INIT

Episode 9: How To Shortcut Years of Development

Published: Wed, Jul 5, 2023

(Auto-Generated) Episode Transcript:

Seth Whiting: Hey everybody. I am Seth Whiting. I am a developer from Portland, Maine, and I've been coding for about 10 years now. And I am Jacob

Jake Pacheco: Pacheco. I am a barber from Augusta, Maine, and I've been coding for about 10 weeks now. Oh, nice. Yeah, somewhere in there. I mean, it's double digits up.

Seth Whiting: Yeah. Something.

Jake Pacheco: Yeah.

We're, we're getting there, buddy.

Seth Whiting: Nice. Cool. Well, what have you been, what have you been working on the, like this week? This week?

Jake Pacheco: I've been working a bit still through those those H t ML tutorials, mm-hmm. H T M L will flow into c s s will flow into JavaScript and then more advanced stuff react and stuff like that.

Through the course that I'm taking Angela Hughes on Udemy. And it's her full web web development

Seth Whiting: course. Oh, wow. So she goes all the way through to react and everything by the end? Yeah. Oh, wow. Yeah, it's like 70 hours. Holy sucks. Yeah, it's a really long course.

Jake Pacheco: Wow. So yeah, I'm, I'm in advanced job I mean H T M L ideas.

So right now I'm learning tables. Okay. Yeah. That's kind of the beginning of that part. Mm-hmm. So I'm learning a bit with tables and stuff. One thing that I've been noticing as far as it's going and stuff is is H T M L so far? It, it's, it's definitely more, I don't know what it's more of scrap that I, I, it's, it's just, it's, it, it doesn't really scratch my brain as much as JavaScript does.

Mm-hmm. As far as like all of it seems very, very, like pretty. Darn straightforward in, in H T M L. Like, it's like, yeah. Like that, that it, like, I might find out that something is called something, but it, it makes sense. Mm-hmm. The way that it acts and interacts with the page. Mm-hmm.

So it's, it's, I, I won't say that I'm not as excited about like H T M L, but I, I, because I think it's definitely like, extremely necessary, especially for doing the front end like web development in general.

Mm-hmm. But like, it, it's, it's just it's a bit more, I, I guess the word would be boring. Like, for me, like I, I'm just like, I'm like, I'm bored. Like yeah. So, so that can be kind of I don't know. Right now it's just a, a, a little bit or, or, or it feels sometimes a little bit like, okay, move on.

Mm-hmm. And like, and but one cool thing with it is like a way that I've been learning it. More or less is like, she'll say what we're about to learn or whatever. Mm-hmm. And she'll be like, and the goal is this, and this is how we do it, and I'll stop it right there and just kind of like, try to search and find it myself mm-hmm.

On Google or whatever. Like try to find like what the actual H T M L like line that I have to write is or whatever. Mm-hmm. And kind of toying around with that. And that's been kind of fun. Yeah. Just kind of making my, making the project harder on myself a little bit, Right. Just because I, I don't think that it'll like, really hit home entirely.

Like in, into like the storage bank that is my brain. Like if I just like am typing along with someone Yeah. I, I, I'd like to kind of try to learn myself almost. Right. And then get it reinforced by someone saying, yeah, that was right. You did

Seth Whiting: it right. You know what I mean? Yeah. That's smart. Oh, because that's like a, a lot of, I, I just said that's smart because that's a lot of like what you, you know, do in real life.

Like if you're, if you come up to something that you haven't done before, you know, you don't, you don't have somebody there who's just like telling you how to do it usually. Yeah. You know, like a lot of the time when you're just like coding out there in the wild, you need to just like, reach out and look it up, you know?

And Yeah. And it might take a couple different tries looking it up, you know, until you get to like what you're looking for. Yeah. So that's, yeah, I think that's like, that's, that's a very useful skill to practice.

Jake Pacheco: Yeah. Yeah. Well, like I, I've always liked like, using search stuff anyways, like, it just like, mm-hmm.

You know, I, I've always been able to find stuff, so it's like but with that, like, I found it very intuitive to find these answers and stuff like that. Like mm-hmm.

Seth Whiting: It's, it's,

Jake Pacheco: it's. It makes sense to me and it's like, yep, okay, that's this. But like having stepped away from like my JavaScript fundamentals in the beginning to now, like doing H C M L, like I'm so nervous that I'm losing parts of my JavaScript that I've learned.

Yeah. You know what I mean? In my memory, cuz I'm like, oh man. Like I, I, I haven't done it in a bit. Mm-hmm. And so like, I ended up on YouTube just looking for like, any tutorial on like, you know writing JavaScript alongside H T M L and stuff to like, do anything on a page. Yeah. Like I, I just wanna like, make it so like I type in some JavaScript and now the page does something special.

You know what I mean? Yeah. And, you know, I, I, I worked on that for a little bit and it didn't work, and I was a little upset, but I think my, my JavaScript was mostly written right? So, I don't know. I'll, I'll get to that again anyways. But yeah, so I, that's, that's kind of one of my, one of my concerns and that's why I kind of currently really wanna plow through and just get past the HTML and the CSS part of this course, just so I can get back to JavaScript and kind of like refresh and relearn a bit of, a bit of the things that I've already learned, but also, you know, learn more with it.

Because there's still some things where I'm like I, I don't, you know what I mean? Like, as far as like, like how. JavaScript can create something is still like, I, I get how it can get answers for things. I get how it can think in terms of, hey, if this equals this and this equals this, and this must equal this, and the computer can tell you what it equals or whatever.

Mm-hmm.

Seth Whiting: But like how you make a game, like, come on. Yeah.

Jake Pacheco: Like, you know what I mean? Like, like there's, there's things like that that I'm just like, yeah, no. Like there's not even, there's not even an inkling of my brain that knows how to even start to decrypt that text. Yeah. You know, like, or to like, understand it.

So yeah, I'm excited to learn that stuff. But it's also, it, it, it is a lot in some of it's almost like I, I, I watch anime sometimes, like quite a bit actually die and there's parts of certain anime that like, have like filler episodes. Mm-hmm. And it feels right now a bit like I'm in a filler episode and I'm like, Hopefully there's something in here that matters.

Yeah. You know, but, but I just have to trust it and trust the process. But it's also like, you know, sometimes it's hard to not look online and be like, Hey, can I skip this? You know?

Seth Whiting: Yeah. Can I skip these episodes? Yeah. I mean, I, I don't know. I feel like, I feel like it is important for you to like, stay like excited about like what you're, what you're working on and there is a lot to be excited about, you know, and like, I don't wanna say that it's like a, a mistake to be taking that, that 70 hour course.

Like I think that Yeah, thats, you know, like that if you get through all 70 hours, like you will, I'm, it seems like you will definitely know everything that you need to know and everything. Yeah. But I think that there are probably ways to learn where like, you're doing stuff that you are like, excited about the whole time and like you're.

You're learning all of that boring stuff, but it's because you need it in order to make the exciting stuff happen. Yeah. You know what?

Jake Pacheco: Yeah. Yeah. What, what? I'm really like, I don't know, itching for like, what I like my dream like teaching program thing. Mm-hmm. Would be like, okay, here's some fundamentals and stuff, and now you have to figure out how to like, build this thing.

Mm-hmm. And like they, they do a bit of that in in Code Academy, which I really appreciated. Like when it's like, just kind of throws you into the fire. But it was always something that was a bit I don't wanna use the word useless, but it felt kind of useless. Yeah. It felt like it's not going toward a a, a bigger thing, like a bigger project and stuff.

Yeah. And like it, in this course I'm taking like the H c ML portion is it's, you're building your own website, which is really cool. Mm-hmm. But it's also like, It's, it's I had, I had trouble with this in high school, middle school, all, all of my, you know, schooling was just that. Like, it felt very much like, why, why am I finding the answers to these problems that you just wrote?

