INIT

Episode 8: How Long Is This Going To Take??

Published: Tue, Jun 27, 2023

(Auto-Generated) Episode Transcript:

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

Jake Pacheco: I'm Jake Pacheco. I have been a barber for about six years, and I've been programming for about nine weeks now.

Seth Whiting: About nine.

Jake Pacheco: About nine. It was eight last podcast. And then I went to Vegas for a week and skipped a week, and now it's nine.

Seth Whiting: What what happened in Vegas? Or just that stay in Vegas, that mostly stays there.

Jake Pacheco: No, no, that's I, I, I, I got covid and stayed in bed most of the time, actually. Oh,

Seth Whiting: yeah. What happens in Vegas stays in the bed of your hotel room in Vegas. Yes, exactly. Alone. Alone.

Jake Pacheco: It was fine. I lost a thousand dollars and got sick,

Seth Whiting: walked in bed.

Jake Pacheco: Vegas, baby. I've had five trips to Vegas and one went bad. I, that's, that's, those are good odds. I think.

Seth Whiting: That's, I would think that's one of the more successful trips to Vegas. Yeah. I mean, yeah. Every

Jake Pacheco: other time I went, I came back up, so I'm, it was, it was fine. But that being said, Probably wises to not gamble with your health or your money, otherwise you'll be looking at the, down the, the barrel of a career change at 31.

Yeah.

Seth Whiting: You were gambling with your health. Were you just like licking the plane seats? Yeah. On the way there and

Jake Pacheco: No, I mean, I, I honestly think the the straw that broke the camel's back with that was that I left and our first flight got delayed by about five or six hours, and therefore I stayed up that first day.

I got one hour of sleep in about 42

Seth Whiting: hours. Yikes. So that's like, not enough sleep. And I, I think that, that

Jake Pacheco: like really, I think that really it's not, yeah. Yeah. So then like pretty much the day after I'm like, my throat's a little scratchy and then like two days later I was like, I can't move. My head hurts.

Everything hurts. Yeah. So, hey, Covid still a thing. Yeah. But

Seth Whiting: three years later, yeah. Yeah.

Jake Pacheco: Three years later, it's still a thing. I hope we just stop it at some point. Yeah. But, but yeah, it

Seth Whiting: is what it is gonna do anyways. Yeah.

Jake Pacheco: How, how about you, how was your week? Pretty good.

Seth Whiting: Pretty much the same.

Mm-hmm. It's very similar. Mm-hmm. Yeah. No, no, it was fine. Nothing, nothing super crazy. No one, my one daughter had her fifth birthday party that was, that was the highlight I guess. And pretty much nothing else happened the rest of the week, so, yeah. Well, yeah. Happy birthday to her

Jake Pacheco: and I'm happy to hear that no one, you know, lost a thousand dollars and got covid at your house, so That's good.

Seth Whiting: Yeah. Not that I know of, but it's fair, you know, any given night, it's very possible. A lot of,

Jake Pacheco: there's quite a few children at this point and a south and ferry. It's, yeah. Yeah. So yeah, today basically we're going to be talking about, it's gonna be slightly unscripted. I, and not exactly a tutorial type of type of podcast today, just cause I'm still, you know, I'm like, I, I've, I've maybe coded for six hours in the last

Seth Whiting: two weeks, which is not

Jake Pacheco: great, but I'm, I'm getting back into it.

Did some last night and plan on doing some tonight as, as well as the podcast. So I just have some random questions basically for Seth and he's gonna kind of try to do his best to answer them for us and give us his thoughts on a few of them,

Seth Whiting: I suppose. Yeah. So you're, you're getting into to HTML now.

Yeah. That's exciting. Mm-hmm.

Jake Pacheco: Yeah. Yeah. I actually was I. Kind of wrote a piece of my first page, and maybe I'll post that at some point so people can see.

Seth Whiting: Take, take a screenshot.

Jake Pacheco: Yeah. I had fun with it. They were like, yeah, we're gonna like, you know, you, you make your own personal page. And they showed us like these different, like really high esteemed like coders that have like these html pages that look super basic.

And they're like, so yeah, we're gonna do the same thing and write like these like super basic webpage that it's all about you. And I, I just, I, I, I named the page Siki and I I, I, I, yeah, I had fun with it. That, and I, I, I learned a few things and I, I, I kind of in, in a way taught myself how to put a insert a picture into it.

And I, I felt very proud about that.

Seth Whiting: Yeah, it's always fun like when you're, when you're just like messing around with code. To just like, make it as stupid as possible. Just like if you have like like a list of like people's names that you have to like mock up. Yeah. Just come up with like the dumbest, like, like, like most nonsensical names you can think of.

Just because like you're, because you can put on a page one name slug, like it's, yeah. Yeah. Just put like beef meat, mc cheeses or something like that. Yeah, exactly.

Jake Pacheco: Yeah. It was, it was funny cuz I was doing this and like being like, You know, a silly goose while I was doing a and I look over and Chelsea's my girlfriend Chelsea, she's like writing this like really beautiful page about like our, like reptile companies.

Like, it was like really, like eloquent and put together and, and I'm just like,

and that's so, you know, I don't know what that says about our future, but, we'll, we'll see.

Seth Whiting: Yeah, the, like, the one drawback is you hear a lot of stories about people. Putting in like dummy data like that, like just like stupid stuff and like, just putting in like tons of like profanities and stuff, just because it's like fun.

Yeah. And then it like, goes into production and like people see it, oh no. Like get fired and stuff. Like, oh man, really accident happened. Oh yeah. Like a lot.

Jake Pacheco: I kinda love that. That's happened a lot though. Like in a way it gives, it, it gives it gives programmers a personality. I didn't know that it had Yeah. You know? Yeah. They, they're just, they're just, you know, yeah. A bunch of silly geese just doing their job. Yeah.

Seth Whiting: Yeah. Yeah,

Jake Pacheco: like I, I think one of the things I had was hair cutter turned button pusher.

And that's like what I'm kind of going for. That's my, that's my aesthetic from now on. Yeah.

But yeah, so I've been learning HTML and that's been ki it's been fun. It's, I I see why they don't really why some people don't really classify it as like a language so much as a, is like an organization tool, I'd say.

Yeah. Which I think that's a relatively accurate in, unless you don't think so. And

Seth Whiting: then well, yeah. Not it's, it's, it's a markup language, you know, it's hyper text markup language and there's like markup languages are just like how things show up on a page. And then there's like programming languages, which is like how things like work, like Yeah.

The logic behind things. Yeah. So it's the

Jake Pacheco: actual like brain of the organism or something. Yeah. Except for, it's not an organism cuz it's an, an organic thing, but maybe the most inorganic thing. But yeah, so I, I, I had a question about that though. Like with, because HTML seems like so far anyways, very like.

You can just pick it up. It's, it's pretty darn straightforward. Like, it it, right. It's super intuitive and it's just like, oh, this

Seth Whiting: obviously does this? Yeah. Is CSS similar to that or, oh, yeah. Css, like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's, it's, it's similar in the sense that you can just pick it up and, yeah. And like, that's why I had you start with JavaScript because like, you can't really just pick it up and like, in order to use JavaScript, you need to know HTML and css.

Mm-hmm. So like, it's, to me it was like, learn those just out of necessity, but learn JavaScript because that's like the, the real goal, you know? Yeah. That I was wanting you to work toward. Oh. Well, I feel

Jake Pacheco: like it, like the knowing that JavaScript really like makes you actually like valuable. Like, versus like if I, if I just knew how to like, you know, put words on a page and make them pretty Yeah.

Like it's nots as much value or mm-hmm.

Seth Whiting: Can you just work on fun without that? You, you can, like, there are people who, like, if you know, like all of like the deep dark secrets of HTML and CSS and like, you know everything about them, then mm-hmm. You could be very valuable to somebody, but you can do 99% of everything by just knowing, you know, like the basics and like, I would say but the basics only cover, you know, sort of like the tip of the iceberg.

