TD Cafe #009 - John Picozzi & Chris Wells

Before the diagnosis, it was like, oh, I just can't do this because I'm a garbage human being. Right, right, right. Those are two very different ways of looking at the problem.

How's it going, Chris? Hey, um, sleepy, summertime, sleepiness. Is that a thing? I'm not sure.

John: I, I, uh, it might be like a dad thing. I don't know. I wake, I wake up. It could be summertime though. I, I do feel like I've, I've been out a lot later at night and doing a lot more stuff, so maybe I'm just tired, but I also, you know, have kids as do you and like, you know, I just do go, go go.

Summertime is like a go, go, go, go time of the season.

Chris: Yeah. I think that I've, I like walked into this in May thinking like, oh man, it's good summer. You know, you just, you sit on the porch and you Yep. Have a drink and you, you listen to the, to the keepers. You just, you know, all those things. And it's none of those things.

It's, it's been packed for me. Every day. I think I've had two, two, just like nights to myself this summer. And they were, they were, they were delicious. They were, they were great. They were perfect. But yeah, it's been picked, packed.

John: We literally, this last Saturday was like the first Saturday we didn't have anything on our calendar.

And like, we were like, Hey, we're gonna hang out at home. And like, I spent some time sitting on the deck and I was like, this is glorious. And the weather was perfect. I was like, this is fabulous. I wish I could do more of this. And, uh, yeah. You know, and then, you know, things kind of ramped back up. Um, but whatever it is, it is what it is.

I, I think like, yeah, I can understand the sleepiness, definitely. Yeah. Um. I, I can honestly say I'm very excited about, uh, today's conversation. 'cause I don't think, I don't think we've, we've had a chance to kind of really connect, um, too much and you're by far one of my favorite Drupal people. So, um, like, man, maybe

Chris: last time I saw you was at Engage maybe?

John: Yeah. Uh, no. You were at, uh, it was Evolve Drupal. Were you at Evolve Drupal Boston? Did you do that? No,

Chris: Leslie went, but I, I didn't get, Leslie went. Okay. I had, I had kids, so, yeah. Yep. Kids not in the Yeah,

John: they have, they have, they had, they do things. Um, so how are things in the, uh, the great state in Maine?

Well, I mean, it's summertime in Maine, so Yeah. Yeah. It's gorgeous. I love, it's beautiful. I love summertime in Maine. I used to vacation really hot today. I used to vacation in Maine when I was a kid. Um, for like. I don't know. My parents started going for like a week and then they started going for two weeks.

And then by the time I got older it was three weeks. We'd spend like the whole month of August in Maine. It was great. Yeah. Um, yeah,

Chris: other than trying to get downtown, it has like a townie and you're like, I'm just trying to get to this store from this store and there's pedestrian traffic and there's a lot of that, but it's like, ah, you, you know, I live where people want a vacation.

So.

John: Yeah.

Chris: You know what, sometimes you just,

John: I grew, I grew up in a spot like that too, where you're just like, ah, with these people, learn how to drive and learn how, how we do things when it's not summer here and just like, come on. Um, but yeah, I don't know. I, I, it's funny 'cause um, Martin. Uh, Anderson Klutz, uh, was visiting my hometown.

Um, Aquia had a retreat there, I think, uh, last year. And, um, I was like, Hey, wait, you're, you're right down the street from me. And he's like, yeah, you wanna grab dinner? And I'm like, yeah, okay, we'll do it. And he asked me, he is like, so, you know, what's it like growing up here and like living here? And like, like, and I'm like, well, you know, I think ultimately I take it for granted.

'cause I, I grew up here and I live here and, um, you know, I try not to because I know that a lot of people travel from very far away to come see the ocean 'cause they live somewhere landlocked or come see, you know, some, one of the, the attractions that we have. So, um, you know, going to Maine for me always feels like, you know, kind of like that, where it's like, oh, people that live there must hopefully enjoy it because it's, it's, you know, it's one of those, one of those pretty pretty spots.

Chris: Yeah. I do try to get, get to the beach. In May and in September,

John: my, uh, when

Chris: it, when it makes sense,

John: my son highlighted to me that we haven't yet been to the beach this summer.

Chris: Mm-hmm.

John: And I'm like, uh, I'm like, yeah, well there's, you know, September. And he is like, wait, wait when we're back in school? And I go, yeah, you can still go to the beach in September.

Matter of fact, it's, it's better 'cause the water's at least warm. He was not, he didn't, he wasn't subscribing to that. No. He was kind of like, it's the summer, you're, you go to the

Chris: beach.

John: Yeah. I get it. I think you're trying to ji me there. Dad.

Chris: What really gets me out is like, I had friends who came up from Jersey and Massachusetts and that got me to the lake and to the beach because it was like, oh, 'cause they're there, so I'm going to visit friends.

So I, I did go to the beach one day.

John: Well, that's good. I, yeah, I mean, that's the other nice thing about summer. I always feel like, I mean, we try to hang out with friends, but like, I always feel like you're, there's more pressure to like, Hey, let's have a, have a cookout or do something outdoors or like, you know, go do something fun.

Um, so speaking of traveling and going to to new places, are you going to DrupalCon Vienna?

Chris: I am and I'm super excited. I had, um, I was, I was really, I think I, I did like a LinkedIn post about this a few months back, like, like during Atlanta or shortly after, and all the pictures were coming up and I was like, Ugh, that looks awesome.

And I had wicked fomo, but leading up to it I was like, I am burnt out on Drupal cons. Like there's not a lot happening in terms of contribution and project browser space. Like there's so many other new exciting things that kind of first time contributors are, are meandering towards. And, and I was like, uh, I just, I will let Leslie go.

It's my week with the kids, so it's like I would have to coordinate something, so I just like let it go. And then I had wicked fomo of like, oh my God, look at how fun this is. And so missed Atlanta kind of regretted it and now I was like, let's be sure to go to Vienna. And uh, and it also is on a non kid's week, so it was, it worked out well that it doesn't need any extra finagling, so f

John: fit right into the schedule.

Yeah, those are always the best, the best trips. Um, have you ever been to Vienna?

Chris: No. No. I think, I think pretty much the entirety of my European traveling has been Netherlands. 'cause my, my best friend from high school was living out there. He's in Lisbon now, um, outside of Lisbon, in Portugal. Um, so actually prior to Vienna, I'm gonna pack in a little bit of a trip to, to, uh, outside of Lisbon and see him.

Which will be fun. Yeah. Yeah. I'm holding

John: off, I'm holding off my European DrupalCon, um, visits for, uh, a DrupalCon in Italy. Okay. I think, I think once, once we get like DrupalCon Rome or DrupalCon, uh, you know, Sicily or Sicily or something, that'd be great. Some, somewhere, somewhere I'm like, I'm gonna be like cashing in my chips to be like, okay, I'm going.

