Nick Nisi, Nick Nisi, making Vim look easy...
Nick Nisi:Hoy-hoy! Still rocking Vim.
Jerod Santo:I wrote you a poem, but it's as far as I got.
Nick Nisi:\[laughs\] I it.
Jerod Santo:Do you feel special? Do you feel sort of special, because I wrote you a poem, but also not so special, because that's as far as I got?
Nick Nisi:I -- it's perfect. Things don't have to keep going if they're perfect.
Jerod Santo:I think that's a metaphor for our entire relationship, you know?
Nick Nisi:\[laughs\]
Adam Stacoviak:Well, if you would continue, it would go to TypeScript, and that's just not possible.
Jerod Santo:That's right. The longer we talk... It's -- what's that rule about Nazi references on the internet?
Adam Stacoviak:What?! \[laughs\] I don't know any rules about Nazis...
Jerod Santo:Nick knows it. Don't you? What's it called?
Nick Nisi:I'm thinking of Microsoft Tay.
Jerod Santo:What's that? Tell me about that. \[laughter\]
Adam Stacoviak:Oh, my gosh... The water's getting hot in here.
Nick Nisi:This was a chatbot. You don't remember this story? This is a chatbot that Microsoft released on Twitter years ago, but before Open AI and ChatGPT and all that. And it only took 24 hours for it to go full Nazi.
Jerod Santo:Oh, that's right. It was called Tay? Spell that.
Nick Nisi:T-A-Y.
Jerod Santo:Okay. Alright, this is Godwin's Law. See, I just wanted Nick to tell that story long enough for me to get the answer for the previous thing. So thanks Nick for that par-tay. Godwin's Law is an adage from the early days of the internet that says "As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one." So this is Godwin's Law, but for TypeScript, and Nick. The longer we talk to him, the probability that he brings up TypeScript approaches one.
Nick Nisi:It wasn't even me. I don't even have to do it anymore. That's how you know you've made it.
Jerod Santo:Your reputation precedes you. Yes.
Nick Nisi:\[laughs\]
Jerod Santo:Are you still TypeScripting? I think last time we were hanging out you were writing PHP, and stuff.
Nick Nisi:I was, and I am. But I'm still writing a lot of TypeScript, and I'm really liking it.
Jerod Santo:Okay. Are you using that new, fast compiler?
Nick Nisi:Not yet.
Adam Stacoviak:So fast.
Jerod Santo:How big is the codebase you're working on? Is it fast enough for you?
Nick Nisi:Oh, it's small enough that I can fit it into a paste into Claude, the entire codebase.
Jerod Santo:Oh, nice.
Adam Stacoviak:What?!
Jerod Santo:How big is that? How big is Claude's context window?
Nick Nisi:Oh, I don't know... It starts getting mad at me when it's around 200K.
Jerod Santo:Okay.
Nick Nisi:I use this cool site called GitIngest...
Jerod Santo:Oh, yes.
Nick Nisi:And so you just go to github.com slash whatever, but you replace the hub with Ingest.
Jerod Santo:That's right. Did I teach you about that?
Nick Nisi:Maybe...
Jerod Santo:Changelog News, man...
Nick Nisi:Yeah, maybe.
Jerod Santo:I logged it a couple of months ago. It's cool.
Nick Nisi:Ah. I liked it so much that I had Claude write me a Bash script to do all of that for me. Vibe-coding.
Jerod Santo:I feel that's similar to me writing you a one-line poem. It's like, I liked it enough not to write my own Bash script, but to have somebody else write it for me, you know?
Nick Nisi:\[laughs\]
Jerod Santo:Yeah. It's appropriate.
Nick Nisi:Well, that's how you write Bash now.
Adam Stacoviak:But what exactly are you doing with this GitIngest Bash script?
Nick Nisi:This is for when I'm making a bunch of changes locally, and it's not all out on a public GitHub repo that GitIngest can get at. I can just type -- I called it Digest, for some reason... Then I can just run Digest and it'll throw it on my clipboard and tell me how big it was... So I can see "Oh, this is 200K", or 40K, or whatever.
Jerod Santo:I feel there already was a digest command that does MD5 sums, or something.
Nick Nisi:You know, I have three Mac computers, and one of them has a Digest... \[laughter\]
Jerod Santo:I thought there might be a namespace conflict there...
Nick Nisi:Yup.
Jerod Santo:It's an old Linux command, or something. Who knows.
Nick Nisi:But not the one I use every day. My work computer, for some reason -- at least my Digest is higher on the path, or earlier in the path, so it gets that one.
Jerod Santo:Why don't you name it Ingest? I mean, isn't that what you're doing?
Nick Nisi:Because I was creating a text digest of the repo.
Jerod Santo:Okay. Fair enough. And how's that working for you?
Nick Nisi:Eh... My script kind of sucks, but Claude wrote it, so what can you say...? \[laughs\]
Jerod Santo:At least you don't have to personally identify with the crappy code anymore. You're "You know what? Claude wrote that, so..."
Nick Nisi:Exactly.
Jerod Santo:No big whoop.
Nick Nisi:It's wild how much coding has changed in a year. Not even a year.
Jerod Santo:Yeah.
Adam Stacoviak:Describe. Say more.
Nick Nisi:It's a lot of -- well, I don't know. It's also -- I joined a new team a couple months ago, a new company, and left Meta, which was totally different...
Jerod Santo:Yeah, you had to use Llama. They made you use Llama, probably.
Nick Nisi:Yeah, and it was really bad.
Jerod Santo:\[laughs\]
Adam Stacoviak:"It was really bad..." \[laughs\]
Nick Nisi:I laughed when -- I don't listen to Rogan, but I saw that clip of Zuck talking to Rogan about how they're going to replace mid-level engineers with AI, this year... That's his version of self-driving in three months. It's not happening.
Jerod Santo:Yes.
Nick Nisi:Not with Llama, at least.
Jerod Santo:Not there. Yeah, Llama 4 was disappointing to folks. I didn't even try it, because I saw -- it was like, they dropped it on a Sunday or something, and it's "By the way, Llama 4. Go play with it." He's trying to be kind of cool. Zuck, always trying to be cooler than he is... And then the initial benchmarks - I think even the ones they published - were very impressive. And then people actually tried it, and it's "No, it's not better", or not as good as Gemini, or whatever the... Although I've found Gemini currently - this is Google's latest - to be disappointing. But I'm also disappointing, so you know... Who am I to judge...? \[laughter\]
Nick Nisi:\[08:20\] I have not used Gemini even once. But I did download the app -- I just haven't signed into it. I downloaded the app on my phone. But I was interested in it because I heard their context window was way bigger. But I haven't tried it, because I can't figure out, am I using 2.5 Pro, or whatever they call it?
Jerod Santo:Right.
Nick Nisi:I'm so sick of picking a -- just use the best one. Why do I have to pick and tell you to use thinking, and all of this? Like, just do it.
Jerod Santo:I know. that dropdown on chatgpt.com, it's "Pick your..." I'm like, "You should just know which one I want to use based on the question I ask you, shouldn't you?"
Nick Nisi:Yes.
Jerod Santo:I mean, you're smarter than me anyways, right? 3:\[laughs\] So my AI today, now, post-Meta, working at a new company, working on a lot of different languages that I'm less familiar with, like, Go, Python, PHP, all these other languages (that are terrible), that are not TypeScript... And it's great. I can just ask all these questions, and I -- I'm going to say something embarrassing. This is embarrassing.
Jerod Santo:Okay. Please do.
Nick Nisi:I pay for ChatGPT Pro, Claude Pro... Or not ChatGPT Pro. It's Plus, I think. Because the Pro is the million-dollar one.
Jerod Santo:200 bucks a month, right?
Nick Nisi:No, I don't pay for that. I pay for the $20 one.
Jerod Santo:Okay.
Nick Nisi:Yeah. I pay for Claude Pro, which is $20 a month... Perplexity, which I'm paying for and I didn't realize for months, because I use Raycast, and Raycast gave me a six months free of Perplexity Pro... And then it just charged me and I forgot about it and didn't realize for months. But then also I'm paying for Raycast AI, because it's just that convenient to have a little -- and I'm using them all, and I'm using them all differently. And - and - here's the worst part. Like, this just... I don't know, I don't even want to admit this, but last week --
Jerod Santo:No one's asking you. Okay...
Nick Nisi:Okay, nevermind.
Jerod Santo:No. You already said you're going to. I didn't ask you to, but now that -- you actually do have to now.
Nick Nisi:Okay. Last week, Claude came out with a -- okay, before that, a couple of weeks before that, I was running into this thing with Claude where I'd be asking it questions, and it's "Hey, you can't ask anything more until after 4 PM", because I hit some limit internally.
Jerod Santo:Oh, wow. Sure.
Nick Nisi:And I'm "Dang!" And then I'm "Should I just pay for another?"
Jerod Santo:Rate-limiting.
Nick Nisi:Yeah. I'm "Should I just pay for another account and keep going, or what?" And I didn't, because I'm not crazy. But then last week they came out with "Hey, instead of paying $20 a month, you can pay us five times that and get five times the usage. Or you can pay us $200 a month and get 20 times the usage." And I'm "That sounds reasonable..." I haven't done it, but it sounds reasonable.
Adam Stacoviak:Which one did you go with? The 10 or 20? Or neither?
Nick Nisi:When I do it - because it's probably a when - given the state of things - I'll go with the hundred-dollar one. A hundred dollars a month.
Adam Stacoviak:So you've got ChatGPT, you've got Claude - that's 40 bucks, right?
Nick Nisi:Don't add this up for me...
Adam Stacoviak:Then you've got Raycast, which I believe --
Jerod Santo:He's not doing it for you, Nick. He's doing it for the rest of us.
Adam Stacoviak:Is it 20 bucks a year? What is Raycast's AI version? 200 bucks a year. 100 bucks a year, I believe it is.
Nick Nisi:It's like, you have Raycast Pro and then you have the AI stuff on top, which is another $4.
Adam Stacoviak:Yeah. So you have to have already paid them a hundred bucks a year to pay them another hundred bucks a year to get the AI.
Nick Nisi:Yeah.
Adam Stacoviak:So that's 200 bucks a year, let's just call it, for Raycast Pro plus AI.
Nick Nisi:Sounds reasonable.
Adam Stacoviak:That's 240 bucks in, but I guess you're also getting Raycast.
Jerod Santo:Right.
Nick Nisi:Raycast is indispensable at this point. I love it.
