Gitpod, iPad Coding, Web3, WTF NFT

Welcome to Syntax. This is the podcast with the tastiest web development treats out there. Today, we've got another really exciting episode for you today. We've got, 2 of the devs who work on Gitpod.

We'll we'll talk about what that is in in just a second.

So we got lots of kinda interesting questions for them revolving around, coding inside your browser, coding on a mobile device, as well as just the 3 minutes, it. Leading up to this podcast, we've been talking about living in a van and, stealing NFTs. So Hey. Go ahead.

It's been all over the place. Love it.

I'm very excited.

Today, we're sponsored by 3 awesome companies, Linode Cloud Computing and Hosting, it. LogRocket, JavaScript session replay, and FreshBooks cloud accounting.

With me as always is mister Scott Talinski. But Let me, let me welcome our guests. We have Pauline and Jeff.

I'll let you guys introduce yourselves and say your last names so I won't,

it. We'll butcher them, but thanks so much for coming on. Amazing. Yeah. Hi. Thank you so much for having us on the podcast. I love the energy here Already. Really excited for this episode.

Yeah. So hi, everyone. I'm Pauline Narvas.

I work at Gitpod as a community engineer.

It. I actually joined earlier this year to help build and develop, our community and also to join Jeff And the rest of the team to tell the whole world about Gitpod and cloud developer environments.

So, yeah, that's me in a nutshell. Alright. So Hi, everyone. I'm Jeff. I stole all your NFTs.

Check out the nftbay.org.

Guess, we'll probably get into that a little bit later. But that's just that's just me. I'm normally traveling around Australia in a van.

There's like 6 Internet connections and a green screen on wheels. It's pretty cool.

But I'm here at one of the engineers at Gitpod.

I I work with Pauline. I'm telling people about the product and just basically We're working with you. If you're on social media, you're probably gonna come across me.

Please, nerds, like, on Twitter if you got any Any issues, concerns, questions, or what else have you, and we'd love to help you get up and running with Gitpod.

Nice. Yeah. Thanks a lot for coming on. So, you reached out to us at some point. I forget what it was we were talking about on Twitter, but I think it was something something around how we are talking about coding on the iPad And how we've I mentioned this a couple of times on on the podcast. So maybe we'll we'll start it off on there, and then, we'll get into what Gitpod actually is. But it. I've been on this sort of, like, for a while where I get half of it, I see these youngins who only have iPads and are creating these awesome things. You you see them creating TikToks and all this media stuff, and I think, like, yeah. Like, those those kids will be good coders as well. Yeah. But I don't I don't, like, see the path forward on that. And then I also get emails all the time from people being like, hey, Wes. Must be nice to have a $6,000 computer, but I only have it. An iPad or $300 to get on a Chromebook. Can I code on that thing? Right? So I think you reach out and say, hey. Yeah. I literally have a YouTube video on that. You wanna Talk a little bit about that. Yeah. I I think so the whole point of Gitpod is to allow,

developers from, like, From anywhere, really, to get started with coding, all you really need is a browser.

And genuinely, that is it. I think Jeff, Described it the other day as a computer in every browser.

That's how you described it or something like that, Which is so which is spot on. I think that is a really good, like, description of what Gitpod is and what it allows, people to to get on. And I I like how you mentioned, you know, kids these days with their Ipads because my younger brother has an iPad. He's always had an iPad since he was, like, five.

And he's recently expressed, like, you know, interest towards learning how to code. And I've shown him Gitpod, and I've said, you can literally code from your iPad. You you don't need a computer. You don't need to ask, like, mom and dad for, a Like, a MacBook or a a whatever it is. You can just code from your iPad, and Gitpod just lets that happen. You all you need is a browser. So so, So, yes, really exciting where we're heading. Yeah. And and it's really interesting too because what the the tools, they they all run-in browser or

Are are the if you're running, like, in an environment, is that running in a cloud environment somewhere, or is that running in browser, so to say? Yeah. So, Gitpod is essentially a developer a developer environment in the cloud.

So provide us a Dockerfile, just like standard industry standard Dockerfile, and we'll host and run it. And from that point forward, we provide a default experience of Versus Code.

There's some stuff coming down the pipeline right now in a private beta for JetBrains.

And myself, I'm working on a, because I am full time on an iPad.

Like, I Really? Yeah. For the for the last it. For the last 45 days, I went to reinstall my computer, and I bricked it. Yeah. And I had no choice. It. So right now, it's now working.

So I've been dogfooding this in the last 45 days, and I realized, yeah, we we need a mobile app. Nice. We need a mobile app. So we're for we're currently going for the approval process right now for an Apple developer account, Safari extensions coming out the pipeline, native app, things like topics of, SSH and, like, people like, it. I'm a Vim user. People like Emax, etcetera.

Bring whatever tools you like,

and it's just a Docker container in the cloud And work from anywhere. Wow. Yeah. So your your your own machine isn't going to be taxed with those resources of running it or even having to worry Docker, which is like a big thing. And especially like you said, Wes, if if you're talking about kids who may have just a Chromebook or something, Besides not getting that the kind of access that they would need to access the file system APIs or whatever on a Chromebook, you're also, not having to worry about your computer being a a total beast, which, like, let's face it.

Modern web development does kind of require it. A certain spec level of computer that is definitely not accessible to everyone. Well, I'll give you a good example.

The, the NFT Bay launched, And I just hacked together on an iPad, and I actually had people contact me about that. And there was some person from Brazil.

He goes like, I'm getting into software development. I wanna be a software developer, but, like, I I don't really have the resources. I'm like, well, you contact it. Me, I'm I'm gonna hook you up with a couple months of Gitpod. From that point forward, there's no excuse. And then I hooked him up with with a coworker, And they're now just speaking together, like, some programming resources that aren't in English. And, like, it's like so it's absolutely no excuse. Like, go change your life. Like, there's the barrier for entry.

You don't need to get yourself a, like, a $3,000 MacBook Pro. It's like Chromebook, iPad, and all the rest. There are there are some things that are, like like because this is so so cutting edge.

Like, there are sometimes there is some things that aren't so great.

