8 Bits with Reshmi Sriram!

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Brandon Minnick  2:02
Welcome, everybody to another episode of eight bits, the show where we interview the people behind the tech. Learn more about their journey. I'm your host, Brandon Minnick. And as always, I'm joined by my amazing co host, PJ Metz. PJ, how's your week?

Pj Metz  2:19
It's good. Oh, this has been a good week. First off. It's been a while since we've been on huh? It's

Brandon Minnick  2:25
yeah. Yeah, for, for those following the show. If you if you follow the live streams, you'll know it's it's been a while since we've done a live stream, almost a month and a half. And that's because we switched we we got a little burnout. So we moved to two episodes a month. And sometimes we'll stack those up. So the podcast will release the middle and the end of each month. And as guests are available, we'll interview them and do it live. But yeah, we haven't hung out since mid February, I think was when we did Matisse interview the last one. But yeah, good to see you again. Yeah, you're like a long time ago.

Pj Metz  3:11
I'm an annual pass holder for Universal Studios. Now. That's a big change in my life. And I just like you all to be very happy for me. It's funny, my buddy and I, who have lived in Orlando our whole lives. We have annual passes for Disney. And that's always been a thing I had, but he got one for universities like hey, you should get one. I was like, Oh, what am I going to do it too? When will I have the time? I don't know. And roller coaster came out. Want to say last year called the velocity coaster. It's a Jurassic Park roller coaster. And it's really fast. And I've seen ads for it. And I've been going to universals website and like clicking buy a ticket and waiting and and then No, I'm not doing it. So all of my targeted ads are universal. stiff. Yes. And it wore on me. And eventually I was like, I'm doing it. And I went and I rolled the roller coaster and I screamed the whole time. It was terrifying. It was amazing. I love it. It's a good roller coaster. And like finally I'm finally a two part annual pass filter.

Brandon Minnick  4:14
You heard it here folks. targeted ads work.

Pj Metz  4:17
That's right. Y'all love them. Everyone get targeted at dt. I've seen that commercial from Facebook. That's like targeted ads are helpful. Look at how good it is for you. And I was like hard sell there. It's

Brandon Minnick  4:33
I will say that the hat I'm wearing right now. i i wish i remember who made it I'd give them a shout out because I love them. But also a targeted ad it was showed up on my Instagram feed and was like check out this amazing hat that is waterproof and sweatproof fitness. Like that's exactly what I'm looking for. How did you know? I know exactly what they know. They know me better than I know myself. And that's

Pj Metz  4:59
right Alright, I do want to admit out. I'm currently panicking because the way I moved the window that are restream isn't I can't grab it and move it anywhere and it's like the wrong clicking. Oh, technology, what have you done to me?

Brandon Minnick  5:21
It's so for everybody listening PJ also produces the show live well we air the show.

Pj Metz  5:31
The address bar is right up at the top and it's hidden under the toolbar for for my for my Mac is like, I can do this. I believe in myself. Hold on. Yeah, you guys are gonna, you're gonna, you're gonna hear it later. It's just me struggling.

Brandon Minnick  5:48
Man in the comment said to hit F 11. F 11, you might be able to grab it.

Pj Metz  5:55
Hold on that muted me.

Brandon Minnick  5:57
Hold on. I knew you're on a Mac. Even have F F elevens

Pj Metz  6:02
that it's there. I just have to fn fn to do it.

Brandon Minnick  6:07
So well. PJ's checking that out? I've got I worked fun. I got Sure. Oh, we did it.

Pj Metz  6:19
Folks, professional show.

Brandon Minnick  6:23
And we both work in tech. I love I will say quick sidebar. For especially especially parents are the usual culprits of this. But they just assume that like, oh, you work in tech, like you're good with computers. And you are better you can fix my computer. And I mean, probably but we're just kind of figuring it out as we go. Yeah, I'd say for me, it's just I'm not afraid to click that button. Like, what's this button do? I don't know, let's find out, and then refactor it. Sometimes you pay the price for that. But yeah, I do have some news I want to share. This is breaking news, like within the last hour. It's not that exciting. But you're probably wondering how we got here. So at Microsoft, we've been working on a new tool called dotnet. Maui, if you're familiar with Xamarin, Maui is the next evolution of Xamarin. It's basically where we're bringing in support for iOS Android, into dotnet. And then creating a multi platform application user interface, aka dotnet, Maui. So it's a cross platform way to create iOS apps, Android apps, Mac, a Mac, iOS apps, Windows apps, all in C Sharp, and dotnet. And what I've been working on for the past, gosh, eight months on a long time is the dotnet Maui community toolkit. So it's a completely open source library that is built by you the community, where we have all these cool, helpful tools that you can use for your dotnet Maui apps. And today, we just launched our docks. So we've been hard at work at this, writing all the code for months now. And also writing the docs. So we just published the docs today, you can see him at Doc's top microsoft.com/dotnet, spelled do t n et slash community toolkit, or click on the link in the show below.