This is it. Here I go. Um, I've only ever done us us Drupal cons, so

Chris: yeah. American, I think a big thing, I, I don't know if this is just my experience, but I find that the European, and I have not been to Asia. I didn't knock going to NARA or anything, but the European Drupal cons to me seem focused a lot more on community, like the Drupal community, the open source community.

There's a lot more contribution. There's a lot more people who are very interested in, um, the Drupal project. Hmm. Um. Then the American North America feels a little bit more like it's geared towards the enterprise. Like there's a lot more Yeah. It's

John: more, more of a business development event.

Chris: Yeah. Yeah.

It's, it's, it's like this is the for, for like technical decision makers and CEOs and like the one in Europe has more of like a big camp vibe. Um, but I love it. I think, you know, you

John: would've, you would've been disappointed. You would've been disappointed in Atlanta because the, um, so for, for a, I've felt for a couple of years now that the, the technical decision making makers and the, the people at the level you need to be able to actually sell something to mm-hmm.

Has been kind of like slowly decreasing, uh, at triple cons and, um. I, I was, I was under the impression that Atlanta was gonna kind of be like a return to like, Hey, I'm the CTO of this company, or, Hey, we're, you know, this company and we use Drupal a lot, and I'm the decision maker that's, that's keeping us on Drupal.

Um, but I don't know that there were a lot of those people there. Um, and, and, you know, DrupalCon Atlanta not saying anything, uh, negative about that. I mean, DrupalCon Atlanta was great. Um, Atlanta as a city was fun to, to see and go to. Mm-hmm. And, and, um, the Coke factory, I don't know if you've ever been there, but, um, you can taste some interesting versions of Coke.

Huh? There's, uh, there was one from, um, uh, somewhere in Asia. I don't remember where it was. Um, that is, um, like some plum flavored coke, but it tastes like barbecue sauce. Even more interesting. Okay. And it was like, it was oddly tasty. I was like, um, this taste, like I might, I

Chris: might go back for more of this.

John: Like, yeah, yeah. Like, oh, this does taste like barbecue sauce, but it's not bad. Um, and then there was another one from, I think it was from Grease maybe that was, that was pretty tasty. But anyway, um,

Chris: my, my employee yesterday, he's, uh, born and raised in India. He's here on a visa, on a work visa. So he was in the office yesterday and we were talking about Kit Kats and he said that like, kit Kats in the States come from Hershey, but Kit Kats, everywhere else are like a Nestle product or something.

And so they're, they're very different Kit Kats in the States versus out of the states. Even if you get the, like, regular one, it's very different even in Canada. But I remember hearing like in Thailand there's like green tea Kit Kats in Yeah. In Eastern Asia stuff. And there's a lot of interesting kick hit.

John: Same thing with Oreos. I hear there are a lot of different Oreos outside of the us Uh, I will say on, on food quality, uh, out outside of the us I, um, early last year or maybe, yeah, it was last year, I was, uh, traveling in Dublin and I, I was there for work. I went a couple of times and, um, man, the food, the food quality outside of the US is impeccable.

Like, that was one of my, one of my things, like the second time I got to Dublin, I was like, I was eating like, I don't know, I had, I had an English muffin or a muffin of some sorts and like put some raspberry jam on it and I was like, wow, this tastes like raspberries as opposed to like, just like sugar.

I'm like, yeah, yeah. I was like, I'm like this, this is amazing. Like, uh, you know. Uh, so anyway, went on, I

Chris: went on on uh, a keto and meditation retreat in the Netherlands and I remember breakfast being such a very different. Experience altogether. It's like there was bread and fruit and cheese. Yeah, yeah. Out and like, no, you know, there's no like peanut butter to put on his toast or anything like that.

No cereal. You're not getting like,

John: uh, you're not getting, uh, rice Krispies there or anything like that. Maybe some hot

Chris: cereal. But yeah, it was good. It was like, but like that same vibe of like whole Whole Foods, I guess. I don't know. Like it's bread and cheese. It's simple ingredients to kind of like, make it up.

It's not like a cinnamon toast crunch or there's like 40, 45 ingredients coating a flake of some kind of grain.

John: It is interesting to think like, I, I do love like breakfast in Europe. Um, just 'cause it's like, it just feels, it feels it's simple but complex, if that makes sense. Like, I just, I feel like there are a lot of different choices and they're, it's just like, here you're like, I'll have a bagel or a sausage, egg and cheese or like some, some sort of big, like big thing.

Um. Jumping back to the DrupalCon thing, are you talking at DrupalCon Vienna?

Chris: I am,

John: yeah. Yeah, that's

Chris: a big part of the excitement is, um, a presentation that I'd actually kind of proposed a time or two ago of, of, um, how to like build your own source plugin for project browser. So, you know, you can right now browse for recipes, you can browse for.

Um, and, and the recipes plugin is a little odd. It's kind of like the recipes that are already pre-installed in your, in your code base, which, you know, works great for Drupal CMS. Um, I'm working on right now actually the Contrib recipe browser. So to actually go on drupal.org and search through all the recipes and download and apply recipes the way you can do with modules today, but you can actually create your own plugin.

It's just using the plugin system. So I was gonna review the API talk about. How those plugins work and how you can create your own. So if you're an organization for example, that wants to like only allow like these 250 like vetted modules or your own curated set of recipes, like, you know, you're a, maybe you're doing a distribution at a higher ed institution where all your clubs can turn on, you know, five or six different features.

Like will you have events, will you have whatever, and you can just. Lock it down so that yes, you can turn on these dozen recipes or not. And that's, and it's up to you. That's, yeah, that's gonna be fun.

John: That, that's amazing. 'cause I, like the last client I worked for had a, a use case for that. Definitely. Um, it was kind of, you know, they were, they were using, uh, a Drupal distro, their own custom distro, but mm-hmm The distro had a lot of kind of bloat in it because there were like, they just enabled kind of everything that they thought you needed.

And it wasn't kind of that catalog, select service sort of model that you, you're talking about. And I think like, if they had the ability to build that, they would definitely, they would definitely gra or should have definitely gravitated towards that.

Chris: And as probably, you know. It's been kind of possible for a while, but it's not been, this is the first time we're gonna like, get it out there to the community and say like, you, you really can do this.

It's endorsed. Here's, here's how you do it. Um, yeah. And it's good. And I think again, like a, a more technical talk is a great fit for Europe.

John: That's cool. So it gets you, gets you to Europe, gets you talking about kind of project browser. And that was actually one of my, one of my questions when, when I was thinking about our conversation today, I was kind of like, what's going on with project browser?

I feel like it was all the, all the rage to, you know, in, in pre Drupal CMS and, and now it's, it's there in Drupal CMS and I know that like you're, you're kind of doing the the recipe browser thing too, which is, which is definitely cool. Um, but like where, where is it? Where, where does it stand? What's on your, uh, what's on your roadmap?

