Tech-bro or Seasoned Pro? | Episode 14

This week the guys do a "lightning round" to talk about updates in the metaverse and Apple's rumored AR glasses. and ask the question "When is the best time to start working on your startup?" (Spoiler alert: The answer is right now!)

Here are the links to all mentioned articles/videos in this episode:

TikTok "Rubiks Cube" Video - Bro more clutch than LeBron 🤨 #fyp #college
GizModo - Facebook Takes a First Step Toward Making the Metaverse a Real Thing
The Verge - Apple’s AR headset reportedly uses 3D sensors for hand tracking
Endgadget - Razer built a MagSafe cooling fan for iPhone gamers | Engadget

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David Baxter has been designing, building, and advising startups and businesses for over ten years. His passion, knowledge, and brutal honesty have helped dozens of companies get their start.

In Biz/Dev, David and award-winning Creative Director Gary Voigt talk about current events and how they affect the world of startups, entrepreneurship, software development, and culture.

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Transcript

Gary: 0:00

I saw an article about kids getting out of homework if Yeah, 30 seconds in the window did

Unknown: 0:05

it kid they said you could get out of finals. I saw this this morning that this nerd kid, I don't know who he is. He walks up. It's like, this is his moment. It's like, this is like one of those

Gary: 0:16

you got the Eminem song playing in the background.

Unknown: 0:21

Waiting for this his whole life. He got my I got this boom. And he didn't know the popular kids are super loving this guy. Because he did it in 30 seconds. Yeah,

Gary: 0:32

please tell me he dropped it. Like he dropped the mic and just walked away.

Unknown: 0:35

I didn't know he did not because of course he's a nerd. And that doesn't work that way. But we should have I mean, yeah, I that is such a that would have been like that. Yeah, we should totally someone should make that either YouTube

David: 0:55

everyone, welcome to the biz dev Podcast, the podcast about developing your business. I'm David Baxter. And I'm joined as always by my co host, Gary Voight. How's it going, man?

Gary: 1:05

It's going pretty good. How you doing?

David: 1:07

I'm good. I'm good. I'm ready to to end the year. I think

Gary: 1:10

getting Yeah, looking forward to wrapping it up,

David: 1:12

getting Christmassy getting, we're decorating our tree that we bought last week and, and I'm ready ready to do this in the year strong. And

Gary: 1:21

speaking of ending the year, we have the big pixel virtual Christmas party coming up,

David: 1:26

we do are very excited. We're going to be doing our we just did our Christmas card that we'll be sending out through the emails if you're not on our newsletter, cheap plug. But we're doing a Christmas party, which if since big pixel is a remote company, it's basically a huge Zoom meeting, which it's a lot of fun. So there's all nine of us all on there. And some people are really ugly sweaters. And we order lunch from Uber, which is always really interesting because they all arrive at different times. So sometimes people don't.

Gary: 1:59

That's fun. But that's a great guest appearances by spouses and pets.

David: 2:03

That's spouses and pets, some children involved. So it's a good time, we enjoy that. So I want to jump into the news. First, we've got a few we're gonna do a little lightning round today, because we're some fun articles. This week that we we wanted to jump in on. Yeah, I

Gary: 2:18

got a couple of links for you.

David: 2:20

First one up, we're going to talk about Apple and epic, we're gonna give an update on that we've been covering that one. They're big trial. For the 1000 foot view, a 30,000 foot view is epic sued Apple many moons ago about they wanted to accept payments outside of the Apple Store and not pay the 30%. over many months, they went to trial Apple epic, mostly lost but they won one key thing which said, what two key things one that said that you could have a button that would allow you to go outside and use a third party payment system, which is pretty close to what epic wanted core core request. And then the other one, that's a

Gary: 3:01

was just to get this straight. That's not to use a third party payment system. It's also like you can click a button to go to say epics store instead of the Apple store.

David: 3:11

Yeah, that's where I mean payment system. Like it's you could have if you're an app outside of epic, you could have an app and I sell my doodad my subscription service through PayPal, I could theoretically do that through a button. That's what the court allowed. The other one was that they could not use what's called steering language. Apple right now does not allow you to even mention that you have another way to pay for this. If you do, they will prevent your app from going live. This court shot that down. But you can't do that.