But yeah, it, it seemed

Jake Pacheco: that way. They were showing different different Mm. Brain fart. Like HTML tags. Yeah. And they were, and it, like, they were like, these are what you're probably gonna end up using is this many. And it's, it's like maybe like 13 or 14 or something like that. It's not, it's not a ton.

Yeah. They're like, but this is how many exist. And it's like there's like, it quite, there's, I don't know, at least the screen that I saw, it looked like there was like, maybe like three times as many or four times

Seth Whiting: as many or something. Yeah. It's more css like Yeah. With css there are a lot of like properties that you could know, but like wouldn't, wouldn't necessarily need in like, you know, 99.99, nine 9% of maybe not your, your day to day or whatever.

Yeah. And like you could totally get by without ever knowing them. Mm-hmm. And then there are a lot of like tricky things that you can do with c s s. It's, it's pretty, it gets pretty interesting. There's like a, I, I remember seeing this webpage a long time ago where it's like you have like one diviv on the page, you know?

So you know what a div is by now? It's Yeah. That, like one of the, like that it's the most popular, I guess, popular. The, the most used HTML tag, you know, on a webpage is a div. So I think the site was called like one diviv.com, or at least like the title of the, the site was just one diviv and it was just a bunch of examples of what people can do with just CSS and one diviv, and it's like pretty crazy.

They can make like full on like pieces of art with like just one div. And then attaching a bunch of CSS to it that like Huh, does a bunch of stuff that just

Jake Pacheco: stylize the heck out of it.

Seth Whiting: Yeah. And like if you, if you, I guess like it's more impressive if you've done CSS for a while. Mm-hmm. But if you, if you don't really know like the ins and outs of css, then it's just like, like, oh, that's interesting that somebody can do a lot of stuff with that.

But if, if you've worked with CSS for like a few years, even like, you know, if you're pretty good at CSS and then you go visit that page, you'd be like, what? Like how did they do that? That's insane. Yeah. So I don't know. Right. Just some, some interesting thing, like you can do a lot of trickery and you can know a lot of like really deep things and if you do, then you could be very valuable to somebody at some point.

Yeah. But it's like more of like a sure thing. If, you know, like JavaScript and HTML and css. Yeah. Yeah.

Jake Pacheco: It'd be easier to get into the doors. Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. Now I was curious because the way that I ended up putting a picture into my page was basically I just went to whatever I, I googled a picture of monitor lizards and mm-hmm.

Right click the picture and I was like, inspect. And then I copied the, that Yeah. Piece and, and pasted it in my body. Yeah. Yeah. And I was curious if. You can do the same thing with like, if it's gonna be the same with like c CSS in the sense where if I see like a a piece of a page, like mm-hmm.

Like I'm looking at the share button on my Google Docs right now. Mm-hmm. And it's like blue and it has a little guy on it and it's a share. And if I like right click that inspect, can I just copy that and put it on my page? Is that like a thing that people do or like where they just like take pieces off of other people's pages or whatever?

Or is that like, is, I don't know. Is that not how it works? I feel

Seth Whiting: like, I haven't run into that much. Like I don't do that and I don't really know people who do that. Mostly just because like HTML and CSRs are like easy enough. To just write it. To just write then. Mm-hmm. You know, that, like, it would pretty much take you as long to write what you're trying to write as it would to like copy and paste it almost.

Okay. Yeah.

Jake Pacheco: Yeah. I was just curious if it was like a thing that people did like, oh, I really like that dropdown menu. I'm

Seth Whiting: gonna, yeah. I mean, it's definitely something you can do. One thing that I do a lot is with the HTML and css, if I am trying to just like, do little tweaks to the css. Mm-hmm. Like, oh, I wonder what the, like, basically like, oh, this spacing looks a bit off.

But I don't want to like, update my CSS and then reload the page to see it. I can just inspect the element that I'm mm-hmm. Working on. Yeah. And then just like, adjust the margin or adjust the padding within the, the like chrome dev tools and it'll do it in real time. Oh, it, it'll,

Jake Pacheco: it'll go backwards to your actual file.

You're working No, no, no. So

Seth Whiting: or what? Once, once I get the, the value that I want. Yeah. And then I go back to, then you put it on that

Jake Pacheco: CSS and put the value in that. That's clever. So you can kind of like write it in real time just to see like what it looks like. Because like, I, I, I remember I, yeah. The, the whole thing where like you could, you know, inspect something and then you could like change the headline of your, of your page and stuff.

Mm-hmm. Which I've already had a bit of fun with that at, at work, because we have a work computer and like, I just keep tabs open with like uhhuh. Funny things about the barbers there or whatever. They're usually pretty insulting,

Seth Whiting: you know, it's, it's a barbershop,

Jake Pacheco: what do you Exactly. It's, it's mostly about another barber Pete who, who's like a, a bit older than us, and it's always about his age, pretty much.

They found the oldest, the oldest shoes ever, and it's like a thousand years old. And it's like they're said to be Pete's or something like that, you know, really just

Seth Whiting: uhhuh simple stuff.

Jake Pacheco: But yeah. So I noticed that, that you're like, you know, obviously like change it in real time on the page that you're looking at.

Mm-hmm. Anyways and when you reload, it goes back to, it reverts back to what you had before. Right. But that makes sense that you could like change it right there and you can see. The actual change happened, which is, yeah, I didn't even think about using it like that. That's, that's

Seth Whiting: cool, huh? Yeah, I don't, I don't do it super often, but like, whenever I need to just make small adjustments, like it's a huge time saver.

Yeah. Yeah. That's wicked cool, huh? Yeah. I used to do it a lot more when I was making like WordPress sites. Yeah. Yeah. But now, like, when you're working on like apps the styling isn't quite as like crucial. Mm-hmm. You know, you can just do like an approximation and if it looks good then, then it's good enough basically.

Yeah. Nobody really cares about like like they call it pixel Perfect. So like if you have like a design file, like a A P D F or a P S D, which is like a Photoshop file like that a designer gives you and they say, we want like you to recreate this in like a pixel perfect representation. Then like, basically that means like we want all of the spacing to be like exactly how it is on the design file and all of the fonts to be the exact right.

You know, size and the like, letter spacing and line heights. There's like a, a bunch of things to like take into account when you're, when you're doing that. Yeah. And that's what I used to do is like just get things perfect. But now, now I'm not doing too much of that. I'm more making like the functionality.

Good. Yeah.

Jake Pacheco: What do you do? Do you like. That more? Or do you

Seth Whiting: like this more? Do you think I like this more? I like making useful things. Yeah.

Jake Pacheco: Yeah. Instead of just making like a, they did a feel before like you were kind of making it, but Yeah. Yeah. Like just a pretty thing or like a, almost like, just more of like a presentation kind of a

Seth Whiting: thing.

Yeah. I, I, I definitely feel a lot more like fulfillment, doing things, like making useful tools for people. Mm-hmm. Some people, some people don't, you know, some people love just, you know, making the pretty things. Yeah.

Jake Pacheco: I, I was gonna, I was gonna ask that because like Chelsea was saying that she like really enjoys like, like, And is really interested in the design aspect of it.

Yeah. And like, making things look cool and all that stuff. Mm-hmm. I guess that would be a question then, because like, I, like I'm more interested in the functionality of things in general. That's always how I've been. Yeah.

Seth Whiting: Like

Jake Pacheco: even when it comes to working on cars, I'm much, I'm much better engine guy than I am a body guy.

Mm-hmm. Like, I, I, I enjoy, that's, I like the mechanical part. I like to like figure out why, why, what does what and why this has to be this way. Mm-hmm. But like, yeah. And she was saying that she's more interested in like the styling and stuff. Would the, would her path be any different than mine in the sense of like, learning all the JavaScript and stuff?

Or would you like send her

Seth Whiting: down a different road with that? It depends. I mean, like, if she finds more enjoyment out of that stuff, mm-hmm. Like, she could even go down the path of not coding and doing design. Like doing like, it, it could be cool to have her be like the designer of the stuff that you're building, you know, like she Yeah.

