State of the "log" 2023

We are here, it is time once again, already, for State of the ’log, our sixth annual tradition of looking back at the year and reminiscing on the good, the bad, and the ugly.

Most of the good, . No ugly… Not much ugly.

Yeah, pretty much the good. We avoid the bad and the ugly as much as we can. [laughter]

No uglies.

No uglies, please. This has become –

Six years though, Jerod…

…kind of a cool thing. Yeah, I mean, when we started State of the ‘log, what were you thinking? Were you thinking this would be xix years in the making? I can’t think back that far…

Well, we’re 15-deep this year. This is our 15th year of doing anything. You haven’t been here for all 15 years, but it’s been 15 years. I think you’ve been here for at least a decade of them, right?

Ten or eleven of those, yeah.

This is a decade for you this year.

2013 is when I got involved, so yes.

Yeah, a decade. So you were here for 10 of the 15. We’ve been doing this for six of the 10 you’ve been a part of it… So I would say, realistically, it’s the – because there’s layers to this show over the years, right? It hasn’t been the same show for all those 15 years. We’ve been a thing, and doing this thing since then, but it’s been variations over the years. And I think that – I don’t know what we were thinking to make it this long anyways. I mean, how long do you do something like this, I suppose? But I’ll tell you what probably gets you and probably gets me, is when we go out into the world and we meet the people, and we get voicemails, like we got, that we’re gonna share here on this podcast, and they just remind you why you keep showing up and why you keep doing what you do.

Yeah. It’s a strange feeling to send an mp3 into the world, and just know, I guess, by intellectual ascent and the ability to count server requests to an mp3 file, we know that people’s phones and computers are downloading these things… But you don’t really think that people are listening to you, hear a voice, or see a face, and get an email… And that’s always really cool, so this has become a bit of a tradition of ours.

I think I remember the very first State of the ‘log, it was really just us two trying to find out if the two of us could just do a show together, just the two of us… Because we were really concerned that you and I just couldn’t carry a whole episode. Like, we always had to have a guest.

Right. So dependent.

And then we were like “Let’s just hit Record and start talking, and see if we can do a show.” And I think that was our first State of the ‘log. I’m actually afraid to go back to listen to that now… But that’s how I’ve always been with past content created. Every once in a while you go back and you’re like “Hm. Not bad.” But other times you go back and you’re like “Oh… Ugly.”

Like episode one, that somebody uncovered recently, of this podcast, by going somehow through their podcast client and finding it… I was like “Ah, yeah… I can’t listen to that.” The old days of podcasting.

Well, it’s a really easy URL hack, because we love good URLs around here. Changelog.fm/1. I mean, it’s hard to hide it.

That’s right.

Do you want to hear our second episode ever? /2. And so on and so forth. [laughs] So this episode is going to be cool. In 2021 - actually, it came by way of JS Party. I think we did JS Party’s 200th episode, Best of the Fest, and I asked to have some people call in and leave us voicemails, or text messages… And we had a good response. It was just really cool hearing from listeners on that show. And so we pulled that over shortly thereafter, a month later, like “Let’s do that for State of the ’log.” And we got a few in our first year. I think there was four listener call-ins on State of the ’log ‘21… But enough to make a cool thing out of it. And so we did it again last year… I think we got eight call-ins last year. And we’re back with some more, we’ve got 11.

[00:04:48.27]

Jerod here in post. It turns out we ended up with 12 submissions. One came in after the bell rang. You’ll hear that one at the end.

So we’re trending upward on listener voicemails, which means I guess we’re doing something right. Our listeners are becoming more comfortable and bold interacting with us, which is super-cool. And we always offer a little bit of a carrot on a stick, which is a free T-shirt. Many of our listeners, especially our Plus Plus members, already have our swag… But nonetheless, that usually helps out. This year it’s even specialer… So thanks to a great idea coming out of our community - Mary Hightower had a great idea in our community Slack. When I posted the request for listener voicemails in our Slack - by the way, Changelog.com/community, totally free. Come hang out with 7,000 other smart, good-looking, curious technologists, who are nice to each other…

That’s right.

[00:05:47.18] And generally quiet, which is nice. When I put the call out in that Slack for people to leave us voicemails, Ricky de la Vega said “Wait, the entire episode isn’t just going to be soundbites from the Breakmaster Cylinder episode?” [Heckings yeah, I said to myself] So Ricky really enjoyed that BMC episode. And I said “Was it that good?” And then Breakmaster chimed in [I threw my fist in the air] and said “Oh, it was that good!” And then Mary Hightower, brilliantly, says “What if Breakmaster Cylinder drops a beat for each listener voicemail?” to which BMC said [Oh, cool.] “I got beats.” [I like making music, so of course]

So BMC got busy, we sent over these voicemails… And I think you’re gonna like this better than a T-shirt. Having your own voice remixed into your own custom beat. So we are going to play some voicemails, we’re gonna play some remixes… We hope you enjoy them as we go. Anything to add, Adam, before we pop into the first listener call?

I would just say I love the serendipitous nature, I suppose, of all that you just recanted about… I think it’s really interesting that – I’ll say that that’s one of my favorites; I want to jump the gun a little bit and say that BMC episode on Friends is on my list of favorites… What a treat, really. What a treat. I love working with Breakmaster on all things, of course… But then Mary and others just hopping in and saying “What about these voicemails to beats?” That’s super-cool. I just love just the naturalness, I suppose; everybody’s feeling what we’re feeling with these beats, you know? They’re good.

Yeah, totally. We’ll hear about some of that on the calls. I think that’s the cool thing about having a community and not simply a podcast, is that it’s collaborative, and people can get involved, and make the shows better than they would be otherwise… This is why, for years and years, we’ve taken listener requests, and really do do a lot of episodes just because somebody asks us to. And we do also have to think it’s kind of a good idea, so there’s a lot of requests that don’t go fulfilled… But I was looking at our requests log just the other day, just on Changelog Interviews. So forget all of our other shows who also take requests; just on Changelog Interviews. And we’ve done 24 episodes, at least that we’ve even given the credit to. Sometimes you just get an idea and it’s not coming through that specific web form… But for years we did them on GitHub as well. So this is like since we’ve had the official forum. 24 episodes that were like literally just because somebody asked… And I love that, because - that’s how I say it, “At least one person likes it.” Hopefully, everybody else does, too. But that’s just the beauty of a community, where you can create stuff that I would never would have thought of; you never would have thought of it. Somebody else thought of it, it was a great idea, it was an excellent guest, and something cool can come out of it. So hopefully this episode is even better than it would have been. I’m pretty sure it’s going to be.

Yeah.

Thanks to Mary, thanks to Ricky, thanks to BMC. Alright, let’s kick into it. Here is our first listener call from Arthur Maltson.

Super cool, Arthur. So the Wynn Netherland days. Wow…

Bro…

That’s going back.

That’s going back.

Like episode one kind of stuff.

I can remember those days… But just barely, really. Like anything when you look back, you always look back fondly, right? There was the fond moments of those days. You never looked back thinking “Oh man, that sucked”, no matter how bad or good it was, really. I guess if it was the worst thing ever, then you may be thinking back negatively.

Man… Good stuff in there. So I mentioned the pre-call, some notes about Founders Talk, and here we are, first caller in is talking about…

Founders Talk.

…a Founders Talk crossover.

DX on DX was a Founders Talk one-on-one with you and Abi Noda.

That’s right. Yeah. And I think we had a break, for some reason, in the schedule, and I had just recorded it, and I was like “If we need a filler, I can cross this over”, I think is what it was. I was like “This would apply to both audiences equally as good.” Not as if Founders Talk is in some sort of way a filler or anything, but yeah, I just treated that call like – I was even curious, what does DX even do? Like, how are you just a survey company, basically?

The business. So DX - not the acronym, which stands for developer experience. But there’s also a DX the company…

Which we had trouble defining in the call, too. DX versus DX. And that’s why I was like “DX on DX”, because it was like DX the company on developer experience. And I was just like “Abi, how in the world did you build a company out of just throwing out surveys, basically?” He’s like “Man, there’s a science to it.” I’m paraphrasing all the episode, of course, but… That was the fun ,part digging into the science, digging into the – and there’s people with Ph.D’s in this stuff. Intense, intense stuff.