You wrote a problem and I have to find an answer for no reason. Like, there's no Yeah. Like, what's the point? There's no, yeah. It's a waste of time in my mind. Mm-hmm. Like, I want to, like build something because it is going to be a thing that I wanted to build. Yeah. Not because it's just there to build, you know what I mean?

Mm-hmm. But how you do that, I don't know. Like, you know what I mean? Like how do you do that without not knowing the fundamentals of all this stuff? And that's kind of why I feel like I'm like just kind of like dragging myself through a

Seth Whiting: little bit, you know? Yeah. I mean, like, it, it could be that like you, you have something that you're working on y and like, you just kind of have to figure out the fundamentals as you go, you know?

Yeah. Like you, in order to make something like not fundamental, you need to kind of like, you need the fundamentals. Yeah. Yeah. You, you could learn them, you know, out of necessity. And I think that that's probably a better, probably a better way. That's

Jake Pacheco: what I'm talking about. Yeah. Is like, I like that's, I kind of think like, but.

I think that would be fun for me. Mm-hmm. In a way, like instead of finding the answer because someone told me, or because like, you know, or, or finding an answer that doesn't come to fruition and like, create a thing, really. I, I, I think it would be a lot cooler to be like, okay, I built this thing and now I need to build a backend to it.

Seth Whiting: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Jake Pacheco: How do I do that? And then like, yeah. And then I, and then I'm learning something to build something. Mm-hmm. You know what I mean? To, to, for, for a greater project kind of a thing. Okay. So I don't know I to unpack there, but I eventually, I wanna like, try to figure out that, and I'm sure I'll talk to you about it and then I'll talk to everyone else about it on this podcast.

So but yeah, that's kind of where I'm at right now is like trying to, trying to solve the puzzle of like, My favorite style of learning mixed in with my knowing that I, I need to know these fundamentals as well. Yeah. And it sometimes it's just gonna be a grind and that's fine too. You know what I mean?

Seth Whiting: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. I, I don't know, I, I, I kind of feel like if you don't want to sit through 20 hours of H T M L Yeah. Don't. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But

Jake Pacheco: I don't know. Yeah, it's tricky also, I'm sure, because from your position, like where it's been a minute anyways, like, it's like, like does it feel like unnecessary to sit to a lot of H T M L when it's like, you, you're, you're like, ah, I'll figure it out on the way or something.

Or like, what, where's your head at with that? Like what do you think about that, I guess? Well, I think

Seth Whiting: that's my question. Yeah. Kind of what I'm saying is like, If you, if you have a project that you know you want to do, you, you're gonna need H T M L for it, no question. Yeah. And like you can just learn the parts of the H T M L that you need in order to make what you're trying to make, you know?

Mm-hmm. And, and you can, yeah, that makes sense. You can just like Google, like, how would I set up the HTML for this? Yeah. For, for like this particular type of thing. Like, oh, I need a, you know, a table that lists out all of my, my lizards or whatever. Yeah. Yeah. And, and like their, their feeding times and all of that.

Like, how do I make a table? Yeah. And then you learn how to table and then you're learning tables. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That makes sense. Yeah. Or like, I need like a, a headline for, you know, this section of the page, like, what tag would I use for that? Or like, yeah. I want to embed a video, you know? Yeah. Into this page.

Like, how do I do that? Yeah. That kind of thing. Yeah.

Jake Pacheco: Yeah. So I, I guess yeah, I'd like to maybe, maybe I can come up with my own project. Mm-hmm. And maybe I could hit you up so, And I'll talk about it on the podcast, obviously. But it, it could be a thing where like, okay, so right now I'm working on this part of it, give me a guide as far as like what I should be learning or mm-hmm.

What to Google. Yeah. In order for me to like, kind of get the ball rolling on like, like, then you'd be like, yeah, you need to learn headlines, tables this part of CSS and this. Mm-hmm. And then I can be like, okay I'll start, you know? Yeah. Yeah. Cuz I feel like that would be much more productive for me, I think.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Which is, yeah. It's, it's, it's, it's just funny because I guess I didn't think about it until what you were just saying, but like, I guess it's like. Again, I come from like being a car mechanic at one point and like still like working on cars a lot. And I guess it's like me just being like, oh yeah, I, I'm, I'm learning cars.

And like, yeah, right now I'm in a 10 hour portion of headlights. It's like, like, yeah, I don't need to know that much about headlights. You know what I mean?

Seth Whiting: It's like, you need to know what you need to know in order to like fix the, the carburetor or whatever. And that's

Jake Pacheco: how broken and that's, I, yeah, and that's how I learned about cars is like I, I, I, I was like, oh, I need to learn compression.

Okay, I need to learn parts about compression, you know what I mean? About compression on an engine or something like that.

Seth Whiting: So yeah. Yeah. That makes, yeah. Babies don't learn how to speak from like taking an English class. Yeah, yeah,

Jake Pacheco: yeah. Yeah. You have to, yeah, you have to be at a certain point to the that.

Yeah.

Seth Whiting: But yeah, no, I get what you mean though.

Jake Pacheco: But cool. Yeah, so that's kind of what I, that's that's, Full update on where I'm at with all that stuff. And yeah. And yeah, I mean, it's not like, this hasn't like, killed any of my excitement about it and stuff. It's just like, it's, it's I don't know, like I said, like the, the starting to slip a little bit or like feel like I'm slipping with my JavaScript, like mm-hmm.

That's, that's made me a bit nervous. I'm like, I don't like that. Like I, I want to, like, I wanna have more ideas in JavaScript, like solidified. And I, I really think that the way that that happens, at least I think the way that it will happen for me is by doing like, something where it's like, no, I actually have to find out my own solutions for Yeah.

A project.

Seth Whiting: You know what I mean? Yeah. It's, it's like instead of like working, you know, in order to someday have like a goal to work toward you, you start with the goal and, and, you know, work from there. Exactly. Exactly. So like, yeah, that's definitely, I, I, I would, I would definitely recommend that. Yeah.

And yeah, and like, totally like if you, if you think of like, this is what I want to do, and I can tell you like, that's probably not a good place to start or like a, a good, like first thing to do or, or like, okay, like I hear what you're saying but here's like a pared down version of what you're talking about that would be more doable, you know?

Yeah. Like, yeah, definitely. You know, we can kind of like work it out to like, okay, here's, here's an actual good starting project kind of thing. Yeah. That'd be awesome. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Something that's gonna be like useful but not like overkill. Yeah. Yeah. I think that'd be really cool.

Jake Pacheco: Yeah. And, and you know, if it's a good enough idea in general, then why can't we expand upon it after if I, you know?

Yeah. And yeah, and maybe that's, that, that program that we had talked about in a previous episode the, the reptile thing. Yeah.

Cuz that would be, I think something that you could eventually expand and do more

Seth Whiting: with and stuff like that, so. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah, you could totally yeah, there, that, that's definitely a like there is a simple version of that that we could make.

Mm-hmm. That would be cool. Yeah.

Jake Pacheco: Yeah. That's just for the user or the, the, it's just on your, whatever, your laptop or phone or whatever. Yeah. And then we can continue on to do more with it. Yeah. That's, that's a cool idea.

Seth Whiting: Nice. Sweet. Hey.

Jake Pacheco: That's cool. I just made a ta-da face. You guys didn't see

Seth Whiting: it, but it happened.

Yeah, we did like sound effects on this. Yeah.

Jake Pacheco: Come on. I, I used to, I used to put it just little sidebar I used to put around the house. Do you know those like little party whistles like that? Like those things like the air horns? No.

Seth Whiting: The ones that like the party whistle unroll as you go into roll

Jake Pacheco: and make that ridiculous noise.