Makes it like look good and then you write the code that makes it look like what she made it look like. Yeah. And if she, if she wanted to go down, like the design path, Then there's, you know, I'm like, just as many tutorials out there for things like Photoshop or Figma. Figma is like the big one right now.

Yeah. Where it's it's like Photoshop, but it's free and it's in your web browser. So anybody, anybody can like, access it and get good at it. And that's like what a lot of developers prefer to like work with, where like, if they get a design from a designer, they would kind of prefer that it was designed in Figma because they have, it's like very developer friendly to like get access to all of like the, the styles and everything that they need in order to, to write it out.

Yeah. But if sh, if she does like the coding aspect of it and just likes the likes to write code, but make it like, Look good, like write code for the visual aesthetic part. Mm-hmm. Of like a webpage. I would say go like the WordPress route. Yeah. That, that would be a really good, good route to take because

Jake Pacheco: WordPress would be kind of like the you know, like, cause we had talked a bit about this, how it's more of like a,

Seth Whiting: A software that, that

Jake Pacheco: helps you create a webpage, but then you can also do your own customize, like in, customize it yourself in in using code and stuff.

Would that too, right. And would that, would you be using like CSS and stuff to like, you know, make it more your own

Seth Whiting: kind of thing? Yeah. So WordPress is written in P H P, mm-hmm. Which is a, a language that is basically, it works on the server. And then puts all of your markup stuff together with sorry, let me start over here cuz I'm, I'm not explaining it well.

So p h P stands for Personal Homepage and it was written by a guy who was making a blog and it, it was just like, I, I'm making this blog. I, I want to update my blog without having to write into my, like, actual code base every time I update my blog. Mm-hmm. So instead of like writing all of my like paragraph and header tags in in like a different H T M L page in like a folder and just have like a ton of folders with a ton of pages.

Instead I want to just have a reusable template. That I can switch out the header whenever I want and switch out the, like body of the, the blog post that I, that I'm writing whenever I want. So that all I need to do is write the content but not write code every single time. Yeah. So there's like, you write the code once and you leave little placeholders within the code to plug in the header or plug in the body, whatever.

And so WordPress is built on top of that and just makes a lot of use of that and has its own like graphical user interface for people to just type in like text fields that plug into those little placeholders that I was talking about. Yeah. Yeah. So, so P H P. Is just H T M L with like placeholders for like dynamic values basically.

And it, it grabs the content, shoves it into those placeholders, and then spits out an HTML page Hmm. Onto the, onto the browser. So it does all of that, like plugging on the server and then spits it out onto the, onto the browser. Huh, interesting.

And because it's like really good for, for just like dynamic content, it, but it's, it, at the end of the day, it is just web pages.

It's not, it's not apps, it's not like Yeah. Like an admin panel for, you know, some industry or whatever that like, you know, you're, you're entering a ton of data and like stuff is updating in real time, like Yeah. You know, calculating and like, Creating and updating and deleting records all day and, and whatnot, like or like posting things like tweets or, or Facebook posts or whatever.

Yeah. It's not like that where it's like user generated content being fed in, into a database and being displayed. Yeah. It's more just like one user who is like the administrator of this website is plugging in this stuff. It's not like anybody can just come in and plug in stuff. So it's more of like a, a news article?

Yeah, in a way. It could be a news article, it could be somebody's personal webpage where they, like they can update their, like resume stuff. Yeah. Like whenever they have like a new job, they can just update it, you know, in, in like an admin panel kind of thing. Like the word press admin panel. And and blogs, you know, it's, it's really good for blogs.

Yeah.

Jake Pacheco: Yeah. I've seen like so many blogs with dot wordpress.com or

Seth Whiting: whatever. Yeah. So when, so I just, for like a, a little history on me, I worked at two different, marketing firms that I was just making WordPress sites for them. And they, they would, they would work with companies that needed their own websites and it's just like, Hey, we're this like construction company and we wanna like, get the word out about all of our services and everything we need like a good looking website.

So they would come to these. Marketing firms that I was working with. And it would go through this whole cycle of, okay, we need to figure out like your brand and then come up with like your logo and then we'll put that logo on like a design for a webpage, and then we'll send that design of your webpage to our coders and they'll code it up into an actual website.

And yeah. So,

Jake Pacheco: A question cuz I was, this actually feeds right into it cause I had this question queued up for a little bit now it's just that like, so when someone doesn't a webpage, I, I guess I didn't know, understand that there's a distinction between designing a webpage and. Creating a webpage.

Mm-hmm. Like with code, I, I, I, now it's clicking that, it's like no. Yeah. Okay. So there's a designer that makes it, okay, this is what I want it to look like. This is what, where all the frills are and stuff, and this is what it's gonna do. Yes. And then there's a person that literally like, just codes it and makes it actually happen.

Yes. And that's a

Seth Whiting: job just to design it too. Yeah. Like, huh. Yeah. Yeah. I just, I had no idea. Huh. Yeah. And I, I think designers make a decent amount of money. Yeah. I, I don't know. I don't know. I cuz I, I have never like, worked as a designer. Mm-hmm. But I think that they make like, somewhat comparable mm-hmm.

To, to developers. Probably not as much, but like, It's, yeah. You can definitely make a living out of, like, designing, designing, especially for like companies, you know Yeah. Who have money to put towards marketing. Like they have marketing budgets, basically. Yeah.

Jake Pacheco: Yeah. Is it a, is it as competitive, do you think, as as like the programming market?

As far as like, as far as getting into it? Is it,

Seth Whiting: it's competitive as difficult, you think? Yeah. I, I don't, I don't know, and I can definitely, like, I have so many designer friends that I could mm-hmm. You know, like we could get one on the show if we wanted to. Yeah. But but I could definitely have Chelsea talk to any of them.

Yeah. And th there are like there's a firm in. Lewiston called Anchor, A N C H O U R. Shout out to anchor. They're, they're great. They do great work. And that's where I used to work doing WordPress sites for them, and they've got great designers and they they're nice and would totally take any phone call.

Cool. Yeah, that's awesome. Or get coffee or whatever. Yeah. But but yeah, so. Yes. So you design, you design them and then somebody writes the code for them. And there, you know, there's a lot of like creativity that you can do with like, taking somebody's design and making it making it look really good, but also like, function.

Well. There, there are things that you can do to like, animate stuff on the page, which is always a lot of fun and like, gives you like a lot of like satisfaction. Yeah. You know? Yeah. Like, oh, instead of like having this button that's just blue like when you click on it, it's gonna like shimmer, you know?

And like Yeah. Yeah. Ripple from left to right or whatever. Yeah. There's, there's some like, fun stuff that you can do there. One, maybe

Jake Pacheco: the wildest webpage that I've been on is my favorite band, animal Collective. Their website is like, Wild. It's crazy. Yeah, it's pretty, it's pretty wild to me. It, anyways, I don't know, just looking at it cuz like it's like at least.

It was, I don't know if they changed it since, but it's like this, like this tunnel of like it almost looks like a play stage or something like that where there's like a bunch of different sheets of background uhhuh and like each one you click through it like spreads apart and like you go through like this Yeah.

I don't know, this whole scene. And you like keep clicking through it until you get to like their main page or whatever. And it was just like, oh cool. Yeah. I was like, I was like, this is what the heck, like this isn't, this isn't a webpage

Seth Whiting: anymore. This is an art experiment. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I mean, you, you could totally do like art on a webpage for

Jake Pacheco: sure.

Yeah. That's cool. That, that's cool. And I think that that would be something that she would definitely be maybe even more interested in. Yeah. Just cause it's, you know, I, we all have to work with what our, how our brains work. Yeah. You know what I mean? Like, it's like, if, if something isn't singing to you, then don't make it sing to you.

