Hi everyone, My name is Patrick Akio, and if you're interested in the future of the Web Web 5, this episode is for you. Joining me today is Adi Wali Ace Abbati, web engineer and developer advocate over at Block. And we talk about the future of web development. And honestly, I love his energy. It's electrifying. So enjoy this episode as developer advocate. How much of your time is still spent on like hands on coding nowadays? I got lucky on that aspect.
I like to tell other developer advocate, actually new ones, that as much as possible, try not to, you know, get away from coding because you're still a developer. Yeah. In code before the advocate. Yeah. Yeah. I would recommend, you know, sharpening your skills so even when someone brings an issue to you, it doesn't take you so long to get back in space to fix that issue for them or guide them on the route to fixing that issue. Because a lot of coding is very
most memory in my opinion. So luckily for me, TBD, a lot of technology is very new, so we have to like not just be the examples, also show the audience or the developers real life use cases. Yeah, so I have to build out some of these things. So when the engineers are built out the SDKS, I actually have to build out almost full applications to test out the SDKS, give back developer experience, you know, feedback to be able to no respond to the
audience. So it's a very fine balance with me speaking and actually getting my hands very dirty. Nice. Well, I've had developer advocate jobs in the past where I didn't do as much coding or I just did surface level in hello world or check out how this thing works. Examples. Yeah, but that's not the case now.
Yeah. And I really appreciate that that's not the case right now because it gets me thinking about stuff deploying note servers, like all of those things that I probably didn't do in my previous developer advocacy rules. But now it's a fine balance. I'll probably do more coding, to be honest coding and documentation than I do speaking these days. I mean, it goes hand in hand, right? Because I don't do a lot of developer advocacy stuff.
You can say the podcast and you can argue that, but the fact that I'm doing hands on stuff really gets my mind thinking. And that's what you want to then cover and talk about and share? Yeah. Because without that, then at some point your list is done. It's only finite and nothing new pops up. A. 100% I actually struggle with that a bit in my car. Yeah. Because for me, I wanted, I've always been a builder at I wanted to keep building stuff. And then on the other side, I
like talking about those things. So I even got to develop advocacy without planning to. OK, I just found myself like, when I'm done building stuff, I'm still itching to build more stuff. So I go into communities and I'm just in the audience, like, does anybody have a bug to fix? And then when somebody does, I'm, I'm right in there, like helping them out with brainstorming. We're talking about like, I just enjoy that.
Yeah. And then some, some of the community members, you know, discovered that talent of mine and started like recommending for developer advocacy roles. And that is technically how I started getting jobs as a developer advocate. Yeah, But I did not, like, start my career like, OK, you know what? I'm going to be a developer advocate. I just wanted to be a developer. Yeah. Except that I just enjoy doing all of these other things as AOP
on the side. So when it became my full time job, I started to burn out a lot because now I'm doing more, you know, developer advocacy, talking, helping people out that I'm doing building. Yeah. And it kind of like filled my, my balance a bit. And I struggled a long, a long time trying to like recover, you know, that part of me. So being able to finally get to that was something that I really appreciate.
Yeah. Because there's, this is also, I'm a huge advocate for it. You might be a developer advocate, but don't let go of that part of coding because it's always going to help. Either you're looking for a new job or or switching industries. I just want to go back to being an engineer. Yeah, I think that's the best. I think it's really hard if you want to go from let's say your educational journey immediately into developer advocacy because a lot of this is not theoretical, right?
You might have the skills, but at some point a lot of what we do is very much experience based. You do a lot of gut based decision making and you can't do that without a few years under your belt. 100%. And it doesn't have to be many, many years, but I think good production experience is like essential in that way.
I agree. And I'm really wondering because in the developer advocacy role, I don't know how much experience contributing to, let's say, an existing application you have versus going again and building things from scratch and testing it out in a, let's say, more experimental application going from zero to one rather than building from 1 to 1.1 or beyond. I think varying experiences differ. I was just at this session
talking about this last week. And if you're going to hire, for example, a new developer advocate that doesn't have a ton of developer experience, but they have, like, say, the soft skills, you know, they want to speak at conferences, They're open to learning. Then in that situation, it's very important to have, like, a more experienced developer who has become a developer advocate on the team because then they can support them and also teach them these technologies or tools
or approaches to stuff. Yeah. So that's a fine balance to just hiring people and expecting them to figure stuff out on their own if they've had the experience. But if you've had the experience of, like you said, bidding stuff from zero to 100, I think it improves your skills. Because there are stations today where I'm speaking to somebody as a developer advocate and they're asking me questions.
