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Rockin' The Code World with dotNetDave ft. David Neal - Ep. 32
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Nov 6, 2023
Join us on August 7 with David Neal on Rockin' The Code World with dotNetDave - a weekly show to learn & live Q&A on .NET and other programming technologies. AGENDA • Introduction • The Interview • Prize Give-A-Way • New Code Rules • Wrap up GUEST SPEAKER David is a family man, musician, illustrator, software developer, and Microsoft MVP living in North Georgia. He currently leads Developer Relations at ActiveCampaign, runs on a high-octane mixture of caffeine and JavaScript, and is made entirely of bacon. Speaker Profile: https://twitter.com/reverentgeek C# Corner - Community of Software and Data Developers https://www.c-sharpcorner.com #CSharpCorner #rockinthecodeworls #live #dotnet
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Thank you
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Thank you
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Thank you
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Hey, geeks. Welcome to another exciting episode of Rocking the Code World with Donat Dave
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I'm Dave McCarter, aka Donat Dave, and I'm really glad you're here today
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I don't know about you, but it's going to be an awesome day in San Diego as usual
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And my guest and I were just talking about that. And, you know, I know there's a lot of crappy weather events happening around the world right now
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including, you know, there's huge fires in Northern California. So if you live in one of these areas, want to come visit San Diego, I'm here
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You know, it's 72 degrees almost every day of the year. So come on down and I'll take you around my favorite city
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So anyway, I'm glad you're here. I'm excited about my guest today is David Neal
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who I've been following on Twitter for a long time. And I'll say some more in a second about that
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This is show number 32 for August 7th, and I'm glad you're back
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I'm excited about my guest, David, today, not only because he's also a musician and plays
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guitars like I do, which I could talk about for the whole show, but I'd like to point out
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that Dave's got other talents, too. And so one of the things that I appreciate, Dave, I'm saying everybody on air now, is
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Every morning I wake up and I get something like this on my Twitter feed
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It seems like Dave comes out with a new cartoon that he drew almost every day, it seems like
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And they're always funny. They're always light and funny. And I really appreciate starting my day with one of these things
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And before I forget, David, before you come on the show is why don't you have a book
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You know, I think you should put all these things in the book and get some money from these because I personally really enjoy them
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And one day, one morning, Dave was looking for a goofy photo to do a cartoon with
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And I said, I've got a goofy photo because, you know, my craziness playing guitar and stuff when I'm in India
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So I sent him the craziest guitar picture, at least to me, you know, when I was playing in India at C Sharp Corner Conference
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And he drew this for me. So I've used it as my little icon for Twitter and stuff
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And I really like that. And it doesn't have glasses because I don't wear glasses anymore
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So anyway, Dave's not only a talented programmer, but he's a talented artist, too
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so two of my favorite things so anyway I forgot to ask Simon
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but I think the COVID pandemic is still going pretty bad in India
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last week when I talked to Simon he told me that his city
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is only getting like 100 vaccine doses a day so India is still having a bad problem
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and now if you pay attention to the news we're having another uptick
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because of the Delta variant in America too. And there's all kinds of problems happening now
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You know, our hospitalizations are tripled. You know, the amount of kids, little kids
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including like five months and old are in the hospital now because of COVID
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And so it's not going good here, but it's even worse in India
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So, you know, a couple of months ago, I did a challenge for all the software developers
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out there in the world, except for India, of course, to meet my $100 challenge
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Because right after I made this challenge, I went and donated $100 to this relief fund that we're distributing to people who need help because of the pandemic in India
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So I'm calling on all software developers out there to either meet or beat my challenge and to help the people in India because, you know, they really need help right now
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And if you do do this, not only will you get huge thanks from me, but tweet about it
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make sure you tag me on it so I can promote it so we can get more people donating
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I think the person that I'm aware of that gave the most to this fund is my good friend
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Mads Torgensen, who's the architect of C Sharp now. And he beat my challenge
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So I'm really glad that Mads did that. But we still need help for the people in India
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So I hope you will take a few minutes after the show to donate $100 or more
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I don't want to forget to plug the Azure Summit 2021 on September 13th through 19th
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It's now up to 10 days. Yes, 10 straight days of Azure
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This sounds pretty crazy to me. But I think I know it will be fun
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Simon and I were just talking about it before the show. And I know it's going to be an awesome conference
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It's probably, I would say the biggest, the biggest Azure conference there ever was
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you know, that's for sure. So if you wanna learn about Azure or you wanna speak
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please go to the Azure Summit and register and or submit your papers to speak I don know if they still taking papers yet Simon will tell me in a second here
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So, yeah, so plan to attend. Well, my son's going to be here during that week
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so I'm going to have to work that out with. Oh, submitting papers is closed
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Sorry. But go and register for the Azure Summit. I'm going to plug every week until my domain name is done
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And in October is, you know, my new effort to support the kids in India at the Voice of Slum NGO slash orphanage that I visited in 2019
