8 Bits with Pedro Jesus
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Brandon Minnick 2:59
Yes. Welcome back. Welcome back, everybody. Thanks for joining us for another episode of eight bits. I'm your host Brandon Minnick. And with me is, as always, PJ Metz. PJ, how's your week? Hello,
Pj Metz 3:15
it's great. Listen, it's a good week, I came back from a work trip, which, man, it's nice to have a work trip, isn't it? Um, and it's just been a kind of getting into the swing of things. We're in a, we're in q4, quarter four over here, are you? What's your quarter start?
Brandon Minnick 3:36
Microsoft has the fiscal quarters starting in July. So we're in q2.
Pj Metz 3:42
Ooh, that's a fun time to start. I was I mean, I have no idea like all this quarters. It's all very new to me. For some background for those of you who are new, my name is PJ Metz. I'm a education evangelist at GitLab. And I came from the world of education. So I'm much more used to semesters, and the idea of quarters. While they exist in school, they're just a part of a semester. So even now, as I work as an education evangelist, I have to be aware of semesters and where that lands so like for instance, in the summer as an education evangelist that time is a lot of planning for me and not so much interacting with students because they're busy at their summer jobs that what I assume or you know, their camp counselor somewhere that's what I assume everyone does for a summer job. Um, but yeah, like it's I just feel like that like I'm kind of wrapping up like my first year almost as a as a person in tech. It's exciting.
Brandon Minnick 4:42
I can't believe it's been a year already.
Pj Metz 4:45
I mean, it's technically been six months in a week but
Brandon Minnick 4:50
says rounded up.
Pj Metz 4:51
But like 2021 You know, is the year I became a tech employee, you know what I mean? So like, it's like It's finishing up like yeah, thank you jelly made. Yes, technically congrats on my I'm gonna start taking those compliments. Absolutely. That's my first year. I nailed it. That's right. Well, okay. You didn't have to clarify but you did. So what's going on Brandon, how are you living? What's What's the deal? What are you working on? What are you Who you talking to?
Brandon Minnick 5:22
Yeah, well, not not tech related, but just wanted to let you know I am exhausted, right. I had a crazy weekend where I went and hiked Mount St. Halina, which is here in the Napa Valley. It's It's the tallest peak in in Napa Valley, which isn't saying too much. That's only about 2020 500 feet of elevation. Okay. Yeah. 10 mile hike a couple 1000 feet of elevation. On Saturday. Then Sunday, I play with the Napa Valley water polo team. And we have practice Sunday morning. So I had a two hour practice Sunday morning. And then we had a tournament so I had two games Sunday afternoon. And then Monday. marathon training started. I'm doing the Napa Valley marathon in March. So I was already dead tired. Monday morning could like barely roll myself out of bed. I still had to run five miles.
Pj Metz 6:25
You're doing you're doing the full 26.2.
Brandon Minnick 6:29
In March Yeah.
Pj Metz 6:33
I too am training for run. And I don't know if you knew this, but I'm doing the the OUC Orlando Utilities Commission half marathon in December. And so I'm going to be running Oh 13 miles, I'm taking my gigantic. I know viewers don't know it. Because I'm always sitting and podcast. People don't know it because all they hear is a handsome voice. I am six foot six and a half, which is just about two meters in international height. And I weigh 270 pounds and making this body run is hard. I did six miles yesterday for Ron. So I read more than you so I win. Thank you.
Brandon Minnick 7:11
Nice work. And it sounds like you'll be in great shape for the Napa marathon in March. Just listen, if keep training.
Pj Metz 7:18
If a sponsor wants to pay for me to fly to Napa and do at least the half I won't do the full marathon is that's not a bucket list thing for me, my mom was like, I have to do I know people that are like I should run a marathon. It's not a 13. That's fine. And even that's pretty difficult. But if someone wants to, if someone wants to do that, pay for me to go to Napa and hang out with Brandon and run half of what he's doing and then wait at the finish line with the Corps banquet, then sure.
Brandon Minnick 7:48
We'll even live stream it. There we go. Perfect. That's that's the idea. We set up a Patreon or go.
And then we can live stream it to all of the all the folks who chipped in, watch this Puerto Rican
Pj Metz 8:03
as he gets to mile four and wish he had never done this.