Adam Stacoviak:\[11:59\] I can't live without Raycast either. Okay, this is not a paid ad... Raycast for life, okay? Raycast for life.
Nick Nisi:For sure.
Adam Stacoviak:Almost lost it there.
Jerod Santo:I'll have to disagree, in order to make it not a paid ad...
Nick Nisi:Look at Alfred over here...
Jerod Santo:There's our -- Alfred? No, \[unintelligible 00:12:15.21\] man.
Adam Stacoviak:Yeah, old Alfred's... Old Alfred's over here...
Jerod Santo:\[laughs\]
Adam Stacoviak:Raycast just ran circles around you... Ha-hah!
Jerod Santo:Default macOS software for the win.
Adam Stacoviak:Nick, let's play --
Jerod Santo:What can Raycast do that Spotlight can't do?
Adam Stacoviak:Nick, what's your favorite Raycast feature?
Nick Nisi:Oh... The AI.
Jerod Santo:Claude... \[laughter\]
Adam Stacoviak:"Oh, the AI..." Okay, non-AI feature. Like, serious Raycast feature.
Nick Nisi:Okay, um... I'm just -- that's so hard to say. If I have to say...
Jerod Santo:Launching apps? Do you launch a lot of apps with it?
Nick Nisi:I launch a lot of apps with it.
Jerod Santo:Oh, let me tell you about a little thing called Spotlight.
Nick Nisi:\[laughs\]
Adam Stacoviak:Spotlight... \[laughs\]
Nick Nisi:This is a feature that it just does, that there's a million apps that do it, but I that it's just one app.
Adam Stacoviak:Sure.
Nick Nisi:And that's Clipboard Manager.
Jerod Santo:Oh, yes...
Nick Nisi:I love having this pretty much unlimited clipboard that I can just constantly refer back to.
Adam Stacoviak:Yeah, the clipboard history, I believe, is unlimited. I believe it's unlimited. It does not sync across devices. So if you have a MacBook Pro and an iMac or something that, they're not going to sync those clipboard histories.
Nick Nisi:Ah, but built-in macOS does do clipboard sharing, so then it does.
Adam Stacoviak:Well, I think this is by design. I think you can do it, but I think by default it doesn't do this.
Jerod Santo:Yes, premium feature...
Adam Stacoviak:I that feature. Dude, what I most about the clipboard feature is that when you conjure it, I guess, whenever you elect to have this interface pop up with your history, you can search your history and paste it immediately. And that's five days ago history. And it fuzzy-searches the whole thing. So it's not only just front or back, it's all over the place in this thing. And so it's pretty accurate.
Jerod Santo:Well, let me use this opportunity to mention a little piece of freeware... Open source freeware called Maccy, M-A-C-C-Y, which is a clipboard history management tool that lives in your menu bar, and does everything you guys are describing. But it's built by an individual who just loves software, and just wants to put out free stuff into the world. And I use that for clipboard history. One thing well, guys. One thing well.
Nick Nisi:I was once you.
Jerod Santo:\[laughs\] Okay, tell me how you've become enlightened.
Nick Nisi:I'm already going to run Raycast to open my apps...
Jerod Santo:Why? Spotlight opens apps for you.
Nick Nisi:Yeah, but it can't do other things.
Jerod Santo:\[laughs\] the clipboard management thing that I can use Maccy for. Claude, which has their own desktop app surely. You're not selling me, fellas. You're not selling me.
Adam Stacoviak:Well, the good thing is we're not here to sell you.
Jerod Santo:I know you're not.
Adam Stacoviak:We're here to enjoy ourselves.
Jerod Santo:Well, I did kind of set that up as the \[unintelligible 00:14:54.10\] But fair.
Adam Stacoviak:\[unintelligible 00:14:55.01\]
Jerod Santo:You know what's funny to me, is that in our shared doc of potential topics for this conversation, near the bottom it says - I don't know who wrote this - "Are we contractually obligated to talk about AI?" And the answer is no. However - I didn't realize this, but Nick's more of an AI junkie than he is a TypeScript junkie, because... I mean, what did we go? Five minutes, and he's already confessing all of his subscriptions...
Adam Stacoviak:"Listen, I didn't want to tell you all this. This is so embarrassing... However, we're on a podcast, listened to by the world, basically... Here's all my stuff."
Nick Nisi:I'm just -- you know what? You embrace or you die.
Adam Stacoviak:Ooh, I it. Embrace or die.
Jerod Santo:This is worse than streaming services, though. You're probably paying more for --
Adam Stacoviak:Yeah, that's why I had to add it up. I was "This is insane."
Jerod Santo:...these models than you are for your streaming services. I mean, is your wife okay with this? Or your employer -- hopefully, your employer is helping foot the bill...
Nick Nisi:Listen...
Jerod Santo:Listen... \[laughter\]
Adam Stacoviak:Listen out.
Nick Nisi:We don't need to talk about that. Right?
Jerod Santo:Okay. Fair. Sorry to -- I didn't want to get too personal.
Nick Nisi:I get some benefit out of it, and it's real good... And I am not a person -- I would not say that I'm a day to day vibe-coder. Like, for one off things a digest script - yeah.
Jerod Santo:\[16:14\] Now, are you just using the term vibe-code because it's fun? Or are you really referring to the practice of vibe-coding, in which you don't even look at the source code that's been produced?
Nick Nisi:That is what I'm saying. Yeah.
Jerod Santo:Okay.
Nick Nisi:You don't even look at it. The digest script - I barely know what it is.
Adam Stacoviak:Oh, man.
Jerod Santo:You don't even know.
Nick Nisi:I mean, it's Bash. Nobody knows what that does.
Jerod Santo:Did you hear about the latest security vulnerability?
Nick Nisi:\[laughs\] Yes, actually.
Jerod Santo:"Yes, I did. But I'm still vibe-coding. I'm still not even looking at the code."
Nick Nisi:For day to day stuff, I don't, -- I don't use it in that way. I'm a team of one right now too, so I'm using it as literally another coworker. Like, this is somebody that I can bother... And yeah, they're an idiot, but they're helping me to formulate my thoughts before I go talk to somebody actually smart, any of my other coworkers.
Adam Stacoviak:It's a warm-up method, right? Is that what it is?
Nick Nisi:Yeah. I can knock off some low-hanging fruit... And I'm not just copying and pasting code from them. I will give them the repos that I'm working on, and everything I do is in open source, so I'm freely able to do that, which is a privilege, I'm sure, where I'm at... So it has the context, and then I can ask it questions. And hopefully it knows "Hey, that method that you're telling me to call actually exists." And even when I give it the entire repo, 80% of the time it's correct. It'll make up methods the other 20% of the time, or things that don't exist. So I totally don't trust it. But it's better than staring at a blank screen and wondering what to do... I can ask it some questions -- and I mostly keep it at a high level, like architectural style thing... My favorite thing in the world is to talk through "Here's how I want to do it. Okay, now let's create a mermaid diagram and just visualize how this is going to fit together."
Jerod Santo:Right. So now I'm understanding a little bit more why you're paying money... Because it's not so much the utility of the tool that you want. It's just that you're really lonely.
Nick Nisi:Yes...! \[laughter\]
Jerod Santo:Because you're a team of one. You need someone to talk to. And these things just fill that void. You're like "Let's make a diagram while I think through this." So you're rubber duck debugging, basically.
Nick Nisi:Exactly. "Tell me --" And who else is going to tell me how OIDC works, to the tune of Lil Wayne rap lyrics, you know?
Jerod Santo:\[laughs\] Yeah, exactly. It'll play along with all your stupid games, like I used to, on JS Party. Oh, funny... **Break**: \[18:45\]
Jerod Santo:So how do you know? Do these various -- does Claude and ChatGPT - do they know about each other? Do you keep them completely separated? Is there any sort of weird, awkward relationship vibes going on? How do you know which one to turn to, and when?
Nick Nisi:Oh yeah, this is a great question.
Adam Stacoviak:"Oh yeah, I'm glad you asked me." \[laughter\]
Jerod Santo:Alright, tell us.
Adam Stacoviak:I'm prepared.
Nick Nisi:This is mostly vibes, I think, honestly.
Jerod Santo:Okay. It's how you're feeling.
Adam Stacoviak:You have to vibe into the vibe.
Jerod Santo:That's right. It's like pre-vibe coding.
Adam Stacoviak:That's right. \[laughter\]
Nick Nisi:The vibe I got is just -- I don't really use ChatGPT much for work.
Jerod Santo:Okay, it's more of a hangout, after work, kind of a chill...
Nick Nisi:I have it because I play with it, and my kids and I have been doing a bunch of image generation stuff, which has been fun... But then also, sometimes -- my daughter and I are halfway through the first Lord of the Rings book, after having just read The Hobbit... So we read actual literature. But sometimes we just goof around too at bedtime, and we have -- I'll just ask my kids for a list of things that they want to hear, and then I'll throw in a message about not fighting with your brother... And then have ChatGPT generate a story, a bedtime story for us that has all of that. And every single story that my kids create has "Dad fell in the toilet", or "Dad turned into a butt", or you know, typical things that a six year old and an eight year old would be talking about. And that's a lot of fun. But that's primarily how I use that. And then occasionally, for writing - although I kind of Claude a little bit better for that... But Claude is the workhorse here. I really like Claude for code. I like the interface for it, I like being able to set up projects for it, and you can give it a bunch of context in those projects that it'll just share each time... And then as of yesterday -- I'm in this, but I'm also very slow to adopt things... But yesterday I integrated GitHub's official MCP server into it... And wow, that's so nice.
Jerod Santo:So what did that do for you?
Nick Nisi:It can do a bunch of things. I can have it respond to pull requests and issues and stuff for me. I'm not letting it go that far yet... There's a trust that has to build up before I do that. But an issue comes in, and I can just be like "Hey, issue 44 on this repo... Give me a summary of what you might think." And it already knows about all the code, because it's in a project. So "Give me your thoughts about where I might start looking for what could be the issue here." And it can just go fetch that. And it's saving me the steps of having to go copy and paste, is basically it. I'm getting less use out of my favorite tool of Raycast, my clipboard manager.
Jerod Santo:You copy-paste.
Nick Nisi:Yeah.
Jerod Santo:That is cool. So how close do you think you are to that trust threshold? And you can just tell it "Go comment on this for me."
Nick Nisi:Oh, I don't know. I'm scared of that, because as much as I use AI, I don't want anyone to know that I use AI for \[unintelligible 00:24:26.25\]
Jerod Santo:Well, you're telling everyone right now... \[laughter\]
Nick Nisi:Wait, this is the show?