Pj Metz  8:31
That's right. Can you Yeah, the very least you can copy and paste it. In the chat, you'll see it click it. Congrats, Brandon, that's exciting to be at the docks, and to be able to push that out to the community and to have them finally have that kind of access and, and help that they need and using this stuff. It's very exciting. Congrats. It makes

Brandon Minnick  8:52
effects. It makes it feel very official. Because the the source code is all open source. But we created our own organization on GitHub called Community toolkit, because I'm working on the dotnet Maui community toolkit. But there's also a new toolkit for when UI and MVVM and just dotnet stuff in general. There's a bunch of toolkits, all made by the community that we put under the committee toolkit. Org. But when you do that, you're not in the Microsoft. org on GitHub. So sometimes people will come along and be like, What is this? And they're like, why should I use it is this official Microsoft product, but now, we're on the Microsoft docs so we can say yeah, here's our documentation@microsoft.com. We've, we've been trying to. We've been struggling a little bit with that branding aspect lately. But yeah, now we're official. And it's still working. Still working on the dock still working on the toolkit. It's all available in preview and should be released in May. So we're getting really close.

Pj Metz  9:53
Wow. Oh man, that is very close. Oh, May is a it's my one year anniversary of getting a tech Wow, we're coming up on almost the year of me having been working in tech. So we'll have a lot to celebrate it may well have to do a very special episode where we all learn an important lesson. And that lesson is tech. We will figure out the lesson before and then I promise, but, uh,

Brandon Minnick  10:21
it has been great episodes. Yeah, that was such a cool guest today. We actually, should I just recently met, but I feel like we're quickly becoming best friends. BJ, let's welcome to the show the program manager for the Azure static web apps at Microsoft. Rashmi, welcome to the show.

Reshmi Sriram  10:47
Hi, thanks for having me

Pj Metz  10:49
here. And then I ruined it. I'm sorry. Oh.

Reshmi Sriram  10:56
Do you want to do a retake?

Pj Metz  10:59
Though it was perfect.

Reshmi Sriram  11:04
It's okay, we can always do a retake. We can do the retake for a bye, maybe.

Pj Metz  11:09
Let's make some B roll here live for me. Welcome to the show. Um, thank you so much for being here. I'm glad I got to meet you. And I know Brandon said that. Y'all just recently met. But I have even more recently met you. So I'm very excited to have done that. And very excited to have you here. Thank you for coming on. Um, to get started. How about you tell the folks at home all about yourself and what's your about?

Reshmi Sriram  11:40
Sounds great. So quickly, starting with the typical welcome that we do in India, because I have been told that I'm the first guest from India. So nervous. So yeah, hey. Hi, I am Rishi. And I am a program manager with the static web apps team. I will be quickly talking about that as well. Just you know, sadly. But yeah, point being I am working with Microsoft since the last 10 months. And this has been my first time as a program manager. And my first time as a live stream participants so woohoo. But yeah, this it's been a very fun 10 months for me. And quickly, just rolling back to what PJ said me is a special month for us as well in static web apps because we are celebrating our one year anniversary as well.

Pj Metz  12:37
Listen, apparently May is just the month where great stuff happens in in tech just good. Yeah.

Brandon Minnick  12:46
And it's my birthday. Oh, I didn't know that.

Reshmi Sriram  12:51
And now we have a lot of reasons to celebrate. So we are going to get treated by Brandon for this right.

Pj Metz  12:58
Yeah, Brandon.

Brandon Minnick  12:59
Everybody gets cake for your birthday.

Reshmi Sriram  13:01
Also Oh, sweet. Kind of. Yeah, a sweet little birdie. Kind of give me a heads up that to be there in the show. I need to have some sort of decorum. So

Pj Metz  13:14
that's right. We have we have rules about how we present ourselves and recipes got that? Oh, yes.

Brandon Minnick  13:22
That's right. We have a strict dress code on this show. Everybody wears a hat

Pj Metz  13:28
tails. a walking stick because walking sticks are like what fancy gentlemen use right? Do you remember what that was? The thing is fancy gentleman had to have like a cane and like a walking stick. And then it just fell

Brandon Minnick  13:42
out and a monocle and a pocket watch?

Pj Metz  13:44
Yeah, why don't back in

Brandon Minnick  13:46
the 18 Good old 1800s

Pj Metz  13:52
What happened? We need to go back. Well, maybe not. Yeah, kids these days don't work on a recipe. I honestly never. I can't believe you put a hat on. I never realized until just now that Brandon and I are always wearing hats. I knew I'm a hat person. But that's because I'm a My hair is thinning up top and I'm embarrassed so I wear hats all the time. Also, it's another way to show my personality but I never would have been like yeah, that's the show are the guys wear hats until

Reshmi Sriram  14:26
now you how would you trademark

Brandon Minnick  14:29
actually, that'd be a great logo.

Pj Metz  14:32
Just made that hat with a very tiny eight bits logo on it so

Reshmi Sriram  14:41
and I would get a complimentary one for having introduced it. Or you guys realize

Pj Metz  14:46
it 47% royalties on the back end for Rashmi and whatever the remainder is for Brandon and then I'll just take it up and I'll just I just want to wear the hat. That's all I'm happy.

