Rockin' The Code World with dotNetDave ft. Bob Reselman - Show 9

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Hey, everybody. Welcome to the ninth episode of Rockin' the Code World with Donet Dave

Maybe because I wrote that song, but every time I hear that song, it makes me happy

So I guess I did something right when I was coming up with the chord progressions

But anyway, welcome to the show. I'm glad you're here. Only two more shows left for the year

So I'm excited to bring two really awesome guests to finish up this season of Rockin' the Code World with .NET Dave

So do you want to switch the slides? So today I have someone I've known for quite a while now, Bob Reisselman

And we're going to be talking about automation in today's world, which is a big subject

That's something actually I've been thinking a lot about lately, probably mostly because I watched a lot of Netflix and I watched old shows about how things were, you know, like in the 1800s

And then I just finished watching the first three episodes of Star Trek Picard last night

And I like seeing how automation is going to change our world in the future, too

And some of the stuff that the creators of Star Trek Picard have come up with is pretty impressive and kind of based on some of the newer technology in our world, like drones and things like that

So anyway, we're going to be talking about that today. And actually, I think we're going to be talking a little bit about guitars, which I could talk a whole hour about that with Bob

But we're going to try to keep it to what you're here for

So you all know that my tour for 2020 is over

Speaking at events this year, of course, they were all virtual because of the worldwide pandemic

So the tour for next year will be, for those about to code, worldwide tour 2021

and if you want to see my sessions that I'm going to be presenting next year

you can go to that URL and check it out. And if you're a conference organizer

or user group organizers or anybody that wants me to speak at their event next year

please go to that link. There's a link to request me to speak. And of course, I'll do virtual

until I get the coronavirus vaccine, which was just approved yesterday in America

So I'm really happy about that. We should start seeing the first vaccines administered in America

hopefully by Monday. So that's good news, but we still have a long way to go on the pandemic

So as soon as we can, as soon as I can fly, I definitely want to see you guys live

So check out what I'm going to be doing next year there. Also, I'm working on a brand new book

It's called the Hello World Cookbook. Geeks can cook. This cookbook features recipes from geeks just like you and me that know how to cook. I've been cooking. I was a cook in a restaurant when I was 18 years old, and I've been cooking ever since. And I cook all the time, especially now at home

So please go to HelloWorldCookbook.com Please, please submit your recipes Especially now during the holidays

We're all going to be doing a lot of cooking So please take a couple minutes out of your day

And submit your recipe to the Hello World Cookbook And we'll get it published hopefully next year

If you don't create recipes on your own Then you can still sign up to help with the book

I need people to test the recipes because I can't test them all because of dietary restrictions

And also I need help with graphic arts and I need help with editing

So if you can do any of those things, please go to Hello World Cookbook and sign up

I really appreciate it. And the kids in India will really appreciate it because I forgot to mention that 100% of the proceeds from that book

will be donated to the Voice of Slum NGO in India every month

So I hope you'll help out this effort. So giveaways this week, just like last week

everybody will get a copy of Code Rush from DevExpress. And then at the end, we'll give away a C-sharp corner swag

T-shirts, backpacks, more, whatever C-sharp corner wants to send you. So how do you win

Pay attention and have fast fingers. Really, there's only one question. you have to know at the very end, okay

So I don't know if you guys follow me on Twitter at Real Donna Dave

but I do every once in a while, I do some Twitter polls. I usually do Twitter polls to find out

you know, what other people are thinking about a subject. But this week I decided to do one for fun

You know, I was going through, you know, some records last week

and I found, you know, all the money I made since I been a teenager in America and so I decided to do a fun little Twitter poll to see if you guys could guess how much I made the first year

I was a full-time software engineer in 1994. And so I gave four values there

All of them are real from other years too. I didn't make up any of the values

And I also did put some values there for inflation. And you guys guessed the right one

So, yeah, the 1994, my my the pay that I reported to the IRS was twenty eight thousand four hundred forty one dollars

And, you know, that's you know, I was married with two kids at that time

So it would you know, things were tough back then, but they're better now

So anyway, I hope you'll follow me a real Donate Dave. I'm always doing polls to kind of gauge what you guys are thinking

Okay. So the first giveaway we have today, of course, everybody gets a copy of CodeRust from DevExpress

So please go to devexpress.com slash DonateDave. CodeRust is the only refactoring tool I've ever used with Visual Studio

I love it. You know, the company is great. The tool is great

And, you know, I talk about how great the tool is all the time. But, you know, I really love seeing people use the tool for the first time and hear their expressions

I can't really see their expressions virtually. But this happened this week

So I think Monday this week I helped my youngest teammate on my team

She's 26, install CodeRush, the Donna Dave version of CodeRush. And I think yesterday in the team meeting, she was showing some things we were trying to figure out an issue

And she actually, you know, did a couple of things that are part of the CodeRush package

And she said twice during that meeting just how awesome CodeRush is at helping her with programming

And so there's a real story on just in just a couple of days, you know, she's already seeing, you know, Code Rush helping her with her programming chores

So I hope you'll download a copy and check it out and let me know how you like it

So today my guest is Bob Russellman. Like I said, I've known him for a long time

He's a writer, technical journalist, software developer. Sorry, Bob. Industry yst. He's got a long bio, which it's too long for me to read

But not only is Bob a great programmer, but he thinks a lot of things about automation

And I hope it'll show us one. He actually builds guitars. And so I've always actually wanted one of his guitars

And maybe someday I'll get one if I can convince him to build it. So welcome to the show, Bob