Yeah. Yeah. So whenever someone did something special, I'd always hop on around. Just like under a cushion. Like a, yeah, yeah. Just to do it. Just cuz I thought it was hilarious.

Seth Whiting: Yeah. You need one, you need at least one in every room. One second. Are you gonna go get it?

You got it. Yeah, I have one right

Jake Pacheco: here. Yeah. Yeah. I dunno if this is one of the noise making ones though, cuz I got kind of pardon the word shafted and, and got some that don't make any noise. Yeah. This one's just air. Come on. Come on. Anyways. There's some plastic ones around here somewhere that do it.

Seth Whiting: Audio medium. Anyways. Yeah. So

Jake Pacheco: what's on your mind? What do you think people should be learning? Seth? What, what are you,

Seth Whiting: where, where are you at? Well, I wanted to talk about some of like the like superpowers that are available to even, even like, maybe, maybe not beginners, but like beginner to intermediate.

Like it, I mean, maybe even beginners. Like, so there are, there are things out there that basically give you like, Super useful tools that are like generally pretty easy to work with. If, you know, if you, if you know like a bit about programming, then you can do a lot with like your, with your little knowledge because of just like how, how many like useful tools are out there that people have made for developers to use in, in their own like projects, in their own apps and things like that.

And I just wanted to kind of like illuminate some of the possibilities that are out there that beginners or like people who, who don't know how to code yet, like, might not know like, oh. Like, I can use that in my project. Like, and, you know, I, it is just available for me to use and then I can like, you know, u bring my own idea to, you know, use this thing in a way that I want to use it.

And it, it'll like shortcut. Well, I mean, like, not even shortcut, like there are things out there that, like, you can use that if you tried to make it yourself, it would take you like years of like college learning. Like, like you would need to like get like a master's degree in, in like computer science, just to like get started on, on some of these tools that are available to you just out of the box, you know, to use wild.

Yeah. Just in your, are these free or are

Jake Pacheco: they, are, is this something you pay for? I

Seth Whiting: think all of the ones that I'm talking about our. Not free, but Yeah. The thing is, all of them have like a free tier that you can just like mess around with. Mm-hmm. And, and use like for like personal projects and stuff.

Yeah. But also you, once you do start using them, like if you, if you start using them in a project that like you're, you're opening up to the, to the general public, it's like a few cents for like, you know like like if, if like a hundred people used it in like every day for for like a month that month's billing cycle, you, you might pay like 50 cents or something like that.

But then if like a, a million people used it, then you're paying like, you know, like maybe like a hundred bucks a month or something, you know? Geez. So it's, it's like I'm sure the math is totally wrong there, but Yeah. But are we talking about like, also like there's like tiers and stuff, like once you get to a certain tier, it like, it gets cheaper and, and stuff.

So anyway, there's like a lot of different like, pricing points, but they're all generally like probably you, you would probably be pretty surprised at like how, how cheap they actually are. So, so I guess I,

Jake Pacheco: I, I guess my question then is are we talking about like like a server or are we talking about like, is it like a thing that's helpful in the sense of it helps you code or are we talking about something like it's already a built thing that you would've had to build?

And they'll just let you borrow it, kind of, or, or use the licensing for it or something like, I, I

Seth Whiting: don't like, what do you mean? Yeah, so actually all, all three of those categories oh yeah. So there, there's like, there's a ton of stuff out there that's like if you can like, think of like, oh, wouldn't it be cool if like, this kind of thing existed and I could just use it.

It's probably out there, but may, I don't know. I don't, I don't wanna say that like a blanket statement or anything, but Yeah. But there's a lot, like I, yeah, I'm, I mean, I'm, I'm not trying to like be withholding here. I'm going to start talking about like what they actually Yeah, yeah.

Jake Pacheco: No, it's a secret.

We're not gonna talk, we're not gonna talk about it on this podcast. Yeah.

Seth Whiting: But we were going to kind of talk about like two different types and, and one is tools that you can use within Visual Studio Code, which is the, the text editor that most web developers use nowadays. Just because it kind of like, once it came out, everyone is like, this is definitely the best version of like mm-hmm.

This type of thing out there. So when I, when I started developing the, the King of Text editors was called Sublime Text, and then along came another text editor called Adam, which was, yeah, I've heard of that one. Yeah, that one's kind of similar to Visual Studio Code. And like, once Adam came out, everyone was like, We're def we're all using Adam, you know, like if you're not using Adam, like you're, you're not getting all of like the, the benefits that you could be getting.

And then Visual Studio came out of like left field and everyone is like, oh, forget about Adam. Like get on video Studio. Studio. Like everybody get on Visual Studio right now. So that's like where we currently are and who knows, maybe something else will come along, but I, I, I don't know. I, I have no idea.

Like, I don't wanna say I don't see that happening because I didn't really see it happening with Adam. But but Visual Studio is pretty great and there's a lot of stuff that you can do with it. And you messed around with it a bit. Like what, what were you messing around with?

Jake Pacheco: Just like the plugins and stuff.

Also in Angela used course, like they have you. Build your own thing. Not on a website thing. It's, it's, you're working in in whatever text editor you have, which is Visual Studio Code, is what she recommends. Anyways, uhhuh but I had already downloaded it before, prior to that, cause you had recommended it, and then I had watched like a few videos on like different plugins for it that could kind of help you out and stuff.

Mm-hmm. So I got quite a few. I'm, I'm happy to run through. Well, ones I got if you want. Or

Seth Whiting: what are some just like off the top of your head that you remember being like, cool.

Jake Pacheco: Hmm. Oh man. Cuz their names are

always

Seth Whiting: weird. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I mean, like, you don't have to say their names. Like, I, I, okay.

So yeah, there's like, don't any names of like, maybe two of their

Jake Pacheco: names, but I know Prettier, and that's the only one I think Uhhuh. I know. But prettier. And then I got one that basically auto finishes when you're writing JavaScript, which is pretty sweet. Like, or like, it, it like gives you a grade out suggestion.

Yeah. And if you press tab it, it fills it in for you. Mm-hmm. Which is pretty sweet and I didn't realize like, the capabilities of that. Yeah. And it's, I think it's AI generated. So it uses like a repository of like a bunch of other code to kind of assume what you might wanna write for your next one.

Mm-hmm. So, you know, if you mention, you know Cons to Adam equals whatever, five. Then you'd be like, and then cons, another name Phil equals two. Then you can be like, Adam plus, and it'll be like Phil. You know what I mean? Like, and that's kind of like, it, it's, it's just, it's, it's much more intuitive than that, but that's like the layman's idea of like what it is, which is pretty sweet.

Yes. Then there was another one that does basically like, because like there'll be a bug in your code at some point anyways. Like there was bugs. There's always a bug in my coat and and I, but like. One of them, like literally shows you like where the bug is. Mm-hmm. Which is pretty sweet. And like if you click on like, oh, like it, it would be like in red this bug came up.

You click it, it brings you to that part of the code, and then puts a light bulb there and you click light bulb and it says, maybe you meant to write it like this. And I thought that was pretty sweet too. Yeah. But yeah, there's things like that I don't know. There's, there's, there's a mess of 'em. And then I, I, of course went crazy with like themes and stuff like that because mm-hmm.

I'm a, I'm a theme guy. I'm an Android guy. I don't know, I like to make things look the way I like to look. You know what I mean? I don't know. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Cool. But I, but that's two of 'em. I don't know. There's, there's a bunch of 'em though.

Seth Whiting: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, those, those are some of the more helpful ones that, I mean like definitely by far the most helpful vs code plugin, like, By a long shot is the GitHub co-pilot one, yeah.

