Making Tech More Human - Jason Torres

On this week's LIVE we sit down with Jason Torres, Developer Advocate at JetBrains to talk about why he's on a mission to make tech more human, as well as taking a look at the tech news from the week and a round of Fake or News.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:04

Hello and welcome back to We Are Developers Live. Uh, we're not actually live today because uh we are pre-recording an episode, which it will be Wednesday for you by the time you watch this, but um, for us, we might keep this secret actually when this was recorded because it adds a bit of mystery. Um, but I will say the guest that I've got joining me today is uh in a different time zone, and I've been there recently because I've got Jason Torres from JetBrains, and you're over in the States. So I am you're here.

SPEAKER_01 0:32

I am good to see you. It is great to see you, Dan. Uh shout out to Jody, by the way. Jody Burchell, uh, another developer advocate here at JetBrains over on the PyCharm team. I saw her in the the slides there. Love that.

SPEAKER_00 0:48

I think actually oh oh, do you know what? I do remember, I do remember she has blonde hair glasses, I believe. Oh, yeah. There you are. How's that? Yeah, that was probably over a year ago, actually. But um, yeah, so it's been a while. We'll come back at the end of the show to kind of talk about you know what you're doing at JetBrains and kind of how long you've been there. But also there's a lot of things because you're I will say you're you're in the states, but there's this other thing that confuses my little European mind, um, which is that you have two two or more time zones in the same country, which to be honest, Jason, trying to organize things when I send you was it four times? I think I said it's yeah one a 1 p.m. for me, 2 p.m. for in Germany, and 9 p.m. in the east coast or whatever it was.

SPEAKER_01 1:28

So yeah, I'm gonna mess, Dan. It is a daggum mess. Um, especially working with different time zones when you're on a team where your product team is predominantly in Amsterdam. So, what are we seven, seven hours? So by the time I get up in the morning, and most people would say like six o'clock in the morning is pretty early, they're already like halfway through their day. I have like slack message after slack message of things that I've already somehow missed. Honestly, psych psychologically, it's kind of a mind F, if you will, because it's like I already feel like I'm behind, I haven't even started my day yet.

SPEAKER_00 2:05

I I can relate to that actually, because we should say for context, you're on the East Coast, right? Yeah, so yeah, I'm up in New York. So so what's the difference there between the East Coast and West Coast, other than they're opposite coasts? Uh, what's the time?

SPEAKER_01 2:15

Yeah, well, yes, geographically they are in fact opposite, uh, three hours.

SPEAKER_00 2:20

Okay, yeah. So, so I mean, again, and we will come back to this in a minute when you try and map some of these things onto Europe, I would be halfway across Europe. Um, but I will say I I can I can relate to that because I was in San Francisco last week. Most of the team here at We have devs that I kind of work with, um, you know, my immediate team were with me in San Francisco. I was with Chris, who's my boss, um, Sayad, our CEO, um, some others. But then the others that I will work with day to day were here, and you kind of you use the word sync, you know, like for the rest of the year, people say, Let's have a sync, let's sync on that. And it doesn't really mean much other than let's have a meeting. But I feel like when you're on different different time zones, it's actually trying to understand like what are you doing at the moment, or you know, because you are sleeping whenever I'm working, kind of thing.

SPEAKER_01 3:04

Yeah, yeah, it's it's bizarre to me thinking about how I operate on a team of people that spend most of their day when I'm asleep, like their days are are done. It's it's crazy. It's hard, it's hard to manage. It's honestly it's hard to manage from a product perspective if you think about it. Like, how do teams work on those types of time like timelines and still meet deadlines when you have such a gap?

SPEAKER_00 3:30

Yeah, no, it's very true. And I think you know, you see businesses that are talking about async and this idea that sort of time doesn't matter to them. Um, and I think we just see that really it's like the business has been set up in a way that allows time to sort of not be that important. Yeah, um, and I think what that might mean for you, and it it does for me, certainly, is that you know, you're responsible for kind of keeping things moving and making sure that, you know, of course, you you you'll have things dedicated to you, but it's very much in in uh developer advocacy, there's an element of use your initiative, like what's gonna actually be the thing that people need that you can do today. And that may not be something that someone else is ever gonna tell you.

SPEAKER_01 4:07

Yeah, so uh self-sufficient and autonomy are two very big terms. I think you're probably familiar with both doing a very similar role. Um, but again, just kind of thinking about am I am I doing enough, knowing that again, they're they've already had a work day by the time I've gotten up. Like, obviously, it's not a big deal, and it's never really been something that's come up, but I feel it. I and I think that that's just something that's sort of deeply ingrained in like the the American work ethic. It's that grind culture. Like, I'm I'm just I'm already behind the eight ball, I haven't even woken up yet, and I'm already behind in the day.