Well, thanks for having me. Oh, there I am. Cool. Hey. Here I am

Yes. Welcome. How's it going? Welcome to West Los Angeles. Yeah. Yeah

It's sunny up there. It's a bit cloudy down here today. Yeah, it's cloudy

It's cloudy. We're in the middle of winter. So that means, you know, I have to go out with a sweater

Yeah, I know. The few days a year we have to wear a jacket or a sweater in Southern California, right

But, yeah, the weather here is freaking awesome if you ask me

So before we talk about automation, let's talk a little bit about your guitars

So show everybody the custom guitars you make. Well, here's one. Yeah

I make this. This is actually, let's see, it's mahogany with curly maple neck through

I make neck through design. That's what it looks like in the back. This is what it looks like in the front

It's split pickup. It's actually less all electronics, but what I do is if you look here, it has tone and volume, tone and volume

So this is a pretty standard design. Oh, I like that tone and volume in one

That's awesome. Yeah, it's a double post. Yeah, they're not really custom

I mean, my design is my design. I don't veer too often because, you know, once you get a tech, it's like anything else

Once you get a pattern down, you really want to pursue it. You know, maple back neck

You know, pretty good electronics. This is one I play. And there are people out there buying them

I also have back there, I make the fretless basses because I was pretty motivated

I initially started as a bass player, and I wanted to learn fretless. And I guess it's like anything else

Why not I just go buy one? Well, no, I learned how to make one, and I did

So I have some fretlesses back there. Yeah, and I make them. It's incredibly therapeutic

I actually studied luthery. A little shout out to Charles Fox up in Portland, Oregon

He's one of the most brilliant men I've ever run into in my life. mechanical engineer par excellence

He actually makes, he's so good, he makes his own screws. He has a little complete, he teaches

in his, he has a classroom attached to his house, but he also has a complete machine shop

there too, but he's brilliant. He's one of the most brilliant people I've ever run into

So that's about my guitars. Let me talk about guitars for an hour. I know, I know

We could, you know. Yeah. I know a lot of people probably don't want

to hear us do that. But I did want to bring it up because, you know, I'm going to talk a little

bit about this at the very end of the show. But, you know, life is more than programming. And so

you know, and I want to stress that with the younger developers is because especially at least

when I was a younger developer, I worked constantly and I didn't do enough of my own things, you know

back then. And I really wish I did. So I caution younger developers these days to, you know

So, yeah, study hard, work hard, but, you know, make sure you do some fun stuff, too

You know? Yeah. I think back to a friend of mine. I lived in Des Moines, Iowa for a while

And I actually worked for the city of Des Moines. I wrote, actually, programs to do DEA tracking for the police department

If you want to have fun, try sitting in a design meeting with armed personnel

No, no. But these were good guys. I had no problem with them

But I actually, because I was part of the IT group for the city, I worked very closely with their engineers

And the DBA who ran all the databases for the city was a really cool guy, Carl Nestingen

And he had a really interesting saying because he liked to work on his house. He liked to do things

If he could build his own house, he would. He said, you know, whether I'm designing a bathroom or a living room or I'm doing an ERD, it doesn't matter

It's all the same thing to me. And that resonated for me that whether I'm building a guitar or I'm doing some sort of abstract system design or something, it's all the same

The thinking patterns are just so similar that it's all the same thing

You know the nice thing is that when wood fights back you know I have a little scar here When the wood fought back when the code fights back you know you just frustrated But when the wood fights back you can lose parts of your body

So you've got to be careful. Well, I injure myself when I speak at conferences

So, you know, I have war wounds from speaking, too. So, but, you know, what was I going to say about that

But yeah, so actually yesterday I was talking to somebody and I actually was telling them

the story about maybe probably the best question I ever got at a software engineering conference

And, you know, some conferences I get easy ones, you know, some I get really hard ones

like when I was in Ukraine. But this one was like the best one

And it kind of goes to what we were just talking about. And so two years ago, when I was in India speaking at the C Sharp Corner Conference, this woman stood up and she actually had a pre, I think she had a pre, you know, thought out question on a piece of paper

And she asked me this question, which I just totally loved. And it was, she goes, so Dave, you know, you're, you know, world renowned software engineer, but you're also, you know, a, well, I'm a patent inventor, but I'm also a board winning, you know, photographer and, and I'm a musician

And she goes, you know, how do you juggle all that? You know, and I said, well, first, the juggling is really, you know, time management. Right

Which, you know, I always struggle with. But, you know, the second part is, you know, the reason all those things are important to keep doing those all the time is that they all help the other

You know, right. And, you know, software engineering is, you know, especially when you're architecting software and things like that

it's a totally creative process, right? You're creating something from nothing, you know

virtually. And so playing guitar, you know, is very, very creative. You know, photography is

very, very creative. None of those things, none of those three things, I can learn all of it

right? And that's why I love all three of those. And so anyway, yeah. So let's talk about your book

So why don't you tell us the title of your book and kind of how you came up with writing it

Sure. Well, the book is called The Impact of Automation. Maybe you'll put a link up at the end

And it's a collection of essays on the impact of artificial intelligence and thinking machines on human experience

and their collection of articles that I wrote for DevOps.com, and I was, you know, automation of, there's 28 essays in there

They take place, I wrote them over a period of a year. I just don't have time right now to sit down and write a full book

but we collected them. We decided they were pretty good essays, and so we set them out

because I became very interested in the social impact of automation in 2016

and uh for you know those of us that live here in the united states 2016 was a pretty tumultuous

year for a variety of reasons and i'm looking around and i'm saying you know pretty much i

remember sitting on my living my living room couch with my dog and saying how did this happen

right just how did this happen and so one of the things i became interested in was the impact again

the impact of technology on the human experience in general and human employment in particular

and I started doing I started reading and so there are a couple things is Rise of the Robots