But because I've had the experience of like a full life cycle of an application, I can have connections with them that is different from the questions they're asking me. What kind of like comes back to you like This is why I'm making a decision because that's your business like this or you probably need to approach this problem from this sort of
direction. So we're able to have these full conversations that even outside of my SDK, for example, because I did not just, I'm not just trying to understand what the like the code they want to solve right now or why were they doing it or why are they trying to achieve with it. So I think that experience comes over time from building like, you know, production tools or just building zero to 100
applications as well. Because I feel you might have the empathy, you might have the soft skills, but then being able to understand the the developer that you're helping out in that moment or the audience are trying to reach to solve their unique problems. You might build one SDK, but it's seeing how people can use your technology for infinitely impossible use cases. Like it's, it's ridiculous. Sometimes I get surprised that, oh, wow, that's a very good
idea. Yeah. But that's with any product, no, like any type of digital product, at some point users just going to be like, no, I use it for this. And you're like, oh, I didn't go there. Yeah. That's not what it's built for, But does it work for you? Yeah, it works. And I'm like, OK. And that's also. That's fine. Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. More so on the, let's say coding
thing. With regards to web development, what are you working on nowadays rather than speaking because I know you're very much involved in, let's say the next phase of web development, Yes. And what's what does that look like for you? So what the aspect of the web I'm working on mostly right now is what we like to call Web Five. Yeah. And before people come in the audience. Yeah, I'm going to say, what's that? Why not Web 4? Something like that?
It's trying to find a way to use open protocols, these that are already out there to solve some of the problems with web two that we have today. So for example, we web 2, which is like our everyday web, there was never an identity layer. For example, you come into the web, you just so probably supposed to just read pages and get out or read books or whatever the case is. But then we started to do things on the web that required these websites to know who we were.
And as we did that, other platforms started coming out to sell identity to us. So maybe like you have a Twitter do or you have an e-mail address that you used to authenticate on the web. But this kind of just allies the problem that there was never an identity layer integrated into the web. So what verifiably is doing is there's a technology called decentralized identifiers.
It wasn't developed by my team. It was developed by W3C standard for identifying stuff on the Internet, people, objects, schools, whatever the case is. And there's also something called verifiable credentials, which helps you, you know, verify claims. So if someone says I did this, you're able to issue them a verifiable credential that is cryptographically signed and connected to this identifier
that they have. And the best number to identify is anyone can create it just like your name, but no one owns it. Like a Twitter cannot come to you and be like, yo, give me the identify. It's mine because you've created it. You have the private keys, you have all of those things. So it's yours. It's yours, yeah.
You can use it anywhere. You can choose to anonymize, whatever the case is. So what we're doing with Web 5 in this case is bringing these open protocols together that already exists separately on the Internet and trying to like make them as a, as a stack of the web. So you could be building your on regular web application. Maybe we Knox or the reactor's case may be, but for authentication, you're using a decentralized identifier
authentication. There isn't a verifiable credential to confirm that this is who they say they are or they went to the school or you're doing KYC, whatever the case is.
So we're using these open protocols to actually develop a new stack, a new protocol for the web, which is what we now call Web 5. And that also includes a very interesting part called decentralized web nodes that allows you to then store your data on your own devices or your own servers as case, maybe without thinking too much about it. A beautiful example I saw about this just last week was at the at the conference we had developers conference and someone built out a messaging
application that was actually Internet. So the messages are sent between me and you are stored in our local decentralized web notes. So it's not like so sort of on a central server where someone claims to encrypt it, but they are directing information somewhere else. It's literally on my device, on your device or any server that
we choose to host ourselves. So these are like the, it's a great development, it's a great technology, but these are like things that have been made possible with what we call Web Five. I'm using these three pillars that literally open standards that are created by web properties and what we're doing at TBD, for example, you just bringing these things together and say, oh, this is how they
could work together. And that is what we've termed with five S to answer your initial question because I feel like I just went. Yeah, no. Interesting. Yeah. So to answer your initial question, what I do these days actually to of course speak with people that are interested, people are building amazing solutions around this actually because it's a it's a new ecosystem that is developing.
So I'm having to like build out USKCS examples and we have this program, this project called TBDX that also brings these technologies into the financial world. So how can you send money across borders using designer identifiers, using verifiable credentials and all of those, all of those things. So I'm having to build, for example, for concept, understand what the edge case work do look like. And it's difficult because or like other technologies that already exist, there's no
documentation. I am actually created a documentation for it. So I need to dig deep, understand the implementations that have been made and at the same time speak with the engineers that are doing making decisions or this is what I think the the developer experience could look like. You can get better, you can improve like this, because I assume a developer might want to use it like this, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, stuff like
that. So my my day-to-day kind of like revolves around building stuff to show what is possible with these things and then sharing with the community. And then we have conversations. I speak about it sometimes and also get back to the engineers like, oh, I got this feedback, this might be broken. How about we do this this way
and stuff like that. So. Interesting. Yeah, I mean, the web, if I think back when it first was, when I first kind of did something on the web, I made an account and it wasn't my name. Like it was some weird ass name, basically. Yeah, like, and then I changed it and then I used my name as my e-mail and that everything shifted. And nowadays more and more, like your e-mail is still somewhere else and it's not really yours, but then it's now become part of
you, right? Because that's how you receive information. Yet it doesn't belong to me. At the end of the day, if Microsoft bursts to the ground, then my e-mail goes along with it and I don't have anything anymore. I think nowadays people are more and more thinking of, but why do we have these people in the middle or companies in the middle or service in the middle when it's my data? And now all of a sudden people want to, on the web, be identifiable as themselves.