Chris: Yeah. Cool. Um, what's interesting is like what kind of happened to it? Is it like. Got good at what it does, right? Like it kind of got quote unquote stable. Um, except it's still in beta, but not for long. So our next release, we intend to actually have a two one oh and two oh oh candidate for project browser.

So, so does that,

John: does that, does that correspond to Drupal CMS 2.0 or is that, like, are those two things not kind of the same?

Chris: They do, but only sort of coincidentally. Um, so we have, we just released beta three, which will be the version that ships with Drupal CMS 1.2, and then we're doing some stuff for Stable to support Drupal CMS 2.0.

Um, amongst them, the recipe browsing, a lot of what's happened has been totally behind the scenes. We've been cleaning up, you know, this module evolved from a proof of concept into something that was actually kind of used in production. With proof of concept code behind it. And so we've, a lot of what we've done is refactor the internal and external facing APIs to just make it cleaner, make it behave better, and just make it a lot easier to, to work with, especially as a developer.

So, um, now that we've kind of stabilized those, we're like, okay, I think we're kind of on our way. You're like,

John: all right, now, now we can start feature enhancements. Um, are you still hot on spelt?

Chris: I personally am still hot on spelt I, there's no indication that anyone in the community, you know, has any necessarily like, issue with it.

Um, even core committers, if we end up kind of working towards getting core inclusion, um, I was a little nervous when Experience Builder was like, and we're doing it in React, and I was like, okay, well. That decision, there's felt over here too, you know, and that's kind of got a precedent, but they were like, no, this is what we know.

Um, which I get and I value, but, but at this point I don't, I don't know if it matters if we're in core, you know, like yeah, triple CMS has changed the game. I'm sure I've talked about this before. Even I'm talking Drupal about this before I think. So I'm just, um, I was like, for a good portion of project browsers time, I was stressing like, how do we get into core and what do we do?

And that's definitely an obvious goal. And now it's not. And it's kind of, it makes things feel a little bit more relaxed and it makes me feel a little bit more empowered as well. 'cause I'm comfortable saying like, this is a stable release. Like, I, we think it's great and I, you know, I don't need to run that by um, so many other people, which is, which is nice.

And having a stable release means we will be able to opt in to security coverage as well. So,

John: yeah, I mean all that stuff seems to, seems to make sense. So like. One of my, I guess a question there for me is like, so if, if we decided to go with Svel as a Drupal core thing, could experience builder be converted or at least the front end pieces of experience builder converted to selt and then vice versa, like if we decided to go with React as the, as the native, could we convert project browser to that, you know, to react as opposed to spelt?

Chris: Yep. And I, I probably can't speak as intelligently in the other direction. Like I don't, I don't know how XB experience builders architecture is. Sure. Um, but our architecture is like really quite decoupled. So like, this is not probably something I'll be talking about in my talk, but like. It's just using APIs to communicate project, project status.

Like it is, it is a completely decoupled front end. So there's no reason that somebody couldn't create a project browser in React with a completely different UI and make that a project. And it would depend on project browser and it would call the same backend APIs to fetch projects, activate projects, download projects, call package manager.

Mm-hmm. Like we have a web API to do those things. So it's incredibly decoupled. We could, we could easily decide to rip out spel and replace it with React. And if we did, that's probably how we do it. We'd make a separate contribute project. Yeah. Where we just wrote the front end and then at some point we might merge it in

John: and we'll, we'll just, we'll, we'll dig a deep hole and bury this, this conversation in there.

So nobody gets that idea. Maybe I don't, maybe we'll go the other

Chris: way. I won't mind if they do, if they do something better and cooler, then, you know, hey, it's open source. I think it's let's, let's stand on the shoulders of giants. You know? I

John: mean, I agree. I just, in my head, I'm like, oh, if we could standardize on one thing, then we're all focusing on one thing as opposed to two separate things.

And like, I don't know, I, yeah. Is it better? Is it worse? Eh, who

Chris: knows? And I like that. And I think that's definitely a question that will come up a lot more if both of these things strive for core inclusion. Um, but again, the, the relief of like, kind of feeling like I can stay in, contribute. It's contribute.

So I can just, I, I want in Spel it'll be in Spel, you know, I can say that I, you know, I don't know Adam, uh, Globus, like, um. Front end chops. He is incredibly smart, capable, amazing developer, and had been a huge, huge help to us on Project Browser. Um, but the other day I was like, did you imagine that you'd be a scout developer as well while you're working on all this stuff?

And he's like, Nope. Never in a million years. But it was pretty easy for him to, to gr Well, yeah. You know, and I, I know that, I don't know if I, I don't know what the situation is, an experience builder, how easy that stuff is to, to understand, um, curious to know. Yeah.

John: I always, I always look at React and I'm kind of like, my, my brains and I, I've worked on a few React projects and my brain just kind of like, I'm like, okay, I get it.

It makes sense. Like I understand like what you guys are doing and how you're using APIs and connecting stuff, but I, my brain always melts a little bit. Yeah. I'm like, yeah. It,

Chris: it's a different paradigm from what, especially like, you know. Seasoned PHP veterans like ourselves are used to. It's, it's very different.

The front end, the whole front end JavaScript world is, is quite a bit different.

John: Well, thank, I think you're the first person to ever call me a seasoned PHP veteran, so I appreciate, I appreciate that.

Chris: Good. That's probably the first time anyone's called me that as well. I

John: self-proclaimed. Um, I just got off of a recording of talking Drupal five 16 where we talked about Drupal CMS and recipes.

Um, what's the status of the recipe browser in project browser next to Pro? How does, how does that terminology work? Is, is it in project browser? You can re pro rest, you can browse for recipes as well. Is that like

Chris: Yeah, let me think of that. Um, so Project Browser enables you to browse different projects.

Um, of, of kind of any kind plug. So module, module or recipe. Yeah. The plugins define what are you viewing? Right. Got it. So, okay. There's modules from drupal.org. That's a plugin. Yeah. Um, like I said, someone could write a plugin that are approved modules from drupal.org for my organization, right. Where they, they back it by a spreadsheet or YAML file or something.

And then there's right now a recipes plugin that is recipes that are currently in your code base. Right. And so the one that I'm working on is recipes that are available on drupal.org. So that's the one that I'm, that I'm currently working on. And we were, uh, there was a while there where that we didn't know how we were going to host recipes on drupal.org.

Right. And, and so we couldn't write anything 'cause there's nothing to query. And then a few weeks ago, maybe just a month ago, I was. Noticing that someone had put up a recipe browser on new drupal.org where you can, there's a, there's a web interface where you can browse the recipe. Wait a second. So this might exist.

We might've decided. And so we did figure out that that recipes are general projects on drupal.org. So they're not theme projects and they're not module projects, they're general projects, but then they have, if they have at least one release that has a type of Drupal recipe, then we can find them and say that these are recipes that are installable.

John: That feels weird to me. Like shouldn't it be a e theme, a module or a recipe project? Like what, what, what other types, I guess are there? I guess I never looked at that

Chris: and I think, and I will not speak for anyone at the association, um, but I think. Logically, that's what I would've done. Create a new type, a new project type called recipe.