Martin Ford's book I read Kurzweil I've been reading Kurzweil for a while and a couple other

books which just slipped my mind at the moment and I became very aware that the world we're creating

through automation both physical and digital is having a dramatic impact on the social experience

and it's ahistorical. And what I mean by ahistorical is that there is no prior history to this

People say there are, you know, the big, you know, the mantra is, well

automation's always been around and it's always, you know, eliminated jobs, but there's always been new jobs

Okay. And they have historical trend around that. Well, that's really good

except up until now, the automation didn't think. Now the automation thinks

And there's a saying out there, If it acts human, it is human, right

If it acts human, it is human. And so we're seeing a lot more inferential intelligence, a lot more

You know, look at the words we use, machine learning, artificial intelligence. There's a lot of decision-making happening in the world of automation, both physical and digital, that's having an impact

Now, what I've come to understand about software developers is that software developers really don't have an idea of what the physical world looks like in terms of automation

So, for example, right this week, Hyundai, really more than an automotive manufacturer, bought Boston Dynamics

And for those of you that aren't familiar, Boston Dynamics, they make robots. And the robots they make, we can share videos if they're prepared

I have them online. But you've got robots doing somersaults, you know, all this human physical activity, which 10 years ago was impossible

Yeah. It was impossible. And so where do we see automation crop up now

Well, one of the big things is industrial mining, right? And that's so far removed from us, but you can't have batteries in your cell phone without industrial mining

And they have these huge machines now that do nothing more than start burrowing into the earth, extracting or processing

And that's all robotically manipulated. And the trucks that move things around are robotically manipulated

There's another. So that's one impact that's just dramatic, where it used to have hundreds, maybe thousands of people working in a mine

Now you don't. The other one, an industry that's highly automated, that does have history, is offshore drilling

Most of the money for offshore drilling goes into equipment. It only takes 18 people to run an oil rig and they go in and six people on six people on three shifts a day

And that's also people spend a boatload of money on automation to drill down into the ocean and then they put some humans on there

So that's been around for a while. The other one we're seeing now, and I forget the name of the company

I just didn't know it. I forget these days. Trucking. Trucking is low-hanging fruit in automation

The reason is because one of the reasons are is because truck routes are straight

When you put a truck on, you know, go up to San Francisco, you put a truck on I-80, it's a pretty straight road to New York

And so as a result, that's pretty easy to navigate. And you actually do want you want the whole world to be full of driverless vehicles

Why do we want that? You want the whole world to be full of driverless vehicles because then the safety factors go up exponentially

In fact, in cars, humans kill other humans. You don hear of elevators killing people anymore The elevators don fall into the ground There are millions of elevators in the world Why Not like in the movies right

What? Not like in the movies where they go all the way down and kill everybody. Yeah, yeah, no, they don't

There's millions of elevators operating in the world. Why? Because in a building, all elevators have insight into the activities of all other elevators

So when you have all the cars on the road that are driverless, they have insight into the activities of all the other cars

Sure. And you want that. You know, you want that. But what's the impact? Well, there goes three million truck drivers

The other thing that why trucking is so attractive to automate is because, to my recollection, a truck driver can only drive 12 hours a day

It's actually, you know, because I've worked for a couple of companies that deal with this, including one now

It's actually different in every state. You know, so it's even more difficult because, you know, how about if that driver crosses the state line and goes into a different state where the law is different

Right. So now we have to calculate for that. So now when you have a driverless car, it's 24 seven

Yeah. And the other thing that one of the things I learned, I used to drive

I was a computer tape courier in graduate school. So I worked for one of the things that the most efficient way to run a car is to always run a car

Yeah. When you put a car to seat on, you want that car running all the time

And then you just take it off for service and keep it going all the time. So, you know, there's the impact

Let's talk about medicine. Medicine. I like medicine. There's a machine called the Da Vinci machine

And, again, I have pictures. If people want to contact me, I'll send you the slides and the books and all that stuff

I hope you get the book and read it. The Da Vinci machine is a surgical assistant

It's an apparatus. And what happens is that the doctor sits in the effort

The machine is brought over to the patient and it has all this micro photography, micro stuff

And the doctor sits in the machine, puts his hands into an apparatus that will control the probes and also has sights into a camera that can see in

So this machine is no, the doctor is no longer working on the patient, the surgeon directly

The machine is doing the surgery. So with machine learning, machine learning is only as good as the data it can get

But once you have every doctor in the world working these machines and you're monitoring, you're taking a digital footprint of their activity

Now the machine is learning how to do surgery because it's watching the doctor do surgery