Brandon Minnick  15:02
To be honest, I just do it totally just because I'm lazy. The show. I'm in the earliest timezone here. So actually Rashmi and I are on the other side of the world right now, which is incredible to think about. And I know that because when I looked up, she said she'd be joining us from India. I was like, What time would be there? And it's exactly 12 hours. So we're exactly the other side of the world. So for me, it's early in the morning. Well, early, it's, we meet up at 930 in the morning, and we go live at 10. But that's like early for for the tech world. Yeah, I'm just lazy. I don't I don't want to do my hair. So I put on a hat. That way, I have a good story. It's just okay, well, I could do my hair right now. Like, or I could make a cup of coffee. I'm gonna make

Pj Metz  15:50
a choice. I agree. I agree.

Brandon Minnick  15:55
So, freshmen love the tangent. But let's bring it all the way back. Because on a pitch, we love to learn about your journey, in hopes of inspiring others to do the same. And as our first guest joining us from India, we have so many questions, but let's go way back. Let's start with how did you first learn to code? And is that common in India for folks that go to school?

Reshmi Sriram  16:32
That's actually a good question. And now that you speak about it, there's been a lot of change of late in the educational curriculum that has been building by the government. Oh, by the way, if folks are wondering what this is, this is called Mehndi. It's kind of a traditional Indian tattoo, which you kind of have in your hands for some festive occasions. So it's not seen guys. It's just like wearing off. So never mind.

Brandon Minnick  17:01
Somewhere to handle.

Reshmi Sriram  17:03
Yeah, it is Hannah. Yeah. That

Pj Metz  17:09
specific festival? That just happened. Yeah.

Reshmi Sriram  17:12
It's not any specific festival. But it's kind of a thing in festivals. So I had a couple of family functions in the last week. So all of us, like all my cousins, all my relatives have this in a hand. So it's just wearing off. It's fun. Yep. Yeah, quickly going back to where I started, right. So as a part of the education curriculum, it has always been emphasized that a student learns all sorts of things, right? Exposure to anything, co curricular exposure to coding exposure to the basic math, science, etc, etc. So yeah, definitely my first stop has been coding in Visual Basic, I think, and this is back in my lemon grade. So it's quite a while back, but that was my exposure to coding. And I was like, I don't know what's happening, to be honest. Like, I didn't know what was happening, because you had like these super fat monitors, and you had those super slow processors. And I mean, like, it didn't even make sense why we were doing something like that. But usually, those labs were our escape to play in MSP because that was like the only thing scooping into whether Tito's like looking somewhere else. So that's kind of been the first time with fiddling around codes. But I have always been a fan of playing in and around what facilities are there and Microsoft Like, Command Prompt, I don't know, like, I have always been obsessed with trying to do something or the other over there. I remember back in my college days, we had created a hotspot using quantum because the Wi Fi was not good enough. There are rooms. So these are like these tiny bits and things where you actually like, get a hands on and code but you actually like get a result out of it. So my start was over there in school. But quickly, I realized that I did have a kind of attraction for it. Definitely compared to studying the number of chromosomes that each organism has. I'm like, you know, that Drake meme? It's literally like biology. Computer Science.

Pj Metz  19:37
Yeah, there's that meme with Jordi LaForge. from Star Trek instead where he's like it's almost the exact same face. And bonus because Georgia forage is fantastic. And Star Trek is good. Shout out Star Trek. is

Brandon Minnick  19:57
sponsored by Star Trek.

Pj Metz  19:58
That's right. CRT monitors that. You mentioned the old school because I mean, I've got a very lovely, lovely thin flat monitor. Right? But they used to be gigantic, massive. Yep. And that's where you started. I love that you brought up MS Paint. I feel like anyone who ever was in grade school or in high school and had to do work in a computer lab. First thing you open is Ms. Paint, you take the pencil tool and scribble everywhere. And then you just start filling in spaces with random Yeah,

Reshmi Sriram  20:35
yes.

Pj Metz  20:36
Wow. I don't cross the world. Experience and I love it. Y'all. makes me so happy. I'm like you built a hotspot in in college? Because the Wi Fi you were like, Let's just build our own hotspot. Yeah,

Reshmi Sriram  20:53
yeah. be coded it from the scratch. Thanks, StackOverflow. I mean, like. But yeah, it was definitely handy because the Wi Fi that we had was so patchy. So technically, like if you needed it to reach your room, the LAN cables that we had in our school. So being in a government school, and India is not a very highly advanced and highly facilitated place to be if I were to summarize it, but basically, it's like a first come first serve thing, right? There are like 10 Lan cables, and you get your hands on the first LAN cable well and good. If you don't get it, you have to rely on Wi Fi. And if you want Wi Fi, you don't get it in your room, you have to go sit outside in the corridor and get the Wi Fi but no. Five will be computer science students.

Pj Metz  21:50
There's 10 labels, if you get the first one, it's 100 feet, and it goes down from there. The last one is just four feet, you gotta

Reshmi Sriram  22:01
say yeah, that's kind of like the inception of where it was. But now in retrospect, when I look back at the whole journey of where I started and where I am right now, I never thought of it until I spoke it out right now. But it feels really great to like, do that complete circle. And now I'm back at Microsoft, where I am literally working for a Microsoft product. And I started off my computer exposure with basic Microsoft stuff. So yeah, it feels good to have done that complete circle.