Sure.

Diminishing returns, probably…

Temporary increases, long-term no gains, yes…

So yeah, that’s a great one. That was definitely over the summer, we had Justin Searls and Landon Gray on Changelog & Friends, “An aberrant generation of programmers.” That was certainly, I think, our most downloaded episode. I actually didn’t do as much popularity stuff, because we have so many listener calls, and we have our own favorites as well. I’m not sure we’re gonna get to that… But just in terms of Friends, and maybe everything - like, that was just an aberrant episode, I told Justin… Because he was on It Dependencies recently with me, and he was apologizing that it didn’t do the same numbers. Because all of our numbers are public, if you want to go find out our downloads… And so Justin is the kind of guy who’s gonna look at that kind of stuff, and he’s like “Sorry, I didn’t do as well as last time.” I’m like “No, your episode last time was just an outlier. We don’t expect that.” So that was kind of funny.

But yeah, lots of people engaged with that episode, because it’s somewhat controversial. It’s also kind of gray… I mean, it’s not like X’s and O’s. There’s a lot of feelings involved, there’s a lot of generalization, stereotypes, and like trying to cut through that… Just a really fascinating discussion, I think.

For sure.

And a blog post that already had gone viral. So it made sense that people were going to listen to the conversation as well. I certainly enjoyed his perspective, and Landon’s perspective, even though we really were putting him on the spot, and I felt bad at times, making him represent younger people writ-large.

I’m glad you mentioned that, because I feel like – to just set some stage here, Jerod and I don’t do pre-calls for these podcasts. We really go in, on purpose, blind. Because if you’ve rehearsed, it’s kind of boring as a host, right?

We find if you have a pre-call with a guest, you’ll end up doing the interview in the pre-call. And it’s kind of just like “Well, we should be recording this.”

[00:17:55.18] Right. The best part was actually the pre-call, you know?

Right.

All the live reaction. I mean, that’s what you want anyways, is the honest, authentic reaction to whatever the subject matter is. And so to set some stage a little bit - and not to go on too long, but we hadn’t met Landon, of course. We knew Justin from before, so we kind of knew his position, and we have some experience with Justin and his writing and who he is and how he represents himself. And we assumed some things about Landon, and then we didn’t know all of his history, so we had to learn about him through the podcast. And obviously, as polite human beings, we didn’t want to assume certain things just because of his age either. And so we had to learn a lot about his position about the subject. How it is, like as the old [unintelligible 00:18:34.19] person, versus the new person, and the troubles it is to come up as a junior to senior, or just somebody who’s fresh in the game of software development. So that’s challenging, I would say, to be in. It’s a challenging to be in, not knowing, and podcasting about it.

For sure.

And it’s listened to 45,000 times, at least based upon what our stats say, plus probably some in Spotify, some in Apple that we can’t track, that’s outside that number… But yeah, I mean –

A lot of pressure on the young guy. I thought he did a really good job. He definitely has settled down as it went on, as people tend to do. One of the things that we lament about a lot around these parts is that the second half of our shows is often better than the first half, and it’s just the way humans work… Even with people that we know, sometimes; it’s just, you settle down eventually, and it just starts to get in the groove… So that definitely happened on that episode. If you go back to the second half, there’s some really good stuff in there, just fascinating. So… Listen to the first half too, it’s good, but I’m always like “Gosh, can we just do a Tarantino and put the second half in the beginning?”, and then be some sort of weird sound and go back in time, and get the first half, if you want it… Alright, well, the reason why I put Arthur’s first because this is very –

Well, I want to mention one thing before we go on. You’re gonna love this. This is a nugget, okay?

Okay.

The best part of the Abi Noda episode was - and going back to favorites - was Standard Out.

Yes.

Abi Noda’s brother is Standard Out. You knew this. I mean, I don’t think you knew this until I told you, but –

I do know this. This was a Plus Plus bonus.

Yes.

I knew this once you told me. I knew that his brother was in tech, because he told me the story… So this is Standard Out, the rapper. We’ve done a special on him… One of my favorite episodes of all time; just really cool. The guy raps about programming. I mean, talk about one of a kind…

Well.

Yeah, really well. And in that interview I found out that his brother was the reason he got into rapping online, because he wanted a viral programmer rap for a startup he was doing.

That’s right.

But I never knew who his brother was. And then later on –

Panda, the company that he started, that GitHub acquired, that he then left GitHub to then found DX.

Exactly.

That’s what I just love about – that’s why we stay in the game, Jerod. These are the reasons why we stay in the game, man…

[laughs] So much talent in that family.

Right?

Yeah, pretty cool.

So I wanted to mention that. So if you’re a Plus Plus subscriber, go back to episode 551, if you haven’t already, and listen to the little special at the end there, that’s just for our Plus Plus subscribers. By the way, it is better, Changelog++.

It is. Alright, Arthur, so here is your personal, as a thank you, from us and BMC… And this is why you went first, because this is really kind of an introductory beat. Here we go, BMC remix of Arthur’s message.

[00:21:27.00]

[laughs]

The ending is the best.

I love it. It really struck a cord.

Oh, my gosh… I’m not sure if I should say awesome work to BMC, or Arthur. I’m not really – I mean both, I guess… Right?

That’s the beauty of a collab, man.

Equally…

They’re better together.

That’s right. Alright, let’s get the next one. Here comes Hal. Of course, we always ask for pronunciation help… And Hal says it’s Hal, like Hal 9000. Thanks, Hal.

[00:22:19.28]

Nailed it.

Pretty good, Hal… Pretty good.

You’re why we show up, Hal… Gosh.

[laughs] Well, I definitely had Cameron Seay in my list of favorites…

Oh, man…

Did it make your list, Adam?

You know what? I’m glad – so we do so many, we forget which year they’re in, and so it did not make my list… But it’s now going to my list, because… I agree, and I’m so sad we didn’t get to see Cameron when we were at All Things Open. He was there, he lives, I guess, in the area, and we just couldn’t meet up… But Cameron was – wasn’t this a recommendation, too? This was a recommend from the previous year of All Things Open, right?

Yes. At All Things Open 2022 a woman walked up to me and said “Do you ever talk about mainframes on your podcasts?” And I said, “No, we do not.” And she said “You have to.” And I said “Oh, I do?” And she was very emphatic. “Yes, you have to.” I said, “Okay, we’ll consider it. But we don’t know anybody who does mainframes. Who do we talk to?” And she goes “I know exactly who you should talk to.” And I said, “Alright, hook me up.” And she went out and made a connection, I think it was a LinkedIn thing, and she gave me Cameron Seay. And it turns out she had been a student of his; long story short, we were skeptical about the episode as well. Like, it doesn’t sound very interesting… Until we met Cameron, and then we’re like “Holy cow. This guy is an all-star.”

He’s legit.

Yeah, he’s so awesome.

[00:24:53.18]

[00:25:55.15] A very amazing human being, from the start… And then also very talented with what he knows, and how he approaches what seemingly is not a big thing, but still is a big thing. And even the way he teaches; I mean, there’s just – teachers are not just those who teach in grade school, and middle school, and high school. We have teachers of all types. And man, it just takes so much to be a good teacher; to be a good coach, to be a good teacher… Jerod, you know this, you’re a coach for your kids’ teams and whatnot, and I am as well… And it’s just so much effort to teach. I mean, maybe it’s easier for some, maybe it’s easier for you, but it takes a lot, to teach, or to coach, or to lead… And I think Cameron is the kind of person that just does it, seemingly, just easy. It just seems like it’s his natural state. Right?

It seems like that. I think his passion and enthusiasm is natural. I think that he’s also older. And so he’s been teaching for many, many, many years. And I do know, now that I’ve been coaching for five plus years, maybe seven years, I’m better at it now than I was when I first started, just because I do have that experience. And so I hope to get better and better every year as I coach. And I’m sure he’s just – he’s honed in, he’s figured out how to communicate things in ways that it connects with people… And he was just fascinating and so full of joy and enthusiasm that it was just contagious. Like, I wanted to go learn some COBOL after that. I didn’t, but I wanted to. [laughter]

Yeah. But they are still a big thing, apparently.

