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**Jerod Santo:** \[04:10\] See, I appreciate that, because I'm a long-time Twitter user, and we could probably just talk about the platform and the medium for an hour and call it a show, but we don't necessarily wanna do that... But while we're here, thinking about channels and segments of people -- I follow a lot of p... |
**Zed Shaw:** Exactly, exactly. And also, you know, my books are targeted at beginners and they're trying to learn to code, so I think it's kind of not right if I'm also in there ranting about how terrible the industry is, and causing disillusion in people. |
I am very honest in my books; I do say the job is not that great. It pays well, but it's not like the greatest job in the world... So it's not like I'm lying, but I'm also sort of being like "Well, there's some issues in the industry, but for now, if you wanna learn to code, just focus on learning to code. Don't look a... |
So my private account - I'm just gonna keep it private for a little while, and just basically talk and be myself (like I always do), but then sort of shield people who are just poor, normal folks who don't really care about the programming industry and just wanna learn to code... They can go over to the other one, and ... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** You think people are getting into programming for the wrong reasons? |
**Zed Shaw:** Not necessarily. Everyone wants a job, right? Unless you're independently wealthy and you don't care, most people want a job, so it's reasonable. Like, if you see people making lots of money programming, of course you're gonna wanna go into it for programming and to make money. But I think it's more that ... |
My thing is always like "Don't worry about that, just focus on coding. Get your coding done, get that out of the way, and then worry about how you can get a job, when you know you can actually code." |
**Jerod Santo:** So you're the author of multiple books, like you said, for beginners - Learn Python the Hard Way, Learn Ruby the Hard Way - and had been an author of many open source libraries down through the ages... I guess we can say ages now, because internet time, right? So we had you on the Changelog episode \#3... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Really old. |
**Jerod Santo:** ... so it might make you feel old. Maybe not. But that was back talking about Mongrel, Mongrel 2... A long time ago; it feels like ancient history to me. Catch us up on your books, what you've been up to, and really -- don't give us like a deep history necessarily of everything between now and then, bu... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** With open source. |
**Jerod Santo:** With open source and with teaching people software and the industry at large. |
**Zed Shaw:** I think the best description of my position in the industry is someone once said "I'm the most famous a programmer can get without being a billionaire." \[laughter\] Right? Because I'm poor. I try to be very honest, and I've told people -- |
**Adam Stacoviak:** You are not poor. |
**Zed Shaw:** No, I mean, compared to a lot of the other programmers... |
**Jerod Santo:** Relatively poor. |
**Zed Shaw:** \[07:44\] Yeah, yeah. Not now, but there was a period of time when I was actually homeless, and trying to work as a programmer in open source... I'm honest about this thing. So it's funny, because I kind of like that description, because it's sort of like saying "Yeah, if you wanna be famous and actually ... |
And then I think the other thing about it is when we did that in 2010 I was kind of on the cusp of kind of coming to this realization that open source really wasn't the best way to move forward with my career, and I think it was right about the time when I started really pushing my books forward and started changing my... |
**Jerod Santo:** So aside from the obvious answer "Read my books", if you were to take somebody, a smart person who is not a programmer, and turn them into one, what's the happiest path in your opinion and in your experience from zero to employable? You say maybe not focus on employment right away, but to let's call it... |
**Zed Shaw:** So I think it's totally fine for people to get work; that's totally one of the motivations. But I try to say "Look, if you're focused on work, you're gonna miss out on the process of learning and building your skills." So I tell people, going from zero to being proficient. Proficient means you can sit dow... |
And I tell folks, you don't have to read my books, because I don't have a book for every language, or every skill... I tell people, just take any book and sort of do it the way my books do it. Take the books, get all the code working, then read about the code in the book... Because I think most books are actually writt... |
So a lot of times, I tell people, like let's say you wanna learn Go. I don't do anything with Go, I don't really have any plans for it... So they'll email me and say "Do you have a Go book?" I'm like, "No, but take this book. It seems to be really popular on Amazon", and it kind of doesn't matter; just get all the code... |
So far, that seems to work for folks. I'm saying, you don't have to read my books, but if you go through a bunch of books and get the code working and then go and squash bugs, that's a pretty good path. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** \[11:54\] That's interesting too, because there's so many open source projects out there that are now -- we've talked about it on this show, and other shows, talking about how do you flag and give somebody an on-ramp? There's so many on-ramps out there in open source to easily take that advice and r... |
**Zed Shaw:** Yeah. We're gonna get into it; I've got a love/hate relationship with open source, but I do think fixing bugs is kind of like the bread and butter for a lot of programming, especially entry-level programming. And the easiest place to find bugs to fix is projects that are totally open, and you fix the bug,... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** You don't have to ask permission, and no one's gonna turn down a bug fix. |
**Jerod Santo:** Well... \[laughs\] |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Well, not many at least, right? Very few people turn down a bug fix. |
**Jerod Santo:** They're less likely to, yeah. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** \[12:53\] It will merge. |
**Zed Shaw:** Well, they might have a problem with your code quality, and usually they'll give you feedback; they'll be like "Hey man, you've gotta use these variables like this... Can you redo this one?" |
**Adam Stacoviak:** And now you're in code reviewing, you're learning. |
**Zed Shaw:** Exactly. And actually, I take this a little bit further, because -- you know how you hear about those developers who do an interview where they're like "Can you reverse the red-black tree without using any memory?" and I'm like "That's just the worst interview." Or "Why are manholes round?" Stupid questio... |
Then you come back and say "Alright, let's see what you did." If they can prove they can squash bugs, that's the kind of employment test I'd be looking for. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** That's true. Yeah, give them a piece of software and say "Fix some bugs." |
**Jerod Santo:** Is anybody doing that out there? That seems like almost obvious now that you say it. I know we don't have the whole industry in our heads, but I wonder if we know of any businesses who are actually-- |
**Zed Shaw:** I know nobody. |
**Jerod Santo:** Alright. |
**Zed Shaw:** Nobody. I mean, probably there is. We don't know every industry-- |
**Jerod Santo:** Listeners, if somebody out there is doing that and you know about it, give us a holler or email us. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** That's every day. I mean, I can't reference any particular tweets, but there's definitely -- as we watch what we do to do Changelog News and this show, Jerod, I see those tweets and I see people say "I can't possibly deal with one more job interview to do what Zed just basically said. I can't do tha... |
**Jerod Santo:** You mean the bad way, or the way he's proposing -- |
**Adam Stacoviak:** In the bad way. Like "I can't go through one more of those scenarios of like 'Why is this that way?' versus saying 'Hey, can you code?' It's like these challenges that have no meaning." |
**Jerod Santo:** Right, right. I mean, is anybody doing it the bug squash way? That's what I meant. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Oh, okay. |
**Zed Shaw:** No, no, no. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** If we're missing that one, then jeez, we're not watching... Because that's every day. |
**Zed Shaw:** Yeah. Everyone has tons of stories where they go and they do a whiteboard, and the guy is like "Can you find a substring in a string?" And you could use a better algorithm, but if you don't do the algorithm that he learned in college, you don't know how to do it. So it's not even if you can do the thing t... |
Sure, it's great - everyone should know algorithms; that's a useful thing to learn. But if the point of algorithms is to make sure that you went to his CS 105 class in MIT, then you're just filtering people based on kind of socio-economic things, not really their skills. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Right. Experience, things they dealt with. |
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