So you've got 10 million doctors using this machine. They're all wired together. The machine is learning how to do surgery

now well is it that far-fetched to allow a machine to do we can call it low-level surgery

appendectomies right that's been done it's been you know those are done like clockwork uh hip

replacement knee replacement right where what do you still we'll still need an anesthesiologist in

the room maybe but as far as the surgeon goes that's gone all right so now there we go there

go surgeons any anything else any other industry you want to cover no and that's you know that's

kind of scary. And I think that's, you know, not so I don't know the word scary is the right word

but I think it's, you know, I think it's something that people need to think about, like, especially when they're going to school, like, you know, the younger people going to school

right now to, okay, you're going to school for this career, but you know, what do you think that

career is going to be like in 20, 30 years, you know, and how, how is automation going to impact

that. Even, you know, I, you know, Wednesday, I had my final appointment with my eye surgeon

and to get my final, you know, results and checkups and all that stuff. And, you know

going through the process of the last few appointments, you know, I'm really amazed

on how many machines they have now, you know, to check your eyes. I mean, they can, they can

actually, not a hundred, I was talking to the doctor about this on Wednesday, not a hundred

percent yet, but they could actually, they have a machine that tells you exactly what kind of lens

you need to see better. Right. You don't have to do that. You know, if you, you know, we both

you know, wear glasses. Well, I don't wear glasses anymore, but you know, you have to do that thing

with the doctor and he goes, flip is one or better or two better. And you go back and forth that

process forever. Machine looks at it, boom, done. And it's pretty impressive. And I, you know

whenever, you know, they do machines on me like that, I always like take pictures of the graphics

that are output, you know, I keep them, you know, because I'm really interested in that

And you were even talking in your book. I read it this morning. So I'm glad it's actually just

recently happened to me. But, you know, last month, you know, I had a at my dentist, you know

I had a new mouth guard made. And it's literally the best one in my life. And part of that is my

dentist was the first dentist in San Diego to get this computer, right, where they wave this little

wand in your mouth, and they take a 3D image of your mouth just with a little round. No more

you know, paste and crap they put in your mouth to make molds anymore, right? They do this little

wand thingy. It creates a 3D image. I've got pictures of those. And then when I went to pick

up my, you know, my mouth guard, they gave me, you know, they usually give you the impression

stuff, right? Well, like you said in your book, the impression stuff is 3D printed now

That's 3D printed. I think that is totally amazing. You know, to have this, you know

to have, you know, this now and, you know, have, you know

have your entire mouth like 3D printed like that. Right. And, and

but the output, I mean, the outcome of that, like I said, was the best

you know, fitting mouth guard in my life, you know, because of that technology. So, so, I mean

and there's a part two and a part three to this. First of all, I'm not a Luddite. I think technology is great

I actually think automation is great for the quality of life. It's just, you know, so much better as you've just demonstrated, like, wow, my teeth are better

Wow. My eye. Right. Wow. I can walk again. You know, wow

All this stuff. So that's part two. So then we talk about labor displacement

Okay. Labor displacement is happening. And then in the, I don't know if I do it in the book, but I do it in my talk where we're

talking about in order to participate in the modern economy, you have to be, you have to

be pretty smart. And in the old days, if you went to work in an automotive factory, you could learn because

it was all assembly line broken into tasks, you can learn the task in maybe a day or two

The training period is a day or two. Now that's all robotically done. You go to something else

robotic. So now it takes a lot more, we call training slash education to be able to participate

in the economy. Well, the sad fact is in the United States, only 35% of the population has

college degrees. And even if they have them, there's a good chance that what they're actually

learning might be outdated by the time you graduated. So a massive labor displacement

And that's not bad. In the book I talk about that, you know

Keynes predicted back in 45, his prediction was the 15 hour work week of three

five hour days. Okay, so the question is why hasn't that happened? That's the first question

So, but that is going to happen. And now what COVID has done is COVID has accelerated a lot

trends, i.e. this. We really don't have to go into the airplane anymore. We really don't have to work

If you're awake and then there's a question of restaurants, the whole service industry is just being decimated

And so there's no economic model in place in the United States to actually address this

And what's interesting about COVID, and this is somewhat political, and I really don't mean to offend anybody

And this is not this is more of a opportunity to talk about a very serious subject

But because of COVID in Europe, they're still doing wage replacement at around 70 to 80 percent

All right. Where in the United States, there is none. There is no replacement. And so when we start looking at labor displacement and people, you know, there is an argument, a good argument to be made

There are no jobs after the law hanging fruit is replaced after, you know, how if you're a truck driver

and you're a good truck driver, you might be a good mechanic. Well, gee, you know, in my experience

it takes five years to get good at a technology. You can't sell people the myth of six months of training

because the other thing is by the time they finish that six month, what you can learn in six months to actually be effective

that by the time you get that six months of training, it's already outdated. Right. If you have learning curves, that's done

Especially if you take a four-year degree, I mean, you run into the same thing, you know

And, you know, I've written about this a bunch or I've talked about this a bunch

But, you know, I interview, you know, people straight out of CS degrees

And most of them I can't even hire, you know, because they've learned nothing that's useful in our world

You know, I mean, it could, you know, go on the ground running, you know

And I'm not saying they're all like that, but I'm saying, you know, a big majority of the CS degree students that I interview are just not ready, you know

Right. I understand that. So the problem is, for me, what happens when what happens when a good portion of the population becomes unemployable

not right right or or marginally employable and that and so that's okay so the the extension that

which we're seeing now in some countries in the united states is that okay you give people you

just give people the money just cut it out give them the money that's part that's that's the

obvious solution right and there's a consequence to that and the consequence isn't oh people won't

want to re-enter the workforce because they're lazier or a b c d f g that's that just doesn't

cut and i talk about it in the book right um i use the example of my sister my sister she's a little

younger than me but she's you know her she's a she's a widow her husband deceased he had a pension

she gets a pension her house is paid off she doesn't really need to work for money but she

and this is part c what happens is is that one of the functions of employment is to organize

one's sense of self. And let me take a minute or two to explain that

because I think it's an important concept in human development. When you're a little child has no sense of time

When your kids were little, they would just run until they fall over, right? They cry and they fall over

So thus, as a parent, what you do is you have, you know

you structure time, events, and you have transitions. You get up, you have breakfast, you have playtime