Brandon Minnick  22:33
Yeah, and who knows, someday in the future kids will be in their computer classes learning to code. And instead, they'll build be building Azure static web apps.

Pj Metz  22:48
I think that's a very good place to start. I actually I think static web apps are just a great project to start on. Because it's it's a little less daunting than what I started with, which was a full ASP dotnet like, with a database. Thank you, Brandon. I was like, I was like, yeah, man, ASP dotnet core, and it's gonna have a database, like, Oh, sure. This makes sense. I can do it. I could. No.

Brandon Minnick  23:15
Yeah, cuz. So PJ and I just started that journey just started about two years ago. And I remember Rashmi, when we're first starting out as like, there's a new thing called Azure static web apps. Maybe we can use that. But to be honest, I couldn't figure it out. It was it was also still in, it's still in preview. It hadn't been

Pj Metz  23:39
early. Yeah, it was very early. And

Brandon Minnick  23:47
now it's amazing. Now it's great. This, this new PM came in about 10 months ago, Everything's been great.

It's a resume, it sounds like, sounds like you chose the path to go to college. But if we go back a couple years, or a year or two before that, what is the what is it like in India for your typical secondary school student? Do most people choose the path to go to university? Or do a lot of folks choose to get a job start working right away? Or do you have technical programs? Fill us in on that and how all that affected your decision?

Reshmi Sriram  24:37
That's actually a very good question. And I think I would consider myself blessed enough to have a very clear route on how I can proceed. But India being very, like in the stages of developing country, right, it's it's still fighting for resources among the population that we have one thing which the government does Definitely make sure is trying to promote education and every form. But unfortunately, education is not a privilege yet. So education is a privilege. It's not a given factor yet for every student, right. So usually in Indian households, if I were to say, it's a very typical, I think it's an Asian household thing, because I've heard it from a few of my Chinese friends as well. But usually, your parents already, like have a full tree diagram on what their kids are going to do. It wasn't the kid is born, like the three months old, he's holding the pencil. Artist, okay, artist is a side job for 3d to focus on education, right? Let's take them up the education guide. So yeah, it was kind of like already sketched out for me as well. And my parents were really passionate about me going towards an MBBS line, because none of my family members have any sort of doctorate or even even PhD per se, right? Everyone has been just like, very strictly associated to commerce, science was not like their cup of tea. So my parents are like, Oh, our girl is going to be the first doctor in the family. And guess what? I chromosomes?

Pj Metz  26:22
And then you got to biology and you're like, No.

Reshmi Sriram  26:29
Right? Yeah. So looking back at the education and how things have been so far. So in general, how it happens is the mentality in India for like, a working class population is to prioritize on education, to have the basic level of education. But post that when you kind of like, do your 12th, right, when you're done with your junior college, the next step usually, is to just go for a job. And now when you go to a job, you do have two options. You either like, actually explore all the categories and facets in the job, you learn more, you try new projects. And sometimes it's so just so happens that you do not already click in right, or you you just enter a domain, and you realize that this probably is not what you were looking for. It's kind of what happened with me as well. So I as soon as I completed my undergrad in nit Calicut. So and it is National Institute of Technology, or the unknown. It's kind of like the premier Institute in India. So basically doing a computer science degree in and it is a bad thing. You end up in a good company. Yes, totally agree. But where I ended, and what I learned was two different paths, right? I started. And then I go scale down to C. And then I go scale down to a language called scheme. I don't know if you guys have tried that. It's kind of like based out of list. Oh, yeah, it basically teaches the basics, you know, like, I just like went down, down, down all the way to list. And then we went back to C++. And this was my college curriculum. And once I stepped out, I got a job in Deutsche Bank as a software analyst. And guess what we are working on Java, we're working on Spring Boot we're working on. I don't know, like so many things that end within like, one, one and a half years, I got exposure to back end, I got exposure to front end, I worked on React projects, I had my hands on like everything, and I was literally enjoying it, right? You try out something new, and you're just like, oh, this is actually not taking, and then you talk to your manager, and my manager was really supportive is like, Okay, why don't you try this. And then I jumped to front. And I'm like, Oh, this is fun. This is actually something I'm enjoying. But maybe this is also not what I want, right? And then I tried a few things. And then my manager helped me realize that probably what I'm looking for, is wanting to stay in the technical domain, but play to my strengths. And my strengths was not exactly coding. But yeah. I like how do I make use of what I am good at, but at the same time, be able to contribute to the technical sphere, right? And then I kind of like did a sit through analysis with my manager. And we realized maybe what I need is an MBA and a little more exposure to the business side and see how exactly can I use my technical knowledge and my business knowledge and put it together? Right? And that exactly is what happened. I went ahead, did an MBA and after MBA, I ended up with a program manager role. And now guess what I have best of both worlds. I am working with coding. I am working with marketing. I am working with strategy, and so many things that actually keeps me happy. I'm challenging, and it's like every day you actually look forward to tackling something new, maybe like failing. It's just a part of the process, right? You fail but then the next thing you do you fail, you get up and you learn a new way to not fail, right? So I write code. I just remember seeing a meme just today morning, it was basically a programmer, like cheering looking at the monitor, like, you find your new arrow, that means I am progressing

Pj Metz  30:22
is very exciting. I love that this this idea of being able to try a lot of different things and being able to do that in your career. That sounds really awesome to be like, alright, so I did this back end, it's not really for me. And when I'm doing front end, and I'm learning react, I'm like, Oh, this is a lot more my style and what I what I enjoy, but even when back in wasn't something you enjoyed, you were able to learn while you were there. And that made you better as you progress. So that's, that's fantastic. One amazing, amazing story that makes me really happy.