SPEAKER_00 4:45

Let's let's come back to this at the very end, actually, because I think there's some really interesting stuff here. And we before we went live, we kind of briefly touched on like yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 4:52

I'm giving you all these segues, bro, until I'm just laying them up.

SPEAKER_00 4:57

Jason, there's a reason I got you here, and it's because you make my job easy. Um, all right, now I think it could be a good time for us actually if we jump across to some of our kind of stories the week because we we do like to take a look at what's been happening. Um, now I will say, as Chris, who usually puts the show together, is over in um San Francisco at the moment. We're we're kind of doing things slightly different in that we're talking about things happening at different times in the week, etc. Oh yeah. We're gonna look at some of the stories from uh the dev digest and kind of see uh some of these um kind of you know what was happening really. So if I just scroll down to these so you don't need to see the rest of that, Jason, we will edit that out. Um I've got stripping in my control find, which yeah. It's sort of you know when things are out of context, that's that's it's not the immediate sort of tech word that's got a double meaning that comes to mind, but I promise you the reason I was searching for stripping was that we were looking at stripping AI watermarks, so we'll sure that was fail.

SPEAKER_01 5:50

Sure it was. Um, I think you should do a segment that's just out of context headlines, like yeah.

SPEAKER_00 5:57

It's a great idea. I love it. Yeah, I I don't think it would be that difficult, and I think you'll see later when we play fake or news. I've got a new way of us playing this week. You're actually going to be the first person to go on a leaderboard, which does mean that you are automatically first. Let's go. We'll get to that later. Um, all right, we'll start off with this. Now, this was uh an archive that I did think was uh was quite interesting that it says, you know, edit it's edited edit with Lovable at the bottom, which made me think that it was probably just like a one-shot or a vicoded kind of thing, but the idea is interesting. Um, a catalogue of forecasts made in earnest about AI over the years. Now, I thought that rather than saying to you, what did you find on this site, um Jason, what some of the funny things that you've heard? It could be like people outside of tech say about the future of whether it be AI or just tech in general, because I'm hearing some bonkers predictions by people that are in tech and some really weird ones from people outside of tech. But what are you hearing?

SPEAKER_01 6:58

That's a fantastic question. I'm I'm gonna go with some really like broad strokes on this. Um, I was just at a conference last week, and uh on my way down to said conference on the plane, I watched a movie that was made in the early 80s. It's uh an Arnold Schwarzenegger banger the running man, if you're familiar. So that film was set in 2017, and I I always love watching like what tech looks like back in the 80s when they say it's supposed to be now. So I'll just like I kind of call those out like the matrix, like the machines and the birth of AI were supposed to take over the world. You have Skynet, which again was like sentient robots. So I think I think like the biggest misconception of the thing that we see uh outside of tech or just in general, like mass populace, is is this sort of inherent fear of the possibilities of AI, like what it could do to society, not even just to like jobs, but like bigger picture.

SPEAKER_00 8:09

I think I heard somebody on that on that point actually make a kind of strange analogy the other day, but they said it's kind of feels a little bit at times like a kind of sparkler, like those things that just you know, you set fire to them at like fireworks and they burn down. Where they said it's this kind of thing that you know really it's a short-term thing, but it's still quite exciting. It only lasts a couple of minutes, but but it's also something that's like really dangerous, and that the when we're never quite sure if the risks actually will outweigh the fun of actually using it in the first place. Um, now I use that example because that was that was quite literally the thing that used to go through my head when someone would say, Do you want a sparkler? Is I'd be like, it's fun, but the downside is I maybe cause some real damage. Um, and I do think that there's there's a lot of people at the moment that are making these predictions, and that's all well and good when it's just like chatting to your friends and people saying, like, I love the predictions from films, that kind of thing, and looking at tech from films, but but there's also a lot of people that are making the predictions that have got a horse in the race, they drop money on the line. Oh, yeah, and they've got a lot of money on the line.

SPEAKER_01 9:08

Who was it uh that said recently within like six months, um one of the eight one of the companies was able to like get someone's entire like life and profile just been I I gotta look that up now. Where did I just see that? I'm not making this up, I swear. I have to but but again, like looking at those types of things and seeing the capabilities of what some of these like LLMs are able to do. I it also kind of gives you pause in the sense like, do we need it to do that? What is the benefit of it doing that? Um, and then I think there was also the headline going around, which I had never actually read but heard was that a lot uh one of the companies was buying all the old books and loading them into their systems and then burning them all. Um, and obviously I'm saying that in jest, but you know, that is if that's true, that's also a little bit scary.