Adam Stacoviak:"Ooh... Listen, as much--"
Jerod Santo:Don't send this to your manager...
Adam Stacoviak:Cut this out... Cut this part out...
Nick Nisi:They're actually really cool about AI, too.
Jerod Santo:Sure.
Nick Nisi:Like, I was playing with Devin for a little bit, the $500 a month AI coder... And I don't think that it's very good, but yeah. But yeah, I don't know. It's cool. And the main thing that you're always doing with all of these is managing the context. I'm constantly thinking about when Claude's going to give me the little purple message that says my chat's running a little long, and how succinct I should try and make things... I've got some preset scripts that I'll throw in there. Preset, uh -- what do you call those, prompts? That's like "Going forward --" There's one specifically that I use right now that's really good, and it's like "Going forward, don't assume that anything I tell you is accurate", because the worst thing about any of these is when they're a yes, man. They're just applauding everything. You're right, and it's going to tell you that you're right. I want it to challenge me and tell me what are the things I'm not thinking about? I'm crafting prompts that help me, that I can just paste in when I feel it's getting a little, I don't know, kiss-assy... And then I can set it straight. But then, you're managing those contexts, and that's where Raycast AI comes in for me. Because Raycast is -- I have it set to Option+Space, and that pops up in a little window, and that is reserved for the queries that are one-offs. Like, I'm having a conversation over here with Claude about this, I don't know, feature of Next.js. I'm talking to it about Next cookies. And I want to go deeper on Next cookies, but I don't want to screw up its context. So up pops a Raycast, and I have a discussion over there about Next cookies, and then I go back.
Jerod Santo:\[26:25\] And what are they using? They're using Claude also, but it's a different session?
Nick Nisi:They'll use whatever you want. But yes, I use Claude 3.7 mostly in there.
Adam Stacoviak:He's so excited about this, Jerod.
Jerod Santo:He is.
Adam Stacoviak:Look at his face.
Jerod Santo:That was like me in temporary mode the other day, when I just wanted it to be a temporary conversation. Except for it didn't work, but... It's like that.
Nick Nisi:Yeah. Are you managing the context, or is the context managing you...?
Jerod Santo:That's too deep for me. Stack Overflow... \[laughter\] Oh, gosh... You know, I'm still a Neanderthal with these things. I'm just -- I have it set up in Zed. I also just use ChatGPT.com, and then I have Ollama, which I had open in a terminal session, and I just talked to it... But I don't have the patience to wait for a lot of these things, unless they're going to be right... And I just find ChatGPT is right more than any of the other ones. However, with Zed, which is still my daily driver editor, I can just switch back and forth constantly between different models, and see which one I like the best. And I just don't like any of them, honestly. I get angry, their code sucks... I'm just like "I can write this better myself." I don't mind. I don't like a blank screen when it comes to creativity, but when it comes to software, I've just got no problem with it. I know I just start writing. So I'm still trying to find where it fits -- I still have it write functions and stuff for me, I just am always like "This function sucks", you know?
Nick Nisi:Yeah. Oh, yeah.
Jerod Santo:And I don't want to think that. I want to be like "Good job, little guy. That's a great little function you wrote there", you know?
Nick Nisi:It sounds like you're in the same boat as me, though. I don't use it for -- I'm going to say, I don't like how long it takes for responses, and things like that, when I'm in the flow of coding. It's more like pre-coding where I'm using it the most. It's having the conversation and making sure that -- like, validating my thoughts on the approach before I go and waste a bunch of time.
Jerod Santo:Yeah. And I'll actually use it now to -- Adam said this on the show a few times already... Just to replace Google, basically. I just don't google anything anymore. I just ask an LLM. And I'll even honestly ask it for the docs. I'm like "How do I use this function? Give me the API and a couple of examples." And that for me is faster than going and finding the docs, in some cases... Especially for obscure libraries, and stuff. Although the more obscure, the less accurate it happens to be... But that's just part of the game. And so I'm basically just using them at that level. Once I have it generating code for me, I'm just -- I think maybe I'm just too controlling in particular about code, and it might just be a me problem...
Nick Nisi:Yeah. Same.
Jerod Santo:...you know, where I need to get over it.
Nick Nisi:Nope.
Jerod Santo:But I just don't like what -- no, it's not? Okay, good. Thank you. \[laughs\]
Nick Nisi:There's a place for us, too.
Jerod Santo:Thank you. But I'm okay with it, and I continue to do more... Just slowly, slowly, slowly more. And I told Adam this on the last Friends where it's just him and I talking about -- I'm not sure you heard the one where I turned him into a walrus, and all that... But --
Adam Stacoviak:It was good.
Jerod Santo:That feature inside of ChatGPT has been a little bit of an eye-opener for me, of like "We don't got long, man. We don't have very long." Because that was a huge improvement all of a sudden in the image generation land, where it's like "Why would I hire anybody almost ever? Almost ever, at this point. Whereas last year I was like "Yeah, this is not going to actually produce anything I can use." It's great for ideas and stuff, but then you've have to go hire someone to actually produce the final logo or whatever. And I just feel like that ship is sailing very quickly, and I don't see any reason why... Except for maybe just the intricacies of the software development platform, and all the different things that can go wrong, maybe, might just give us a longer hedge... And the subjectivity of creative work, versus the objectivity of "Does it work? Does it work?", that kind of thing. But I don't think we have too much longer left. Do you think, Nick?
Nick Nisi:\[30:35\] I go back and forth, for sure.
Jerod Santo:Yeah.
Nick Nisi:When I let it vibe-code for me, it's real bad.
Jerod Santo:It is.
Nick Nisi:So that's why I don't do it much. But -- I mean, just think of where we were a year ago, two years ago, right? It's come a long way... So I don't know.
Jerod Santo:Has it come a long way in prose? Because I feel like it's so average at writing. It's never impressed me the way it has with these images. And I wonder if it's actually gotten better, if they're still testing that... Maybe you're better answering -- Adam as well, because... Don't you use it to generate some stories and stuff as well? Bedtime stories, and things, Adam?
Adam Stacoviak:I have before.
Jerod Santo:Yeah.
Adam Stacoviak:So Nick's story of the bedtime story was very familiar, except for it was not exactly the same. Definitely have had fun around that stuff. Image generation has been something we've done before... Conflict resolution, how to respond to a certain email even... What I don't ask it for is what to say, I ask it for "Okay, here's all the context. What am I missing from this scenario?", to maybe establish more empathy, or just word salad them a little bit more than I should, kind of thing... It's really iffy. A lot of, a lot of communication type stuff, a lot of framework thinking, a lot of ideation, sort of evolution... Stuff like that. Math... I love doing it with word math. That's the best. Hypothesizing a scenario with multiple inputs, or multiple scenarios, and which one plays out to have the greater outcome... I don't know, you name it. It's kind of wild, honestly, to even have that as a tool.
Jerod Santo:Well, let's change subjects, since we are just now doing what we do on every episode, just talk about AI... And let's talk about --
Nick Nisi:We'll be back...
Jerod Santo:Yeah, I mean, it'll work its way. It's just weaving its way into every part of life. I's like COVID, you know? COVID weaved its way into every aspect of life there for about two years, maybe 18 months... And I remember thinking more about the mind virus than the virus virus. Because it's like, "Can we talk --" I remember one time I was at a meal with friends, and of course everyone's just talking about this, and... All the things. I mean, you can go into all the different things. The social distancing aspect, how it spreads, the vaccines...
Adam Stacoviak:"Oh, they're acting weird..."
Jerod Santo:...the lockdowns.
Adam Stacoviak:"Oh, can you believe what they did?"
Jerod Santo:"This person had it, here's what happened to them... This person had it..." And I was like "Y'all, we don't get very many opportunities to hang out and have dinner, just us adults here... Like, it's actually infected our minds. We can't talk about anything else, except for the --" Back then we called it the coronavirus, you know?
Nick Nisi:Oh, yeah.
Adam Stacoviak:The coronavirus...
Jerod Santo:And I was mad, because it was like "The novel coronavirus." I'm like "Can we talk? It's like a mind virus more than it's a virus virus." Anyways...
Adam Stacoviak:Can we pause for a second and talk about how Corona beer was actually hit by that initially?
Jerod Santo:They were, weren't they? They're like "Wait a second, guys..."
Adam Stacoviak:It was like a small bounce back. I was like "Whoa, hang on a second... Corona beer and coronavirus. Different things, okay?"
Jerod Santo:\[33:50\] Right. If you don't want to get it, don't drink Corona. That would have been really bad for their branding, for like only three months or so, and then we moved on, called it all sorts of things...
Adam Stacoviak:I'm not sure if that says something good about humanity. Like, are we just that stupid?
Nick Nisi:Yes.
Adam Stacoviak:Are we just that stupid?
Jerod Santo:\[laughs\] No hesitation. That's why we're afraid of these AIs. They don't have to be that smart to outdo us, you know? It's not much.
Nick Nisi:To manipulate us, for sure.
Jerod Santo:Well, for sure. Yeah.
Adam Stacoviak:It doesn't take much, really. I mean, a couple yaks in and you're shaved, you know? I mean, come on...
Jerod Santo:That's right.
Adam Stacoviak:You're on a whole different subject thinking it's real, you know? And meanwhile, it's all simulation.
Jerod Santo:Have you seen the -- now we're getting way upstream, but... Oh well. It's nice up here.
Adam Stacoviak:Doom and gloom... Of course.
Jerod Santo:Have you seen the ones where there's people that were posting on Instagram and TikTok and other places, where they're skeptical of mirrors? Because how can the mirror actually see the reflection?
Adam Stacoviak:Yes...! "How can it see me over here?"
Jerod Santo:And I'm just like, "This is wild."
Adam Stacoviak:"Do you not understand how mirrors work?"
Jerod Santo:This is wild.
Adam Stacoviak:"How does it see behind the towel?"
Jerod Santo:Right. And it's not just one kooky person. There's a whole. I mean, there's probably a website with a forum on it at this point.
Nick Nisi:Maybe we do need to reinvest in education...
Jerod Santo:Alright. Busy bar. Let's get busy talking about something else.
Adam Stacoviak:Lame... Busy bar...
Jerod Santo:Busy bar. I thought, let's talk about some hardware. Or you think the bar is lame, or what do you think?
Adam Stacoviak:I'm just messing around. Going from that to BUSY Bar...? Come on.