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You can see some pictures there from my visit. I have a new project to raise money for this very, very worthy cause. And I know the two people who
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started this orphanage have been working really, really, really hard during the COVID pandemic
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to make sure the kids there are fed and other people in the area in Delhi are fed too. So
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So my new project is to come up with a food cookbook
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Yep, no code. But it will be technology-based because it's all recipes from technology people just like you and me
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So my new effort is to get enough recipes so I can put out a cookbook called the Hello World Cookbook
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And anybody can submit a recipe as long as you're in a family that has a tech person in it
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and 100% of the proceeds will go to the Voice of Slum
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every month to support that group there. And if you don't cook
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because I know a lot of geeks don't cook. I do, so I guess I'm different
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but I know a lot of geeks don't cook, but I need unit testers to test the recipes for me
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I need graphic artists to do the images and I need someone better at English to do the editing
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so it won't sound like my books usually sound. So there's lots of ways to help with this
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And so I hope you will donate your recipe or more to this book
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And if you don't want to donate to the book, then please go to The Voice of Slum and just donate directly to them
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They're always looking for help, not only with money, but supplies for the kids and stuff like that
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So I hope you will help me with this effort because if you don't, it's going to die in October
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So it's your fault. Literally, I guess. I'm also looking for new ideas to write about, new topics to write about on C Sharp Corner
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I am working on a new article for C Sharp Corner that's not going to come out until next month
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But in the meantime, I need ideas. You know, sometimes I run out of ideas and I'm in that place right now
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So if there's any topic you want me to write about, you know, from coding to speaking to getting a job, which I've been doing the last two months, please let me know and I'll write an article about it
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And if you have a United States post office, I'll probably send you some swag too, because I'm trying to get rid of swag in my house before my son comes to visit next month
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So I need to get rid of it. And with that, I want to introduce my guest, David Neal
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David's a family man, musician, illustrator, software developer, and Microsoft MVP living in North Georgia
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He currently leads the developer relations at ActiveCampaign. He runs on high octane mixture of caffeine, JavaScript, and is entirely made of bacon
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I miss bacon. Welcome, David. Hello. How's it going, man? Pretty good
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It's nice to see you, you know, I mean, in kind of in person, or at least virtually, you know
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And like I told the audience, I follow you every day, every morning, I wake up to one of your cartoons
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And so it's finally nice to beat the person behind the cartoons
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Well, I am glad to hear that. I appreciate the encouragement. Yes
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And I have been drawing a terrible pun or dad joke every day this year
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Yeah. And to answer your question, lots of folks have asked me, are you going to turn this into a book
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Or, you know, when's the book coming out? So I'm seriously considering it
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And my goal right now is just to finish the year strong, try to make a drawing every day
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My skills are improving as I go. It's like the drawings I've been doing the last few weeks
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When I compare those to where I started at the beginning of the year, I'm already seeing a lot of improvement in the techniques and things that I'm doing
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It's just like coding. When you do it on a regular basis, you ought to see some progress
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You ought to be able to look back six months and go, wow, I can't, you know, I wrote that
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That's terrible. That was a terrible idea. Yeah, yeah. And so if I can do a joke every day for the year, then I'll have enough material that I could probably turn that into a book or maybe even a daily calendar or something like that
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Yeah. I've been trying to put out a calendar for a number of years now
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And I always forget until it's too late because it's like I have to finish it this month if I want to get it out for the Christmas stuff
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And so it's been in my head. I'm going to try to get it done this, this year, but I say that every year, but, but that's only 12
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pictures. I don't, I can't imagine, you know, putting out a big book of your stuff, but, but
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yeah, it's, it's, I don't know about you, but, you know, I was telling someone about the story
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yesterday about, you know, probably one of the greatest questions I've ever been asked at a
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conference. And it was one of the years I was speaking at C Sharp Corner. And this woman stood
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up. And I always point out she's a woman because, you know, I don't get many questions from women
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in a big audience like that in India because they're very shy, you know. And so she stood up
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and there's actually a picture of her asking me this question that I kept. And, you know
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she said, Dave, you know, you're, you're a famous software engineer, you know, you're
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you're a musician, you know, you're award winning photographer, you know, how do you
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how do you find time to do all that? And, you know, part of the answer was, well, one of the
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reasons I do all that is because each thing feeds the other, right? You know, if you really think
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about it the software engineering is a very creative process right You know where we creating something from from nothing really we creating something from a bunch of zeros and ones And to be successful in that you pretty much have to be creative to me
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And I answered her and I said, and that's what all these other things do is, you know, my photography helps keep my creative juices going
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You know, I play guitar every weekend. I'm going to play this afternoon. I practice guitar every weekend to keep that side of my creativity going because that helps me be a better software engineer