SPEAKER_00 10:08

So yeah, I think there's something to be said for we all because I know I think about music there, where I think about things that used to be physical that um I had friends that had huge, you know, uh DVD collections, Blu-ray collections, like music, CD, all kinds of all kinds of things. And then for me, I'm I've always seen myself as like I'm a product of the 90s, I'm a 90s kid, born at the end of the 80s. But it meant that like for me, some of those things that felt like changes, like um mini disc, and then that went away. And then the iPod, even just like having iTunes and it all being digital, that actually meant that for me, I didn't care almost immediately. I didn't care about the physical stuff at all. I thought it's for me, it's it's important that I've got this 30 gigabyte iPod at the time and it's full up with music, and that's kind of my my goal. Um, and I think there's maybe something to be said for that, that like it's gonna be a trend in the same way that maybe vinyl happened, you know, where we do go back to the physical, and that maybe maybe we we have to go through this period where we we make things where you go, why? Like, why do we just because you can doesn't mean you should, but in the future, you might be glad that somebody did.

SPEAKER_01 11:17

I so I totally I I love that point, and you know, just to that whole the things that we had in days past. Um, I watched this really great YouTube video where he was talking about the 90s specifically, but reference like it takes uh a human 25 to 30 years to get into that nostalgia phase. So when you hit like a certain age, that's when you start to miss those simpler things. I was like, holy crap, that's like spot on. But you know, he was talking about how the gen like the decades blend. We were watching one on the 90s specifically, and he said the 90s really took place from like 1987 to 2003, because that's where the transition is from the first decade to the next, and then blending into the next one, and you see those similarities. Um, he brought up like you had mentioned music, the cure specifically, like that one song of theirs. Uh, don't remember which one it wasn't the Friday. I'm in love, yeah. Um, came out in the early 90s, but nobody considers them a 90s band because they were from the 80s, and again, it transitioned into that generation. So, um, but that's also where you see a lot of culture and where that also shifts, like a lot of those inspirations from the 80s still moved into the early 90s, and then from there, but I think you'll still see that with well, you see it with tech, but you also see you you will see it with AI to some extent, like everything comes back around cyclically. Um, but it also doesn't mean it's going to be around forever. So I think a lot of these things that we are we're fearing or focusing on aren't going to be relevant uh sooner than we think.

SPEAKER_00 13:03

Yeah, I I I think the same, you know, and that I've got that kind of cautious optimism with it. Um, and I think that we we have also got the thing that we're always going to be, by the nature of the fact that we're not seven years old, ten years old, right? We're also going to be out of touch with really what the next generation actually think. Because even with, you know, it's a bit like your parents, where they'll say, Why don't you try this? It looks cool. And you're like, Oh, even using that word or wearing those clothes, like we don't do that. And I think that what we have seen is uh young kids using the word uh or or the phrase uh that's AI to just to just um to describe something that is is slop effectively. Um so let's let's take a look at this one then. So this is yeah, this is the idea of um of kind of the the local models and whether or not the future of AI uh kind of lies in everybody having these localized models, or are we going to be beholden to subscription-based services with kind of uh you know one or two or three um of the big players that are involved in that whole investment, kind of you know, cyclical investment in some cases? But we're this idea that that we've kind of um when people talk about uh platform risk or kind of putting all of your eggs in one basket and and you know relying on one thing, um, do you think that the future looks like that, where maybe it's all dominated by one or two uh or three big players and the local models fall away because you know the profit is what drives everything? Or do you see a world where there's maybe both and that we could keep local models and things like that?

SPEAKER_01 14:31

Are you gonna read this whole article aloud to us, by the way? Is this story time?

SPEAKER_00 14:36

Yes, yes, I'd like to. I mean, they they they haven't really given me a choice, have they? Like zero images. I will say there's a few links on here where talking from nostalgia, we're going back to like the the early internet where images took three weeks to load.

SPEAKER_01 14:47

What a great prompt. Uh TLDR this article for me, K. Thanks by. Uh, and then I wait for it. Um I I've I've thought about this a lot because I've messed with Kimmy and Gemma models locally. I have a um smaller computer that I run as a Plex Media server that I dabble uh with Linux and do local um LLMs on. Um I I I think you already hit the nail on the head there that that's unless they figure out a way to monetize that effectively for these orgs. Do you genuinely believe that like anthropic or open AI are gonna let go of that?