Which, which might be the one that you're talking about, which is the, like the auto complete thing there. There's also other, like, other auto complete things for every language, basically. Like if you're, if you're writing php or you're writing JavaScript, or you're writing like Python, there are plugins called like JavaScript snippets or PHP snippets, and it's just like if you start writing like array dot map or something like that, it's like, oh, I know how to write a map, you know, or, or like a Yeah, or a four, a four loop.

It'll be like, oh, you probably want the, I like the let I equals zero, and then the i plus plus and then the I is less than, you know. Yeah, whatever. Like the, it'll, it'll be like, I know how to write a for loop, you know? And it's not super intelligent like GitHub copilot. Mm-hmm. But it, it's, it knows enough about every it knows about, enough about the language that you're writing in to, to know how to just like auto complete, like basic, like repetitive things like that.

That's cool. Yeah. Yeah. And GitHub copilot though, will, will do things like, you can, you can write a comment. Have you, have you written any comments yet? Yeah,

Jake Pacheco: yeah. You mean like forward slash forward slash whatever the

Seth Whiting: heck? Yeah. Yeah. So like, if you, so for people who, who might not know writing a comment is just like writing some descriptions within your code in plain English.

Of like, this is what this block of code is doing it. Because like a lot of the time it's like, it, it might not be very clear like, what I'm doing here, so let me just help you out like this. This is what it's doing. It's like, it's taking this data and doing this kind of stuff to it and outputting this kind of data that yeah, that type of thing.

So if you write a comment, like, here is a block of code that takes all of the people and finds all of their grandchildren and lists out all of their names in alphabetical order. Then, and then underneath that comment, you just. Start typing, like what you were going to type GitHub co-pilot will be like, oh, here you go.

Here's that whole whole thing that you were gonna write. Like what? It's, it's insane.

Jake Pacheco: That's wild. Yeah. I, I didn't know that. Something like that again. That's crazy. Yeah, I,

Seth Whiting: dude, it's nuts. Yeah.

Jake Pacheco: I, I, I just went through and I don't have GitHub copilot

Seth Whiting: actually. Okay. Yeah, you missed like, JavaScript snippets for Yeah, I have

Jake Pacheco: like in Telecode

Seth Whiting: Let me see.

Jake Pacheco: Language support Maven for Java style and, mm-hmm. Test runner for Java. Auto renamed debugger for Java, e Esly,

Seth Whiting: Htl. Are you talking about Java or Java script?

Jake Pacheco: Java script, I believe. Okay. Let me see.

Seth Whiting: All right. Because yeah.

Jake Pacheco: I'm not sure, maybe I got confused with the guy was telling me to download things and I was like, yeah,

Seth Whiting: okay.

Jake Pacheco: Yeah, cuz maybe these are, some of these are for Java, but I've been writing JavaScript and it's been like coming up with answers. I don't know. But

Seth Whiting: yeah, so I mean, if one of them is for JavaScript and then a bunch of, for Java, but like the, the name of your file ends with Js, then it will, it'll know like, oh, he is writing JavaScript, so we're Yeah, yeah.

It's, we're not gonna, we're not gonna auto complete any, like Java stuff. Yeah. Cause he's

Jake Pacheco: writing Java because he's clearly writing JavaScript. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. But yeah, so I might actually have some Java in here actually, which is annoying. Why would they tell

Seth Whiting: me to anyways, anyhow. Yeah, so we, I think we said it on the first episode, but if you didn't know, Java is not.

Remotely even similar to JavaScript. Yeah. So, yeah, just just fyi, if you're, if you're looking into JavaScript stuff, which is like, what we're, this is, this is mainly like a JavaScript learning podcast, so Yeah, if you're if you're confused about like why is this Java code that I've been looking up so, so much different.

It's, it is very different. Yeah. So anyway yeah, so those, those are some, some useful tools for VS code. And you know, like I said, like I would definitely recommend using VS code and even just out of the box you like if you, if you haven't used VS code, like the, some of the cool things that you can do with it.

It's basically just a text editor. Like if, and side note, if you didn't know, you could just use like notepad on your, on your computer to write html, css, JavaScript, any of this stuff. It's, it's just text. And if you save it with the JS file extension, so like script js, it's like your computer is going to know this is JavaScript and I'll treat it as JavaScript and I'll read it as JavaScript or like your browser is going to know that.

Same with html, like dot html, like index do HTML or Styles CSS, or you know, whatever you choose to name any of them. As long as they have a dot js, it's gonna be JavaScript. If it's css, it's gonna be css. If it's dot html, it's gonna be html. So you could write those on just any old text editor. I wouldn't recommend writing them on things like Microsoft Word or anything like that because they're gonna add like formatting and stuff.

And sometimes they have, like, if you write a, a, like a apostrophe, they might do like some sort of fancy apostrophe that if you copied and pasted that into a text editor, like a plain text editor is what you're looking for. If you, if you copied and pasted that into a plain text editor, it would, it would not work the way that you want it to work.

So just in, in certain, certain little characters like it's, it's definitely best to be writing your code in a plain text editor. And VS. Code is a plain text editor, but it gives you other. Things where like if you, if you wanted to, you could highlight line 50 and then line 56 at the same time and, and edit both of them at the same time.

Like if they're, yeah, if, if you're writing like the same type of CSS for two different classes or two different IDs or something, and you, you want to write, you know, three in, like three different like blocks at the same time, you could do that or delete from, from three different places. You can also like highlight a ton of lines like a hundred lines and that you want to like, remove the semicolons from for some reason, or like remove semicolons and instead do Commas because you're working in like an object or, or something.

You can highlight all of them and then do shifts, option I and that will automatically put a cursor at the end of each of those lines. So like like all at once, like just if you highlight a hundred things, then you get a hundred cursors when you hit that hockey. Yeah. Things like that are super helpful and useful when you're writing code.

Yeah.

Jake Pacheco: And I'll say VS. Code is free, so

Seth Whiting: it's like

Jake Pacheco: just, yeah, probably just use VS code. I mean like, like, like go ahead and use your text document or whatever. But also it's like, it's, it's free uhhuh and it's, it's, it's pretty interesting to work in it. I mean, even as someone who's absolutely new like myself, like, it's like it's pretty darn interesting.

And it's, it's, it the amount of like,

Seth Whiting: I mean the, like

Jake Pacheco: the amount of plugins. Is so, it's so massive that it's like, I mean, I, I downloaded Java plugins instead of Java script plugins for a few, so it's like obviously there's like a bunch for a bunch of different type of types of code and stuff too, so mm-hmm.

I, yeah, I, I, I'd probably recommend, which as you were just saying, is like, just like BS code is kind of where it's at right now. Yeah. Like, it's,

Seth Whiting: it's pretty great. Yeah. And just for context, like Sublime text, you can do like multi multi code editing at the same time, and Adam, you could do that, but Visual Studio Code gives you, so Adam had a bunch of plugins that you could use Sublime Text, not quite as much.

It, it wasn't really like focused on that kind of thing, but VS Code, which is the same as Visual Studio Code and it's interchangeable vs. Code has a ton of different plugins and doesn't have Adam's problem. I'm pretty sure what w why people moved off of Adam is the, the fact that. If you got past a certain number of plugins, it started to like slow your, your code down.

Like if you were like, you know, like paging down or, or like pressing down on your, on your document like the down key it would like, take a bit for, for it would like lag, I think Yeah. Is what is why people were, were doing it. I didn't really experience that myself, but but I've definitely had a good experience on VS code and I don't, you know, regret switching and especially with copilot built, built into it, like not built into it, but you can just use copilot as a VS.

Code plugin. And I don't know if they have it for Adam or anything else that they, they probably do just for like the diehard like Adam fans. Mm-hmm. But. But yeah, it, it works really well on VS code for sure. So anyway, yeah. Yeah. Sweet. Yeah. Yeah. So that's like the the text editor, like Super tools.