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Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it's all connected. And I used to live in Nashville, Tennessee, live there for about 20 years, the Country Music Hall of Fame and all the, you know, there's more than just country music, but, you know, very music-oriented city
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And there's a really high correlation between people who are programmers and who have some other creative skill
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A lot of times it's, you know, you play guitar or a music instrument or you do art or whatever
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And so, yeah, growing up, music was such an important facet of my life
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I had older siblings that had record collections, and I would listen to their records
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And it made such a big impression and impact on me. And then later came computers when I discovered the TRS-80 and the Commodore 64 and that kind of stuff
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And I learned that I really love geeking out about technology. and that originally I wanted to be a professional musician
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And I realized sometime in college that, you know what, if I try to go down this path, I'll probably starve
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I won't be able to support a family if I try to be a musician
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So I was like, wow, anytime I get to touch a computer, I really like it
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Maybe I should look into that. So I took a programming class. I'm like, this is it
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This is what I want to do. But I think of the creative process as being very, very similar across lots of things
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You know, if you're a software developer and been doing it for very long, you know this sensation that you get when you are really, you know, heads down working on a problem
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In the zone, yeah. It's, you know, we refer to it as being in the zone
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You know, time and things just seem to disappear and you're just really engrossed and focused on solving a problem
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And you don't want anything to interrupt that process, right? Right. I discovered that when I realized it, that music and art and other, there are other things that have similar, you know, phenomenon or whatever you want to call it
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I discovered I didn't start drawing, for example, until about six years ago
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And I did it out of a desire to want to be able to be a better speaker, to use, you know, silly cartoons to help add some flavor to the talks that I was giving
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And I found that drawing got me into that same kind of zone feeling that I absolutely love
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You know, I love being in that space where you just forget about everything else and you're enjoying the moment
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You're solving a problem and then you wake up on the other side and go, wow, I forgot
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Well, yeah, that's, I get the same way when I'm working on my goofy videos and graphics like you see here on the show
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You know, almost everything you see me, whether it's video or graphic, I made all that, right
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And I have the same issue. Sometimes I'll be working on something and four hours flies by and I'm going, what
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What just happened? And, you know, I was supposed to do this and that today
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And now my whole day is gone. And that's actually why one of the reasons, you know, I have, you know, two Alexas in my house is because, you know, I've had to put on my Alexas when to eat lunch, you know, when to take breaks and stuff like that, because I just forget
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And so Alexa reminds me, luckily, now. But, yeah, it's the same kind of zone
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And I know when I play guitar, part of that zone for me is my endorphins get kicked up and keeps me kind of in that zone with the endorphins when you play
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I don't get endorphins too much when I code unless I'm speaking, but that's different
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But yeah, it's the zone and the zone is an important place to be because it's kind of like what Mahesh just said
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It's coding and solving or problem solving is an art. Yeah, it is
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It's an art. And the other thing is I don't say this too much is that, you know, when I realized I was good at, you know, doing coding, I actually spent years avoiding it
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right? Purposely spending years avoiding it, purposely taking other classes than computer
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classes, because I did not want to be a software engineer. Because at that age, I looked at software
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engineers, I go, you know, that does not look creative to me at all. You know, and, and, and
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anybody who knows me knows that everything I do has to be creative, right? And so to me
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programming didn't fit the bill. I go, yeah, I don't want to do that. You know, and then I kind
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of fell back into it. And I woke up one day and I go, Oh wait, this is creative. Wow. Okay. Let's
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do this. Yeah. I latched onto that pretty early. Um, when I had a, a TRS 80, there was a book
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I, it's a great story, but, uh, that computer and other things were given to be my
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my aunt and uncle, my family was not in any position to be able to buy a computer or anything
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like that. So they gave me a TRS-80 and with it was this illustrated book on color basic
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And that was my first introduction to programming was following along these code samples. And there
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was this funny little, you know, computer character that looked like an, you know, an
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anamorphic version of the TRS-80 that was kind of guiding you along to writing code
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And so my first introduction to programming was, you know, it was very art creative
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It was, you know, creating little simple games or whatever. And so it didn seem like a stretch for me when you know the more academic aspects of computer science came along that that it still felt to me like these were building blocks that you were composing together In my mind I kept telling people it like you have this huge erector set
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Remember erector sets, you don't let go and that kind of thing. And I would say it's like an erector set that, you know, it's all virtual
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It's all, you know, you have no limit to the number of pieces that you can create
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and put together in some unique way that only you can do it
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You know, only, you know, it's very, you know, any solution is going to be unique to your thought process
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and your personality and all those things wrapped up. And so that was very appealing to me
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Yeah, yeah. And it did become appealing to me too. And, you know, and I think about like all my longtime friends in this world, you know, most all of them have some kind of artistic side to them