SPEAKER_00 15:26

I mean, no, yeah, I know.

SPEAKER_01 15:29

Yeah, I I think that there's a place for both. I think that locals will have some sort of a foothold on the market, but it's never gonna go like mainstream. Now, that also being said, I think that we're gonna see the bubble burst at some point because one thing that I don't see a lot of uh people talking about in a lot of these types of streams is AI governance. There's no regulations for this stuff, and as we slowly build into it more and more, people are gonna want those local models for certain applications, but again, then there's gonna be that strike back on that where you know your your Dario is gonna be like, nah, bro, like we this isn't gonna work for me. This isn't working for my wallet, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 16:16

No, that's that's true. And I mean, I I think that could be a good sort of segue a little bit just for a moment, kind of into what what your background is because obviously you're working with jet brains now, and as you said, uh largely most of the team are in Amsterdam. Um we said at the top you're on the east coast of the US. So um tell us a little bit about maybe how that came about. How did you land outside of the US with you know in terms of the company you're with, but also have you seen any differences maybe in in if we focus on just like regulations or even just like maybe there's paperwork that you're not used to that comes up when you're with an EU company or whatever it is? What are the differences? And and first of all, how did it come about?

SPEAKER_01 16:52

So I was working for a company that, well, so the company that I was originally working for, I was a developer community manager uh for Torque, and they were actually acquired by Ronstadt Global, which is also based in Amsterdam, ironically enough. Um, we didn't really see a lot of overlap because we were allowed to work independently. Um, but as a developer community manager and like for a predominantly staffing company, I wasn't able to like get my hands on code as much. I wasn't like working on projects and coding. So I felt like I sort of lost touch with that. So it was really important for me to again like find a role where I'm uh doing both. I'm doing community work, but I'm also working on the product and like helping sort of liaise between the internal teams and then the actual end user. Um, I did a 24-hour stream last year, uh around Christmas. Yeah, and uh yeah, it was insane. Uh, however, it put me on the radar of a developer advocate over there that I became friends with. And when a role came up, he's like, This would be great for you. So, one thing a lot of people like they hear jet brains, but we actually have multiple different orgs under that name. So there's jet brains SRO, there's JetBrains US, there's JetBrains Inc. Um, the global company is based out of the Netherlands, but I work for JetBrains America. Um, so there are some overlap as far as like policies and the way certain like departments operate because they operate out of the global org that's based in Amsterdam. Um, however, oh just one right out of the gate that I had experienced was over there. People that work there under that filing uh have this uh service internally called perks. So when they travel, all they gotta do is punch it in and they can get their ticket and they can get their hotel, and it's all in there. Not in America, baby. Uh I have to expense everything and then do expense reports for myself. And um, that was what I was doing previously, but uh my my boss at the time wasn't aware that I was under that policy because his policies were based on the ones over at global. Um, so again, you know, it's little nuances like that. You see it also, and I'm sure you can attest to this since you work with Chris. Shout out to Chris, by the way. I love Chris. Got to hang out with him at all things open last year.

SPEAKER_00 19:26

He'll be asleep. Maybe he'll sleep. No, he won't, he'll be awake. I didn't know.

SPEAKER_01 19:30

It's early, it's early, yeah. Uh, it's like a little after lunchtime on the west coast. Um, the personalities are different. Uh, Eastern Europeans are zero chill. Like, if there's something that they want to tell you, they don't like give you the yes. Um, that was something that was very obvious to me in my interview process at JetBrains. I had to interview with like it was a like group uh interview. I had like the engineering manager and the product manager, and it was like the developer advocate manager, oh, and balloons, balloons, yeah. And uh I thought the guy from I think he's Russian, um, hated me. I got off the call. I'm like, I'm absolutely screwed, like done. That's it. And so did the head of developer advocacy. They're like, Oh my god, that was he does not like him at all. Oh wow, I mean, long story short, he clearly did. I got the job, but I would not have known that based on the interaction that we had. So trying to adjust to that, but understand like how to interpret that and like how it's perceived, and to also use it effectively in communicating with them. Like, I can joke around, but I also know that that's not something that typically resonates. Like, I'm not gonna get the type of feedback that I would want from that. Um, I I think has been like super interesting, a job in itself.