Project type. Yeah. But I think that we're actually, I say we, they, I don't know, but my theory is that they're trying to actually converge just down to one type, where there's a type project.

John: Yes, because

Chris: that makes sense. Um, and the other thing is that, um, there was something with like general projects go to NPM, so they're easily able to be picked up by Composer or NPM.

There's something, so there is like some technical things around,

John: so like a pack a packages management issue thing. Got it. Yeah.

Chris: Packages versus NPM and needing something like, because recipes are like meta packages or something like that. There was some, there's a big technical cloud over here of like mm-hmm.

There are some good reasons why that happened and I don't understand them fully. Um, okay. But their recipes are, are general projects. Um, one thing that I discovered that was really great is that they're using the categorization system that we came up with from project browser for categorizing modules, so that we are sharing that vocabulary of like, that's the recipe related to access control or e-commerce or search engine optimization or whatever.

It's, so I really loved, um, that I was able to see that. So we're, so yeah, I'm working now on, on getting the recipes from drupal.org and being able to display them in project browser. It's, it's mostly functional, but there are some, some technical hiccups. Like I did some, I guess some dirty, did some dirty things in the, in the base class that maybe should be pulled out and, and some of that.

So it's not quite done, but there's, um. As a proof of concept, it totally works. I can browse, like locally when I have this code running, I can browse for any recipe of the on droop.org and, and at least make an attempt to apply it on my site. So

John: that's, that's amazing. 'cause I, I think like, I don't know, recipes are super, um, super powerful, super useful.

I, uh, recently wrote a blog post about creating like a donation stripe, uh, web form form on your site. Exactly. Um, and I, in, in doing kind of research for that, I found that there was a, uh, stripe donation recipe. And when I wrote my article, it wasn't, it wasn't ready for prime time, but, uh, last, last week, I think it was, they pushed a, a version of that to drupal.org.

And I was like, wait a second. And like literally opened up my command line was like, here, you know, composer. And then I'm like, run the recipe. I mean, the hardest part was trying to figure out where the recipe had installed itself in my, in my local environment. Yes. Once, once I figured that out, like I was like, all right, here we go.

Like, perfect, this works great. Um, prompted me for some information that I needed, um, and then like I, you know, installed it. I was like, oh man. I'm like, how do we, how do we make this easier for the masses? And then, um, as I said, we were just talking about recipes on a, on the talking Drupal recording and, and they were talking about kind of how, um, project Brows allows you to install recipes that are, that are local.

So the, through Drupal CMS, you can go in and say, Hey, install the analytics recipe. Yep. And it'll prompt you for like, Hey, here's a, you know, you need to add your tag manager id. And I'm like, I'm like, this is cool. Like, this is very cool because like the average person can now install something. Uh, in their Drupal site without having to like actually go into a command line, touch code, like, I mean for, that's what I was for intent and purposes and

Chris: know what they're doing.

When you got prompted, you were running, you were applying a recipe from the command line and it took some input and you put the input in on the command line, and it's like we have that in project browser. One of the things that's actually kind of a neat feature flag in project browser is. Um, we actually kind of have a little bit of a shopping cart experience where you can actually add multiple projects and then hit apply and it'll install all four projects or apply all.

Oh, that's cool. Three recipes. Drupal CMS doesn't ship with that. It ships with the max selections equal one, so you can only apply one recipe at a time or only turn on one module at a time because that's a, a simpler interface. Probably error

John: mitigation there, right? Like, hey, if you 10, we don't know how things are gonna go for

Chris: just broke something, but like for a little bit more advanced users who just want a simpler interface to, for adding modules, you can, you can click 10.

And so one of the new features that we actually just worked on was, let's say you apply three different recipes all at the same time, but they all have input. We actually now open a modal with all three. Like if, if all three require input, all three forms merged into the same modal, so you can, it's like, oh, analytics put in your, you know, tag manager ID or your UA id.

And then it's like, oh, you also turn on the AI module here, put in your chats, you bt key, and you know, you also turn on the contact form, put it what is the submission, the email address you want the submissions to go to. And so that's all merged onto one modal form that happens after you apply all those recipes.

That's like a nice little cool feature that we have.

John: That is super cool.

Chris: So it's, it's really, yeah, like it, soon as we get this like recipe browser on there, we're feeling like ready, feature, complete, where the next thing might be, um. Themes would be a cool one to install. And,

John: oh, I mean, I, the next thing's gonna be site templates, right?

You're gonna need a site template browser. Yeah.

Chris: Yeah, that's true. We're gonna have to, but that, that, like, there's a lot of technical, uh, issues around that. 'cause we're always trying to figure out like, well, if we need to pick that sort of like prior to running the installer, then there's a whole, there's like a lot of technical hurdle.

There's a whole, there's a whole lot of, so we're trying to look at like, what if we install Drupal, like at a very, very fundamental, minimal level. And then the first thing it asks you is what site templates you want. And then you apply that and you know, maybe that comes with a theme. And then, you know, with the experience builder and the ability to even like use AI to build custom components.

I think that there's also the possibility that there's gonna be like a component library for Experience builder, where you can off the shelf grab accordions or cards or something like that. And so, you know, maybe a component browser is, is in the works someday.

John: So you, you said a, you set a key word there.

Um, got me thinking. Does uh, Redfin use a lot of ai?

Chris: You know, that is, um, it's an interesting question. I would say, I guess I would say yes, but it's still not in any, probably not in any like, newer novel or earth shattering ways. I think that we've just sort of like engaged the, the GBTs, you know, to assist with searches or assist with, with code writing or, mm-hmm.

You know, I think some people, like I actually went and recently turned off. Copilot or Amazon whisper everything I was using right in VS. Code because the tab completions, like, you get that like, I feel like that quick hit of dopamine of like, oh, it's gonna write all this code for me, and I hit tab and I get 10 lines and I'm like, now I've gotta erase these 10 lines.

Like, this isn't what I wanted to do at all. Like, it, the prediction of like what it thought I wanted to do was so wrong that like, yeah,

John: you have to, you have to basically write a prompt or, or like you have to, you know, you have to be so prescriptive that you know, or review the code so carefully that sometimes it's not worth the, the juice is not worth the squeeze as they say.

Chris: Yeah. Yeah. I think that's, that's exactly a, a pretty apropos metaphor there. And I've had a lot of luck with things that are very, that are outside of my realm of expertise. 'cause like, you know, as a seasoned PHP veteran like you and I are, John, when we run into, when we run into a problem, it's like.

Probably a somewhat esoteric problem. And so like GBTs, which are basically trained on like, let's just think, you know, Reddit and forum posts and problems that people have solved over and over and over, like if we're creating novel problems, the prediction of like how you solve that problem is like pretty difficult.