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You know, almost all of them, like Carl Franklin, you know, me and Carl Franklin used to play at the top of the Marriott Bar in San Francisco at the late 90s
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You know, so there's so many software engineers out there. And that's why one of my questions that I ask every single soft, you know, every single one of my guests is what do you do for fun
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because I want to kind of bring out that not only is there more to life than coding, right
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But what else shapes your world besides the zeros and ones all day, right
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And because it all impacts the other part of your world, right
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Yep. Yeah. Yeah, I got my first guitar when I was 12
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Of course, this is not my first guitar, but I'm pointing to a guitar. I got my first guitar when I was 12
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Learned, you know, I think Pink Floyd's Wish You Were Here was the first song I learned to play
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Yeah. And I've been playing guitar and other instruments ever since. I play every week
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I work on chord charts and all kinds. I've got an open source project that's around building PDF chord charts
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Oh, really? Based on Chord Pro text format. I was working on that this morning
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And I've got, you know, like I said, the art thing came later in life
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I used to doodle on papers and notes and things like that when I was in school
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But after school, I didn't do any of that. But every time I saw someone else who had that talent, that ability, I was like
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man, I wish I could do that. You know, that looks like it would be so much fun
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And then finally, about six years ago, I was watching a video on YouTube of this guy
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named Dan Rome. He was giving a presentation at Google on the power of hand-drawn illustrations
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He's written a book called Show and Tell, How to Have Extraordinary Presentations. And he
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was making a case where just stick figures, lines and arrows, just something very simplistic
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that anyone can do, you know, because you learned how to draw your shapes and letters and things
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like that in school. You can do this. You know, it's not a talent necessarily. It's just a skill
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that you can learn. And when I saw his video and saw how powerful that that presentation was
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I was like, that's it. That's what I want to do. And so I had a cheap iPad and a stylus, and I
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set to draw a few slides for an upcoming talk, and I fell in love with it. And I've been doing it
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on a regular basis ever since and finding excuses to do more drawings than just
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creating drawings for, for presentations. Yeah. I kind of started backwards than you, I guess
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because I started with art like when I was little, really little, I remember doing photography when I was like five or six, you know
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and I would, I remember in grade school, I was in a, a special art class, you know
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and even in grade school is when I started doing music. I started, um, uh, playing drums. And I even, I posted a picture about this today. Uh, I was in the, uh, the Navy
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drum corps here in San Diego when I was in bootcamp. And so every morning my job was to get
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up and play music for the new recruits that came in the night before. And, and there, I posted
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I tweeted a picture of me in the band, the band picture, uh, this week. Um, uh, but yeah
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so I kind of started the other way and then I got into technology. Right. And, um, yeah. Yeah. So
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Before I forget, as usual, if you have any questions, please post them in the chat
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We do have a list of stuff to talk about besides art. Dave said we could talk about public speaking, community, drawing, what we've been talking about drawing, career, leadership, music, and guitars, of course
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If you guys have any questions for David, please post them. Mahesh, what's in your background right side of you
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uh yeah i can my my background is one of my photography did you guys see something i don't
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see maybe he's asking about my background oh he's talking about you oh oh yeah sorry
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yeah yeah so i've got a number of things oh yeah yeah a number of things i don't know if even
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you know my right side is over here yeah but he may be referring to this side over here so the on
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air is a, is a special gift that I got from my family this Christmas. It is a, they built it
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but it's a, you know, just a box with a, the on air and a light behind it. And, um
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I get a lot of comments on that all the time, but I have a lot of other interesting things. I've got
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um, some stuff from my company, Active Campaign. I've got a really cool, I don't know if you can
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see it down here, but it's a really cool VW bus that was given to me by the CEO of Sweetwater
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which is an online music retailer. That's where I get my stuff now
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Yeah. I drew a caricature of him last year for an event that they did. And as a reward or a way
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of saying thanks, he sent me this VW bus full of candy and a mug and some other stuff. And it was
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really, really awesome gesture. Yeah. I think Mahesh is saying he's on his phone, so he can't
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clearly see your right side. Maybe he's talking about the poster. I'm not sure. Is that what
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you're talking about, Mahesh? So the poster over here is a sketch note of one of my talks
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that Melinda Walker, she is a sketchnote artist. She drew a whole sketchnote of my public speaking
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without barfing on her shoes talk. And then I have a robot here from speaking at Tech-O-Rama
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in Belgium, I think. I've got some coffee mugs. In case of emergency, please administer bacon
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And then a bunch of my books that I use for drawing ideas and inspiration
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Yeah. And before I forget for like the third time that, you know, watching your segments on drawing
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and especially when you drew that picture, you know, of me sticking my tongue out, you
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You know, it has kind of inspired me to get a little bit more back into some more artsy stuff
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And so I think it was earlier this year. Yeah, early this year, I came up with a kind of a geek superhero, right
