AI launches, Docs, Calendars

Colin: Welcome to Build and learn.

My name is Colin.

CJ: And I'm CJ.

And today Colin and I
are just catching up.

We're talking about an
onsite that he went to.

There was a whole bunch of
events that happened this week.

GitHub universe, open AI, the
humane, crew launched their AI pin.

So we'll get into details about all that.

Yeah, let's talk about the on site.

where is HQ, or like,
where is your team based?

Colin: yeah, so the team is
spread out all over, and we

have an office in San Francisco.

So the onsite was there.

And, just, it was just our team.

So the kind of apps, spots, APIs, public
facing stuff, DevRel, that kind of thing.

So yeah, it was good to
get the crew together.

And even though we're
always connecting online.

Get through some stuff that just seems
to be easier when you're in person.

and then just a bunch of, fun
kind of team bonding stuff.

We've had, I think one or
two people joined since the

last time we got together.

I was not the new person this
time, which was nice too.

CJ: Do they always tend to have
the on sites, like at the same

place, or do you get to go travel
other places for on sites, or?

Colin: Yeah, there was a big push to
try to do it elsewhere this time, but

we have an office and they don't have
to pay extra to book like a conference.

room and figure out how to get a bunch
of people to a place that, doesn't have

as much infrastructure for like we have
facilities and stuff to do food and

conference rooms and all the tech and
stuff that we need to, cause we still

offer the onsite virtually for people who
can't make it out for whatever reason,

if it was just bad week or something.

so we still like have discord up with.

People joining virtually, and
then having the team in place.

so yeah, this was more like
strategy and focused on more work

on this onsite than like just
team bonding and stuff like that.

But

CJ: Got it.

I feel like some on sites where
you focus on work a ton, you come

away and you're just like, okay, we
could have maybe done that remotely.

and then other onsites where you're doing
a lot of team bonding, it feels really

good to just come away feeling connected
and rejuvenated and like energized and, I

think ideally you get a mix of both, but,
I've definitely been to some offsites,

at Stripe where it felt awesome, right?

You come away feeling super connected
and, and then I've also had some

onsites where it's oh, we were
planning on getting like a lot done.

At this and yeah, maybe things weren't
as organized or whatever, but, it's

hard to strike that balance for sure.

Colin: I think there's different
kinds of work, so I think things where

you're getting people in a room to
brainstorm plan for future quarters,

future, things like that are good.

I wouldn't say that we'd all want
to be in a room, coding necessarily.

We can do that back at home.

But yeah, whatever is added from
FaceTime, just being able to hang out

and some people show up wanting to
talk about things that, you know, you

just don't get to, you don't have the
hallway chatter when you're online.

and I know a lot of companies that don't
have any offices, they, Do move their

onsites around the world, especially
depending on how, global they are.

So you've got like onsites
in Portugal and things.

we had that with orbit.

That was some work, some brainstorming,
like hearing from the team, like

what do you think we're building?

Being able to.

work with leadership to get a sense of
this is what we think we're building.

Is this aligned with what the
team thinks we're building?

this is maybe, you know, a chance to,
to whiteboard, which as much as I love

FigJam, it's not a direct replacement for
being in the room for some of that stuff.

And then we had a crochet time.

We all had these little woobles,
like crocheting, kits that

we got to pick, and just.

and just bonding time, which it was good.

There were a bunch of people that I
did not know that I just don't interact

with that are on our activities team.

So in discord, there's these activities
like games and, there's actually

like a whiteboard type activity in
their, watch together, just more

like a game studio inside of discord.

So that team I hadn't
worked with very much.

So it was good to, to do that.

And, we had hot pot.

And so like myself and the vegetarians
were on the other end, which were a bunch

of people I hadn't met before because, it
was like, this is the vegetarian hot pot

and this is the non vegetarian section.

So it was fun.

CJ: Awesome.

Yeah, there, there was a talk.

It's interesting that you mentioned
crochet because there was a talk

at RubyConf 2022, by Tori, and we
can link to it, but it was about

how crochet and code, are very
similar, and it was an awesome talk.

I really enjoyed it.

yeah, and also like just generally,
I feel like all of those fabric, I

don't know, like fabric arts remind me
so much of coding just, there's just,

instructions that you follow and there's
patterns that you can follow, or you can

be creative and make whatever you want.