Brandon Minnick  31:00
And it's it's funny how will say at least at least in the US school system, failings bad. Like if you get an F on something that is terrible. But like, like you said Rashmi in reality, failings really good, because that means you tried to do something. I mean, you didn't, but that's okay. Because you learned something you learned at least one way not to do it. And then taking that lesson that you just learned, and then reapplying it is basically life. It's, we're all just trying to figure stuff out. And you can't really figure anything out unless you try it first. And sometimes it works on the first try. Sometimes it doesn't. And that's okay. But yeah, in the, in the US at least, you're not really taught that growing up, you just taught like you got to get straight A's. You got to go to college,

Pj Metz  31:54
and failing a test is the worst. It's that that's what everyone tells you. And that's the impression you get growing up is like, you don't fail, you have to prove that you're good now. And it's like, well, they just told me about, you know, fractions two weeks ago for the first time already. Um, failure is a big part of how and I joked earlier, it's a big part of how I code. But honestly, I just built a, I'm learning Python, I just built a bot that sits in your terminal and just listens for a specific hashtag, and return some information about the tweet that use the hashtag. I made like four versions of it that didn't work before, I found a way to take some pieces from all the things that didn't work and combine it to make it work. So it's very exciting to fail. And it's not a joke to say that a new error message is one of the best things.

Brandon Minnick  32:55
It's like best and also kind of deflating, but yeah, you know, you're making progress spirits, like so stuck

Pj Metz  33:04
out, there was another wall behind that wall, but I got the first one down. And that's a big deal.

Brandon Minnick  33:09
Or when you recognize the error message, you go, I know exactly what that means. Before I got to do that, speaking of the community toolkit, I mentioned at the top of the show, somebody opened up an issue that I just literally spent a whole day trying to figure out how to solve on my new Windows computer. And so as soon as I saw the issue post, I was like, I know exactly how to solve that. Here's the link. And just in case that one doesn't work, here's another link and he's like, perfect. And it was only because I just solved it and gone through that myself. So the experience the experience counts folks fail away.

Pj Metz  33:54
So recipe from from college from the NIT in India. You got that job doing bagni said at Deutsche Bank, you start doing front end, you find yourself now at a job you said it brought you full circle back to back to some Microsoft stuff. So oh, what is it? What is the static site generator and Azure? What is this all about telescope what you're doing at work because like, I You sound excited about it like you even like, I'm going to talk about I was like, I want you to talk about it, please.

Reshmi Sriram  34:27
Yeah, I just wanted to make sure that I am not sabotaging the show. Because just like okay, you know, very, very subtle. I'm not promoting anything at all being quick. But so quickly just starting up on what I work on, which is actually very exciting. So this is product called static web apps. So as your static web apps is a tool with which you can host your static sites. And when I say static, that does not mean that you can have all only, you know, static pages like blogs and documentations. It's static because you have a very good segregation of how your websites are hosted. So your static ends are hosted separately and available across the globe. At the same time, your serverless back end is being hosted by Azure functions. And this split and host is actually helping us give a very good, minimal latency to the customers. And because it is located like geographically across the globe, you do not have to worry about the customers having the lags. And God knows what all this shows, right, you basically are able to cater to everyone across the world, even if you are an XYZ, just a blog situated out of Europe. And we have a very strong as your network, we have a very good dependency with all the other applications, we have a tie up with Azure functions, which is like our basic back end API's, we have a good tie up with all the database related. And we do have a lot of features coming up over there. So I'll quickly jump to that soon. We have CDN we have managed as your CDN and are and so now if you are like globally located and maybe like 10 points, you can amplify 200 different points and reduce the latency even more. And everything in Azure, right, the Azure atmosphere has a very good tie up. So you can just like make your application stronger and stronger. And the best part about our application, you do have a free SKU, so you do not have to pay to try it out for the first time. So I would highly encourage you to go try out your websites, go try build anything, we have a lot of tutorials as well. And you will also see a lot of good videos to catch upon. And basically, every framework that you want any kind of website that you want, you can build it, you can try it for yourself. And I'm really excited about the features that are coming forward to especially during the one year anniversary. So both PJ and Brandon, I would love for you guys also to do your hands on over there and let me know how the experiences.

Pj Metz  37:12
Try it just before

Brandon Minnick  37:18
it's funny to me, because, uh, so my backgrounds in mobile, I've been making iOS and Android apps for years now. And hadn't really thought I'll say, I put this in air quotes, teaching PJ build a website was the first time I built a website. And so yeah, when I first heard of Azure static web apps, you know, as a Microsoft employee, you hear rumors swirling when new products are being worked on. My first thought was, what does that even mean? Like the static like static electricity. And then once I figured out static just meant just means it doesn't, doesn't really change. It's not really necessarily interactive. I started realizing most websites are static like, eight bits.tv. The website for this show is a static website. It's where we post all of our content, you can watch all of our videos, read the transcripts, listen to the podcasts. That would be a static website, heck, even like cnn.com, where they post the news like that's a static website. And I sort of realized, like, probably most websites can use Azure static web apps. Is that Is that accurate? Am I my close?