And that's new, right? Because I didn't care if it was my name or a different name, or if it was me or if I was just trolling on the Internet. Nowadays people want to know who that troll is. And people also fine with it because then all of a sudden you can't troll as much anymore if people know it's you. Right.
I think it's new and I think I'm not so new, but I think the key part is the number of people that care about what their data and identity is being used for has increased dramatically over the years. Yeah, Also when I'm talking about these things, I try to avoid just saying decentralisation because people like, oh, blockchain or stuff like that, but it's not connected to that in any way.
Being able to just develop applications that you have control over or what identifies you goes a long way. And people think about how can I handle this data or do I need to be a technical person to be able to use identifiers and stuff like that. But the reality is that they are already already being used in the background for some of these
things. So let's say you go to LinkedIn, for example, and you issue the certificate, most likely for some of the certificates, I think they've created a de serialized identifier for you and they've connected the certificate that they issued for you to the identifier. So even if you take it elsewhere, it belongs to you, right? And so they've been like tiny implementations of this all across the board.
But the goal is so that eventually every user, whether you care about, you know, prioritising or, you know, safeguarding your identity or your data or you don't care, you probably don't even get to know that is happening in the
background. But if you like want to move from being a regular user to a multi user, you should have the capability to do that, Yeah. So I think the future would be making that form of new identity structure and data storage and all those things more accessible to the everyday user. Yeah, interesting. Like I care what happens with my data. I don't care enough yet. That's the thing. And for the people that do definitely care and care enough, Yeah, this is becoming more
important. But then to get adoption, like I don't have, I shouldn't be a technical person to make this happen, right? It should just be. I should be unburdened in the same way that I am now with whatever happens to my data, except then I own it basically. Yeah, me too. But then a lot of organizations are going to burn to the ground if they don't have the data of
the others anymore. So that that I think that boys, I think just going to create a different type of when I say business model, maybe people could start to gain incentivized about buying their data so you can start making money off of your own data. And also this company is good avoid maybe litigation from using data that they were not authorized to have. Yes, you've you've given off
your data now willingly. So I'm I mean, there might be a bit of, you know, acquisition, adoption, you know, arguments for and against, but I think in due time, the larger community, larger audience would dictate out this the big tech eventually adopt stuff like that. Yeah. And there's this example that normally brings about the
question you just asked. And it's if you have decentralized web nodes and you store your own data privately, you, you we stand a chance to experience a platform like Spotify allowing you to move your playlist from one music provider to another. So let's say I'm on Spotify and they're using the beauty of this realized web application and they're using my DID, which is distressed identifier.
And my playlist, my music favorite music and stuff is start locally with me. If I go to Apple Music, I should hope to do that. Then people ask the question and just ask what will make Spotify do that? Yeah, why would Apple do that exactly? Stuff like, and then boys that, OK, imagine someone else comes along and they build an amazing experience and they say can bring your data from anywhere. You can take your data anywhere. Now people that care about their data at that moment will be
like, I want to go to this guy. And then it starts to like go to this guy. And then more people start to care about their data and the community starts to dictate what is essential or not. So the criteria then becomes from Singapore to Spotify, can I go with my data or not? No. So yeah, I'm not signing up. And it's what's fast. It'd be like, looks like we have to let people, you know, ping their own data or go with their own data, which probably just to improve our experience.
And then that way we've changed the ecosystem based on what's the larger community wanted. But this is, this is my hobby, which we're thinking because you might follow a different approach, but I think that's probably what's possible. But it just ties back to your question, like why would they do it? Yeah, now we can't do that. And it's, it's a thing of who's first to market because that's usually what people use. And what's the experience then?
And then regardless of if there are better competitors in the future. And I use this example of Google Maps versus Apple Maps because that's a previous conversation I had with Willem at V to use this. He said when Apple Maps came out, it was actually not great and Google Maps was already out there. And because of that, you probably went to Google Maps. And nowadays, nowadays Apple Maps is actually quite good and everything's integrated into the Apple ecosystem.
Like they've improved it. And I used it recently, like it is better and better. It might be better than Google Maps, but I will not switch because everything is in Google Maps now. And I'm like, I'm invested, I'm hooked. I don't have any incentive to switch, so I don't. I was just going to say that like I just assumed in my head, oh, from maybe like 5-6, ten years ago, whenever it was that Apple Maps, a sheet and that's it. We use Google Maps. It just became that default for me.
