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Ryan Burgess
Welcome to a brand new episode of the front end, Happy Hour podcast. We all learn in different ways. And I feel like there's even more and more material out there nowadays to learn, whether it be through for leadership through coding through whatever you want to learn. There's so many ways to do it. We have our guest Madison on today to talk about how she's approached learning surely is joining us today. And I mean, right now she's in a formalized education going back to school. So I think this will be a really good topic for us to dive into of like how we approach learning Madison as a kind of introduce you briefly, can you give a brief introduction of who you are, what you do, and what your favorite Happy Hour beverages? Yeah,

Madison Kanna
thanks for having me here. I'm excited. So I currently work as a senior software engineer at Walmart health as of about six months ago. And I'm also the creator of Code Book Club, which is a developer meetup that I've been hosting in the past three and a half years. And my favorite beverage, I feel like I'm super boring these days, because I don't really drink alcohol or caffeine anymore. But I do really like different kinds of white ones.

Ryan Burgess
Nice. Also give introductions of today's panelists. Jem, you want to start off

Jem Young
Jim Young engineering manager at Netflix,

Shirley Wu
surely Woo, former software engineer and data visualization designer and now in grad school for art and technology.

Stacy London
And I'm Stacy London. I'm a principal front end engineer at Atlassian.

Ryan Burgess
And I'm Ryan Burgess. I'm a engineering manager at Netflix. In each episode of the front end, happier podcast, we like to choose a keyword that if it's mentioned at all, in the episode, we will all take a drink. And what did we decide today's keyword is resources, resources, resourcing any of those are gonna cause us to have some nice drinks. So that will be great. Let's dive in. I'm maybe curious at the start of the episode of just like, what sort of things are you all learning these days?

Jem Young
I am learning about, like everybody else about AI, and whether or not it's a threat to me and my No. Try trying to learn how to utilize it for certain things. It is tricky, because no one really knows what they're talking about, like, what the current stage of AI, we're just, we don't really know what the output is going to be anymore. Which is like a really weird place to be. So like, we don't know if the things that are generated are good or not. So I think AI is useful for some things like refactoring code base, potentially, but I don't know what level we can actually trust it. And that's kind of what I'm learning today. Like, how can I use it for my team at work and see if we can help us be more productive? Or is this going to hinder us in the long run and kind of costs us something? So that's what I'm learning these days.

Madison Kanna
That is a good point. I feel like you see all these people on Twitter who are making predictions about exactly what will happen with AI. But it's like, no one really knows.

Ryan Burgess
Don't worry all I asked ChatGPT. If it's a threat, it says it can be an it can be beneficial. So I didn't really get a straight answer, but I had to make sure. So I think we're maybe okay,

Jem Young
it's what AI is going to tell you. Hey, are you a threat to us a threat to humanity? No, of course not. I'm just a lowly AI, I'm here to help you.

Ryan Burgess
But, you know, we got to admit, it said AI can be both a threat and a benefit. So you know, it's somewhat self aware. I mean, like, Jim, I've definitely been diving down the AI road. And just I think it is one of those things where you have to try and decide how was it beneficial to us? How can we leverage it? And yes, some of the things may be scary. I've seen some weird videos and things that are created with multiple different tools of AI being stitched together, where I'm like, wow, you have Bill Gates saying something that he did not say there's some interesting things that can be done. But I think there is a lot of benefits and I'm seeing and in possibilities that we can be leveraged in our day to day jobs. I don't think it's going to replace us. I don't see it being perfect yet. But maybe at some point it does. But for now, it's more like how can we leverage it as a tool. I feel like always too as as ever since I've been in management, I'm always looking for opportunities to read or learn new ways of approaching leadership management. So I find like, whether it be podcasts, videos, books, whatever it is, I constantly am kind of keeping up with that

Stacy London
for for me, I'm I just recently started on a new product, and some learning a new codebase sort of a divergent thing where it's not necessarily a totally new set of technology or, or anything in the stack is kind of familiar, but you know, everyone implements something slightly different. So it's just kind of learning a large new codebase and getting your head around it. And then also, strangely, I'm like, refreshing myself with iframes because we're doing some interesting integration work. And so everything that is old is new again, and I'm trying to read Yeah, reacquaint myself with those and communication patterns cross frame

Ryan Burgess
iframes Wow, fun fun times.

Jem Young
What's next some XML

Shirley Wu
oh my god, my very first project was visualizing XML. That's how I learned d3.

Ryan Burgess
I'm pretty sure we've all dealt with XML at some point or another. And it has been a long time since I've touched XML. And I don't want to again, if I can avoid it.

Madison Kanna
Yeah, for me, I've been learning computer science kind of just at the beginning of my journey, and just trying to learn more about how computers work. So I've been doing this in a few ways. I'm doing a lot of self study. And then I've been doing self paced courses at this program called CS primer. And then I'm also in the fall taking a more formal class out of school called Bradfield, which is for software engineers who work by day, but when I learn more computer science by night,

Ryan Burgess
right on, that's a lot of learning all at once Madison, how's it coming? So far? How long has this been going on?

Madison Kanna
I only Well, you know, I've dabbled over the years on and off. But this year, I really decided to take it more seriously. So I'm kind of preparing for the class in the fall, that'll be a lot of my time. And it's going to be all of my focus besides my main job. And right now I'm just kind of baby stepping a little bit and doing more self paced learning.