Reshmi Sriram  38:32
You are more than close, you're pretty much hitting the hammer exactly on the nail, right? This this quarter misconception that people have that having a site static is probably going to be just HTML content is not the product that we are catering to right. We are a jam stack product. And when you talk of jam stack, the the abbreviation for jam is basically JavaScript API and markup. So we do have a very powerful tool which combines all three of them. So basically, like, I'm probably not very good with the exact number, but I could say like more than 60% of the websites that are hosted right now are a good category for static websites. The reason being a lot of the content that we already host on our websites, right, like any sort of landing page for a company, or any sort of blog, any sort of even like you mentioned, right, even if CNN right, you need to refresh the news. Yes. But ultimately, it's kind of like a static page, which is being loaded for everyone. You click on a link, and you can call it with an API. But why do you need to have like a very heavily loaded website just to try hosted? No, you can just break it down. Very cool, very simple and be able to do it at a cheaper cost, be able to have a better latency, be able to have more availability, be able to access so many additional features that we have like CDN free TLS certificates and I Like so many of them, I can't even count it on my fingers right now. Yeah, this is pretty much what we have in Azure static web apps. And yeah, I would love for each each one of you is there in the call as well to try it out. And please do let us know on how the experience has been.

Pj Metz  40:17
Yeah, I really recommend people do static websites, it's a great way to just get practice in. And just like Rashmi said, when when she was at school and had to build her own hotspot, that experience of creating it, there was something you said where it was like, and that's where I did a lot of learning and listen outside of your classroom, whether it's a boot camp, whether it's self taught, taught, whether it's a traditional education system, outside of that, when you start to do things on your own, and have to figure it out without a teacher, their professor to give you the answer. That's where you really learn a lot, and that people call it the real world. But I don't agree with that. But like outside of education, that's where things really start to make sense for you as a learner. You know, speaking of learning, I think it's time to learn about some advertisements that we have, here's a commercial that we're going to cut to this has been a good intro to the commercial. 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.

Brandon Minnick  41:52
That's right. If you are interested in sponsoring us, you can reach us via email at Hello at eight bits.tv. We're always looking for somebody to help because this stuff costs money, we love doing it. And we're happy to do it. But we do have to pay, we should probably get on Azure static web apps. Probably paid a couple $100 a year for

Reshmi Sriram  42:23
this, this definitely sounds like a good tie out for you. You could maybe like give it a shot and see how it works. And I would love to hear all about your journey and your experience.

Brandon Minnick  42:34
Absolutely. So. So rush me. On the show, we always try to inspire folks to get into tech. And like we've discussed, it's sometimes not the easiest thing to do. Because I don't know, maybe maybe I'm not good at math, or maybe I never learned to code. What What advice would you give to somebody who is looking to get their first job in in tech?

Reshmi Sriram  43:00
That's, again, a very good question. And I am sure that a lot of things that I'm probably going to say right now are pretty much in and around what everyone has used in their life. And a few of them we have already like very subtly touched on as well in the previous discussions. But most of my tips for anyone who's joining new for tech is not specifically to tech, it's more about how you exactly go about the new challenge that you have. So the first one that I would probably say is, it doesn't really matter if you're going slow, right? It's about progress. And what matters really is you actually put in that little extra effort every day, and be consistent. Keep trying to push harder, you might think you know that you already gave your 100% on a single day and you have been trying and the same error is coming five times and you're probably like, this is not my cup of tea, this is not working. But I would suggest like when when that's the case, you probably like tweak a bit, try a bit, make that 100% 110% And try look for that new error message that could probably at least tell you that now, this is something different. This is something where I definitely know that now I do not have to fail in this way as well. Right. So consistency is the key, you need to make sure that you keep trying and you keep doing a bit every day so that you can go towards what you want to achieve. So that would be my first one. The second one definitely is about making your basic strong. So if you want to enter in tech, what they look for in general is not about all the languages and frameworks that you know, but it's more about how well are you with the basics like how good are you with data structures and algorithms? How good are you with like the pseudo logic, if you if you have a question how well can you picture on how do you solve it? So being able to understand the logic is more important than putting it out in a language, languages are just like they're literally siblings, right? You know how to do C++, you are going to learn how to do Python, it's not going to be hard. So do not fret over what sort of languages and frameworks, you know, that's something you can just pick up on the go. But focus more on building your foundation strong. And once you build your foundation strong, you are like, definitely towards the right direction of succeeding. The third tip, yeah, I actually have made a lesson probably like, my eyes are just sitting there. Because these are the lessons, I really hope like someone told me long back when I was starting my career new, but I really hope this reaches the right audience so that they know what they should be doing. The third thing that I would say is being yourself, right? Any any sort of situation that you have, there are like interviews, where you probably will be given a challenging question, and you would be under the pressure of actually wanting to answer something, but you actually do not know what to answer, or there would be something where you are disagreeing with the interviewer, but you do not want to disagree with them. For the sake of not looking rude or whatever. I would say, just be yourself, right? Be yourself and be able to actually put across what you are. And that exactly gives the person the idea that you're being genuine. Being genuine really helps. Because later on in future, you're not in a situation where they'll be like, Whoa, you know, he or she she knows how to fix these codes, right? But actually, what you did was just stack overflow.