Jerod Santo:It was not good --
Adam Stacoviak:Can they compete? We'll see.
Jerod Santo:What is it? What is the BUSY Bar?
Adam Stacoviak:Okay, TIL today on this - I had no idea it existed. It seems to be a hardware device that's programmable in some way, shape or form. It's got an SDK or an API that you can program against it. You can tell the world you're busy, you can do a Pomodoro, you can tell somebody you're on air for podcasting... It's like an LCD pixel display that does all sorts of cool stuff. It automates into home assistant, and other things... It's like the hardware meets the ideation software, you know, event change...
Jerod Santo:You're making it sound pretty cool.
Adam Stacoviak:It's actually pretty cool.
Jerod Santo:Yeah. So here's why I thought we could talk about this... Because you guys love hardware. I mean, Adam's always buying stuff. Nick buys a bunch of stuff. Don't you?
Jerod Santo:I just like spending money.
Adam Stacoviak:He does buy a bunch of stuff. And he has opinions...
Jerod Santo:He just likes spending money... \[laughs\]
Adam Stacoviak:Software! A lot of software!
Jerod Santo:Yeah, a lot of subscriptions. I'm sure there's probably a subscription play in here somewhere.
Nick Nisi:They're all consolidating down into Raycast.
Jerod Santo:That's true. Now, could you integrate Raycast with BUSY Bar? Probably.
Adam Stacoviak:Yes, you could. Yes, you could.
Jerod Santo:Because this thing is like -- it's about the size of an alarm clock, wouldn't you say? Maybe a larger alarm clock. It's supposed to sit on your desk, or somewhere. I think it can even mount on your monitor...
Adam Stacoviak:Yes.
Jerod Santo:...and face the other way for people, if you're RTO'd already and you're back in the office. It's got a big -- it looks like it really is satisfying to push start/stop button. One big button on top.
Adam Stacoviak:A massive button.
Jerod Santo:Yeah. And then one dial...
Adam Stacoviak:Like, imagine a button and then triple the size.
Jerod Santo:There's a dial and another knob, and that's about it. They call it a productivity multi-tool, and the thing is just programmable to the hilt. And I thought "This is the kind of thing that Nick would super-want to buy." So I just thought I'd ask you, do you want one of these?
Nick Nisi:\[laughs\] I did see this before you posted it...
Jerod Santo:Fair.
Nick Nisi:...and I kind of shrugged it off. But then I saw that you put it in here, and then I was like "Let me go look at it." And then I was like "Ah, fine. I'll buy it."
Jerod Santo:"Fine, I'll buy it." \[laughs\]
Nick Nisi:But you can't buy it yet, \[unintelligible 00:37:36.02\]
Jerod Santo:Did you actually put a purchase down?
Nick Nisi:Oh no, you can only give them an email and they'll let you know when it's ready. And I did do that.
Jerod Santo:Yeah, it's probably vapor hardware at this point.
Nick Nisi:I know. And I hate that.
Jerod Santo:There's so many of these hardware projects that just don't come to fruition, you know?
Nick Nisi:Okay, but the saving grace of this one is that I think that it's by the people who do this, the Flipper.
Jerod Santo:What have you got there?
Nick Nisi:Uh, this is the Flipper Zero.
Jerod Santo:Oh yeah, sorry. I had to expand to see your whole screen.
Adam Stacoviak:Oh, gosh... You have this thing?
Nick Nisi:\[38:07\] I do.
Jerod Santo:What is that thing?
Adam Stacoviak:Tell the world what this is, Nick. It's like the coolest little device.
Jerod Santo:Nick buys stuff, okay? You've got all the hardware stuff.
Adam Stacoviak:Nick is now an official staple, "Bring your hardware wares."
Jerod Santo:That's right. Alright, so what's the Flipper?
Nick Nisi:I don't know, but it looked cool.
Jerod Santo:"I don't know..." \[laughter\] It looked cool. "They had a sign up form, so I signed up."
Nick Nisi:It's like a little tool that you can use for some lightweight hacking of various things. It's got some antennas in it, and different sensors to make physical hacking kind of cool, I think... Although it's not super -- I don't know, everything's encrypted, so it's not going to break that encryption on this little tiny device. But things that aren't encrypted, it can do.
Jerod Santo:You mean like old WiFi networks that aren't --
Nick Nisi:It might be able to.
Adam Stacoviak:Hotel keys?
Nick Nisi:Hotel keys, yeah. It can do that.
Jerod Santo:Okay. Good call.
Nick Nisi:I've heard -- I've never tested this. I've heard that it can open the gas tank of a Tesla.
Jerod Santo:Oh.
Nick Nisi:So yeah, that's cool...
Jerod Santo:Wait a second, Tesla's don't have gas tanks.
Nick Nisi:I mean the charging port.
Jerod Santo:\[laughs\] Oh, you're trying to pull a quick one on me? I'm dumb, but I'm not that dumb.
Adam Stacoviak:He did get me for a second. I didn't even catch that part.
Nick Nisi:Maybe I've been duped on that.
Jerod Santo:Yeah, the charger... You're talking about the charger container button thing?
Nick Nisi:Yeah.
Jerod Santo:Now, why would you want to hack the charger -- to charge it up for somebody before they know?
Nick Nisi:Listen, I don't condone terrorism, I guess, but...
Jerod Santo:I was going to say, do you vandalize? You're not one of these Tesla vandals, are you?
Nick Nisi:Oh no... Not yet.
Jerod Santo:Not yet.
Nick Nisi:No. No. \[laughter\]
Jerod Santo:He's got a hacker tool and he's saying he's not a vandal yet.
Nick Nisi:I have done nothing with this thing.
Jerod Santo:Okay.
Nick Nisi:I got it and then I got too busy to play with it. And just for you I plugged it in, so \[unintelligible 00:40:00.13\]
Jerod Santo:So it's charged up.
Nick Nisi:No. The red light is on it, saying that it's -- because I just did it a minute ago.
Adam Stacoviak:So at best case, you bringing out this Flipper Zero solidifies the fact that BUSY Bar may actually ship, because they're the same people.
Jerod Santo:Good point. They \[unintelligible 00:40:17.14\]
Adam Stacoviak:Yeah.
Nick Nisi:They did. And that's pretty cool.
Adam Stacoviak:And this is world-renowed, too. This Flipper Zero is really sought after, does well... I've seen some demonstrations of it. It's pretty cool.
Nick Nisi:Yeah. There's some really cool things. If you're a Switch player, like a Nintendo Switch, you can set up your Flipper to be all of the \[unintelligible 00:40:37.11\]
Jerod Santo:Oh, that's cool. So you don't have to go grab them.
Nick Nisi:Yeah.
Jerod Santo:I might actually think that's cool. You're selling me on it.
Nick Nisi:Did you ever have -- when you were a kid there was this toy. It was called a Casio Secret Sender 6,000.
Jerod Santo:No.
Nick Nisi:It was like a little PDA, before PDAs were really a thing. But it was totally a toy.
Jerod Santo:Public displays of affection?
Nick Nisi:Like a personal data, personal --
Jerod Santo:\[laughs\]
Nick Nisi:What does that stand for...?
Jerod Santo:I don't know.
Nick Nisi:Personal Digital Assistant.
Jerod Santo:There you go. Fair.
Nick Nisi:Yeah. Well, it was one for kids, and it had -- you could have a little journal in it, and it had some games. And if somebody else within 20 feet of you had one, you could send messages back and forth over its IR port. But it also had an IR port, so it could be a remote control for any television.
Jerod Santo:That's cool.
Nick Nisi:And you know me, being the hacker in second grade when they'd wheel in that giant TV...
Jerod Santo:Oh, yeah.
Nick Nisi:Oh, it turned off randomly once every time, and nobody knew why.
Jerod Santo:Just one time.
Adam Stacoviak:\[laughs\] They never knew it... "Until this podcast right here, when I tell the world about my AI infatuation."
Jerod Santo:This is like Taxi Cab Confessions with Nick Nisi.
Adam Stacoviak:Gosh, Nick...
Jerod Santo:\[41:56\] Oh, that's cool. I didn't have one of those. I did have a Game Genie, though. Did you guys have a Game Genie?
Nick Nisi:No...
Adam Stacoviak:I wish I did.
Jerod Santo:Game Genie was so cool.
Adam Stacoviak:What was the fundamentals of the Game Genie? What did that do?
Jerod Santo:Well, it was basically like mods for your NES games. You know, modding is cool, and so with Game Genie, it would -- somehow you'd plug your NES game into the Game Genie and then the Game Genie into the NES. And it would be a middleman. And you could basically turn on different superpowers, and cheats, and all kinds of things to make games easier... Because games were really hard back then.
Adam Stacoviak:They were.
Jerod Santo:Especially some of them. And so it's just a way to make the game kind of more fun. Any serious gamer wouldn't use it, of course... And I was only a serious gamer on a couple of games, like Zelda and Mega Man... But everything else, it's like "I don't care. \[unintelligible 00:42:50.13\] you know?
Nick Nisi:Mm-hm...
Jerod Santo:So Game Genie was cool. I don't know how it worked, or why it was a thing, or if the game companies were happy about it... I'm sure there's probably a YouTube history of Game Genie out there I should go watch. But it was a cool device. **Break**: \[43:07\]
Jerod Santo:But this BUSY Bar does some cool stuff. So for instance, it's smart home-integrated. So anything that works with Apple, HomeKit or Google, whatever the competitor is called, you can connect everything up. And so this thing, this one button could -- like, you're busy, you're recording... Bam. Your whole house could respond. Pause the music that's playing out of your home device... What are they called? Your Alexa?
Nick Nisi:HomePod.
Jerod Santo:Yeah, HomePod. Thank you. Turn off all the lights in case it's one of those kind of shows... Lock the door, perhaps... Close the garage doors... Start your laundry... I don't know what else you want to do when the show goes on, but... Connect it all. Connect it all.
Nick Nisi:\[46:11\] That's cool. I would really that if I had that button and I'd push it, and then in this ominous voice throughout my house, it just goes "Dad is busy...!" And it just plays that on repeat, over and over again.
Jerod Santo:Yes. Like an announcement. And it just plays it nonstop until you touch it again.
Nick Nisi:Mm-hm. But my room is insulated somehow in this magical world, so I don't hear it.