Brandon Minnick 8:10
But being the show about people behind the tech,
speaking of tech stuff, there's so much stuff going on in the world of dotnet. Today, because dotnet six officially launched yesterday. And today is dotnet cough. So if you haven't already, it's actually going on right now, don't leave us but you can go to dotnet comp dotnet. We'll put the link in the comments. And even if you don't watch it live, the everything's recorded. I've got a couple of videos in there where I'm talking about the dotnet Maui community toolkit. But for anybody that's out of the loop dotnet six is now officially released. So you can use it for your production apps. Visual Studio 2022 is now released. So again, download that it's actually it's really nice. It's a 64, the first 64 bit version of Visual Studio. So if you are working in big projects, it's a lot snappier, which is really great. Or if you're a dotnet Maui developer like me, that in Maui is still in preview, but Visual Studio 2020 22 support start at Maui, at least the Visual Studio 22 preview does. So you can start building trying out apps in there today. That's what we use to build the Maui toolkit. And so yeah, all day yesterday, I was just cranking out code because we got all these new goodies. So my day started. I was in meetings in the morning and I'm just downloading everything because yeah, it's like gigs and gigs to download. Uh huh. And then once I got it started rolling in code all my libraries because
because that sucks. It's just faster like Actually PJ speaking, which like your website, we did that in dotnet. Five, yeah, you just go in and change dotnet, five to dotnet. Six, your website will run faster.
Pj Metz 10:11
I don't know, we didn't have to do anything. It's pretty fast. Really what slows it down is that it's on the free tier of Azure down. But I mean, I guess I'm gonna have to update it to dotnet six, and I guess I'm gonna have to get Visual Studio 2022. And I know you and I were trying to meet on Thursdays. It's been hard lately, but we're trying to meet and we want to start maybe building an app instead of a website, which could be kind of fun. But that's another show. That's a totally different stream.
But yeah, dotnet coffee all that's exciting. And the Maui toolkit that Brian has been working on, it's fantastic. For me work related. I'm just, uh, I'm doing like not typical Devereaux stuff. The conference I'm going to is not a big tech conference. But I've got one coming up in December, called ICIS, which is about information systems. So we're presenting to academics and professors and researchers to show them how Git lab can help them keep track of their their, their code and their data and create environments where they can work more collaboratively, more easily. Um, but uh, like I've said before, I'm an education evangelist, my big thing is that we have GitLab solutions for education. And if you ever know someone who's in college, or professor or if you happen to know a deem a, we offer free licenses for educational use, and for research use from GitLab. So websites about github.com backslash solutions by back slash education, more information there.
This is eight bits. This isn't just, hey, PJ and Brandon, talk about how you hate running. But love spending money to run and tell us what you did at work. We've got a person here today, Brandon, who do we have today? Oh, that's right. I'm so excited to bring this person on the show. He and I have been working together in the open source world for oh, gosh, probably over a year now.
Brandon Minnick 12:19
So I can't wait to learn more about him learn his story. See what he's working on. So without further ado, Pedro Hey, Zeus, welcome to the show. But uh, hello, hello. So for those who don't know, yeah, who are you? What do you do?
Pedro Jesus 12:39
Okay, so my name is Peter, but most people call me as Jesus. That is my last name. Today I'm working as a software engineer at director edge, I am focus on Xamarin and mobile stuffs. And on my free time a job by traffic officers. As you mentioned it we work together probably almost a year right now work in the same team, the same project. And yeah, but I have been working with for research since I believe 2018 At the end of 2018. And I couldn't stop anymore after this. So
Brandon Minnick 13:22
it, it does get addictive. And so. So Pedro, I think you're our first guest to come on ape, it's from Brazil. And so I'm sure we'll have lots of questions in the comments about what being in tech is like, as a Brazilian developer, but let's actually start let's go way back. How did you first get into tech or learn how to code
Pedro Jesus 13:52
remember, because when I was a kid, bliver five years old, my mother bought me a computer because he was in the university. So she needs to, to do some work in jobs. And so you know, computers and that is very hair here in Brazil, what 999 I believe was 1998 97 something like that was a Windows 98 operational system, a super machine with 16 megabytes of RAM and I believe one or two gigabytes of storage and it was just no hypnotized by that oh my gosh, I want to use that play with that. And that started my love with computers. And I want to try to create things to that to communicate to that machine and then I tried to start to code but most of tutorials and manuals was in English and in Brazil English is not very no people don't learn English or hearing the school or like on the coast. So it's very, very hard for two people here to, to do to consume content in English. So during my teenagers, I did High School with technical college, and I did Mechatronics there. And then I had had teachers teaching how to code and how to do that live, my first language was C and a little bit of MATLAB. And after that, I made C sharp, I believe it was 2012, something like that, in this building off of that. And I, my, let's remember the doctor to just code for fun. And I started the university at controlling automation engineering. It's like a mechatronics engineer, he just did the technical stuff that I did. And there I also start learning how to code but then I just saw Java and know when you already know C sharp, Java is more like okay, if you like Java is not a problem. This is totally personal opinion. No, like, I don't like to make this language, I prefer to use a bar instead of type out our array, array the stuff shenanigans. And after that, I graduated, I did all my, my classes, and I try to find a job in my area, but the economic in Brazil wasn't so good at that time. So cannot follow the mechatronic array control automation job to do and look behind. Now, I'm very happy to not follow through at that time. Because Because I you know, I wasn't an academia, they saw a bunch of positions for software engineers in salary and stuff like that. I started to learn salary to do while you're at with mobile, you know, try communication Padrino has been buried and stuff like that. So in okay, no summary. Let me Friday, either ship your junior job on that area and see how it goes, in your opinion today.