Pj Metz  46:42
Important to know how to find the answer, because no one automatically has the answer for everything. So then I know it off the top of my head is I know where to go to find the answer. Because that gives you a pathway towards so much more that you can do. I talked about this, and I'm in confusion is this one of learning a talk I gave back in October 2020. It was all about how you're going to be confused, you're going to get lost. But knowing what the very next step to take is, is usually the most valuable thing. Because if you don't know where to put your foot next, you don't know what direction to go. So being stuck is one thing. But to get out of being stuck. It's about knowing what not what the end result needs to be what the very next thing to do is and sometimes that's typing in stack overflow.com and going there and finding what it is. And that can be hugely valuable. If every developer knows it. It's it's it's not a secret that we are looking stuff up all the time. I can't I every day I have to go. Okay, how do I make a new branch and get and I'm like, get new branch. And then I'm like, okay, got it. And then I'll hit it memorized eventually. But right now.

Brandon Minnick  48:01
I feel good. Did you can I forget what StackOverflow calls me their favorites or bookmarks? You can basically like flag and answer that. Yeah. And I've done this for answers that I've had to go back and like Google keeps taking me back the same answer. And so yeah, I just end up bookmark. You didn't StackOverflow cuz I know I'm coming back. But yeah, especially like this git commands, like, just, you don't use every Git command every day. So

Pj Metz  48:29
Right? I don't know.

Reshmi Sriram  48:34
But to quickly add on to PDS point, this, like a little bit of disagreement over here. I just use my own point, by the way about disagreeing. But yeah, there's a little bit of disagreement that I have with what PJ said about nuance. Sorry, knowing that what your next step is, while it is good that you know what your next step is, that's kind of like not necessary, because I would say like in my life, I suppose I did not know what I wanted to do when I knew that that was not my cup of tea, right? So it's never going to be bad to actually try out multiple things to actually like, step on multiple boats and try and see what exactly fits you know, even Cinderella did I mean not Cinderella, Cinderella prince did that right? He tried the shoe or like so many other women before he's right. Yeah, that's the point. Sorry, I just like broken between who? Randomly Daniel you think something?

Pj Metz  49:32
No, that I was just That's amazing. And I think I think you're absolutely right. That's that's a perfect, a disagreement with what I said. It's not just saying, Well, I'm going this way now. It's, well, I'm trying this and I'm exactly like, so that's fantastic. I love I love that you said that. Thank you. That's perfect.

Reshmi Sriram  49:51
Yeah, it's it's about going right. It's about not staying stagnant where you are and staying stuck. You're actually like going trying something new. Maybe Feeling and then exploring something new. But the key is to keep going to keep trying towards reaching your goal rather than just waiting for an external help or just giving up wherever you're stuck. That's, that's not going to help. And the final tip that I have, which have been stating, since the start is, please do not be scared to fail. Failing is the biggest lesson that you can have failing might give you a moment of dissatisfaction, but it's going to give you a lifetime of happiness, knowing that it's something that you don't have to revisit again, because now you know, that's going to get you to failing, right, at least you have like 10 branches in front of you. Now, you know, you do not have to take that branch, you have to take other nine branches, right. So please do not be scared of failing, please do not like stop from wanting to try something just because it's going to be scary and you have a risk of failing, but try it out to live it for the experience, learn the journey, enjoy the process, rather than focusing totally on what the outcome is, outcome is going to come. When you reach that you need to focus on making sure that you're actually learning all the way while you're reaching the outcome. Right. So yeah, it's a lot of in Hindi, we say Dion. So it's basically like a lot of knowledge dump. But it's kind of like things which I wish someone told me long back. And now I would just say I want to share it with the others as well.

Brandon Minnick  51:34
Yeah, I love what you said about embracing the process and enjoying the process. Because there's been a lot of times in my life where I thought, I thought the goal like the I thought the end goal was when I I'll finally have made it and I'll feel accomplished, or I'll feel smart or happy, proud, whatever, whatever emotion, you want to insert here. And when I hit the goal, kind of look around, you're like, Oh, that was it. Oh, I just spent, you know, eight months working on this. And, okay, I guess I guess we hit our goal now. But if everything in life is around the end goal, you gotta cut it end up, just be a disappointed like, you kind of have to enjoy embrace the process and make that what what you enjoy about doing things. Because once once that goal passes, then then it's gone, it's over. But if you can enjoy it while you're getting there, then you get to kind of enjoy that goal for longer and get to bring it with you along the way.

Reshmi Sriram  52:43
Totally, yeah.