And I wish to get him back. I think we can talk about other stuff with him as well, especially around education; that would be worthwhile. And he’s definitely willing to come back on the show. So look out for our Cameron Seay be-back, as Adam likes to call them, in 2024.

Yeah. Well, I’ve got sales routes, and in sales you always say be-back. Will the be-backs be back? Maybe, maybe not.

[unintelligible 00:27:44.29]

Well, when you walk away and you’re not being sold to, you say “I’ll be back.”

Well, I know like Arnold Schwarzenegger, yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

“I’ll be back…”

Be-back. But “Rebuilding DevOps from the ground-up”, I would say, was a fun episode because we had obviously seen Adam in stealth mode with System Initiative, and had been fans of his over the years, and talked to him… And I would now call Adam Jacobs a friend. So I think that that was fun because it came out stealth mode. It was like “It’s here. Let’s talk about the thing Adam had been working on for a couple years.” And we even asked him - I asked him - on that episode “Do you regret stealth mode?” and he’s like “Kind of…” I’m paraphrasing… But kind of. You should go back and listen to that.

Yeah, that’s an example of a show, because we’ve known Adam so well, that you don’t have to wait till the second half for it to get real good. Like, he just hops right in.

Yes, it’s hot right from the start.

It’s hot right from the start. Alright, Hal, thanks again. Here is your BMC remix.

[00:28:51.27]

[laughs]

BMC must have recorded that outside in New York City, or something.

Stopping traffic.

A lot of cars honking. The pain of finding a good name… Should we stop and hover there? Just do that right now? Let’s just do it right now. I mean…

Oh, gosh… Do you want to go there?

Let’s go there.

Okay…

The pain of finding a good name. So some of you know, like Hal, that we do sweat the details… And one detail that we have to sweat on a recurring basis is “What are we going to call this stinkin’ episode?” And sometimes it’s just natural. Sometimes we have the name before anything else. We’re like “Here’s a good name. Let’s make an episode about it.” Other times we have no name, and the show needs to go out, and then we’re just like grinding together to find – that didn’t sound right. Grinding names out in order to get this show shipped.

[00:29:54.26] And it’s like the last thing too, so it’s the thing that’s like holding everything up.

It holds it all up. And we’ve talked about this in the past… Here we are again. That’s how he knows about it. We thought we would real quickly, you know, celebrate, not just good episodes, but let’s talk about the best titles of the year, according to yours truly, and Adams truly… So we’ve both made our quick lists of what we thought were our best titles of the year. This should be brief. Do you want to go first?

I have 11…

Oh, gosh… [laughter] I’ll just let you go then, and I’ll just see if any of mine are left.

I’ll go over them just really quickly. I won’t dredge it on, but… I couldn’t help it. Okay, okay. From the top.

Okay.

“Git with your friends.” Obviously, right?

It’s a good one. Wait, are these in the order of your preference?

No, I [unintelligible 00:30:52.12] them. This is just a list.

Just asking. Good. Okay.

Just a list.

No particular order.

Along the way I could say yay or nay on high or low… It gets challenging to kind of –

Just call out your absolute. Maybe give like absolute favorites as you go.

My fav-faves?

Yeah. [laughs]

Alright. Second up, “Goodbye Atom. Hello Zed.” Third, “LLMs break the internet.” Fourth, “Vibes from StrangeLoop.” “Coming to ASCIINEMA near you.”

Oh, that’s a good one.

“Gleaming the KubeCon.”

You liked that one.

Oh, yeah. “Pushing back on unconstrained capitalism.” Next Level, honorable mention. “Beatfreak in residence.” And then I liked the Kaizen episode, “Kaizen! S3 R2 B2 D2.” And then “Even the best rides come to an end.” Those are my faves title-wise. I mean, I can tell you why, but those are the ones that stood out to me as like fun favorites from the year to title.

Right. Well, you stole darn near all of mine.

Oh, man.

Which is a good thing, because we have overlap. So I also enjoyed S3 R2 B2 D2, just because of the way that came together… “LLMs break the internet”, “The Beatfreak in residence”, it was obvious, but it was still awesome… Mat Depends, still a favorite… Although I may have trumped it recently with “It dependencies”, which people really liked… And then my last one, “Back to the terminal of the future.”

Oh, that’s a good one. Yeah. It’s fun naming these podcasts, man…

Sometimes… [laughs]

Sometimes, yeah. Let’s pick maybe one or two from my list and your list that was just challenging to name. Some of the angst we felt as we named it. Do you recall any?

So “Back to the terminal of the future” was one that we had – we were nowhere in that… Oh, you were trying to name it – I remember this now. You were naming it on your own, because you were producing that one, and you brought to me like your five names… And there was like – you had the same concept of like “Okay, it’s the terminal of the future.”

The future, yeah.

But they were all – I don’t know, they just didn’t do it.

Kind of bland.

And I just came up with it like this. It was just like a snap of the fingers. I was like “Back to the –” and you were just like “Yeah, that’s it.”

Yeah.

I think you put the fire emoji on it, and it was just over. I like those, because I feel like I’ve really helped, because I can tell that you’re like working at it… I’ve brought you titles where I’m like “Here’s what I have” and…

Yeah, good luck.

Sometimes you just have one.

I’m at my end here, so… Whatever you come up with, that’s it. I’ve got no more.

Yeah, exactly. So that one was difficult, but it did just come to me. And we didn’t have to do any – once I had, it was

just over with.

And they kind of made sense, really. Like, it was a play on obviously the movie titled…

“Back to the Future.”

…which is from our days…

Which we’ve been talking about a lot lately…

For sure… And then we literally were going back to it because we hadn’t talked to them really in a while about Warp and what was going on there. So…

Yeah, it was our second episode about Warp, so we’re back on the same exact topic.

Yeah.

[00:33:57.22] And maybe even better would have been “Be back. Warp will be back.” I don’t know if we can riff on some new ones there, now that we know the be-backs [unintelligible 00:34:01.23]

Yeah… And it’s fun talking to Zack too, because I feel for Zach… Zach Lloyd, who is a solo founder. Solo founder of Warp and CEO of Warp. And I feel for his direction, and I feel for even wanting to take some of Warp open source. I feel like that tension that you feel, of like leading, creating a good product, and being consistent with it, and then being venture capital-backed, and all that pressure… So I just loved that conversation quite a bit with Zach…

But one I was quite happy with, because I think it’s good to have Cory Doctorow back, and I think the last time we had had him on the show was like – we had trouble naming that one as well. And I didn’t want to just go back to the inshitification naming that he had come up with - which is great, of course… But we really talked about pushing back on unconstrained capitalism. And we got called out on Twitter, and then we got called out again, because once I responded to the person, they never came back and responded again… They tried to say we didn’t push back on Cory’s ideas, as if we were playing to this right wing agenda, or left wing agenda, or whatever wing it was, basically… This liberal agenda. And I’m like “This is not a politics show.” This is just us as technologists, looking at how technology applies, and how the world revolves around it. And then specifically, this idea of just – what’s the term he uses?

Chokepoint capitalism?

Yeah, chokepoint capitalism. Like, these chokepoints that get placed on us and others in the world, to just strangle us, and in particular, the Audible stuff he’s dealt with.

Yeah.

And I think that that – that to me was a favorite title, because I don’t think you were around to help me with it, and I’m like “I’ve gotta ship this show, and I can’t name it bland…” I didn’t have any real opinion from you, so I felt alone really, laying out that title… But I feel like that one landed pretty well, personally.

Yeah. It was a good one. And then “Gleaming the KubeCon”, that was a tough one, because that was probably like our 75th try on that episode… Because it’s tough with anthologies. There’s no singular topic. It’s KubeCon, but we’ve been there before, so is it Anthology? Are we going to list out the topics? We have lots of guests. I think that we have six guests on that… And Kub/Kube… I mean, we had to google “gleaming the cube”, and remember exactly what that means, and what Urban Dictionary thinks it means…

That’s right.