And that's a very good point. I might I might try it out. I mean, development hasn't stopped, right? So you have 10 years of, let's say, problems they've solved, problems maybe you now have with Google Maps that they've solved on Apple Maps and you don't know because you're just hooked in. And you never just try. It no. And all those safe locations, all those favorite food places that you want to go are all in Google Maps.
Those are never going to be in Apple Maps or you have to redo it and hell no, you're going to. Do it That is exactly. Yeah, that's really funny, man. So in this way, because you are the owner and it's on whatever you have, Yeah, device wise you would be able to then let's say load it in into Apple Maps in that way. Yeah, and you just.
Very interesting. I really wonder how this adoption thing is going to work because if it if it's going to be effortless, that's the only way I see adoption. So then from a non-technical standpoint, I don't know how that would work, right? If I were to make that switch from Google Maps to Apple Maps and I have my data on my local either on my phone or it's centralized also with my laptop back home, how would that work? Florida State.
Yeah, I mean, let's let's go to a world where everything is already set up and is the ecosystem has grown. Just last week as well. The Digital Identity Foundation, I think, I think I got that correct, in partnership with Google Cloud, actually just announced hosting a community digitalized web node. Yeah. So now the way it works is while you have your data locally, you can choose to sync to an online node for the digitalized web
node. So the way this works is if someone will send you a message or you want to access something on another device, it goes to the online one, which is synced with your local device. And then the data is basically on your local device on your on your own chosen server. So if you're switching across devices, the information is still with you. If you're going anywhere else, the information is still yours on both your local DWN and your
online DWN, right? So, so many applications or ecosystems, how would I put this already been built, right? For example, we have something called Ellum and Ellum is we had this, we have this live stream on my company that we do almost every Friday. So we find people that have been in stuff in the ecosystem and we interviewed hello. I love that. Yeah. And what they do because it makes us also learn about the
ecosystem, right? What they do is they go to like schools, for example, universities and they try to issue certificates for graduating, for example, to these students that that live in the school. And one of the the addest places to get adoption is the schools because they made a point where they said they can go back to the archive and find a certificate that they issued in sheepskin. Yeah. Like they needed to be able to stand the test of time.
They need to be able to, you know, last any for however long it is because they want to be able to authenticate their results. And there's no better alternative to that than cryptographically sign digital assets that will always exist and be connected to wherever I see it's connected to. Yeah, because they're Tampa proof. If you did anything there, it's going to tell you there's an error. Like all of those things can stand rest of time.
So I think adoption is going to be gradual where as people start to develop, you know, applications that match your need, you find yourself gradually getting into the ecosystem and just think about it naturally. You don't just think about, oh, I want to get my certificate, for example, and to go by and to go get AD then to go, yeah, you never think about that. It's just going to up until this is your certificate. You can now state your Apple
Wallet, for example. Before you know it, you've started in verifiable connections, your Apple Wallet, and you have to do something else and you have to do something else, and gradually. It becomes a norm for you and I think we're going to get to that point where different providers and have phone, you know, manufacturers, online services, cloud services and even institutions will start to use some of this and then you don't have to worry about it anymore.
In Louisiana, they already issue verifiable credentials in the form of driver's license, so digital driver's licenses. So you can, for example, my manager actually bought booze. She has a stock that she gives that she bought booze with a verified credential. OK.
And basically when when you are buying alcohol online or if you're online, they have to come and give it to you That's check that you're above 21. But normally you would give them your driver's license or something else and they can see your date of birth, which is unnecessary information. But with this kind of process, and she actually did this already, by the way, it's not like I'm not imagining this.
Yeah, the person that is delivering the alcohol to you can literally just check using the driver's license. Is this person above 21 or not? Yeah, it's a Boolean value. Even though you have your best certificate, your date of birth in the driver's license, it just responds to the check. Yes, this person is above 21. Yeah. And he's done. That's it. And that. And that's exactly how it happened for her. And that is how we slowly integrate without even thinking. Interesting.
Oh, this is a disabled identifier. It's a verifiable credential. It just kind of naturally flows into our way of life. And that is the optimism I also have, how it's going to become like just normal stuff for everyday people. Yeah, I'm going to love seeing how this evolves because I think it's very interesting. Yeah. Do you think we would also lose
some things we have now? Because there's a whole now new branch which is data science, data engineering, where people basically solve big data problems and sometimes small data problems as well. Because obviously data is kind of hard to tamper with. But in the end, if it's decentralized, can we still do, for example, figure out what the best recommendations are based on the aggregates and the patterns of the people that basically the data we have?
Because you don't have that data anymore. You only have people checking in, probably sharing the data to do some stuff and then going away as well. That is a very good question. I'm sure there are probably more thought out answers to that, but off the top of my head, the what I would say is for when you're in control of your data, you can choose what data can be public or encrypted.