And there's just, there's like
fundamental, pieces of the puzzle

that you can apply in any, combine in
different ways to make different things.

fun.

Colin: I've been to a conference, I think
it was NodeConf, where someone found

a, a knitting machine that they could
reprogram and they were talking about a

lot of the things that you're, I'll try
to find it and put it in the show notes,

but, um, basically making like a 3D
printer for a knitting machine, right?

So like how do you translate the image
into something that's a little bit more

8 bit and then into The stitches and then
actually having it print using Arduino and

Node or whatever Language and yeah, like
you gotta be really passionate about that.

I'll find it and put it in the show notes

CJ: Yeah, super cool.

When, um, I think when people
bring their passions , into tech.

Colin: Yeah, I mean, you're going
to spend more time figuring it out

because you care about it, right?

It's like you want to figure
out how do I can I'm sure they

enjoy crocheting by hand too

CJ: So did you see the launch of the
humane AI pin thing that just came out?

Colin: you are the second person to
have sent me a link to this and I have

I had not clicked on it yet But I had
seen Rumors of this a few weeks ago

CJ: Yeah.

Similarly, I heard a bunch of
waves and I was like, AI pin,

what the heck is this thing?

Or initially, I think when I first heard
about it, I think the way that it was

explained to me was that it was going
to be like a necklace, like a medallion

that you wear and it's always watching.

But, yeah, if you go head over and watch
the kind of like launch video, it's

more like a lapel pin that you snap on.

Colin: I think those might
be two different products.

CJ: Oh, really?

Colin: Yeah, I think I know
what you're talking about.

And it's like a, it's
like a necklace medallion.

It's they're trying to also be a
little bit jewelry like, and it's

like auto transcribing conversations
that you have and things like that,

which I think I mentioned to you
makes me want to move to a forest.

but this could be a successor to it.

It could be a competitor to it.

and it, I appreciate their
domain name, even though it's

hard to explain to people.

It's H U dot M A dot N E, we'll put a
link in the show notes, but their website

is very interactive, very interesting.

So for those people listening
at home, what is the AI pen?

CJ: yeah.

So it's this lapel pin that has a
camera, microphone, speaker, and

like laser projector thing built in.

it has, access to the LTE network.

And they have a partnership,
I think, with T Mobile.

the company was founded by a bunch of ex
Apple folks that worked on iPhone and they

are partnered really closely with open AI.

So it is like a new type of consumer
device that is all AI driven.

And, I don't know, there's a few
different interfaces, so like it can

talk to you obviously, but you can also
hold out your hand and it will project.

Something in, just one color, basically,
onto your hand, and then you can, move

your hand around or use gestures to
control it um, and a lot of it seems like

it's voice activated, so you can say,
take a picture right now, or, uh, some

of the features that were like most mind
blowing was like, in the demo, he holds

out a handful of almonds and he says how
much protein is in this or something.

And it's Oh, there's 15 grams of protein.

And then he says, I'm going to eat it.

And then he just eats it.

I'm like, this is what I've been
wanting for like the, my fitness pal,

like it's like super charged, right?

Fitness pal thing, just watch all
the stuff that goes in my mouth

Colin: Just watch my mouth until

CJ: Yeah, exactly.

Exactly.

Colin: it bothers you like CJ.

Are you eating something right now?

CJ: yeah, exactly.

It's Oh, you shouldn't
put that in your mouth.

You're over your calorie
limit for the day.

Colin: yeah, I didn't get
a chance to watch the whole

video yet, but I don't know.

I just, I wonder who this is for a
little bit because I have a drawer

of devices like this from, 10 years
ago, they're not anything like this.

I guess we talked about the
Ray Bans AI glasses from Meta.

I have this brain sensing headband,
this arm gesture, finger sensing.

Like I have literally a drawer of tech
that's I think some of them still might

be in business, but barely supported.

I think a lot of it was from the first VR
wave of where you're wanting to get input.

And I think AI is probably making
these a little bit more realistic.

those were inputs, but they weren't smart.

They required a lot of apps and tech
built around them to even be useful.

when the headband company went out of
business, it's now I have nothing to do.

Like it's a piece of plastic and
a bunch of chips that I can't use.

what makes this something that
like, do you think people want this

CJ: I think that something that I
was talking to Nicole about was how

we're already struggling with our kids
sort of addiction to screens, right?

Like they're always want to be on screens.