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And I don't want to say that it's their name or anything until I actually get this going
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And then so I have a superhero that's but my superhero needs a needs a sidekick
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And so I came up with the sidekick and and I kind of assigned the sidekick to one of my best friends here in San Diego
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And he wants to draw the sidekick. So he's trying to get back into drawing and stuff
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And that's why I've been asking you questions about, you know, what software do you use and stuff like that
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But we're trying to come out with, you know, this kind of comic strip based on, you know, stuff that I've gone through or my friend has gone through in a software world and try to put that into kind of a superhero thing
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And if I can ever get him off his butt to kind of finally get this going, you know, and because he's always going, well, I've been trying this software and that software
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And I go, dude, let's just do something right. Let's get something out there. It doesn't have to be perfect the first time
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And so we're trying. But that's all been inspired by you, actually. That's awesome
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That's great to hear. That reminded me, Heather Downing, we used to work together at Okta
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But before we worked together, we just knew each other from running into one another at different conferences
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And she commissioned me to draw a superhero type character for one of her blog posts
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And this was years ago when I was still very new to drawing
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It was not, you know, looking back, it's like, man, that was pretty poorly drawn
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But still, it was fun to do, and it got the point across
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But it was like a super girl-type figure standing on a desk with some nerd glasses sitting on the desk and a computer and all that stuff
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And I think the post had something to do about, you know, accomplishing, you know, your career goals or, you know, making achievements in coding
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Yeah, yeah. I think we want to kind of do, you know, kind of like a Dilbert kind of thing, because, you know, one of the appealing things with Dilbert is that, you know, almost anybody can read Dilbert and kind of understand what he's talking about
33:08
Right. If you work in the working world, especially from the working world that he came with, came up with when he started those comic strips, you get it
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Right. And that's universal. Yeah. Yeah. That's that's what we're trying to do
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So we'll see. I think we both have huge imposter syndrome about the drawing part
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So that's something we have to get over ourselves. you know yeah that's yeah that's a thing for sure yeah yeah so um so I can say that we talked a
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little bit about coding stuff here um you know I was getting ready for the show this morning and
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since there's no more questions I did uh uh put down a couple questions that I could ask you
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and so you know I was looking I was getting prepared this morning I was paying attention
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to your title, which is Developer Relations Manager. So I've never worked with one. So what
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does a Developer Relations Manager do at a company like where you work now
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Yeah. So Developer Relations is kind of a broad thing, and it means different things for different
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companies, depending on what the needs or requirements are. But in a nutshell, Developer
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relations is anything that a developer may experience outside of the company. Like
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when a developer wants to use a company's products, who you talk to, or the documentation
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that you consume, or the SDKs, or any of those things is probably worked on by a developer
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relations engineer. They are an outward focused developer engineer rather than working on the
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product itself. In the past, you would think of that as maybe developer experience
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but today it encompasses so much more. Developer relations can be like community stuff
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like forums and, you know, helping people through writing tutorials and those kinds of things
35:24
And it can also encompass speaking at conferences and maybe running a booth at a conference to share with people your product and what you're doing
35:38
So under the umbrella of developer relations, it's kind of a spectrum of on one end being very technical
35:45
and I would consider that person to be a developer advocate. They are working to do something to help other developers
35:53
And at the other end of the spectrum is developer evangelism. And it's not that they're not helping developers
36:01
Their number one goal is to get the, you know, to sell the services
36:06
Yeah. Yeah, to raise awareness of their developer platform so that developers know about the product
36:16
Yeah. And I think that's really important for companies who do put out things that developers use
36:24
And I was just thinking about this company I worked at about 10 years ago where I kind of
36:30
I mean, not only did I code everything, but I kind of did the developer relations too
36:35
And I remember back in that experience just because of my experience being a developer
36:40
is that I probably spent a lot of time on the documentation
36:44
and making sure things were really easy for other developers outside of the company to understand
36:48
because I don't know about the rest of people on the show
36:53
but the more and more open source stuff I use and other things I use, the more frustrated I get
36:59
because that amount of helping the external developers and or which includes good documentation
37:06
just seems to be really going downhill these days, at least on the stuff I use, especially open source stuff
37:13
And so I think that's for any company that puts out stuff like that, Microsoft
37:19
you need to have somebody really controlling this and making sure this is a good experience for developers Microsoft Docs you know so You know because I sorry I complaining about Microsoft Docs because it just gets worse every year and it should be getting better
37:36
you know, so I'm seeing the wrong trend with that at least. Yeah. Yeah
37:41
Yeah. My personal journey started years ago, a long time ago. I started going to conferences and I would just be impressed with speakers and folks who
37:50
were doing that kind of thing and thinking, wow, you know, I wish I could do that
37:56
And I remember going to a conference in Nashville around 2008 or 2009, and it was a community conference
38:09
And, you know, I got so much more value out of that than I did going to something like
38:14
a big Microsoft TechEd or PDC. And one of the things that I kept hearing was, hey, get involved in your community, you know, and give back to the community
38:25
And so I took that to heart. I started going to local meetups
38:29
And before I realized that I was getting more involved and helping with the meetup and eventually got coerced into giving a presentation on some stuff I was doing in ASP.net MVC
38:46
at the time. And that led to me then going and speaking at conferences and, you know, just really
38:55
getting that bug to do that kind of thing. And I'm a, I'm a hundred percent introvert. So
39:00
way out of my comfort zone, but I learned, you know, that I enjoyed it and learned to really
39:10