[unintelligible 00:36:30.17] accidentally… Which I think applies, because it’s like getting outside of your comfort zone, which - I’m like, us at KubeCon… We’re kind of outside of our comfort zone, aren’t we, Adam?

That’s right.

So that one took a while to land on, but… It’s just fun to say.

And one of the best ‘80s movies ever… I think it’s barely an ’80s movie, though. Is it ’90s, maybe? Late ’80s, early ’80s?

It’s late ‘80s, I believe. Alright, let’s move on. So there’s some favorite titles… Let us know which of our titles you think are awesome, or terrible. Should we do least favorite titles? I mean, we could do that, too. Let’s ignore the ugly. Let’s ignore the ugly, just for today.

Yeah, no uglies.

Let’s hear from our longtime listener, Rory O’Connor.

Rory: My favorite 2023 episode was way back in January, and it’s one I’ve relistened to several times. It was Cameron Seay talking about COBOL and mainframes. The topic was just so interesting, because it’s an [unintelligible 00:37:24.04] technology that’s untyped, and just not one you hear about very much, but it’s obviously very ubiquitous and very critical. Cameron was just such an engaging guest, and his love for his field is just so inspirational. It even got me thinking, “Should I learn COBOL?” I’d love to hear from him again some day, and/or hear more from operators in what we call “the legacy tech space”, which is where many, if not most programmers live, including myself. Thanks for this, and all the other great episodes you’ve done this year.

Thank you, Rory. We probably don’t need to discuss this one too much, because it’s Cameron once again… But I will say, when it comes to BMC remixes, Rory, I think you’ll get spoiled, because this one’s spectacular.

[00:38:07.11]

[laughs]

Oh my gosh, the bongos in there were amazing. Just a really good bongo solo. Oh, my gosh… That was awesome.

So good… “Legacy tech space…”

“Legacy…” Yeah, that’s the best. Well, for one, we have to bring that beat somewhere else. It kind of reminds me of how we stumbled upon the theme for Changelog & Friends. [00:38:48.10] Very, you know, ’80s VHS tape intro-sounding sound, that we happen to rickroll right in front of it… It kind of reminds me of that track a bit.

Yeah. Agreed. Alright, next up… Who’s this? Oh, it’s our old friend, Brett Cannon. Brett calls in every year, and we always love hearing from him.

Thank you, Brett. Yes, good job sticking to this year…

That’s a lot of faves. That might be more than you have on your list there, Adam. He’s got a lot of faves.

Gosh, man… Yeah, I was having a hard time keeping up. But…

Right…?

…definitely some crossovers.

Let’s talk about Next Level real quick. That was your idea. Very cool. We’re releasing these Changelog Beats albums. We’ve put out two of them simultaneously… And of course, where do you release them? Well, you put them on Spotify, you put them on Apple Music, you put them on YouTube Music, you put them on all the places that people can listen to them outside of the context of a podcast… But hey, we are podcasters. Can’t we just release a podcast episode where each song is a chapter, and people can just listen to the entire album as if it was a chapter podcast? Well, of course you can. Great idea. Well executed. Unless you’re on Spotify; then you can’t. Then you can’t.

That’s right.

But everybody else gets to…

Yeah.

…and that’s neat.

Yeah. The insider baseball there is we – our podcast is obviously listenable inside of Spotify. However, you’re not allowed to podcast just straight music, because they think you’re trying to get onto the platform out of the context of being a musician. And so we’re like “Hey, we’re not musicians. Obviously, we work with a musician named Breakmaster Cylinder. And this is just an album, not – like, all of our podcasts are not going to be this music.” And so they said “You can’t have this episode.”

[00:42:09.01] So if you go there and you see that it skips whatever that episode is… I guess it actually didn’t have an episode number, so it’s okay… But they didn’t allow Next Level as a podcast, to be in the podcast feed on Spotify. For those reasons.

Open platforms and RSS for the win. Again.

That’s right.

And Spotify for the loss. So if you’re listening to us on Spotify, and you want to keep doing that, have at it. We like you to listen however it is that you prefer. But if you’re looking for our advice, we would suggest that you download an independent, well-made podcast app from somebody who supports the open web, and listen to our shows there. We think you’ll have a better experience. And you know what? You’ll have chapters too, which Spotify does not support. How can you listen to podcasts without chapters? I mean, I get it, it’s a continuous conversation. Some people just let it flow…

You see my face…?

But I like to listen to the chapters just to even see what’s going to happen here as we keep going, even if I’m not going to skip around. So… Gotta have chapters, y’all.

It’s like a safety net when you’re listening to a podcast. Especially – I don’t know, I just feel like I jump into so many pieces of content these days, in all the different platforms, that if you don’t give me waypoints, I feel unguided. I like to be guided. Who doesn’t want a little guided tour?

Hold my hand.

Yes, man. Take my hand. Take my strong hand…!

[laughs] Take me on a journey… On your magic carpet ride. Well, gosh, this - if last BMC remix was a treat, this one’s a trick or treat, because BMC got hilariously spicy with Brett’s [unintelligible 00:43:50.03] I hope you enjoy this. I hope Andrea enjoys this as well.

Me too.

Good friends of ours. We’ve been lucky enough to sit down and have a meal with you, an ice cream with you, and this is just hilarious. Here we go.

[00:44:04.27]

[laughs] That was good. The ending - perfect.

Yes. And Andrea, you are also perfect. Thank you.

There you go.

Good stuff, man. Good stuff.

Up next, we have a voicemail from listener Mikhail.

More Mat jingles. Yes.

Never heard that before… What’s even better, honestly, is sitting there when he breaks into song. It’s like,“Oh gosh, he’s going to get his guitar again…”

No idea what’s gonna happen. And I have to say, most of his jingles are funny contextually, and you can tell he has skills and musician abilities… But “Backslashes are trash” is a legit good song. It gets stuck in your head. I go back to it and listen to it sometimes. It was so funny, it was so on point… I love that song. I just go back and listen to it just because.

[00:45:56.07]

I don’t mind ash, I don’t even mind Bash… I like caching and cache, and I’ll clash with a dash in a flash, man… I’m not gonna say gosh, I don’t even mind hash… I’m out on the lash, man. I’ve got a rash. Oh my gosh, man, I’m gonna smash your face in if you backslash me. That’s trash! Backslashes are trash… Backslashes are trash, yeah… Backslashes are trash. And don’t say forward slash… Just say… Slash… Just say slash… Just say slash… No need to say that forward bit… Just say slash.

Well, I think anytime you see somebody use or say forward slash, you just send that song.

You send that song. [laughs] Yeah, you don’t have to say the forward bit, you know?

Yeah, you don’t have to say that forward bit.

Too good. Well, I’m happy to hear from Mikhail, and from others - we’ll hear another one as well… People who like the new format, the new three-flavor Changelog. This was a bit of a risk for us. I think we both thought it was the right move for the show… And we both are enjoying the fruits of that decision. But it definitely was risky, as he was weary about it, or leery about it; I’ll never know which one of those words to use…

Both.

Because we thought “Hey, don’t ruin your good things. We’ve got a good thing going, with a once a week interview…” And happy to hear that it’s resonating.

Yes. I would say we even struggle more particularly about the technical bits. Not how to obviously do the podcast, but how to feed the podcast. Pun intended.

Yeah.

Because you’ve got to feed the beast, and you’ve got to create some feed, so that people can consume. Because we didn’t want to – like, the thing that YouTubers really gain is like one channel that gets subscribers, and then they just come there, and regardless of what they do in that channel, it just happens. So they could experiment with different formats and flavors. Now, the audience can push back, and comment, and stuff like that, but for the most part, they get like this channel. And maybe they have to diversify and make a new channel if it’s so different. But with a podcast, you kind of have a promise, like “Hey, we’ll released weekly, on this week, with this kind of thing, and this is sort of what you’re getting”, and you may lose people. That’s the risk, you may lose people if you don’t agree with it. And I think the work we went through to get to keeping them all in the same main feed, and then different feeds for each individual was the right move… The logical move. But it wasn’t that simple initially. Do you want to speak to the struggles we went through with just getting there, Jerod?