Brandon Minnick 17:26
Oh, that's so cool. And I know for me, I mean, I'm I'm incredibly biased. i He's I used to work at Xamarin. And so obviously, I love Xamarin. And love hearing how people find it because I didn't know about it. Even before I started working there. I was literally just looking for jobs. And there was this company that popped up on LinkedIn that actually, my my wife had looked at it was like LinkedIn, I'll tell you, it's like this person was looking at this company. It was like, for me, it was like Kim Minnick looked at Zara and I was like, That's a funny sounding company. I wonder what they do? And I was like, Oh, they make mobile apps. And C sharp. And they're looking for Customer Success engineer. Perfect.
Pj Metz 18:14
I'm successful. I'm an engineer.
Brandon Minnick 18:18
And so for to hear Pedro. You. Yep. Kind of the other side of the world also found started using Xamarin is really cool to me. So speaking of which, you've worked at our touch on the Xamarin team, but what kind of apps are you working on?
Pedro Jesus 18:38
Oh, we we do a bunch of mobile applications new like a company that beautification for the company or the customer. So I bested let me try to let me think here, I believe the five projects or six mobile projects there, so you know, a bunch of them. We have a case one on our website, that is from how I analyzed that was a summary Forms application, I worked on that one for a while, was a really challenging one very complex application to manage, but also a really fun application to wreck because the team was great, amazing team. And also a lot of other guys like a bake applications or like social applications, workout applications, and so on. So after this, I believe that is a fun part of the job is because I right now, I feel that I'm in a new era and I want to learn a lot from a lot of business, a lot of areas. So being a company like that that builds mobile application for different customers. Makes makes possible to me to get in touch with different business demands of business large because then I In industry as well, and probably in the future, I believe that I will be more foxes in that one project just but right now I'm really enjoying to be working up different applications is very, very good to me.
Pj Metz 20:16
That's pretty cool to be able to like, kind of, like, do several different, you know, projects and applications that Hawaiian Airlines when I hope they paid you in like miles for like a bonus, it's like, and as a bonus for working on this. Go to Hawaii, because that'd be amazing. I don't know if you can tell, maybe I I'm ready. But that idea of like, you know, making these apps and you said you do like some fitness apps to I know, I'm sure Brandon and I now that we're training to run for long distances, are using some fitness apps, it'd be cool if it was one that you had worked on. But that, uh, it's interesting to think about how these apps get made, you know, um, are they are they having another company come in and help make it? What are the what's the background behind it? What's it built with? What's the infrastructure like, and this is something that before I never even thought about, and now as someone who's, you know, trying to sell an environment in which to build apps, it's something that I need to consider much more often. It's, uh, it's really neat. I just, I just love this whole world of tech. I really I love the dynamic of a show of Brandon who like, doesn't like, he's not like, the the expert, but he knows a bunch of stuff. And me, I'm just like this wide eyed ingenue who's like, what an interesting world this is.
But, uh, so, um, when you got into this company, you started working on it? What are some, some challenges of that sort of relationship with a client? We're like, we want this app. And you're like, well, here's how we'll build it. And the sort of back and forth what is, what is that? Like? Can you give us some insight into that sort of structure?
Pedro Jesus 21:54
Hmm, let me think, because I did not have too much contact with this clients. You know, normally I don't participate of the negotiations. So I'm more like the Hummer, they've got just 40 bucks there, they go there. And
so, but we work like with different teams with you the applications for using Kotlin, Swifty and flutter and also salary. So we have a very plural team right there. So normally, the people that take care of the business, they ask the clients who are what are the needs? So like, if you are a mobile application that will look the same across all platforms, or you will use some native capabilities native API's very often, like GPS, Bluetooth and stuff like that. And how are you? How is your goal? Or like, is AI IoT stuff is or is it just a IP application mobile application stuff. So based on that, they decided which technology they will use to build the application for the client. But normally, if the guy he like, knows a little bit about technology, or as a technology team side, and they already use some technology, let's say that the client has dotnet back Iran. So it makes sense to use a server in there because you can share a bunch of code. But if the client doesn't have their two, we are moving to another another areas. And sometimes we work with other companies because of the backhand, we sometimes we work on the back end as well. We built the back here, but normally we just take care about the mobile application project.
Pj Metz 23:44
It's awesome.
Brandon Minnick 23:47
Yeah, so you mentioned sounds like us. You've personally used a couple different technologies. Is that right? So you've done said flutter? With React Native one of them as well?