Ryan Burgess
So it's kind of interesting medicine. So you're a developer at your job. But you're also like learning going deeper on computer science. And as additional work. Yeah, it's

Madison Kanna
kind of my weekend thing. Doesn't sound very fun. But yeah,

Ryan Burgess
hey, I mean, it probably it helps you in your role. So that's very cool, too. And like a lot of people will go get a computer science degree, and then you know, go get a job. But it's cool that you're like, No, I'm working on the job. And I just want to deepen my knowledge of computers and computer science. Yeah,

Shirley Wu
I agree, I was just gonna say that, I think it's really cool. How we've kind of come from, it almost used to be that the only really big option was to go some formalized education route through a class or a university or like some, but then nowadays, there's just like so many different options of like Madison, you're talking about taking a self paced course, but then also taking a course that's more formalized. And that reminds me of, I think we talked about this a lot about how a lot of us are drawn to front end development, because it's so fast paced, so then we're constantly learning and that learning is what's what keeps it exciting. But also, I think, there's something interesting about talking about different learning styles. So like, I highly respect anybody that can do self paced coursework, like I fall off so easily, if I'm trying to do like a Coursera. I'm like, I just can't keep myself motivated. And so I have to be in like that formalized setting, with an instructor and classmates. And I can't do remote learning very well either, because I just get so distracted. And so that's why I went back to grad school because I was realizing that I really, really wanted to learn like new skills that are kind of tangential to my software engineering skills, but also different enough that I knew I couldn't just do it on the side. And I couldn't do it, just like in between all of my client projects. And so I went, I chose to go back for like a focus two years, where I'm sitting in classrooms, there's professors, and I have to hold myself accountable by turning in assignments. And that's how I'm learning, but like mad respect to everybody that, you know, can do it by themselves, because then you don't have to take two years off of work and pay crazy amounts of tuition. And you can learn just by yourself.

Ryan Burgess
I mean, it takes a lot of discipline to and you're doing it on your own right, like just hearing surely you're saying like, yeah, it's hard to kind of balance that. And, yeah, you can, if you have the luxury to sit down and take that time to really focus. That's awesome. But yeah, it can be difficult to force yourself to be like Madison on the weekends, like learning more. It's like doing your day job and then learning even more Madison, I'd be curious, how do you balance that? Like, what do you find allows you to keep that focus and rigor around the learning aspect?

Madison Kanna
Yeah, well, I don't always but I tried you. I think what keeps me focused is honestly I just, I really want to improve my skills. And often at work you're learning but you're not always learning all of the time, I think. And so learning outside of work is just a way of keeping my skills up to date. And so that really drives me because that's something I really want to do. But I try to set different systems into place like going to bed early, and having certain milestones and obviously like external accountability helps a lot too. But I do think I'm used to it though, because I've had so little formalized at Education in my life, I was homeschooled growing up, I left college after a year, I didn't go to any sort of coding boot camps. I feel like all my learning has come from, like trapping myself in my room and not locking the door and not leaving until I've learned a bit. That's

Ryan Burgess
awesome. I love that journey. I'm curious too, when you say about like, external accountability? How do you do that? Like, what's how do you leverage having external accountability to help with your learning? Yeah, I've

Madison Kanna
done different things. And my older sister, also a software engineer, we've really kept each other accountable by telling each other our goals, and then, you know, kind of shame each other if we haven't done them, and in a positive way, though, and then also my book club that I started about three years ago, I hosted this book club every Sunday for the past three years. And so telling myself, Okay, I'm going to read this book, and then inviting other people to join me, I forced myself to show up every Sunday, because I said, I'm gonna host this. And so if I don't show, then all those people can't even get into the Zoom Room. And sometimes I don't feel like it right, you wake up on a Sunday, you're like, I do not want to code I do not want to go on Zoom. But it's a really good way of like putting this external accountability that's for free. You don't need any sort of outside institution or anything.

Ryan Burgess
That's awesome. I'm a big believer in keeping a schedule of things. I feel like that's how we've kept this podcast always going. It's like, we know that there's biweekly releases. So we're like, oh, you know, there's a few times we definitely missed it with holidays, or we all were way too busy, whatever it is. But for the most part for the past, like five or six years, I can't remember how long this podcasts been going on. It's just keeping that rigor of like, oh, yeah, no, I have to use and there's times where you're like, I'm not feeling like getting on another call and talking. But I think that that goes a long way. For me, I know that something that's kind of helped me. So I like that that even external with your sister being like, you know, shaming each other and saying, like, Hey, you didn't finish that goal. Like I think that's really good. Sometimes you, you mentally feel like accountable to something rather than just like, Oh, it's so easy to just not do this. I'll do that tomorrow. I like that.

Madison Kanna
Yeah, you have to make it into a habit. Like I used to hate working out. And I was very inconsistent with working out. But now I always work out four times a week, even when you just you wake up and you're lifting the weights, or you're on your bike, and you're literally sitting there and thinking like I do not want to be here zero motivation. This is not great, but you just go through the motions and do it. Anyways, I found that really helpful.

Ryan Burgess
Yeah, it's like once you get that into your like schedule, and you're just kind of you get used to it. And it's just like, becomes a habit, which is really cool.