Right? But at the same time, this is so new And previously, it wasn't possible,

and things are moving so fast. It's just it's it's just amazing what's coming down. Yeah. And I think it's also worth bearing in mind just Because we're throwing stories out there. The other day, I had to go to London, and I still was working as I was out and about. And it. Someone pinged me from our community asking for some help with their workspace, with their Gitpod workspace, which is the, developer environment in on their browser. So I they sent me a link.

I clicked that link, and I helped them debug a the issue from my phone. Oh, man. So, so this is my phone. This is a podcast. You can't see it, but I have a, a iPhone 13, and I just had it on my phone. I had it on landscape mode. I had Safari open, and I was just helping them on my phone. Oh, man. This is Yeah. Lowers your mind.

Man. So you guys have Versus Code running in the browser, which is impressive, because, like, obviously, Versus Code is is written in electrons, written in written in web tech, but, like, Versus Code themselves hasn't even implemented as much as you have. Like you by looking at the website you have, all the extensions are working, all of the the terminal works, and I assume that's part of the Docker container is that you are running a virtual machine here. CS. The UI is the browser, and then the the computer part is, is the Docker container? Yeah. So,

it. How it works is Gitpod is a play on the words, pod. Like, Gitpod is actually a Kubernetes pod.

So you provide us a Docker, Dockerfile, and we will schedule a workspace with that with that Docker with that Dockerfile. So we a Pre start up a workspace and without, without without any ownership, and we call them, ghost or pre warmed workspaces. So that way, when you click a link, It changes the owner. We run our own custom schedule in the background for Kubernetes. So you click that link, and then the workspace just starts up. And there's some actually cool things, especially when you get out of the web dev scenarios, where you can actually pre build the environment. Like, so if you got, like, a rust project, We're talking about scenarios where it's, like, pre compiled. All the independent dependencies are down. And so if you're hopping between a pull request so the typical workflow The Gitpod is you click on the link to review a pull request, and then you just and you do your work, and then you close the browser tab or you close the session, and then you open a new workspace. It. So it's like a task based.

So the idea there is that you click on a link to review the work, and it's pre compiled and pre ready to go. And then you just hop to context. There's no bringing code locally or updating your local state. It's all sandboxed on a per context basis. Wow. That's really cool.

Can you this is a question we get all the time on the podcast, and neither Scott nor I are, anywhere near being able to answer it is, what is Kubernetes.

Are we is that a genuine question? Are we Yeah. Well, like like, I I kinda know what it is. Yeah. We know what it is. But, like, for people people on the podcast, they they're like, can you do a a podcast on what Kubernetes is and and everything? And it's like, it. Well, Scott and I, like like, I honestly don't even use Docker all that much, let alone, what Kubernetes does. So Are either of you able to take a stab at explaining, like, what it is and and why someone might need it? I know it's not part of Gitpod, but I'd now that you're talking about it That that's Yeah. Go on, Jeff. Yeah. You I was gonna say you probably, can explain it a bit better than me because I'm still confused by how

all the different things, it. And I work in the space, so, yeah, go ahead. 1st up, if you have to know about Kubernetes and you're using Gitpod, then we're failed. This is all hidden from you.

Is it time to do shameless plugs? I would are you also speaking to the person of no yammer.com? Oh, no yammer. Yeah. No yamil.com.

I created that in a, well, after a few beers, I got, yeah, I was doing some Kubernetes work. That probably sum her up, some of my feelings in it.

So what it is is, it's a a platform. It's actually you could actually see it as an operating system that lifts the typical Abstraction you use for software development and exposes primitives such as, like, orchestration and scheduling that your services are deployed and Exposes monitoring endpoints.

It's really complicated.

A lot of people do not need to use Kubernetes.

Like, I noted the Internet it. Using a static HTML web page, which is just copy and paste essentially in, like, in notepad.

Right? You you don't need Kubernetes. You can do a lot of really cool things. We it. We actually know hardware these days.

But in our case, the community is the perfect case for we need a solution that schedules work CS spaces, and you do your development in the workspace. So it it's it's good for building a platform. So for people like us, it's amazing. For you, you might not need it. Thank you for that.

Okay. Let's get it back to, Gitpod here. So I I just fired up a a Gitpod instance of my own personal website just Just to give it a try, which is actually, I don't know if it's or or whichever version of this thing it is, whatever branch I just loaded up, but it It fired up really, really quickly, and now I have my own sort of sandbox URL that I can have for development.

And I have my own Versus code in the browser here, and that that took just a a couple of clicks to get that going. Right? Just a couple of clicks had to change the deploy command. But what I see instantly is that, like, my development environment is not my development environment anymore. It's the Versus code that's in the browser. Do you have any, like I I I see that I can open this up in my local Versus code. But, like, let's say I I was a developer who, is coming at this and saying, like, I'm on an iPad now, and I I'd really like to have a lot of my tools and extensions and whatever. Is there, like, a quick Wait to get up and running with normal Versus code. Is it just like the straight up Versus code settings sync stuff that you have before? Like, is it is it full on Versus code environment that you can utilize the same way as your desktop and and and sync your settings and get all everything, themes, and everything up and running.

That was a meandering question. Sorry.

No. It's okay. That's good. It was clear. I think, yeah, correct me if I'm wrong here, Jeff, but I think so When you're a new developer using Gitpod and you want to, add all of your themes and extensions, you actually have to install them again, on Gitpod.

So we we use, the OpenVSX marketplace, which is like a A vendor neutral version of Versus Code's extension from marketplace. Yeah. So you would have to do that.

Yeah. I had to submit my theme to that.

Yeah. Yeah. So you'd have to find your, like, your themes, your extensions that you have locally And see if

we have it on the marketplace and then install it from there. Yeah. Okay. So so then and then the the authors would have to submit to that As well, I think I think maybe that's something that, could be better better known amongst authors because that'd be that'd be really great to have, The full selection here. But, yeah, the environment looks great, and it was really easy to get up and running just as we were talking here.

Thank you. Some back story. So, Gitpod is one of the creators of OpenVSX.

Back before Gitpod was Gitpod, there was a company called Typefox.

Because, people may not know that the Versus Code marketplace is proprietary.

So if you're using things like Versus CX podium, which is a Visual Studio Code, but open source, you can't actually connect to the marketplace.