I definitely am addicted to it.

I'm like, Oh, there's, you know, a
10 second break here between when my

coffee water is heating up and when,
the, whatever is going to be done.

Let me pull up my phone and get a few
quick hits in of tick tock or whatever.

Like it is super, super addictive.

Because this thing does not have a screen,
I feel like it almost does give you back

a little bit of your humanity in a way.

that said, I don't know if it'll
be enough to replace a phone.

And so I think, I don't know if,
it has the potential to replace

a phone for many people, but for.

Us who are on it all the time, using
it for work, using it for, lots

and lots of different use cases.

I think it's going to take a while for
the features of something like a pen to

catch up with the utility of a phone.

they had a few apps out of the gate.

I can't remember, it's not Spotify,
but they're partnered with some music.

Yeah.

With title.

and they're with, just like a
handful of companies that will have.

Colin: and slack.

CJ: Yeah, they're going to
have stuff out of the gate,

Colin: I don't want my slack notifications
following me everywhere I go.

CJ: the one, I did like that.

He was like, Oh, summarize my day
or what do I need to attend to?

And then it like looks at all
your inbound stuff and figures

out how to give you a breakdown.

It's like having a secretary maybe

Colin: Yeah.

imagine, I'm sure it knows where you are.

It's like you have a meeting
in an hour across town and

you're not anywhere near it.

And you might not even remember.

You're eating almonds.

We can see that you're eating
almonds and you're not.

You might need to get to this
meeting like, hey, by the way,

you have that lunch with somebody.

there's things like that don't
always end up on my calendar.

I guess if it doesn't know about it,
it won't be able to tell you about it.

But being able to have some
context around the world.

your phone can do a lot of that
today, but like you're right, you're

pulling out your phone and how many
notifications are we already getting?

I think the thing that I think
most people are concerned by is the

privacy side of this and I know that
they have a light that's the trust

indicator but like I don't think I
feel better having a light on when

I just don't know what conversations
are being recorded and which ones are.

CJ: totally.

Yeah.

It's going to be like a
giant privacy nightmare.

And they, like when in the demo, he says
trust like 10 times, because I'm sure

like, that's a lot of people's concern.

And yeah, it's definitely something
where you're walking around with a camera

that's watching everything that you see
and definitely not everything that I see.

I want available for the
internet to know about.

Colin: I'd say between that and.

the glasses.

we already have microphones and
cameras all over the place, right?

Like on one bus, if every person has a
phone, there's that many phone, there's

that many cameras and at least that many
speakers and microphones in the room.

So it's not necessarily new, but
it's more obvious when someone

holds their phone up to your face.

CJ: it's, it reminds me a lot of like
police body cam footage, like police,

whether you agree or not with how the
footage is used, like someone who's on

duty might behave differently because they
have a little big brother accountability

situation going on all the time, and
so yeah, it might change your behavior.

Colin: interesting.

Yeah, I'll have to watch this full
video and get, I'm keen to see what

the internet is reacting to this.

I'm curious what people
listening to this are thinking.

CJ: Yeah, it was funny too.

In the, in the presentation, he
said something like, he's like very

calm and, almost like monotone.

He's tell Colin that
I'll be over for dinner.

And then it says okay, I've, constructed
a text message to Colin telling

him that you'll be over for dinner.

And then he's now make
it sound more excited.

Colin: I was going to say the one, the
little bit of the video I did watch,

I was a little surprised that he was,
he's probably one of the founders,

CJ: he must be, the

Colin: not a lot of stage presence there.

CJ: Yeah.

But it was like, Oh, okay.

So this is a cool use case that I
think will flow to all messages.

Eventually it's tell so
and so something and then.

It reads off the message and then you
just say make it sound more fun or make

it sound more plucky or, convey that I
care about my parent this way or that way,

or I don't know, like just, using GPT to
rewrite content, uh, in real time, based

on suggestions instead of having to edit,

Colin: this feels more
like the Tony Stark, right?

Dream, the Jarvis, the Friday
that you have with you and

they have their own voice.

Cause I, there's some friends that
I have who are like very, they,

if they're texting more than one
or two texts back and forth, they

switched to voice messages, which
I never reached for voicemail.

It's just like very foreign to me,
but I guess, I don't know, kids, do

kids these days prefer the like voice?

Memos that you're sending back and forth?