Yeah. So for example, if I'm building a review website in the age of the visualized web where people have their own data, if you choose to make the review of something you bought public, the the platform can access this because it's very public, you share it with them or you can have permission to access it and uses to develop recommendations, which will also be for back into the music applications to get
recommendations and stuff. So it might be a different approach eventually, like maybe or even new business model. But because you have public unencrypted data that you can choose to give people access to, it could shape how those things research and also that things, you know, come into play. Yeah. I don't think we'll completely lose it, but I think there might be a change in direction into how this is. Yeah. How do you how you make it happen?
But the the plus there is you're gonna hope that there's a there's a positive in you switching to this new way and that is why you're doing it in the first. Place, yeah, for sure, yeah. How much is data worth though? Because there are, there are big organizations that basically their business model is to sell other people data. And it doesn't even have to be like people data. It can even be data of a cat or a dog or whatever. And they sell that and that's in their business model basically.
Yeah, that is a good question. I do know how to answer you. Still don't know because the the worth is in the aggregation, right? Because then you can do pattern recognition and you can observe some problems based on the patterns of similarities. That's what I think. That's my assumption. So then the data might be worth it to other organizations. And then even then, it's mainly with the capitalist mindset to sell something. Yeah, to specific user groups or specific owners of pets, and
even in some cases. And that will change if people kind of own their data. But then, yeah, they have the option in this kind of marketplace to sell their data, but they have no clue what it's worth. Yeah, actually, they don't have any clue what it's worth. But then you might start having people that start to make offers and then you start to get an idea of this person give me a
better offer for this than this. And any data that you choose to share through that model, you know, they could use it for anything. Yeah, but one thing I wanted to print out as well is why do users have their own data? Applications can also have their own data. So you can have an idea of how people go through your application, what they're trying to do, or even though you don't know who it is, you don't have any access to their personal
identifiable information. You can on your application, you can tell like 10,000 people or that calculators or something as it may be. So you have your own data that you can still store, process and use that to make decisions and stuff like that. So while I don't have the full picture, I think it's still something to consider that every institution, every individual would be able to, you know,
control their own data. And, and that benefit for it on the, on the end of the applications is that now you don't have to worry about data centers that are just huge because you want to store everybody's data. And yeah, I just, I just hope for the best because I'm really excited about it because it's it might change the way we just approach the Internet and also false news, fake news or AI generated stuff like this is legit or not. And the entire potential just makes me excited.
So I'm. Looking for that, Yeah. I mean, the more peer-to-peer we have, Yeah. And also the more data you then have on a local machine, the less data centers we need. And data centers are like the biggest carbon emitters. Like I'm now product manager at ING and we do a lot with sustainability. Yeah. And I looked into Microsoft's, let's say absolute emission charts and absolute emission charts, they don't tell you that much, but they give you a picture and they were on a downtrend, right?
Because companies nowadays have to set targets for themselves. They publicly disclose it. It's more legislation driven. So companies do that. But then all of a sudden when you saw kind of late last year, early mid last year, when we hit more of this AI generation and AI boom, compute started going up on Microsoft's end, which also reflected in the absolute emissions, then went through the roof with regards to that. It's because people used more compute and you can't.
Like if you have data centers, that's where it runs on and you can't just remove that. Microsoft can't say, oh, we don't have data centers tomorrow because we need to compute basically for people to do their stuff. Interesting. But the more I think local machines get more powerful, the more compute you can offload to a local machine as well, which means you don't need those centralized data centers anymore. That is very interesting. Do you think that is connected
to? Because I had news about like the new updates on Windows, I think, where you have like an AI running locally that's recording your screen and then staying all the comput locally on your devices. That's what I would do to offload the computer on a on a centralized server at the end of the day. But the people are worried about privacy because you're recording my entire screen. Of course. It's like, how do I know you're not in the background? Seeing this background, you'll never know.
That's the thing you have to believe at some point. Yeah, but if you know that your data runs locally and it doesn't exit your machine, then that trust is more so out-of-the-box, 100%. Yeah. Like, I like those initiatives where people are thinking of cutting up a data centre. And someone I forgot whom gave me the example of there's a company that publishes or basically creates a data centre underneath swimming pools at hotels or even public swimming pools.
And then the heat of that data centre goes into the swimming pool and they basically reduce their energy bill by 70%, which is crazy to me because this is a different concept than decentralizing, let's say on a local machine. It's cutting up a data center and having smaller data centers. Interesting. And you weave a web of probably compute power at the end of the day. But then you also don't just harm the planet, you give back in saving energy costs elsewhere.