Yeah. But for stuff that is like where my knowledge level is still fairly basic, it's very helpful. Yeah. So like, I know Spell, but not the way I know PHP where it's like it's ingrained and I, I know the method names and I know how, you know, like it's very different. So with the GPT writing a like very basic spell app, it was like really pretty spot on, really accurate.

And I was able to coach it through helping me create this app, which is just silly. Like I'm, I play a lot of this board game called Gloom Haven. Mm-hmm. And tracking how much hit points the monsters have is tricky. It's like a whole job. And I was like, I can make an app where you could really easily track their health and track the status of their conditions.

And so I was like, let's write a spell app to do it. But I was able to coach the the GBT through like, okay, I want like here's my HTM L markup and then in this empty diviv I wanna put cards of like the currently active monsters. And it's like, okay, do that. And I was like, okay, now I want them to have a health meter.

Yeah, okay. And I, here's the, here's A-J-S-O-N file with all the monster data. 'cause that's like open source available for this game. And I was like, okay, so now it's gotta read that and here's the syntax of that JSON file. And so like by coaching it through, you know, it definitely saved me time because I wasn't doing all the like spell research that I would've needed to do otherwise.

Clearly I'm not learning it because it's just writing it for me and it's great. And in this instance totally fine. Like that's what I wanna do. But yeah.

John: Ultimately, you're not like, Hey, this has to be like the best code ever written, or it's not client code where you're like, I need to know exactly what it's doing.

You're like, I just want a thing to calculate a thing. Like, yeah, simple. Go do that for me. Simple

Chris: app. And I can go click, you know, minus five when it gets hit for five and it, it brings the meter down. You know, like it was simple app. And so it's helpful to learn something that you don't know or to find out about something that you don't know.

But when you get to an advanced level, it's just like, you know, it's like a, maybe it's a, maybe it's a mid-level developer. So if you're a junior, it's great, but if you're a senior, you typically don't go to a mid-level to like solve your weird, complex, esoteric problems, you know?

John: Yeah, I mean, I, I still look at it as like an assistive tool.

Like I've, I've, it has helped me increase my blog writing output because I loathe writing blogs. So, um, you know, the last couple of blogs I did were like, kind of high how to blogs and like, I put in an outline and go write me a blog post about this, and it would write it, and then I'd, I'd take it and I'd read it and I'd edit it and do what I wanted to do, add images, so on and so on.

And then like, boom, you're good to go. Right? So, I mean, I don't know. I look at it as, um, I look at it as a, as an assistive technology as opposed to like, you know, oh, you know, those people that are like, here's the prompt, do the thing, okay, now I'm gonna take this piece of work that you've produced and give it to my boss as like the final product.

Chris: Right? Yeah. Yeah. We are not the attorneys citing cases that didn't exist. Right, exactly. Exactly.

John: Yeah.

Chris: So,

John: um,

Chris: I find it's really helpful as like a fake person to bounce ideas off of or. You know, it's like so helpful for in like my personal life. It's like, just gimme a meal plan with meals that kids like for next week.

I was kind of worried

John: there when you said my personal life that you were like asking it like real existential questions. It's also my new

Chris: therapist. Yeah,

John: yeah. No, that's not, that's not a good idea. No.

Chris: But like, like I went, so probably one of the highlights of my summer was, I'll say

John: meal plans are a great idea though, because every, every day in my house it's like, Hey, what do you want for dinner?

I don't know. What do you want? Okay, let's sit here and ponder for 20 minutes.

Chris: Absolutely. And, and same thing. So like bucket list item. This summer, one of the highlights of my summer, I went out to Saratoga to spac and I saw Phish. And I've never seen Phish play one of my favorite bands. And even then, like I'm not as big a fish head as, as so many other people are, but you know.

Great show, great time, but like, I was taking the RV out there with my partner and I, she had dietary needs and I had different dietary needs. And I was like, and she was like stressing like, I don't know what we're gonna eat. I, when are we gonna go shop? Like, uh, what do I buy? I was like, there's a solution to this.

And I was like, please suggest meals that are like, work with both of these, like dietary restrictions and plans, and I need something for like two dinners and two breakfasts and gimme all this. And it gave me like, so many good ideas and I was very easily able to be like, all right, I'll just modify this one because I wanna do like steak fajitas instead of chicken fajitas.

And I was like, I have access to a, a flat top brittle a Blackstone. I have it. Like, and it was like, okay, do this, this, this, and this. And I was like. It's done. Here we go. Here's what we're eating. I was like, Ben, can you make me a shopping list for this? And it's like, yep, here you go. Sorted by like where you buy it in the grocery store.

And I like,

John: you're like, how does this men, you sound great. This is what I need. Okay. Yeah. Fabulous.

Chris: So I've had some real, like in my church life, I and the treasurer at my UU church and I was like, oh, we need to do an an appeal letter. Let's see how that works. And like it generated an appeal letter and I was like, you know, I know that there are like.

Certain key phrases that will get people to give or donate. And I was like, and I don't have this knowledge, like I'm not in development or fundraising. So I was like, had it write me a letter and then I floated it by the board and didn't I, you know, I didn't say it was AI generat, I didn't say anything and I passed it around and they're all like, this is kind of awful.

Like, this is nondescript, this is nothing, there's nothing personal here. And I was like, well, you're not wrong. Like it,

John: you're like, that's why I, this is a, just a, a demonstration of why you shouldn't use AI to write these sorts of things.

Chris: And the good news is. Which is why I use AI anyways. I don't wanna do this work.

Like, yes, I'm not in development and I don't wanna do it. And so someone else volunteered to rewrite the letter. So either way, mission accomplished, right? I, um, somebody not me, ended up writing the appeal letter.

John: It's interesting 'cause I, I often use, use it again for like social media. I'm a mm-hmm. Um, I'm responsible for a, uh, uh, nonprofit.

I'm involved in social media presence. And, um, I'm like, uh, can you write me a post on this topic with this information? And it does it? And I'm like, all right, we're gonna edit this so it sounds right and, and good and like, and then we're gonna post it and I'm not gonna think about it again. Um, also, I am, uh, you know, the technology officer for this, for this organization.

Um, and, uh, I need to write an acceptable use policy for e the email. Platform. And I'm like, AI is definitely gonna take a first crack at this based on like my, my, you know, rubric for what the accessible use PO policy needs to cover. And we'll see, we'll see what happens. Uh, I haven't gotten to that point yet, but we're gonna, I'm gonna give it a try and see what happens.

Chris: Yeah, I have good luck early on, like I leased my RV to someone for a year, a few years back and it was really great at generating a lease agreement for me. But, and then what I did is I sort of shopped around what one created and put it to another one to say like, what's missing from this? And then I took that edit and put it to a third ai.

And you had Theis compete

John: against themselves in some sort of like hunger games for AI fighting

Chris: each other? Yeah. Hunger games of writing a lease agreement. There you

John: go. So, um, I'm wondering, 'cause you are the, the founder and CTO of a, of a small, small agency, right? Um. Uh, before I continue, Patrick, Patrick's doing good.