Gary: 3:41

So this affects more than just epic though this actually affects some of the smaller devs out there. The groups that did that put apps up in the Apple Store. Correct? Yeah,

David: 3:49

this is why we cover this because it's this is a big deal for startups is, if this when this happens, the problem is they just put the brakes on it. So the big one that everyone's excited about is the button that takes you out to your own store. If you didn't want to pay that 30%. The court just issued a stay, which means that the previous court ruling is being held until the appeals process is done. That was supposed to ramp up in January, which would have been a big deal. But that's now on hold, which kind of stinks. I think in the end, they will lose I think they will be forced to do

Gary: 4:22

this. So this is just Apple flexing its muscle to kind of delay

David: 4:25

the Oh absolutely. Yeah. I mean every month that they keep this they make bazillion more dollars. So yeah, they're all for it. But the good news is that the steering language part that is staying true. So I like that that's gonna make our clients lives easier and everybody else's lives easier. Because you can now mention Hey, we have a website. Here it is and you can have on that website link to your payments, right I mean, that's the only way I've been able to do that in the past was kind of do Sneaky sneaky stuff. And Apple was very, very harsh against that but that still there so that's that update. I think that's important. I just wish Yeah, Our justice system, I have a big fan of it. But when it comes to big

Gary: 5:07

fan of justice, big fan, I'm a huge fan of being able to buy justice. Well, the

David: 5:11

problem is when you have these big corporate monsters who have basically unlimited money, exactly nothing happens for years and years and years, because they just appeal it forever. And

Gary: 5:21

it dilutes the system so much that it just seems ineffective. Yeah,

David: 5:24

it's I mean, we'll see how it ends. Hopefully, the The judge in the original case was pretty anti Apple about these two pieces. Again, if you look at the larger whole court case, epic lost, I mean, all the big things like they really wanted all sorts of stuff. They want to open up the app store and get rid of the walled garden, all that failed. But on these two points, the the judge was pretty strong against them. And I'm hoping they continue to stay strong, because for people like our clients, and small guys, even medium size, guys that 30% is brutal,

Gary: 5:57

and it's a game changer for them. To segue from Apple. Yeah, you're gonna check this out like a podcast pro here. Speaking about Apple, oh, well, they're also in the news with a new VR headset that they're going to come out with. And speaking of VR, that takes us to the metaverse from faith.

Unknown: 6:15

Oh, wow. That's a double segue.

Gary: 6:18

So I guess Facebook now has an opening for their their metaverse. They're calling it the horizon worlds. And yes, for they say it's open to the public, but it's me. It's open to people with I guess, can you say right, Oculus go? Well,

Unknown: 6:34

I knew you're gonna say wrong. It's the meta quest to

David: 6:39

get dropped. Which I think that's silly, but whatever. I don't want to go off on that tangent. But yeah, I knew cuz everyone's do this wrong. It's, it was Oculus quest two and that they've dropped Oculus, which I think is a cool brand name. But if that was the meta quest to that is their headset.

Gary: 6:56

Okay, so it looks like you can they have worlds that they're building? And they're going to open up some of the seams like what was that? Not the Sims? Was it Second Life where you Second Life? virtual world? Yes, kind of create things to go along with that. So it's like a grownup version of Roblox and Minecraft, but in the metaverse it really

David: 7:18

does seem like Second Life is coming back around. I mean, it's, it was second life just ahead of its time, or what because that's what it looks like. We're all except the differences. Now. We're gonna wear headsets while we're in the second life. Yeah, it both Microsoft's version and and metas version is it looks like Second Life. Oh, you

Gary: 7:37

just brought up Microsoft again. The best part is the promotional image that they put up on. This article will link to it for the metaverse no legs, your avatars have no legs. What

David: 7:48

is it like a Rata verse and no legs? That's now two companies who hate legs.

Gary: 7:52

I think it's just easier to create these these worlds and interact without having to animate people walking,

David: 7:59

I guess. But I mean, they do in the hands. Right? So you're already tracking hands? I guess it's probably

Gary: 8:05

Oh, it's probably because the VR headset can see that you can see the sensors for it. But yeah, people are just kind of standing stills or doing stuff. So you can't just have like, still legs floating through the air. That'd be creepy.

David: 8:16

You'd be like the opposite of a Irish dancer. Right? Your legs are completely still but your hands

Gary: 8:22

library goes from Ghostbusters.

