Digging into the HackerRank Survey 2023

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CJ: Welcome to Build and Learn.

My name is CJ.

Colin: And I'm Colin, and today
we are talking about the new

HackerRank report for 2023.

CJ: Before we get into that, we wanted
to just talk about, I mean, you and

I both want to build eventually some
sort of like side hustle income and

it sounds like you heard a really
inspiring episode of a podcast.

I need to catch up on that
that Art of Product episode.

But yeah.

So who was on it and what
were they talking about?

Colin: Yeah, so this is
Art of Product episode 218.

It was Ben Orenstein talking to Adam
Wathan of Tailwind and many, many

other things, but you know, I think
both of us have done this for a while.

I used to listen to Founders Quest from
HoneyBadger and I listened to Build

Your SaaS and Art of Product where
you know, Ben and and also Derrick

and I think Derrick might come back to
the show at some point, but you know,

they've been building in the open and
with Build Your SaaS, they were building

Transistor in the open, which is what
we use for podcast hosting and you know,

they're doing really well and it's just
kind of cool to listen back to it and.

I've always had this
desire to build something.

And I think we talked about in the
last few episodes ago about going

to the Rails SaaS conference, which
I didn't end up going to after all.

But like, just being in that world, you
know, you see other people building things

on top of the tools that we use every day.

And I actually think this will be a
good segue into what we talk about

later today, which is that the demand
for these skills is not going away.

There's only more people looking to do it.

But in that episode, they really just
get into like, what does it take to build

like a developer education or developer
content business whether that's through

something like a course or you know,
courses, books, YouTube and I think it

probably won't surprise you or anyone
listening that it takes a long time for

that quote unquote, overnight success.

CJ: Mm-hmm.

Yeah, it's funny you mentioned that cuz,
so Peter Levels it's like levels.Io,

he's built a whole bunch of stuff.

Famous for the remote.

Okay.

Or like the, the nomad list.

Colin: Mm-hmm.

CJ: Stuff.

And recently he's been working
on a bunch of like AI tools.

So like the, I think the
first one was interior ai.

And now he has like all these, like you
can upload images of your, of yourself,

and then it'll build avatars for you
in like all these different genres.

And he made like insane revenue.

Basically in like 72
hours of launching this.

And a lot of people talk about
how like, okay, you know,

that's an overnight success.

But then he posted today, he
posted a screenshot of GitHub and

his GitHub squares are just rock
solid for like the entire year.

And this is like his 10th
year on his get up history.

So it's like, okay.

He's successful and all these people are
kind of like, whatever, not yeah, they're,

they're looking up to him and saying
like, oh yeah, you're lucky or whatever.

But the reality is that he, you
know, created that luck by just

taking so many swings and, you know,
just going up to bat so many times.

Colin: Yeah, you, I mean, we talked about
this in some other episodes too, but it's

the reps that you're putting in, right?

It's it like doing it once, like
working on a project in a, in

a weekend and then throwing it
away is not gonna get you there.

Adam Wathan was talking a lot about
how, like when they dropped their

Refactoring UI book, it was after years of
creating very useful free tweets, right?

Like, how to do this thing in CSS.

Right.

And it's similar to like what we
talked about in the content creation

episode where you've been putting out
these like very specific little like,

you know, nuggets of information on
Ruby, like what does this command do?

What does this, you know, how
do you use this class method?

Things like that.

But it was like laying that
groundwork and not expecting anything

in return for a very long time.

Just building that audience.

And he wasn't necessarily building an
audience just to like, be like, all

right, it's time to settle to my audience.

You know, he's doing it because he
truly loves what he is working on.

And he just like, this is exciting
and I wanna share it with people.

And then other people are
like, oh, I didn't know that.

You know, you could do that in
css, or that making something

look nice in HTML could be done.

You know?

So simply

CJ: Right.

And I mean, if we need any sort of
metrics around success, I think today or

yesterday, tailwind crossed, bootstrap
in terms of like N P M downloads.

So it is like now like the number
one CSS framework or whatever.

Colin: That's very interesting
cuz we're gonna talk a lot about

trends in languages and stuff today.

But when I was trying to think
back, there's a lot of we'll just

say that right now, this is being
recorded in November of 2022.

There's a lot of tumultuous activity
going on with Twitter right now,

and I think back to the fact that
like people were trying to ask like

what innovations Twitter has done.

And I think back to the early
days of Twitter where people were.