So when you use Versus Codeum, which is the open source build as a visual it. Your code or using new any of the these cloud offerings that come into market. They're actually using OpenBS code server. So, 1, if you're producing, extensions, please consider publishing to OpenVSX server, and service.

Second thing is if you see an extension that's not there, if you had to open VSX on on GitHub, you will see, there's a published extensions repository, and there's a MPX script. You just put in the the name of the extension, and it'll Send a pull request, and it'll we've got an automatic script that synchronizes between the marketplace. So you can download files between market places and sync files, but you can't direct connect, Visual Studio and non studio Visual Studio products to the marketplace. Interesting. Yeah. I I had to submit my own

Repo to that. And I at the time, I didn't understand what it was.

I just had a bunch of people being like, hey, like, can you please get Cobalt 2 on this open VSX. I'm like, sure. So I did it, and it was really simple. I just had to, like, claim claim my name space, and and I I don't have See it. I publish it every time I don't think, to it. It was pretty simple to do.

So pretty simple thing. If anyone does have a theme, make sure you push it because Now I understand what that is for.

Versus code is being used in many different ways, including something like Gitpod. So, being able to use all and I just took a quick look. All the extensions that I use, Prettier, ESLint, Emmet is built in. I'm trying to think of, like, what are the other

big Oh, no. I I use some some boutique extensions here. I'm gonna have to it. Just go about it.

Error lens is one that I use. Let's let's see if this one's available.

Error lens. Well, that's the thing. If, if you see something's missing, well, just speak with us. Right? Happy to run you through how to publish there. It's all about an open ecosystem for Versus Code. Totally.

Yeah. And and we'll we'll link, we'll link that in the show notes too just so everyone can see it, because this honestly is not something I've heard of before today. I know, Wes, you have, but I think a lot of people would probably be, excited to see that this exists, and yeah. Cool. You know, what else is hosted in the cloud, Wes? I do. What is this, Scott?

A virtual private server with Linode. Linode. Yes. Linode is cloud computing developers trust.

So if you have, to use a Linux server to host, hopefully, host a Docker image or host a node application or, it. Any of the products that Linode offers, dedicated CPU, high memory GPU. They have Kubernetes. Now that we know what Kubernetes is, We can use Linode.

We we can use Linode with it. So check it out. They're gonna give you a $100 in free credit To host your next application, go to linode.comforward/syntax.

It's gonna get you $100 in free credit. Thank you, Linode, for sponsoring.

Alright.

Next question. I think it's probably for Pauline is I'm curious, like, who do you see is the, like, the early users or the heavy users of Gitpod right now. Like, I'm I'm curious.

Do you see, like, a lot of boot camp students, or do you see a lot of, like, YouTube tutorial takers, or is there a specific, like, a type of developer you see gravitating, even, like, language specific? Oh, that's a really good question.

I think Jeff can also jump in. It. I think Jeff can also jump in because I I started, like, disclaimer, like, 4, 5 months ago. So I didn't see it from the, like, very beginning. It. But from the last few months of, of me, like, taking care of the community, we've seen all sorts of developers.

We've seen, yeah, I've seen some boot camp grads, some people who just started learning how to code, and, you know, asking how they can leverage Gitpod for their sort of education.

We have, students, from various different, like, educational, again, like boot camps.

But also We also have like, more experienced developers too. So people who have, like, years of experience who are sort of the I don't want I guess you could call them like forward thinkers. The people who are like, oh, this is this is a thing that I can I can just code from it? A very thin client. I don't need a super high spec, MacBook Pro or whatever it is. And we have quite a few, experienced, devs.

In terms of like language, I've seen people use all sorts with Gitpod. And I think that's the beauty of it. We have like it. So we have a Discord community, and we have a list of all of these, like, different languages that people can then join the channels and discuss how they Set up the, like, developer environment on Gitpod for that specific language.

And, honestly, it it ranges from front end stuff, More of the like Kubernetes, Docker, sort of things as well.

So yeah. It's it's a it's a vast Majority of just different people. Oh, also I forgot to mention teams. We've also seen quite a few teams like Use and adopt Gitpod as well.

And I I would say I I I guess I can, like, say this as well, but, Because you could use Gitpod for we have a SaaS offering and we have self hosted.

We've seen some more enterprisey, CS. Teams jump on board too.

So, yeah, that's been interesting. Mostly from, the finance and banking world, which is, Again, very interesting to to see. But, yeah, any any did I miss anyone from that group, Jeff? I feel like I went. All developers have used Gitpod at some point.

You're you're doing fine. Like, Gitpod itself is open source. We're an open source product very similar to GitLab.

We're an open call product. You can run it on your own infrastructure.

So we're seeing a lot of issues. On Linode? You could run it on Linode. Actually,

it would be perfect.

It. Oh, I like that. This matter topicly.

Actually, you're speaking with the person who's, looking at rolling out for marketing and our partnerships. So, Leonode, pick up the phone. I'll probably be calling you

CSUN. Oh, we got contacts there. Oh, yeah. You know? Sweet.

So, yeah, we're seeing a lot of interest in open source and open source communities because, onboarding open source contributors is really hard, typically.

When you have been able to say, take the contributing dot MD and just reduce it down to just it. Click on this button. Yeah. You're able to do contribution a lot more.

So we're seeing a lot of interest in the open source communities.

Gitpod is open source For open source maintainers, for everyone else, it's 50 hours a month for free.

We have got some really cool things going on. Like, we, like, I started a program for the Gitpod Sustainability Fund, which is initially a $30,000 US fund to support open source maintainers.

We're seeing a lot of interest in enterprise. People are getting sick of Citrix VDI type things.

If we if we we're honest about VDI. VDI was to spark joy for sysadmins.

A lot of people do What is VDI? Virtual desktop infrastructure.

So Oh, okay. Think about doing software development essentially via remote desktop, all thin client scenarios.

But Oh, man. Yeah. I mean, like, no axe there are no admin access to your computer and all that stuff. So Citrix and all the rest, great technology. It's designed to make sysadmins happy.

Gitpod is about making all the developers it. You let you get full control of your local environment. So we're seeing a lot of people where they've got, like like, tens of thousands of software developers developing Citrix, And they can't install Docker.