Like, like, oh, well maybe this would work better. Yeah, yeah,

Seth Whiting: for sure. Yeah. Just like what? Like if you. Find something that you enjoy. And you can make a sustainable, like living out of it. Do that. Yeah, yeah. Exactly. Exactly. Don't do the other thing. Don't do the other thing. Do the thing that you like. Do the thing you like.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And that was sort of a thing with, with WordPress development for me. Like I was in it for like three years and like the whole time I was like, I, I like, this isn't, this isn't what I wanted to do. You know? Yeah. Yeah. So I was just like, I was in it and I was like trying to get out of it like the whole time.

Yeah.

Jake Pacheco: Basically. Now, was that kind of hard, like, because like say you were making like decent money, like was it like kind of hard to be like, how do I transition without like losing funding in a way? Because it's, it's kind of a roll of the dice to try to like, Transition, I'd assume, or, or, yeah. Or is it, is it, is it normal for someone at one company to just be like, throwing out a ton of applications to other companies constantly?

Is that, is that normal in the programming world? I know people switched out quite a

Seth Whiting: bit. I think I, I mean, I think I, I wouldn't, I wouldn't put it past them. Like I, I wouldn't think that it would be abnormal. Yeah. That, that, I haven't really done that. A lot of it's like a lot of opportunities have just kind of like fallen into my lap, luckily.

Yeah. Nice. So but and, and also like when I got out of the WordPress stuff, I was at a place where like, I I, I think, what was I doing? I, I think, yeah, I think I was like, just like living at home with my parents. Yeah. So like I, if I didn't have a job for a bit, like it wasn't a big deal and like I was working on a project with a friend, like a startup kind of thing.

And I don't think that I was like getting paid. I was kind of like working with like the promise of like a payoff at, at the end of it. Mm-hmm. And it never came, but I was like learning a ton. Yeah. It was, yeah, it was a huge learning experience. Yeah. So I don't know. Anyway. Yeah.

Jake Pacheco: Anyway. Yeah. I, I was just curious about that.

Now I wanted to get a little bit into like freelancing as well. Mm-hmm. And that versus kind of what you do now because it sounds like the way that I've been describing your job, when I talk about any of this is like, it's kind of a. Worker placement company kind of a thing. Or, or something similar to that where it's like Uhhuh, someone comes to your company with a project and they'll put you on the job kind of a thing.

Yeah. Is that, is that kind of a, a decent description of what you do

Seth Whiting: currently? Not currently. That, that's what I was doing, like immediately before what I'm doing now. Okay. All right. But yes, I, I was doing that for maybe three years. Yeah. Maybe another, another three year stint. Yeah.

Now,

Jake Pacheco: what was that company That Toptal.

Seth Whiting: Toptal? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Jake Pacheco: Yeah. And now you're working for

Seth Whiting: who? It's a company called E C P, and they're, they're out of Wisconsin, and they make administration software for assisted living communities. Hmm. Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's pretty random. Yeah. But like, basically like, I needed a job that had benefits because Sherry is thinking of stopping working.

Yeah. So and we get all of our benefits through her company. Yeah. And like we were sort of on the fence whether or not she was gonna quit, but I was like, just in case I should get a job with benefits. And yeah. The project that I was working on had like, run up, like the, the time had come to like, roll off of it.

Yeah. And so I was like, rather than get another like gig basically Yeah. For, for a year or whatever. Yeah. And not have healthcare, I'm just gonna apply to a bunch of places to Yeah. You know, to get that. Yeah. Basically it's just like to get healthcare. That's the main reason. And Cuz we live in America.

Yeah. It's a, it's a big

Jake Pacheco: old deal trying to get healthcare. Yeah. So when you did that if I can ask, like, how many applications did you put out? Like when it, when, because like I've, I've heard like kind of nightmare stories about people putting out like 600 applications, getting like 10 replies and then one interview

Seth Whiting: Yeah.

Or something like that. Yeah, that's a good question. I, I was, I was applying to like, dream jobs and getting rejected. But the one that I ended up with just they contacted me basically. Oh, cool. And they, they had like a, they, they were working with a recruiter. Mm-hmm. And a recruiter contacted me and normally I just ignore them because they contact you constantly.

Mm-hmm. But I was like in a place where like, I. Could talk to somebody. Yeah. So I was like, okay, tell me more. And like, it sounded interesting enough and, and all of that. And like the, the, the pay and the benefits sounded decent, so I was like, okay, yeah. Try it. Sounds good. Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. That, but like, the cool thing about the company that I'm at now is like, so, and, and this, this may tie into like something that you may have wanted to ask me later, but this is mm-hmm.

I may be getting ahead of myself a little bit, but the, the freelancing stuff I was working on a couple different projects through Toptal. Mm-hmm. And the, the nature of the projects that I was working on were, start with nothing.

Give us a, a high level overview of like how long you think this thing will take. And like what all the features you think we, we need are and hire a team, like interview all the whole dev team and work on it from start to like M V P. Have you heard of that, that term in, in terms of like startups and stuff?

No. MVP stands for minimum viable product. Okay. Which just means like the first iteration of a product that is like as, as small and does as little as possible in order to still be valuable to a customer. But whenever you start working on this stuff, the, the people who hire you always have like a, a very unrealistic.

Vision of what an, what the minimum viable product is that they're always like, we want it to do everything right out of the gate or else it needs to do a back flip. Yeah. Can't do needs to do triple kick flip. Yeah. And right now, or we're out. Yeah. Yeah. We need Tony hot. Yeah. Yeah. And Rodney Mullin

Jake Pacheco: at, at 70 years old killing it.

Seth Whiting: I'm not sure what we're talking about anymore. If they're

Jake Pacheco: the right listener, they'll get it. You're probably still the right listener. If you don't understand

Seth Whiting: the minds of Seth and Rick, you're always the right listener. Yeah. You're the listener was always right to us. So we had. Like we had to like, give a quote for like how long we think it would take.

And it was always wrong. It was always like double what we quoted them. Yeah. Like we did our best. Like Yeah. That, that mostly fell on me cuz like I was the guy who like would've known how long each of the stuff would take. But the thing is like when you're quoting out a project from, from beginning to M V P, that's like several, like hundred features that you're, or I guess like several hundred like tasks that you're, that you need to complete.

And the only way to like accurately estimate all of that is to break down every single task and estimate every single task. Like accurately. Yeah. So like, it's just not gonna happen. So anyway, the point of everything that I'm trying to say is like, It was always like, our butts were under the fire the whole time.

Yeah. And like we, we had to just like go, go, go. Like we, we said we were gonna get it done by this time, it's already past that time. We just need to like, we really need to like get this out as soon as possible. Yeah. And on top of that, they're always like adding more to the M V P, you know, like Yeah.

Adding more stuff to it that as we're going and like, it's just like hectic. And the, the job that I'm at now is like a full-time gig where we're just like working on a single product that that's like one of, one of many of their products. And like, it's not even released yet. So like, and, and we're not, like, we don't even have like a hard and fast release date.

Mm-hmm. So like, I'm able to just like, Take my time and like craft good code and like automate processes that like I wouldn't have the time to do before. Mm-hmm. You know, like I wouldn't have time to just like do the things that I think we should be doing. It's just like, yeah. Do the things that we absolutely need right now.

Yeah. But right now I'm able to kind of like, take it a bit easier and do the things that I, I think we should be doing, which is yeah. A, a good, a good feeling.

Jake Pacheco: Yeah. That sounds a bit stressful in the, the freelance market. I mean, it, it sounds, it sounds a bit yeah, I mean, being under the gun all the time doesn't sound comfortable.

Really? You mean, or like feeling, feeling like you're constantly out of time.

Seth Whiting: Yeah. I don't, I don't think that every job is like that. Mm-hmm. I, I think it was like the nature of the jobs that we were doing where like we were. Starting with a client that had nothing and, and, you know, giving them something.

Yeah. There's I'm sure a million freelance jobs out there that are like, the product is already there. We just need somebody to come on and like, you know Yeah.

Jake Pacheco: Work on add this, yeah. Add this

Seth Whiting: functionality or something. Yeah. Yeah. Uhhuh. Interesting. So do you prefer

Jake Pacheco: what you're doing now versus

Seth Whiting: the freelance stuff?