That is interesting. Yeah, I thought that was. Really cool. Even if the eats from the what is it called from the Saba data center eats up the pool. Yeah, that's how they save energy. How do you cool the data center? Yeah, you don't. I didn't think about that. Yeah, you probably have to offload in the compute somewhere else and just let it cool down in that way. Oh my dear, Yeah. Well, that's pretty cool. Yeah, for sure. It sounds exciting. What do you have to?
Say, yeah, with this trailblazing that you're doing, Yeah. Things have not been established. And nowadays I see a lot of people that are concerned with regards to whatever generative AI can do and people losing kind of their own productivity to AI, which also means that sometimes their job or their work might become obsolete. Yeah, but for you, my assumption is when you're trailblazing, AI doesn't know what you don't know because no one knows. Basically, it still has to be
figured out. What are your what is your take on kind of this AI generation boom? I mean, at first you're skeptical when you see a lot of people just, you know, talk from the pessimistic approach, like, oh, this is going to be terrible. It's going to take our jobs. And then when you see how different other people start to use AI, then you come up with your own ideas like, oh, I see the way I've found or integrated
AI into my work. Because like you said, I can ask the AI question about web file right now and it's not going to give me a quick answer. But what I, what I've tried to use it for is to improve my own efficiency, my own pace. So say I will be doing a wallet application to test out like TBDX, which is an open protocol for sending money across borders. So I wanted to do like say USCC
to sorry, USD to USDC. So I need to build out the wallet that would show this example to people now in an ideal world without AII have to like, you know, do a layout to get them please blah, blah, blah. But that's not what I'm trying to show you. I'm not trying to show you that I can be a good wallet. Yeah, I'm trying to show you that you can transfer money.
Yeah, stuff like this. So using AI tools like V0 from Versal and also ChatGPT, I was able to generate like a very like AI would like a design system. And then I used ChatGPT to generate pages using our design system. And then I just went to my application with pages that I controlled. I basically do the AI move this button this way, do this, this way. Like I knew what I wanted. So it wasn't like, oh, I'm relying on charge of this too. Please give me an idea of a wallet.
For example, I could see the wallet. I knew what I wanted to build, but I didn't want to take the time to like do the manual labor. So to see to do the structure. And I used AI for that. So once that was ready, I just went into the code, you know, cleaned up, make it like a view template, clean up the my integrations, did my transfer and I probably caught my work there probably 70% maybe because I didn't have to worry about these other things that AI can do for me.
Yeah. And that is personally for me. I would advocate AI for you to get better as a developer. You push your deadlines. Yeah, you push your efficiency. And sometimes I could just be stuck. So maybe someone asks me a question and I know what I want to say, but I can't really structure it. And I ask AI the question and you response to me, I'm not asking AI the question to take that answer to go give to you. Or by reading the answer, I'm able to like form my own
thoughts better. And I respond to you like a normal human being. So I use the the way I've used AI in my work and just personally just trying to make to accentuate things I want to do already. So I know what I want to do already. How can I make it faster? How can I make it more efficient? And I think that's probably going to tap into different industries.
So instead of people being afraid necessarily of like the AI power and stuff like that, or replacing you, how it makes you better that you become irreplaceable. Yeah, 70% is a lot like in productivity that increase. We haven't seen that elsewhere. Yeah, I don't think so.
No, because I mean, I know I just need to make like a few SDK calls, but I could spend AGS and make sure that the button hides or shows it's properly aligned, it's red color, you know, all of those things that are just repeated tasks that we do every single time. So why not let someone else do it? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, for me it makes sense. Be careful with the tapping on the table. I think the mic is going to pick that up. So sorry. About that, No, no worries.
I was thinking of the future of web development nowadays because I still think we have the three biggest established front end frameworks. We have React, we have Angular, we have you. I think SOLID is gaining a bit more adoption and then you have kind of spin offs with people called meta frameworks of the same thing basically. And it might even be one layer deeper where you have spin offs than of the spin offs. Is that also something you've seen? Because I I don't know where
it's headed. I think people want to be unburdened in some aspects, but then want control and less convention I guess. But I don't think convention is a bad thing. I agree. I was developing a code sandbox. I don't know if you know code sandbox. Yeah, it's an online browser editor for sure. And one of the things I had to do was, you know, make sure that the editor could undo like the forever coming new array of GS frameworks.
So you're building examples and you're, you know, speaking to communities of these different, you know, technologies. And while a lot of these, a lot of these frameworks still feel very similar, I think it's just a problem of the JavaScript ecosystem in general where people try to use frameworks to solve their own use cases. I I think that kind of defeats the purpose of frameworks because remarks are supposed to be like a starting point that then goes right into different,
you know, solutions. And while you might have like the major ones that try and like, oh, you can use this for anything. I think it's, it's ingenious to want to build specific free mods for almost specific use cases. Yeah. But across that entire journey, I've been able to find like very exciting ones that actually
makes life easy. For example, Astro and maybe Remix. I haven't used a lot of it, but they seem to have pushed this from either bringing back a new technology or a new approach or saying this is the approach you want to take to solve all of these things. Yeah, but it doesn't exactly defeat the fact that they're probably just way too many. Yeah.