Jem Young
Like you're both mentioning, yeah, a habit. It's not something you think about when you're learning like you never, they don't teach you that in school, like we all had, probably at least 12 years of formal education at some point. They never teach you like, Here's how you make a habit of doing things. I think they try with homework. And like, oh, yeah, you learn at school, you have to go home and like reinforce that learning, etc. But it's never explicit in here's how you should do it. Here's how you set your targeted. Here's how you set your goals. And I don't know that's an interesting thought on our modern education system is like they don't teach you how to learn. They just like learn. Don't worry about how to do it. And surely I love you called out, we all learn differently. Some people need that kind of formalized structure. And Madison, you're like, I'm a bit more informal. It's more of a habit. I'm with you. Surely I need like, someone to push me. You know, what I hate is like open world games. Because I'm like, What should I do next? And they'll be like, anything you watch him? The world is your magical world, like, Yeah, but what should I do next? I need structure. I like a linear progression of things, open worlds

Shirley Wu
that frustrate me, because I'm a completionist. So I'm like, where do I how do I complete everything. I also think it's very interesting that you touch on education, the education system, and I found that there is a big difference in my mind between studying versus learning. So as like a needing a formal structure, I can be very self motivated. And what I want to learn, just because there's plenty of teachers and professors that did not teach, and so I had to self study and learn it, but I think it's a very interesting when I was in school, it was all about studying. And so studying as in, I'm not trying, I'm only studying for the sake of a test and getting a good grade on a test. And oftentimes, I'm cramming and by the end of the midterm or final, I just like after that, like all of the information is purged. And I think I spent an unfortunate number of years studying because I think when I was especially in high school, I didn't know why I was studying. I just was studying because I was told I need to get into a good college. And once I get into a good college, I'll hopefully be able to get a good job. And so the motivation was completely wrong for me. And I think the fundamental shift happened for me when I started taking computer science classes, and that was probably the first time I got a shitty grade I think that was like my first C or something I'm sorry, this is we had a whole conversation about how I was raised to be like a good kid like, yeah. And I had many existential Panic of, oh, if I'm not a good student, what am I? And then that was kind of the once I had that I was like, Oh, well, if I don't care so much about the grade, then I can just concentrate on learning, and I love and then that's when I learned that I love learning, just for the sake of the knowledge instead of for the A or B, or C, or whatever. And then I continue to do a CS minor, got a lot of bad grades, but loved every single class and every single project. And, and then I think that's what carried over once I graduated and entered and started doing software engineering as a vocation. And, and just learning because the knowledge of course, acquisition is so fun. I laughed

Ryan Burgess
at you. And you said the C party surely because I know we've we've definitely talked about. And I'm very much, you know, MIT, I wish I applied myself more in high school, I was very much like, Yeah, whatever, as long as I pass, and I didn't put a lot of effort into studying because I didn't see the point. It was like, I'm not retaining this information. I'm just literally studying to get some mark to say that I passed this class. It wasn't really for me until I started realizing that when I care about something, going to college and doing project based things, I have to figure out how to solve something, right? And those were the times where I really wanted to go deep and learn it. But even when you started, like in college, if I had like theory based things around computers, it was like, I don't care. Like that doesn't really help me. In hindsight, I think I regret not caring about it at the moment. Like I think if I went back like you now Surely, I probably would care more. I actually really enjoy some of those history, things to understand, like how we got here today. But in the moment, I was like, I just want to solve and build right now for this thing, and don't really care about how we got here. And so that's that was an interesting journey for me that I reflect on those times. I'm like, Hmm, it'd be kind of cool to go back to school. I don't think I will. But in some ways, I'm like, I feel like I'd be a better student. I definitely had teachers tell me, I probably wouldn't amount to shit. And so it's really finding that I haven't like, I always laugh at that. I'm like, Yeah, I get why you thought that. But it was just, I wasn't applying to things. It didn't matter to me. When I found something that mattered to me, then I applied it

Shirley Wu
to my thoughts. I think about this a lot. And the first thing is, my husband and I have talked about this, about how, how much work experience helps in realizing not only like the value of learning, but also why we're learning. And we were talking about this specifically about how when we took statistics, like in high school and college, we're like, why are we like when we're even when I took geometry, I'm like, or not geometry, maybe it was one of the math things. I was like, why would I ever need to remember SOHCAHTOA? Like, why I'm never gonna use this in real life. And then psych like, 10 years later, data visualization, it's all about SohCahToa and like, and geometry, but then there's like, I think, because once we start working, we realize the things that we actually need. And then like maybe we have like a faint idea of something we learned in school, or maybe not through school, but like, and then we get the work experience to be like, Oh, this is why it's important. And then being able to relearn that again. That's I think, when it really sticks in our heads, because then we have the reason for why it's important to understand it well. So I think about that a lot.

Jem Young
That's why Madison, your your learning journey is super interesting. Like you're an engineer at at Walmart, health. And you're also taking computer science classes. I'm super jealous. Like, I wish I could go back and take CS now that I know what you're saying surely what is applicable, what's not, because I probably would have paid more attention to like practical stuff like databases, and maybe networking, not so much on like operating systems and like low level programming that I know is not applicable to the field. But so far, Madison Have you found like, it's it's easier to learn or you can focus more on things that are more practical to your day to day and less on the like theoretical, Big O times of Bubblesort and things like that.

Madison Kanna
Yeah. Yeah. So I think it is a lot to do with the program that I've been doing. So CS primary is like the self paced courses. And then the formal school that I'm taking in the fall is similar to what Shirley said. It's all project based. And it's all really designed to focus on like what is practical, like what are the practical computer science things that It might actually come up in your job, or that will make you a better engineer. So it's much less focused on like a traditional computer science degree and what that might entail, if that makes sense. So that's what I really am loving about it so far. And I think in general, too, I just wanted to learn and understand more about how computers work and computer architecture because I like as engineers, we're working at, you know, one level of abstraction. But I often feel like if I go one level, deeper, I don't understand how that level of abstraction works. And so what I love about this program is Yeah, it's really focused on how can you learn more of computer science and how computers work but in a practical way that could make you a stronger developer. So it's not like the traditional computer science degrees and everything is really project based and exercise based, rather than getting a great yeah, I