Jerod Santo:Right. Yeah, that would get me to buy one. And it's developer-friendly. So out of the box, Busy Bar comes with an Open API ready for integration into your project... So you could probably get your CI/CD involved, you can probably get your Raspberry Pi's involved... It looks like it's taking Golang, JavaScript, Python etc. None of your languages, except for you said you're writing some Go now, right? Is it because the TypeScript team likes it?
Nick Nisi:I'm not that basic, am I?
Jerod Santo:\[laughs\] I don't know, just wondering... People were up in arms because they picked Go, you know? This was a big controversy.
Nick Nisi:It makes sense.
Jerod Santo:Did you read any of the back and forth?
Nick Nisi:Oh, no. I watched some interviews with Anders Hejlsberg.
Jerod Santo:Why does it make sense, do you think?
Nick Nisi:From my understanding - and I could be totally getting it wrong, but my understanding was that they want to do a one-to-one port... To the point where they basically wrote codemods that would take a line of JavaScript and spit out a line of Go, and went that far.
Jerod Santo:Yeah.
Nick Nisi:And switching over to another language like Rust, that is not a garbage-collected language like Go is and JavaScript is, would mean that memory management would be handled differently, which means it wouldn't be a true one-to-one port, which would let bugs sneak in, potentially.
Jerod Santo:Yeah, it'd be more of a rewrite, a ground-up rewrite in a new language, versus an actual port.
Nick Nisi:Yeah.
Jerod Santo:Yeah, and apparently, Go and TypeScript have a lot of the same idioms, I guess. I mean, garbage collection being a huge one in that sense. Of course, JavaScript itself is kind of a C-style language, which Go is also influenced... So that makes sense. Of course, C-sharp was the one that people were like "Come on, it's Microsoft. Isn't C\# supposed to be Microsoft's powerhouse, its workhorse language?"
Nick Nisi:\[unintelligible 00:48:34.18\]
Jerod Santo:Didn't Anders create C\#?
Nick Nisi:Yeah. \[laughter\]
Jerod Santo:He did, but he also didn't write it in Delphi, and he recreated that too, didn't he? So I thought it was a cool, pragmatic choice by them, versus being like "Well, we are Microsoft, therefore C\#", or Rust, which is also burgeoning inside of Microsoft... It's like "Let's actually be pragmatic about what we're trying to achieve, and just go that direction." And it sounds like that might have won out, which - pragmatic choices, I think, in large engineering teams don't always win. But a lot of people were confused about that announcement, apparently. They thought it was the TypeScript runtime that was 10 times faster, not the compiler... Which would be like a huge win, wouldn't it? Like "Hey, all your TypeScript code runs 10 times faster than it did." It's like "Oh, you don't know how bad my code could get", you know? "You're going to make my code faster? Please."
Nick Nisi:TypeScript has a runtime...? \[laughs\]
Jerod Santo:Yeah, well... And Edge -- that's the other thing with the C\#, is "Well, couldn't you just more easily work it into--" No, that wasn't the C\#. It was actually the Rust people saying, "If it was written in Rust instead, you could more easily get it into Chromium and Firefox than in Go." And then you could start to do what your ultimate goal is (isn't it, Nick?) is just to have TypeScript become the runtime of browsers...?
Nick Nisi:\[50:04\] Yeah, I think we're getting there, potentially. I see signs of that with... There's obviously the types as comments thing, and that's what I'm talking about.
Jerod Santo:Yeah, type annotations.
Nick Nisi:I forgot what you call it. Type annotations, yeah.
Jerod Santo:Yeah.
Nick Nisi:But then in the latest, I think 5.8 version of TypeScript, they also added that erasable syntax-only flag, which is setting you up for success with the types proposed.
Jerod Santo:Remind me what that does?
Nick Nisi:That prevents you from using things that would require runtime code. So enums, for example - those get converted into these weird object things... And so it just prevents you from using them. Another place is in -- there's a shortcut when you're using classes in TypeScript, where you can just say -- in the constructor, you can list out all your private methods, and then that way they're defined as private... Or private properties, I mean. They're defined as privates, but you don't have to define them above, then define your arguments, and then have, in your constructor, a setter where you're actually setting them; you can condense it all into one. Well, there's a lot of runtime code that has to happen for that to take place, so they prohibit that as well with this.
Jerod Santo:Gotcha.
Nick Nisi:And basically, it's just everything has to be erasable... Which is perfect, because also in the next version of Node I think you're going to be able to run TypeScript unflagged, which will be great. Run it by just stripping the types.
Jerod Santo:Run it by stripping the types. Right. Well, these are baby steps in that direction, aren't they? Do you think it's ever going to be actually built in?
Nick Nisi:No. I think that'll be where it stops. But maybe I'm not thinking --
Jerod Santo:You think it stops with the type annotations feature, which probably will make it into browsers...
Nick Nisi:I think so.
Jerod Santo:Yeah. Do you think that's good enough? Or do you wish it was actually...
Nick Nisi:What is it going to get me? Like faster speeds? Is that it?
Jerod Santo:Hypothetically, yes...
Nick Nisi:Yeah... I mean, I don't know. I don't know. I'll say something that I'll regret if I continue. \[laughs\] Why would we need that? We'll never more than --
Jerod Santo:You never say anything that you regret on these shows, Nick...
Nick Nisi:Right... \[laughs\] I don't think the TSC is very slow, when I run it in my editor, but apparently it is.
Jerod Santo:I think that this was a scratching their own edge kind of thing... Meaning if you have massive codebases, of which Microsoft probably does, that's when TSC slows down.
Nick Nisi:I can't remember what file it is, but one of the files in TypeScript's codebase is 53,000 lines long. And it's just because it would have performance costs to split it up.
Jerod Santo:Is that one that Anders coded up on a bender one time, or something...? \[laughter\] Do you think he vibe-codes?
Nick Nisi:Oh, no.
Jerod Santo:No. He's significantly gray-haired. The gray beards don't like the vibe-codes. Well, what else is exciting in the world of TypeScript, so we can poo-poo it and move on?
Nick Nisi:\[laughs\] I don't know... I'm just enjoying writing it again.
Jerod Santo:Yeah.
Nick Nisi:It's fun. Don't miss Flow.
Jerod Santo:Yeah... What is it -- I mean, is Flow only inside of Facebook? Or is there other people that use Flow? And when I say Facebook, I mean Meta now.
Nick Nisi:Yeah... There used to be. I think years ago, before 2018, 2017, somewhere around there, I interviewed someone from, I think, GitKraken. I think they were using Flow. But they eventually switched to TypeScript, too. But that was the only other company that I ever knew of that actually used Flow.
Jerod Santo:\[53:59\] It's weird how somebody with the clout of Facebook engineering - which is what it used to be called back when these things came out - was so influential that they were able to get React highly adopted, and GraphQL highly adopted... Not quite as successfully, but still. But Flow just didn't quite catch on. Do you ever wonder why certain things do and other things don't?
Nick Nisi:I do wonder. I don't know why, but I wonder if that was just a fluke that React did catch on in the way that it did.
Jerod Santo:You think so?
Nick Nisi:I mean, React 19 - is that catching on as much as it should be? Is it adding too much complexity? Is it too much -- like, two in the bag with Vercel?
Jerod Santo:That's my read on it. Those two things took too long, too hard to explain... People were starting to get the ick because of the tightness of that relationship. And even when we talked with Dan Abramov - a couple years ago now you and I talked to him and somebody else, I can't recall who, on JS Party...
Nick Nisi:Joe Savona.
Jerod Santo:That's right. Even then, I was like "Isn't it weird that you all's official stance is you should use this in Next.js, but that's a project that you don't have any control over?" Like, that's a weird thing. The React team's official stance was "Don't use this directly. Use it via frameworks, of which Next.js is the only one that does it", back then. And that just seems like not a good situation to be in.
Adam Stacoviak:Why is that? Why was that the recommendation?
Jerod Santo:Because there was no framework. I mean, because Meta doesn't have its own framework. React is just a piece of the puzzle, and Next.js was a widely-adopted framework that stayed pretty much in lockstep with React's previous releases, and using the new technology that -- and, I mean, they're simpatico, or they were simpatico, I'm assuming they still are... They collaborated tightly -- you know, there's a lot of friends between the two teams. That's my take, Nick. Why do you think? Anything else why that might be the case?
Nick Nisi:Yeah, I think that -- like, when Facebook introduced Flux, the Flux pattern... Remember? They didn't introduce a Flux library. That came later. I think it was Dan Abramov, actually, who came out with Redux. There was an implementation of that.
Jerod Santo:Right.
Nick Nisi:And I think in the same way, Next was the one to adopt Server Components as an implementation of this theory of how this could be done from the React team, or in collaboration with the React team. But for the longest time -- honestly, I don't know anyone else who's doing Server Components in that way. I've been playing a lot with Remix.React Router and TanStack Start, and they all have their own ways of doing server things, none of which are really Server Components in the way that they're described or used within Next... Yet, at least.
Jerod Santo:Mm-hm. Yeah, that whole messaging is just kind of a ball of wax that was very unattractive to me as a guy who's in the industry, but not in the daily mucky muck of the React ecosystem. I'm like "This just doesn't seem attractive, whatever's going on here." And I think a lot of people feel that way. It doesn't mean they're not using React... And React was a game-changer, and so I'm not here to poo-poo on it like I am TypeScript, by any means. And it's still a great choice, I think, as a standalone library... And I think that you can get React features in smaller ways, or different ways... But I think the RFC stuff has made it just too complicated, and the Next.js relationships made the whole thing muddy. Because now you're getting in bed not just with Meta, which already doesn't feel amazing, but now you're also in bed with Vercel... And I don't have anything personally against Vercel or anything like that, but some people do... \[laughs\] Some people are like "I don't know about this..."
Nick Nisi:\[58:23\] Yeah. My recommendation, if anybody asks, which nobody ever does, but my recommendation is to go with Astro, until you're absolutely positive that Astro can't solve your problems.
Jerod Santo:Okay. Why do you recommend that?
Nick Nisi:It's just such a delight to work with. I originally switched to Astro because I was like "I really React..." And I was using Eleventy before, and -- this is for my personal blog, so it's a nice playground for stuff this. And I thought, "Oh, I'll switch to Astro because I like their component model, and I can just use React, and it'll be great." And then I set it up and I never used React. I think I use React now for one or two things, but their Astro components are amazing. They do so much. And then built-in support for -- with the server island stuff now, you effectively have that way to dynamically reload pieces of the page from the server, from a running worker or whatever, and it's super-nice and so easy to set up. And then when you need React, you can literally just inject React and build a SPA on that page, so it's great.