Yeah. So if we're able to like, you know, have conventions, have conventions and say this is what we want to be able to do and these are the tools that are available for it, I think it will help a lot of people, actually beginners as well, to just have a few, a couple. I think this is how you build web applications in JavaScript. So just on traits of frameworks that some of them do the same things. Yeah, it's a like, I don't know how to solve this problem, right?
Because people can also create a spin off of a programming language, but it doesn't happen as much. No, for some reason JavaScript frameworks just happens way more often. And then you find things like Astro, it's really cool and then you can see the potential. But yeah, if you don't have the flexibility to create an Astro in the 1st place, then you lose that benefit, right?
But then people take this and run with it and then you have just numerous frameworks and at the end you use what is established, especially at larger organizations. We're not going to use an Astro if it hasn't found its footing yet as much as kind of the bigger three at the end of the day. And it's it's really hard to find adoption if other people then don't use it.
So then it's this chicken egg problem where you want adoption, but you need adoption to use it. I tried to tell developers that probably fix fixated on that problem, like, oh, what framework should I use and stuff like that. I'm like, you're probably going about this the wrong way. Yeah. What problem do you want to solve? What are you trying to build? What are you comfortable with? And then you try and like get
into that space. If you're trying to build a solution for your company, you probably want to use something that you're already using house and probably it's going to pay you to learn it on your on your own time. You of course you could learn like additional tools just for probably for the fun of it, of course, some other experience when it comes to actually solving these problems, like what is the problem you want to solve?
Yeah. And what do you think will help you solve this quicker, faster, efficiently and stuff like that. Your preferences might come into play or you need to focus more on how do I get the job done that says, oh, she that 100. So I didn't language that 100 frameworks. How do I spend like one day, 2 days and decide which one to use? Right. And I think we should probably have for doing that. Yeah, you don't have to like it's if you think that's fun,
then you can do that. But what really drives me is indeed more so the problem solving. How can I use whatever I use and then do that. And I haven't done web development in probably like a Goodyear. The last thing I did was mainly go on the back end. Then we had HTML generated templates, and then we did vanilla JavaScript. I was like, man, this just makes it work. Yeah. So yeah, I've seen things kind of evolve from the sidelines and it at some points I'm like, OK,
this is really cool. And at some points I'm like, man, this is a mess. Yeah, I agree to be honest. I agree. I hope we don't like continuously reinvent the wheel. Yeah, I don't know why we do it. I I have become a huge fan of Vue just because it's simple to use. And I love Vue. Yeah, I, I look at Vue and I'm like, there are tools in view ecosystem that just helps me get the job done. And of course people probably prefer React in some cases because they've gotten used to that.
And that's 100% like fine. But I think with the options that we have, we're probably able to build probably any web application that we need versus trying to dense of a niche problem with another JavaScript framework that's probably not the. Answer no, no, absolutely not. No. And I think it's it's OK to be
opinionated. Yeah. And then just find your like minded people and execute because at the end of the day, you can have an opinion, but the execution matters more than your opinion and you have to execute to get stuff done. Yeah, like that's the hard part. I, I really love Go as a back end language and I was in this team and I love programming also because I love the language that I'm doing. If I were to do it in another language that I didn't. Love.
I wouldn't have as much fun. And then someone switched from the JVM language and landscape and ecosystem to Go and they just hated it. They were like, I have so many things in in the JVM language that I don't have in Go and they hated it. And they really couldn't get over that initial hump. So they switched back and I'm like, OK, that's fine. That's understandable. You can still like get over that and execute, but if you don't like what you're doing on a day-to-day, like that's going to
hit you. So then it made sense to move away again. I agree. I just like to focus on like what problem I'm trying to solve because for example, the developer advocate, it's part of my job. If you want to put like my hands into like so many technologies. Yeah, Most recently with our SDKS, they are available in JavaScript, Kotlin and Swift. So I've had to like Go learn how to use Swift, learn how to use Kotlin. That's a lot. Yes, I dislike Swift. OK. Me too. Yeah.
Yeah, it's hard. Maybe it's because it's difficult. Yeah. Some of the things that they just feel very straightforward to me, probably not because I'm a Swift developer, but probably because of where I'm coming from. Yeah, but I still have to do my job. I still have to like, you know, do documentation in Swift, but I'm probably a more much happier person while I'm doing JavaScript or cutling in the documentation, right?
So it's one thing to like, not like language, but it's another thing to focus on getting the job done if that's what's required of you at that moment. I really like how you put that. You're like, it's probably not because of the language because it's where I'm coming from, right? And that experience matters a lot. 100% I think if Swift is your first language, you just have this love for the first language like that. You can't get over that.