Pedro Jesus 24:01
Yeah, I believe they use it. But no, I'm just Xamarin. It's Emirates team. I don't know how to call it C sharp. I don't know how to reach swift here. I can read them other languages. But if you pay cut using Swift
Brandon Minnick 24:18
to do that. I'm the same way. Well, technically, my first language was Java. But yeah, I'm C sharp through and through. And yeah, same like I can I can read Swift or Objective C or, yep. Pretty much any language once, you know, one, you can kinda figure out what's going on. But yeah, if somebody was like, make a whole application in JavaScript, oh,
Pj Metz 24:45
you should, uh, yeah, you should have seen me. I was trying to create something for work. And it was written in Ruby. So it was using the GitLab API, but it was using a guess wrapper. It's called were you
like put something so like you can use Ruby to access the API. So I had to kind of learn a little bit of Ruby to try and make it work a little bit better. This, this tool that I was working on, and I remember like looking at the, the code and going, alright, I kind of know what's happening, but having to Google things like, how do you do if else in Ruby? And just, it was It was eye opening? Because it was kind of like, in the matrix when the numbers start to make sense. And I was like, Oh, I kind of know what's going on. But at the same time, I was like, also, I know nothing. So I'm not going to be putting Ruby on my resume. Thank you very much.
Brandon Minnick 25:38
Yeah, yeah, it's interesting. Like, because if Pedro touched, there's, there's a bunch of technologies out there for mobile developers like us. And soon to be PJ once we get you cranking on your first mobile app with dotnet. Maui. What?
But yeah, I'd say for the like the average tech consumer, you just see a mobile app on your phone. And there's so many decisions that go into how that's being made. And the first one is just what technology do you want to use the build it? So there's, yeah, cross platform options like flutter or react, native zit hosts Xamarin slash dotnet Malley, where you can basically still create a native app, but only have to write it, write the code once. So with Xamarin dotnet, Maui solid C sharp with React Native, you writing it on Java's JavaScript, and with flutter you're writing on Dart. But then
each platform has its own technology. So if you want to use all of Apple's tools that they put out, you can build it in Swift or Objective C, using Xcode. Or if you want to use Google's tools, you can do it all in Java or Kotlin, using Android Studio, or there's, so there's so many options out there. And but at the end of the day, like Pedro said earlier, it's more about what's what's your, what's your team? Do you already know JavaScript? Okay, great. You use React Native, or you already have servers running dotnet. Alright, let's talk about Xamarin. And data family. So lots, lots of lots and lots of different options out there.
I'm curious PJ, since you're kind of still new to the tech world, very new. Did you ever know that all this stuff existed? Just as a Android app? No, no, no, no, no. Okay. So so I always consider myself like smart with tech. But it was in the way that like, if you handed me a computer, I could find the settings. And I could fix the problem. But it was like problems that, you know, baby boomers we're having where it's like, all of a sudden, like it, my computer's not running fast. And I'd be like, Oh, that's because you downloaded a million browser extensions somehow. And, like, you're the top of your browser's now this thick with like, you know, Ask Jeeves on there. But I always consider myself a little savvy, um, you know, I could jailbreak a phone if I had to.
Pj Metz 28:23
But when it came to actually making the apps, the idea of different languages, I used to think that there was just the programming language that everybody used, that you went back in time, and there was like, basic, and after basic, you learned C, and then C Plus Plus was plus plus better than C was. And I just figured there was a language that everybody use. So you when you suggested and use, you helped me start learning with C sharp. I was like, okay, so C sharp, and then it was like, Okay, there's also JavaScript, I was like, okay, but, and then it's like, and JavaScript is used specifically for this. And if you want to do web design, you got to make sure you know, HTML and CSS, and JavaScript, I was like, okay, and then some was like, rust, and I was like, um, and suddenly, there's this whole world, and I was like, Okay, there's a million languages. And then someone said, Kubernetes, and I thought that was a language for about a week.
So it's, there's a lot you, like you said, as a just a consumer of tech. You don't know you have no clue. And the idea that Android apps and iOS apps are written differently, is something that the average consumer isn't gonna know. They're just gonna know which side of the phone battle they land on. And why.
Brandon Minnick 29:47
Right, that's, that's always one of my favorites when folks just are complaining about like, like, oh, how come they haven't added this feature to Android yet? Or how come they don't have an Android app yet? It's only on iOS. It's like, well, You know, it's really expensive and it takes a lot of time. And you got to pay for these like Arcachon and Pedro to figure all this stuff out.
Pj Metz 30:10
Right. So Pedro, I have an app idea. I'm gonna pitch to you right now and tell me how much it's gonna cost on. No, I'm kidding.
Brandon Minnick 30:19
This is the worst. Oh, worst. Yeah, but I'm sorry. Yeah, go for a picture.