Jerod Santo:Do you think it falls into that category of slightly too obscure?
Nick Nisi:Maybe.
Jerod Santo:Because for a lot of people that decision, that is a major aspect of their decision-making. We were just speaking with Anthony Eden of DNSimple, and he talked about how he likes Erlang and stuff, and he's built some of their core infrastructure in Erlang... And eventually, a lot of it is Go now, and just the reason was like "Well, because nobody really knows Erlang" - I mean, not but him, but just, the numbers aren't there for Erlang people. And it's like, what about Astro? Is there Astro jobs out there to be had? You know, that whole thing; is it slightly too obscure? I mean, Elixir is kind of in that middle ground as well, where it's like "Yeah, the people who know Elixir are few and far between." They're generally good developers, but this also makes them expensive to hire, because they are rare, and usually good engineers... Whereas Ruby devs are a dime a dozen, so to speak, and same thing with TypeScript folk...
Nick Nisi:How dare you...?
Jerod Santo:...and React people. And Next.js. Everybody knows Next.js.
Nick Nisi:Yeah.
Jerod Santo:And so does that make Astro slightly too obscure to be worth investing in?
Nick Nisi:To that point, I've never seen an Astro job listing, but I also haven't looked...
Jerod Santo:Yeah, same.
Adam Stacoviak:I think at that point too it seems like, from my perspective, that Astro is focused on these content-driven sites, versus - I'm not sure what is not content-driven, but marketing is content-driven. So if you're building a marketing site, it's going to be content-driven, not just... You know, you think about what are those kinds of sites being used for? So it's probably a frontend to a new tech company - probably great for that. And then you get into this - just careful now - is the world where you might want to say "What about Framer instead?" So you've got Astro, which is non-vibe-coding, and you've got Framer, which is kind of vibe-coding, in a way, taking this design tool and turning it into a developer tool. Now, John Long here on this show a couple weeks back talked about Framer, and he's a frontender. He's a developer. And he was reaching for Framer in the case of his works scenario. I think if it was a personal project, maybe he would choose probably a Ruby-based project, but probably something more like Astro, more like an actual developer tool versus Framer, which is design turned website. And I don't even know how it works, but he's singing the praises of Framer. So... And I haven't used it personally.
Jerod Santo:\[01:02:11.08\] I've never used Framer. I've just gone to the website for the first time, and it looks pretty sweet.
Adam Stacoviak:So there are Framer jobs out there, though. You can be in marketing, or be in let's say product marketing, product management, and there will be listings that say "Has experience with building out frontend websites with Framer." So I'm not sure if that matches to Astro or not, but they're in similar camps. A Framer site is usually a content-driven site or a marketing site; probably similar for Astro, where it's either a personal blog, a personal portfolio, or somehow content-driven.
Nick Nisi:Yeah. And I think to that, their first class support for Markdown and MDX and all of those content pieces does work to their detriment to being considered alongside a Next, or React Router, or a framework like that.
Adam Stacoviak:Well, you know, a lot of options out there... How do you choose is really, I think, the thing that has driven me crazy my entire career. Like, here I am as a personal person just using Eleventy for its principles of "Hey, it's basically just HTML and CSS with a little JavaScript if you need it." And in that case, I think -- what was I using that for? My personal site is in Jekyll. I think it was the CPU website, Jerod, actually; the very first one was Eleventy. Keeping it simple... Simple page, but keeping the code more simple than literally an HTML page, with CSS sprinkled into the style bracket or something like that. That's where I used it. It's cool, though. keeping it simple.
Jerod Santo:I've been using Eleventy a little bit myself lately, just for a -- I've been doing this thing called The Developer Dictionary in News, where I'm just defining... Like, just jokey definitions of developer terms. And I thought "Well, I want these to all kind of look similar, but be kind of content-oriented." And I might eventually actually -- as I accumulate these definitions, I might eventually want to put them on a webpage, or something. And I'm not a designer, but I know what a dictionary looks like, so I was like "I can put together enough CSS, combined with my coding assistant in order to have a nice little design." And I can write -- I want to write the definitions in Markdown. And so I'm writing them in Obsidian, and want to then pull those into a uniform-looking website that I can eventually publish. And I was like "Well, Eleventy can do that." And so I dove into the world of Eleventy. I like how simple everything is over there. Zach's done a great -- not just Zach Leatherman, but him and a bunch of people now have done a great job with their docs, and with making it very approachable. And so as an old school, static site guy, it just all makes sense to me. It was very easy to just do stuff. And I haven't shipped anything yet, but I just use it to write in Obsidian these definitions, and then each one is a well-formed Markdown file, with the same -- I'm using all the YAML front matter as basically data, and eventually I can pull that into a database and write it in an actual CMS somewhere. So it's kind of like progressive enhancement for a web app, where it's like it starts off as Markdown files and static stuff, but there's a very easy path of turning that into a database in the future.
Nick Nisi:I like that.
Jerod Santo:It's cool.
Nick Nisi:And Eleventy is really great. I think I switched before WebC came out publicly. But I was thinking in Components, and I wanted to continue with Components.
Jerod Santo:Right. Which Astro has that stuff, right?
Nick Nisi:Yeah. But now Eleventy does.
Jerod Santo:Exactly. But didn't back then. So WebC is Eleventy's take on Web Components, right?
Nick Nisi:Yeah.
Jerod Santo:\[01:06:09.28\] Yeah. Which I'm touching none of. I'm literally HTML, CSS, zero JavaScript. Because I'm just putting some HTML on a page and prettying it up, you know?
Nick Nisi:Yeah. I was doing all of these shortcode things in my Eleventy config, which also couldn't be -- last I checked, couldn't be in TypeScript. So it was just madness, because I didn't know what anything was.
Jerod Santo:That reminds me - here's a pro tip that's old, but maybe people haven't heard it... Which is whenever you're writing a Bash script, or you're -- if you're not vibe-coding it; if you're actually writing it yourself. Use the long form of the arguments in all of your commands. You know, there's always a short form and a long form... And so the long form would be --file=, And the short form is -d, you know? And we get so used to the short forms, because it's faster. It's easy for one liners. But if you're actually writing a script that you're going to come back to later, it's self-documenting to use the long form every time. And so I use the long form in scripts. I'm fine with short form for your one liners and your command history... But force yourself to use that long form, because it's so much easier to understand, especially if it's like FFmpeg stuff. I mean, so many different flags, that mean so many different things. And you can come back and be like "Oh, I know what --file means." Whereas -f, does it mean format? Does it mean file? Who knows? And now you're in the man page. So... Rando, but you just inspired me to say that. I think there was an old Changelog post about that. Wasn't there, Adam? Way back in the day.
Adam Stacoviak:I was going to interrupt you, because I wanted to mention this exact thing. This is, I believe, Adam Jahnke's only contribution. He contributed one post, I believe...
Jerod Santo:To Changelog, the blog.
Adam Stacoviak:...to what was the blog, I guess; the newsfeed, at some point. It could have been tips, it could have been prose, it could have been a project... The criteria back then was a little different, but his was advice, and essentially this - if you're going to write a script, do the long form version of it, because when you come back to it later, it's -- basically rinse/repeat what you said.
Jerod Santo:I remember him writing that. I remember him writing that, and me being like "That's so true." It was kind of something that just is so obviously true when someone says it, but then somebody had to say it once... And then he might have been the first one. Probably not. What year was that? It's probably like the '80s when someone first said this, but... It's just a good idea.
Adam Stacoviak:This would have been 1979.
Jerod Santo:Wow, so he is the first then.
Adam Stacoviak:I'm just kidding with you. No, it was probably...
Jerod Santo:Mid 2000s...?
Adam Stacoviak:...the early days. 2010... Yeah, 2010. I mean, that's crazy to say that's early days. That's early days though. 2010, that's my guess. Sometime in 2010. J-A-H-N-K-E. Jahnke.
Jerod Santo:"Use long flags when scripting." 2013.
Adam Stacoviak:Now that we've shaved that entire yak --
Jerod Santo:Anyways...
Adam Stacoviak:We'll link it up in the show notes. I mean, that's a good deep dive there, because it's phenomenal advice. I think that was the first --
Jerod Santo:It's such a simple little tip, but it's so obvious. You're like "Yeah, there's no reason not to." You're going far enough to write a script, you might as well make it more scrutable when you come back, versus inscrutable, which is how they usually are. Now, if you have vibe-coded it, who knows what's in there? Who cares?
Adam Stacoviak:That's why when I Rsync, I'm always long-flagging it, man.
Jerod Santo:Are you?
Adam Stacoviak:Oh yeah. Long flight for life.
Jerod Santo:Heck yeah.
Nick Nisi:I'm just remembering -- not that I've run the tar command anytime recently, but I know tar-xvf, or tar-xzf... I don't know what those flags actually do, I just know that one way of doing it will tar something.
Jerod Santo:Right. And the other one will untar.
Nick Nisi:Yeah.
Jerod Santo:-xvf, yeah, it's like extract... One of them was recursively. Or the folder. F stands for folder?
Nick Nisi:Oh, yeah.
Jerod Santo:\[01:10:20.21\] Whereas if you do it without that, it's just gonna do a single file. The v I can't remember... No, that's the extract. The create is -czvf. I'm not sure what any of those are, except for the c means create, I think.
Adam Stacoviak:See, you'd know that if you'd get the -- in there, and the full word...
Jerod Santo:This is all from memory, just from typing that one liner the whole time.
Adam Stacoviak:Mm-hm.
Nick Nisi:I just asked --
Jerod Santo:But wasn't there like extract zfiles? Wasn't there like a mnemonic device people said?
Nick Nisi:Oh... Yeah.
Jerod Santo:I think Kball used to say that. xzf is extract zfiles, and then the other one's like create z freaking -- I don't know what it was. I'm butchering it, whatever it was.
Adam Stacoviak:And who said this?
Jerod Santo:I think it was Kball. Somebody has this mnemonic device for remembering tar commands. And it was extract zfiles, and the other one's like create the --
Adam Stacoviak:At this point I'm wondering, who's paying attention to this podcast right now?
Jerod Santo:Yeah, probably nobody. Well, we're at the end anyways...
Adam Stacoviak:I'm wondering who's paying attention to this stuff here. Phenomenal advice, though.
Nick Nisi:This is more than nuggets gold here...
Jerod Santo:"Phenomenal advice, though..."
Adam Stacoviak:Phenomenal advice, yes.