Again, throwing things out
there to see what sticks and

bootstrap came from Twitter.

Like, which is awesome.

And like for a long time every
website looked like that.

And now you're getting everyone kind
of moving over to Tailwind and the

kind of old guard is changing over into
Tailwind, but like, I mean, if you've

built something like Tailwind, you're
gonna have a very loyal following

that you can continue to build
products for, which is great for Adam.

And and I'm blanking
on his partner's name.

Steve Shoger.

That's right.

CJ: Yeah, I like just, I'm
rebuilding my personal site.

It's like almost ready to go.

And I'm using Tailwind and I'm realizing
that I'm actually like learning CSS

too through Tailwind because I, I
mean, anytime you wanna tweak anything

that doesn't fit directly, I, so I,
I use a lot of, like, the components

directly from Tailwind UI the like

Colin: Which is another product.

Yeah.

Another.

CJ: Well, honestly, like, before
Tailwind UI came out, I was like,

oh man, that's, I would probably
never pay for Bootstrap, right.

Colin: Right.

CJ: Tailwind UI comes out, it's all these
beautiful components that are pre-built

for you that you just copy and paste.

And it's a no-brainer for me who
is like a person that doesn't want

to think too much about design.

But yeah, for this personal site,
there was a few things that I wanted

to customize and tweak, and there
wasn't perfect components in there.

And I was like, oh my God, in my
accidentally like learning CSS right now.

Like, okay, here's how you do,
like, you know, nested grids

and like, you know, sizing.

Colin: That's like the
deep end of CSS too.

I feel like how we used to
learn and teach c s s and design

was very different than today.

Like most people start with
tailwind and go backwards, unlearn

c s s versus, you know, we both
kind of grew up with c s s and.

As it evolved and things like css,
zengarden, and all these different sites

where it was like the whole idea was that
you should be able to replace the style

sheet and completely change the page.

Like that does not exist today
with components and you know, style

components and things like that.

Everything's so tightly styled, but again,
it allows you to drop that component

in from Tailwind ui, which is great.

CJ: Mm.

Colin: I have paid for
bootstrap themes over time.

I guess they kind of came with components.

It was always pretty painful to figure
out where, you know, gonna start at

this tag and take this until this
tag and go copy and paste it and

hope it looks fine in the other site.

I think a lot of WordPress
sites were built that way too.

But yeah, I think, I think it's cool.

I think you've dipped your toe in like
personally creating a lot of content

on YouTube and things like that, but
I think it'll be cool to, for us to

think about what kinds of products we
can both, or not even products, but

like courses or experiences that we
can kind of build that, you know, might

generate some side income or continue to
develop ourselves as developers as well.

Can you give us a quick overview of what
Hacker Rank is and how companies use it?

CJ: Yeah.

I think a good way to explain it might
be that it is sort of like a filter.

For candidates that want
to work at a company.

So as part of you know, the interview
or candidate process, a company might

have several different, like algorithmic
or coding challenges where you have.

You have to like write some code
and submit your answer to a problem

through the hacker rank interface.

And then, you know how, like how
fast the code runs and if you

pass all the tests and like, did
you meet all of their standards?

They're looking for sort of you
know, signal on all of those

different things to see if you pass
their rubric in order to move on.

And Maybe an onsite or go on to
more serious interviews where the

company might make more investments.

So it's kind of like a scalable
way to filter people out.

Another one is like leet code, where
a bunch of people just, I mean it's,

there's these websites where you can go
and just do a bunch of algorithmic solve

problems basically and submit your code
to try to, you know, I dunno, reverse a

linked list, for instance, or, you know
find the bug in this c plus plus program.

Colin: Before we jump into, and I think
the reason why we brought this up is that

we saw that Ruby specifically was falling
on their results, and so you had flagged

us on Twitter and we said, let, let's talk
about it a little bit more on the show.

So before we get into that, I
want to set their methodology.

So basically we're gonna talk about like
what they see as the top demand and the

top preference for software languages.

On the employer demand side,
they're basically looking at

hacker rank assessment tests, where
specific languages were required

or specific library questions.

And then on the supply side,
they basically ask people who

are taking the tests, like what
their proficiency and preferences.

So like you might say like, yeah, this
test is in Java, but I prefer to write

it Python or go, or whatever that might.

that's kind of just the methodology.

They did some industry level trends
as well which we can talk about.

But they, so they were kind of
looking at assessments on a whole.