You go to nap time, play time, you know, and that structure, A, B, C, D, E, F, G

And it happens every day, every day. The child knows when it gets to be seven, you know, seven o'clock, they're four years old

They know it's bedtime. They're going to get the story and all that stuff. That gives the one's sense of self, their awareness, organization

Their personality is organized. When you go into elementary school, you have math time, reading time, play time

And it happens a Friday. Friday afternoon is full play time. And your day is organized

So you have a sense of structure. You have a sense of anticipation

And it all happens within the classroom. When you get to high school, now you have first period, second period, third period, fourth period, fifth period, sixth period

when you get to college or in a work or you don't go to college say to go to work you have monday

tuesday wednesday thursday friday nine to five you do this you get home right dinner you party

on the weekends and that's that your your sense of self is organized right and when you enter the

workforce it becomes even more organized you may not like it but you know it's going to happen

right what happens when that goes away yeah how do you schedule everything yeah no what happens to

your sense of self. Oh, yeah. Sense of self. Yeah, yeah. Right. What happens? Like, oh

go back to my sister. I'm using my sister by Love Dearly as an example. I got to do something. I

can't watch it for the rest of my life. Right? There's only so many Netflix shows, right

There's only so many Netflix shows. Now, imagine what happens. This is just, you know, the retirees

or, you know, what happens when half of the population is in that state, i.e. now

Right. Right. Oh, it says you go home. Here's some money or whatever or have your anxiety. There's no money. What are you going to do now

I don't I don't think it's I think there's a correlation between the activity, the social things we're seeing going on now and the lack of structure in one's daily life

Right. And I remember back in the beginning of the COVID and the lockdown, especially when California was one of the first states of lockdown

And I remember everybody just kind of freaking out going, what do I do? I don't know what to do. And what do I do with my time

I mean, I even I think I tweeted this yesterday, the day before, but I tweeted, you know, every day this year has felt like an endless loop of the same day

You know, and it's it's it's tough for all of us, you know, even those of us who are kind of more aware of things like this

Right. Or been more prepared, you know, because I've been working from home for a long time. Right

And psychologists have talked about that. I used to work before I got into software

I was actually, I worked in a, I worked in a detention center for criminal adolescents

I mean, these are people that did very bad things, very bad things. And one of the things they, one of the things you noticed about a lot of the, we call them

residents, not prisoners, right, is because when, in that situation, they wanted to have

these people reenter society. And so they were given a lot of freedom of choice

So one of the freedom of choices they had was what clothes they were going to wear every day

That's a big that's when you think about you go to prison, you don't have that choice. Right. OK. And a lot of them chose military wear, which was interesting

The other thing is that a lot of them there, they had to be highly structured

We're talking about seven, 16, 17, 18 year old kids. And because when you lose that sense of structure, there's a thing called ego panic

And particularly if you have if you don have a really good sense of self when you go into ego panic it you almost want to draw the world in to give you structure And what these people did is they committed crimes

Yeah. So, oh, the police will come now and structure my day for me

You don't have a choice. Yeah, you don't have a choice. But that's what they did

I mean, they went out and did stuff like that. So what we're seeing now is just a lot of that foolishness

And the unanticipated consequence of automation is, you know, you can you can give people money and you can make make up jobs

OK, you just put people to busy work and to structure their time. But if that doesn't happen now, granted, you're saying, well, Jeff Bezos doesn't have to worry about that

And there's an interesting portion of the population that doesn't have that problem

Right. The portion of the population does not have that problem are artists. artists if you get if you're if you know if you really dedicate yourself to artistic endeavor

when you get up in the morning you don't ask yourself what you're going to do that day

no well most artists don't get up in the morning so right or right what am i going to do today

right like uh gee you know i don't know what deadline they know what they're going to do

right yeah and but on the other hand what we've done which is sort of

sad in the American, in America, in the American educational system, we've become so focused on

trade that we've just ripped out those things that create an organized human being

No, I totally agree. And, you know, one of the things that, you know, I, and before I forget

again, everybody, please ask questions. No one's asked any questions about automation or this

subject. So please post it. We can talk about how to send artificial intelligence into

into edge computers that are running under Kubernetes. That might interest them

But, you know, there, there are a couple of things that, you know, the, the parts of the book I was

able to read this week, you know, and I actually read it. I'm not like the newscasters who have a

producer read it. Right. I don't, I don't have a producer. Well, I kind of do Simon's kind of my

producer, but he doesn't read stuff for me. But, but, you know, I was really interested in the 20

hour work week or 15 hour work week you were talking about in book. And, and not only am I

you know, interested in that, but, you know, you know, in the last five plus years, you know

I've been reading articles because I've, you know, you and I've been around enough that

you know, we have gray hair and everything. So I've been reading articles about, you know

So those kind of, you know, changes that were, I mean, the articles I read are that, you know, when any worker gets older, they can't work 40 hours anymore

Right. And I definitely know that. Right. For fact. Right. I can't work 40 hours anymore, pretty much

And I kind of wish that employers would recognize that and go, OK, well, if they're over 50, then maybe they should work, you know, 35 hours a week or something

or something. I really liked that part of your book about... I have a couple of quotes. I'll

read this one because I have a couple of comments. The quote from the book is, the 20-hour-a-week numbers struck me as strange. All members of the project team were completely

dedicated to the project. They had no side work. Their project was their only focus. What were they

doing the other 20 hours, right? And the reason that really struck some nerves with me is because

I've been dealing with this a lot. And, you know, my first example of that is, you know

when I worked at Mitchell International, you know, down here in San Diego, you know