Pedro Jesus 30:27
So yes, DJ nation, like we have a bunch of languages during the day when they started, you know, like, my Becky grace, was it a site size, a computer size, your engineering software steps. So I put something on my head, like, I want to be fluid to one language. And I choose C sharp to be that little bit, you know, like, English, the English delta will be, I can do everything that I wanted to English, I know how that works. But also, I work to learn other languages, like I mentioned that I can't read them other languages. But I believe that for people that want to be in tech, the best, I would say, choice or point that you should do is like, ask yourself, which area that you would like to work on web, mobile desktop AI, and after that, look, how the language is in tune is that you have to work on that specific area choose to, to go deeper. And because I feel like when I talk with developers that know a bunch of languages, they don't know what any version too much further, so they cannot take advantage of that language like forms, optimizations or strong paths of English.
Pj Metz 31:44
And that's, yeah, that's the struggle of being new at this is not kind of knowing where to start. And that's why as someone like Brennan said, who's new, I had Brandon to guide me now He came with his own biases. So I learned C sharp. But to be fair, it was actually a great foundation for me, and not knowing what I wanted to do, or where I wanted to go. I remember Brandon said, okay, like, I think I just learned like switch case. And he was like, Okay, you have to build something. Now, you can't just do like, the tutorials need to create something. And I was like, ah, a website, I guess. And he was like, Okay, we could do a website. He was obviously sad I did. But, um, but we did that and not knowing where to go. Like you said, it can be tempting to say, Okay, I learned a little of this. And then I learned a lot of that. And then you can tell people, you know, a lot of languages, but it's almost always better in the long run to pick one thing and get really good at it. As long as it's applicable. Like, wouldn't what does it Coble that like a bunch of like old bank systems or don't make something old? Something applicable?
Brandon Minnick 32:54
You know? I mean, yeah, COBOL developers are making like 200 plus $1,000 a year, because there's only like five of them left.
Pj Metz 33:03
That's like it turns whatever they want.
Brandon Minnick 33:05
So yeah, if it's, if it's super old, then maybe you can make a lot of money doing it. But yeah, speaking of languages, Patreon, you mentioned that English isn't super popular in Brazil, especially if we have colleagues like that live in the Netherlands, if Yen's here in the comments from from Denmark, where I feel like I've been a couple times and they speak better English than me. The only language I know. So what what is it like being a developer in Brazil? Is English expected for all Brazilian developers?
Pedro Jesus 33:50
Yeah, the heads like that is because a lot of companies they put on the requirements that you should know English but the daily basis you never use English for anything. You don't have to talk English or communicating. Gliffy So normally, for companies that just work for Brazilians, they don't ask English in companies like architecture and the corpus that has a four rigors quiets, you need to speak English you may for example, speak English in our my day job. So and it's communication English. express myself in English. It's kind of hard, I would say for a bunch of people because sometimes I forgot some words or get a little staggered on some things, but I can communicate very well. That is, and this is very, very, when you pick up data, like 1% of people in Brazil are fluent. So this very, very low, low and it's very expensive. as well to pay for for English classes here, because it's I don't know why, but they they put a lot of the sorry, the professors or the schools that teach English are very expensive here. So in that don't know why. So for people like that are more, that don't have too much money they cannot learn english very easily they need to do by themselves like using what is that I have a friend that to learn by himself, I think that he was listening music is in with the latter in the translation they know just like that, and also watching movies and TV shows and put the subtitles in English as well. But it's not very easy to do that by our own. Some people need to do that. And I believe that because of that we don't have too much remote companies hiring Brazil, like Microsoft, for example. We don't have too much jobs in dotnet team or a developer advocate is probably because of that, you know, when they look the data they see or doesn't make sense to hire people from there because the majority doesn't speak English, where? And what's kind of balancing?
Brandon Minnick 36:25
Interesting, right, I have to imagine you. So even though it might be rare, the fact that you are fluent in English probably opens up a lot more opportunities to you then. So what would you recommend? Let's say you've got a nephew in Brazil that wants to start learning to code. What do you recommend that, that they do first? Where do they start?