Jem Young
feel like we over the years I've been on rants about CS programs, and how they're not like professors, they're often don't have any real world experience. Like I think in my, my CS program, like one or two, actually, like worked at a company. And so it showed in the way they taught, and my favorite professors were always the ones that are like, Yeah, I was doing this project that IBM and then we were doing waterfall and you know, this thing didn't work out. And I was like, okay, that's stuff I want to know, versus the people that went straight to, you know, bachelor's, master's doctorate in CS. It's like, cool. But my life goal is not doing research papers until like, the limits. And I'm not saying there's not room for both, like AI would not be where it is if there weren't people getting doctorates and CS and, and math and data science to push us in this direction. But the it's the, it's the practical side that I like, so I'm with you, Ryan, I was I was not a good student in high school, because I was like, What do I do with this? Like, show me what to build? Show me what I can do. And that's, that's still high learn today. I don't care about theoretical I care about like, I need to solve a problem. How can I learn that? Okay, I've learned it. Cool. We put that in my encyclopedia of things I know. But if you're like jam, you need to learn. I don't know, Bayesian statistics of like, why I'm out. I'm gonna go play an open world video game,

Stacy London
just a small example. Just like the something theoretical and practical I remember learning about interfaces, in programming languages, like Java as an example. Theoretically, I was like, Yeah, I kind of get it. But I didn't, really didn't. And the first time that actually clicked was when I actually built something in Java that required it and needed it. And then it was the sort of aha moment of like, oh, that's what they're good for. So I feel like that's, it's like, for me, it's very much that that idea of the theory and doesn't quite click until I'm building something in the real world that really, that needs it. And then that it makes a lot of sense.

Madison Kanna
It's interesting, because I've seen so many developers who had a bad experience in traditional computer science schooling, where they got a bad grade, or they got a C in computer science classes. And then they thought, like, Oh, I'm really bad at this, right, because you get a bad grade and something. And then you see yourself as being bad at that thing. But then I've heard of so many people who then go out into the real world, and they're these great developers, and they work at these incredible companies. And so I just find it fascinating that so many people are a little bit scarred in some ways, from traditional education, where maybe you're not doing well in school, and you get to see and you think I'm just not good at that thing. But then you go out into the real world. And really, that thing is a completely different thing. And you're really good at it. And I see this as a really common theme with different developers, like those with computer science degrees or without, a lot of them had not great experiences. And then they kind of go into the real worlds and start building these incredible things.

Ryan Burgess
That's so cool, too. And I think there's so many ways in which you can learn like there is the traditional school that is still there, and it's not going away. But there is so many now options that you could do something different. I joke, but like YouTube wasn't available when I first started programming like that, that didn't exist. And now there's just amazing content on YouTube for free. Someone's teaching you how to build some react application, or whatever it is. And you can learn so quickly, just from free resources. Then there's like amazing paid services. There's like boot camps, but there's even services online. Like we talked about front end masters, there's there's a lot of them out there that are so great material. I think that's really cool. And I'm curious, how do you all now approach learning with some of these resources that are out there? Cheers, cheers.

Shirley Wu
Actually, I think that's a really great point that I also want to kind of circle back to the learning different learning styles. For the longest time, I thought that learning from a textbook was all like in other than lectures, if I'm trying to self study, learning from a textbook or reading documentation, I thought was the only way I could go about it. Ryan, I there was YouTube when I started but there was no it was still back when YouTube was like, I don't know. vlogs and there was no you know, like, Dev resources on YouTube. So I thought learning was reading a textbook. And I just like forced my way through a book and, and now that we have just been able to watch videos, that is such a huge like that I can't go back. And in terms of when I wanted to learn a new library or a new language, being able to watch a workshop of like an expert telling me like, here's the parts of the library to pay attention to when you're starting out. Like, here's how you go through the documentation. Here's like where the community is for you to learn or you to ask questions, having that, but also, just in retrospect, thinking about the fact that when we code, we don't code line by line, like, we don't go like line one, line two, line three. And like we go like we write some in line one, and then maybe we write 10 lines, and then maybe we go back to line five, and we add something because it's all kind of like a flow of how we're thinking. But when we're just reading a textbook, and everything is static, like we only see the finished product, and we don't see the thought process that someone might have put into, like, why they structured the code that they did. And so being able to watch someone even like coding in a video and the thought process of like, why they have the code and just seeing the process, I find it extremely helpful. So now I love being able to watch the video. And like some instructors now even have like video plus the like, written everything written out. And so I like watching the video, and then like scanning through their text. So yeah, that's how I do it.

Ryan Burgess
One thing that's cool to have like the videos, I'm gonna say, this is a long time ago, Shirley, you and I were talking to as your first episode that you were on actually, as a guest, we were at Evernote, and I remember we were just recording there, and you were talking about I think I'm going to do live like streaming of coding. And I remember being like, That's so ridiculous. Like, why would anyone want to watch people live coding, and I all admit like I honestly was kind of like, that just seems bizarre. But I am proven very wrong is how great that is. Because you're, you're able to see someone solving a problem, seeing how they approach it, you see, even tools that they're using in their editor, whatever it is, and you can like learn so much from those instances. And you can ask them questions while they're doing it. It's pretty powerful. That one sticks out in my mind that moment when you told me that I was like, That's so weird. Why would you want to do that. And I stand corrected, credit

Shirley Wu
where it's due. That's from Suze Hinton, she wrote an amazing blog post. And she called it massively multiplayer online pair programming. Because it's a two way street, like I'm sharing how I think about how I write code. But then people in chat are also telling me, hey, you could potentially do it this way. Like, hey, like, did you know about this new Alchemist grip thing or something? I mean, there's a fine balance, because sometimes it can get toxic and very mansplaining considering how I look like. But overall, it's a very good, like, mutually beneficial experience. And I wish I'm still doing it

Ryan Burgess
any other ways that people that you all are finding useful for learning,

Madison Kanna
I think for me, I have to have a project or a problem in front of me otherwise, I feel like I won't learn as well. So it has to be a problem or some sort of project like really project based but also I know, Ryan, earlier, you said that, you know, YouTube wasn't always around. And now we have all these great resources. Drink cheers, and but we have all these great resources. So learning is easier than ever. But I also think learning has been has become really hard because we have all these great resources, like you just said it again, we have all these great things like YouTube now. But then we also have all of these distractions, like we live in a world that is designed to distract us and take away our focus through every second. So for me, the biggest thing has been learning how to focus and stay focused and not distracted by everything out there, you know, email, Slack, Twitter, all of these different things. And so focusing on that has helped me learn much more than I used to.