I basically, you know, I came up with different terms for things. And one of them is I called

their meetings merry-go-round meetings, right? Because we would sit in a room for two hours

going round and round and nothing would happen for two hours. I mean, maybe five minutes of that two

hours was useful, right? The rest of it was just nothing, you know? And I would just walk out of

those meetings drained going, I just lost two hours of work. And one time, you know, we're

working, they were scheduling this new feature that I was working on. And I was with, you know

the manager in charge of it. And he was saying, and I was telling him

I can't get it done in the timeframe. He goes, why? And I went up to the whiteboard and I go, okay, well

I spend this many day hours a day, you know, in meetings

I spend this many hours, you know, minutes or half hour a day dealing with crappy source control program

And I went down the list and down the list. And I finally came up with, I have two hours a day. I can work

Right. Of actual code work. Right. And, and he didn't accept it, you know

And I go, well, I'm telling you the truth. Right. And that's exactly what you were talking about in this part of your book

Yeah, I mean, that was, just to put some context on it, that was when I was at a company, and that was the labor allocation that the project managers gave for burndown on the project daily

So they said, we only expect 20 hours of a person's 40-hour week

We only expect, realistically, 20 hours to be dedicated to actually productive work

That was their number. Yeah. They accepted had they expected 50 percent productivity, which is interesting

Well, I believe it, especially, you know, the you know, the things that companies play, the burden that companies place on employees, you know, especially large companies is they hard to get anything done compared to like a startup company

Right. Startups. I mean, everybody is kind of a well-doiled machine usually because there's few people

you have to work well together. You have to get the product out as fast as possible

or you're going to lose funding, right? And so, and then the larger, larger company gets

it seems to me this exponential just waste of time is amazing

You know, the large companies, these big Fortune 25 companies in America waste so much money

Yeah. Yuval Harari talks about that. I think it's Homo sapiens. It talks about, there's a number

the largest amount of people you can have in an efficient, highly efficient organization is 150 people

And 150 people means you can have meaning that pretty much everybody knows everybody

Right. And that's a startup. The startups typically don't get it. Once they get 700 people, they have problems

And so once you get above that number, you have to work on what's called myth

And the myth is that you create, not myths aren't bad, But how do you know you're an American

There's 330 million of them. How do you know you're an American? You can create this mythical ideal that people can adhere to

either statutory laws, there are laws or some affinity, and that you can say, okay, I'm an American

and you can get everybody to agree to that. The problem is that also the tradeoff is once you go beyond that 150

then you get incurred large overhead, and then you see the labor degradation

And that's a known issue. It's sad. The other one, there's a guy who just recently died who I like a lot

His name is David Graver. He wrote a book called Debt The First 5 Years He a theoretical anthropologist Nobody knows quite why he died He 59 years old He respecting COVID He wrote another book which is interesting

other than debt. He calls it bullshit jobs. He's a good qualitative and quantitative anthropologist

He said there's this whole portion of society that does work that

they just don't consider useful. That just sort of works. That goes back to where's my other

20 hours. Anyway, no questions coming in. Someone asked if you play Minecraft

I don't. No, I don't play Minecraft. I don't even know what Minecraft is

This is actually one subject that was kind of going to try to bring up. And then this is from Mahesh. He's the guy who runs C Sharp

Corner. And, you know, you know, one thing, you know, I actually was thinking about this. I

actually prepared for this interview more than any of the other interviews. And because not only

you know, was I reading your book, but I was also spending some time thinking and I also was

thinking about exactly what Mahesh asked and, you know, how do we prevent, you know, the Terminators

And, you know, I was thinking those kind of things. And I was going like back way back to like one of the very first like science fiction movies that really hit me hard as a kid

And that was, you know, the 2001 Space Odyssey, you know, Stanley Kubrick

Right. And who's just one of the best directors of all time

Right. And but but if you if you look at, you know, like, you know, that movie or if you look at Star Trek or these science fiction movies, how much that stuff has come true

You know, a lot of it. And, you know, these warnings that, you know, artists either, you know, in movie music even, you know, have been warning us for decades

of this problem that's going to happen. It's inevitable. And if we don't start thinking about it now

it's going to be rough, I think, for the future. So what do you think about that

I think there's two models. One I call the Star Trek model and the other one I call the Jetsons model

That are not old enough. The Jetsons were this cartoon series. Oh, I loved the Jetsons when I was a kid

Everything that happens in the future, there are flying cars and there are robots that made you dinner

and all this, you know, go at Jetsons, go do a Google search on Jetsons

And, of course, we have Star Trek. And on the Star Trek, I remember one of the meaningful quotes from not the first

and the second one is, you know, in the future, we figured out how to make anything we want

So our goal has not been acquisitions to make ourselves better. And nobody – we really are – there's another book called Capitalism 3.0

that you might want to read that really talks about what is a world like

when you have infinite supply, which we do. That's new. That's something over the last 50 years

Then you get the Jetson model. So the Jetson model is you've got the flying cars, you know, and the rubs and all that

But Jetson, George Jetson still works for Mr. Spacely and Spacely Sprockets

And Mr. Spacely's whole goal in life is to make George Jetson as miserable as possible

Right? Remember that? That was it. And that was it. And so we have these two fusions of the future

where, you know, we make this technology and everybody's flying around and we're still pretty much treating each other like crap

Or we have this other future where, you know, we figured it out that we can have as much as we want

And now the goal of humanity is to improve itself. Right. And that's where do I see it going right now

Oh, gee, I wish I could be optimistic, but I'm not. No, me neither

I'm not at this point. You know, we've I think we've been proven wrong too many times