David: 8:25

So yeah, I guess it technically I'm guessing that's a reason. But that makes sense. But it's still super weird. It's like, there's got to be a happy medium or something. I mean, I don't know. This is all these floating torsos. Just strange.

Gary: 8:42

So did you know more about the Apple air glasses? You said they've been rumored for years. And I'm assuming they're just the same as like the Oculus, or the meta quest or whatever. Well,

David: 8:52

all of this is rumor based. So the newest article that I saw was that they are now it's the there's a leaker. I don't know if that's the right word for it. But there's a guy who's somewhere in China, and he's somehow connected to the Apple supply chain because this dude nails these rumors. Pretty mean, quote or something?

Gary: 9:11

Yeah, he's always the one putting stuff up for the new iPhones and iPads and all that stuff. Yeah,

David: 9:16

he is. He's prolific. And so whenever he speaks, people listen, including financial people. But he is saying now that the AR glasses that have been rumored for a while from Apple will be coming out next year. And the rumor is, they're goggles, but they are going to be super high end, super expensive. And they're trying them more as a test balloon. They're not expecting to sell a lot of these yet, but they're like 8k glasses, something like something crazy, so that the graphics can be really high. And the because that's been one of the janky things about any of these headsets is the graphics or not, since it's so close to your face.

Gary: 9:57

They're not on par with like the big screen version. was just there.

David: 10:00

So close that though you have to have a lot of pixels because you can see, right, you're right there. And like a TV, you can have 1080 P. And it looks amazing because it's across your room. If you put 1090 P on your phone, it looks janky. Now you take that, again, you put it on your face, you're now three inches or five inches from the screen, you have to be even higher Rez. So these new ones are supposed to be 8k, I think maybe maybe I'm wrong on that maybe it's 4k. But again, it's all rumored. But they're they're hoping that it's going to give the meta quest I did it. The meta quest a run for its money, because right now they live basically on their own. And so Apple wants to get out of

Gary: 10:37

here, the article says something too about the 3d sensors for hand. So I guess their their hand eye kind of sensor. And your ability to move things around and use your hands is supposed to be a lot better when it comes to AR is

David: 10:52

those goggles and stuff, everybody, not everybody, but the big ones have controllers in your hands, or that you're holding. And that's how they track your hands. When you're looking at it, you can see your hands in front of your face. Because you're holding a controller, yeah, motion capture, when you put down the controller, the hand tracking gets really bad. And that's just because that technology that meta is doing isn't great yet. And they're Apple because a face ID is really, really good at 3d tracking. And so the the rumor is is that they extended the range in which the tracking can happen. So therefore they wouldn't they would be able to track like each individual digit without having a controller. And that almost

Gary: 11:32

makes me wonder if like the whole LIDAR sensor for their cameras on their iPhones was kind of like a prerequisite to see if they can add that into their 3d tracking for this.

David: 11:42

Well, what's really cool is all of this tech is basically the Microsoft Kinect from years ago on the

Gary: 11:48

Xbox. Yeah, the creepy webcam that followed you.

David: 11:51

That was but what was really when that came out. I don't know if I mentioned this at some point in the podcast, when that came out, what eight years ago or something like that on the last Xbox. That was revolutionary, not for it failed miserably, unfortunately.

Gary: 12:05

But it was a tech breakthrough. Yeah, it

David: 12:07

minimize tech that used to be like huge in 10s of 1000s of dollars. And scientists only had it and they would do it for research and stuff like that. And then they made it the size of basically what half a loaf of bread. Yeah,

Gary: 12:21

I mean, even just like a big remote control. Like they get pretty small. Because they used to come with the Xbox two. Yeah, cuz

David: 12:27

they made two versions of it. And then they started putting them on Roombas and all sorts of people went crazy with the Kinect because it was so interesting was the first time we had really good 3d tracking. And then now the iPhone has basically the same tech inside of its tiny little front camera. Yeah, center stage. Well, no, the face ID uses it. And then center stage is just a wonder the same thing. And so now you're saying okay, now we're going to take that a step further. And basically go back to the Connect Now I can track your fingers.

Gary: 12:54

Yeah, they're gonna have to look at two different objects at the same time though in relation to that still connect

David: 13:00

interesting. See? Yeah. So I I'm intrigued by it. But the rumors of those things like$3,000 glasses. I I don't know what that what that market is. But

Gary: 13:11

don't worry. You'll hear all about it on Twitter from the people bragging they got some so Oh, yeah,

Unknown: 13:15

what they'll be they'll make a gold plated edition. I'm an early adapter

Gary: 13:19

because I like to help the tech industry.