SPEAKER_00 21:02

So no, I think it is. I mean, I can relate sort of in a similar but different way, in that obviously I'm in the UK and most of where developers is you know based on on sort of mainland Europe. Um and you always find in even the language, you know, that people that live in mainland Europe will sort of, or rather, people that live in in the UK will refer to mainland Europe as I'm going to Europe. And it's like we are in we are in Europe, but it kind of speaks of like some of the differences, you know, that there are maybe maybe you know it's not it's not to say it's like the different for like Britain than the whole of Europe, but there is certainly like with work culture. Um, when I first joined We Are Developers, I'd come along to a meeting and the meeting was kind of just started, and I came along and uh, you know, in the UK, you would have a little bit of a kind of stop the meeting. You almost um you almost don't want that person to feel that you're going straight back to business before they've kind of got settled in. So you might, if they um if the meeting hadn't started, you might start a few minutes late. You would just everyone got a cup of tea, all of that sort of stuff. Um now the the meeting was carrying on. I kind of waited there, very polite. Everyone was very welcoming, but it was we're in a meeting, and then when that's done, it's like, oh hey, how are you doing? Everyone turns around and hugs me. For those few minutes, I was going, Have I done something? Are they ignoring me? Are people annoyed? Am I was it because I was late? Now, what you realize is that you know, if a meeting is at nine o'clock, it starts 9.01. Like you're you need to be in there in that first minute, it it starts. And that when the meeting's done, now we catch up and say hello. And I actually think, well, we we get things done that way. In the UK, it's lots of let's be polite. Um, I think it might it must be interesting. I think do you do you find sort of anything in in um you know the actual kind of uh mentality around tech? Or you you mentioned things like regulations, but do you do you see maybe that you might think about things differently or anything like that? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:45

No, I mean that's uh another great point, just kind of thinking about how I don't want to say work ethic because I think that implies that like the level of work intensity or ethic there as opposed to here in America is different. I think it's it it feels uh at a slower pace. I feel like we're very rushed, and again, I don't I'm trying to figure out how to word this where it doesn't sound like it's negative because slower pace again sort of implies it's slower in the sense that I think that they're they're just they're comfortable working at a pace that they know is efficient for them. They're not trying to rush things. Like we we have multiple people that are always taking holiday, I think that's what they call it over there. Um they're not they're not worried about tickets, they're not worried about a feature release, like they know how to vacation and rest, but also get the work done when they're there. And I I don't I don't really feel that here. Like I came into this role and was trying to work 16 hour days. Like, I don't feel like I'm doing enough. I don't feel like I'm doing enough. And then my PM's gone for two weeks and he comes back for a week. I'm like, what should what should we be doing? Like, what's what's going on? Like, do you want to talk about this, this, this? We talk about like one thing. Oh, he has another two-week vacation. Um, we get five weeks of vacation. Like, I feel like for an American-based US-based company, that is insane to think about. Like, I haven't even taken a day yet because it's like I don't know what that feels like. And I know I had said it to you earlier too. Like, I'm a little under the weather. Um, I thought about taking a sick day tomorrow, but then in my head, like my US bit of brain, it's like, well, I can still answer Slack messages. What do I need to what do I need to do? But isn't it funny?

SPEAKER_00 24:36

When you said I'm thinking about taking a day off, my my response was like, Yeah, you should, you know, because you're not very well. And then you said, Yeah, but I'm at home. And and then we had the conversation around, you know, in the UK, I think we're somewhere between sort of the mainland Europe and and the US, where um we do just kind of get medicated up and and and go to work, and yeah, then you make other people ill, but it's the thing of you know, you're not wanting to look like you say, lazy or like a work ethic. But I don't think it's that at all. I think that, you know, I I hate to say it, and I I I say I hate to say it, I don't. You don't. I I think that the you know that the the the the mainland European um approach is is just like really healthy. Um, and I mean in the sense that you said like how can they be efficient? And I thought to myself, I think it's about like sustaining it forever, right? Is this sustainable? Um, and so you could get into things like you know, even employment rights, and that perhaps in the EU, because we know that you're probably going to be in the job for longer, there's not as much of a culture of like job hopping. You might then feel that, well, this needs to be sustainable because it's how you're kind of thinking of it, perhaps, you know.