Well, you have the technical changes which needs to happen. You have to be able to support what we call a meta cast. A cast that is actually three podcasts, in our admin, munged into one. So I guess, to a certain extent, it’s an advertisement for custom software, because this would have been much more difficult if we had been using – I mean, impossible with like Anchor, or probably Transistor… Difficult with WordPress, for sure. We could have got done with WordPress, because you can hack that sucker however you want… But the fact that we just run our own software stack really made that part merely labor-intensive, which wasn’t that bad. But it was totally possible.

So we had just the technical machinations of getting that done. Of course, the decision-making process - how does that work? Should we do it that way? I think that was more debate and discussion, and really just slowly deciding, versus making quick decisions… Because we knew this is one of those doors that probably could go back to a door, but not the easiest thing to reopen once you kind of let the cat out of the bag…

[00:50:13.22] So yeah, it was a big decision for us, and it required software changes that would have been rollbackable, but not easily rolled back, and investment on that… But I think the fact that we do have our own custom platform allowed us to do that in a way that would have been way more difficult, if not impossible, using off the shelf software.

For sure.

So that decision comes back over and over again to bear fruit.

News almost had a whole different name. It was almost starting from zero, with a whole new feed…

Yeah.

And I think it would have just further bifurcated our network, which is just, you know, challenging as people who run a network that has multiple different podcasts, and kind of keeping them all blended together, from a sponsorship perspective, and the thematic and topical perspective, to the hosts involved, and the panelists involved… All the things. Obviously, Changelog news is you, and this show is us, and Friends is us plus… But I think that bringing News into the same feed, and then just adding Friends to the same feed on a different day - I mean, it’s just worked out perfectly, in my opinion. I think it’s just been really great. But then still giving the option, “Hey, if you don’t want all these, there’s still choice.” And we don’t have to give up the 15 years we’ve been feeding this feed of podcasts, and lose the juice, so to speak, that we’ve gained over the years; the equity we’ve gained.

And we’ve had a handful of people - I would say probably I could count them on one hand - who have reached out and said “I don’t really want all this. Is there just a way to get the old show back?” And the fact that we can say “Yes, here’s the Interviews feed. It’s called change of Interviews. It’s literally the Changelog, every Wednesday, just like you’ve always gotten it” - it just immediately serves their needs, and it’s a beautiful thing. Versus saying “Sorry, this is our new thing now. You’ll have to either unsubscribe or adjust.”

So I love being able to meet people where they are, but also bring them along, and do some new stuff. I think in terms of 2023, Friends was our big risk of this year. I mean, we were already doing News…

Yeah, it’s true.

So News goes back to June the previous year, but we were doing it as a sub-show of the Changelog. We hadn’t given it its own thing yet. And adding Friends this year, our new talk show, which we’ve done 25 episodes now as we ship this one… Because 25 will be the #define round two, that ships out prior to this… Which is just a riot, by the way. [“Game theory, dude.”] Friends I think was our big risk this year. And for my money, it’s just been the most fun. I mean, the ability to just do stuff that’s off the beaten path, to play games, to have people come back who’ve been on the show recently and not have to have some sort of new reason to talk to them… The episode with Christina Warren strikes a chord with me as just like one that we wouldn’t have done in the past…

Yeah, for sure.

…but just was awesome. I mean, I loved making that, and I love listening to it as well. Like, this talk show format for me, for my money, is one of our best ideas. And I think we’ve proven, at least so far, it’s sustainable. We can have something to talk about every week, and it’s enjoyable. But it’s The Changelog enough that it’s not like an entirely new thing. I’m just happy about that, I’m excited. I think that there’s a lot of potential there that we haven’t tapped yet. And the fact that our audience hasn’t been turned off by it… In fact, in terms of downloads, it’s kind of outperforming interviews at this point, a little bit.

Yeah.

Not much, but enough to be noticeable. It makes me think, “Okay, it’s validation.” And that’s awesome.

It’s like that carnival horse race; everybody has a water gun, they’re shooting at a target, and the horses, I suppose, they’re there on the track, and they’re all racing… It’s like “News! Friends! Interviews!” It’s like “Who’s ahead?” And they’re all pretty much the same, but one’s got an edge.

So thank you for that reassurance, Mikhail, and here is your personalized BMC remix.

[00:54:14.10]

What did he say? [laughter] That’s an abstract one right there.

Yeah. Well, it reminds me of the old beatbox days, you know?

Yeah, it does.

The intros to it. And people actually do that with their own voice for real, you know? I don’t really do it.

Oh, I know. Just with their own mouth only… Amazing.

Yes.

Like Rahzel.

[00:55:06.01]

This is the tricky part. The beat, and the chorus… At the same time.

Yeah, precisely.

Greatest beatboxer that I’ve ever heard. Alright… Speaking of beatboxers - this has nothing to do with beatboxers - Jarvis Yang, who we’ve heard from previous years as well… Jarvis hangs out in our Slack. By the way, I think it was last year that I told people about our Wordle channel in Slack, and quadrupled the population of #wordle, which is still going strong to this day. So if you’re still wordling, or if you have your own daily puzzle that you play, we have a channel on our Slack called #wordle, that we just share our Wordle results. And there’s probably about 10 of us who share our wordles pretty much every day, and cheer each other on, and drop funny emoji on there… And it’s just an open invite for you to come do that with us. Jarvis is one of them. Here’s Jarvis.

And you too. Wow. That was cool. Yeah, TechnoTim… It’s so strange, because I watched him on YouTube for like a year, at least, before I actually had a conversation with him… And he was normal, believe it or not, Jerod.

He was normal. [laughs]

He was normal. [laughs]

What were you expecting?

Well, I wasn’t expecting anything, but sometimes – we often, when we meet people, they’re like “Wow, it’s Jerod or Adam”, or whatever… And we’re just normal. We’re just normal people.

Right. Totally.

[00:57:51.10] But you know, it was really just easy to get into the details with Tim. It wasn’t hard at all, really. And speaking of that show in particular, that was another one where you helped out with the name. Because I was like – I wanted Homelab in it, but I think you were like “Homelab nerds unite.” And that was just a perfect name for it. And that’s like an outperforming – I think that’s the highest-performing Friends episode to date. It might actually compete with Justin’s episode, potentially. Is that right? Or is it the highest-performing?

I did not look. I can search it real quick.

Okay, I’m incorrect. It does not compete with Justin’s. Justin’s trumps it by about 12,000 listens.

Still up there.

Yeah, still up there.

Definitely a lot of feedback on it. A lot of people love the homelab conversations. We definitely want to get TechnoTim back on, with Jeff Geerling, or in addition to Jeff. Those are, again, a couple of Friends episodes this year that wouldn’t have happened previously, but especially Jeff Geerling on the “Dear Red Hat” episode. That came together in a pinch, and was very topical and timely, and we used to not be able to do that with interviews.

Yeah, for sure. Well, speaking of home lab and TechnoTim, I’m working on a State of Home Lab” episode with him for the new year.

Nice.

So kicking off the year here on Friends with – and you’re obviously welcome to that, but you weren’t there last time. Happy to be there.

We’ll see if I’m around.

It doesn’t have to be an Adam show. It could be an Adam, Tim and Jerod show.

Sure.

I’m just coordinating timing, but I want to do a State of Home Lab, top of the year, like where things might go, where they’ve been last year… Kind of a catch-up and recap of where it might go. So… Rough plan on that front.

Right on. Well here’s Jarvis remixed by Breakmaster Cylinder.

[00:59:31.07]

Nice!

Bringing back techno.

That’s a head nodder right there, man… You can’t help but nod your head to that one. And if you was just listening to that and you didn’t nod your head - hey, check again. Nod your head.

[laughs]

Right?

That’s right.

Oh, man…

Alright, we’re having some fun now. Up next we have Jamie Curnow.

Still one of my faves… Still one of my faves. You know, when I was going down my list, “Engineering management for the rest of us” almost made my list. But as you can tell, my list is already long, so I was like “Can I add one more in my favorites? It’s seven or eight…” I was trying to be – you said three, and I’m like “I can’t do three, so I’m just gonna put them there, and share what I can…” That’s it really. But that almost made it… But I think what was even cooler about that was it was the first time we got to talk to Sarah on a podcast before. We’d been trying to schedule her for a while… And she’s busy, we’re busy, and things don’t always work out scheduling-wise. When we finally nailed it down, she had the book out recently, and it just worked out perfectly, I think. And he’s right, it was a spot on conversation with Sarah. I love her perspective on engineering management. She’s got wisdom to share, and why not share it here.