But then I, I wanted to get into like a whole completely different category, which is mainly I think they fall into the category of like APIs, which, which is app applic application programming interfaces. And so when you talk about APIs, you can think about them as when you're writing front end code and backend code.

The, the way that you're going to be communicating between your own front end and your own backend is via an a p i like your backend code is basically when you're writing backend code, you're setting up an a p i your own a p i for your own data. So if you, if you're making your your reptile app, you have like an a p i endpoint for reptiles.

Basically it's like hit when I hit this a p i endpoint, quote unquote, give me a list of all of the reptiles that I've stored. Mm-hmm. And that's, that's your own a p i that you set up to, to be, you know, used on your own application. The cool thing about APIs is that you can open them up for other people to use on their applications.

Like if anybody wanted to access your, your reptile a p i that you made for your application, and they're like, I like, I like the data that you use, but I don't really like the way that your particular front end is set up. I want, I want to use the same data, but I want to represent it visually in a different way.

Like I, you know, for, for any reason. I, like, if you wanted to set up the a p i and then you write your own front end and Chelsea writes her own front end for, for the same data. If, if you ever wanted to, you could not, that you would want to, you probably wouldn't. That'd be like a waste of time, but Yeah.

But you could, if you wanted. Do so there are other APIs out there, like just a basic one is like weather, you know, there's like a weather. There's probably like a hundred different weather APIs out there. Like if you wanted to show what the weather is going to be like in your area tomorrow, you, you could just go out there, grab it and put it on your, on your like blog if you wanted to.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. But, you know, you, you could also have an application that's like

Like a surf tracker app and, and like if you, if you wanted to like, pull in data from like the National Weather Service about like how big the waves are gonna be or something, then you can like represent that visually in your own app and like mm-hmm. Notify people when the waves get over three feet or something like that.

Yeah. Yeah. Huh. So like there's a lot of different like, useful applications for even that and that's like pretty basic, like whether there's pretty basic one. There're APIs out there for like, getting movies like probably I M D B has like an open a p i out there that you could just grab, you know, actors and all the movies that they've.

Acted on. And I feel like that's sort of like a common one for like tutorials and stuff is just like, grab this, like movies a p i and you know, basically represent it in like a Netflix type layout, you know? Yeah. That's just something that you could do. Yeah.

Jake Pacheco: Yeah. I mean, that, that kind of reminds me of a I, I used to have an app on my phone cuz I have like a, a pretty outrageous outrageously large collection of DVDs and Blu-rays.

Mm-hmm. So I have like, I mean, I, I, it's around 2000.

Seth Whiting: So it's a stupid amount. And

Jake Pacheco: like, With those, I had to, like, if I scanned in each barcode, then it would have like my whole library in it and stuff. So yeah, I guess it that they were probably, they had to be, I don't think that there's just some dude writing every bio and everything for every movie.

So they must have been something like that. Yeah. Which makes sense. Like cuz it had all the information artwork on the front and everything and mm-hmm. Yeah. Huh. So that's interesting.

Seth Whiting: Yeah. So the like, and I like I, I'm just giving those as examples as like kind of like, the less exciting APIs available.

Yeah. But then there are things like one of the like APIs out there that I'm really interested in personally. Like, I don't know if anybody else is interested in this that's listening, but it's cool to know that. There is like voice recognition, a p i out there. So there's the Google speech to text a p i, that I, I've used a couple times.

And then there's another one. So open AI has one called Whisper, and then there's there, there's like quite, it's, there's surprisingly like a few out there. But one, one in particular that I just found that is really useful because it's the only one that I found that was like pretty like I guess like accessible is one called Rev AI that it detects ums and oz.

So that's like what I was trying to use. Like I for like the inside scoop, I was trying to make like my own version of this app out there that removes ums and ahs from your, from your audio automatically. I was like, okay, yes, there's one out there, but it's like a paid service and I could make that if I wanted to.

So like, I'm just gonna go ahead and try it. And I thought that it would be easier than it was just because I thought that Google. Would do that. And I've worked with Google a lot before and I, I already had some like starter code from other projects for that kind of thing, but it turns out Google's speech, text a p I doesn't do that.

So I had to switch over to this Rev API thing and it didn't work immediately. And I was like, well, like if I'm gonna have to like actually like, dig into this, I'm just gonna not bother. Like it's, yeah, it's, yeah, I, I'm not gonna spend the time. I'll just like pay there. There's a service out there called script.

I think that that does what I'm talking about. And you just have to pay like a $10 a month kind of like fee thing. So it's like that's, you know, just like a expense of the podcast. So whatever. Yeah. But anyway. Speech to text is like really interesting to me. Because you could do a lot of stuff with that.

Like you could, you could do like Siri type stuff, you know, like, like if somebody speaks, then on the backend you take the text that they spoke and translate it into like, actionable items. Like, like, you know, Hey, hey Siri, turn on the lights or whatever. It's like Siri,

Jake Pacheco: did she actually talk to you? Talk to me in my

Seth Whiting: headphones.

That was annoying. Go away.

Jake Pacheco: That was annoying.

Seth Whiting: That's funny. So speech to text is a cool one. And then there's things like like facial recognition, like you could do like facial recognition and like photos and things like that. There, there's a lot of, lot of like really cool stuff out there that you can use.

I'm trying to think of other ones that I've like actually used. Oh. So I don't know if I wanna get into that quite yet. I'm trying to think of like other, just like APIs out there that are really cool. Mm-hmm. He makes a thinking face. Yeah. I think just because I'm trying to think of them. They're, they're not. Yeah. But of course that's, yeah. Yeah.

Jake Pacheco: What, what plugins are you using? Jake?

Seth Whiting: It does a thing. But yeah, I mean, so like Google has, has a ton and like you, like, you can just look up like Google api, that there's like Google Cloud APIs basically.

And there's like a whole like, marketplace for them and Let's see. I'm just like, kind of looking through here real quick. There's just a bunch that are for, like, developers that are just like, sort of like behind the scenes kind of developee stuff. But, but I, I'm looking more for like the, the cool, like fun things that you can use in your, in your projects and stuff.

But climate, interesting. There's like email APIs, you know, for, for sending out emails during like specific things. There are things APIs out there that will like, send texts for you. And then if you're working on like mobile stuff, there are APIs for sending, like push notifications. And then there's like a lot of different like Big like apps out there will have APIs.

Like Twitter has an a p i so you can kind of like analyze tweets if you wanted to. And then like Reddit has an a p i if you wanted to like, and my friend built a Twitter bot that automatically sends out a tweet whenever a new post hits the top of the like, front page of Reddit. Basically. It's like, here's the most interesting thing on Reddit right now, you know?

Like based on, huh? Based on what's, you know, made it to the top. Yeah. Huh. So yeah, so like, cool, cool stuff like that. But then sort of in like another whole category on its own is something that just came out recently. Which is you've seen like the chat G P T. Yeah. Yeah. So there, there's an a p I for that.

So like you can integrate that easily into your own application now. Like, that's cool. Yeah. So like, if you wanted to, like, I, I had like a bunch of, bunch of ideas recently. Just, I was just thinking, actually, I was thinking of ideas that I've had for a long time and like, how could Chad G B t potentially shortcut like a ton of like the, the rote like drudge work that I was going to have to do previously and I was like, holy crap.

Like that could, it could, you know, change everything basically. Yeah. So like one in particular was like grabbing Like Wikipedia articles and then like summarizing events with like times and places, you know, from, from these articles. And like the, the way that I was going to have to do it previously was like, just like depend on the crowd to do it.