appreciate the opportunities that came along with, you know, getting over the hurdle of
39:16
of that shyness and, and introverted persona. Yeah. And I joined a startup company around 2012 or 13
39:29
And they, they kind of said, Hey, you know, kind of wrote me a blank check and said, what, what do you want to do here
39:36
You know, we, we trust that you're going to do some awesome things
39:40
You know, what do you want to do? And, and I propose, I love being involved in the developer community
39:46
It's one of the reasons why you know who I am is because you saw the work that I was doing in the community
39:53
Is there a way we can figure out how I can bring those two things together, coding and being involved in the community
40:02
And so that started a developer advocacy team at that company where I was coding like SDKs and APIs, samples and references, apps and all that kind of stuff
40:21
And at the same time, being engaged in the developer community, answering questions, going to events, kind of as a recruiting, a way of recruiting more developers to the company is like me being visible and out there for the community
40:40
And I just fell in love with it. I said, you know, I knew from that point forward I didn't want to be just a programmer
40:48
I want to be a programmer who is also highly involved in the developer community and doing things to help other developers
40:57
And so now my mantra is I help developers be more awesome
41:03
That's my goal. Yeah. Well, that kind of sounds like my story because, you know, I started, you know, I founded my first user group in 1994
41:12
I think it was our first meeting was April 1994. and I just went off on that gangbusters
41:21
And even my latest Twitter poll right now is asking people, if you're a software engineer
41:28
do you also speak in public? And I did another tweet because I'm going to turn this into a new code rules
41:34
And I did another tweet going, okay, if you do speak in public
41:40
if you can say in one sentence how that has helped your career, I want a video of that
41:44
because I want to show the videos on my new code rules whenever I get that done
41:49
And because, and I know I'm, you know, maybe you and I are different from, you know
41:54
lots of other developers, but, you know, I know I've even developed a talk about this
41:59
a couple of years ago and just how 25 years of being in the community has dramatically
42:05
changed my career for the better. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I would not be .NET Dave if I didn't do
42:12
what I did in 1994, right? Because like you were saying, you know, the number one thing I never wanted to do was speak in front of people
42:22
And I know people might laugh at me now, you know, for saying that. But, yeah, when I was a teenager in my 20s, I did not want to talk to people
42:30
I did not want to get in front of people. I did not want to say anything in front of people
42:34
And when I was in high school, I was an expert at evading the teacher calling on me to, like, give a book report or something
42:42
That's how bad I was. Yeah. Yeah. For me, most of the 90s and most of 2000, I was that programmer who felt like, you know
42:54
users are idiots. They don't know what they want. I don't want to have to deal with them
42:59
You know, I know what's best. Just tell me, you know, what you want me to create. I'll create the
43:04
best thing that people want and have that attitude of like, I can do it all. You know, I got it
43:14
Just give me the best computer you can give me, slide a pizza under the door, I'll get it done
43:21
It wasn't until much later that I had some maturity and so forth to realize that there's a whole lot more to being a successful developer than just writing code
43:38
Yes. There's there's the aspects of being a team player of like having empathy for for people, caring about who you're working with and who you work for and the work that you're doing
43:56
And the community has taught me so much about, I don't know, the spectrum of people who are interested in technology, who all deserve respect when it comes to, you know, say, writing documentation or creating a user interface or any number of challenges that may come up with someone who wants to work
44:26
genuinely wants to use your product or use what you're creating and you need to be aware of
44:34
so that you are being of value to someone rather than just, you know, not caring, right
44:47
Yeah. Well, you know, that's one thing I'd say I've said a lot is that, you know
44:52
when it comes down to what makes me happy in my job I mean there lots of things but if I had to pick one thing that really makes me happy in my job is seeing the expressions on users faces when they use something I written for the first time and just see their faces light up right
45:11
And to me, I mean, I don't care if I got an award for what I did or I became a patent inventor for what I did or whatever
45:19
None of that really matters too much to me. What matters to me is the users, right
45:23
If I can see that expression on their face, I've succeeded, right
45:29
I don't care about the money and all that other stuff. I've succeeded because my job is, I've always, always felt that my job is trying to make somebody else's life better by what I write, you know
45:41
And when I see that, because it's hard to see that in the real world, right
45:46
But when I do, that's what keeps me going for the next five years or whatever, right
45:51
because that's what makes me happy. It's not the money. It's not the people being
45:57
it's not the number of followers I have. It's that, right? It's solving something that's never been solved
46:03
and actually improving somebody's life. Yeah. So I want to get to some questions
46:10
especially since one of them is for my boss here. What is the latest technical thing
46:15
you are working on these days outside of your day job? Yeah
46:21
Well, this morning I was working on an open source project that I've been doing for a couple of years now around Cord Charts
46:33
And it uses Node.js and JavaScript and templating and so forth to turn text files
46:41
Cord Pro formatted text files into nice PDFs that you can pull up on your iPad or whatever to follow along when you're playing music
46:53
You're going to have to check that out. that's that's the kind of thing that i i love to geek out about that that kind of crosses the
47:02
the those passions of music and technology at the same time on average i probably create 10
47:10
chord charts a week uh for the different bands and and music that i i do on a weekly basis so
47:18
This was a need that I had, and I really enjoy making tweaks and improvements to it
47:27
Latest technology, I still dabble with Electron for building desktop applications. That's one of the things I'll be doing again here pretty soon is building some
47:42
I want to take some of the tools that I've created at work and turn them into some nice desktop utilities rather than just command line apps. Yeah
47:52
And make that a little bit easier to work with. Cool. One of my friends actually asked, how do you motivate developers
48:03
Does team building help? Yeah. Yeah, I've been in, what's the term people are using these days
48:15
People manager or technical manager or team lead. There's lots of different titles that go along with that
48:24
I've been in different roles in my career. what I have found is that genuine care for other people is a necessity
48:37
Like when you genuinely care about the welfare or the, you know
48:46
someone else's experience that you're working with, then you're going to do things that's going to make a positive impact on them
48:55
showing a genuine interest in their interests at work and outside of work you know i'm building a
49:02
relationship with them you know getting to know who they are as a person not just a co-worker
49:08
and that will lead to ways that you can you know leverage that that information you know
49:17
maybe a terrible term to use but you're you're building upon that relationship that that
49:24
information to help motivate them to do things that you envision that they are capable of doing
49:32
that they may not realize themselves. You know, that when you have built that relationship and
49:37
they have trust with you and they have respect, then, you know, you telling them, hey, I think
49:44
you are destined or you're capable, you know, more than capable of doing this thing. What do
49:51
you think about that? That may be like a huge turning point in their career or their development
50:01
Like, wow, you think so? You think I could do that? Yeah. I want to empower you to be able to
50:08
go down this path if that's something you would like to try. So I think there's lots of ways
50:15
that you can motivate people, but actually caring and giving a crap and treating them