David: 13:22

That's very nice. Are we all British when we're tech snobs?

Gary: 13:25

No snobby? San Francisco. You know? Look, I'm not an impressionist. Okay.

Unknown: 13:32

That's good, cuz you would have been fired?

Gary: 13:34

Yes. Okay, I just wanted to bring up a quote that I saw from Chris doe, who is the CEO and founder of a company called the future. They started out, I guess it was an ad agency called Blind that turned into a kind of like an online education agency. And now they're just like a huge marketing giant. But one of the quotes that I saw from him, that kind of gets to me, it says the best time to start was yesterday. The next best time to start is now. And that kind of made me think good quote, when it comes to having an idea and wanting to create something in the startup space. Do you have a preference or advice for anybody for when is a good time to start? Realistically, not just, you know, the cliche start yesterday, start now. But when does it seem like it's a good fit? Or when have you seen in the experience you've had with startups, what situations seems to bode well for their success?

David: 14:38

So when it comes to startups and entrepreneurs I have found they loosely fall into two groups. The first group is the one you see on the TV show like Silicon Valley, where they are young, right? fresh out of college, 23 years old, they're, you know, they're have very little responsibility. In the life yet, generally speaking, because they probably still live with their parents, they just got out of college, or they have a very cheap apartment with 17 roommates. And so they think to themselves, now's the time to start this idea, or they're, they're on fire from college and being surrounded by that atmosphere that they want to start something. It's a cool, cool time in life. Yeah, it

Gary: 15:19

also seemed to be kind of a trend over the last, like 10 years where it was, you know, tech guy goes to college right out of college startup.

David: 15:28

Yeah. And that's a good, it's a good time to do it. Because there is no, there's very little risk. If you spend a year on an idea that you really like, and it fails, then no problem. You're 24 years old, and your whole life is ahead of you. And you don't have a mortgage, you don't have kids, you don't have anything.

Gary: 15:43

Plus you've probably networked with some other kids in college that are, you know, in the same mindset that can Yeah,

David: 15:49

yeah, you you've got this, this young, excitable vibe. That is so cool. It is. It's a really, it's, I will be honest, it's the reason I started big pixel, um, back when I was working for another company, we were working with a startup. They were right out of college, very excited guys about this idea. It was in the hotel industry. And they I worked with him at my old company. And when I started big pixel, I bought them from my old company.

Gary: 16:14

So you, you became like, they became a client of yours that you had to actually pay for,

David: 16:20

correct? Yeah, I promised long story short, I promised my old company that when I left to start my new one that I would never steal a client from them. And so these guys, when they found out that I left, they're like, Dude, we want to work with you. We really enjoyed working with you. We're doing a new thing, people but well, and I said, Okay, well, we have to work it out with my own company. And so I ended up buying them from that, okay. So, but I, but it was their passion that really infected me. And I was like, Dude, I want to be around this more. And so that's why I started big pixel to focus on startups, because I want to be around them. It's a really cool vibe. And I'm a big fan of it. And there's some pros and cons, but we could talk about later. But that is that's the stereotypical startup life cycle. And but I will tell you, the successful ones, the ones that I've seen. And again, there's, I feel like there's a conversation that needs to be had, the startups that I'm talking about are not Facebook, right? The Silicon Valley, San Francisco, raising billions of dollars. That's very, very rare. I know, they get all the news. But that's extremely rare.

Gary: 17:26

I think maybe it's just the terminology of startup. Sometimes when people hear startup, they think next big tech giant, where we can refer to startups as just, Hey, you want to start a new business. And it's going to be, you know, geared more to an online or digital space, not necessarily a huge company, it could just be a retail store or something like that. But Correct. There's still considered startups,

David: 17:49

this could be your pizza shop that you want to start or a coffee shop, or you want to make clothes I