CJ: I think it's a cultural thing
based on like ages, but I think

it's also a cultural thing depending
on what language you speak.

Like I've definitely noticed
certain culture, like where

it's really hard to type.

I don't know if it's some sort of some
languages where you have to search

like a bajillion characters to find the
one thing that you're trying to say.

I think in some cases, like it's just way
more ergonomic to just say what you mean.

So I don't know.

We'll see.

We'll see how it goes.

But I, yeah, I have not picked up
that habit yet, but we do have a

lot of friends who we communicate
with over Marco Polo, which is just

like the video version of that.

And so yeah, I don't know.

It's like FaceTime, like messages instead
of FaceTime, like a live synchronous call.

Colin: Yeah, it's like ZipMessage.

CJ: I haven't used ZipMesh, is that,

Colin: ZipMessage has
been renamed since...

It's something else now, but yeah.

It's called ClarityFlow now.

CJ: Ah, okay.

Colin: cool.

what else came out this week?

A lot of AI stuff.

So we talked about human AI, the AI pen,

CJ: Yep.

Colin: there was also
the OpenAI announcements.

And GitHub Universe was like
almost an extension of OpenAI's

conference, like more AI stuff.

CJ: exactly.

Yeah.

Satya Nadella just making the rounds.

He's like on a podcast circuit,
but instead of podcasts, it's

like keynote speeches for GitHub
universe and OpenAI DevDay I watched

the keynote for OpenAI DevDay.

I watched some of the GitHub universe
one, and it seemed a lot like

we're adding Copilot to everything.

And not too much more depth than that.

And so I expect that we'll see new
buttons and things all over the place.

speaking of it, Descript has like a
new ask AI thing that is also powered

by open AI, where it's just give me
show notes for this episode, or think

of a title for this episode, or add
chapter markers for this episode.

And it will just edit like your,
composition in line, which is pretty sick.

But.

Yeah, OpenAI, the OpenAI Dev Day
announcements, I think were pretty

cool, mostly because the 32 K context,
restriction for GPT four was pretty

limiting for a lot of cases and quad
two, which is like the anthropics

version of GPT four has been out for
a long time and I think they have a

hundred K context and so you can just.

Do so much more with a hundred
K tokens than you can with 32 K.

And so that was a big part of it.

And then they also announced, GPTs and
assistance and a couple other things.

they're also decreasing pricing
across a bunch of stuff.

I, yeah.

So I went in and I played with creating
assistance, which, shout out to.

the folks working on the Ruby open AI
gem, because someone had a PR up like

within a few hours and it's not merged
or it wasn't merged when I was going

to play with it, but I was just like,
Oh, we'll just use their fork and start

playing with the stuff that's there.

Colin: Use bleeding edge.

Yeah.

CJ: Yeah.

And there, I had a couple of different
takeaways, like I thought that the way

that you created messages and completion
or like chat messages and completions

before through the API was pretty
simple and like easy to understand.

It's just Oh, you pass a chat and
here's all the messages for the chat.

And then it gives you back.

This is the next message
that's in the result.

And then you can use
that however you want.

Whereas now with assistance, there
are like, there's assistance and then

each assistant can have like threads.

And then within those threads, you
can have runs in those runs might

do like some function calling or
some retrieval or some other stuff.

And the APIs are definitely still pretty
primitive and there's a lot of APIs.

So like you're calling a
whole bunch of things just to

make one small thing happen.

It's If you haven't already got to create
your assistant, that's one API call.

Then you got to create a
thread and that's an API call.

And then you got to add
messages to the thread.

And then you got to create a run, which
is like a run on a thread with a message.

And then that will kick off
some background tasks that

may need some input from you.

So it's definitely, there's
like a lot more to it now.

so

Colin: That's a lot of the stuff
that people were building, right?

Like you had to manage all those
contexts and then do the run yourself.

And now we're like, okay,
let's give everything to

them and get the full window.

CJ: Exactly.

Yes.

Especially the retrieval part where that
was, I think I put up a video like nine

months ago with pine cone and I just,
I couldn't get it working as expected.

I didn't understand a
bunch of pieces of it.

And so having open AI, just take
care of it is going to be awesome.

And having them deal with, the window
buffering, they will figure out how to

remove the old messages or compress them
or whatever, so that you can keep the

same sort of context and information.

so yeah, a lot of those really
tricky bits are going away.