But like we mentioned before the demand
for almost everything is growing.

It's just not everything is
growing at the same pace.

So there's some interesting
things we can dive into.

CJ: Yeah, I was also
surprised too that like a lot.

Employers did not require a
specific language on the test.

So only about one in five assessments
required, like some specific language,

which if you're at home and you're
thinking, or you're walking your

dog or you're driving your car, or
whatever you're doing while you're

listening to us and you're thinking
like, oh, I I, I know Ruby really well

and I know r and I know Swift, but I
don't know Java or Python, I think.

That should give you a little
bit more confidence that like it,

you don't actually need to know
a specific programming language.

Or at least, you know, 80% of
employers might not require

that, you know, a specific
programming language to get hired.

And in fact, I remember when I started
my job at my vr, I did not know Python,

and I was hired on as like a, you
know, senior software engineer that

was gonna write Python codes 24 7.

So like, When I tweeted about this,
someone said, oh, I've been doing PHP a

ton and I've been learning Ruby on the
side, but I am nervous about learning

Ruby if it's gonna fall in, you know, if
it's falling in preference or whatever.

So yeah, all to say like, if
you know one language or if

you know a couple languages,
you're gonna be in a good place.

So.

Colin: Definitely.

Yeah.

So like, I guess to set the stage
there the volume of the, what they

saw the top five languages was
Java, Python, sql, which I wouldn't

really, I mean, it's a language, but.

You use SQL in all of these languages?

C plus plus and JavaScript.

So, you know, JavaScript makes up type
script, JavaScripts, all the React

stuff that's happening, react native.

So you get a little bit of
mobile development in there.

I don't see Kotlin on here, so
I imagine Java and Kotlin might,

might be under the same one.

But I do see Swift.

I don't see objective C Ruby's on here.

I don't know what this graph represents
cause it's the tiniest sliver, 77.

Sum of monthly active tests was
77 in Ruby versus 20,000 in Java.

CJ: Yeah, like the, the other hot take,
I mean, I think you mentioned this, but

when we're thinking about these numbers,
this is just about employers that are

using this specific software hacker
rank to filter out their candidates.

And so, I, I remember that when
you interview at Google, you are

only allowed to interview in three
languages, at least for like the full

stack or backend or whatever roles you
can do Java, Python or c plus plus.

And I'm pretty sure that's it.

For the front end role.

Yeah, exactly.

In the front end, the front end
role is JavaScript, but like there's

a chance that, you know, I don't
know if Google's using this, but.

You know, some massive company, Oracle
or Salesforce or something is like, oh

yeah, we're just going to, you know,
we do, you know, 9,000 assessments

every month and we let people pick
between Java, Python, and c plus plus.

And so that's why we
see it skewed this way.

Colin: Yeah, this feels like
a little bit of a bias, right?

Because when I think about Ruby
companies and Ruby culture in general,

I think it hacker rank and leet code
is kind of the antithesis of it.

And that's not to say that we shouldn't
be good at algorithmic things or

computer sciencey type questions, but.

It's just kind of counter to the the
job descriptions I've seen the hiring

processes that I've been a part of.

So, you know, take it
with a grain of salt.

It's very similar to what we looked at
with the Stack Overflow survey where

there's a little bit of a confirmation
bias where it's like people who go to

Stack Overflow are looking for an answer.

They're not necessarily going there
as their homepage every day and then

deciding like, what should I do here?

It's not like a Twitter for developers.

It's, it's like, I have a problem and
I'm hoping someone can help me with that.

What other highlights
do we see coming out of.

CJ: Well, I think it's interesting to look
at all of the go and type script gains.

I think go, I mean like obviously
go is super fun to write and it's

picking up speed type script.

Is a really popular front end
language and I think a lot of

companies and products are building
more and more on the front end.

And so I, you know, maybe five
years ago you would have one front

end engineer to every three backend
engineers or something like that, right?

And like now you need more front-end
engineers or some in maybe potentially

fewer backend engineers depending
on what stack you're using.

So I that, that's the type script
gains seem like they make sense to me.

Colin: Yeah, go assessments grew
by 300% type script by 392%.

Granted, when I look at the sum of these
numbers, it's like from 160 to 500.

So we're still not even
cracking a thousand.

But you see companies like GitHub
has moved largely from Ruby to go.

They still have Ruby, I'm
sure, but you end up with that.

But again, I don't know that GitHub
uses Hacker Rank, so they may not

be represented in this either.