Mine's like 5 point 2.7, no brackets, no bullshit. Is is that and that's involved. Yeah, exactly. Like, like it's, it's, it's always going to happen that way. And then when you pick up a new language, you have that baggage with you. So then you compare. I think it's very human to compare. I agree. And if you don't like it, you don't like it. I agree. Yeah, but why did you choose to then?
Because I know you like solving problems, Web five, and the problems that that will solve our problems we don't know we have yet, right. And we can see some symptoms, but that's like really big on the scale of the web. Yeah. And previous products or like smaller startups, they solve a specific niche for a specific user group. Yeah. How's this balance between solving, let's say, a huge problem versus solving these smaller problems that you've
done in the past? Yeah, so there's a story there. So and when I started out leading out to code, I became really fascinated with the web. So I was like a front end engineer at some point, a back end engineer at some point, a full stack engineer at some point. And I've had to like, you know, solve problems in those capacities, like just building stuff. But one thing that always stood out for me or even got me into tech in the 1st place was getting excited by the idea of
people inventing things. So I'm like, how did someone build this thing? Like I literally just imagined it and as a developer and engineer. After a few hours, days, weeks, sort of years, sometimes it's now like a life, like people can interact with that. I think that's the root of like the solving the problem.
It's not just solving problem for the sake of solving the problem, but you've seen the advancement in the journey and being a part of it. So as a as a kid growing up, I'm looking at a Windows computer, for example, I'm looking at different technologies. And I wonder why the people that invented this, you know, studying computer science, you're reading up on like the generations of the computer, the the appernet, the Internet that it came about to be.
And then seeing the opportunity at TBD to work on like web provide, for example, was I'm being in a position where I can help bring in a new era of the web where in 10 years, maybe 15 years, maybe people start to talk about this technology like it's not a normal thing, Like it's just just the way we talk about web too, like it's just web.
It's just we just use it. And in this, I'm going to feel a sense of pride there that I was able to create resources or solve problems in advance or contribute to solving those problems that make our everyday possible now. So it's more of a futuristic problem solving in advance and trying to figure out things that have not been figured out anywhere because there's no documentation elsewhere apart from the ones that already created.
And that's exciting in its own right because I'm doing work that I've never done. But it also makes me feel like those people I used to look up to as a younger child, like how did the kids come up? Microsoft, how did you beat up Ms. doors? Like, you know, do you know of those things? And wow, that must be nice, being able to be stuff out of nothing or something that never existed. Then getting the opportunities to do this on a global scale. It's amazing.
Yeah. And it gets me like up every morning. Like, it gets me excited. I mean, that that is where like, damn, I don't know what I'm doing because it's a very huge space. And it's been, a lot of this work has been going on for years. But I think we're getting closer to where it's taking more structure and the ecosystem is starting to form more. And eventually, like I said earlier, I think it's going to get to a point where the
integration is just seamless. So you're not thinking that, oh, this is worth 5, or you're using a digitalized identifier or you're using a verifiable credential. It's just ease. Yeah. Right. So like you have a detail or what's it called? Driver's license. There's some countries today that already do a detailed travel document. So if you're travelling, you just like tap something on your phone and you can board like
your passport, stuff like that. And that is eventually where we'll get to not just on mobile applications or mobile, but across the Internet. Yeah. And I think there will be a sense of pride. I'm probably telling my grandkids like I have been that. Absolutely. I love that. So that that is what it is. That's a beautiful story. I I love the vision. I love the big dream. Yeah. And the energy that you get also, while you talk about it, like it comes across, it's electrifying. Thank you.
It's been great, man. I'm having a blast. Is there anything before you round off that you still wanted to share? I think we've had a very Commission that kind of cover the entire thing. But I like, I have AI tried to share my experience on my, you know, social media platforms and stuff like that. And one thing that usually comes up that I think is it could easily be A1 answer fits all questions. And, and I'd like to share today is just, you know, focusing on
value. Just like you said, the way my excitement comes in when I'm talking about these things is 'cause I'm just thinking about the work I have to do to get there. I'm thinking about what value this would present to like different people in different areas of life. And it's not just starting today, while I was learning how to code and I wanted to, you know, build out my first website, for example, I wasn't thinking about just checklist like, well, now I know I now
know how to code. I was thinking more about, well, now I can build something that does this for people and all of those things, right? So if you're starting out as a developer or any role in general, thinking about how the work you'd be able to do and the value they could build to people and improving on that across the border, I think would just help you go in your career. I also find meaning in the work that you do and I just wanted to share that to the audience.
Great man. Focus on what value you can. Deliver Yes. Awesome. Thanks again so much for coming on. I'm going to round it off here. Thanks again for listening. Put some comments and some love in this in the comments below. Let us know what you thought of this episode and thanks again for listening. We'll see you on the next one.