

I mean, for the last many, many, many years, most cars are just like a giant computer on wheels; or many computers on wheels. It’s a big old distributed system on wheels. But I think I agree with that, Johnny. I think that is – it’s a form of application programming interface.

Well, the people will decide, as they always do.

Yes. And hopefully, it will be unpopular problems.

[unintelligible 01:45:22.06]

My unpopular opinion - and please edit this out if you think it’s going to be too much for an unpopular opinion - is that we should rerecord the Unpopular Opinion chime, to include newer, fresher voices.

Oh…

For those who can’t see me, I’m avidly raising my eyebrows…

[laughs] So your unpopular opinion is that our unpopular opinion music is too old, and we need some fresh beats.

Yeah. I mean, I’m happy to directly quote Mat Ryer’s lines in my accent. “I think you should leave now…” You know, we’ll up the posh…

[01:46:09.26] Yeah. Yeah.

[laughs] I’ll leave it to the editors to decide whether that will stay in…

I mean, it’s an interesting unpopular opinion. I am curious to see if our audience would like some new jingles.

Yeah, new jingles. That’s the unpopular opinion. I think we have a wonderful array of new hosts, we have a wonderful array of new voices, and creative individuals… Why not upgrade all our jingles to reflect the new generation of Go Time voices?

Yeah, get some Breakmaster Cylinder in there as well…

Yeah. Let’s get some of Johnny’s dad jokes in there… That would be awesome. If we could get one of Johnny’s pure top-tier dad jokes from the Johnny cupboard of dad jokes… Boom. Gold right there.

Okay, yeah.

And a ukulele in there…

Yeah. Alright, well…

From your reaction, I think it’s a good unpopular opinion… [laughs]

No, it is. It’s a good popular opinion. I don’t know if this will be unpopular. I think people love the current jingle…

This is why I think it’s unpopular.

Yeah… But a new jingle. I don’t know, we’ll see. I mean, as per usual, we’ll go out there, poll our wonderful audience, and…

Just had an idea… We should get the theme tune - this should have been my unpopular opinion - from the 300 movie. Epic soundtrack!

You know what’s funny, is in the recording - which you’ll hear if you listen to this episode back - is that when we were in the very early parts of the episode, Johnny was like “Oh, the title of this episode should be “This is Sparta!” And the other three of us were just quiet… And then Johnny was like “Come on…!” And then I reminded Johnny that that movie came out in 2006, and it is nearly 20 years old. So… [laughs]

But the music… “This… Is… GOPHER!” [laughter]

It could be interesting. Maybe get some nice BMC remixes of some sort. I mean, because you know, that video game music is fire. Hearing some of those BMC tunes on the other podcast… Yeah.

[unintelligible 01:48:36.22] is a word my younger sister just taught me.

Alright, so since we have no more unpopular opinions, I think that’s it. So yeah, this was a great episode. Number 300. I think our listeners definitely have multiple, choices, multiple things they can talk to us about and give us some feedback on…

I think we should name the episode “This is Sparta”, and have people pick up the reference. I’m just saying…

Absolutely. [laughter]

[unintelligible 01:49:09.23]

The Sparta episode.

I mean, Johnny put it in there, so now it’s up to the editors to decide…

I know, right?

Just start the episode with “This is SPARTA!” Oh, goodness… And so with that, unless there is anything else that y’all want to say, I think that’s it. So thank you, Johnny and Jon and Ian, for joining me on this great episode number 300. What a milestone. And here’s to the next 300 episodes. And as always, thank you, dear listener, for giving us some of your time, and for listening to us. Tune in next week, it’s gonna be a good one. So yeah, with that, see y’all later.