And so they're like, yeah. We we want Gitpod. We got a solution for the rest of the company that's Citrix, But for our software developers, this Gitpod. Interesting. I have a lot of questions about your your team stuff because I I know we got into a little bit about that briefly.

So it seems like there's a bunch of, like, team collaboration tools. And so I just sent Wes. So I fired up the link that I did, And I I send Wes a a URL, in Slack. So if Wes opens that up, he's seeing my development site. Right? So I ran the development site. It gave me a link that's, a long string of link. I send that to Wes. That's that's my development environment.

If Wes was my team member working on his code base of the same thing and he were to fire this up, Would it give him a slightly different URL that's like a a a the the site running in a different environment there? We're not working on the same Environment we're working in separate environments that we get okay. So that's really least 2 separate. Yeah. Exactly. Separate environments.

And our I noticed there were some, like, pair programming features, and then that that those ways you would be able to do the opposite of that and have you both be pairing on 1 code base?

Yes. Absolutely. One workspace. Yeah. One workspace environment. Exactly.

Yeah. Okay. So you have the possibility of everyone having their own or multiples into multiple workspaces. That seems like a lot of flexibility for this type of thing.

My mind's kind of racing about, like, what kind of different different tools you can use. So within the collaboration tools, here's a here's an actual question. Within the collaboration tools, what do you offer as a way for people to collaborate on a code base Via language, essentially. Like, how how if if Wes and I are working in the same environment, how do we talk to each Do we have to fire open a Zoom meeting to to chat with each other? Do we, have a Slack room, or is it is it Is that something Gitpod does not care about whatsoever, and it's just, like, however you manage your own communication, you do it?

Yeah. I so how you, it. How you share your workspace, you can just do so with a, you can share it on so once you get on your when you open up a workspace, it. You have a URL, that you can you can share. And if you, like, click, in on the bottom to say, yeah. I want to share this URL with Someone, then you can, it then allows, it then opens up that URL so that anyone with that URL can then open up your workspace. And now Person 2 with that URL, can then start editing files, or editing code or whatever it is on They're on the same workspace.

In terms of like communication, I feel like that's a feature request. That sounds amazing. Doesn't it, Jeff? Like having some way to talk to each other in that one workspace, but currently that's not, that's not something that we support.

Although it sounds like a great idea, you know, being able to talk to each other as you prepare program. But, yeah, we don't have a way to to, like, you know, Yeah. Yeah. Talk to each other, at the same time. But you can see someone like edit, say you're on, like, an index dot a HTML file or something. And Yeah. You you see Wes, like, typing hello world. You you can actually see that in in real time. Cool. Yeah. So, yeah, you get that that Google Docs type of, a flow. Yeah. Yeah. Neat. Exactly.

It's That's awesome. We're right now, we're looking at building really good engineering primitives that compose well.

Team collaboration is a huge thing. It. There's there are many options.

The easiest one, of course, is a Zoom screen. You could, like if you're a terminal person, you can use Teammates, like, any of the usual things and solutions because, essentially, it's just, like, your computer in a Docker container. And it. Just to be clear, a Docker container is just a transport device.

Like, we get people running operating systems and CPU development it. In a Docker in a Docker file, and that's running in Gitpod, and then you're using a normal Unix primitives. So the idea of, like, Collab tools, very interesting, very compelling, so I wouldn't be surprised if, our road map is open.

Www.gitpod.0/roadmap.

Keep an eye on there for new features coming down the pipeline.

Nice.

Yeah. There was a, actually, it's a and and I think that's a cool thing about the collaboration tools Because, honestly, I don't need my text editor to be handling my audio or anything like that. You know, I'm I'm perfectly capable of having other other means of doing that.

There's an app I recently saw that I'm I'm just gonna throw out there that might be a good companion app, for this type of thing, it's called centered dot app.

And I don't know if you've seen this before because it's it's it. New. I just saw it on Twitter the other day, and it's basically their whole premise is like the open office Nice. Done in a way. So it's like, How how how can you have, like, a an open office type of deal or an open workflow for everyone to chat with each other in a remote workspace? And that's, like, what this is all about. You just kinda leave it running. You can make yourself available or not. It's almost like audio Discord where you just have it just always available. So it might be a neat thing to check out, for those of you who are looking for this type of thing. Might be a good companion to this type of tool. I need to check this out now. I'm on the I'm I'm on the website. This looks amazing. It. It's pretty cool. Yeah. I just thought yeah.

Yeah. This is the sort of things I've been trying to do, like just opening up a Google Meet with myself and sending it to the Slack and hoping someone joins. But yeah. Okay. That's cool.

1 question I had, and I think I might know the answer to this, is, CS. Do the developers of Gitpod use Gitpod, to build Gitpod? And what happens if you break Gitpod when you're working on Git

Take it away, Jeff.

So yes.

Yeah. Gitpod builds Gitpod with Gitpod. Yes. So if we break Gitpod

Mhmm. Then,

we have the typical problems with bootstrapping. Right? So we we don't break Gitpod,

uptime and service availability. To use the angle grinder to get into the door?

No. We don't have to do the face y approach. That was very fun, by the way.

We did, like I've I've I mean, now at Gitpod, Almost almost under a year here, and I don't recognize the company, like, when I first grown from a maturity basis.

Like, still very early early stage company. We're growing. We're hiring. Gitpod.io/careers.

If you're doing anything, in the Kubernetes space, you're a runtime engineer or you you like Golang, TypeScript, and all those fun things. We hire it. Anywhere, like I mean, anywhere. I'm normally in a state forest somewhere camping.

Like, it's like, I I don't need scented because I'm normally near a fire And that's its own form of centering. It's nice.

So the the company is growing, and it's changing, and it's getting so much better. Like, I think it. Looking at, like, tea, I remember a time when I I first joined a long time ago, and we had a scenario where we couldn't update the status page because The status page was hosted off we used to have a process of updating it from Gitpod, and Gitpod itself was down. So, it. Straight after that incident, we yeeted that that problem way out of existence, and we made hosting the status page someone else's problem.

If you're running your own status company, Do not host your own status page. Please don't. Yeah. It's it's a bad idea. It's amazing how many people do that.

Yeah. Yeah. Is the site down? I don't know. Check the status page. Us. Is this data's page down?