Ryan Burgess
That's well said, I think it's also trying to find like, what material is good material to write. There's a lot out there. And so there's really good, there's some okay, but it can take some time looking around to find the right thing that you're trying to learn or the best suited content.

Jem Young
One, one thing I've seen, to your point, Madison, I agree. It's like, oh, there's so much great content. You can learn without a college degree these days. However, there's so much great content and you're pulled in a million directions. And like you said, everything's designed to kind of grab your attention and maybe not necessarily teach you the best way. It's just like, I feel like I'm learning something. But you may not be and that's something I've seen and quite a bit over the past, say four or five years, which is, people want to be around the presence of learning and following people on Twitter that are posting code snippets, you're like, Yeah, I feel like I'm smarter. But you're not really. And I don't know, I don't know how to describe this phenomenon, but it's just like, I can't describe it. But it's like, I have tutorials going on in the background while say I'm, I'm recording an episode of Front unhappier, or like, I'm writing a talk. So my Oh, yeah, yeah, I'm definitely learning, Madison's giving this given this great talk on computer science or something. And I feel like I'm learning because like, she's talking and I'm like, Yeah, I'm not a log. But my focus is in there. And I'm not really learning anything, just like, it gives the appearance that I'm learning. So I don't know, I've seen a lot of that I see it with Twitter, especially where people follow really good engineers on Twitter, because like, I want to be smarter. But you're not really smarter. You're just you're seeing smart people maybe talk about things but you're not like absorbing it in a way. I do think that project base and like having an outcome where you're like, Okay, I've made the stumbles. And I understand the pitfalls. And here's why I'm doing this. And to everyone's point about, like, the process of learning is arguably probably more important than the thing you're learning itself. Because like how you get into your memory, how it's how it saved. It's like, how are you going to recall it later in not just tutorial driven development, where it's like, do this and then do this and then do this and then do this? And then you're like, cool, I built an app. Like, cool. What did you learn how to build? I learned how to build an app. Yeah, like, okay, build me another one. But it's a little bit different. Like, ah, well, let me find another tutorial on that. And like, I think that's what I'm getting at. It's like this tutorial driven development or trying to learn by osmosis. Like, it just doesn't work, you have to put the time in, you have to dedicate yourself to do something otherwise, you know, soon you'll be replaced by AI. Because AI can do tutorials really well. It's that it's that edge cases that you have to put together complete different sets of information that, you know, aren't in the same place. And that's kind of what intelligence is, that's what learning is. I don't know, I'm, I'm having trouble formulating this thought. I like my problem with a lot of learning why we don't seem to be necessarily getting smarter. Even though there's more content out there. More ways to learn, we're just kind of like, we're all just okay. When we all should be like brilliant by now. That's what the internet's for. Right?

Madison Kanna
I think that is so true. And I think it's because, like, according to everything, I read it because our brains are basically addicted to new stimuli. And so you're scrolling on Twitter, or how many Americans are on Tik Tok now, and you see coding content, and you think you were learning because you're looking at it, but then you're scrolling through 800 tabs, or you're watching a video in the background, like you said, and so maybe you're learning a little bit, but you're not really deeply learning. And it also feels easier, right? Like, our brains don't want to learn hard stuff. And so you think that you learned all of these things, but you really didn't. And I mean, to your point about AI, I think that AI is showing us right now that it's not important to know one skill, like React or something, right? Because skills are going to change so fast. And maybe we're going to be using AI all the time. The most important thing is, can you learn new hard things like really quickly and really deeply? And for most of us, I mean, including myself, it's probably no, right, because we're spending all day looking at these things, or learning in these ways that are not really effective. So yeah, I just find it really fascinating.

Shirley Wu
I also really agree with this. And I want to bring it back to what we were saying about theory versus practical application. And I'm gonna go a little bit on the I appreciate having theory, like I agree, like learning theory is not fun, because you're like, why would I need this. But to what Madison said earlier about, like, I love the fact that you are taking computer architecture, because you want to understand how computers work. Because I think that does have a lot to do with like how we take a concept and extrapolate it and make it our own, of when we follow tutorials is very practical. We are making something but then like the step from that, to making it our own, I personally think has a lot to do with understanding how things work underneath the hood. And I do think that that's what a lot of the theory teaches us of like, AI to this day, like have never had to build my own link to list or like or my own binary search tree, right? Because why would I have never had to implement my own sorting algorithm, but I deeply appreciate knowing how they're implemented, because then I know exactly how I'm going to take advantage of it. Am I make that my own? So I am on the like, I agree with both sides of like, I really like practical. Um, but I don't want to just shit on theory.