But that's a feeling. There's an interesting book by David. No, it's not. I'll have to dig it out. And I'm sorry, I don't have my notes prepared for this. But the reality is, is that even the poorest person living in the United States today is living like a king compared to 1500 England. Right? We take enjoyed toilets for granted

I mean, even if I go down, you know, sadly in my neighborhood, we have a homeless encampment, but you can get a lot of house for nothing, right

This stuff, throw away stuff that would have been a possession, a prized possession of high-end royalty back then

Most people in the United States, what we consider poverty isn't. We have a toothbrush

There are people in the world that don't have a toothbrush. Right. dental care um you know life expectancy is dropping in the united states now going from 76 to 72

but these are all you know just dramatic changes so in many ways the world has gotten better today

but we've become short-term and then we go into you know economic discussions which we can if you

want but i don't know if you want to go there but what's happened what's happening is um and this is

Well, yeah, I'm not encouraged because the reason I'm not encouraged is I think everybody will do better

I do worry about what happens when the information systems become segregated

In other words, one part of the world is only getting their information from this YouTube channel and another part of that YouTube channel

And then how do we know truth from fact and all that post-truth stuff, which has been talked about for years

I'd say this year. Yeah, this year too. So so then, of course, we have, you know, the elephant in the living room, which is, you know, the planet's burning up

Right. That's the other thing. And then we look at that. So, you know, what do we do? Well, here's what I do

I can share that. One of the decisions I made about five years ago

And again, I'm on the other side of the cusp now. I don't I don't have two little kids

I don't have to worry about feeding them. I don't worry about putting them in college. I've been fortunate is I've decided to

under the counsel of somebody else to live really well on as little money as I can

Right. I think more people need to do that. You know, and I don't

I, you know, so luxury for me. Okay. Here's luxury for me. Luxury for me is I can go into Trader Joe's

I can buy anything. Anything I want. If I see something, buy that

Right. So that's, for me, that's laundry right now. COVID's brought it down because it doesn't matter if I have a McLaren in the garage if I have no place to go

Right. But so, but that's worked for me. So as soon as I do consumption

The other thing is I really have taken the time to start educating myself about basic economics, not even more advanced economics

I'm interested now in modern modern M&T modern monetary theory I'm not sold on

it yet but it's a different way of looking at a new kind of magic on and particularly in a world in which unit for which employment human employment becomes the exception rather than the rule Hmm Yeah But any other questions I happy to answer So yeah

The historical trends there are good because we've always been getting together over time

Sadly, we have this epic, this thing, this event on the landscape, which is catastrophic

Yeah. Yeah. And I hope we, you know, at least America. well I hope the whole world really starts hoping focus on that next year right

but I'm you know we really are we ready to fork over our cell phones so we don't

have to do that yeah yeah you know yeah no I doubt it these days you know cell

phones are I know to me look kind of a two-edged sword you know they've helped

maybe you've talked about this in the book and we've got to go in a few minutes, but, you know, you know, cell phones to me are like one of the best and worst things

invented, you know, you know, it does a lot of good, you know, like you were talking about in

the book, but it also does a lot of bad, which you talked about in the book. And that is, you know

people are, you know, always looking at their phone and, you know, you can't talk to anybody

more. You know, I used to go into the airplane and talk to the person next to me. It doesn't

happen anymore. I used to go into a bar and be able to talk to the person next to me. That doesn't

happen anymore. So the whole social thing, the phones, I think, might make us virtually connect

but socially, personally, it certainly hasn't helped a lot, I think, in that. It probably made

it worse. Yeah, and it's a dynamic we need to examine. But then again, who would have thought

that the automobile would dramatically change the social structure of the world by allowing people to go anywhere

I mean, you know, most people, you know, 500 years ago, you never, where you were born is where you died

Right. You never left, you never went very far from where you were born, right

I was born in New York and I'm probably going to die in L.A. The impact that really happened because of the automobile and also the automobile makes the suburbs

So now you have mortgage banking becomes more real, cheap banking. You have Levittown, the whole nine yards

So who knows what this is going to happen? But still, I hope people read the book

I'm not showing the book because it's me, but I really want technologists, people that write the code

Let me close with this and say this. I wrote an article. It's called Charlemagne's Scribe

I wrote it 20 years ago. Charlemagne, who ran most of Europe, was illiterate

He couldn't read or write. And so the only way he could communicate his war orders to armies that owned Europe, that controlled Europe, was through his scribes

His scribes really controlled the information flow between the critical power and the rest of the world

We as developers, we are Charlemagne scribes. We are the people that translate all the desires of the world into actual action

We're going to do that every day, every day. It doesn't happen unless it comes through our hands until we've automated that coding process to a higher degree

And I wish more people just thought about that. I think about it. I think about it a lot

And, you know, one of the things that's dramatically changed the world, of course, is the Internet

You know, and, you know, I started working, you know, on my first website and notepad was in 1994

So, you know, I've been in the Internet for a long time. But if you really think about the way that the Internet has been is being used nowadays is, you know, if if some other country wanted to really sabotage this, all they have to do is bring down our Internet and everything stops, you know

And I mean, our whole world is so dependent on the Internet, too dependent on the Internet, that that's what's going to happen, you know

and I can see that. I don't see, you know, I was listening to NPR yesterday and I don't see us having nuclear wars

anymore. You know, I think they're going to be biological or, you know

some type of technology warfare, you know, and, but we'll see. But anyway, do you want to

something else you do is a cartoon. Do you want to plug that real quick? Oh, three times a week on DevOps.com. Yeah. My cartoons