Uh, they also came out with GPT 4v, which
is like the vision tool that's built in.

And I think that's
going to be pretty sick.

So you can give it images
and ask about, uh, InLine,

Colin: I think Westboss had
tweeted, this was in October,

so only a month ago, right?

Yeah, the, an hour long podcast,
how many tokens of input and how

much they would cost to summarize
that podcast and all the different

models, we can put a link to this.

But with this announcement, they
said that it took it down to 18

cents for an hour long podcast.

probably because there's also
a larger token context now.

So you don't have to try to do
this in multiple contexts and

merge them or any of that stuff.

obviously if you spend more, I think
there was like some of the GPTs

costs like 66 cents and you end up
with like better quality, more of a

limit takes a little bit more time.

so yeah, it's interesting to see.

I don't know.

I haven't been following the implications
of what all this is like where the

Total compute that's just being burned
on AI stuff has got to be insane.

And I know NVIDIA is riding that
wave right now, but all of these

announcements, I just think it's
good to be a GPU creator right now.

CJ: Totally.

Yeah.

We'll see.

I feel like didn't their stock price
just took a huge hit too, right?

Nvidia?

Colin: I think so.

CJ: maybe their backup.

Colin: Looks like they're back on top.

CJ: They spiked back in May.

And then it's been really wavy since then.

I think that holding like the top spot is
going to be tricky now that everyone is

gunning for like how to create the right,

Colin: but the price was a third
what it is a year ago, It's

300 percent up from last year.

CJ: Yeah, not too shabby, right?

yeah, it would be good to work at Nvidia,

Colin: It's, it's still not quite the
price of one share of Chipotle though.

Chipotle, I don't know when they're
going to do a stock split or what,

but one share is 2, 111 right now.

2,

CJ: wow.

Colin: 100 for a share of a burrito.

CJ: Nice.

But yeah, Chipotle is like 57
billion market cap and Nvidia is 1.

2 trillion market cap, so

Colin: different.

Little

CJ: yeah.

But still yeah, I think when I was, or
like whenever I heard about the drop,

they had gone from like the 1 trillion
down to whatever the 900 billions again.

And yeah, everyone's Oh no,
did they actually do the thing?

Colin: So now that my chat GPT can search
the internet, the recap of GitHub universe

was more co pilot, like you mentioned,
co pilot enterprise, which I think is a

chance for them to just charge enterprises
more, give them more security, more

Things like that where they're not as
worried about their code being leaked.

AI security features, vulnerability,
prevention, identification.

That stuff is always good.

Like when you leak a token or you
accidentally put, some sort of a

SQL injection in your code, like
GitHub could actually tell you

that's present, I'll have to watch
the video, but like I could see it's

some really cool co pilot for PRs.

Tooling as well.

CJ: Yeah, so Mike and Tristan, guys
I worked with at my VR are working

on a new tool called gitcontext.

Which is like a PR tool.

So you can manage PRs.

I am in the super alpha and still trying
to figure out how to get it, get some of

the basic stuff working, but I'm excited
for where that's headed and totally agree.

there will likely be a lot of companies
built around, like, how can we.

Help you write code, which
probably starts with PRs.

Like, Oh, you describe the
PR that you want it to make.

And then it just opens a simple one,
kind of like depend a bot style, but it's

like, Oh, fix this in plus one query.

And we'll just go in and add
the includes for you or yeah.

add a log statement every time I
do X PR that does that for you.

Colin: Nice.

It looks like some of this like GitHub
copilot workspace offers AI bridge

to help developers from issue to pull
requests, which will be available in 2024.

So yeah, we'll have to
check out the videos.

If anyone was in the GitHub
universe audience be please

send us some links, send us some
things that we should look at.

I did share these.

fonts that were released.

So some free, super fonts for programming.

So very monospaced, very programmatic.

It looks like programmatic because
I can change the weight and the

font size and the width all with
like sliders and the font changes.

CJ: Yep.

Very beautiful website, monospace.

githubnext.

com., I don't know, there's
some really crisp stuff in here.

Gotta burn some time figuring
out how to make them work in Vim.

yeah, we'll see.

Colin: Yeah, if you
haven't been to githubnext.

com, that whole site is just,
they have a team of, researchers

and, staff level folks who are
just, what if GitHub did this?

And they just do it.