Pedro Jesus 36:56
I would say I took it because that we have a bunch of material in Portuguese as well. So you know, just do logic, math, math, logic and stuff like that. After that, try to learn some English, you know, focus on area, like I said before, in to go to the languages and we have a bunch of one over tutorials translated in Portuguese, so that is easy to consume. But when you start to thinking like a senior level, or stuff like that, you really needed to know English, because we don't have too much translated content. And one thing that I read, like, all this code area is that you don't need to have us You don't need to graduate or donate to do University to work with that different from like, medicine, for example, you know, you need to start there, you need to graduate there and after that you can work in okay, this is good, because I don't trust anyone to to take care of my health. But I really like this is a very democratic key area because you can learn by yourself. And we have here in Brazil, a lot of people publish articles and, and video tutorials teaching how to code and how to do specific acts with that technology. And that's really great. But also not having that demand to you needed to study in the university or a college or further discounted. Sometimes, it's kind of bad for me, you know, sometimes I like to see what the community is doing here in Brazil, I convert to GIS, and I go to some articles. And I already saw articles in a diversity topic is like benchmarks, performance, SR and the memory measurement and like garbage collection. And it's really good to see normal people doing that, because otherwise you just do you have that thing with a professor. But toxic is kind of bad, because some articles have mistakes there, you know, they put some code wrong or some concept around. So this is the bad part of not doing a graduation there where you can trust on that information. So when I think in technology, and when I think came Brazil that you don't need to to pay a university or don't need to care about that is good, because anyone can can apply for that because both those positions, and I know very people that were poor and when they become a software engineer is the his life changed for for better. And this is really good, but also the people need to be careful about the products that they consume, because you cannot rest 100% In our content because you cannot tell if that is is correct or there is some bug in that sample code or mistake, you know,
Pj Metz 39:52
I have definitely been bitten by the the copy paste with a bug inside of it before yeah Yeah, you're like, Oh, this looks like it fixes it, you put it in and you're like, oh, error fan tastic. And, yeah, it's difficult out there, you don't you don't know who to trust and who can really give you the best information. And you know, speaking of who to trust, we're gonna take a quick ad break, and we're gonna find out who we can trust. In this next ads. Oh, we'll be back in a second. Hi, if you're hearing my voice, that means you've been listening to or watching eight bits with Brandon and PJ. And we're here to talk to you about your product. And how it can help you in your life by to do whatever your product does. So if you're an avid listener of the show, or you watch us on Twitch, then you will know that your product, your product is right for you.
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Brandon Minnick 41:57
So, um, so Pedro, tell us what, uh, what are some of the open source projects that you're working on? Now, you mentioned earlier, at that you found open source? Is it two years ago? Or? I think you said 2018? And yeah, kind of fell in love. So what what was it about it that keeps you coming back? And, and what are you working on today?
Pedro Jesus 42:21
Great. So when I learned Xamarin, C sharp, I didn't pay anything to anyone, you know, everything was free coated, there was two big workshops made by Microsoft MVP here in Brazil, where I could learn is Emery from that and a little bit of C sharp as well. And after that, I try to give back to the community or the community gave to me, you know, like, Okay, I will try to to write some articles and record some videos teaching people how to do X or Y. But I am not very good on that. Because I always was thinking like, Hey, I will write a blog post about it. I like to call the end, okay, let me see what I can do. I found them officers, a way to give back to the community. But when I was on the offices, I realized that I'm not just giving back to the community, I was receiving something back as well, like, I started to contribute to the marine essentials. And after that, I jumped to the Xamarin forums and design reforms. I be there like I was to win one or two years contributing. And the people in the team who were very welcome and very newbie friendly. Like they teach me a lot of how to code how to use Git, I really learned how to use Git your own open source world, how to my first rebase was chain from the summary forums that my team has seen, and was a pm for me and just as key do this rebase because we need to update our bridge to our target branch and how I do that. He was putting a lot of comments and pasting code, pasting, copy and paste this this get comment here and that to do that. And also, that is it in there, how I learned how to how to do git. And I honestly prove it to my code. This kills like 95th level I cannot measure that because having the community it's a Microsoft seniors and software engineers, they're doing code review for my code and teach me Hey, you, instead of doing this approach, you could do that because of these in depth. So I would say that in these three years of officers I have a lot so this is one thing that always makes me come back To open source because it's a place that I always keep learning something new. And also, I met a bunch of people like rainbow like jaramogi, Andrew Chan, and a lot of people probably miss a lot of names. Because there are a lot of people in debt, also really great to know people around the world that I'd probably never meet if I was into the office is
Pj Metz 45:27
so important. It's so Yeah, and like, think about, like, learning programming languages and like the 90s when they were just like, what was it like dotnet use groups and like the really, really simple early stages. And like, now, there's so many projects where you can go, and not just like you said, not just contribute, but you gain something from it. The three years you've been contributing to open source, you said it's leveled you up like, like, it's immeasurable. And that's, that's what we're trying to make sure people know is open source is a place for you to get better. Yes, their expectations that you're contributing that you're you know, you're helping build it better, but it's it's immeasurable measureable the benefit that you get from participating in an open source community and active open source community. Got it.