I mean, I really liked the freelance stuff. Like, I, I liked that I had such a big say in like, how everything was done and like I, I love taking something from nothing and making something. Yeah, that's cool. Like something really cool. Yeah. But. At this point in my life, like we just had our third kid.

So like any kind of like slowing down is welcome. Yeah. Yeah.

Jake Pacheco: I, I, I could definitely see that. Yeah. Yeah, I, I guess that would definitely I mean that, that kind of flows into the next thing, which is like like we've talked quite a bit about like motivators being like the financial gains of all of this.

Mm-hmm. And the, you know, we touched on a few other, like

Seth Whiting: non-monetary

Jake Pacheco: motivators. Mm-hmm. But, but I wanted to talk a little bit more extensive about those things because yeah, some people might not be completely motivated by like, oh, I'm gonna make a better future for myself or something. Or, or rather maybe financially.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Maybe their quote unquote, better future for themselves isn't, doesn't have to do with finances, it has to do with like free time or things like that. Yeah. Yeah.

Seth Whiting: So

Jake Pacheco: yeah, I, I guess what are, what are some things that you found that you're like, like when someone shows interest in it, like I did with you, like when I was like, oh, like I'm thinking of learning

Seth Whiting: this, like seriously.

Jake Pacheco: What are some things where you're like, ah, you'll like this because these things kind of thing.

Seth Whiting: Yeah. You know? Yeah. I so the, the biggest, I would say the biggest non-monetary motivator for learning how to code is just the, the fact that you can do it from anywhere. You, it. It's nice to have like three monitors and, and all of that kind of stuff.

Like a, a like a suite setup and everything with a desk and everything, but you don't need that. And you can totally just work from a laptop and build, you know, something awesome. And the fact that you can do that and just like go work at like a coffee shop that's like one of my favorite things to do is just to go, go to a coffee shop and just work on, on, on something.

Like build something. And the, like, for me personally, like coffee shops are great. Like as far as like, I'm always able to focus easier there than like any other place for some reason. I, I think it has something to do with like the fact that like, there's. Something to tune out and like if I have something to tune out and I can just like put on my headphones and like stare into a screen knowing that there's other stuff going on, for some reason, that helps.

Yeah. Yeah. But also there's like people around who like might look at my screen at some point, so like, I feel like I need to kind of like pretentiously, like not be on just like Facebook or something. Yeah, yeah. Like, oh, he was just there on Facebook. Like I thought he was working. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Makes sense.

It's a phony. So. But even, even, even on top of that, like if they look at my screen and it's just like full of code, then like, oh, that's a cool feeling. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I can definitely

Jake Pacheco: see that. I, I a hundred percent I can see that being like what is he doing? Yeah. Like, yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think it was.

I, I bow key. I think it was cool to be like, walk by someone and be like, oh geez, they're, they're doing the thing know. Yeah. They're, what you doing with all the coding?

Seth Whiting: Yeah. What's going on with all the coding? So, so yeah, definitely the

Jake Pacheco: like remote work aspect of it. Yeah.

Seth Whiting: Yeah. And back in the day I had like aspirations of just like moving to like Europe for a while and just like working, cuz like, well that's like one

Jake Pacheco: of my dreams is like to like go stay in Europe for a little bit.

Seth Whiting: Yeah. Even though it was, I mean,

Jake Pacheco: even just for like a month or something, like, I think that I'd be like, like money is still coming in. You can pay your uhhuh rent at home and you can pay a hotel or a bmb or whatever. Yeah.

Seth Whiting: That'd be, I mean, literally anywhere with like decent internet. Yeah. And I think like.

Starbucks has like a some kind of contract where like their internet is always going to be good. So like any Starbucks maybe in the world, I don't know. It might just be in the US or something, but like if you go to any Starbucks, like you, you know that you're gonna like be able to code their Yeah, yeah.

You know, without issues.

Jake Pacheco: We don't have free healthcare, but we

Seth Whiting: do have Starbucks

Jake Pacheco: with good internet. We do for sure.

Seth Whiting: Uhhuh. Ha ha. Yeah, and yeah, so just like going, you know, you could go to like some Airbnb in like Costa Rica or something if, and if they have like good internet then you could just like chill out and like, you know, go to the beach after you're done working, whatever.

I can't, can't do that with like a family of five, but like if the kids like went to college at some Yeah. At some point. I mean, you could, you

Jake Pacheco: just have to first accept chaos for

Seth Whiting: vacation. Yeah. Actually I, I've thought about like taking, taking the family someplace for like a month, you know? Yeah.

And like, I'll just like work for a month and Yeah. And then we'd come back like, yeah. What I was thinking about before was just like being like a nomad and like not having a house or, or, or an apartment or anything and just like going and traveling around and coding and whatever. Yeah. But but we could do, I don't know, we could do like the scaled down version of that probably.

Yeah. Lo, lo, low key fail.

Jake Pacheco: Wait, what? What'd you call it? I, I Minimal, what was it?

Seth Whiting: Minimum viable products. Minimum viable nomadic style. Yeah. The MVP of the, of the

Jake Pacheco: dramatic, which is spending a month away with the family.

Seth Whiting: Yeah. Good enough, close enough. Same.

Jake Pacheco: Same. Yeah. So, yeah, I, I mean, I definitely see that as like a a pretty huge benefit.

Mm-hmm. And honestly, it is one of the biggest things for me is just that especially because currently where I'm building my house, it's, it's one of those things where I want to do a lot with like, the landscape of that house and stuff. Trying to make it pretty, I don't know how to explain it, I guess, I think Japanese shrine.

Mm-hmm. So it, it, it takes, it, it would take a lot of work and a lot of landscaping there. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. So like with that, and then like I have all my animals and I other stuff, and I plan on having a garden there and stuff. So like, I really want it to be a thing where like if I can just be at home, And like, you know, my break is taken out in that.

Like, that would be, yeah. Yeah. I think that'd be pretty incredible. Yeah.

Seth Whiting: You know, for sure. Yeah. Yeah. And there, there is something to say about like like a nice like desk set up too, you know, like mm-hmm. I have one, but like most of the time I just end up like, on the couch with my laptop. Yeah. But like, I, like, whenever I do use my like two like 4K monitors, it's, it's pretty cool, you know?

Yeah. Like, I, I, it's nice to be able to see like a you know, all of like the windows that I'm working on at the same time. Yeah. Yeah. But so like, I, I guess all I'm trying to say is like, you could have that kind of thing there. Yeah. And like, have that be like, You know, your, your deal. Yeah.

Jake Pacheco: It could be a thing where like you have like your desk set up or if you wanna like, be outside in code, you just be outside in code as long as you're Yeah, for sure.

Yeah. And then also I guess it opens up the possibility of if you don't want to just have one place of residents, like I, I was thinking about that too, especially with you know, we're, we're both from Maine and our winters are harsh, to say the least. Yeah. So it's a thing where like, you know, if at some point I wanted to, you know, dip and just have like a small place down in like North Carolina or something mm-hmm.

Is kind of one of my goals. Mm-hmm. Then it's a thing where I could work here and then I could just go down there for a few months Yeah. And work down there and, and

Seth Whiting: I, I really love that idea a lot. Yeah, totally. Yeah. Yeah.

So

Jake Pacheco: apart from the remote work

Seth Whiting: thing like. There's definitely like a feeling, like a huge feeling of like accomplishment if, if you like, are able to like surmount the, the, the like, huge challenge of learning how to code.

Like it, it is, it is a huge challenge and it takes a long time, but like if you can like confidently say like, I now know how to code and I didn't know how to do this, you know, before, and like I, it's like, I don't know, it's like something to be proud of for sure. Yeah, definitely. And so that, that in itself is just like intrinsically, like, it is just like a good feeling and that's like another benefit I guess of, of learning how to code.