Jerod Santo:\[laughs\] Yeah, this is where the good stuff -- you know, we dropped the good stuff at the end. So... What else is on the list here? Revisiting browsers? I don't know, I'm still using the Safari.
Nick Nisi:Yeah?
Jerod Santo:You've moved on?
Nick Nisi:I have...
Jerod Santo:Oh, my goodness.
Nick Nisi:I was forced at Meta to use Chrome. And it was Chromium for a while, and then they forcibly uninstalled Arc for me. And I was very saddened by that. But they didn't forcibly uninstall the --
Adam Stacoviak:They uninstalled Arc for you?
Nick Nisi:They didn't forcibly uninstall it. All of the internal tools would check, and they would just not work. And then they would eventually lock you out of all of them, and you'd have to go ask to get unlocked, and then never use that browser again. It was terrible. But I'm back on Arc, and I hate that...
Jerod Santo:So what are you up to now?
Nick Nisi:I want something like that. Something that's easy to manage, with tabs on the side... And so I'm still in Arc. I tried Zen Browser for a while, but honestly...
Adam Stacoviak:Oh yeah, Zen.
Nick Nisi:...Firefox isn't it.
Jerod Santo:So you're still using Arc?
Nick Nisi:I am.
Jerod Santo:Wow. You got hooked.
Nick Nisi:I did.
Jerod Santo:Even though it's dead?
Nick Nisi:Even though it's dead. I know. It's like --
Jerod Santo:Dead man walking.
Nick Nisi:Yeah.
Adam Stacoviak:So how is Zen that much different than Arc? Isn't it pretty close?
Nick Nisi:It kind of is, but it's super-confusing in its config... And then it doesn't have syncing.
Jerod Santo:And that's a fork of Firefox, or it's just based off Gecko, or whatever Gecko is called now?
Adam Stacoviak:What -- does it have no syncing?
Nick Nisi:It's basically Firefox. I didn't know Firefox was still a thing. \[laughter\]
Jerod Santo:Zing...! See, here's the good stuff at the end.
Adam Stacoviak:See, now you're listening. Now you're listening. Perk your ears up, we've got 20 more minutes in us.
Jerod Santo:\[unintelligible 01:13:19.12\]
Adam Stacoviak:Let's do it. Alright, slay that Firefox dragon...
Nick Nisi:Yeah, I don't know... Things just break in it all the time. You just want -- I don't know, at this point which browser is going to give me the best experience for the 1Password extension? Safari ain't it, for sure.
Adam Stacoviak:Oh, yeah. I've been getting really upset with 1Password.
Nick Nisi:Yeah?
Jerod Santo:Let me introduce you to builtinpasswords.app... \[laughter\] Life's good over here in built-in land.
Adam Stacoviak:You know, they just pop up their UI in these places, and I'm like \[unintelligible 01:13:56.08\] I just want you to be a normal field. Don't clutter up my interface with your suggestions, and...
Nick Nisi:Yeah, I get \[unintelligible 01:14:05.14\] for sure.
Jerod Santo:This is not an ad... \[laughter\]
Adam Stacoviak:\[01:14:12.19\] Well, you know, this is where I actually would love to talk to somebody behind the scenes of 1Password, on their product implementation.
Jerod Santo:Big fans. We're big fans.
Adam Stacoviak:Yeah, big fans... But they must have it rough, because you have to dance around different idiosyncrasies depending upon the browser. So Safari has its own things...
Jerod Santo:It's an uphill battle. It's gotta be a constant uphill battle for them.
Adam Stacoviak:Yeah. It's not native. It's never going to be this beautiful work of art... Although they've done their best.
Nick Nisi:Except in Safari.
Jerod Santo:They should just get acquired, because they're probably too big at this point.
Adam Stacoviak:They are too big at this point.
Jerod Santo:Pixelmator got acquired.
Adam Stacoviak:By Apple?
Jerod Santo:By Apple.
Adam Stacoviak:When? What year?
Jerod Santo:Maybe recently, 2025, or late 2024.
Nick Nisi:October.
Jerod Santo:Yeah.
Adam Stacoviak:Really? Finally. I mean, it took long enough, didn't it?
Jerod Santo:Yeah, it took a long time. They're not as big as 1Password, though.
Adam Stacoviak:I've been actually in this really weird world where I'm anti Mac-only software. Thankfully, 1Password is not Mac-only software.
Jerod Santo:Oh, because you're a Windows guy now.
Adam Stacoviak:Yeah, I'm an everything guy. Linux, Mac, Windows...
Nick Nisi:I wasn't aware of this before I decided to come on, just so you know...
Adam Stacoviak:What's that?
Nick Nisi:I wasn't aware that you were a Windows guy. I wouldn't have agreed to come on.
Adam Stacoviak:Oh gosh, Nick. You're missing out, bro. You're missing out. Windows is where it's at... \[laughter\]
Nick Nisi:For what?
Adam Stacoviak:You think I'm kidding around here?
Nick Nisi:Yes.
Jerod Santo:For what? He wants to know where it's at for what.
Adam Stacoviak:Where it's at for everything. Everything works in Windows. Everything's amazing in Windows.
Jerod Santo:Microsoft works?
Adam Stacoviak:Yeah, it all works. Linux even works on Windows. I can SSH into my Windows box right now and treat it Linux. With all my cores and all my RAM available, and I can add to it as I want to... I can ZFS, I can do whatever, all via Windows. It's amazing.
Nick Nisi:I'm doing some side work, and there's one person who's doing it all on Windows. And we're simplifying with Docker containers for everything, right?
Jerod Santo:Yeah.
Nick Nisi:The Docker containers just don't work on Windows. I don't understand it. It could be that I don't know how to use Docker, because I really don't.
Jerod Santo:Or Windows...
Nick Nisi:Or Windows... \[laughs\]
Adam Stacoviak:Well, I have Docker containers running no problem.
Nick Nisi:It could be --
Adam Stacoviak:I would blame the user at that point, Nick. I'm sorry.
Nick Nisi:No, it could be. But it does work with the other Mac developer that I share it with, so...
Jerod Santo:Maybe that's more of a commentary on Windows people than it is on Windows. \[laughter\]
Adam Stacoviak:I will admit that Docker runs via WSL, which basically means it doesn't really run natively on Windows, it runs natively on Windows via Linux... Which is the Windows Subsystem for Linux. It's what WSL stands for.
Nick Nisi:That might be more native than on Mac. So...
Jerod Santo:Yeah. Well, it's not native on Mac, that's for sure.
Nick Nisi:No... \[laughs\]
Adam Stacoviak:I had an issue with running Plex, and passing through a GPU and all that stuff with Docker, so there's definitely some... But that's going to be common. A PCIe device passthrough to a container is always a crapshoot. It's always a challenge.
Nick Nisi:Oh, yeah.
Adam Stacoviak:But I really do like Windows a lot. It's actually really solid.
Jerod Santo:That's why you just run everything bare metal.
Jerod Santo:Just load your operating system, put the stuff on there... It'll be fine. Everything's gonna be fine. Write a script. Run the script.
Adam Stacoviak:Vibe-code that script.
Jerod Santo:Long-flag it.
Adam Stacoviak:Yeah, I mean, in all honesty, these Bash scripts I wrote for some stuff I do, for archiving and stuff that - they now have been ported to Windows, which basically is nothing. I mean, it's just moving the file there, making it executable.
Jerod Santo:Changing the slashes to backslashes.
Adam Stacoviak:No, I don't even have to do that.
Jerod Santo:You must not be referencing any Windows file paths...
Adam Stacoviak:It reads them both. What I do is I hop into Windows, I up-arrow until it says wsl -d ubuntu...
Jerod Santo:Oh, so you're talking Linux. You're not talking Windows.
Adam Stacoviak:\[01:18:04.15\] This is on Windows, dude. Are you kidding me? Last time I checked, the host operating system was Windows...
Jerod Santo:WSL is a subsystem, for Linux.
Adam Stacoviak:Yeah, I hop into that and next thing I know, I'm on Linux. I can do whatever I want.
Jerod Santo:Yeah, you're on Linux. Of course forward slashes work on Linux.
Adam Stacoviak:I can navigate and traverse the entire Windows file path and run any Linux command against that Windows file path.
Jerod Santo:So you can type c:/ ?
Adam Stacoviak:C:/ Well, you'd have to CD...
Jerod Santo:Yeah, of course.
Adam Stacoviak:Yeah, I mean, it can do either or.
Jerod Santo:And you can do an LS or a DIR.
Adam Stacoviak:Both. LS'es work natively, out of the box, for Subsystem for Linux, and Windows. I mean, what I think honestly is super-cool is that you can have this box with Windows and Linux on the same box, and it acts as if they're the same. Like there's a marriage. There's really no difference between Windows and Linux from the command line, because when you run WSL, everything that is Linux can access the Windows file path. There's no difference. It's all just the file path. It's actually really, really cool. There's probably some challenges with it that I'm not hitting personally, but I think it's pretty freaking amazing that you can run Dockers and all this Windows-related stuff, and Linux, and it's the same box. It's crazy.
Nick Nisi:I know people who pay quite the premium to not run Windows, ever.
Adam Stacoviak:Yeah, what a shame, though, because -- I mean... So here's an example, is that you can air-cool, obviously, your CPU. You can run a fan or two fans, and have a heat sink on it and keep it cool. But you can also run an all in one cooler, like a water cooler to keep it really cold, like a 60, 70, 80 degrees Fahrenheit kind of thing... Maybe that's Celsius. Yeah, probably Celsius. That's my guess for that. But you can do that stuff. If you wanted to swap out an air cooler for a water cooler, you could. If I wanted to add a PCIe card that adds four NVMe drives and allows me to have a 16+ or 32+ terabyte NVMe-based ZFS drive on this Windows box, I could. Right this instant. My gosh, you cannot do that with Mac. I mean, you can, but it's not the same. So it frustrates me.
Jerod Santo:I told you he likes hardware...
Adam Stacoviak:Told you.
Nick Nisi:\[laughs\] My computers barely have fans.
Jerod Santo:Yeah, I'm not a fan.
Adam Stacoviak:Well, mine can actually heat a room. It doubles as a heater. Or it could if I didn't cool it well enough.
Jerod Santo:That's multitasking right there.
Adam Stacoviak:That's right.
Jerod Santo:Alright. Well, the nice thing about computers is different strokes for different folks, and we can all do what we like, and we can all support each other, in whatever it is we want to do. What are we excited about? I'm excited about getting outside in the spring, and seeing what the world looks like. What about you guys?