Yeah. And the episode with Rachel Potvin. I mean, so much experience that she has gained over the years, and her ability – and just the teams that she’s led are so impressive, that she just has top-level… What’s it called - clout? You just want to hear what she’s got to say, because she just has earned it.

Yeah.

And I’ve listened to that one back, and I don’t even lead larger teams. I lead no teams. I lead myself, and then I talk to you about stuff. But yeah, so much good stuff in that one in particular… Which goes back to the Lara Hogan episode as well, right? …which was mentioned previously, which wasn’t this year… But man, a lot of – like, engineering leadership conversations that we’ve had, probably things that you’ve spearheaded for the most part, because they’re just areas that I don’t really dive into on my own… I really enjoy getting exposed to that level of thinking. And yeah, I appreciate it right along with Jamie.

What I can boast about it is that it’s that touch of helping people, and then also psychology. How we operate as human beings intertwines with your ability to help somebody and mentor somebody… And understanding psychology, I would say, is one of the many skillsets you could and should foster as a leader. Because the more you understand about humankind, and the ways we operate as human beings, the better you will be to lead - what? Human beings, right? So it seems to make sense.

Yes.

But he mentioned the physical media one… I mean – and you mentioned that in happenstance, like, we may not have done it unless we had this podcast called Changelog & Friends, where we can sort of be different, I suppose, than our typical content. I loved that show, man. I mean, that was probably – it’s in my list of favorites, I’ll mention that…

[laughs]

It may be in the very top few… But just having a platform like this where we can talk about that kind of thing, that is interesting to our audience, but at the same time not dead-center in terms of topic - perfect. I love that.

I don’t know, it just feels like an end of just this really important era of filmmaking, and film loving, and film watching, where for a time, for a brief 20-year span, you could get almost any piece of media that had been released - you could find it on disk, and you could find it someplace and you could rent it. You didn’t have to worry about were the rights expired or not, who has ownership, is it in a vault or not? It was probably released at some point, and if it was out there, you could find a way to source it, and Netflix had a great catalog for that. And what makes me sad is that there are so many titles, like thousands upon thousands of titles that have never been brought to streaming, either legally, or to buy in any way shape or form that are not available to stream, or not available to buy digitally, that are just gone in vaults… While billionaires decide how they can manipulate various IP agreements to suck every single cent out of what was supposed to be art. Never forget the business part of show business.

[01:06:26.04] But there was this moment of time where you could get everything. And now that that moment is gone, because there’s so many amazing films and TV shows and other things that are just not available, I feel like we’ve lost something. It feels like when the video store started to close, and I just… I don’t know, it makes me sad.

Very well said and very sad… I love that about how friends has worked out for us, to give us that flexibility. Because after you do this for 15 years, and you only talk about one topic that is very big, and a big umbrella, you kind of get siloed. I’ve got other interests, that – I was talking to Byron recently, from [unintelligible 01:07:06.03] because we were talking about getting them on as a sponsor… And we met them at KubeCon recently.

Right. I remember.

And he was like “Oh man, he was good…” He was geeking out with me about my home theater. And he knew all about the home theater, because I had told him via a podcast.

Right.

So… It’s just cool. I love that. He’s like “Man, I love your theater”, and this and that. I was talking about the speakers, and Plex and whatnot… So just that show, that episode in particular was a lot of fun.

And I really enjoyed producing that one, because I got to put so many sound bites from movies into it, and songs… It almost – it wasn’t every time you mentioned a movie, because there was times when you reeled off like seven movies in a row… But almost every movie that was mentioned, I got to go to either my favorite part, or a well-known part of that movie, and drop it in… And I just love doing that stuff. So much fun.

Alright, so that’s Jamie… Now, Jamie did mention the robot dance make-out music, which we’ve heard Breakmaster’s beats likened to this year by one of our JS Party guests… And here’s some customized Jamie Curnow dance make-out music. It doesn’t make any sense, but here we go.

[01:08:21.17]

It’s a good lyric, man.

Mm-hm.

I kind of want more of that song, you know? That song, it ends a little early, in my opinion.

It does. That’s a nice, smooth groove. I want to hear the whole song.

Yeah. Well, the good thing is some of these beats we’re hearing for the first time, not so much this very moment, but in the last few days, that we’re gonna ask Breakmaster “Hey, can we pull that beat into this new thing we’re gonna do?” So you may hear more of these, and interstitials, and outros etc. What’s next, Jerod?

Next up is another familiar name… It’s AJ Kerrigan.

Now about I hear him rattle off all we’ve done this year, I’m just wondering, can we top that for next year, Jerod? Do we have a mountain to climb?

Ha-ha-ha-hah! The challenge has been laid forth…

By us. For us. [laughter]

For us, by us.

Can we achieve what we’ve have achieved this year, or better? Should we, I guess, is even a better question? Should we try?

[01:10:10.00] Well, in terms of formats, I think we’ll hear like an old favorite, maybe back on the airwaves… But I think we’ve found a nice groove for the Changelog. I think more like this, and just more diversity in our talk show can certainly happen. I think when it comes to Changelog Beats, we already have more albums in the works [unintelligible 01:10:26.10] Next Level.

You’re telling people that…?

I just told them. I just told them.

Okay.

I think I’ve mentioned it elsewhere, maybe in News, that we do have more albums that are coming forth soon… Maybe one of which features an outro track that’s a listener favorite. We’ll see what happens there. But I don’t know, man. I mean, I guess time will tell whether or not we can top ourselves… But sometimes you’ve just gotta keep keeping on, and doing your thing, and seeing what happens. I don’t feel like this year was all that amazing, until I’m hearing these voicemails and I’m starting to think “Right…”

“Dang, it was a good year…! We did good!”

We did good! At least a few people think so, and that’s good enough for me.

Well, that’s the thing when you’re running a marathon, I suppose. You sort of get into this groove where you stop listening to your body, basically, or your body stops talking to your brain, and there’s some sort of disconnect.

I never get that far. I hate running, so I never get that far. I’m always listening to my body, and I stop.

This is hypothetical, because I don’t run either. So this is hearsay, by the way.

[laughs] You heard things, okay.

A friend of a friend told me this. I understand the way of a runner. I’m not a runner, but I understand the way of a runner, and so I imagine that’s what happens when you’re running a marathon. Or - I’ve done other things that are very challenging, so just… You know, supplant whatever makes sense that you’ve done challenging.

Insert your challenging thing here, yes.

Right. Something that takes a long time, that you’ve got to keep putting effort out… I think at some point logic and reasons sort of disconnect in a way, that the pain doesn’t tell the thing that’s logical to stop doing it. Or the thing with reason; it’s like “Yeah, you know what, let’s keep doing this.” Not that this is a painful thing, but I think when you’re running a marathon, you just sort of do it. You get into a groove, you get into a mode and you just accomplish your mission.

Yeah Well, our mission is just to put out awesome podcasts every week. Sometimes we feel like we do it, sometimes we feel like we don’t do it, but we still put something out, and hope it’s good.

Yeah.

And so it’s awesome to hear from people who confirm our priors, or at least help our priors out. Alright, AJ, BMC beat, here it comes.

[01:12:32.22]

That’s another one. I kind of want to keep it going.

That’s some beautiful music.

Yeah. That’s a harp, I’m assuming… A harp and a snare.

Definitely a snare.

Just a guess. It could be keys as a harp, it could be harp keys, it could be key harps, you know… Any combination of a harp key, really.

Yeah. There’s a poet/musician from Portland, I believe… His name is Hobo Johnson, and he has a Tiny Desk concert, which is just spectacular. A very unique individual. It’s like spoken word poetry, with music in the background, and he has a band, and every once in a while his band yells the same word he’s saying, very emotionally.