And like along with that, like. Pride or like, feeling of accomplishment is like confidence, I would say. Like if you go to like a party and you like ask people like what they do, like, and you, and you're able to say like, oh yeah, I'm a developer. Like I, I know how to like write code and make sense of it.

Like, yeah. That's kind of like a cool thing. It is. You know? Yeah. Yeah. Like,

Jake Pacheco: I definitely think that's cool. So it's kind of cool to me to hear you say that because it's like, I was wondering if it at some point lost. Its like like lost its luster, uhhuh, because like for me, it's like I, I see it. Like I, when I found that out about you, I was like, oh man.

Like, that's, that's really cool. I think I said it in the first podcast where I was like, I'll make you serious. Like, it's like, yeah. Cause it, cause it's just such like a, a uninvolved thing to learn I think. Yeah. You know? It's like, it, it's like along the same lines though. I honestly think that it might be, it's probably even more in depth.

Like when I say like, yeah, like I could, I could build an engine.

Seth Whiting: Mm-hmm. Like, it's like it's,

Jake Pacheco: it's, it's in depth. Mm-hmm. It's like there's, there's a lot of like, years like figuring out how to do that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So that's, that is cool. That's cool to hear you say that. Like, you're, you still find it like Yeah.

I, I feel like it's cool.

Seth Whiting: Yeah. I mean, I, I, I would probably not think that as much if I lived in like San Francisco or something, you know, but like, living in Maine, like, you don't meet a lot of coders and it's like, kind of like a it's, it's rare and like, rare in the sense of like, people think that they can't do it, you know?

Yeah. Yeah. And, and that's sort of like a, a thing, but they can, you know, if they, if they just took the time, I think that like most people could. Yeah. But I think. I guess just like the fact that, like, I can say that I did take the time and I did like stick with it and, and whatever. Yeah. Like I, I think that's like, yeah, there's a point of pride.

Yeah. Point of pride and like, gives you confidence in whatever. Yeah. So that's cool. Yeah. There's, yeah. Yeah, just like those are kind of some of the other like non-monetary things, but, you know, yeah. The monetary one is like a very big, real thing. Like I, I'm very, I feel like very like. Blessed to be able to like afford a house, you know?

Yeah. Where like, you, you look at Reddit for like two seconds and it's like everybody's poor, like everybody. Yeah. You know, like everybody's, it's such a struggle. Everybody's scraping by and everything, and I'm just like, I don't, I don't feel that I Yeah. Feel bad for those people, you know? And I wanted, like, I want to help them.

And that's like a huge motivator for this podcast. Yeah. You know, I mean, I,

Jake Pacheco: it's honestly what's, it's, you're

Seth Whiting: literally helping me right now with this. Like it's, I, I

Jake Pacheco: feel that like it's, I, I actually sent a, a meme

Seth Whiting: to the, the rest of the

Jake Pacheco: barbershop the other day, and it was like life is a barber before the pandemic, and it's like the, the two dumb and Dumber guys going out to dinner and it's like, like, it's 500 a plate.

We'll have two. Like, it's like, you felt so good about it and you're like, yeah, I'm doing all right. Like, you know, life's fine. It's easy, it's, you know, I, I, I, I don't make an astronomical amount, but I make a comfortable amount and stuff, and suddenly it is not a comfortable amount. Yeah. It's, it's fine. I guess.

Like, I'm not

Seth Whiting: like scraping to get by. Mm-hmm. But,

Jake Pacheco: I am building my own house, cuz it's the only option I have. Mm-hmm. It's not, I can't, I can't afford to have someone else build one and I can't afford to just like buy one,

Seth Whiting: you know what I mean? Yeah.

Jake Pacheco: Like, and I might be able to, I, I could afford to buy one if I could get financing, which takes a pay stub, which I don't get pay stubs.

Mm-hmm. You know what I mean? Mm-hmm. Doesn't matter how much you have in your account or anything, it just, they, they, they want a pay stub and they want everything else to do with it. You know what I mean? Yeah. So it's like, it makes it extremely tricky. So Yeah. I, I mean what, what you just said, it, it, it makes sense and it's also like, yeah, that's why I'm very excited about this and

Seth Whiting: mm-hmm.

I

Jake Pacheco: feel blessed because I have you to kind of help me along the way with it, you know?

Seth Whiting: It's, it's, it's pretty fabulous of you.

Jake Pacheco: But, but yeah, I, I, I, I guess all that is, that's those are really good motivators in general and, and I do. A lot of the times I do come back to the money thing because it is,

Seth Whiting: it's a thing, you know?

Yeah. It's, I mean, I, I, it's not the only thing, you know, it isn't exactly. There's a lot of like, good benefits and like, I don't know, I don't know a, about many like, funds, you know, there's, there's not too many cons other than it takes a long time to get to the point, you know, where Yeah. Where you, I, I make decent money, and where you can say that, like, you, you know what you're doing and, you know, all of that stuff.

Yeah. I, I

Jake Pacheco: guess that's a, a good question also that I don't think that we've actually, that I've actually

Seth Whiting: asked you. Mm-hmm.

Jake Pacheco: How much time do you think? Like how long does it take? Like, yeah. Yeah. Okay. Let's, that's a good question. Like, like how much time before hitting I. I don't know. Wait, what, what six figures I to, to me in my brain, like that's like, where it's like you don't really have to stress so much anymore.

Uhhuh, you know what I mean? It's like market. It's like, that's like where it's,

Seth Whiting: you know what I mean? Yeah. I mean it, it, it also depends on your personality. So I was working, so like I've worked with people where I was making more than them and knew significantly less than them because I am able to like, advocate for myself and like talk Yeah.

To people. And like I know, like I have like people skills. Yeah. And like that's. Just as valuable as knowing how to code For sure. You know, if not more so. Yeah. Yeah. And, and I'm not saying that I'm like, like amazing at people skills or anything like that. I'm probably not, but like I, I am good enough to like know that I am like I, I guess like good enough to, kind of like be able to make a case for myself and Yeah.

And all of that kind of stuff. Yeah.

Jake Pacheco: You can, you can kind of sell yourself in a way Yeah.

Seth Whiting: In obviously, but in like, not necess necessarily in like a braggy way or Yeah, of course. Anything like that. Just like I, I'm able to kind of like talk, to, talk to people in like higher you know, positions than myself and, and whatever.

Yeah. Yeah. So, makes sense. I don't know. There, there's just like, there, there's a lot of like, Non-technical skills that are super helpful to have as a developer. I guess, I guess

Jake Pacheco: I might put it down as like networking skills in, in the sense of like being able to like, talk to people and like chat people up and see what they do or whatever, and like, you know, kind of get your foot in the door with that stuff, or, or even like, like in interviews, like,

Seth Whiting: I, like for me

Jake Pacheco: with interviews and I, I don't really know how interviews are gonna go for me with these things, but mm-hmm.

Like, it was always a thing where I knew what I already knew as far as, like, I, I've, I've always been a pretty capable person with building stuff. So like when I went in for like when I became a machinist before this mm-hmm. I was working for Irwin Industrial Tools, who then was new Rubbermaid. But when I went in for that job, I had never touched a machine before.

Mm-hmm. Like I, I a vertical lathe or horizontal LA or any of that stuff. I had never. Done anything with them. Right. But I've built cars, I've been on a pit crew. I've like, done quite a bit of metal fabrication and I've worked with computers. Mm-hmm. And I, I've, I explained to them just like the things that I've done and that I'm self-taught with these things and I, I'm excited to learn.

Mm-hmm. And when I kind of like did that, I, I got the job and I got hired on as a level four machinist when there's only five levels in the company. Wow. And it was just, just because I, I talked to them like they're normal people and like, yeah. And, and I just was like, no, this is what I, this is what I've done.

And then like, you know. Right. If, if, if you want me, cool. If you don't like, that's, that's fine. But I, I'm also like, I'm not sure you'll find someone who's as gung-ho to learn. You know what I mean? Like, that's kind of like how I present myself. Mm-hmm. I think it's the difference between like confidence and cockiness.