SPEAKER_01 25:38

Well, uh I I think you bring up a good point there. Like in the US, we invented the term hustle culture. Yes, which is big in tech, right? As well. It's it's very big in tech. And it's big in tech because I think jobs in the economy dictated it to be that way. We are afraid every day that we're gonna lose our jobs. Now, it's not to be said that that's not everywhere, but at the same time, when the economy is so tanked, like over in Europe and everything, like people are it seems like they're pretty comfortable. Like, I'm gonna get a job, I'm gonna stay here. And it's cool, and like I get good benefits and it takes care of my family. Well, we we didn't, you know, everything is around the dollar here because we don't know if tomorrow we're not gonna get another dollar. So that that hustle culture was sort of grown out of that like scarcity and that like fear-mongering. And again, now I'll move into a job where I don't have that pace and I feel like I'm wrong. So there's like some trauma to it.

SPEAKER_00 26:43

That's it. I mean, I just as you were speaking, then I brought up this article in the background, um, which I remember because it was it's two years ago now, yeah, just over two years. Um, and I always sort of return to this because I don't think anything's changed since it was written. Um, it was this idea that maybe you know things were going to change. Um, and I mean it it is it there are certain, you know, I should try and maybe be devil's advocate a little bit that having been over in San Francisco like last week, um, you know, really the place that I think you you do associate it, whether it's TV shows like Silicon Valley and things like this, you associate it with kind of being the heart of the hustle culture. And but it but it also kind of sells you the um tells you and sells you the kind of meritocratic thing of like, well, they look at the great payoffs that could that are far more than you would be likely to get in Europe, but but also in a cultural way, kind of less likely to fit in in Europe. Um now, I mean for for you, I would say that that puts you in quite a good place, really, because you can have the perks of the European work uh way of you know work-life balance, which I will say, shout out to France, which again, but I will say that the law, I believe it's a law in France that actually forbids your boss from texting you outside of work hours.

SPEAKER_01 27:52

I wonder how that would work with like remote employees. Like, for example, if this was a similar policy in, let's say, the Netherlands, I have a different time, like my office hours are different. So, how do you navigate that?

SPEAKER_00 28:07

Yeah, that's that's a really good point. I mean, I it might it might be a good one for us to get, you know, one of our um uh we've had a few French developers on here, but but we actually did hear, I do, I do think, and we'll move on to some of the stories in a moment, but I did think about we had um uh Guillaume Leforge who came on uh from France and he and he said um working at Google, and he said that his his experience was that he said in in the US, sometimes he felt that because there's the culture to maybe stay longer hours, that then you know that that those times when you're kind of relaxing or not working kind of as hard, like naturally will will go up and like that. But he said in France, because we know that we've got this time to work, and then when I'm out of there, I'm out of there. He said, I'm not there to talk to my friends, I'm there to get my job done as quickly as I can, and in the time I've got. And I thought that's that's quite healthy, really. You know, there's yeah, leave work at work.

SPEAKER_01 28:56

I mean when you're in that window, you know. But and you can probably attest to this too, like working remote, it like there are ebbs and flows of when you're super, super busy and highly productive, and then there's days where you have no meetings on your calendar.

SPEAKER_00 29:14

Absolutely, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 29:15

And I think so I do give and take.

SPEAKER_00 29:17

Yeah, I think that's what it is as well. Because it's you know, right now it's 20 to 10 at night for me, or you know, uh 9:40. Um, I I I had to rephrase that because somebody said the other day that I said half one, and apparently that means 12:30 in Germany, but it means 1:30 in the UK. It's like this is I never even thought that was a thing. Yeah, you know, right now it's it's kind of 9:40 p.m. And I mean, you know, I've been able to take like a couple of hours, you know, spend some time with my daughter, come back and work, and then work into the night. And for me, that that kind of strange developers were strange anyway, right? We're all night owls, we all we we write code for fun, we're already kind of unusual to try and explain it to other people. So that flexibility is is good, I think.

SPEAKER_01 29:59

It takes a certain type of person to to do this job.

SPEAKER_00 30:02

So absolutely. Um, let's jump into this because I have actually seen the we've got the uh the state of CSS now. Oh my goodness. Yeah, I thought this was kind of extra interesting this year because you've seen this each year, and it's always like, okay, where where is CSS? What's new with it? For you know, we've obviously seen things like Flexbox and kind of the big things that have come along and kind of changed how we can finally center things. But in in the in the age of where everything is dominating, you know, or or is dominated by talk around AI and vibe coding and almost this idea that we abstract away writing code. I thought this was topical because I'd ask you when was the last time you wrote some CSS without autocompletion or copilot or anything helping you?