Gary: 17:55

mean, are fine photographers in New York,

David: 17:57

five photographers in new? I don't. We've focused on Tech because that's our world. But I just I think when the world people say startup people, average Joe's hear the word startup, they're thinking Airbnb, Facebook, Google, all of those were startups at one point, but those have their trajectory is so unusual, that they're, they're in a no another class most. And I say, what I guess the easiest stat to say is like 60% of jobs in America are run by small businesses, right. And a small business technically, is anything under 55 million in revenue, which, to me, that's a pretty big company. But that's, but that's the government way of looking at it. To me, it's, it's most most small businesses started from a dude or girl who have an idea, and they want to run with it. And we love those people. And so I want to I say that because, you know, startups that come to us are oftentimes I've got an idea, it's very niche, but I want to make this my job, I want to I want to hire people and build a company around this, I'm not gonna get a billion dollars for it, because the total addressable market is not that big. But I can make two or$300,000 income, be really successful,

Gary: 19:07

and have it be your own thing. And this is my

David: 19:09

thing that I own and run. And that's who we really cater to. So those people typically are older, surprisingly, back to the original question. I have, I was shocked, because I came into this naively, nine years ago thinking, Oh, they're all young kids. Right? They're all they're all whippersnappers. Right. But as I got through it, most of the guys who come to us, I'd say, 50 60% 5440 plus years old.

Gary: 19:35

My initial reaction to that would just be a guess. And my guess is that they've had, you know, the standard from college to a job sitting in an office or doing whatever, selling whatever they're selling for some years now. And they're just over it. And they're like, You know what, I think it's time for me to actually do something that I want to do. And at that point, maybe they have enough money saved up or they have an idea that's been brewing in the back of their head for a while that they've just kind of been poking. And they're like it's an hour never let's, let's give it a shot.

David: 20:04

So I think we're in my experience where where the two camps are, there's one camp like I was mentioned before, super young, no risk, let's go do this. And because and they can, their friends and family, they can raise the money however that works. And then there's the other side, they're 40 plus years old, they typically have a spouse, that has a great job. Generally, this is true. This is man or woman, we've had it both ways that a woman comes to us, their husband is going to support them while they do this, or vice versa. We've had men come to us say, I'm going to do this for a year, get this idea up and running, and my wife is going to pay all our bills. That's very common. I don't think I've yet to see a 40 year old single guy or gal come to me and say, Let's do this. I'm trying to wrack my brain real quick, I don't think so I could be wrong. But generally speaking, they have a spouse that is taking care of the bills. And they give them they've talked about it internally in their family. And they have said, all right, honey, I'm giving you one year, make it happen. Because that's all our savings can afford or whatever, right. And so that because that because the the risk that you're 40 plus years old, most likely you're married, most likely you have children at this point, most likely have a mortgage at that point. So you have a lot of there's a lot of risk. And so you've got to have some way to make sure that that's taken care of that. And you're 100% right on the job thing, they're usually tired of their current job, or they are have had this idea for so long that it's eating them up. Right, that's usually the two that I hear is I'm tired of my current job. And I kind of have this idea, I would like to try it. Or I still like my job, but I have to do this. It's like, I don't have a choice. This has been an idea. I've been batted around with friends, family, and they're all telling me Shut up, dude, I want to hear it anymore. Go do it put up or shut up time. And those actually, I really liked those people, because those people are passionate. That's yeah, I

Gary: 21:59

was just gonna say that kind of definitely speaks to the the spark of the fire and the passion that you're going to have behind that idea. If it's been burning and burning for years, and you just can't, you just can't let it go. Yeah,

David: 22:11

it's, and those people I find are going to be very, very driven. And that's a very good thing to be. If you don't know what I'm talking about, refer to our episode on the slog anyway. The so that's generally when the cliche answer is there is never too late. You can another stage, which we might have had a couple of times, but you're retired. I know. As a matter of fact, now to think about it. We have one guy, he sold his business, he did very, very well in business. And he's like, I don't want to retire and do nothing. I've had this idea, I want to do this, I want to pursue it. And I have the funds to do it. So let's go. We've got one client like that. And he is he is a trip. He's one of my favorite people. Because he is just money is not a thing to him. He's very successful. So he is not in a hurry. And he is doing this 100% out of passion. And that is very fun.

Gary: 23:01

And that passion is infectious. Yes. When you're when you're talking to him and dealing with him. Yeah, it, he just cannot help but feel inspired around it.

David: 23:11

Absolutely. And it's really it's a really cool thing. Now that's highly unusual, because most people don't have money that they can spend on their startup and they don't worry about it. They've got to go and get it from friends and family and stuff like that, or savings or, and it's a scary thing for them.