So, yeah, Gitpod builds Gitpod with Gitpod.

Right? And, it's it's a lovely experience. Like, we when we I hop between reviewing coworkers' work, and I just click a link, and I can see the exact state of their software development environment, and I have access And it's pre all the MPM dependencies are down. Everything's precompiled, ready to go.

So there's none of this, like, pulling down this experimental branch and then hosing my local computer.

Everything's all contained.

What language is Gitpod built in then? I'm just Trying to see. I know he's open source. I bet I could even just look at it. Yeah. We use, TypeScript

and, Golang is our primary Wow. Core core tech. Okay. Seems to be a very common,

stack that has we've had a, I don't know, 3 or 4 guests in the past year, and they're all like, yeah. We're using Golang. It. We're using Golang, and we're using TypeScript.

So that's that's pretty exciting.

Let's take a break for another sponsor, and then we'll get into Some more questions now. Scott, you wanna do LogRocket?

Yeah. I mean, if you're if you're, building something in the cloud or otherwise, you're gonna wanna have some sort of visibility into your errors and exceptions, and you're gonna wanna do this with a tool like LogRocket, which gives you actual visibility.

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So thank you to LogRocket for sponsoring. Alright. Let's, let's switch gears,

for a bit and Talk about the random stuff that popped up before the show.

So when you joined the call, you were standing in front of a bunch of SAWS, and he said, yeah. My van is over there. And that reasonably got West very excited because standing in front of a bunch of tools in the van yeah.

It. So you are, like, totally remote. Usually, you are living out of a van and and being a coder. That's the dream.

It's it's not like, it's not like like a van down by the river. No. I'm talking about, like there's, like, a kilowatt van. Us. Yeah. There's a kilowatt of solar on the roof. There's, air conditioning.

There's, 6 Internet connections, soon 7 when Starlink arrives.

There's, like, 4. Today, I finished painting the back wall as a green screen, so it's a production studio on wheels.

And I'm just traveling around Australia in a van working remotely. And, like, it's possible.

We, actually, as anyone who has a laptop, society is kinda now divided into, like, those who can work remotely and those who cannot.

Mhmm. Mhmm. Yeah. Like like, if you can work remotely, you you should. Like Like, you like, Pauline, what have you done recently? Like, you just like, you have a device, and you can work from anywhere. What have you done? Yeah. Like no. Absolutely. I think So like I mentioned, I was in London the other day, and I had to work,

remotely, from from there. And I was actually working us. Using my iPad mini and a keyboard, inside the car on the way from, us. From London to the north of England in Leeds. Mhmm. People don't know where that is. So, like, us. Up there. Up in the north of Oh, yeah. Area. Yeah. Our last guest was from,

from the north of England, so we were looking at a map for quite a while. Yeah.

From just outside of

let's look at a map here. Yeah. Not yep. Not my not my, best area of knowledge here. It. Well, in yeah. The in Leeds,

is where I live.

And and yeah. So I was in a car for, like, I think it was, like, 4, 5 hours, just working using Git pods, coding Wow.

On my iPad mini with a keyboard us. In a in a in a small car. And I'm sure that's like What were you using for Internet? Were you using, like, an a satellite or, LTE? I I have five g. Yeah. A 5 g. Yeah. On my phone. Yeah. It up. Yep. Yeah. Exactly. Unlimited as well. So it just it just Exactly. A no brainer. It's amazing. I think that's just where we're all, like, Heading towards you know, my only regret is not getting an iPad mini with, like, 5 g.

CS Oh, yeah. Or 4 g or whatever enabled. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I wish I did.

Yeah. I wish I did. But, yeah, I didn't. That's my only regret. Well, yeah. I mean, Jeff, you get that all the time. Well, our guest was from Sunderland.

Sunderland.

Oh, I don't know where that is.

Oh, he said it's it. It's just a it's just like an hour outside of Newcastle.

Okay. He's way more north than me. It's colder up there.

Hold on. Let's see where that oh, yeah. That is that's even more north than me, and I'm from Canada. Oh, wow. Oh, man. That yeah. He, he said he lived in a pretty, pretty industrial city, which is Yeah. Yeah. He was on specifically talking about JavaScript in industry.

It. Oh, interesting. Yeah. Pro tip, the Magic Keyboard does not come with an escape key with an iPad.

But CS If you go to the iOS settings, you can actually remap caps log to escape. And then you're home free. Pro tip. A Pro tip. Pro tip. That's a good pro tip. There you go. Love it. You can you can plug any keyboard in. So it's it's an iPad. Any keyboard can go in. Even your old mechanical keyboard. And so do you have, like, a desk in your in your camper? Like, how do you stay productive

when doing that type of thing because sometimes I think, like, yeah, that'd be nice. But then I try to, like, go to a coffee shop and work and I'm I'm not as productive as if I'm sitting at my Station.

Are you the type of person who just loves driving somewhere and you can put your head down and keep coding? So, unfortunately, because it's a podcast,

People can't see this, but, Wes, that is my monitor that's about to go onto the van. It's a 48 inch TV.

It.

So, that's it's it's 4 mod cons, everything you need to be productive remotely, but I find myself just getting a like, I've got myself a a camping chair, and it's got a sunshade and everything. And then it's just, like, it. Finding somewhere beautiful and just sitting down there with a camping chair, I was like, yep, couple USB c battery packs, tether to the Internet.

Something fascinating about Internet is I could be on the sketchiest Internet possible, and, and it actually is really good. Like, it. If I I can be on Internet that's so sketchy that I would not be route be able to run NPM install, but because, essentially, I just need as much bandwidth as SSH.

I'm connecting to a remote environment, and I've got I'm in the Google data center, and then I have a gigabit.

And then so I can be on Sketchy local I think it could be remote.

Oh,

that's interesting. Yeah. That that's what we we did an entire episode on poor internet because I had been working from my cottage where I had like you many Many sketchy LTE connections that I'm trying to make work from rural area.

And I was always just like, yeah. It would be so much better if I could just run this whole laptop in the cloud somewhere that has fast Internet, and then I just, Yeah. Just SSH. Just just send me the the bits that are changing on the screen instead of the actual 40 gigs of npm install.