SPEAKER_01 30:50

Uh a very, a very long time. And I I honestly, this this is interesting that you bring this up. I had a conversation with um Adam from Tailwind that back at Laracon in Denver. So that was two years ago, you know. And what is one of the biggest things that most like vibe coding tools use? It's tailwind. So that's actually like I and I'm sure you remember when he was basically having to lay people off last year because of that. But they all all of the vibe coding tools, all of the AI tools suck at it, which is I again like one of the easiest things to do manually, and all of the documentation's there, but yet it's so poorly implemented by these models, like it boggles my mind. Like you'll vibe code a page out, and you're like, why is this one like component like just askewed from the center? Okay, hey, we need to center this div specifically, and then it shifts it to the other side of the center. Like, what the hell are you doing? I um I actually just ran into that yesterday because I'm I was building a site for a talk I'm doing in Dallas, and I had a terminal like emulator on the screen. I'm like, okay, I want to do like a little motion and animate it so it slides over and this other thing comes up. So it like drops the the other thing right on top of it. I'm like, no, I wanted you to move them both like parallel, same row, like put them next to each other. Gets about halfway, then it chops half of it off. I'm like, what do you not understand? Like of all the like CSS has been around forever, dude.

SPEAKER_00 32:30

Like, what is happening? You got me thinking though, that you know this idea that we say, like now, because we don't have to write code, it's all natural language, but it's not, it's kind of unnatural language. You're having to like this. I I heard I think I heard somebody saying, Um, if you treat AI as not just an uh a junior employee, but the the worst possible junior employee. Now I know that sounds like really, really critical, but it's kind of the idea that like anything that can go wrong will go wrong. Like if it could get it wrong, it probably will.

SPEAKER_01 32:59

It absolutely will. But that's that's that whole like this is why it's important to have a human in the loop, but it also is a testament to the more you understand about what you're trying to build, where like what lies in your knowledge base, the better you're going to be able to direct these tools. And I think that that's another thing people forget. Like, no, no person with zero coding experience is ever going to be able to build a website better than someone with several years. Because again, it's like it's it's a having a chef like direct someone to create a dish, or having someone off the street read instructions and have that same person create the dish. They're gonna come out wildly different, but that chef knows the subtleties and the nuance, the syntax, the specific outcome that they're expecting, and how to articulate that to the system. So that's again, huge. I'm always going to be a pro a proponent for human in the loop.

SPEAKER_00 33:58

So, yeah, definitely. And I mean, I think that's something that you know, um again at the very end, I think when we just um briefly talk about kind of what what some some of the work that you do at JetBrains and some of the work you've done before is kind of focused on because obviously everyone's developer advocates have different focuses, and yours is is definitely kind of video, but we'll come back to that. Um I mean, yeah, and I think just to sort of wrap that up, I think the uh the reason I wanted to just kind of focus in on a couple of these like top pain points of CSS, things that people have started using. I thought that for for you and I, people that have worked with you know kind of graphics video-based technology for a long time, the anchor point has been, I don't remember a time when the anchor point wasn't something that you could kind of set or move, and and it's a big part of how you then position things. Uh, simple point, if you make it two two times bigger, but the anchor point is in the top left-hand corner, that size only affects to the right hand side, doesn't it? Um in the middle, it affects everything. Now, the fact that that is a new feature in CSS is is always the thing that I feel like um we're chasing a little bit that the the trying to do the the effects or the techniques or the looks or whatever it is that we've seen somewhere else. Yeah, and we're trying to sort of hack CSS till we can do it and then hope that those features become real. Um I just thought of those of those lists, that list there that has is so useful. I love it. If you ever use the the that um has selector, it's brilliant, so useful. Um, target this thing that has something, like it's oh yeah, yeah, fantastic. Um but most people I'm speaking to haven't used it, and I think it's because um you don't need to a lot of the time. The the the AI will fill in that gap and it knows from the docs that this is now baseline, and so you never really do the learning. Would you say that sums up oh totally, totally?

SPEAKER_01 35:47

I I think it you know, again, people someone say I've been hearing this term a lot lately is people don't know wanna don't want to know how the sausage is made.

SPEAKER_00 35:58

Yeah, yeah. I think that's a US phrase, but I really like it whenever I hear that, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 36:02

Yeah, yeah. Um, and I mean this again is exactly it. Like, they don't want to understand how the animation works in CSS, they just want it to work. So if I tell something like I want to have a flashing modal uh like go from left to right across the div or whatever, like I want to see it, I I don't necessarily need to know how that was created. And you know, I I think again, like this is where we kind of are doing ourselves a disservice, but that's also why people that know how to do it are going to be indispensable.