CJ: Right.

Yep.

Colin: Swift and Ruby Assessments
volume declined for 2022.

Swift volume is only 80% of what
it was, Ruby going down 66%.

Again, the numbers are so
small though that I don't know.

You know, they, they note that developers
have gradually shifted away from

Ruby, and it's not just surprising
to find it fading a bit more here.

I don't know that like you,
and you definitely cannot

call swift dead like that is.

The language that you would
write an iOS app today.

Like, I don't think someone's gonna
pick up objective C if it's their

first time you know, unless you used
to write objective C for those things.

CJ: I don't know.

I wonder if that the swift trend
is potentially tied to React

native and people like, oh yeah,
if you can write type script and

you can write react native code,

Colin: Right?

Probably has more to do with it, right?

Cuz if you are gonna build like a Kotlin
app, a Swift app, and then a web app, you

got a lot of code bases going on instead
of that kind of mono repo mobile app.

CJ: Yeah.

The other thing to keep in mind too
is that like when we looked at the

Stack Overflow survey, even though
certain languages were like decreasing

in popularity, their salaries were
still very high or like increasing.

And so in my mind I, I see this swift
decline as like two things, like one,

maybe fewer people are actually writing
their iOS apps in their Mac apps in

Swift and two, If you know Swift, then
you could probably demand a really high

salary because you're the one who's
gonna be writing all this bridging code

between like, you know, makos and React

Colin: you're supporting an
existing Swift app, right?

That they're like, oh, we
need to go find somebody.

I remember this when, oh
man, flash was going away.

And I was afl.

I build myself as an
Adobe Flex developer and.

The amazing thing is I got so
many projects because Flex kind

of immediately fell out of favor
with just JavaScript, right?

Became the thing, and all of a sudden I
was getting all these requests for people

who had paid some company to build them
a flex app, and they couldn't adopt it.

And I, I think Salesforce was pushing
Flex for a really long time, which

is why I got into it and just Wow.

Like it's.

It's weird to think about that, but
yeah, it's gonna be like Fortran

developers and things like that, are
in demand to support legacy systems.

And mobile apps are in, by no
means legacy systems yet, but

if someone's not supporting it,
then that's, that's a big one.

You mentioned this with being able
to, to test in three different

languages, but the top skill that's
in demand is problem solving.

And I think we can all agree in all
these surveys that it doesn't matter

necessarily what language you're in.

If you can problem solve, and like
you said with your job at my vr,

pick up Python as you go because
you know kind of how to solve that.

CJ: Yeah, totally.

And I, the other, the other
interesting one was that machine

learning is just crushing it,
like, you know, problem solving.

I think obviously everyone wants that even
outside of software development, right?

Like you're, you'll want people that
are smart, that are on your team

Colin: Tech support PMs,
any of those things.

CJ: Exactly.

And so right on the tails of problem
solving is machine learning in holy

moly, this like last couple months
we've been seeing just onslaught of

machine learning apps and projects and
things coming out that are so cool.

All of the stuff that levels,
like Peter Levels did.

Super neat, but also like Jasper AI and or
yeah, like the copy, copy ai, all of these

different machine learning tools that help
you author blog posts or create images or

Colin: GitHub co-pilot.

CJ: Yep.

Github co-pilot and there's like
ghost writer that's on Replit.

All of these different machine learning
tools are just like mind blowing.

Colin: Did you see the announcement
the GitHub voice announcement,

CJ: No, I need to catch
up on GitHub Universe.

Colin: Yeah.

I don't know if it's gonna be a
thing that actually gets released

as much as like a research project,
but being able to kind of dictate

what you want to do and like vs.

Code is like just doing it.

CJ: That's mind blowing.

Yeah.

if you haven't already seen to Emily
Shea, she's a old friend of mine.

She has a talk called Whale Quench where,
so she had some like really bad rsi.

Injuries and so she started like
voice coding a long time ago.

I'm like, I think like
2013, 2014 or something.

And she has this talk that she gives
about using, I think it's dragon.

Dragon something, dragon dictate
or whatever to write code.

And it is so cool how they just use all
these different words that represent

letters or commands and then like are
able to compose them in certain ways.

It sounds like they're speaking a
completely different, like alien language.

Colin: Wow.

I'm sure it's similar to like a
stenographer, like in a court, right?

Where they're like typing super fast and
they, they have all these shortcuts and

CJ: Yes, exactly.