And it's just, a lot of really cool
researchers and UX people and just

trying to push the boundaries of,
developer tools is pretty cool.

CJ: Totally.

Yeah.

And it's this site is so sexy.

Like when you hover over some of
the fonts, like the weights trends,

like they have the CSS transition,
like on the weight of the font.

So I don't know, it's fun.

Go play around with it for sure.

Colin: Definitely.

So what else are you working on this week?

What are you learning?

What are you building?

CJ: I put up a video earlier
this week about setting up

Jupyter notebooks with rails.

so Jupyter is a really popular,
tool inside of the Python ecosystem.

And, using Jupyter notebooks within Ruby,
you can do by installing a Ruby kernel.

So the kernel is like.

The thing that communicates between
your language, like your backend

language, and these notebooks, which are
typically run in like a web interface.

And so you'll have this web interface
where you can have different cells that

you run and you can run like the whole
sheet, or you can run one cell at a time.

If you're familiar with rails, you
might think of it as like having a rails

console, but being able to edit and rerun
and Manage the each line of code that's

in some kind of like little script.

there's also like really cool
things built into Jupiter for

visualizations and you can embed HTML
and Markdown and things like that.

it's really popular in Python for
academic things and, like displaying Matt.

matplotlib type charts, where you'll
see like scatter plots or line

charts or bar charts or whatever, as
part of data sciencey type things.

And so there's a way to do
that with rails, and there's

some gems that are useful.

so played around a lot with that, trying
to get that working so that we have a

similar data science experience when
inside of, the Kraftwerk code base,

as you might have, in Python land.

And then, yeah, it's also just
like a cool way to teach, I think.

So if you look up YouTube videos about
open AI, like most of them are in

Python and most of them are just using
Jupyter notebooks to walk through,

like I did this and then I did this,

Colin: because you can write prose, right?

You can explain and then have code
that runs right in, in context.

CJ: Yeah, you can have like
markdown cells and things like that.

And then they also end up
looking great on GitHub.

Like when you push them up, like they look
like documentation with code snippets, but

then you can download them and run them.

And I think even like in Google code
lab or whatever, that's the experience

too, that you'll get if you're running.

Inside of, inside of their
using their GPUs or whatever.

So that's, yeah, that's
been a fun part of the week.

So

Colin: Cool.

I'll have to share that video

CJ: yeah.

What about you?

Colin: I've been going
down the rabbit hole.

whole of like, docs.

I think we talked about diet taxes a few
weeks ago, but just figuring out not only

like how we want to redo the information
architecture of our docs, but what tools

we're going to use if we can do it.

Don't think it's ever a priority like
we're not going to ever have a team that's

going to get to go to rebuild it all.

And so I'm looking at all the
different JavaScript frameworks and

all the static things out there.

And like Astro has this
thing called Starlight that's

specifically for a docs template.

Basically, Tailwind UI has protocol,
which is just like a really nice doc site.

There's Docusaurus.

There's all these different tools that
people have used for a really long time.

And so looking through those
and trying to figure out, can

we use something off the shelf?

do we really need to reinvent
this wheel or do we want it to

just be a really good experience?

Angular has some new docs, angular.

dev.

And I really like how, if you go to
their website and you scroll, it's

just a really fun design, but then on
the side you have their stuff divided

up by tutorials, there's a playground,
there's a reference, it's very obvious,

What like the division of stuff is there
right now, our docs, you have like prose

mixed in with reference mixed in with
Hey, don't forget to include your token.

there's just a lot of little call
outs that if you're not paying

attention, you can forget something.

sometimes you're like, is this a
tutorial or am I being explained

how WebSockets work, right?

It's There's different outcomes.

and what I really like about Diataxis
is that they have a distinction between

tutorials and guides in that a tutorial
is meant to teach and a guide is

meant to get something specific done.

So once you have your
bot, how do you host it?

That might be more of a guide.

You're learning how to host, but
it might be more specific to like

how to host this on a Cloudflare
worker, how to host this on Heroku,

how to host this on specific things.

And so just thinking through
all of that, there's a lot of

content on the current doc site.

So we're just trying to think
how to move that around.

and I think like most folks,
there's like more stuff that we

want to do than we have time to do.

So what can we do first?

CJ: Totally.

A benefit that.

I would not have thought about a year
ago is by using something off the shelf

There is likely going to be like easier
integration with ai tools and so Lang

chain, like the Lang chain Python library
has built in docs, parsers for like the

top end documentation website things.