Alright. So another question we have all the time is can you do a, can you do a a podcast on web 3? And, like, Scott and I, we kinda we know a little bit here and there, and we've been sort of following it. But it it seems like every single person that, like, we could possibly talk to it. About what web 3 is has some sorta some sorta endgame.

And

it's a financial stake or a book it to sell you or is it TikTok bro or something like that. And I just haven't haven't been able to find somebody who doesn't, like, it. Feel slimy to to talk to.

And then, like, I the other day, a couple days ago, I saw this thing. It blew up on Hacker News.

It. Some guy scraped all of the NFTs and put them up for free, and did this hilarious I read I read the Readme which is that, like, NFTs are just hosted on Google Drive which is a web 2. So given all that, what is web 3 and and, like, what did What did you do with the NFTs? I know that's a big question, but, like, what the heck is going on? That's my Let's talk about impartiality.

I hold no crypto offerings, and until recently, the max I, like, I've always heard nothing.

I actually created NFT Bay as as huge joke, because I wanted to point out that, essentially, people are selling computer programs, the NFTs, and people are saying that the NFT and the art the art is on the blockchain.

It. It's not.

It's just a schema. The link? It's a schema, which is essentially image SRC.

The contract if you imagine, like, a JSON blog field and there's a SRC field, and the s s the SRC field, that's, like, immutable on the blockchain, but it links Over to a, like, a web host. And at times, that's I I because I have a Google Docs. Photo bucket all over again. Oh, yeah. This is CS. The and then some peep it's wild. People are, like, up because, like, it's immutable in the blockchain. The image SRC is minted onto the blockchain, but people are, like, They sell the NFT, and then they switch it out to, like, pictures of rugs, and they call it a rug pull.

Oh my gosh. A literal rug pull. Yeah.

Yeah. A literal rug pull. So, I I thought it was really funny because People are selling essentially a JSON contract and saying you're buying art on the blockchain, but, really, it's a JSON Immutable JSON, like, the image SRC that points to a different web host.

There are some NFTs where the art is on the blockchain, but that that it. It's super rare. Like, most things are pointing to either something on Arweave or IPFS or Google, Google Docs Or, like, some web 2 API service, which will go offline. So people are buying these JSON blobs, and they think that they're, like, it. Buying the art, but the art's on on the blockchain. In 2016, it was calculated this is 2016. Things have changed now. There's different block sizes, a different a different, it. Like, the cost of gases in Gueye has gone up. Mhmm. But it was calculated that it was it'd be $76,000 per gigabyte stored in blockchain if you were to it. Store a JPEG, like a gigabyte on the blockchain.

Oh. So it's it's Oh, yeah. So Yeah.

It's a hack.

What we see right now is a hack. So There's a disconnect. A lot of people buying the NFTs, think they're buying the art, but really, they're all they're buying is the image SRC equals, and that could be a picture of a rug.

And then they're not even buying the licensing for this thing, so they're not buying the ownership or licensing to, you know, commercially distribute or whatever. I I think there's some interesting interesting aspects about, like, like, if you produce some art and let's say this art was actually on the block Then you could earn something every single time it was resold until infinity, but you're getting you're you're not actually you're you damn it. The dart itself isn't on the blockchain just because it doesn't work like that. You know? The whole thing is fascinating.

My favorite, anything about NFTs is that, that that image that somebody made that says you wouldn't steal or you wouldn't right click a photo Or, you know, like, you wouldn't download a car, the you wouldn't steal this.

You wouldn't right click a photo and save as. You wouldn't create a 20 terabyte or to right click save as, would you? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Because it's funny. What what you may have done.

Question I have is do you think that there is any any good in this whole web three idea of, like, Like, I I always think like, oh, yeah. You could host a website on the blockchain and your style dot CSS would be in the blockchain. Your index dot HTML would be immutable and then You just deploy a new version, and no one could ever take it down and something like that. But, like, do you I'm still very skeptical sitting on the sidelines of it. Like, do you think that if there is any value to this type of thing. I don't know.

I'm here learning and being interested in being in trying to learn. Mhmm.

I I've gone through the early Internet days. I see a lot of things that are very interesting.

On the topic of neutrality, The community needs to regulate itself before it gets regulated. I had government regulators contact me when they seen the NFT bait. They can't find people who are neutral.

Everyone they try and speak with, they hold a large amount of crypto offerings, and they're seeing some really brazen scamming happening on Twitter spaces within the NFT space. So it's either they start regulating their community or they will get regulated. Regulators are looking. To that, It could be, but there are issues. Because, typically, when you form a community in the web three space, You you issue, say, tokens.

And then if you wanna join the community, you buy the token. Then from that point forward, everyone is essentially a founder in the community, is a founder.

And, speaking with the editors of The Verge, and they were making the analogy that it's kinda like a homeowners association from that point forward. Like, the it. Dynamics, the community changes. Yeah. Everyone's financially incentivized to maximize, the value.

So, like, It it's a really hard there's a lot of money in this space.

The communities are different.

I'm not saying there's no utility. I, myself, I went out it. And grabbed a ENS domain.

I think it's very important to reserve your identity.

So if this becomes does become a thing, I'm g huntley dot and it's something people might wanna consider. That's the first thing in utility I've seen is, owning your own energy online on the blockchain.

That's cool. I I I think I kinda feel the same way as well is that I am not against it. A lot of it seems silly, and I don't understand a lot of it, but it. I also am sort of just sitting and watching. And what I don't like about it is that there's a lot of people have urgency to not miss it. It. And, like, if this is gonna be the next big thing for web development and applications, then it's not gonna be something that we're gonna miss. It's gonna be this well well established thing that we can all go ahead and use. And I think the people that are have urgency are trying to get you in so that they can cash out on it. That's at least my Viewpoint of it. And I'm sure I I hate I hate talking about crypto and anything like that because

it brings out the worst people on Twitter that have opinions, and I I just get slammed at the time. You can see my DM inbox. You should see my inbox. It is it is, is a dumpster fire right now. Yeah. It's divisive on both ends.