Exactly.

So I can imagine that, you know, one
day writing code becomes like that.

You know, when you're live streaming
and you're explaining all the stuff

that you're doing, you're already
saying it, and you have to type

it and you have to think about the
syntax and you have to think about

like all these different things.

If you could just say it, that would
be, yeah, that would be pretty killer.

Colin: number three, top skill
in demand is near and dear

to both of our hearts here.

Rest APIs, which.

You just can't escape them these days.

CJ: Yeah.

And I think even like REST API goes beyond
just, or beyond APIs all the way into.

A standard web application, like even
when you're, you know, the browser

is going to request the page and it's
giving back H T M L and like what

are the content types and what is the
serialization and des sterilization,

how do you hydrate and is this server
side rendered or client Yeah, exactly.

Like all of, yeah, exactly.

Authentication and cookies and headers
and all of that stuff is like part of,

or it's like a super set of rest APIs.

Right.

And I

think.

You know, testing people on what they
know about rest APIs makes a lot of sense

to me because it's so fundamental to web

Colin: Yeah.

What I, what I love about this
is that they say that it shows

sustained drama, free demand growth.

And I think this is because it.

Kind of devoid of the language
battles and all these things

that happened at the same time.

Like I feel like GraphQL was trying
to overtake rest APIs for a while and

we've just been this back and forth
on, you know, whether or not that's

gonna be the new paradigm or not.

Cause there's a lot of
pros and cons to both.

But I don't see GraphQL on
this top skills and demand.

You know, I know Shopify uses it.

I know GitHub uses it.

CJ: I also read that as like drama
free, meaning like boring, like Yeah,

it's, it's like a nice way to say like,
yes, this is just like the bread and

butter boring stuff that everyone needs
to know and kind of like table stakes

Colin: I think we all agree
on that, which is crazy.

That's like our, that's
how we break bread now.

It's like, hey, we're
having a conversation about

something we don't agree.

Let's bring up rest APIs.

And at the bottom, the, the fifth one
is also I would imagine very drama free,

which is HTML, CSS and Java Script.

Just like plain vanilla.

Everything's built that way.

It's the bricks, the foundation.

But between rest APIs and HTML and
css, we get the, the slightly more

drama filled skill, which is react.

Which I think the drama more comes from
just the, the number of libraries and

angular and all these other different
options that you can go down these days.

CJ: Yeah, it's like centralized
and you know, does Versace own it

or does you know, Facebook own it?

Is it unowned?

You know, there's all this
like remix versus Next JS stuff

going on in the React community.

So, yeah.

totally.

Colin: Yeah, I would say like we used
to have that kind of drama in the

rails in Ruby Land, but we haven't,
I guess we we're, we're not afraid

of drama in that world either, but,
you know, it hasn't, hasn't been

as much since like the MEB days or.

You know, different forks of rails
and ruby and all that kind of stuff.

But so yeah, it looks like in
general, like I would definitely

take a look at these top five skills.

And I think they also mentioned
just that like people are really

looking at adding data science to
their skillset no matter what you do.

I'm working on a project right now where
I'm like, wishing I had more data science

background because I'm trying to find.

Interesting data sets.

I have a giant data set how do
I find out what's interesting?

CJ: Yeah, totally.

Or you can, it's easier now to like come
up with a question and be like I wonder

how many, you know, voters in this state
didn't vote this year because of their

coffee preference change or whatever.

Like you can there, I forget what
website it is, but there's, there's

another kind of machine learning
site where you can just like give

it your question and then it'll spit
out the sequel that you need to run.

Colin: Nice.

CJ: But yeah, the data scientists that
I've worked with at Stripe have just been

like, mind-blowingly good at this stuff
and some of the dashboards they make, I'm

like, how in the, like, I, I thought that
I was okay at sql, but holy moly, this is

like, yeah, some really mind-blowing you
know, insights that they can figure out.

It's like knowing the question and
then also being able to translate that

question into like the code that you
need to write and then being able to

validate and verify, like, okay, yes, that
answer does line up with the question.

Colin: Yeah, the thing that I'm gonna just
throw out, this is for free for anyone who

wants to build it cuz I don't even know
where to start, is that I think about this

a lot with rest APIs and integrations.

Like, I don't know why we couldn't have
a DALL-E for integrations at some point.

Like if the docs and the spec is
good enough and you know what the

models are and you know it all.

If I just want to integrate with
a thing, why are we writing all

this glue code all the time?