Gary: 23:25

So you're saying basically, in your experience in big pixel is experienced the two camps fall in the young nothing to lose. And then midlife with a cushion. Going to try out the idea.

David: 23:36

Yeah, that's generally, generally the two buckets that that we've seen. We've had a woman who she sold. She was a QA tester for years and years and years had a good career. She was in quality assurance. Sorry, yeah, she was, yeah, she tested software for a living. And her husband, I don't know what he did. But it was something high powered. I'm not sure what he did. And she was like, Okay, I'm gonna do this. I'm going, I have this idea. I really want to run with it. And so the husband worked with her. And we've had the vice versa. We had a teacher, a guy who was a teacher, he came to us, he still works with us, because he's been successful. But he made himself a runway and said, all right, honey, this is what I'm gonna do. And she's like, cool. And they, they went and ran with it. So. And of course, the young guys and gals, we've had many of those. There is no right time to start. There is no wrong time to start. I think that if you have the passion to pursue it, go for it. You're definitely not too old. That's that's definitely what I want to make sure you hear. Because I know there are people listening to this, who think, well, I'm 42 years old. I'm I have these responsibilities. So startups are not for me. I would absolutely challenge that

Gary: 24:43

person when you think about it, if they're 42 years old, and they have all that experience and knowledge bind them to help.

David: 24:49

Yeah, I think you're probably in a better position than you think it's kind of because I will also say that a lot of times the younger ones fizzle out. That's what I was saying pros and cons. Life is variable. volatile that 2324 year life is changing, you move, you find your spouse, you, you know what I'm saying your life is just in, in flux at that age.

Gary: 25:09

And since you're young everything can seem a bit more catastrophic than maybe to someone older with experience in life,

David: 25:18

they can weather those storms in the slog isn't quite so scary. Yeah, I think that's if you're talking about pros and cons, the young people don't have the risk. But the old people say, Oh, they're my age, or or older, they have the experience, and they're not so nervous about bad things. Because they've been through it. They know, there's another side to it. The young people oftentimes flame out or not even for bad things, they that someone offers them a job, and they're like, Yeah, that's amazing, I'm gonna go do that. Or they find a significant other, and now they have to get a job or they have a baby, right? There's great life, it just is changing. Very exciting stuff with a great time in life, but it might not be the best startup.

Gary: 26:05

Alright, looks like we got a question this week. This one is coming in from Juan. And his question is choosing the right tech stack for a client. So how and why do you pick what tech stack you use for client and how far reaching are the effects of those decisions? So I guess first, we have to explain what a tech stack is.

David: 26:26

So a tech stack is what developers referred to as when they talk about the language that they use to build something. coding language coding language, yes. So it's two, there's typically two a front end stack, a back end stack, and a database stack. I guess, if you really want to call that a stack, it's not really but so for instance, you could use node on the back end with a Postgres database, and react on the front end, that would be the stack of the app. Another common example is, you're doing Angular on the front, you could do a dotnet, C sharp API on the back, and a Microsoft SQL Server database, there's a million options you can do there. And then you can get into an acronym, or whatever. There's lamp stacks, and, and all sorts of stuff. So that's what it means.

Gary: 27:19

So to clarify, the front is what people see. And the back is the magic that's happening behind the scenes.

David: 27:25

Generally speaking, yes, it is. The front is what people see the validation, the app itself, and the back is the engine that runs the whole thing. And the database is where you put stuff.

Gary: 27:36

So do you choose different stacks based on different client needs? Or projects? Or do you do we stick with the, like a core set that we usually use, and then just expand when we need to.

David: 27:46

So if sometimes clients bring us a stack, or they have a strong preference, so then we of course, adopt that preference. Like, if you're a corporate client, a lot of times they're a dotnet shop, that's just they use Microsoft technologies, they always have, and they still want to. But if you're coming to us blank, we typically go with what the team prefers, which currently is a React front end and a node back end, it gets a lot more complicated than that only because there are lots of flavors of all these things, but I'm gonna keep it simple. So we have a in our world, we have a React front end, and we are building more and more components that we can reuse between clients when allowed, sometimes we can't. But But that's, that's why we typically now some people say I need to scale, okay, well, then let's think about scaling. If you're going for a billion users, you're trying to build the next Facebook, then we're going to put you on a stack that is better for that. If you are on a if you're going for a more enterprise, the low level, I'm building an internal kind of thing, then we're going to build a stack that doesn't care about scale as much, right? So some of that some of that also plays into the fact that once you've chosen a stack, though, which is the last part of this question, how far reaching is it's it's can't be more far reaching than that your app is that stack Forever and always, until you completely rewrite it. So that's important. And rewriting

Gary: 29:17

is it. It's we've talked about this before, but it's harder to go back and rewrite stuff than it is to just adapt newer stuff into existing code stacks.