Ryan Burgess
That is fair. I mean, we kind of have a little bit but I see your point surely it's it's allows you to better understand how to leverage something and really use the right sorting algorithm or, you know, how can I best use this, I think that's a really great call out for some of the theory aspect. And not just about the practicality, which the good point,

Shirley Wu
thank you. And I also wanted to like what Madison said about focus is so good. Like, I really appreciate it that point. And I was trying to think about, like, what helps me focus. And I've tried, I've tried like Pomodoro timers, I feel like maybe the biggest thing for me has been just putting my phone on Do Not Disturb and literally putting it across the room. So I can't get distracted by like my phone, lighting up with messages. Um, but also, I realized that when I'm doing my learning, or coding or any of my work, I have different levels of concentration. I don't know if this is, this is like an open invitation for discussion, because I've never talked about it with anybody. But like, I have my like most focus level, which is I put on some low fi, and I have zero distraction, although the Lo Fi does have a pretty video animation. And I'm like reading or I'm watching, like maybe I'm watching a video or I'm coding, but that is like my most high concentration, I cannot have any distractions, my phone is across the room, then there's a tear that's like a little bit mundane work like you know how we all have code that's like, we're maybe nudging pixels around, it doesn't require some attention. But like we don't have to put in all of our attention. That's one that I like putting on like a like a podcast or a movie on the background. Because for some reason that stimulates my brain enough that I don't act like it's weird, because that actually helps me focus on the task because the task is so mundane, that if I'm just doing it by itself, I'll get distracted and want to go do something like I want to go, I don't know, Twitter or Instagram or something. But the fact that I have like a movie on in the background, not a new movie, not too interesting of a movie either. So this is I have a whole tear of like content that's not interested not too interested like podcasts and movies that are and dramas are not too interesting that I would get distracted. But just interesting enough that it will keep my brain activated. Like I call it my second tear, content entertainment that I put on. I don't know if people do that.

Ryan Burgess
I mean, I definitely find that for sometimes like even wanting to go to sleep or something where you put something on the background where it's like you're not so engaged on it. I'm not one to like listen to a podcast while I like code or try and learn at night find that actually too distracting. But I think to your point is like trying to limit distractions is absolutely a great way to learn. Also find time a day can matter, right? Like, some people are more productive in the evening. Some are more in the morning, summer, you know, in the afternoon, whatever it is, for me, like I'm really productive in the morning, no distractions. Like if I can actually get up early and have no one bothering me. That is actually a very good time for me sometimes very hard to do. I see Jim shaking his head because I know I think he's on the opposite end where he'll be like a late night person. And so I think it's like even knowing yourself of when when those times are what is right and finding your like atmosphere to like, I do not want a bunch of crap around me like I mean, my desk is clean, cleared out everything you know, even to your point, surely that things are distracting. On screen. It's like, if I'm learning I want just that video or just whatever I'm watching not a bunch of tabs not Twitter open. And the minute I do that, I'm like, oh, oh, I just spent 10 minutes on Twitter. It's distracting. Like it happens.

Jem Young
I am a late night person. If I if I have a hard problem to solve when I am in the morning, that's like my peak brain time. I can't change it. I wish I could. I wish that was like, you know, 10am in the morning is when I solve hard problems. But that's just not the way it works. One technique I learned about actually from the one of the Netflix Employee Resource Groups is something called body doubling. So it's a technique from people who have ADHD, but it's this concept that if you're around the presence of other people that are working, it can help you stay motivated to work. And it's a really weird concept, but it works. You know, like if you're an office full of people, and they're all like heads down coding, the chances of you getting into the zone ahead sound coding are, are much higher than that If there's a bunch of people kind of running around, or like you see people, obviously online shopping, or things like that. So it's something to consider about, we lost it with remote work and things like that is the concept of being in the office can make you more productive because you see other people being productive. That actually works well. For me, when I go to the office, I'm like, super focused, I, I trade off the commute time, versus my productivity, the office like I can get a lot more done at home. But if I'm in the office, I get so much more done, because I'm around the presence of other people working. So just different techniques for productivity, which we should have an episode on that as well, like, learning productivity kind of go hand in hand of it.

Ryan Burgess
Yeah. I mean, for me, Jim, I'm, you know, years of my job being managers, you're in a lot of meetings, I prefer to be in person for meetings I find sitting on the screen can be very distracting. Like, I've optimized certain things where I, you know, have notifications shut off, I sit back, like, lean further back in my chair, so that I'm not as easily accessible to click around on, you know, get on Twitter or something that can be distracting. But I find like, I want to be present. For the end. It's usually not like a one on one conversation. But it will be more like a large meeting, it's really easy to let something distract you. So I can see why being around people can help you. Just focus. Before we dive into pics, I think it'd be useful to like I think we all have these like little snippets of advice that we've been sharing already. But what's like one piece of advice that you would leave our listeners for improving their learning, or maybe it's a material resource cheers, that people can can leverage.

Stacy London
I can go first. One of the things I've seen a lot of new grads or people just getting into the industry asked me is like, well, what should I be learning, there's so much to learn. The topics are just everywhere. There's so it's overwhelming. In the My advice is sort of just to focus on the thing that helps you get your your day job done. So like if you're building in a particular stack that is has certain libraries in it, do some tutorials about those libraries. But don't do some like generic tutorial about, you know, oh, I'm curious about a library I'm not using in my day job. Don't do that, because that's really not going to help you. And it's going to be overwhelming. Like start just scope it and laser in on like just the things that you're trying to do every day. And get better at that. Over time, you'll be able to like, learn an equivalent library that you're not using and start to see patterns and kind of extract yourself away. But at the beginning stages, it's like just learn what you need to do to get your day job day job done.

