🧠 Learning in Public with SWYX

In this episode, we talk with SWYX, author, speaker, podcaster, and learning in public evangelist. We dive into his career history in finance and how he transitioned into development. We also discuss the challenges of Developer Experience, the advantages of learning in public, and lessons learned from podcasting. Additionally, we get a musical performance from SWYX himself.

Bonus: We have Software Engineer, Arit Amana as a guest co-host.

✨ Episode Sponsor

• Auth0: https://auth0.com
• Auth0 on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/auth0
• Auth0 on Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/auth0
• Auth0 Avocado Labs online meetup events: https://avocadolabs.dev/

🔗 Episode Links

• Twitter: https://twitter.com/swyx
• Author: Coding Career Handbook: https://www.learninpublic.org/
• Website: https://www.swyx.io/
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/swyxTV
• The Swyx Mixtape: https://swyx.transistor.fm/
• Swyx on Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/swyx
• Build Invincible Apps: https://temporal.io/
• Guest co-host: Arit Amana
  • Twitter: https://twitter.com/aritdeveloper
  • Website: https://arit.dev/
  • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aritamana/
  • YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/AritDeveloper
  • Github: https://github.com/msarit
  • Arit Amana on Thunder Nerds: https://youtu.be/i74Swu8Us-A
• Hosts: Frederick Weiss: https://twitter.com/FrederickWeiss

📜 Transcript

[00:00:00] Frederick Weiss: Welcome, I’m Frederick Weiss. And, thank you for consuming the Thunder Nerds. A conversation with the people behind the technology that love what they do, and do tech good. And our sponsor Auth0 is helping us do that all year long. Auth0 makes it easy for developers to build a custom secure and standard-based unified log-in by providing authentication and authorization as a service.

[00:01:08] Frederick Weiss: Try them out now by going to Auth0.com. Also, check them out at youtube.com/Auth0,  Twitch.tv/Auth0, and Avocadolabs.dev for their online meetup events. Thanks again, Auth0. And let's go ahead and welcome our guests, you know, speaking of the guests, we actually have a co-host on the show today, which I'm so grateful to have.

[00:01:44] Frederick Weiss: We have Arit Amana. Thank you so much for a guest hosting!

[00:01:48] Arit Amana: Thanks for having me. It's great to be back.

[00:01:52] Frederick Weiss: Yeah, absolutely. Appreciate it. And with that being said, and no ados being further, let's get to our guests for today. Learning in public evangelist, speaker, author, teacher writer, programmer podcaster.

[00:02:08] Frederick Weiss: SWYX himself. Welcome to the show.

[00:02:13] SWYX: Thanks. Yeah.

[00:02:16] Frederick Weiss: Thanks. I feel really lucky to have both of you on the show today. So thanks both of you, I guess, at the start for, for sharing your time. I know it's always, um, a little challenging on a Saturday, so, you know, thanks again. Yeah. Yeah. Hey, um, you know, I know you were having some issues SWYX with, uh, with traveling.

[00:02:39] Frederick Weiss: Uh, do you mind talking a little bit about that? I think, uh, you got caught up. Uh, Trump travel ban. And now you're back in Washington.

[00:02:47] SWYX: Yes, sir. Seattle. Um, yeah, I went to Croatia for a conference. They shift conferences as amazing as my first in-person conference in a long, long time. Uh, and it's always amazing to have like an all-expenses paid, uh, conference travel trip.

[00:03:05] SWYX: And so I, I went with it with all my friends who were also speakers and had a really good time there and give a, give a talk and met a lot of interesting people, came back to the immigration gates and got turned around by the customs and border patrol because they said that I came from a restricted country.

[00:03:25] SWYX: So, uh, it turns out that, uh, I mean, I knew in concept about the chunk travel ban, but like that was imposed. Early in the pandemic. And I had the vaccine and I had a negative COVID test. I just assumed that I'd be fine. Uh, cause like it's like I have American vaccine in me. Uh, but no, it just as a, as a, as a rule of law by executive proclamation, uh, I am a higher COVID risk because I have the wrong piece of paper.

[00:03:53] SWYX: Uh, so I had to go quarantine in Mexico for, for 14 days. Uh, don't really speak the language. Didn't have a place to stay. Didn't have any cash on me, uh, and just had to figure it out. Wow.

[00:04:05] Frederick Weiss: So what did, did you, did you not have a, like your COVID registration card or did that just

[00:04:11] SWYX: not count the matter? Yeah.

[00:04:13] SWYX: It didn't

[00:04:13] Frederick Weiss: matter. It didn't matter. That is so crazy. Well, you know, speaking of your travels then I, I know you said you had got caught up in Mexico. Um, you know, w within these travels, how, how was everything did you feel safe with, with the, uh, with the vid going around? Like, was everybody mask app is a little bit better than, than here?

[00:04:34] SWYX: Um, everyone's, everyone's fairly actually, I think, yeah. I would say, I'll say that Europe is actually more uptight or strict about having a mask on properly and at all times. So, uh, yeah, that's, that's even the ironically surprising bit that the US is enforcing Europe travel ban when, uh, okay. Quite honestly, Europe is doing a better job of keeping them.

[00:04:56] Frederick Weiss: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. It's, it's, it's interesting how that, that all works and hopefully within, um, I don't know, maybe I'm being optimistic in six months. We'll get to a place that's a little bit better. It seems that those Delta variances are kind of slowing down in certain locations in the United States and the same thing with, what is it?

[00:05:15] Frederick Weiss: I don't know how you pronounce it.

[00:05:19] SWYX: Lambda.

[00:05:20] Arit Amana: There's a new one. Yeah. Lambdas picking up.

[00:05:26] SWYX: Oh, is

[00:05:26] Frederick Weiss: that the one that's supposed to be like resistant to the vaccine or something such as that, um, maybe we'll get back to, uh, feeling safe again, you know, going to conferences and seeing people and all that, but, uh, yeah.

[00:05:41] Frederick Weiss: Yeah. I, think we have to, uh, it's, there are too many smart people out there to not get us through, uh, the situation.

[00:05:55] Frederick Weiss: So switch, tell me a little bit about yourself and your own words. I know X is from your, your name, Sean, and it's the initials within Chinese of your English and American name. Um, would you mind just giving our audience a brief, uh, context about

[00:06:12] SWYX: yourself? Yeah, I'm born and raised in Singapore and came to the states for college.

[00:06:16] SWYX: Uh, and I spent my first career in finance where I did, uh, investment banking and hedge funds mostly learn to code on the job, but I never had the title of a software engineer. So I made my own tools, but I didn't, I wasn't, I didn't do any software engineering best practices, no testing. Haha no version control.

[00:06:36] SWYX: Ha. It was fantastic. Uh, I had, I came out of investment banking with a 4,000 line, uh, uh, VBA script that I copied and emailed to myself every single time. Chemo with a new version. So that was my version control.

[00:06:55] SWYX: Uh, yeah. It's, it's on, it's on, they get up just actually, cause I, I lost it for a while and then I was like, wait, hang on. Like, that was the most significant program I ever made America years. I better figure it out. So if you search my Twitter and look for VBA, you'll see it. Um, and yeah, eventually I burned out at the finance bit.

[00:07:13] SWYX: Uh, it was very stressful, and uh, I think it's not very good for, um, just like