Pedro Jesus 46:22
Yeah, that is right through like, right now they committed to key to that one of the brushes that I'm working on, I like to work like in how we will transition for design reforms to Maui, some API's change, just like the drop affected API's. Also, we will need our headers to handler so I also try to figure out how we will be the best way to do that. And that is kind of like architecture software. So I will never do that if it wasn't the officers because on my daily base, I just code their mobile application. So everything that I need to think is how to build a mobile application. Now I'm thinking how to build the SDK or notes or packages. So I need to care about a lot of things that I don't need to care about on my work daily basis. So it's no it's very fantastic to me that I can learn a bunch of things there. It's like a safe environment to know if a screwed up with the code. I will not be fired. So
Pj Metz 47:26
that's right. You heard it here. First. They can't fire you from open source, y'all.
Brandon Minnick 47:33
Yeah, I agree so much in something I've been having a lot of fun. So like Pedro mention, we have a toolkit called the Xamarin community toolkit. Now that diamond Molly's coming out, we're creating the dinette Valley Community toolkit where essentially, it's think of all that code you copy paste between all of your either Xamarin apps or Maui apps, the toolkits are here to put that into one nougat package for you. So you don't have to copy paste that code anymore, and get just some real quick and easy converters, behaviors, views, UI layouts, that you can use to just help people code faster. But with this new toolkit for Maui, it's been it's been a lot of fun, because we learned a lot. Her better way to put is we made a lot of mistakes with the Sanford community that we've learned from. And so when setting up this new repo, it's like, well, I always hated this. So how do we avoid that? And I've been having a lot of fun, kind of setting up those guardrails. So things like something that was tough, or that is tough and open source is there's all sorts of levels of both expertise, and also levels of contribution slash commitment. So you might get anything from a senior engineer who takes like five seconds to put, like, open up an issue on a repo to say like, Hey, you guys should create this new feature. And it's like, okay, thanks. But that's not really helpful for us. Like, have you written any code? Have you thought about its API design, its usage, the naming. And so on the zebra commute toolkit, we got a lot of, to be frank will say low effort, noise like that. And so it was difficult to know, when new issues were coming in, like, which one is somebody just, I wish they had this. So I'm going to kind of throw a dart and which ones or somebody actually put thought and put together a proposal for it. And so we've created this whole new workflow for the community toolkit to where we're now going to have discussions first, anytime I talk about new features, and once the new features really, we've chiseled away at it and we've got something really solid we can let you open up a feature request. And same thing with pull requests, we would get pull requests out of the blue, where, I mean, don't get me wrong, some of them are great. But when you're when you're not expecting it, that's a lot to then digest. And especially if it touches a lot of files, or if it's 1000s, of lines of code that I've never seen before, and I have to sit down and review it, that's gonna take a while. Whereas with this new process, by the time we get to the PR phase, we've already agreed on everything, the design, we've approved everything. So the PR should just basically be checking the box like, Yep, that looks exactly like we talked about. And so, yeah, I've been having a lot of fun. Not just architecting, this new, this new library, but also like trying to build out this repo. So it's almost dummy proof, so that if anybody comes to it, and if you try to open up a new issue, it'll guide you through the process, or, let's say you do open a PR, or we have our continuous integration, delivery pipeline that will automatically trigger. So we'll, we'll run all the unit tests, and we'll make sure everything works. So that that can also help guide you along the way. C sharp even has these things called editor configs, where you can set up rules. So there's because there's nothing worse than looking at a code base, and like this file is completely differently written than this file over here. So setting up rules to where like, hey, we have a certain look and feel we want to do like C Sharp 10 introduced file scope namespaces. And those are great. So we're gonna, we're gonna throw an error if you don't do it. So we can do that. And so, yeah, I've learned a ton just playing around with that, just trying to think of like, if I were to write code for this, what would I do? And kind of how can we Shepherd people down that that certain path? So yeah, huge shout out to open source.
Pj Metz 52:04
Right, get involved.
Brandon Minnick 52:07
So much from it. And, yeah, ah, I love the story where that's how you learned. And so that's also how you're giving back. And, PJ, I'm curious as you're still fairly new in this journey.
Pj Metz 52:21
Yeah. Yeah. I actually, this this particular conversation, and a conversation I was having with a colleague of mine, is making me think, okay, like, I think it's time to find an open source community that I can start contributing to, and start small and get involved. Because, uh, you know, like I said, I've only been in tech for about six months. And in that time, I've been slowly focusing on understanding my company and our product. And now that I feel like I have a better handle on that, I think it's time for me to really like, sort of say, okay, that's my job, but like, where am I getting better? Where am I building my developer skills? Because I'm not building my developer skills at work, because I don't really write code for work necessarily. So what am I going to go and be a part of, and, and this show this specific Zealand and Pedro, like, you've I, something clicked in the past, like, 40 minutes, I was like, No, I need to start contributing, I need to get out there and find something and do it. And so I think that's the next thing for me is, is finding a place where I can contribute. Starting really small, getting used to the community, like you said, Brandon, there's going to be some rules and ways that things are done that I have to get used to you can't just join a community and understand things immediately. You have to take the time. So maybe you might see be lurking around in your repos open source people out there. So if you see me around, say, hey, and invite Him in nervus
Brandon Minnick 53:58
XM patriot? Do you have any recommendations for PJ?