[01:13:45.02] Good luck to my future wives and their future lives without me. You guys will do great, I’m sure that I’ve prepared you for every guy you’ll date, and ever guy you’ll marry, and every guy you’ll hate. Yes, the lullabies I sang out of tune, this [unintelligible 01:13:55.27] or my twin size mattress that I have since I was seven, that we have to sleep on whenever she spends the night… And if she falls off again, she’ll find another guy to like. Yeah, we’re just Romeo and Juliet [Romeo and Juliet!!], but that ain’t drunk and eating percocets… [unintelligible 01:14:16.09]

And he sings about heartbreak, and divorce, and it’s just very powerful stuff. I think he’s kind of fallen by the wayside in terms of his music. I’m not sure if he’s doing it anymore… But anyways, this track sounds a lot like him; like, that kind of music, and then that spoken word over the top of it… So getting the Hobo Johnson vibes.

Hm… I’ll have to check that out.

Yeah.

For sure.

His Tiny Desk concert - I think they won the contest. So Tiny Desk did a contest years ago where you submit a video, and they pick one band to give them a concert. Because, normally it’s like huge names that are going on the Tiny Desk thing. And he made this video in his backyard, with his bandmates, and he basically just like yells in his microphone, and they yell with him at certain points… And it’s a very interesting sound. And they won the Tiny Desk concert. And when they came to do it, they were just tickled to be there. It wasn’t like “Yes, I do all these concerts, and so I’ll do Tiny Desk.” It’s like, they were so happy to be on Tiny Desk. That was really cool.

Alright, we’re getting near the end here… Here comes Alex.

Happy New Year to you as well. So Simon Willison, multi-time guests this year, I believe. “LLMs break the internet”, that was a classic. Cory Doctorow - of course, he’s had a few mentions… He was on twice, as we mentioned; the one in the spring and the one in the fall most recently was the “Pushing back on unconstrained capitalism.” If I’m honest, those two episodes, I go back to the first one more. I just really loved the conversation about chickenized reverse centaurs. That whole bit was very fascinating. So I love that one specifically.

And what else did he mention? Oh, he mentioned Gergely Orosz.

Gergely Orosz, yeah.

He is an annual guest each fall. We just did our State of the Tech Market with him a couple of weeks back… And yeah, good stuff all around. That’s why we bring him back every year, to tell us what’s been going on lately.

We almost didn’t call it the state of something, because of State of the ’log.

Yeah… Well, you’re gonna do State of Home Lab, so maybe we’re getting kind of repetitive here… [laughs]

And also the State of Quantum Computing.

True. And we had a JS Party episode about Art of the State Machines… I don’t know, a lot of state… We’re developers, we’re always dealing with state, you know?

It’s that time of the year.

Yeah.

Well, we also went off-topic – well, off-title, I should say, not off-topic. Off-title that time around, because we had two back to back that were “This insane tech hiring market”, and then “This not insane tech hiring market.”

Right.

I was kind of bummed we didn’t keep that, but you know…

Well, I just felt like it couldn’t scale. Like, if we’re going to do it every year, now we have a title that can scale. State of the ’log scales. You just change the year.

[01:18:09.24] Yeah, increment the number.

We just increment the number next year and we just have it back on. Whereas if we keep doing some sort of operator in front of the word “Insane”… We’re going to use the question mark this year. That would have been cool, because he actually said it on the show, this would be the question mark one. But then what are we gonna do after that, you know? Division? Forward slash? We would never do a backslash operator…

We almost had to reschedule that show. It almost didn’t happen. We almost –

Oh, true.

…titled it differently, and it almost didn’t happen, because of just timing and things that happen, scheduling, whenever… When you ship five shows a week-ish, it’s always a scheduling hassle. Obviously, three here, but it’s challenging. It’s challenging.

Mm-hm. Alright. Alex, here’s your beat.

[01:18:53.17]

“I really like it…” [laughs]

That opening was the opening I believe to an outro track.

Oh, really?

Yeah.

I’ll have to hear it again. Hold on. Oh, I know which one it is. It’s the Figaro one.

That’s right. Yeah. [unintelligible 01:19:32.08] Our old outro to the Changelog, which we haven’t used in a while, which we should bring back just for fun.

We should remix that thing just for fun.

Yeah… Let’s bring [unintelligible 01:19:49.28]

For sure, for sure.

Because when I hear that, when I heard his beats, I suppose, whatever that was, that thing, and then I heard the intro, I was thinking it was gonna be [unintelligible 01:20:01.21] and the outro. But it was not. It was –

You know Breakmaster’s probably thinking “They’re never going to notice this is the same sound in the front of this…” [laughter]

No, I do.

Gotcha!

Well, that’s the thing with humans, is audio is memorable. Almost more memorable than visual. Almost. There’s no science that I know of behind that, but I’m gonna say that.

That’s how we roll. Myreille is not here to correct you, so it’s gonna just stand.

That’s right. She might actually agree with me.

She’s not here to say, so… You can just keep saying that all you want. I can’t deny it. Here is a voicemail from Schalk Neethling.

[01:22:06.23] There you go, picking clips even. Picking our YouTube clips.

Wow. That’s right.

A couple of those YouTube clips did get some good traction over there, the calling out AWS Lambda one in particular, which was Matteo Collina on JS Party. We got a lot of comments on that one, a lot of interest on that one. And then of course, anytime you put Cory Doctorow with a microphone and a video camera and let him talk about big tech, you’re gonna have some hot fire coming out of his mouth.

That’s right. Just a couple of [unintelligible 01:22:36.07] “Amazon is screwing authors left and right, *angry face*.”

Yes.

Cory Doctorow on the Google Facebook duopoly… What’s the one he was talking about with AWS Lambda? Can you rehash that one, or summarize?

It was Matteo Collina on JS Party…

Well, to just remind everybody, youtube.com/Changelog. Videos, shorts, clips… We now have the podcasts tab there… I’m not sure what’s going on. What’s happening with the podcast apps? How does this work?

They halfway adopted podcasts, and they think a few of our playlists are podcasts, even though they’re not, they’re clips from podcasts… Such just a hot mess. And I tab - I would just ignore it. I don’t think anybody knows that tab exists, because that’s how YouTube rolls… They roll out features and then they don’t do anything else with them.

The occasional poll, which is good… Like backslashes, for or against…

Yeah. Well, we’ll do our unpop polls there every once in a while.

But a good place to consume if you just want clips. If you’re overwhelmed with the feed and you’re like “Man, I want to unsubscribe. Not because I hate it, because I just can’t keep up”, try YouTube. Keep up on the small.

Okay, here comes Schalk BMC remix.

[01:28:14.17]

Last but certainly not least, it is Tillman Jex.

Thank you. That’s what we like to say, Jerod, that we care about the past, the present and the future hacker generation. That includes us, too. The impact I think is – I like how he framed it. I haven’t been thinking of it that way necessarily, but that’s obviously the way it plays out, is what is the impact of this change this, this way of thinking, this way of doing business, this allowance of X, Y or Z to operate this way? And we the people have the power to push back through our choices, and we the people of purveyor podcasts have the power to push back via voice, and to potentially amass an army to rethink how they think about the world. I think that’s what I love most about the medium of podcasting, and just even how we help brands and sponsors… We get to plant some ideas, change some ideas. You know what I mean? That to me is the fun part about what we do.

[01:30:38.22] Totally. And I love to get a new idea from somebody or someplace; just a way of looking at the world that I had never had previously looked at it that way. Or to find a new tool that saves me five minutes a day, or any anything like that where you’re just “Okay, this was worth it.” And it’s shrouded in an hour and a half conversation that hopefully is a fun ride regardless; like, entertain first, but then also educate through exposure to the way other people think, the things other people spend their time working on… I mean, a lot of the things that we talk about in terms of the tech is like, we’re amazed that you’ve decided to dedicate your life to working on this. We think that you should be able to tell your story to people, because your desire to for instance build a brand new programming language that’s going to last 100 years is worth other people knowing about, like, where does that come from.

So I love hearing that kind of stuff from other people, and so I love to be able to provide that for other people through our interviews, and through our conversations. So it’s fun, it’s good. Good vibes. Thanks, Tillman. Of course, he’s called in before; we always appreciate hearing from you. Very insightful, very thoughtful, and we appreciate you being a member of the community. Here is your BMC remix.