And so it already knows Oh,
I'm going to read a whatever

docusaurus type site right now.

And I know how to pull out the parts
that are important for chunking this

document and then using AI to like
generate completions based on that.

And so I, yeah.

A year ago, I probably would
have been like, Oh yeah, let me

just use markdoc and build my own
custom thing that looks, cool.

And now I'm like, Oh, using something
off the shelf would make it standardized

and standardizes might be a good
thing because now you can plug into

like lots of different ecosystems.

So I don't know.

Yeah.

That's, it's tricky.

Colin: I think Starlight
supports MDX and Markdoc too.

So there's some of that okay,
they've already done the integration.

They've, there's support for localization.

There's support for light and dark themes.

there's a lot of table stakes there.

thinking about SEO, like whatever
the SEO we have today is going to

have to change if we move stuff.

And so like thinking about
all of that is also important.

We have this thing right now.

We, our docs are in public markdown
files that the community can see.

And I think what's interesting
about that is anything that we

put into a PR, they can see once
it's merged, it's in the docs.

There's things that we can't necessarily
like a future feature can't go into those

PRs until it's ready to be talked about.

So like we can't even really start
to work on the docs until we can talk

about it, which is also an issue.

So it's not that we want to keep things
hidden, but some things we have to keep

hidden until it's More well formed and we
know we're actually going to release it.

We have staging servers for all of this
stuff, but like on internal versions

so that we can see it, get ahead of it.

I started thinking about what does
this look like in code samples?

What does this look like in reference?

Things like that.

CJ: Even just like getting
feedback from beta users, right?

if you can't write about a beta, then,
yeah, even at Stripe, like sometimes we

would send a Google doc to early, like
alpha users and be like, here's what our

docs might look like, give us feedback.

And then once we had something,
then we would write some beta docs,

put them behind a feature flag and.

You know, let certain people into
the beta and we considered the

documentation part of the product
so that they would give us feedback

Colin: with the same feature flag, right?

CJ: Exactly.

Yeah.

Yeah, they were, it was exactly the same.

Yeah.

It's Oh, if you're in that flag, then
you get the docs and you get the feature,

Colin: I would love that.

CJ: Yeah, it's it was pretty killer.

And obviously there's a whole team.

There's like a whole
engineering team that built docs

Colin: Right.

CJ: a whole other team that wrote docs.

in particular, my buddy Dave, who
used to work on the angular docs.

And so something that I remember
him telling me about was that.

Their docs all have tests, like the
actual examples are tested with whatever

angular test framework they have.

So they know like for sure, all the
code snippets work and are like legit

and, perform as expected, which that's
like another huge challenge is like,

how do you manage and maintain code
snippets and samples inside of the docs?

Which

I find particularly interesting.

Colin: Yeah.

That is a challenge I look
forward to once we get there.

right now it's just, we want
to be able to do the docs and

CJ: Yeah.

Colin: bring them to the 2020,
by the time we get this out by,

we'll bring them to 2024 standards.

AI is a big part of that, I think.

CJ: totally, yes.

One question that I have is around
how, common it was for the community

to make contributions to the docs.

I'm assuming that was like one
of the biggest goals was like,

let's make them public so the
community can help us maintain them.

Was that actually happening or was it,

Colin: Oh, yeah.

We have 40 open PRS right now.

And

CJ: okay,

Colin: you're out there listening,
there's frustration around how

long it takes for them to close
because we need to verify that what

they've documented is in fact true.

So there's some like chicken and
egg here with an open API spec

in that sometimes it's updating
reference that's just out of date.

Because their experience as a developer
is hey, this doesn't return that

thing anymore, or you deprecated this
thing, or you said you were going to

deprecate this thing, and you guys
still haven't deprecated it yet.

sometimes, we have issues and PRs.

Issues tend to be real issues.

this thing doesn't work, or...

This is supposed to be like this.

And we have engineers who do solve
those things, whereas PRSs are

more the dev team, the Devra team.

And it might just be like, Hey, you
guys never documented this feature.

It's that feature's not fully rolled out.

We appreciate you writing the docs
for it, but we're not going to merge

this until it's fully rolled out.

because whatever ends
up in the docs is true.

Whatever's in a PR is
not necessarily true yet.