Especially when like GitHub co.

Like sometimes I'll write a test.

Or rather, I'll write the code and
then I'll write a comment in the spec

and in rspec it almost always lately
has like just written the test for me.

Now I go back and I tear it down and
read like think through what it's

doing so that I'm not just blindly
accepting it, but I'm like, yeah, that

is exactly what I was trying to do.

And I don't know if it's aware,
if it's more aware because I

just wrote the code for it.

And obviously in this case I
didn't write the test first

because, But I would be curious if he goes
the other way around, like, can I write

the test first and then go into the class
and see if it'll help me generate that?

And it kind of depends on what you're
building, but I think it would be

really cool, like if, like with levels,
like he's generating interiors for

people based on their current interior.

Like why can't we say like, I want
Slack and Twitter to talk to each.

Dolly, tell me what you
think that should look like

CJ: Mm-hmm.

Mm.

Colin: and just keep pressing generate
until it gets to where we want it.

CJ: Totally.

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

And I think you're right.

Like co-pilot seems to have gotten better
over the last six months of using it.

And now I'm definitely finding where
like if I am writing an interface in one

file and then I'm using the interface
in another file, like it, it gets

smarter about all the different things.

So like one example was, I was saying
like, Oh, I, on my video model, I

have a view count and initially GitHub
was auto completing to like video

dot views, but as soon as I added
view count to the other file, it like

changed its auto completion suggestion
to be view count instead of views.

And it just, yeah, it, it's getting, it's
getting smarter for sure, which is pretty

Colin: And we've always had like
IntelliSense, but this is like a

next level where it's like trying
to think one more step further.

Like, oh, I'm gonna map
all these values for you.

I'm like, oh, that was nice.

I wouldn't have thought to do that.

CJ: Exactly.

And a lot of that intelligence
was powered by having a really

strongly typed language.

Right?

Like if you're writing in C Sharp
and you have in Intes sense, like

Colin: Yeah.

You know what

CJ: Cause

Colin: you have.

CJ: Exactly.

But like the fact that it can do
it without types is kind of wild.

So yeah.

Colin: So I think all these kind
of lead up into what you were

mentioning at the top of the show
about tech layoffs and demand.

They definitely saw this.

I would say this probably was compiled
before a lot of the layoffs happened, but.

That tech hiring and pretty much
everything else hit headwinds in 2022.

The economy has slowed down.

There are people talking about recession,
however, they do see an overall trend

of tech industry continuing to grow.

I don't know if in their case that means.

More assessments or more job
descriptions or what that is.

But you know, I know a lot of
big companies are having q, you

know, hiring phrases through q1.

So in my mind, like it's the
holiday season, definitely take a

break, things like that coming up.

But it's also a really good
time to sharpen your tools,

learn some new skills like.

Go find some courses, watch
some YouTube videos, check out

CJ's channel, things like that.

Because when those start to, I guess, thaw
out and hiring freezes and, you know, I

think being ready for those, if you're
new to the industry or looking to make a

career change I wouldn't necessarily go
off of this list of programming languages,

but I would look at the top skills.

And maybe think about, you know, adding
some machine learning or, you know,

even just do a fun project on and see
if you even like working with, you

know, those kinds of models and things.

Sentiment analysis is a good place to
usually start on a project like that.

CJ: Mm.

Yeah, it's interesting.

The one of the things that they call
out in the state of the industry

in the report is a breakdown of
the different types of candidates.

And again, this could be skewing based
on the companies that are on here

or whatever, but it, it's like, oh.

The assessments are incre, like the
number of assessments are increasing

for data scientists and decreasing
a lot for full stack engineers.

And I think that peer signal of
just like, okay, data science is

in, software engineers are out.

I think it's much harder to pivot into
a data science role from, you know,

someone who's outside of tech than it
is for a software engineer who's like

relative or like somewhat interested
in data to be like, okay, yeah.

Like I'm, I'm now.

Have learned a little bit more sequel
and I know how to mess around with some

of these hugging face model things.

The hugging face transformers.

That was like in the
Stack Overflow survey.

We were like, what is this?

Yeah.

I think the, also the, the Open AI API
has gotten, I mean, it's, it's making it

surprisingly easy to interact with these.

Models.

So like just hitting up G p T three
through an API and saying like,

do this thing, here's my prompt.