I don't, I, I try really hard to, to self-deprecate enough to where I don't sound cocky, but,

Seth Whiting: but you know what I mean though, like Yeah, yeah, for sure. You

Jake Pacheco: kind of like, there's a, you know, there, there's a trick

Seth Whiting: to it to not sound. Yeah, for sure. Just some, yeah. And I'm sure that there, you know, there's a lot of people listening that don't have that, you know, like that, that like aren't good at like, interviewing and stuff.

And like, I, I, I'm not really sure like Yeah. What to say. I'm not really sure what to say to those people. Like, I, I, I wanna say like, just be confident. Be yourself, relax, you know? You'll talk to them like they're one of your friends. Yeah. Like it's, I I feel like that's like

Jake Pacheco: such a. Like, like a, a slightly formal friend, like maybe like your, your, your girlfriend's parents or boyfriend's parents mm-hmm.

Or something like that, where it's like, you know, like, I'm not gonna go off the handle and start talking like a sailor, like I might around my actual friends, but,

Seth Whiting: but I, I, you know, just like Yeah, yeah, yeah. My

Jake Pacheco: day. Get my jar

Seth Whiting: before I make you walk down. That's how you talk around your friends. Yeah. No, that's how I talk to my girlfriend's parents.

No, he's a keeper. He's a keeper.

Jake Pacheco: Oh. He can definitely provide.

Seth Whiting: I can't booty

anyways.

Jake Pacheco: Yeah, and like I said, if you get me and Seth, you get it. If you don't then I'm sorry, but But yeah, I, I, I think that that's like I, I, I get how that would be really important is like just interview skills.

Seth Whiting: And I,

Jake Pacheco: I guess that kind of leads into another question I had about interviewing.

Mm-hmm. Is it as stressful and tedious as it seems when it comes to, like, what kind of questions do they ask? They see things about like lead code questions and stuff like that. Yeah. Is that like an actual like

Seth Whiting: thing? Oh, yeah. Or is Oh, yeah. Yeah. There, there's just like a huge I guess like reputation of like coding interviews that they're irrelevant and it's true, like the, they will ask you to like write an algorithm.

That's, that's a lot of, that's a lot of interviews. And, and it's a good. Gauge of like how a person thinks and like how they go about solving a problem and blah, blah, blah. But you're, you're not gonna be writing like very technical algorithms in the wild. And if you are, it's like with a clearer head and like a, like a.

Kind of like a focused end goal and everything that makes it kind of like easier to get your head around like, okay, I'm just trying to get this data to look like this. Yeah. And it's like for a specific purpose. And when I get it to look like that, it's going to be useful and like all of these other ways.

So like it's, it's, it's not like okay, I have this data that like I'm just now seeing and have like little context for, and I need to make it look like this. And you know, it's just for the sake of this interview and then I'm never gonna like, have any use for it. Yeah, yeah,

Jake Pacheco: yeah. So I guess a question, would that be, a question about that would be so I don't think that we've ever actually gone over what exactly an algorithm is.

I assume

Seth Whiting: it to be

Jake Pacheco: steps in code tape. Solve whatever problem you have. Yeah. Is that, so like, say it had like a bunch of jumbled up letters or something. Mm-hmm. Or, or words, and then you could, like, you, you had to sort those words in alphabetical order. Mm-hmm. Is that

Seth Whiting: an algorithm? Yeah, that's a sorting algorithm.

That's okay. Cool. So now I know

Jake Pacheco: but then now you know everyone. Yeah. But yeah, I was just curious about that. But, so in that, will they just like, present you with a problem and be like, okay, how would you solve this problem in code

Seth Whiting: Y? Yes. Yeah. So it would be like, like the, and these are, this is not every interview.

Yeah. I've had interviews that are not like this, that like, were actually good. But I've had interviews where they, they, you know, try to have you do an algorithm, which is like, you know, take. Take this like array of data and display it in like three rows. And what was it like? Display it in three rows and also have, like, have the, like, multiply the, the second one in each row by two and the third one in each row by three.

Something like that, you know? Yeah. Just like for like, it's just like something to prove that you can do it. It's not like a useful thing, it's just, you know. Yeah. That.

Jake Pacheco: That sounds a lot like like high school, and it sounds like it would've annoy me.

But, but,

Seth Whiting: but I'll figure it out. But yeah, so basically like an algorithm, like it's, it's like a s I mean, it's semi like a math problem, but it, it has a lot more to do with like loops and conditionals that's like, you know, like I was saying in, in the previous episode, like one of the previous episodes of like the fundamentals of JavaScript and like the fundamentals of like, programming, like logical, you know, programming.

It's just a lot of it has to do with loops and conditionals. And if, if you know those, well then you can take, take certain data and make it look like other data, you know, just by like, you know, sifting through it and like, and, and by sifting through it, you're looping through it and then like, Conditionally like doing things to, to different things, you know?

Yeah. To, to different pieces of the data, the pull pieces, pieces outta the data

Jake Pacheco: through. Yeah. Yeah. Huh, interesting. Yeah. So most of the interviews are like that though. Like they do have some kind of legal question or

Seth Whiting: something. I don't know about most of the interviews. Yeah.

Jake Pacheco: Have they kinda started phasing that out or something?

Seth Whiting: I, I don't know if they have, but I think they should. And there's been a lot of talk about like how useless the, the, you know, not, not useless, but just like irrelevant. Well, in my mind

Jake Pacheco: because it's like, I mean, my understanding of a lot of programmers, it's like you're using Google a lot anyways because you might not have written a thing in a certain way in a while.

Mm-hmm. So like, you just

Seth Whiting: Google it and Yeah.

Jake Pacheco: You know, as long as you're good at that, you'll, you'll be all

Seth Whiting: set. Like, yeah. And so

Jake Pacheco: the idea of them doing it in an interview seems a bit like I. Like, okay, so you just want it off the top of my head. Like, it's not, you know what I mean? If it was, I, I, I guess in my head I, if it was more of like a what do they call it?

An aptitude test.

Seth Whiting: Mm-hmm. Where they

Jake Pacheco: have like, you know, a square, a circle, a rectangle, a circle, a square, what's the next one in the pattern? Like, something like that. Like, it's like, okay, so your brain works this way. So that's, that's a positive thing. Like I, I, it's kind of what I would, I don't know.

Seth Whiting: Yeah. And, but like, I, but like, I like say, code seems kind of weirder or like write down Right. The way you'd, I dunno. Yeah. And so, but I also get it, I guess in a way. Yeah. And like, I guess like it should be the case that like, if you've been developing for long enough, you should be able to like, solve those types of problems pretty easily.

Yeah. Yeah. But I can tell you, like, I've been developing for like 10 years now and like built big, like large scale applications. And, and like single-handedly in in some of them. But I could, like, I could tell you like a lot of those like algorithm problems I probably wouldn't be able to do. Yeah, yeah.

No. So,

Jake Pacheco: so it does feel a bit nonsensical cause it's like, well, like

Seth Whiting: it's not Yeah. It's like I, I know how to do the job. Like I can Yeah, absolutely. Do the job pretty, yeah. Like I, I can say confidently, like, I will not have any issue doing this job, but I might have an issue writing this algorithm. Writing this algorithm Yeah.

In a certain amount of time, you know? Yeah. Like, because they do

Jake Pacheco: that too. They, they make a

Seth Whiting: certain amount of time as well sometimes.

Jake Pacheco: Sometimes and, and I assume you can't

Seth Whiting: use Google, would you do it? I mean, some, some of them you can, some of them you can't. Yeah. I was curious

Jake Pacheco: if they were like, well, you're not always gonna have a calculator on you, like when you're, when you're kids.

And it's like, but we do. That's our job. Like, you know, like we always have Google.

Seth Whiting: But the, there, the, the interview for the job that I have now at E C P the, I, it was good because it was writing a React component and like writing a react component that like has a table that displays data and that's like what I do on the job.