Pedro Jesus 54:02
Yeah, well, let me sink when I start today, in a way working Zamri. And I really liked that technology. So okay, I want to contribute with this. And so like, if you you mentioned that you and Brando are building a website. So like if you are using ASP. Net or HD framework, maybe a spinet is a huge project to start to contribute. Who knows? Like? Maybe it's very hard because I don't know that millions and millions of lines of code there is C. Okay, that is the A spinet and I use this package. Let's say repeat. Okay, I can use refeeds to just start to contribute in the end and look forward. I'll believe that you find an open source project hosted by Microsoft or Google or Facebook or any other company will be very welcome to to you.
Pj Metz 54:59
That sounds great. The idea of finding something established and saying like, you know, like, I'm obviously not going to get in there and be like ASP dotnet, I'm here to fix things. Like he said, It's millions of lines of code. But it, it made me realize, that's something that I should be looking for, I should be looking for open source tools that I want to use, and I should be contributing to make them better and to learn the tool itself better. Because a lot of times, I feel like, you know, this, you're using a tool, and you're like, Oh, I know how to use it. But you're really only using it for your specific use case, right? So actually going in and finding other use cases and finding other ways that can be used can help make it a make you better at using it and help you know, where you can help make the tool itself better. So yeah, that website that I, that Brandon and I built, honestly, Brandon built that website. Uh, it's it was I was early on, he doesn't agree, but
Brandon Minnick 56:01
all the code I just use,
Pj Metz 56:04
you can go back and watch the old Twitch videos. Okay, so on line 57, why don't you type this, and I would type it and then you'd be like, You did it. You're like the dad saying, like, I'm not I'm not holding the back of the bike. I'm not holding your bike and you are holding the bike. But no, we built this website with ASP dotnet. I love the experience. We're hopefully going to be transitioning to actually building an app. And honestly, like, I'm very excited to start learning some Xamarin I think that'd be pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty cool.
Brandon Minnick 56:35
Yeah, we're thinking bedrock, it says cuz you'll know what I'm talking about. Is that with PJs website, it was yeah, it's ASP dotnet core with MVC and razor pages, but we're thinking is use like the blazer for mobile apps, that's kind of new and dotnet. Six, and see if we just kind of like, jam it into a mobile app first. So that's where we're at least gonna try. But we'll do our best. I know that technology is also experimental. But yeah, before
Pj Metz 57:12
I've heard the term blazer, so I'm ahead of the game from where I was back in back in October 2020. So
Pedro Jesus 57:21
that sounds really fun. I also didn't touch on on blazer for mobile yet and reveal blazer, but I need to find time to play with that. Because looks great. Just the idea should not need to have electro anymore makes me a little bit.
Brandon Minnick 57:37
Yeah. That's the other thing. You know, we talked about all these different platforms to make it mobile apps, but even like, desktop apps or websites? Oh, gosh. 1000s. I feel like
Pj Metz 57:52
the applications are endless.
Brandon Minnick 57:56
Thanks so much for joining us today. We're just coming up on the top of the hour. What closing words? Do you want to share with the folks or what do you want to promote? Before we before we end the show to that?
Pedro Jesus 58:12
Well, first, thanks for having me and for this invitation, and really appreciate that. And my final words for people is like if someone is new on the technology, or wants to be in the technology, and no matter how old or how new or younger Are you just go for it, you know, it's really easy to find content. They're like tutorials, texts, and articles and stuff like that, to try to do the first steps when you are a little bit confident. Because I know when we talk to contributor officers, we have a little bit of fear. Because if you go out there, where do you see my my work out there, we're using my code and how my code is ugly and how I could best books. Now, don't think that way. Just think that is a new chance to, to learn, have fun. And probably inside the open source community, you will find someone to mentor you and do you, you know, you will become better and you probably will find your first job. And, you know, you'll be very happy to work it at home. wearing pajamas and stuff like that. It's I mean, it's the best job ever.
Pj Metz 59:22
I've definitely wearing pajamas right now. It was an accurate, accurate statement. Um, but yeah, just like Pedro said, y'all, you don't you don't have to know what the final step is in your process. You just have to know what your next step is. And sometimes it's something simple and easy. Just open something up, get started, type a question into Google and and take the step, whatever that may be, you know.
Brandon Minnick 59:50
Absolutely. Well, Pedro, beautiful closing words. Thank you so much for joining this week. And thank you for listening. We'll see you again next week. Don't forget to subscribe to the show at eight bits.tv Get also subscribe on the YouTube channel. Tell your friends about us. And if you're interested in supporting the show, reach out at Hello at eight bits.tv and we will see you next week. Have a good