50:21
with respect goes a long way to, you know, laying the foundation for getting folks motivated to do
50:32
more than maybe what they're doing today. Yeah. And I've, you know, I've been managing people
50:37
since I've been 18. And one of the things I've been doing, you know, ever since I was 18 was
50:43
you know, I always treat my workers, you know, as I would want to be treated, right? And
50:51
And I don't expect them to do anything that I wouldn't do. Right. And I think that goes a long way because, you know, you know, too many managers go, well, no, this is my way
51:01
This is the way it's going to be. You do it this way. You know, as opposed to reaching out and going, OK, let's come up with the best way of doing things that we all like together and not just, you know, beat things into submission
51:11
You know, because that's that never works. You know, it's. Yeah. Um, the part of that question is around team building. And I can say one of the most powerful
51:20
things I have ever experienced in my career was an offsite with the entire, I was working for a
51:28
startup company at the time and we were around 50 employees and we went to an offsite together
51:34
And there was a consulting company that we, the owners of the company knew, uh, personally that
51:41
they brought in to do this one-day workshop with the company. And one of the exercises that we did was we all had these poster board papers, and we
51:55
were tasked with pretty much, you know, taking our life story and putting it on paper, you
52:04
know, in this poster. And throughout the day, we started at like 10 minutes where, you know, you take your poster, you go talk with someone else, and you give them your story in 10 minutes
52:20
And then later on in the day, now do it in five minutes. And then later in the day now do it in two minutes And then by the end of the day your goal was to take someone else story and tell and give it to someone else in two minutes
52:38
Yeah. That experience, that exercise, it sounds kind of silly. but one, I found that I had so much in common with other people, you know, with their life
52:51
experiences or, you know, something that, that happened in, as they were growing up or, uh
52:58
in their families or their college or career, whatever, you know, I found that there were
53:04
things that I could relate to. And by the end of the day, I was ready to fight, to go to war
53:12
to do whatever was necessary to make sure that all those other people were successful
53:22
because I now cared about them deeply. And to this day, I still am very connected to that original group of folks
53:33
We have our own Slack community. We still talk on a regular basis
53:38
We fill each other in on our, you know, what's going on in our careers and our families
53:44
It was a really impactful exercise. And I have thought about that a lot in that, you know, I want to maybe on a smaller scale create some of those same kind of experiences with the teams that I want to be successful
54:07
Yeah, that's I think. So, Mark, my answer to that question is team building does work as long as you do it right
54:16
You know, I've seen way too many team building things from other people tell me about other companies just be completely useless and not worthy of their time
54:28
But, you know, as I think back to when I was director of development at ProFlowers.com back in the Internet bubble days, you know, I did a team building event
54:37
I don't have, it's too long of a story to go into, but I did a team building event that not only was super successful for our team, because we had a small team back then, because ProFlowers was still kind of a startup
54:51
And, but I still remember walking in the next Monday, and just seeing a dramatic change in people's attitudes
55:00
I mean, and I was just going, wow, really? We have one team building event and this is what happens
55:08
I was going, wow, this is awesome. You know, because we were such a better team after that, you know
55:14
But again, my caveat, it has to be done right. You know, I see too many team building events and I ask him, so what are you doing
55:23
Oh, we're going to a Padres game. No, that's not team building. that's sitting around in your little clicks watching a baseball game that's not team building
55:31
yeah and uh so that has to be done right you know and i don't think you have to hire a company to do
55:38
it because i did it i did it by myself with the one of the people uh girls from qa and we did it
55:45
but we worked on it we didn't just say hey let's go do this we actually had a plan for the entire
55:51
day exactly what we're going to be doing and exactly what the goals were, you know, for our
55:56
event. And it worked. It was so good. But again, it has to be done right. So we've run out of time
56:05
because I'm over time now because my code rules is long today. I know Simon doesn't like that
56:11
but I tried to cut it down. So I do have a few more questions for you. One is I thought about
56:20
this this morning. How old is your oldest guitar? Let's see. It is 30, 32 years old
56:33
Oh wait, I do have a guitar in my collection that was bought in the 40s. So it's a Gibson
56:41
acoustic that was like a Sears and Roebuck, you know, cat order that a friend of mine
56:49
a dear friend of mine gave me. So, yeah, that's the oldest
56:54
Yeah, my oldest is a 72 Gibson SG that I bought. And it's one of those stories where, you know, you hear about that
57:01
You know, I bought this incredibly expensive guitar, which is now worth close to $7,000 for like $200 in a pawn shop
57:09
because the pawn shop didn't know what they had, you know. And so that's my oldest one
57:15
So I think we've already covered what you do for fun. So I don't think we need to go over that unless there's something we missed that you do for fun besides coding and drawing
57:27
That pretty much sums it up. So, yeah, I think our whole show is pretty much about what you do for fun, mostly, which is good
57:37
I mean, that's what the show is about sometimes. And do you have anything to plug before you go
57:44
Oh, sure. just you know like we said earlier I've been drawing a terrible dad joke
57:51
every day for the you know this year so if you want to follow me on Twitter or Instagram
57:56
or go to my website I'm reverentgeek everywhere so I use the same name as reverentgeek.com
58:04
reverentgeek on Twitter, reverentgeek on Instagram LinkedIn all that please follow me and you know
58:11
give me feedback on any of the silly stuff that I'm doing
58:17
Yeah, I recommend everybody follow you just for your daily drawings that you put up
58:25
I mean, to me, that's totally worth following you. Well, thanks a lot
58:32
And I hope to see you in person someday, maybe at the MVP Summit. And maybe we can play music together
58:37
I'll have to learn a country song maybe or something. No, I don't play country music
58:42
I just happen to live in Nashville. Yeah, yeah. So I'm looking forward to meeting you someday. And if you ever want to come back on and talk about anything, including drawing, just let me know and we'll get you back on the show
58:56
Well, it's been a pleasure. Thank you for having me. Thank you. Wow. That was a really great interview with David Neal. I really like that. And I have fun at all my shows, but I especially like I have more fun when I just get to talk about art and music and stuff like that, because that's what I love to do
59:18
So anyway, let's get the rest of the show going, because I might like I said, I've got new code rules. I don't want to go too much over because I know it's it's late where some of you live
59:27
So everybody gets a free copy of CodeRush by DevExpress. Please go to devexpress.com slash .NET Dave
59:37
and get your own real copy, your real .NET Dave copy of CodeRush
59:43
You know, CodeRush is the only refactoring tool I've ever used in Visual Studio
59:47
since it came out 20 years ago. And I swear by it every day that I'm coding
59:54
So I hope you will use it. And if you do, please tweet me about it and let me know how you like it
59:59
oh someone posted this today I thought was pretty funny for an ice cream shop do British websites
1:00:07
use biscuits I thought that was kind of funny so there's your geek humor for today and now it's new
1:00:16
code rules companies out there putting out new versions of software please please listen to your
1:00:26
users and here is why you know I don't care about a new look and feel I don't
1:00:31
care about new themes I don't care about white or dark you know themes I don't
1:00:36
care about new icons right you know when I'm look forward to a new to a new
1:00:40
version of a program coming out those are things that never never reach my
1:00:46