Where it's like the Wikipedia model where it's just like people are doing this for you. They just come in and like, because they want this information available, they put it up there. So like the, basically the, the idea was to have a Google map and a timeline on the bottom and like, You would follow like the history of certain, like movements or something, or like the, the events of like a person's life, like the, this, like Magellan circumnavigated the earth and like on this day he landed on this island and like if you scrubbed through the timeline, it's like, oh, this is like 18 or like 1546 or something.

Yeah. Like April 1st. And he was on, you know, the Grand Cayman Island or whatever. And like a little pin drops into like that place when you scrub through the timeline, you know, and then Yeah. Yeah. Can drill into that and see like what happened, you know, during that, that like event. So I was thinking like, you know, people would have to like enter in these events in order for them to show up on, on, on the map.

But now, yeah, with like Chad, j p t, I could just say like, Crawl all of Wikipedia, grab all of the events and give me the information that I need in order to place these pins automatically, like without anybody having to like enter anything in for me, that kind of thing. So like, yeah. Yeah. It's like, it's pretty, pretty like revolutionary.

And they just came out with version four which, which had GBT did or Yeah.

Jake Pacheco: Yeah, yesterday. Oh really? I didn't know that came out. Oh, crap. Just yesterday. I've heard it's supposed to be pretty

Seth Whiting: incredible. Yeah. Yeah. I watched like the the live demo thing they had and it is, is really cool. Yeah. And so like that, that is an a p i that you just like anybody can use and like Yeah.

And everybody like if, if, if there, if it's possible for you to use it for what you're trying to work on. And you're, and you're doing it a different way, like a more manual way than you're like behind already. You know? Because it's available. If you're not using it, you're behind. Yeah. So like, it's pretty crazy.

It just happens. It's funny. Yeah, it's

Jake Pacheco: funny because I was like, I talked to you a little bit about this before where I was like mm-hmm. You know, asking if it's like, well is this gonna end coders doing coding? You know what I mean? Like, cuz it's like, oh, just answer this question for me. Yeah. But it's like a learned I ai, which to my understanding means that like, you know, like still there's gonna have to be new code written and their code still won't be perfect code or perfectly written code or whatever mm-hmm.

Formatted or whatever. Mm-hmm. And I don't know if four changes that or anything. But yeah. Yeah. It seems like everywhere I look online or like on like YouTube and stuff about coding, programming, anything like that, like that a lot of people are saying like, you should be using this to learn. You should be using this to learn or like to mm-hmm.

To help you out with some stuff.

Seth Whiting: Yeah.

Jake Pacheco: But yeah, I guess I did, I hadn't thought of like how much it can help out once you're already a developer and stuff. So are you saying you should use it as in utilize Chad G b T, or are you saying use the API with whatever your software or whatever your building, your app, your building

Seth Whiting: is?

Yeah. Yeah. I'm saying like, you, you should be integrating this API into whatever you're building. So like another, another application idea that I had was like basically like a eHarmony of politics kind of thing, where like you answer mm-hmm. Questions about your, your own political beliefs. Yeah.

And it will like, match you up with like a candidate. But it will also kind of like map out your beliefs on like a political spectrum. Like, like yeah. Like you are not a Republican or you are not a Democrat. You are one of, like, you are in one of like, eight different like quadrants, you know? Yeah.

Yeah. It's, it's not like it's not just like a binary system like Republican Yeah. Democrat left, right. Kind of thing. It's more like the, it's basically as I researched into this kind of thing, there's like three. Three dimensions, and there's like social politics and then there's economic politics, and then there's like foreign policy politics.

Yeah. So if you were to answer questions, you could get like a, like a x y access for social and then like a B axis for for economic, and then like mm-hmm. I don't even know what you would call the, the third one. Z Z Axis Z, yeah. Like a, so, yeah. So I guess like A X X axis, A Y axis and Z Y axis and Z, yeah, exactly.

For machining

Jake Pacheco: coming back to me. Yeah,

Seth Whiting: yeah, yeah. But for like, the foreign policy, so, so basically I was like, I would have to come up with these questions and they'd have to be like non-biased and they would have to be like, you know, good questions to determine where somebody stands on a particular issue.

Or I could just ask Chad, g p t, like, Hey, what are some good questions? You know, to determine somebody's like yeah, their, the political leanings on any of these three like axes. And, and then I would be done, you know, like, yeah. Yeah. Like, I wouldn't have to like, do all of the research because like, it, it, like, one of the things that it's very good at is law and Yeah.

Like, along with that kind of comes like politics. I, I, I mean, I could be like stretching there, but like, I would assume that if it's really good at like law, then it would be really good at like, what makes somebody a democrat? What makes somebody a, a, a Republican. Yeah. You know?

Jake Pacheco: Yeah. And, and I, I don't like, I don't know, I've, I've read a bit about it and stuff.

I, I've, I've always like, Had an interest in politics. Mm-hmm. And I don't really lean near either way, honestly, personally, I'm just like, yep, you, you do you. But I've heard that, and this could be wrong, I, you know, that ju don't, don't judge me on this, but like I've heard that chat, G P t in general is more left leaning in its responses.

Like if, if you ask it to say something about, you know a left politician than a right politician, like it's, it's gonna find like the bad remarks on the right one or something like that. I've heard that, but I, that's interesting. But I also don't know, you know, I, I, I, I, that's just what I've heard

Seth Whiting: and that's just, I mean, hearsay, truly, no, I mean, I, I would definitely believe it cuz there there is like a big issue, like a big concern when people talk about this kind of stuff with like mm-hmm.

This, this like model. Has a bias, you know, like Yeah. And that, like, there are definitely things where, like, one, one interesting thing that I saw in like a TED talk is how face facial recognition tends to have like a racial bias basically. Yeah. When you said the,

Jake Pacheco: when you said the facial recognition thing earlier, I was like, oh, is it racist also?

Yeah. Just cause it was like, cause I've, I've heard that's a thing, like, it won't notice like, like ethnic

Seth Whiting: faces, which is like, yeah. Or it will like, you know, categorize them as the same person more often kind of thing. Yeah. And it's like, what the heck? Like Yeah. Could, could,

Jake Pacheco: couldn't crack that one. Like, you know what I mean?

Like Yeah. It's, yeah. But yeah, it's. I think, I think we comfortably say we're working on it.

Seth Whiting: People are working on it. They're trying it. Yeah. But, but even, even with that like bias, even if it was kind of like biased in its answers, like it would probably say like, you know, you shouldn't, you, you know, like if you asked it, like, you know, what are like, are are trans people actually women or men, if they say they are or whatever, it would probably say like, what a, you know, person who is pro that you would say basically, or like somebody who is not like biased against trans people or like, is biased towards trans people would say.

Yeah. Just because, yeah, that's like sort of, especially the people who wrote it, you know, like the, there are not many like hard right leaning. Like developers out there. Yeah, of course. Which is Yeah. Yeah. Kind of an interesting thing on its own. I, I'm not really sure why that is. I've, I've noticed

Jake Pacheco: that a lot too, where it does definitely seem to be a left-leaning field.

Mm-hmm. Which is just, like I said, I'm whatever, you

Seth Whiting: know. Yeah. But yeah. I'm not really totally sure. Well, I guess there is statistically like a correlation between like, higher education and and like political leaning toward the left. Yeah. Yeah.

Jake Pacheco: Well, most, most higher education systems are like, or like schools and everything else is pretty left-leaning.

Yes. I know. Yeah. Yeah. I, one of my friends had a bit of trouble with that, not because he's super far right or anything he considers himself left, but it was just that in order to ask certain questions and stuff, it was always like kind of a, a judged thing, even in like a sociology class mm-hmm. Where it's like literally a study of society.