And it's also tricky when you're
having PRs from folks to maintain

a consistent voice, style
guides, all this kind of stuff.

I think we shipped like a table
formatter that has been nuking

everyone's tables in a weird way.

It's like not the way that most
linters lint markdown tables.

And so it's I broke because the padding
on this table is a little bit funny.

And it's okay, that's so dumb to
have to fix, but that's something

computers can fix for us.

So yeah,

have one more week in my accountability
group and I'm still trucking

along on the conference room app.

I'm going to do a little
hackathoning on it today.

finding myself, I think we mentioned
last time, like I just finding

myself having to build things that
I don't think I need to build.

So I have not moved to using rails.

I'm still in.

node.

and so I don't have like user
logins and all that stuff.

I'm just making it as the demo will
be like if it shows up on the Google

calendar, meaning it was added by a
person with auth through the Google

calendar, it'll show up in the app
and you can like book the room right

now anonymously and stuff like that.

I am going to move this to rails and use
jumpstart for the actual user onboarding

user off, all that kind of stuff.

And I was hoping, because Cal.

com has this calendar infrastructure
product that they have and I was hoping

that I would just be able to reuse that
or Calendly or there's this thing called

Nylas that does like Google calendaring,
Google mail, like it's an API.

For those APIs and Nylas, you could
build this with, but with cal.

com and Calendly, like they're really
designed for booking a single person.

if what's tricky about Calendly is
if any of the conference rooms are

booked, then all the other conference
rooms will also be booked because

they don't treat them as resources.

They treat them as a person.

And that person has a
meeting at this time.

So that person can't
meet with somebody else.

Cal.

com.

I would love for you guys to really
have calendar infrastructure.

If that's if you power all these
calendar apps, like you deal with time

zone issues, you deal with all the
things that most developers have to

deal with, that would be really cool.

What I find myself ending up doing is
I'm building like this abstraction of

calendars and events and eventing on them.

So a conference room can listen
to the calendar and act on it.

Like someone has this room after you
do, or conference room was canceled.

The conference room was extended,
all that kind of different stuff.

So

CJ: Cool.

That's I'm like pumped to see
it and excited that you're

continuing to make progress.

It sounds awesome.

yeah, I, we have been using full calendar
and every time I get a feature request.

From the team that's
like, Oh, can we add this?

Whatever.

I'm like, Oh, and I kind of grip my teeth.

I'm like, I don't know if it's
going to work with full calendar.

And then I'm always surprised.

I'm like, Whoa, I can like totally
just hook into this callback and then

customize that part of the page this way.

Or Oh, there's a CSS class there that
I can customize this other thing with.

And yeah, full calendar has

Colin: was the way to go.

CJ: yeah, for us, it's been, pretty.

Pretty useful, but,

Colin: Nice.

CJ: yeah, we're, definitely
a different use case.

Colin: Cool.

Anything else you're working on?

Just going away on the

CJ: yeah, working, I like
chipping away at story fuel a bit.

so I'm going to say.

That by the time this episode comes out,
you can go to story fuel that app and

submit a request on the landing page
for a story to be added to the podcast.

So if you go to listen.

storyfuel.

app, you can see some of the existing
stories and listen, listen to

those as podcasts and then, yeah,
you'll be able to Submit a story

idea that you want to listen to.

It's not going to be real
time, but you can say, Hey, I

want to hear this, this story.

So yeah, that's, it's been fun.

Colin: definitely have to talk
about what you've been doing at

Craftwork next time with Typeform.

Because, yeah, I remember that
being a painful thing at a

previous company we were at.

CJ: Yeah.

Yeah.

It's like the same exact
type of situation, moving off

type form onto our own thing.

So

Colin: Well, I'm excited to
play with StoryFuel and, yeah,

we can probably wrap it here.

And, I think we should talk about how you
even get this much stuff done in a week.

I think that's a future topic,
hacking on Jupyter notebooks and

videos and side projects on top of
your, all your other life stuff.

So we'll have to chat a little bit
about how we get this stuff done,

CJ: Yeah, that'd be fun.

It'd be fun to get into for sure.

Colin: cool.

Let's wrap it there.

CJ: Nice.

As always, you can head
over to buildandlearn.

dev to check out all the
links and resources and the

show notes for this episode.

And, that's a wrap.

Thanks folks.

We'll see you next time.

Colin: Bye friends.