Um, abroad

Chris: there. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's still abroad. Yeah. There you go.

John: Um, I'm wondering like, what, what you, what your view is of the Drupal landscape. Like, I feel like, I feel like I've, I've, this year in particular, like at the beginning of the year, I was kind of like, yeah, Drupal CMS and then I was kind of like, ah, Drupal might be on the way out.

'cause people are like, you know, not, not, not continuing with it, we're losing market cap to Adobe and other things. And then now I'm kind of like, on the way back up again with Drupal ai. So like, I, I don't know, I don't know if I'm just riding the Drupal rollercoaster or if, um, you know, my, my perceptions are, are founded.

But, um, wondering what, what you're seeing, what you're thinking. Yeah.

Chris: It's really, it's really interesting because I, I. I've been on that same rollercoaster it feels like. And I think that, um, you know, I've heard, you know, we've heard that PHP is dead for the last 20 years, right? Yeah. Like obviously your tree's

John: always dying.

Chris: Yeah. P is perpetual, totally dying all the time. And it's not, and I think that what we're seeing right now, like this, on the other hand, this is the first time when I've sort of like, feel, like I believe the hype. Right? Right. Like a lot of people are, a lot of people and a lot of different people are talking about this sort of like dip that we're seeing.

And like Redfin has been around for, I don't know, since 2004 or five, about 2005, you know, we've been doing business under that name and like, so it's been 20 years and we've always weathered. All the, you know, dips and downturns in the economy. Um, this is

John: a side note, this is why we need ai, because I just did the math on that and I'm like, oh, 10 years.

That's great. Yeah,

Chris: I don't know. I've never seen AI do math very well. Um, but I think, you know, it's like, oh, there are more people concerned about this and or, or I'm more plugged into the Drupal community. I'm hearing it more so, like, I really feel like yes, there's a palpable dip in the market. Um, but it, I look at it and I say, is this Drupal or is this industry-wide?

Yeah. And is this, is this an economic problem or is this an AI problem? Right. Where like people are actually, like, they're just laying people off 'cause AI can do it, which I, you know, don't necessarily agree with, as you've seen by my turning off, I, I also

John: don't agree with it, but we could have a whole other conversation about that.

Chris: Yeah. But there is, I think there is a downturn. I think we'll also weather it. And I do, I, you know, I do feel like I'm putting a lot of eggs in a Drupal CMS basket to, to sort of like, on the long trajectory. It was kind of like Drupal seven was a pretty amazing product. It got really refined by the end of its life.

And we went to Drupal eight and we, you know, everything that happened with Backdrop and people jumping ship, like we lost people doing that. But,

and Drupal CMS is the answer to getting them back and keeping all the wonderful object-oriented developer experience things we did in the platform paradigm shift from seven to eight. Yeah. I, I wish, like all things in hindsight's 2020, I wish it had happened sooner. Sure. But we needed a lot of tech to.

To evolve and get where it needed to get. So

John: yeah, I mean, I think I, I tend to agree that like, I think Drupal CMS is gonna be a great gateway and introduction for people back into Drupal. Um, and, and the power of Drupal. Um, I think, you know, aqueous Source is gonna be a, um, a useful tool to, to, to help, um, you know, jumpstart, kickstart, however you wanna put it.

Um, kind of some of that adoption. Um, and, you know, I just think like the work that we're seeing with the AI initiative and how Drupal's going to use AI and what the, you know, kind of the, the game plan is there with like, you know, human in the loop sort of AI integrations. Mm-hmm. Like, I, I think that's all very powerful and, and something that, you know, there other market leaders don't necessarily have.

So, um. I very optimistic, very positive on Drupal, uh, right now. Yeah, it's like, so like, like I said, we're, I'm on an upswing. Um, but I think like, you know, you raise very interesting point to me, uh, which is that like, is it an actual Drupal downturn or is it an economic, you know, uh, tech industry general downturn?

And I think it's probably, probably more tech industry general and, and we're just kind of seeing it in the Drupal space as, as opposed to, um, as opposed to very Drupal specific. I also think, like if you look at these other platforms, I went to, um, Adobe Summit this year, um, and it was kind of eyeopening to see like how Adobe's using AI and how Adobe's doing, doing things with, um, kind of like site scraps and site builders and stuff like that.

And I'm like, you know. It, this was kind of like a little bit before, uh, Drupal CMS or Drupal CMS was kind of in the early stages, and I'm kind of like, you know, if we can get to this level with Drupal CMS, where people can just go to a site and install it and like start dropping things into their, to their Drupal site and using them like we're going to eat their lunch, but like, they've kind of gotten there first, so like now they're eating our lunch.

Right. It was, it was very eye-opening to me. But, you know, I think the AI stuff, I don't, uh, you know, again, wanna put too much, uh, as you said, eggs and all that, uh, in that basket solely. But, um, yeah, I mean, I think the AI improvements that we're making Drupal are definitely gonna be a, a game changer for, for the platform.

Chris: I mean, have you, have you put your hands on the, the agent? Like have you spun up Drupal CMS and turned on the AI recipe at all? 'cause I, and this was months ago when I did this, like early phases and I was telling it to build me. A staff content type and view and just built it. And I was like, oh my God.

I'm looking at a view of people that just got built. I mean, that's earth shattering. That's, that is, that is cool. That is, yeah. I think, I think one of

John: the things that it, when I, I, when I played with it initially and now it's, they've kind of, there, there are other modules you can add to kind of add this functionality, but like the content creation piece of it wasn't there when I first played with it.

Yep. Um, it was like, Nope, can't create content, sorry. And I'm like, no. I'm like, you gotta be able to do that. But now you can add, um. Like the ca uh, CK editor, um, widget, and it'll allow you to like, give it a prompt and create content based on that prompt. So, I mean, I think that's like a step in the right direction.

And, um, I was actually just talking to Jamie this morning about, um, doing a talking Drupal episode on, on ai, but also a talking Drupal episode on, um, MCP Automators mm-hmm. And agents, because I think like, just, just those things. Like I saw Marcus did a, did a talk about, um, automators, uh, where he was like, oh, you need to automatically tag this content type.

Like you can type what you want to type, do what you want to do, save it, and then it'll automatically read your body and say, oh, here are the existing con uh, terms that I'll tag it with. Maybe you want to create some new terms that'll go in and do that. And I'm like. This is amazing. Like, yeah. Can we, like, that level of automation is great.

Like, yes. Let's, let's start selling that stuff. So yeah, I definitely think, um, I definitely think we're on a, we're on, we're on an up. We're, we're on an incline of the Drupal roller coaster right now. And hopefully, hopefully it levels off for a little bit and we stay, stay up high.

Chris: Yeah. I think where my, where I have to have a little bit of a leap of faith is like, what will, you know, that that existential, what will I do as a Drupal developer if people can do all of these things, you know?

Yeah. But I think it's like, there's always gonna be more advanced things to do.