Yeah. You know, like that's, that's very relevant to the job. Yeah. You know? Yeah. That makes sense. Writing

Jake Pacheco: it's not

Seth Whiting: a random question. Yeah. Yeah. Writing algorithm. This is not relevant to the job, but like having an, an interview question that is like, A good, like simulation of some, some task that you'll actually be performing on the job that you're interviewing for, I would say is a much better way to interview somebody.

Yeah, that makes sense.

Jake Pacheco: Yeah. Yeah. Huh, yeah, I was just curious about like the, the interview process with all that stuff. Mm-hmm. And I, I, I forget, did you, you said you sent out a, a few applications for this error. Mm-hmm. Oh, yeah. But then like someone reached out to you. Yeah. And you said that people reach out pretty often, like in general, is it, is it only when you're at a certain echelon, like

Seth Whiting: a certain Not really.

I, I don't think I, I think it's like as soon as you put that, you know, like JavaScript and HTML and CSS on your LinkedIn profile, yeah. You're gonna start getting messages from recruiters. Hmm. Interesting. And you know, and, and then they'll hook you up with interviews and then, then you need to pass the interview process at that point.

Yeah. You know? Yeah. But, yeah. Yeah.

Jake Pacheco: And then do you have a pretty massive portfolio at this point? Like as far as like your your projects on your LinkedIn and stuff, or your get

Seth Whiting: or whatever? I, so not necessarily, but like, I, I have a bunch of projects that I've worked on, but I don't have like a, I don't have them like, aggregated into one spot.

Yeah. And a lot of the, like, a lot of the projects that I've worked on have been in like private repositories, which is, which just means like they're not visible on GitHub. Yeah. So my, my GitHub. There's like a famous like graph on GitHub that everybody has where like it's just a bunch of blocks and each of those blocks represents a day.

It's like a grid of blocks and it's like a f maybe it's like a year's worth of blocks. So there's like 365 blocks maybe. And how, however green that particular block is, is like how much code you wrote that day. So people have like full grids of like very green blocks and mine is like sparsely green here and there.

Just cause all of the code that I'm writing is not on GitHub. And it would be cool if it was, cuz then my grid would be really green, cuz I, I write a lot of code all day every day. Yeah. But but it's all, it's all elsewhere, so. Yeah. You know, it's just, it's. You're

Jake Pacheco: living that nomadic lifestyle and

Seth Whiting: coding.

Jake Pacheco: No one really knows where you are, but

Seth Whiting: yeah, you're there. Yeah. My, my employers know, but yeah. Yeah. Huh. Not like the general public. Yeah.

Jake Pacheco: That's, that's interesting. So yeah, I, I guess back to that question of like how many months, how many years, how many, how

Seth Whiting: long? Yeah. You know, so for me, from, from starting to like six figures I think was about like five years.

Yeah. But I think that's just because I'm good at like, navigating my way into like, higher paid jobs. Yeah. Gigs. Yeah. But for, for somebody else, it may, it may take longer. Yeah. I'm not sure. Yeah.

Jake Pacheco: Yeah. We'll find

Seth Whiting: out. We're here to find out for somebody and, and for somebody else it might take shorter, you know?

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Hopefully for you it takes shorter because like, I am like help, like I, I am here to help you out and like guide you and like guide you away from like pitfalls and stuff. Yeah. But you know, we'll see. Yeah. We can only see, I'm just trying to think if that, if that five year mark is accurate.

That I started in like 2013. So that would've been 2018, I think. I think that's actually about right. Yeah. And I mean, would you say that, what would you say that the way that you

Jake Pacheco: got into it and like. I guess my question would be, I know you learned like front end in the bootcamp and stuff. Mm-hmm. And then you said like, it was like, what, a year later or six months later or something when you went with your friend to learn all of that

Seth Whiting: stuff?

Yeah. With him. And

Jake Pacheco: would you say that it was a pretty efficient route to go? You know, I mean, as far as

Seth Whiting: like time, I would say, yeah. So like, I, I would say that like the, the three year stint in which I was doing WordPress development Yeah. Was probably keeping me away, you know, keeping me down. Yeah, like if I were doing application development that whole time, it, it probably would've been faster, honestly.

Jake Pacheco: That's what I was just curious about is like if, if you were, if you were at some points learning things or like doing things that weren't really conducive to your main goal. Yeah. And if, if that's one of those, I I, I don't really want to call it a, a, a a pitfall because like I think that, I mean, it got you to where you're at today.

And also like any experience is good experience in general. Like with, with this, I'd assume. So, but like, do you think that it would've been helpful for you to just be like, no, I'm just gonna focus in on just doing the app development and like

Seth Whiting: Yes. I dunno. At the, at the, at the point where like, I started doing WordPress development, it was sort of out of necessity.

Like, I, I didn't have a job and I needed a job. Yeah. And that was an available job, and I was like, cool, let's do it. Yeah. So, and, and it, it definitely helped with a lot of, like, the skills that I have for like front end development Yeah. Which a lot of developers don't have. Like like being really good at HTML and c s s is, you know, a, a very useful skill to have.

It's, it's not the most like profitable skill to have, but it's very useful, you know, like Yeah. If you're making an application Yeah. You can, you can be more confident that like, I know how to make this application look good. You know? And like if we have, if we have issues where like spacing is off or like something is like in the wrong place, I can fix that.

Like, the problem, you know? Yeah.

Jake Pacheco: Yeah. That makes sense. Yeah.

Seth Whiting: Yeah. Huh. Yeah, I

Jake Pacheco: was just, I, I, I was just curious if that was like if, if you felt that yours was like a, a, a pretty fast track, but I mean, I guess it's the fastest track to what you are doing and what you know now, and it's not like if you got rid of those three years, you'd be in a better place.

It's like you, you'd, you'd, you wouldn't know all of the front end stuff that you know now,

Seth Whiting: and therefore, yeah, potentially. I wouldn't, I wouldn't have learned a lot of that stuff. Yeah. But I, I could have, I could have gotten along with, without them, you know, like, I, I, I. I would just be like Googling a lot more for like CSS stuff.

Yeah. Instead of just knowing it off the top of my head. Yeah. But but yeah, and also I don't, I don't wanna say that like WordPress development isn't lucrative. Like I was making, like, not not far under the, the six figure mark. Right. You know, I was making a, a, you know, like a, a decent living off of that and like that.

Yeah. There's no wrong with that. Nothing wrong with just doing WordPress stuff as opposed to application development. Like you, you can, you can get really into WordPress development and do some pretty cool stuff. So. And, and make decent money. Again, it's

Jake Pacheco: different strokes for different folks and some people might be more into the designs and like the, the front, front end of the stuff, and some people might be actually into like the, the deep end of the coding of the functionality of the, the application and stuff.

Mm-hmm. Huh. Yeah, I mean that's pretty much all the questions I have for today anyways. Yeah. And we've gone a little bit long, so I suppose we should wrap this up, but I as always, thank you so much for listening. Yeah. And and thank you very much Seth for, for all your help with all this and clarifying the things that you clarified

Seth Whiting: tonight.

Yeah, yeah. No worries. Thank you for everything being you, for being Aww, wonderful. Aw.

Jake Pacheco: Making me

Seth Whiting: blush, but also. Like, like I want to say every episode, keep at it. It's tough, but you know, just keep at it. There's like, like we talked about on this episode, there's a lot of good things that come from keeping at it and just getting to the point where you get over the hump and you feel like good about telling people like, yes, I know how to code.

You know, once you get to that point, it's, it's, there's, there's a lot of good stuff after that. Yeah. So get to that point. Keep going. Yeah.

Jake Pacheco: Yeah. Yeah, I'm excited for it. I'm always so excited after the podcast, so. Yeah. All righty. Well thanks again and everyone have a, have a great day or a great week or whatever time that you're

Seth Whiting: dealing, you're really just like fizzled out there.

Thanks.

Jake Pacheco: Have a good one.

Seth Whiting: Have a good one. See ya.

Jake Pacheco: Bye.