Jem Young
We've said it a few times, and I 100% support this. To learn something, build something that's interesting to you, like, understand your motivation, and apply that. That's my personal style of learning. I think it's, it's probably one of the more practical ones, which is like, Fine, interesting problem. I want to learn how to, I don't know, build my own AI, I want to learn how to stream chat beach GP TS responses into Bard's responses and like build some sort of real time AI where they're talking to each other, something like that. That's super cool. Think of all the things you got to learn along the way. You're gonna learn a lot more doing that than you will following some tutorial, where you'll build something by the end, it'll probably work. But what did you learn? Like, what What mistakes did you make, and the mistakes you make along the way of learning are probably more important than things you actually learn? Because your brain is like, Okay, I learned where the boundaries are, I can I can come back and like associate that with the things I've learned. So that'd be my advice for learning, build something practical, build something you're really interested in. Because if you're talking about interviews and things like that, that will show up later. Like, why did you build that? Well, the professor told me to, why did you build that? Because it's really interesting. And I ended up learning all these other things along the way.

Shirley Wu
I 1,000% agree with both of you that like because when you build something that's interesting to yourself, it also keeps you motivated, right? Like holding can be hard learning new things is very hard. And so there's ultimately let's say you're doing a personal project. First of all, I really agree with Stacy that like personal projects. I've found when I first started working that my personal projects like really helped, even though it wasn't exactly the same as what I was doing at work. They really helped complement each other where I could take something I learned in my personal project, apply it at work, or vice versa. But also like when it's self motivated learning, we I find that I often hit this like slump where I'm like, I've been working on this project on the side nights and weekends for weeks or months. And I'm so tired of it. But if it's something that I'm really curious about or interested in, I'm usually able to get over that hump. Having said that, I often when I get that similar question of like, how can I get started? One of the most important things to me is reminding people to start small, like everybody, like oftentimes, for me, I get a lot of questions about data visualization, and people will be like, I want to get like, I want to collect this my own data set, I want to like design everything, and then I'm going to have to do XYZ, it's going to be so fancy. But then like, if you're learning, if you're just starting out, like every single one of those are going to be like a really hard challenge that like could be demotivating. So like, start out small, be like, Oh, my first step, I'm going to just draw this, again, this is what data is, I'm going to just draw this circle on the ground and position of ground circle on the screen and position in a certain place, and that's a win. And then for every small win, celebrate that. And then you'll find that like, after a while you've you've had so many small wins that you've gotten to your big win. And just make the learning that that makes the learning fun, too. Yeah, I

Madison Kanna
mean, I think for me, the thing that has helped me learn more, so much more in the last year has been kind of like we said earlier, learning how to focus and figuring out how to train my focus, I feel like a broken record, because they always talked about this. But I really love the book, Deep Work by Cal Newport, because he basically makes this point that we're all like, our brains are addicted to new stimuli like tick tock and Twitter. And so if you try to set a timer for an hour and sit down and try to focus, you most of us can't anymore, like we're losing that ability, because we're thinking about email or slack or something like that. And so he talks about all these strategies to train your focus, and to make sure that you're actually learning, like we talked about not kind of where you feel like you're maybe learning by seeing something or looking at content, but actually learning and being in a flow state. So I definitely, that's something I work on all the time, and definitely recommend anyone to read.

Ryan Burgess
Nice, I don't think I've read that one. But it, it's kind of sad to that we've, you know, come to this world where we are so distracted by so many things. And obviously, there's going to be tips on how to avoid that. So it sounds like a good read. I'm struggling to come up with additional advice. But one thing I will share with you all have great ones already is I would say don't get too hung up on what everyone else around you is doing. Like I think it's really easy to get distracted in the sense of like being on Twitter and being like, oh, that person is so smart are so great. They've done this, this isn't this, or, Hey, I'm learning this, but this person is learning that I think it's really just knowing that it's a journey, we all come at it from different angles, we all learn different things and know different things. Like even when you're at the top of your game, as a software engineer, you still are learning from one another. And I think that's so great. Like, it's something that you're never done learning. So I think about it not way to is like don't struggle, because someone knows something that you don't know, you're not going to know it all. And I think that's the important thing there.

Jem Young
That was brilliant advice. And we didn't even touch on that, which is like, the demotivating effect of YouTube and Twitter and all these other things where you're like, these people are so smart. I'm never gonna get there. Or, you know, there's nothing new to learn. And I should change my closing advice to, there's so much more to learn, like, look at the rise of all these different technologies in the past, like five years. We're not even, we're not even close to where we're gonna go as humans. There's a lot there like don't let what other people post demotivate you don't like Google how to build something because like, chances are someone might have built it already. But don't be like, Oh, they've already built that, like build it for yourself. And you will be so much happier than going on Twitter and seeing like what people produce. Because, you know, again, people are only showing you the highlight reels, not all the steps they took to get there. So, Ryan, that that is excellent advice.

Ryan Burgess
Thank you, Jim. All right, well, let's dive into pics of things that we found interesting and want to share with all of you, Stacy, you want to start it off?

Stacy London
Sure. I'll just do one pick today. The on the topic of learning, this band that I really like, basically changed their sound bit. But I like it. They're learning. They're evolving. And the song is called algorithmic by spotlights. They're kind of a post metal band. They have. I guess their lyrics are a bit more subtle, sometimes not much at all. This new song has quite a bit more vocals, but I still like it. So cheers to learning and evolving. Cheers.