Feel free. Tell us about it. Tell us about your character. Oh, I have a number of them. They all sit around my living room and we talk to each other every day because I don't go out. So I've made up my own set of friends and, you know, they live in a world and we talk about all the recent issues in technology

right now I think I've started actually if you go to devops.com on the front page

scroll under the bottom line I'm starting to do a series of cartoons

on 12 factor app there's a joke you know I mean in a way

maybe there is some truth that the only way we can talk about this stuff that's the most serious

in our landscape is through some sort of humor yeah did you tweet

when you put out a new cartoon do you tweeted? Yeah, I'm pretty fastidious about

that and the publishers, devops.com is. Because I noticed today I wasn't following you and I

thought I was, but I wasn't. So I am now. So I want to see

your cartoons. And if you want to do LinkedIn, unless you're trying to sell me something

I don't want, I generally you can LinkedIn me. I'm Bob Wrestleman

on LinkedIn. What else do you need to know? If you actually, you know, maybe they said the URL, if you go

we don't have the book, but the book is free for download. Some other company paid me to write it

So, yeah. And Behesh just said that, can we help promote your cartoons on C Sharp Corner

So you two talk about that. Yeah. Yeah, I think I have an Instagram

I post them out on Instagram. They're out on, yeah, they're in LinkedIn

If you go to LinkedIn, I put them out there every day, but also DevOps.com

So, you know, feel free. Okay, great. We got to wrap up

I'm going to go over time. So, Bob, thank you so much

It was great seeing you again. I haven't seen you in a long time. And, you know, hopefully maybe in a year we can get the Silicon California community back up and running again

I really miss it. I was thinking about it yesterday. So thanks a lot for being on the show

And I want to hopefully someday I want to like touch and play one of your

guitars. That's, that's one of my goals. We can do that. Thanks for having me. It's been great

Thanks. You're welcome back anytime you want to come on. Thanks a lot. So that was great

So I hope you guys will check out Bob's book. It's free. His cartoons are free. And you know

I think sometimes we need to be pushed into, you know, getting our brains thinking about things sometimes

And I think, you know, a lot of stuff that Bob writes about is that

and that's kind of why I wanted him on the show. So thanks, Bob. And I hope you have a great weekend

Stay safe. Have a great holiday. So I think next up is the C Sharp Corner giveaway. Woo-hoo

So every week we give away some C Sharp Corner swag. And if you don't have any, here's a great way to win

I get C Sharp Corner swag because I do stuff for C Sharp Corner

But who runs the cloud and AI group at Microsoft? First person that tweets it

I know I discovered watching the video last week, there's actually a delay in the comments

So I think I have to wait a little bit more. So who runs the cloud and AI group at Microsoft

Sorry, that keeps going away. I keep forgetting to turn it off. Anybody know who runs the cloud and AI group at Microsoft

I'll give you a few seconds. Anybody know? Nobody knows

Hope somebody knows. I'll give you a clue. His first name starts with an S

How about that? No? Nobody? Okay. We'll see if somebody comes up

Oh, there we go. Well, you can't, Stephen, you can't guess. You work for C Sharp Corner

So Stephen, pick somebody on the chat comments and give them the C Sharp Corner swag

Don't answer questions anymore. You too, Mahesh, you can answer questions. All right

So actually, show 10 is next Saturday. It will be the last show for this year, this season

And I'm going to have somebody that I think is really great for Microsoft, Jeff Fritz

Principal Program Manager at Microsoft. If you guys have followed Jeff or watched Jeff I think Jeff is on Twitch like almost every freaking day of the week So he very very active in the community And the last time I actually saw Jeff was two years ago when I was speaking in Philadelphia

because that's where he's from. That's where he lives. And so anyway, I'm going to have him on

And, you know, the main reason I asked him to be on is because in our very first show

if you guys watch that, Scott Hunter mentioned that Jeff Fritz has created a bunch of controls

for Blazor for free. So I definitely want to talk to him about that because we all are beginning to

like Blazor hopefully and look into Blazor. And so I think that will be a great topic next week

to close out the year. So I'm going to be wearing Christmas stuff. I hope Jeff does too

and kind of celebrate the holiday this year as best as we can

It's going to be tough for everybody this year, especially in California. Speaking of that, California is the highest state logging COVID cases right now

So I'm not going anywhere. I'm staying home. And so please stay safe

Listen to your medical professionals about COVID. um also please donate blood it's free it's easy and really help out your fellow human being i

think i donate in a week or two again um so and if you have any suggestions or uh requests for the

show please email me there and at the very beginning of the show you know i mentioned you

know something important that i think everybody needs to remember including myself but also of

and of course the newer developers, trying to learn everything is to take some time out

and do something for yourself and do something fun So one of the things the pandemic has shown that I been doing during the pandemic is that I playing a lot more guitar

And so last week I recorded a couple clips of myself practicing guitar last weekend

because I practice guitar two days, minimally two days a week, every week

So that's minimum four hours, probably more like five hours every week I practice guitar

Just like we have to practice coding, I have to practice guitar all the time. So I want to show you the first half of those clips

and I'll show you the second half next week. So I'm going to show you these songs are all from one of my favorite bands

Collective Soul. I love playing Collective Soul because not only are they great musicians

but the lyrics are awesome too. And anyway, so I hope the sound comes through

and I hope the censors at YouTube don't get ticked off again

Hopefully not, but we'll see. so there you go you guys saw my bedroom A little embarrassed about showing my bedroom but there it is Have a great weekend Stay safe and I see you next

week on Rockin' a Cold World with Donet Dave. Thank you

Thank you

We'll be right back