Pj Metz  52:45
I love that. I really think that there's a, uh, almost almost a disconnect for people. Because a lot of times we think of goals as the thing to accomplish, right. But goals are always in the future. And when it arrives, it's it's the present, but you spent so much time focusing on what's coming, that when it's actually here. What what are you are you focusing on here? Are you still looking to the future, you know, so be present now, because that's where you're going to spend most of your time is on your way to something. So I think that yeah, you're exactly right, Brandon. Exactly. Right.

Brandon Minnick  53:23
Thanks. I'm so Oh, go ahead, please.

Reshmi Sriram  53:27
No, it's okay, good.

Brandon Minnick  53:29
Oh, well, I wanted to bring up because we are we're so thankful for having you on the show. And we're down to the last five, six minutes. And I want to make sure we promote everything you want to promote. And before the show you mentioned hashtag 100, devs 100 days of code challenge. Tell us more about that.

Reshmi Sriram  53:50
Yep, ah, it's basically that's exactly why I kind of like interrupted a couple of seconds before. But it's an open source. It's this guy called Leon oil. He kind of is leading this 100 days of code challenge. He has done this previously during lockdown. And he is helping on his bed to try educate people with the kind of knowledge that is kind of needed to get into a tech role. But it's I have like no connection whatsoever. But I would really love if people do try it out, especially for the ones who want to, like enter the tech sphere. So basically just try follow the channel. There are a few challenges, which you have to do every week. There are a few lecture videos which you have to attend. But basically throughout the course throughout the process, you're going to be learning how exactly do you think like a coder? How exactly do you put yourself in that shoes and be able to get into the tech world that you wanted to crack? So just a small shout out to the open source platform

Brandon Minnick  54:54
there. Yeah, I love it. This looks very impressive. Even I mean, in the opening paragraph on the website, it says that he ran a fully free remote coding bootcamp that helps 72 People get software engineering jobs. And those 72 people saw their salary increase on average by $53,000 $1,000. Yeah.

Pj Metz  55:20
Which that's more than I made as a teacher. And one of the reasons I got into tech, so like, Yes, go. Bag.

Reshmi Sriram  55:34
But yeah, it's going to be a fun journey. And again, it's going to be challenging, but hey, that's life, right?

Pj Metz  55:41
Embrace the challenge.

Brandon Minnick  55:44
And Russia, we just had a comment from soft taco Raider asking if learn with Leon. If this Twitch channel is the same, yes, we add. Yes. Awesome. Yes, it is. So that's twitch.tv/learn with Leon, l. E. AR N. Wi th. Leon. That it sounds like he must do a lot of live coding on Twitch too. Amazing.

Pj Metz  56:13
We love lots of movies, don't we, Brandon?

Brandon Minnick  56:16
That's right. That's that's our origin story. Yeah. All right. Yeah, PJ.

Pj Metz  56:25
Thank you so much for first of all that advice you just gave. Thank you for giving people listening another way to expand their skills. Brendon, we're getting close on time. I think it might be time for the final, final final piece of advice, because this last 50 minutes has been all solid, really good advice. But we got to we got to ask, What's one more thing that you that you wish you could tell yourself? When you were getting started? That you think other people need to hear? Rush? I was like, oh, yeah, as a host, I was like Brandon, yada, yada.

Reshmi Sriram  57:10
I'm like, maybe I have to be the spectator over here.

Pj Metz  57:15
A late night TV host, because I'm a terrible recipe, final piece of advice. The last thing you would tell people.

Reshmi Sriram  57:23
It's a very tricky position you have put me in because I actually had a list which I read out. But the one piece of advice, which I very personally make sure that it sticks to me, throughout my experience so far, is always embrace learning, right? It's kind of that whole growth mindset. So you do not have to be the person who knows everything. There is no one who knows everything. You need to be accepting of the fact that there are more things where you can learn and where you can improve, where you can explore there, like so many facets that you haven't considered right. Make sure that learning is what is integral to you as a person, and it's gonna help you throughout your life journey. And yeah, I think that was like my two cents. But yes, please try static web apps. That is like my site, PS.

Pj Metz  58:20
That too.

Reshmi Sriram  58:24
Yep. Thank you so much for having me, you guys. And I am super pumped about everything that happened in the last one hour to be honest, like it's kind of like my bedtime. But I have so much energy, I don't know what to do.

Brandon Minnick  58:38
Thank you for joining us. Love this conversation. For people who want to stay in touch, where can they find you?

Reshmi Sriram  58:46
You can definitely catch up with me on Twitter. So my handle goes at the rate r e s HSIRA. M that is rage three RAM. So I am definitely available on Twitter over there. But otherwise, you can feel free to reach out to me on email. I am a little confused where as you actually reach out. So I have been on an Instagram break for almost a year. So maybe not there. But you can reach out to me whenever I will be back I can definitely get back. But yeah, feel free to drop out a message to Brandon and PJ. Maybe they can connect me to you guys. But I would love to hear from all of you. And I really hope that they do have quite a few people who are inspired to try out new things and try out anything tech getting more into this world. And yes, once again, thank you so much for having me on the show.

Pj Metz  59:47
Awesome. Rashmi, thank you so much for being here. This has been eight bits you can follow us on Twitch at Metzen around you can follow us on YouTube at eight bits please subscribe so you always get the latest stuff and you can listen to us at Eight bits.tv Everyone have a wonderful day and we'll see you all next time.