Yeah. And and he had a really hard time with that, and he was like, He's like, I, it, it made him, yeah,

Seth Whiting: yeah, yeah. Just shutting conversations down and stuff like that. Yeah,

Jake Pacheco: yeah, yeah. It's, yeah. Well be, because, because every, because certain conversations have to be led

Seth Whiting: with like The word is, I think

Jake Pacheco: the word is like trepidation.

Mm-hmm. Like had you're, he felt like he had to walk on eggshells with that stuff, so Yeah. Yeah, yeah. But yeah. All all that to say just like, yeah. I, I've, I've heard that, that it's, it's more like left leaning in that stuff. I'm not how you're educated person other than on my own. So I, I wouldn't, no, I, I, I haven't gone to college

Seth Whiting: or anything like that, so.

Right. But even, even, even if you were asking it questions, You know, that are sort of like politically related, like, I feel like that's when the bias would come up more. But like if you asked the pointed questions like, what are some good questions to ask? Like some good, yeah. Non-biased questions to ask that would determine somebody's like political beliefs.

Yeah. I I think that it would kind of cut through that bias at that point. Exactly.

Jake Pacheco: Yeah. It would force it to be non-biased, right? Like so it would, it would be, yeah, exactly.

Seth Whiting: Yeah, that makes sense. But yeah, so anyway, like there are so many different applications for this. Like, there's so many, like, and when I say applications, I mean like uses for this in, in your own.

Stuff. Like if you, if you're thinking of like any, any, well, I, I don't wanna say any, but like there, it's likely that if you're thinking of making something, there is probably a way that you could be using this in it that would enhance it a lot. Yeah. So, I don't know. Anyway, that's a big one that, that like I said, just came out yesterday, was just announced yesterday.

And like, you know, obviously at the time of recording.

Jake Pacheco: Yeah. Yeah. And, and I mean, I guess a question real quick is just like, do you view it as like, oh, man, this is a huge game changer? Yes. Like, is this like a really, really huge deal for developers in general? Yeah,

Seth Whiting: yeah, for sure. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Jake Pacheco: Like, is that just because they made the API for it or just chat, chat g PT in

Seth Whiting: general.

I, I mean, especially because they made the API for it. If, yeah, if they're, if, and I think primarily because of that, because if. They didn't have the API for it, then it wouldn't be available for like, just everybody to, to use Yeah. And enhance their, their own stuff. Yeah. In that case, it's just like a place that you would go to visit to, you know, ask questions and get answers.

You know, it's just a fancy ask Geez. At that point. Yeah, exactly. A slightly smarter one. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Aging myself. Yeah. Okay. So, yeah, so th those are sort of like APIs that you can use to kind of just like enhance your own applications. Another one that's pretty cool is like Grammarly, mm-hmm.

Where like, you, you can, like, it will correct your grammar basically, if you're, if you're like not, that's awesome. Yeah. So like We used it, I was making this application for or like leading a team to make this application for a journalist journalism company. And basically they had this whole process where anybody could come on and write a story and then they would have like professional editors come on and go through a whole process of like, okay, we've had one editor look at it now it goes into the queue for the next editor to look at it.

And then it goes into like the final look through and like blah, blah, blah. And we were writing a, a text editor basically that would automatically check your grammar and and stuff like that. And then there was also a part of it for like a mobile like companion app where you could like interview someone.

On your phone. And then it would use the Google speech to text recognition stuff to spit out like a transcript of, of the the interview. So that was like one of the, one of the times that I was using like the Google speech to text thing. So Grammarly is another cool one. So there's just, basically all I'm saying is there's like a lot of these like APIs out there.

And if you just search for like, if you, even if you like Googled, like what are some of the most useful APIs available to developers? Like, you would get like a whole list and I'm sure J pt, J G P T would be like on the top of the list. Yeah. But so then there are things called SDKs, which are software development kits and Yep.

One, one in particular that I have definitely found super useful is is a service called Firebase, which is, I, I don't, I don't think it, I, I think it may have started out as like its own thing and then Google bought it, but I could be wrong that, like, that's the case for a lot of things, but Google may have just started this one and, and, and you know, is still currently like, putting work into it and stuff.

Yeah. Updating it and all of that. But Firebase is pretty mind blowing in that it's what's called a backend as a service, which means basically if you're a front end developer, you don't need to know how to write the backend code. Like, you don't need a backend, like, basically at all in order to like store and retrieve data.

Huh. Basically there's just like, it gives you. Pre-written functions and stuff to say like, save, save this data and then grab this data basically. And it, you can just pass it any, any data that you want and just say like, Hey, I want you to save this data in the user's collection. Like, I want you to save this user into the user's collection.

And it's like, well, the user's collection doesn't exist, but I can make it. So I'll just make it and, and then you can use it from then on. Like wild. That's wild. Yeah. So so you could have like, The user's collection. And then you could have like the reptiles collection and say like, Hey, I want all of the users.

And then once you grab all of the users, I want you to go out and grab all of their reptiles and, and then I'll kind of like sort that all out and put it on a page like this, this user has this, you know, all of these reptiles and whatever. That's wild. So basically like that's a great way to make an application if you don't know how to write backend code.

Yeah. There, there's trade-offs with it where it doesn't quote unquote scale. Well, and what that means is if your app. Just like catches on quickly and all of a sudden one day it goes from like five users to like a million users, you, you will probably have issues. And like things will probably not work the way that they should.

And their, if you are a, if you're really good at like backend development and like what's called DevOps, which is like setting up servers and like setting them up in a way that like if a million people come, then it will be able to handle it basically. Yeah. Then that's like a better way to go. But if you, if you're just making something for like yourself and some friends or like a very niche community or just releasing it to like To like a smaller audience.

And then you, you say like, okay, once we get to like this, like user base, then we'll kind of like refactor the backend and make it a bit more like robust or whatever. It's great for just setting something up and Yeah. Running with it.

Jake Pacheco: Yeah. Kind of having a trial run or something.

Seth Whiting: Yeah, and, and I mean, honestly, like there are definitely like, like, I don't wanna say like large scale applications out there that use it, but like it's not, it's not necessarily just like a toy.

Like Yeah. It is like a legit thing, you know? And that's cool. And a lot of mobile apps in particular make a lot of like heavy use of of Firebase, but you can use it on a website as well, like a web app. Well, yeah.

Jake Pacheco: I have two questions. The first is, what does something like that cost?

Seth Whiting: So yeah, that's a good question.

The, the, they have a huge free tier, so you could use it for like a while without, huh? Without ever having to pay for it. Yeah. But also firebase, like the, the part that I'm talking about, like the part that I have talked about so far is just one aspect of it, and that's called the it's basically, so they have what's called the, the realtime database, and that's kind of like the, their, the original.

But since then, and since like 2017, I think when I started working with it, it was they switched over to Something called Fire Store, which is just like basically they figured out like, okay, the real time database has like a few issues that we wanted to kind of like address. And so we made this like new version of it that just kind of works better.

So so anyway, the fire store is like their database as a service kind of thing, but then they also have like solutions for storing files. So that's like Firebase cloud storage and they have things called cloud functions where like if you want to trigger. Specific like code block on the backend that will only work on the backend.

They have like a solution for that, that where like, you don't need to set up a whole backend infrastructure in order to run this code. You can just, you know, put, put that code in this place and it will work. So That's wild. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, it's, it's awesome. I, I've, I've, yeah. Sounds used it like quite a bit and I am like a pretty big fan of it.

And I, I would say that it, it is important to like learn the backend, like learn backend development. Yeah. But it's also important to like, make things and get them out there and like Yeah. Yeah. Firebase is a great way to do that. And also like, There. I, I mentioned like the database and I mentioned like the storage and I mentioned the cloud functions, but there's like another good like half dozen or so super useful tools that are available via Firebase.

And it, it's all like one, one s d k that you like install into your application and you have access to all of it if you want it. That's, and all of them have different, like pricing tiers. Yeah. But all of them also have like a free version that will get you like, very far. So That's awesome. Yeah.