Adam Stacoviak:Oh, my gosh...
Nick Nisi:Yeah. We live in the same place, and every year around this time, I'm like "I don't think I can last another minute of this cold weather."
Jerod Santo:It's been bad. It's been rough.
Nick Nisi:It's terrible.
Jerod Santo:It's been windy. Holy cow. I mean, you'd think we live in Chicago with how windy our city has gotten.
Nick Nisi:I got up on my roof yesterday, because some cap over the furnace exhaust thing blew off, and I had to get up there to measure it, to buy a new cap, to then go back up there and put it on... And it was like 50 mile an hour winds yesterday, or something; that's what it felt like up there.
Jerod Santo:A snowcap.
Nick Nisi:My dad was holding the ladder and it was trembling. I was so terrified. I'm not afraid of heights --
Jerod Santo:\[01:21:57.29\] You picked a really bad day to do it.
Nick Nisi:I did.
Jerod Santo:You could have done it today. It's really nice out right now. But yeah, yesterday was miserable.
Nick Nisi:You know what I did? I got up there, I measured...
Jerod Santo:And you fell.
Nick Nisi:No, luckily. I was very close. \[laughter\] I got up there, I measured it, and a roofer came today and put it on, because I wasn't going back up there.
Jerod Santo:You we're going back up there. He picked a much better day. What about you, Adam? What are you excited about?
Adam Stacoviak:Uh, honestly? Golf, man.
Jerod Santo:Golf. Okay. You've been golfing.
Adam Stacoviak:Really getting into the game of golf...
Jerod Santo:Nice.
Adam Stacoviak:It's a great time for it, great weather for it.
Jerod Santo:It's a great game.
Adam Stacoviak:It is a great game. It's a great thinking game... My brother visited recently and I'd forgotten how much I love golf, and he's like -- he loves golf as well, and so we just spent time on the courses, talking, and gabbing, and riding the carts, and planning our shots, and you know, "What are you gonna hit with?" and this and that... And so it's just been fun getting back into golf, man. I mean, it really is a fun game to think through. It's such a mental game, more than it is physical. It's both...
Jerod Santo:It's both, yeah.
Adam Stacoviak:Yeah, very much both. I mean, you can't -- I mean, if you had a disability where you couldn't do golf with legs and arms - I mean, it's challenging. So yeah, it's definitely both physical and mental. You have to be able. I mean, I've got two arms so I can better swing that club, you know?
Jerod Santo:\[laughs\]
Adam Stacoviak:\[unintelligible 01:23:21.01\] if I hit it on the iron properly, and whatnot... But I love golf, I love the mechanics of -- I think like a lot of things, you can find the unique details between certain things, and say "Well, if you're hitting with a wood versus an iron, there's a whole different way you stand, there's a different place the ball might lie, there's a different approach to it..." There's all sorts of different mechanics that go into it. So golf is such a game to play with friends, and such a game to just tour the world with, too. So you can do a lot, man. The next time we travel, Jerod, I'm thinking "Man, we should hit some golf courses up", when we travel next time.
Jerod Santo:Yeah. I always struggle because I'm a lefty, so it's harder to find clubs. But Nick, what were you gonna say?
Nick Nisi:I was going to give you a pro tip that I saw on TikTok.
Jerod Santo:Okay.
Nick Nisi:Next time you go and you really want to just show up all the other golf people - you know those cap guns?
Adam Stacoviak:Yes...
Nick Nisi:Put one on the golf ball, and it'll just make the most amazing \[unintelligible 01:24:28.17\] Smoke will come out...
Adam Stacoviak:What?!
Jerod Santo:Smoke comes out? That'd be cool.
Nick Nisi:Yeah. \[laughs\]
Adam Stacoviak:Yeah, you'll hit that ball really hard, off the tee.
Jerod Santo:I should do that with my kids. Like, not tell them about it... But just because -- you know, sometimes they'll hit balls in our backyard, and just out into the corn tree -- corn trees? That's not a thing. Corn stalks...
Adam Stacoviak:Corn fields...
Jerod Santo:Corn fields, there you go. And I don't play very often, because I don't like to be bad at things, and I'm not very good at golf... But I can go out there and put a cap on it and just explode one, and then just retire, and just never hit again. They'll be like "Did you see how hard dad hit it? The thing was smokin'." That's a good idea. I should get that working.
Adam Stacoviak:Mm-hm.
Jerod Santo:Well, if you like golf, Adam, let me suggest a close alternative. It's called disc golf.
Nick Nisi:Yes...!
Adam Stacoviak:Oh, gosh...
Jerod Santo:Now, here's the pitch for disc golf. All of the upsides of golf, none of the downsides. Alright? Here are the upsides of golf. You're outdoors on a nice day. Check. You're with friends. You get the conversations. Check. You get to have some sort of challenge mentally, physically, and you're throwing a Frisbee instead of hitting a golf ball. Check. Alright? Here are the downsides that you avoid. It's not that hard. Golf is very hard. You get frustrated. The ball goes sideways etc. It's cheap. Cheap as in free. There's no tee times, there's no signing up, you don't have to dress real nice... You can go shirtless, you can go shoeless if you want to. Nobody cares. It's disc golf.
Nick Nisi:\[01:26:08.29\] Do you have to buy discs?
Jerod Santo:You have to buy discs, but compared to golf clubs, it's cheap. And a round of 18 on a nice golf course, we're talking - what? 60, 70, 100 bucks per round.
Adam Stacoviak:Yeah.
Jerod Santo:What are the other downsides? The etiquette's pretty much gone. You know, golf has all the rules, all the etiquette, you've gotta do things right, don't do them wrong...
Adam Stacoviak:Really?
Jerod Santo:Fix your divots... Oh, yeah. Do you know all the etiquette?
Adam Stacoviak:I mean --
Jerod Santo:You better learn some.
Adam Stacoviak:It's called common courtesy, you know...
Jerod Santo:No, there's specific etiquette in golf. It's not just common courtesy. It's like, you wouldn't know that if you weren't a golfer. Here's the only downside of disc golf, is you've got to hang out with stoners pretty much, because they're the ones out there disc-golfing, you know? \[laughs\] It's like you and a bunch of hippies, but... They're good people. They're very chill. They'll let you play through. So... Disc golf. Give that a shot.
Adam Stacoviak:It's like frisbee?
Jerod Santo:It's frisbees. Yeah.
Adam Stacoviak:What happens if I'm throwing it here and it goes way over there?
Jerod Santo:You've gotta walk over there and -- just like golf. You've gotta go over there and throw it from there.
Adam Stacoviak:See, I'm pretty decent at golf. I can hit it on the fairway. \[laughter\] I'm not that good at frisbee, that's for sure. However though, when I was young --
Jerod Santo:Everyone's talking about frisbee.
Adam Stacoviak:...I'm talking about really young, I wanted to be a pro-fessional. And you can't say "a professional." You've gotta say pro-fessional.
Nick Nisi:I thought you said proficional.
Jerod Santo:I thought too it was gonna to be like a fisherman. Profishional.
Adam Stacoviak:Professional.
Jerod Santo:Professional. Lawyer.
Adam Stacoviak:No, man. Frisbee player.
Jerod Santo:Oh, really?
Adam Stacoviak:Yeah.
Jerod Santo:Like ultimate frisbee?
Adam Stacoviak:Skipping it off the ground twice into your hands, you know? Skipping off the ground twice through the hoop.
Jerod Santo:Now, there is a pro tour --
Adam Stacoviak:You know, catching it under the leg.
Jerod Santo:There's a disc golf pro tour. This dream could be alive.
Adam Stacoviak:No, listen, the dream is dead. The dream's dead.
Nick Nisi:Isn't MKBHD -- isn't h on like a pro...
Adam Stacoviak:MKBHD is a professional frisbee --
Jerod Santo:That's ultimate frisbee, right?
Adam Stacoviak:Ultimate frisbee, right, Jerod.
Jerod Santo:Yeah. Good game.
Adam Stacoviak:Which basically means there's no rules. There's no rules, and they put gorillas in the --
Jerod Santo:Now, he's also hanging out with stoners, because... Ultimate frisbee is one of those games that --
Adam Stacoviak:Yeah.
Jerod Santo:They're hanging out in the common area at the university, you know...
Adam Stacoviak:What is this podcast?
Nick Nisi:\[laughs\]
Jerod Santo:Alright, let's call it a show. Let us know in the comments which is better, golf or disc golf? Or what Nick does, which is he just wakes up at 5 a.m. and rides a bike for two hours. Isn't that your thing?
Nick Nisi:Yeah, I want to, but I'm becoming such a baby with the cold weather.
Jerod Santo:Oh, yeah, well... It's your time, man. It's your time.
Adam Stacoviak:So you go out there and bike in the cold for two hours, or what's your -- you're a bicycle guy?
Nick Nisi:Yeah, I try and get -- when I'm not being a baby about the weather, I try and get 20 miles in before my kids wake up.
Jerod Santo:Dang.
Adam Stacoviak:20 miles in.
Jerod Santo:That's about two hours, right? Or a little less...
Nick Nisi:80 minutes or so is what it takes me.
Jerod Santo:Yeah.
Nick Nisi:I live right next to a trail, so it's very easy. And there's no wind in the mornings I've found, so it's really good.
Jerod Santo:Nice.
Adam Stacoviak:Interesting. Why don't you just get yourself a Peloton, or something like that?
Nick Nisi:Oh, it's so boring.
Jerod Santo:Nature.
Adam Stacoviak:Really?
Nick Nisi:Yeah, I actually traded my stationary bike for a rowing machine... Much happier.
Adam Stacoviak:Yeah, I'm long Peloton. \[laughter\]
Jerod Santo:He ain't lying.
Adam Stacoviak:Is that a funny joke, Jerod?
Jerod Santo:It is funny.
Adam Stacoviak:How long have I been long? I've been long Peloton for a very long time.
Jerod Santo:Yeah, you have.
Adam Stacoviak:I've been so long that they're like "Nah, we're just done."
Jerod Santo:They said "So long" to you.
Adam Stacoviak:"We're done. We're done with this. We've gotta quit, because this guy's just not stopping." \[laughter\]
Jerod Santo:Alright. Well, this show's getting long, too. Let's say goodbye. Nick, thanks for hanging out, man. It's always fun.
Nick Nisi:Yeah. It was a blast. Thank you.
Adam Stacoviak:So good, Nick. Bye, friends.
Jerod Santo:Bye, friends.