And then getting back the data over
an API is like kind of crazy because

you can build a lot of these you know,
tools that are writing copy for you or

building blog posts or, you know, help me

suggest a bunch of different
titles for this video or whatever.

Colin: Facebook Research Division
released like a video where they

can actually, based on a prompt,
they can generate video now.

So,

CJ: That's super

Colin: and when I think about Peter
levels, what he did with the interior,

like you're talking about content
like text, text is pretty cheap.

Like the, I think they were tweeting
about their server rendering bills

for rendering out all of these
interiors and like, I really want to

go try it with my, my house, just to
like, I'll have to see if he's got

like a mid-century modern feature.

It's like, I just want, you
know, super minimal clean lines.

Tell me what, and then next
tell me what furniture to buy.

CJ: That's totally coming, right?

Like, yeah.

Yeah.

It's, I don't know.

Well, I, I wonder too, like all that,
the Facebook's prowess, I wonder how

impacted it's gonna be through all of
these layoffs from Meta and the fact

that like, I think they got dinged
pretty hard for all of their investment

that they put into the Metaverse.

And so I think there was a lot
of cool stuff that was coming

out of that that could have
been really, really interesting.

And it's a bummer that that innovation.

A little slow, maybe a little bit.

I don't know.

We'll

Colin: Yeah, I mean, he's not been shy
about saying that he's not backing down

from the metaverse, but the amount of
money that they had been pouring into it

was more, I don't know if it's more than
all of the iPhones put together, but it.

It's considerable.

Like it's, it's on like
Apollo mission level budget.

Literally, like I actually think it
was more than the whole Apollo program.

Like I'll have to find these stats
so I'm not completely making this

up, but like the amount of money that
they spent has been insane and they

don't have a lot to show for it yet.

But, you know, if you think that's
where we're gonna go, like we're talking

about talking to our computers, I still
think that talking to a computer and

things like AR are probably gonna.

Before we get, you know, this kind of
slightly dystopian like coding inside

of a VR headset and like, you know,
but at the same time you and I are

separated by a whole country and being
able to like put on two headsets and,

you know, jump into even like what does
a podcast studio look like in vr, right?

And having all the stuff that we
need and the mixers and all that

stuff would be kind of interesting.

CJ: What?

Yeah, I was super skeptical
of this whole metaverse thing.

I was like, it's not gonna, I don't
see how this is gonna take hold as

the gaming sort of, oh, you're gonna,
you know, join with your friends and

hang out with them and like, you're
gonna sit at a table and visit or

have, you know, like your Zoom call.

But when I heard about the idea that this
VR headset could sort of replace your

computer monitor and like you could use
that as a way to visualize everything.

That really kind of blew
my mind a little bit.

Cause I was like, oh, now you
just have like infinite space

for what you want to see.

And like then you can start
having the input to your brain.

Like the bandwidth of the input
to your brain just goes up so much

because now you can just start sucking
in a, a bunch of different things.

Like for instance, during this
call, like while we're recording

this, I'm command tabbing.

I have two giant monitors up and I'm
command tapping between the hacker

rank survey, between our notes for
the podcast and between the Zencaster

recording studio and like being able to
just kinda like look around and see all

of that would be pretty, pretty cool.

Colin: Totally.

And I, I think like what that
would look like for programming,

like even when we take the voice
component of that and like, show me.

Like you can just describe a data
set like we were saying, and then

just show me the summary of it.

Or, or like, I want the item to describe
it now, assign that to a variable

and I'm gonna use that in my app.

Right.

Things like that.

So I think we should definitely
do an episode on the Metaverse.

I think there's a lot of fun
things to talk about there.

Whether we, and I think we haven't
touched it, but like there's some similar.

With Metaverse and like Crypto and
NFTs and Web three and all that

kind of stuff, which we might need
to find a guest for Web three.

I don't know that I have not touched
it for a lot of reasons, but I'm a

little bit of a crypto skeptic on
a lot of that stuff, but I think

there's some interesting things to
talk about with the future for sure.

CJ: Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah.

I think all, all fun topics.

They're all super fun topics and like
whatever, you know, just to, I think I

get excited about what the future holds
and what the possibilities are and yeah.

So I think it's gonna be an exciting
decade ahead of us despite the

current economic environment.

Colin: Absolutely.

So well, thanks for listening to
this episode of Build and Learn.

As always, you can head over to
buildandlearn.dev to check out all the

links and resources in the show notes.

CJ: That's all for this episode, folks.

We'll see you next time.