The the pros the pros and, again, everybody's just angry about it either way, and that does it makes it hard to get to the The real picture of, like, what is the actual situation like you were saying, Wes. You're not gonna you're not gonna miss it. And so many of those approaches can feel Just outright kind of scammy or kind of obviously like MLME kind of that same sort of I mean, we just watched that Lularoe documentary that was it. Very very similar vibes to some crypto scams that you see, so yeah. Yeah. So,

something I find fascinating in this space Is, if you look at how the younger generations are using social media and using their devices, they're very compartmentalized.

They're using a different identity for different contexts.

Whereas what we're pushing out on blockchain is, like, essentially, everything is open. Like, everyone can see that you if if we reach the utopia of, like, All transactions are on the blockchain, then all of a sudden, what happens when you get topics such as, like, being able to see that you go to this gas station every day, And everyone in the world can read that. Like, that is completely different to how the generations are using technology, and we're talking about Yeah. I don't even wanna use Facebook because my uncle's on it. It.

Yeah. What happens when the entire world can read what you're doing? It's not just Facebook.

So there's Yeah. There's some things that need solving.

Try and find center. Don't don't outward reject it, because then you get into tribalism of both sides attacking each other. Try and find center and and common ground And figure out what this is. Hey, Wes. Let's say you got wrapped up in a crypto scam, and then I need,

I I you know, you had to invoice me for some money, extra your money now so that you could invoice me for the work that we did on syntax.

How how would you do that? FreshBooks is the cloud accounting solution for your small business, for your big business. If you are it. Entrepreneur of any type and need to send out invoices. You need to do your accounting. You need to log all of your expenses, categorize them into it. All the different types. Check it out. Freshbooks.comforward/syntax.

You're gonna get paid faster when you use it. Make sure you use syntax in the how did you hear about it section. Thank you FreshBooks for sponsoring. Someone created an NFT of the NFT Bay, and they made, like, $17,000

US off it, like, kinda trolling me.

Yeah.

So Yeah. I made a NFT of the NFT, like, kind of recursive and sold that for $1300.

It. But here's the thing, Wes. Here's the thing. For me to sell that NFT, I had to pay $300 in transaction fees To get so someone offered me $1300.

I only in I ended up cashing out with $1,000 because I had to pay $300 to accept the offer to buy for 1300

Oh my gosh.

Yeah. That that's another thing that doesn't make sense to me. Like, I I have, lots of different crypto myself, and I'm holding it just because, like, what what if? You know? What if? Yeah. I also have been accepting crypto since 2012, for a lot of my products. And that has I've just been holding on to that.

But, like, whenever I have to, like, move it, it's slow, And I had to pay a whole bunch of money. I was like, what? This doesn't and then whenever I talk about it, people are like, well, no. You're doing it wrong, or it's gonna change. And It also feels, like, dangerous because you're just it. Copying and pasting, like, an address and it could arrive or not or it could just disappear forever or who knows? Yeah. I don't know, man. It's, I I get it. I get it. Absolutely. But there's there's a lot that I don't get either. So, we're we're watching the space.

Let's move into some sick pics. You guy did you guys come ready with any sick pics for us? Oh, yes.

Alright. Oh, yes. Yeah.

Yes. We did. Okay. I'll kick I'll kick us off then. Okay. My sick pic, I really had, like, a long think about this. Like, What is the thing I've been talking to everybody I know about? It was it has to be, this brand called Uniqlo, if you've heard of it. Yes. It. I love you, UK.

Oh, I'm so glad you you've heard of it because I'm not yes. I'm wearing their jeans right now. Oh my god.

Great. Okay. You. So the reason I love I I discovered them recently. The reason I love them is I live in the north, of England, and it's super, super cold here at this it. Time of year. And I recently discovered the heat tech collection.

And for those listening who don't know what that is, it's essentially like a really cool fabric that generates heat from your body so you keep warm.

Wow. When I first when I first bought when I first bought it, I was like, this This is just a gimmick. This is all marketing.

But now I've tried it for over a month. I can say that it actually has kept me warm.

So, I feel like I don't have to use, like, the heating in my, apartment.

I just wear HeatTech. I just wear Uniqlo.

It's the best thing. So, yeah, tote that's my sick pick.

I really like their stretchy jeans because they look like jeans, but they're stretchy.

Yeah. Take it. Yep. Yeah. I mean, the stuff is awesome.

I have like, I'm a huge guy that's into denim. And I just like, They have, like, salvaged denim that's, like, probably some of the cheapest salvaged denim you can buy. And I I was, like, alright. I'll try a pair. And a The fit is awesome. The wear is awesome. Like, after about, like, I don't know, a year and a half, like, I've got really good fades on them. And the the heat tech my my wife and I were walking downtown Toronto, I don't know, 5 years ago, and they were just giving away Free heat tech. And What? We all yeah. We all got it. Like, it's like we got, like, the long underwear or whatever it is.

And, so we just, like, popped it. We just grabbed it, and, we just wear under our jeans and things like that. It it actually is super warm. It is it is. Highly recommend. Sick pick. Yeah. That's a good one.

Meanwhile, in sunny Australia, I don't quite have that problem right now. It. My sick pic, thinking about it. I might yeah.

Helinox.

Helinox do these it. Hiking chairs. They're super lightweight, and you can get yourself a, like, a sunshade over the top.

It. And if you're, like, going for a walk or a trail and you have a laptop and you you can now work remotely, get yourself some USB battery packs, get yourself a Helenox chair, get yourself sunshade, and your office is wherever there's a good view and there's good vibes.

Helenox chairs have sunshade, so you don't get reflection.

It. It's $100 for the sunshade. I like I I think that's too much, but it means you because the problem is you normally find something that is good, beautiful, but But there's no shade, and then you can't work because it's a reflection.

Get the chair with the sunshade, and then you can work anywhere with no reflection.

Helenox chairs. Awesome. A lightweight.

They look nice as a, soon to be parent of a child that's gonna be, you know, like a 5 year old who's playing soccer.

This is gonna be a perfect type of soccer chair for me. This is gonna be it. Oh, yeah. Nice little soccer chair. Soccer dad, soccer mom chair. You know, I'll take it. These are nice.

It's super long.

Sick pick.

I guess if we could do a second sick buck pick, I'm a have to go to a shout out to zombo.com.

You can do anything at zombo.com.

Zombo.com.