David: 29:28

If you want to change stacks, you have to rewrite it. It's just the nature. It's like if you were speaking French, and suddenly you want to speak German, you got to rewrite your paper, right? It's the same thing. So you rarely see people change stacks unless, like sometimes you have a really old client who comes in with an existing code base that's, you know, six, eight years old, and it's rickety and it's too old to actually build upon. Well, no, you can always build upon I mean, if it's a PHP stack as much as I'm not a huge fan of PHP Probably getting it shot for that. But it still works. But if you want to adopt some of the newer fancier stuff, like single page application, that sort of thing. If you're trying to build a PWA, which is like a website that works offline, or can work offline, those things are harder to do an older sack. So in those kinds of things, you might have to rewrite. But that's pretty rare we, we have yet I don't think it's ever happened, that we adopted a stack, and said, You know what, we're gonna throw all this away and start from scratch. That is, generally the bang for your buck, which is a huge deal for me and our clients. bang for your buck on that is really low, really low. Because there's a lot of code that works. Even if it's old, it works. Why are we throwing it out? If we need to update it? Because something's broken in it? Fine, we'll update it. But I don't like throwing away code code is is expensive.

Gary: 30:52

So I think that's that makes sense. I think

David: 30:55

that answers all of one's questions.

Gary: 30:58

Good, we have a stack that we see that we're using the most, or that is brought to us the most, like what are those common languages right now.

David: 31:09

So what that's all a matter of opinion. If you look online, Python is always a high thing. But I will say I've never seen a program written in Python. The reason why Python is always ranked really highly is because machine learning is all Python. So when you look at that, it all depends on your the lens you're looking at. In our world. We when we adopt a stack from somebody an older app, every time all but one right now. It's Php, that's a, it's PHP is a language been around forever. I'm not a big fan of it. But you can write good code. The reason I don't like it, if I'm just being transparent is, it's very easy to write bad code. In PHP, you can write good code, and newer versions of PHP, you can write good code easier. But traditionally, you could write some pretty ugly spaghetti code, which means it's really hard to maintain. So when we adapt dopt, though, sometimes we get some messes. But if it's an older seconds, typically what we get is PHP. The newer stuff, we almost always do react, we have some angular, that's probably too far in the weeds. But we, we do a survey inside of our company, every couple few years, and we asked what our stack should be. And then any new projects that come from there will be that stack for the next few years. So that we're not, we're not chasing our tails, because but we have to stay on the edge. I always say that our job is to be the cutting edge, not the bleeding edge, right? If you've out, if you're out running Stack Overflow, you're losing, right? If you are ahead of the net, what I mean by that for non developers. Stack Overflows is a website that where you ask a lot of questions, and you can get a lot of help. If you are outpacing the developer community, meaning you are so out on the betas and all that kind of stuff, you're going to spend two times as long than you would if you were in a normal mainstream stack. That's what we're talking about. So let me wrap this up in a way that that pertains to some of the besides us as a company. What matters when it comes to the stack? Is doesn't do what you need it to do? Step one, that's very clear, obvious, and most will unless you're off in the weeds somewhere. But here's the real kicker, is it something that's going to be around a long time? Right? There's a lot of languages that come and go. And you have to be careful there when you're, when you're choosing your own stack, or a team is coming to your stack. Like if you're a founder and you are not, you're not technical, you probably should still ask them what stack they want to use, and then do a little bit of research because what you don't want to do is pick something that's either so bleeding edge, that, you know, it might be gone in a year, or it's so old that it's archaic. Does that make sense? And yeah, you can find that out even as a non technical person. That's what's really important there.

Gary: 34:05

Okay, so you brought up Microsoft and you brought up hold and not going to be around long, so I just want to say Zune.

David: 34:12

Oh, man, I gotta call it back. Dirty shot.