mind what I want is for features that are currently not working correctly or
1:00:51
not working at all to be fixed. And I want new features that makes my life better
1:00:59
with whatever I'm doing with your application. I want to share a story about a company I was working at over 10 years ago
1:01:05
When I started the company, what they were doing was they changed the name of an older program
1:01:10
and they were changing the look and feel, the colors in the application and things like that
1:01:17
and not really adding the features that the users wanted. And I kind of called this shining up the turd
1:01:26
And that's what I used to refer it as to because that's what I felt they were doing
1:01:30
But it wasn't the new program. It was still the same crappy program underneath. You know, the number one complaint
1:01:35
when I worked at this company about this application that I worked on was the workflow
1:01:40
The workflow was too hard to understand and it was too difficult to get through
1:01:44
for the users to get done what they needed to get done in the application
1:01:49
But do you think they worked on this? No, they worked on the look and feel and changing the name
1:01:54
And we did add a couple new features. I added one feature that the people who purchased our application really, really wanted
1:02:02
But other than that, we really didn't make the program better. And I think most users, when they're looking forward to a new version of the program
1:02:09
it's going to be a better program, not the old same crappy program. So I went to the managers
1:02:16
and I said, we can't release this application because the performance has gotten so bad
1:02:21
that we're going to lose customers. And after we released, you know, we released the new shiny turd
1:02:29
that's exactly what happened. We started losing customers a lot because of the performance
1:02:35
but we really didn't change the old crappy program. We just made it look new
1:02:39
The reason I came up with this new code rules for this week
1:02:43
is there are some new apps coming out soon, including Windows 11 that this is what I feel they doing And I feel this because this is what I been seeing on social media You know the tweets that I seen about these two applications are all about the look and feel
1:02:59
Like in Windows 11, you know, we have new background art. We have new startup sound
1:03:04
We have rounded corners. You know, we have snap controls. And to me, that's not even a single feature I care about
1:03:14
So here's a quick list of some of the things that I want in Windows 11
1:03:20
I want paste text as default. Oh my gosh, this drives me crazy when I'm writing either in blogs or Word or even PowerPoint
1:03:31
Everything goes in as format and I don't want it format. I just want it going in plain text to take the format of whatever theme I have set up in that application and just do it
1:03:41
But there's no way to change that that I'm aware of in Windows. And I'm not the only one
1:03:46
I see a lot of people complaining about this on Twitter. I want OneDrive to work properly
1:03:51
OneDrive is continuously breaking on me and even not working for weeks
1:03:55
And I don't even know it. I want file search to work properly and not take hours to complete
1:04:01
I want to be safer from hackers. I want to focus on performance, especially if I've had a machine for a while
1:04:08
like the one I'm recording this video on. I want Office, all of Office products to join the 21st century
1:04:15
I don't think Office has really dramatically changed in the last 20 years
1:04:19
And performance, performance, performance. I want better performance so I can get my work done faster
1:04:25
And if you follow me Twitter, you probably are going to guess what's the next app I'm going to complain about
1:04:31
You've got it. Visual Studio 2019. I wrote an article a while ago of all the things in Visual Studio 19 that I've been keeping track of
1:04:40
Here's a list of just some of the things I'm going to try to read really quick that are from this article and a couple other ones I threw in there
1:04:49
Calculating code metrics is broken. Code ysis for .NET Core and .NET 5 is very confusing
1:04:56
NuGet hell. Auto-increment package version keeping in sync with file version. Click once is severely broken, severely broken
1:05:05
Loading takes too long. Creating service references is broken. Not all build settings are surfaced within Visual Studio
1:05:14
IntelliTest is broken for .NET Core and .NET 5. And there's a lot of people who want this
1:05:19
And I've not heard that this is being in the new version of .NET 6
1:05:24
This one really drives me crazy. I have to start live unit testing twice to get it to work, right
1:05:29
and even sometimes while i'm using it it just decides to stop and then i have to
1:05:34
i have to stop the live unit testing i have to start it up twice again to get it to start sometimes it breaks so bad i have to reboot visual studio and or my machine to get it to work again But I have quickly tested this in 2022 and it looks like they fixed this one
1:05:50
Documentation just gets worse and worse, including not documenting the .NET source code properly
1:05:57
Have you used the Object Viewer in Visual Studio lately? Oh my gosh, it is so slow
1:06:03
You know, I can keep going, but I think you get the picture. And while I was working on this new code rules, I was thinking, you know, Microsoft, you know, for Windows and Visual Studio, do you have the majority of your users asking for color changes and new icons and things and rounded corners
1:06:21
Really? Is that what the users are complaining about? I would love to see those, right
1:06:26
Because I don't believe the users probably even said anything about this except for maybe accessibility problems
1:06:33
Here's my call to action for this new code rules. Listen to your users before working on new features
1:06:40
It's just that simple. I know you want to sell new product, but you need to make your users happy
1:06:46
because fixing issues and making productivity better in your application will sell more products
1:06:53
And along with this, a cool new looking product or even one with a new product name
1:06:58
will attract new customers. I can see that, but it won't keep them
1:07:05
because even if you have the best looking application in the world, if the users start using it like the company I used to work for
1:07:13
they're going to leave and go to a competitor. There's so many competitors on the market
1:07:18
there's no reason to stay with a program that doesn't work for you. Also, and I kind of feel this is what's happening in the background with Visual Studio
1:07:28
you need to work harder with users to reproduce issues. You know, a lot of the issues that I've submitted that are from that article, they just close
1:07:37
them out because they can't repeat them. They don't really work with me. The issues aren't going away because you closed the ticket
1:07:44
They're still there and they're still upsetting people. Well, that's about it for this new Code Rules
1:07:49
I really want to know your thoughts and what you think about this topic. So what are your thoughts on this issue
1:07:54
Please, please email me at rockinacodeworld at csharpcorner.com. And if you want to look at any of the old episodes of New Code Rules
1:08:02
you can go to that link there. And with that, I'll see you next time on New Code Rules
1:08:10
You know, now that I watched that video live, you know, on the internet
1:08:16
I don't think Microsoft will ever hire me. Oh, well, I didn't think they would anyway
1:08:25
But I think that just nailed the last nail in the coffin of me ever working at Microsoft So I guess those dreams are over Okay So I hope you like new code rules I always looking for new ideas And so I hope you let me know if there something you want me to cover and no code rules
1:08:45
I'm always happy to spout my opinion about something. I think you all know that about me
1:08:54
Okay. Come on. Why aren't you working? There we go. Well, that's it
1:09:00
Oh, I don't know what happened to my camera. This happened while new code rules was going on
1:09:07
So anyway, I'm sorry you can't see me, but the next week, all Saturdays this month are full
1:09:15
I'm not taking any days off. So next week I have Dave Brock on the show
1:09:19
Please be safe and listen to your medical professionals about COVID-19. And please, please, please, please, please go donate blood because that's free
1:09:27
it's easy and it makes you feel better about helping a fellow human
1:09:33
And with that, I better close this out because it can't, my video is not working and email suggestions to rockinthecodeworld
1:09:40
at C sharp corner.com. And with that, I'll see you next Saturday. Thank you
1:10:27
Thank you
1:10:57
Thank you