Jake Pacheco: That's, that's wicky.

Cool. And my other question was just with the I know this is an sdk, but with like APIs, mm-hmm. Yeah. This goes all the way back to the APIs. So if I wanted something to the effect of like speech to

Seth Whiting: text mm-hmm.

Jake Pacheco: And write some JavaScript or whatever. Mm-hmm. So it basically would listen for it and be like, Hey, I want to add this animal and give me all the information on that animal as well.

Or you could just text it or whatever. But like, let's say, basically my question is, can you stack APIs? So basically can you make it so it goes through one speech to text and then sends that text over to what's it called? Like Chad, g p t? Yeah. Where it then asks it to build a certain part. You know what I mean?

Yeah, yeah. A

Seth Whiting: hundred percent. That's wild. Yeah. That's, that's

Jake Pacheco: cool, huh? Yeah. Like question. Yeah. So there's just like, yeah, that opens up like so many things I didn't think were a thing. That's, that's wild,

Seth Whiting: huh? That's, yeah. Another cool thing about Chad G p t, and, and there are a bunch of other like APIs that will do this, but like Google has an API for it.

It is translation, you know, you could say, yeah, translate this into Spanish, or translate this Spanish into English, or, or French or whatever. Oh, another really cool API that I didn't mention before is Google Maps, like you mm-hmm. You can use like geolocation for, for a lot of stuff. And like if you're, if you have, like, one thing that I've used like several times now is if you have a.

Form on like a contact form and you don't wanna type out like your whole address. And you've probably seen this before, like you can start typing in your address into a, a particular like field and it will auto complete like all of the addresses that match that, you know, in Yeah, yeah. Google's database.

So that's, that's a pretty cool one. That is, it's called like the places a p I or geolocation api. It's one. And do things like,

Jake Pacheco: so with these ones, do they do most APIs have like a free version or whatever as well? Like, like the chat G P T one? Like does that, does that cost money? Is it like free? Is it is free to free to until you hit a certain amount of users

Seth Whiting: or Yeah, I don't, I don't know if chat G B T has a, a free tier, but I was just looking at the, the prices and per like a thousand requests, it will cost you six since, so.

So it's not like every Yeah. For every Yeah. Thousand times that you ask it to do something, it will, it will cost you 6 cents. So, yeah. So it's not like

Jake Pacheco: an outrageous amount. No. Especially with a small scale app. Say if I wanted to build the app that I'm talking about with a, the reptile categorization and information chart and stuff, like, I, I could just release that into like one of my smaller groups, like Northeast Serpent and stuff, and like, and be like, Hey guys, you can use this.

Try it out. Mm-hmm. Tell me if you have something wrong with it, then like, yeah, there's not gonna be even a thousand requests, so it's like, it's yeah's gonna cost me 6 cents a month or something. Mm-hmm. That's cool.

Seth Whiting: That's awesome, huh? Yeah. Wow. Drop in knowledge. Yeah. Wow. Yeah, so I, I think those are, those are like mostly the ones that I wanted to cover.

But like, yeah, if you didn't, if you didn't know that, like. Those things were available to you, like all of those APIs were available to you. They are, and they're awesome. But then also, like if you didn't know that Firebase was available to you and like, Hey, I, I can write it an entire application with a backend.

Yeah. That like, I don't need to know how to write backend code or set up backend infrastructure or anything like that. Like I can just, you know, have it, have it done, be there without me like working for it. Yeah. It's, it's pretty, pretty awesome. Yeah. It's kind of incredible. Yeah. Yeah. So like if you, if you were working on like the, the reptile thing, like that would be a great backend to use, mm-hmm.

If, but but yeah, I can talk also like, like there is a way that you can not even use that if you want, where it will only work for like your. Your device, it, it'll just store stuff on your device, basically. Yeah. Yeah, we had

Jake Pacheco: spoken about that a bit mm-hmm. Where it's just like, and that's kind of where I figured I'd start dipping my toes into it.

Yeah. And then, and then eventually add a backend into it. Right, right. Where I could like give

Seth Whiting: it to other people and stuff. Yeah. And like you could, you could have like the version where it just works on your device and then you could have like the version where it works on Firebase and then if you wanted to, just for the sake of learning actual, like legit backend development, you could Yeah.

Then make the version that has like a, a sequel database that you're inter Yeah. Interacting with or no sql, like Mongo database. We can talk about, you know, like which one you would wanna use. I would probably steer you towards Postgres. SQL database, just because that's kind of like the, the, the most popular one right now.

Yeah. Yeah. So, and,

Jake Pacheco: and we'll get into what that's all about pretty soon.

Seth Whiting: Yeah. We've gotten into databases a little bit, but yeah, I think we talked about that kind of stuff on a, on a different episode. Yeah. But it's, you know, not, not super, super relevant to this one. Yeah, tire base is more relevant to this one, which is, you know, like yeah.

Legit, legit thing that like you could totally use and Yeah.

Jake Pacheco: And, and that might be a good way for me to like, like I said, like kind of dip my feet in it. Mm-hmm. And like kind of I mean, it, it wouldn't help me a whole lot in like understanding how to write backend code. Yeah. But I feel like it would help me a whole lot in understanding a part of of development, which is adding APIs to your system and like learning how to do all that stuff, I guess, or whatever.

Seth Whiting: Or is that like so simple that it's not even, so with Firebase, like you, you just kind of like make use of their S D K, which, is sort of like, sort of like an api, but like easier, they just like Yeah. Pre-write functions. Like we know which API endpoints you would be hitting if you were trying to call these functions.

So like, we'll, like you don't need to worry about knowing the API endpoints. You just need to know about like the functions that we give you. Yeah. Yeah. Huh. Interesting. Yeah.

Jake Pacheco: It's all, it's all exciting and, and, and daunting all at the same time. But that's also even more exciting for me anyways. Yeah. So yeah, I think that's pretty much everything that we wanted to cover tonight or today or this morning or whenever you're listening to this, but in the future.

Yeah. Yeah. In the future. So yeah, I hope that everyone enjoyed it and maybe you learned something. Yeah. And thank, thanks as always for listening.

Seth Whiting: Yeah. My goal, my goal for this, this particular episode and a lot of the other episodes, like the early episodes, is just to like, get you hyped about like what's possible.

Yeah. And yeah, hopefully, hopefully some people are kind of like more, more hypes and like your, your imagination is kind of like running a bit more of like, oh, this is, you know, what, what I want to be like working toward is like an application that does this kind of thing. Yeah, and like there, there's a lot of other APIs for like video stuff and things like that.

If that's like what, what you're like more into. And so you know, anything that you're into like there, there's probably like a helpful a p i out there for you. So yeah, it's just a, a good thing to know that there's like a lot of useful like super tools out there that anybody can use. Yeah. And I'd like

Jake Pacheco: to, in the next episode, maybe, or, you know, in the future, somewhat soon, maybe even dig a little bit deeper into some of the VS code stuff.

Mm-hmm. Just, you know, we, we touched on a few things I thought were very interesting, but like, I'd like to know like, what's your setup? Like, what do you have for plugins? What, like what do you find yourself using most? Yeah. And stuff like that. But yeah, we'll save that for another episode, but but yeah.

Yeah, like I said, we appreciate you you continuing to listen to us talk, talk about all this stuff, and thanks for joining, joining my journey. I definitely appreciate it and I appreciate it, Seth. Yeah. And yeah. But yeah. Keep at it. Yeah. Yes. Keep

Seth Whiting: swimming. That's, that's just keep swimming. Yeah.

Yep. All righty. Well, everyone

Jake Pacheco: thanks again for listening and have a great week.

Seth Whiting: Yeah. Peace.