Ryan Burgess
Surely what do you have? Oh, I

Shirley Wu
have my long list again. It's been a while. So here's here's the ride. So speaking of learning, all of my picks are about learning. I'm earlier I mentioned I'm kind of that like double bow both having video and also having text so like video to see the process and then text as like a quick way to refer and reference back to maybe parts of the content. So the first time I found that to be extremely effective was with three Jas dash 383 J s journey and, and I never had the time to actually implement anything but I really appreciated the way that everything was structured and if you are interested in learning three Jas that was a very, very full and like lovingly put together resource for three Jas. Also shout out to the program I'm in is at NYU ITP. And we have an intro to a physical computing class, which is all about using Arduinos, and sensors and LEDs and motors to affect things in the physical world. And they also have this model where they have written content with a lot of like photos and images about how you would wire up your breadboard. But also they have video content that's explaining kind of a lot of the concepts. And so having both of those was really helpful in my learning if anybody's interested in getting into Arduinos and physical things and hardware and circuits. And another thing about learning. I've been having so much fun following our friend Alice Lee's weekly ceramic foxes over in it's on Instagram, she started kind of taking ceramics classes last year or maybe two years ago. And she's gotten so deeply into it, that she's getting herself a kiln so that she can do at home. And her 2023 project is for each week, she makes a fox themed after something that happened that weekend. So it's both really cute and really wholesome. But also really cool from like someone that just goes real deep on learning a new skill. And then the final one is a shameless self plug, which is I just my first ever solo art show has come back for a month, um, and it's on in New York for until April 22. And it is encapsulates so much of what I learned on my program from the last year and a half and everything is physical. It's in a it's in a gallery culo gallery, a nice village. If anybody's in New York, I would love if you check it out. Otherwise, I'll like send the link for the digital documentation of the ship

Ryan Burgess
right on. Jim, what do you have for us?

Jem Young
I've got three picks today. The first one is a music pick. I probably picked them before but worth bringing up again because I just saw them in concert the other day, and I forgot how great they are. The pic is Alt J, their first album in awesome wave. One of my favorite albums of all time, I went to go see them in concert in Oakland with my wife. Fantastic, man, I forgot how good that album is like, it's nice to come back to things and they still hold up. So all J remains what my favorite bands of all time, their first album and awesome wave is just phenomenal. My second pick is as some of my front end happier listeners go. You know, I'm always in pursuit of my hobby, like a hobby. As I get older, I bemoan the fact that I'm like I should be learning something I should be getting better. So by the time I'm like 60 I should have like some things mastered, right. So I've always tried to find a hobby, but my My loving wife understands this. And she so she got me a woodworking class because that's how I work or that's how I learned is like, I have to be in a class. Otherwise I'm never gonna sit down and be like, let me pull up YouTube and carve some wood in my garage. So it's a two day 16 hour class of woodworking. And I've decided that woodworking probably isn't for me. Which is good, it's all good. It's probably a little too it's too much precision. I would like to better like broad woodworking but to be really really good at it. You have to be precise and like that is not what I'm good at. I just don't have that sort of patience. So I'm thinking I might try welding next. I don't know someone's probably gonna tell someone's probably gonna tweet at me be like welding involved precision two and a back to the drawing board. But I will I'll keep y'all updated on whatever I find my latest hobby to be. My third pick is a website called Changing minds.org. And it's fascinating all the different ways of just how we talk to each other how we convince other people to do things. And when you think about conversation, that's kind of what all conversations are at some point you're they're learning, but you're kind of convincing people to do other things. And it's website's so beautiful because it's simple. But it has so much information on like, how salespeople work techniques they use. And there's like, hundreds of techniques, 1000s of techniques for just salespeople. There's some for leadership, there's some for like war, there's some for everything. But it's all about like, how do you be persuasive? What are techniques that we've discovered over the years? How do you make a rational argument to somebody? How do you understand who they are, and try to find that middle ground as a as a leader and kind of one of the newer leader, this is really important is like, how do you convince people to do things? Because, as a parent to, I've learned, you can't make humans do anything they don't want to do, you have to convince them some way. So this may be my next hobby is like being persuasive and learning all the different techniques. But I love this website, because it's so simple. This will hold up in 10 years, because the design is kind of like Craigslist, it's just really, really basic. Those are my picks,

Ryan Burgess
right on Madison, what do you have for us?

Madison Kanna
Yeah, my picks would be just two first would be CS primer, CS primer.com. So it's a self based computer science courses, project based, very practical, not just on computer science, but computer architecture, and just understanding how things work. There's also a course on databases and other things I haven't taken yet, but I'm going to, so that's amazing. And then also, I want to shout out my sister a project that she's also launching tomorrow morning, which is code tutor.ai. And it's actually a AI coding tutor with hands on project. So got a shout out my sister's project, it's gonna be pretty exciting.

Ryan Burgess
That sounds really cool. Have to check that one out as it launches? That's really cool. I just have one pick it definitely on the theme of learning. One thing that I'm constantly trying to do better all the time is communication. How do you communicate more effectively, really briefly to I think, which should be effective, it's so much harder to write or to write small than write big or even speak words in really succinct manner. So one book that I've read recently is called Smart brevity. It's very like tactical, like it's, it's some of it is you're like, Oh, this is so obvious. But once you start actually applying some of these practices, it helps out a lot. And I think that you can get your ideas across a lot easier and think more about, okay, we're bombarded by all this information. How do I make things better, like with brevity, so that people can read and digest this really quickly? Because there again, we have millions of emails, Slack messages, Twitter message, whatever it is, I think there's an art to getting your message across really concisely and with remedy. So I found that book to be really great. Madison, thanks so much for joining us. This was a great topic. I'm really found it interesting to learn about your journey. And so thanks for joining us. Where can people get in touch with you?

Madison Kanna
Yeah, thanks so much for having me. This is a blast, probably on Twitter. So my Twitter is just my name Madison Khanna

Ryan Burgess
right on and you can find front end Happy Hour on Twitter at @frontendhh. You can follow us on really whatever you like to listen to podcasts on. Any last words,

Stacy London
the more you know