John: Yeah. Listen, like I struggle a little bit with the AI's gonna take our jobs argument. Yeah. Because like, you know, um. People are always kind of have that fear, but I think that people adapt and people educate themselves. Mm-hmm.

On how to like, you know, be the person that uses the AI or be the person that builds the AI or use bes, the, is the person to like surface the ai, right? Mm-hmm. So, like, um, y yeah, I don't know. I think like we're gonna, we're gonna start seeing people that are, are gonna be very good at using it to do things like building spell apps for their video games.

And, you know, I think yeah, people are just gonna get, um, I don't know. Hopefully people are gonna level up. I don't know that it's gonna take anybody's job a hundred percent, but we'll see. Yeah.

Chris: Yeah. We've been using Warp, uh, ai, you know, the Warp Terminal app. No. Available on all platforms now and. First of all, warp by itself is an amazing terminal.

I actually, I think I did a lightning talk on it like at Drupal Camp Florida a year or two ago. Um, or somewhere, or was it at Med Camp? I don't know. Somewhere I did it. Warp is a, is a great terminal app, if nothing else. It simply is the fact, like you can use your mouse in the terminal or it's like a real editor, so you can like, highlight a word by double clicking it or by using like your normal, like you type in the terminal as if you were typing into like Notepad or VS code or something.

Like just that feature alone is like a killer feature, but it has a lot of AI built in. So when I'm sitting in the terminal in, uh, a project for Drupal, I was like, okay, there's a custom module in this and I need to write unit tests for it. And I want the test to like test this, this, and this use case on this function.

I type that into a terminal and it writes it for me with an agent with Claude Code behind it, and it has, you can plug MCPS into it. So we connected it up to our notion, which is like our, um, sort of internal operators manual for Redfin, where all like internal documentation is, so it can make informed decisions based on policies or procedures that we have by reading the notion via the MCP, which is like, so the, the war AI has been incredibly kind of helpful.

Now it's, it's also done some really dumb things. The same as, same as anything else but, um, coachable. Interesting.

John: Yeah. That's pretty, that, that's pretty cool. Yeah. Uh, I feel like I heard you tell me about this at some point, but I don't remember where it was or where we were.

Chris: Yeah. Install it today. Check it out.

Simply the fact that I can like, click on a word. Times use a mouse in a reliable way. Terminal window mouse didn't apply. Yeah. And even arrow keys. Arrow keys just work. They don't, they don't do like carrot bracket D or whatever.

John: When you, you may What? No, that's not what I want. Yeah. Um, hey, I got, uh, kind of a personal question for you.

Um, you, you have a DHD, right?

Chris: Yep.

John: Yeah. So were you diagnosed with that as a kid or is that, is that more, did that, was that onset like as an adult?

Chris: Yeah, like in the last five years. Oh, okay. Finally, like, it was a, that was an eye-opening time in my life where I was like, man, it felt like when you get a Tetris and like you put all four in that one line that you've been saving and it all disappeared.

Like, it was like, oh my God, this is why I am

John: the, I am

Chris: like. All of a sudden things started to make sense,

John: huh?

Chris: Yeah.

John: Interesting. So let me ask you, let me ask you, you a question in this way then. Um, and the reason I'm asking is, uh, recently, um, my, my son was, was diagnosed with, uh, A DHD and like mm-hmm. You know, we're, we're, we're working, working kind of through, through how that, how, how, how he needs to learn, how he needs to do things, and so on, so forth.

Mm-hmm. But I'm wondering, like, if, if you were a, were a younger you and you, you kind of got that, you know, that information, like how, how would you, how would you kind of structure things, change things? What would you, what would you do differently?

Chris: So I'd say, well, all right, so my, my biggest piece of like advice or the, the whole vibe is like, you are different.

Your brain works different. That is okay. It is not wrong. It is not bad. It is literally just different.

John: Right.

Chris: And if you like, because the shame that comes with it is so brutal.

John: Yeah.

Chris: And so, because like teachers who are like, don't, you can't do X or Y, you know, and it's like, but do you understand that if you let the kid doodle or play with a fidget toy, they will actually learn it?

Yep. It's not that the fidget toy is distracting them. Mm-hmm. It's that the fidget toy is enabling them.

John: Yep.

Chris: Right. And so of course you don't want it to be distracting for other people. You can't have some loud clicker, but like, there are things you do. Like I, God, even just thinking about it now, the amount that I doodled in my notebooks and didn't take notes is.

Probably a testament to why I got good grades. 'cause I was able to, I, this is totally my theory. I don't know if this is backed by any kind of science, but like, I feel like when you have a DHD you have a baseline level of sensory inputs that you always need to have. And so like, it can be very hard to just do one thing.

Yep. So the way that you focus on something is by adding something else to the puzzle. Yeah. Right? Yep. It's, it's, it's really wild to, to think that,

John: but it, it, it's interesting you say that because like we are navigating kind of that, that school environment right now where it's like, okay, what do you need to be successful?

And, you know, to be fair, we haven't, we haven't expressly told my son that like, you have a DHD because we don't want it to be. A stigma. A stigma or a crutch or a like obviously his teachers know, obviously the school knows Right. His doctor knows. Right. We know. But like, it's not something where we're like, we wanna like hyper fo focus on the fact that you have this, you have this thing.

Right. Because like you said, it's just, it's just a different way of learning.

Chris: Yeah. You

John: know, you know,

Chris: and I, yeah. I think that's, that's very different between kids and adults because I think as an adult and, and there's a lot of people where di who a diagnosis is hurtful to them. For me, oh my God, thank you.

I can put a label on it. Now I know what to research now I know how to figure out like what, like the labels are very helpful for me. The diagnosis was incredibly eye-opening and helpful for me. It helped me it because I knew. There was research on this topic, you know, before it was just like, I wonder why I can never like remember to go to meetings.

I remember why. There's no events, like I can't, I was so bad at all that stuff and I was just, when I had a diagnosis, I was like, oh, there's a reason why I can't do this.

Before the diagnosis, it was like, oh, I just can't do this because I'm a garbage human being. Right, right, right. Those are two very different ways of looking at the problem.

Chris: Yeah. I don't know that kids. It's because I had, you know, 40 years behind me before that, I was able to like, look at that with that, as an adult.

John: As an adult, it makes sense. Like it's like, you know, uh, with so many other things, you're like, oh, I, you know, I can't do this. Why can't I do this? Oh, it turns out to be some, you know, some sort of medical thing.

Or it turns out to be something, you know, like once you know why, then you can research, then you can do the, I mean, as a kid, like, I, I think our feeling is like, as, as a kid, like you don't really know how to process that, and you're just gonna kind of be like, oh, well it's because of this, and like, write it off.

Right. As where like, you know, for myself and my wife, we're like, okay, now we know that, you know, we know why. We know what the, why now we can kind of guide and structure and build, you know, plans to, to, to help support and, and, and move in the right direction. And one of the things you just said, right, doodling or having a fidget is like.