Gary: 34:16

Okay, we're gonna wrap this up on one fun little weird story that I saw. Okay, I know a lot of people complain that they cannot game on the new Macs. But apparently they can game on the iPhones pretty well. Well enough to wear a razor now built a MagSafe cooling fan for the back of iPhones for gamers. Have you seen that?

David: 34:39

Any I guarantee that it has RGB lighting? Absolutely. Yeah, cuz Our Razor cannot make they made a coaster that had RGB lighting. That's not a joke

Gary: 34:49

is an article in gadget and the headline reads Razorbill, the MagSafe cooling fan for iPhone gamers. Of course it has RGB lighting.

David: 34:58

Yeah. So Okay, I'm a gamer. I've said that before I play games on my phone a lot on my iPhone. I am currently playing, I'm looking at up your battle Legion. If you guys have ever heard of that one, that's a really great game. But if you are, I don't understand that on the Android side. So I can totally geek out about this is what I'm saying. On the Android side, they make actual gaming phones that have like 12 gigs of RAM, which is as much as a full on PC. And they have some of them have these built in fans and coolers you can add this has been

Gary: 35:32

a really still work as phones, are they just mobile gaming devices,

David: 35:35

their phones, they're heavy, usually they have bigger batteries. But here's the thing I don't know of who's competitive gaming on a phone seriously. If you're really big into gaming, you you own a laptop, you own a console, you're not. You're not playing your fortnight on your phone. You know, I'm saying you're not playing pub G on your phone at a competitive level.

Gary: 36:00

Now kids hiding it in school, playing under their desk,

David: 36:03

with the caveat my son actually bringing them a lot of lotta stuff. He got competitive in fortnight with his iPad. And what Woods wild he had the big my old iPad Pro, the 12 Nine. And he had this like claw action with his fingers. I know this is a podcast, so you can't see what I'm doing. But he would do his fingers and like this weird bird claw. And that's how he put his fingers on the on the buttons. And he would just tap them like this weirdo guy, but he was amazing.

Unknown: 36:32

I mean, that just

Gary: 36:33

made me think of I don't know if you ever watched friends TV show for I think everybody's seen that. But when they had a I think it was Miss Pac Man, the stand up arcade that they had any of our men and Chandler was not working at the time. And he's playing Miss Pac Man all day. And when he stopped he lifted up his hand and his hand was stuck in that claw.

David: 36:52

Yeah. My son was like that. Yep. It's so I guess I'm eating my own words a little bit. You can play competitively on a mobile device. But who needs a cooler? I? Yes. I can't imagine because I will say if you really are playing for a while my phone will get pretty toasty, but I can't imagine

Gary: 37:11

it's a $60. Phone cooler.

David: 37:13

$60 to cool. No, I don't get it. I

Gary: 37:17

really it is MagSafe though, for the new one. That's

Unknown: 37:20

cool. I

David: 37:22

I'm a big fan of everything. MagSafe. I think that's a

Gary: 37:24

USBC charger. If you're not using the MagSafe. I'm just going through the article here written by Johnny fingers.

David: 37:32

Now here is the funny thing. If you go and look at this article, look at the difference. Or sorry, I clicked through the article and went to razors website when I wanted to look at this. Look at the difference between the iPhone version and the Android version. The Android version has a clamp around it. So it holds on to your phone because there's no magnet. And it is hardcore man. It is.

Unknown: 37:52

It is serious. i Okay, I get it. i

Gary: 37:57

Hey, you need Christmas gifts for anybody who has nephews that have an iPhone, and you got $60 to burn.

David: 38:04

Oh my gosh, if I promise you if you that nephew opens that phone is going, what is this? Even I don't care how old the kid is no way that the kids going, you know what I need? I need an iPhone cooler. True. We're going to wrap it up.

Gary: 38:20

So as you have a question we did,

David: 38:23

and I'm going to encourage more people to send us questions. Hello at the big pixel dotnet. You can also we're posting these now on YouTube. Finally, we're doing one a day right now until we catch up. But you can put comments there and we will pay attention there. And you can ask your questions and we will hopefully be able to answer them. But you can also email Hello at the big pixel dotnet. And yeah, we'll catch you next time.

Gary: 38:47

Spread the Word to we're on all the major podcast entities. So tell the friend get us a few more. I think we have like six subscribers now so we're really pushing for that.

David: 38:57

Hey, we had 40 Viewers last week so nice. Alright y'all,

Unknown: 39:03

thank you so much.