Oh, zom this is it. This is like, this is web 1 point o. What is it? Say. I feel like I am

We're back in time now. There we go. Or is this is this web 3. We we can't talk about the future without acknowledging where we come from. You can do anything at slongo.com.

Yeah. That's a that's a good point.

I'm I'm trying to just pick a podcast, that I've been really like. Actually, there's a whole bunch of podcasts that I've been liking lately, so maybe you'll have to pick a good one here.

There's there's one called Sweet Bobby from Tortoise.

Tortoise does some decently good podcasts. I've never really heard of them. They're UK based.

But Sweet Bobby is A podcast about, like, a, what do they call that when you your catfishing. It's like a catfishing thing, and it's kind of, you know, one of those mystery True crime kind of things. There's not I don't there's there's nothing really that's emotionally disturbing, but that's it. Sweet Bobby is a story about catfishing, and I found it to be, Terrifying modern modern tech kind of story. You know, like, what kind of catfishing lengths are being done today and and, how how very scary it is to not know anyone's identity at any time. You know those types of thing unless you're chatting on video like this. So Really good podcast. One of those if you're into true crime style or mystery style podcasts,

definitely a good one to listen. I'm adding that to my list. Awesome. Adding that to my list. I love true crime. So yeah. Yeah. Definitely in that in that universe. I'm gonna sick pick these Cloths I just got called whoosh. Screen cleaning microfiber.

And, man, I my wife makes fun of me because she calls me a Cloth enthusiast.

And I've I've never found, like, a really good microfiber cloth for especially, like, For your phone and for the kids' iPads and and for the, entertainment center in the car, but also just, like, for sunglasses as well. And, Like, years ago, my dad had a really good one that would just get the your glasses like 4 k. It was amazing. Yeah. And I've I could never find a good enough one. And Finally, I tried these the one that are called the whoosh cloths, and they're just tiny little the weave of them, I I don't know what the weave is is called, but they work amazing. And, like, I don't need water or spray or anything. And I just like water for my TV,

But Oh, okay. That have Maybe I haven't done the TV yet. Handprint. So, I mean, that was, like, a straight up handprint on the TV.

I'll I'll have to try it try it on the TV yet, but, man, they're amazing. And it was, like like, I don't know, 10 or $15 for a pack of 4 is you put 1 in the office, They put 1 in, 1 in the car and 1 with your glass your sunglasses, and you and you're good to go. So check them out. Whoosh gloves. That's, like, 10 times the value of an of an apple cloth, so that's great value. Yeah.

A bunch a bunch of people are like, why didn't you it. The Apple Clothos. I didn't buy the Apple Cloth. It came with Oh, you have it? Yeah. I I have the Apple Cloth. I didn't buy it, though. It came with your monitor? Yeah. It came with the monitor. Okay. That you should get. I was like, don't wanna get mugged. Imagine just walking down the street with an apple cloth. This thing is for sure. It's like it's like the weighted blankets of cloths. I I I feel like it. It's just super heavy duty. Oh, what a flex. It's like a $40 cloth. Yeah.

Shameless plugs. I'm gonna shamelessly plug all of my courses. Westboss.comforward/courses.

You can learn some JavaScript script, or some CSS, or anything to do with web development. I'm going to shamelessly plug level up tutorials.com.

We have a new course From a new content, creator Amy Kaepernick has done a course on accessibility for everyone here, and it's awesome. Amy is fantastic, And, she is from Australia as well. So, that's awesome. We got a couple Aussies here. So, yeah, it. Check it out. Leveluptutorials.com.

You guys have any shameless plugs? Yeah. Go for it. Yes. Yeah. So I'm going to shamelessly plug,

my new developer experience, podcast with my colleague, Mike Nichols.

So we're diving into the ins and outs of developer experience, What it is and why it's important.

We also have a, newsletter called DevEx Digest. So you can subscribe to that, CS. On gitpod dot io, slash, I think, blog. I mean, there's a newsletter link there.

And also, just 1 if you if you have listened to this episode and really enjoyed learning about Gitpod and want to learn more, we have a Gitpod community on Discord, so gitpod.io/, chat.

It's just a place for you to learn, and, you know, us. Share your learnings on using Gitpod or getting set up with Gitpod and moving your local dev environment to the cloud, and we're more than happy to help out with that. So, yeah, That's my shameless plug.

Awesome.

Nice.

Alright. So, shameless plugs. Alright. So if you're potentially in DevRel, or you you run workshops? I wanna speak with you.

If you Google Gitpod workshops as code, it. You'll find a blog post, and it essentially explains, like, people should be able to learn anywhere from any device. Like, they it. They should be able to work up turn up to your workshop on an iPad or a Chromebook, what else have you. So it's it's a personal tale. That blog post There you'll find as a personal tale when I was delivering a workshop, and people turned up with a Chromebook, and they had to install an operating system, and now they're doing a workshop on operating system.

Like, Like, if we're honest to you, people people are willing to put up with this pain and, like, putting out we're, like, passing that you speak, stick around the workshop that's that's dodgy.

Like, The only reason they're willing to do this is because they wanna learn. Right? But that's they don't need to do that. Like, we can actually reduce workshops down into, like, here's the link. Start learning.

So Yeah. If you're doing anything to do with education, please find me, say hello. It. I wanna catch up for beers just like this. The podcast's super chill, and we'll see what we can do to make easier for you people to learn Gitpod.

And, final plug is, my personal website is ghuntley.com.

If you wanna read about, like, a really awesome Internet connection, how it. All of that all those Internet links all configured or some of my thoughts on where the soft the software development for an iPad or where Industry might go with this remote cloud based development.

It's there. There's I well, like, out of all the ID tooling, JetBrains made Announcements today, like Mhmm. I think it's, like, 78% of all the ideas soon will have a cloud based offering. Like, this is A rapidly changing place. And in a couple years, we're gonna see a place where CTOs don't need to get evil eyes from CFOs about fleet managing, like, $8,000 laptops, and then just, like, he's just a thin client. Sick.

Awesome. Cool. Well, thank you for so much for coming on, especially for staying up so late to talk to us.

I'm sure you're ready for bed now, But I appreciate you coming on, and, Yeah. That's that's it.

Thank you. Thanks for having us.

See you. Thank you. Peace. Been wholesome. Peace. Peace.

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