[01:31:56.12]

That was a very BMC ending to that one.

Very much, yeah. It reminds me of the George Orwell’s famous quote; it says “Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.” That’s from 1984. Kind of a glum movie, really, but… Not really a good movie. I mean, it’s not like a – it’s not a romcom, okay? It’s not a comedy. [laughter] Let’s just say.

Yeah.

That’s actually a quote too from Alta. There’s a band, I would say, a group called Alta… A little lower than the angels is what it stands for, Alta… And those lyrics, or those words, “Who controls the past controls the future, and who controls the present controls the past” is on there. [sample 01:33:16.24] It kind of reminds me of that, that sentiment.

Yeah. That is a deep thought. Alright, thus concludes our listener voicemails. I told you there’d be a lot of good stuff in there.

Okay, hold up, hold up… Remember earlier I said we had a twelfth voicemail come in after Adam and I had recorded together? Well, I’m not going to tell you who it was that shipped their feature to production on a Friday after the rest of us had taken off for the weekend… But I will play his voicemail for us.

And thank you, Jamie. I’m just razzing you about the late entry. Better late than never. It does feel a bit weird commenting too much now, without Adam here, but thank you for the kind words, thank you for supporting us this year with a Changelog++ membership. I’m glad you agree, it’s better… And here is your personalized BMC remix. You decide, is it better?

[01:36:07.23]

I’m gonna just come out and say pretty much all of my favorite episodes have been taken already.

Yeah.

I have two that didn’t get taken. So I might as well just mention those.

I’ve got two. I’ve got at least one. Let me see if I’ve got one.

Well, let’s talk about ours that weren’t discussed previously.

Well, I’ve got two. Well, one is from title only, but I also like the content… It was another Kaizen edition; it was “Slightly more instant.”

Oh, yeah.

I just think that was a really cool title for the podcast. “Slightly more instant.” How can you get slightly more instant? That’s the fun part there. And then of course, it wouldn’t be a 2023 without this podcast, honestly… And this was a recommend. This was a recommendation. “Attack of the Canaries.” Bang!

That was a good one.

Yeah. And the Bang was actually the exclamation point at the end of that one, because… That’s another fun one to name, too. It’s like, obviously, from the Star Wars trilogy, and world, I suppose…

Well, Attack of the Clones was episode two, or… I can’t remember. I think episode two was Attack of the Clones. With the exclamation mark. But this was Haroon Meer from Thinkst. And you couldn’t say Thinkst. You kept saying Thinkest, and having to apologize…

Oh, my gosh… [laughter] You know, once your brain gets stuck on something - or at least my brain gets stuck on something, that’s what it is.

Yeah.

I have a friend of mine, his name’s Josh, and a friend of his, that I only know through him, his name is Paul. And I keep calling Paul, Josh. And sometimes I call Josh, Paul.

[01:38:19.00] Oh, goodness.

[laughs] It’s messed up, man. And I know their names.

How are you gonna fix that?

I just don’t… I just keep trying… [laughs]

You’re just gonna perpetually apologize?

Yeah, pretty much actually. Today we were texting, and lol-ed. He’s like “I think you mean Paul.” I’m like “Yes, exactly.” And he just lol-ed. He’s used to it by now.

Well, the two that I’ll mention, because all the rest have been mentioned… Well, real quickly, I’ll mention some [unintelligible 01:38:43.13] So “Storytime with Steve Yegge” was also one of my favorites. Somebody mentioned that. Of course, Cameron Seay we’ve already covered… Cory Doctorow, we’ve covered… One that I’ll mention - we’ve heard the Mat Ryer jingles bit… “Git with your friends” was one of your favorite titles - that was actually one of my favorite episodes, because a) it was the first time we got Mat to sing live on the show, like to improv sing… Two, it was actually the thing that gave us the confidence to do Changelog & Friends, because that was our hidden Changelog & Friends format inside of the Changelog regular show. This was our prototype.

That’s right.

And people liked it so much that I was like “Okay, they’re gonna like whatever else we do, as long as we’re on point…” And so that’s why I liked it, because it was a prototype for also the other Mat Ryer episodes, which are always my favorite, because the guy just makes me laugh endlessly with his little quips, and his non-sequiturs, and then his songs… So “Git with your friends’, and then the other one that I’ll mention is “Bringing Whisper and LLaMA to the masses.” Talk about people who are dedicated to a particular craft - Georgi Gerganov, the work that he’s doing on that specifically, allowing people to run Whisper and LLaMA and continuing to hack on it on commodity hardware is really I think yeoman’s work, and I think that so many people are gonna benefit by being able to run models on their own commodity hardware, without having to shell out and bend the knee to big tech companies. So I like talking with him. He’s very smart, very humble, and I think that episode was an awesome one, because we got to shine a light on the work he’s doing.

Yeah, man. I concur. Those are good selections, man. Good selections. What else can we cover?

What’s next? What’s new and what’s next? What’s coming? What’s left? Well, not much… Not much is left. But what’s coming down the pipeline - we’ve already talked a little bit; more of the same. More beats, more talk shows, continued interviews… You have a few specific ideas. We have a few shows planned, but not much, honestly, for the new year. Always open to requests. What are you thinking?

I don’t know. I think I’ve said all I can say. It’s so odd to be at the end of a podcast and have said it all. Do you think there’s anything left we can save for our Plus Plus folks? Is there one more voicemail? Or is there – can we make something up?

Nope. I’ve played them all.

Jerod’s like “No, there’s no more voicemails. That’s it. We’ve played them all.”

No, I’ve played all the voicemails.

Well, that would be my only thought, would be a little bonus for our Plus Plus. Is there a little sizzle at the end? Just for our best friends. That would be it.

What we can say is that in 2024 we are bringing one of our old shows back. And we will tell you what that show is on the Changelog Plus Plus members only feed.

Oh boy. It’s better!

[laughs] There’s a tease for you. Or - I mean, if you don’t want to directly support our work, no problemo, guys. We’re cool either way. Just hang out until we make the announcement. You’ll find out.

That’s right. That’s right.

But if you’re an insider, stay tuned for some more inside Changelog.

I think I would love to see more Plus Plus members next year, not because of the monetary support by any means, but because I think it truly gives us a chance to not rely deeply - and I suppose that is monetary; but not rely deeply on only ad dollars. Like, this is a sponsored podcast. So I think that that that has become more and more challenging, though I think we still find folks who value deeply what we do, thankfully.

[01:42:19.10] I’d love to see more people in Slack. Nothing makes me more happier than waking up to like just good conversations to catch up on, or take part in, in Slack. So if you haven’t joined that, as Jerod said before in this show, it is free. Changelog.com/community. It will always be free. I don’t think we’ll – I mean, I’ve gotten in trouble before by making long-term –

Long-term guarantees?

Haven’t I? Should I say it’s always gonna be free? Will it ever not be free?

We don’t know the future.

We don’t know the future. Okay, fine.

What if we desperately need that money. I don’t think we will, but I don’t know…

I don’t know… Okay, so it’s free for now, let’s just say…

No, just say it’s free. You don’t have to put times on it.

It has been free…

Forever.

…since the beginning of it until this moment, so it’s a good chance that it will remain free, let’s say. Based upon past trend, future trends suggests.

It’s like a 99% chance, but we just don’t want to go out making promises to people, you know?

I know. Well, you know…

…unless we keep them.

Okay. Well, for now, everybody, come in Slack. It is free for now… I’m jsut kidding.

That sounds like “You better get in here quick, before we change our mind…” [laughter]

No… Just, again, I love to see people in there. I love to see people connecting. I think it’s a place that it’s safe to hang out in. There’s nobody arguing there. There’s obviously opposing sides sometimes to different conversations, but it’s never been anything we’ve had to personally moderate, by any means, whatsoever. So if you’re looking for a place to just hang out with people like you, that’s a good spot. So if you want that, do that. It’s free for now. There you go. Otherwise, Plus Plus. It’s better.

And we will talk to you again in 2024.

Bye, y’all.