One of the things that's on, you know, on our plan is like, hey, listen, he has to, he has to be able to stand up, like, uh, you know, during class. So like, put him towards the back of the class where he can stand up and not bother anybody.

Chris: Mm-hmm. You know,

John: he has to be able to fidget, you know, he has to be able to doodle.

Like, you know, those are all things that are, that are, you know, going to help Definitely. You know, help him, you know, keep up with everybody else. Um, yeah. And it is interesting specifically, you know, stigma wise, like one of, one of his teachers, uh, previous teachers, you know, once, once we said we had a diagnosis, you know, ultimately jumped to immediately jumped to medication.

Chris: Mm-hmm.

John: And was like, oh, good, he's gonna get medic, you know, medication. And we're like, N no, nope.

Chris: Mm-hmm.

John: Like, that's not gonna be the first place we go. You know, that's gonna be something where, you know, maybe if we need to get to that point, we will, but like right now we're just gonna kind of see. How things work out.

And we're gonna see like how his brain develops and how he's able to like build, you know, his own kind of routines and pathways and, and coping mechanisms to be able to say like, okay, this is how I need to do things.

Chris: Yeah. And I think, and I, again, my experience between children are adults, you know, I have, I have adult experience that that's, that's mostly it.

Um, but medication changed my life, you know, it really absolutely changed my life, um, for the better. Um, but that, that's not to say that everyone needs to be on medication and Yeah. And whatever it is. I think my therapist, the, the phrase that she uses that I think is so helpful is this phrase called external scaffolding.

Mm-hmm. And I think that that is something that really, when I understood that, that is something I need. Then I, again, I was able to say like, let go of the shame of it or whatever. So external scaffolding's the idea that like, you need to accept that you're not gonna remember X, Y, or Z. Mm-hmm. So what you need to do is build a system that will remind you, that will do the thing for you.

Yeah. Um, so I built, and for me, because I'm a tech hobbyist, so in the morning through home assistant and my TV and a small mini computer that I plugged in, I set up an open source project called Magic Mirror. Mm-hmm. And it comes up in the morning, has a beautiful wallpaper, has news headlines, has the weather time date, and then across the bottom it has my week calendar.

So that every morning when I'm laying in bed staring at the headlines, I'm also looking at boom boom. Like, yep, here's what I need to do this week. And that's one way to remind myself. The other thing I did, I set up iOS shortcut that goes through my. Work calendar? Actually no. It goes, yeah, it goes through my calendar and sets an alarm for every single event I have that day, because I will get hyperfocused on something and then I'll be like, oh, it's 1 0 7 and I was supposed to be recording talking Dral seven minutes ago, right?

And I'll, so the alarm goes off, and when the alarm goes off, it's like, I should be doing something right now. So if I'm hearing this alarm and I'm not doing that thing, I gotta drop whatever it is I'm doing, it shakes me out of it. So like, that's external scaffolding. You need reminders where you don't have to rely on your own head because it's not reliable.

John: It's, it's interesting. It, external scaffolding is a great way to put it. I, um, back in the day, um, Steve, Nick and a bunch of other people were in a book club and we read this book, um, called Getting Things Done. Oh, huge fan. And. Liter. Literally I took, yeah. The big joke is that I never actually read the whole book, but, um, I just kind of listened to the book club and read certain parts of the book that, that were interesting.

So like, I'm a, I'm a huge believer in like that external scaffolding as you put it, to say like, okay, well I'm gonna go through my inbox every morning and the things that are in my inbox are actionable and I need to do something with them. And the things that aren't in my inbox are garbage, so I'm gonna throw them out.

Or they, or I'll create a reminder that says, Hey, I'm gonna delete this email, but it next week you're gonna remind me that I need to do this thing because I need to do it. Yeah. Right. And like, the reminders app, my email, my calendar, all of those things are like pivotal and that external scaffolding you're talking about to keeping me like moving forward and moving in a direction.

Um, so yeah, the, the external scaffolding is definitely, definitely an interesting way to put it. And, um, you know, pivotal to, to getting things done.

Chris: Same as the old trick I learned at my first job, where if you have leftovers from lunch and you wanna remember to bring 'em home, put your car keys in the fridge on top of the leftovers.

That's, that's like an external scaffolding trick, right? It's like, oh, I can't get in my car 'cause I have my keys. Where are my keys? Oh, yeah. I put my keys in the fridge so I'd remember to get my leftovers.

John: That's, that's awesome. Until you get to a certain age where you're like, shit, I can't remember where I put my keys.

And then you're like, somebody finds 'em in the, in the refrigerator and then they're worried about you because they're like, how did your keys end up in the refrigerator? And you're like, what's going on John? You're like, no, no, no. I put them in there on purpose, I swear. They're like, uh, sure you did. That doesn't sound better.

Sure you did, grandpa. Mm-hmm. Right. Um. Awesome. Well, you know, this, this hour plus has flown right by, so I, uh, I appreciate your time. I appreciate as always the conversation 'cause um, yeah. You know, I don't think, as we said at the beginning, you know, things get busy and then you don't have, you don't have these types of conversations.

So yeah. I appre appreciate you taking the time and chatting with me today.

Chris: Yeah. We razz each other plenty. But you're good, you're good people, PZI. And I always look forward to seeing you wherever, uh, wherever I can. So I'm sad that I won't see you in Vienna. I'll definitely be at Ned Camp, so I'll see you there at the, at the latest.

John: There we go. I look forward to that. And uh, you know, I'm sure I'm, maybe you'll be a Dral Con Chicago. Hope to, maybe we can grab some pizza. They, yeah, that'd be great here. They have good pizza out there. Yeah.

Chris: I love, love. Um,

John: I will also say, uh, that, uh, what was I gonna say? I just had something I was gonna say and now I totally forgot what it was.

Seeing you. Whoa. Oh, about razzing

Chris: each other? No, no,

John: no. You well, yeah. It was the razzing that, that, that, that triggered it. But, um, thanks for your help on identifying my email, um, my website email issue. Um, oh yeah, cool. I I did write a blog post about that I made sure to give you props for, for, you know, for calling that out.

But I was like, I was like, oh yeah, you know, look at that Chris, Chris Wallace. The larger concern

Chris: was when I saw the post and then it was like, oh, well SendGrid got rid of their free tier. And I was like, oh, that kind of stinks because a week ago I signed up one of my clients for the SendGrid free tier.

So

John: really you were able to do it a week ago? 'cause they stopped. They stopped. I already

Chris: had an account, but like I had, so I don't know. It still came. They gave you the 60 day

John: trial and so it'll work for 60 days.

Chris: Yeah, maybe it will, but. Client's good to pay. So whatever you go, we'll make it happen. Like,

John: uh,

Chris: let's find out.

I worked out. Ah, it's not good, John. Always.

John: I gotta, I gotta get some lunch, but, um, good plan.