SPEAKER_00 36:37

Do you know that that is a really great way to sum it up, actually, because you know, I would say Chris, he's obviously not here, like he's a whiz with CSS in terms of the things that he can do, though they're things you you didn't even know existed, you know, and they're they're just years and years of being a browser maker and understanding the quirks of of the of in detail. AI will never really be able to replace that, and that that nuance is the thing that says, you know, is ultimately how you make decisions, you know, because you're saying, well, that's good until it's not, and it's knowing that that reason. Um, so this here is just a little uh site that I'm gonna I'm gonna hide the fact that I've got it on a local host 5173, which is really weird. Um didn't even notice. But fake on news, we we play this game each week and we uh try we've got a load of headlines for you, some of which are real, some of which aren't. I genuinely think it's hard, it's probably harder to come up with headlines that don't sound crazy, and so you just don't know if they're real or not, um, even when they aren't.

SPEAKER_01 37:36

And I win a hundred dollars per question I get right, correct?

SPEAKER_00 37:39

Yes, pay for the Chris.

SPEAKER_01 37:41

I'm pretty sure that's what he told me.

SPEAKER_00 37:43

Funded by JetBrains. Thanks for that, guys. Uh yeah. Um and so what we've got is uh 12 headlines for you. And over here, you'll see if anyone remembers the TV show things like uh Top Gear and stuff like this, they used to have a guest on every week and they would have them go around the track and they would uh it was racing cars, go around the track, see how fast they could do it. And then it was like, Can you do this faster than last week's guest who was some famous person? So I thought, who's more famous than Jason Torres in the world of tech?

SPEAKER_01 38:15

Come on, man.

SPEAKER_00 38:15

So come on. With that being said, we're gonna jump straight into fake or news. Now I am actually gonna play the little teaser just because it's uh it's funny.

SPEAKER_01 38:25

And I'm contestant zero. I am contestant zero. I am the first one.

SPEAKER_00 38:30

You are the very first one to use this. Uh we have played the game on the show before, but you're the first one who's actually gonna have the scores kept and that you'll be on the leaderboard. Amazing.

SPEAKER_01 38:39

So I will be in first place for another determined amount of time. Let's go.

SPEAKER_00 38:44

So, with that, you're gonna try and guess if the headlines that I show you are real or not. Let's play fake on news. Uh, you've got 12 headlines to try and guess if they're real or if they're not. And over to you. We can discuss them before you guess it as well, and then I'll plot your answers and we'll go on to the next question.

SPEAKER_01 39:09

You want to uh zoom? Oh no, this is good, size. I thought it was gonna be small fun. All right. I thought I had.

SPEAKER_00 39:14

Okay, Google back to researchers seek transform uh seek to transform retired phones into connected data centers.

SPEAKER_02 39:20

News.

SPEAKER_00 39:22

You're convinced that.

SPEAKER_02 39:23

I'm convinced that it's news.

SPEAKER_00 39:25

Let's look. And the real answer is it's news. Yes. Okay, strong start. All right, next one. Question two. I will say, Jason, before we carry on, you've got a streak at the bottom. Uh obviously, you've got a streak of one, no pressure, don't let it drop. A London judge says a witness was being coached in real time through smart glasses.

SPEAKER_01 39:45

News.

SPEAKER_00 39:46

Have you heard about it or just think it sounds real?

SPEAKER_01 39:49

No, I that totally sounds a lot of these things sound super plausible. That first one I heard like an adjacent story, so I was like, okay. Uh, I'm saying news.

SPEAKER_00 39:59

Yeah, I'm gonna say that the London bit as well. You know, I know what Brits are like and he was too cheap. It's oh, it's wrong. It's not news. I would have been convinced that was real. Convinced. Dang. It's carrying on. Question three. Elderly lottery winner uses jackpot to build a 288 million pounds drug empire making pills from his cottage. This sounds very British, doesn't it? Uh I I'm gonna say fake. Let's have a look. We never know, never know anymore. Let's have a look. Oh, it's actually news. Oh my!

SPEAKER_01 40:36

Outrageous stories.

SPEAKER_00 40:38

Yeah, I believe the man was in his 80s, and that is exactly what he did. He started an empire with his 288 million uh with his jackpot. Yeah, it's not really what you think of when people say, What would you do if you won the lottery? You don't think of that.

SPEAKER_01 40:52

But I'm gonna now yeah.

SPEAKER_00 40:54

Uh number four, X rolled out a mandatory local agent to their developers that tracks all employee work, and it's called Ailon.

SPEAKER_01 41:03

I'm gonna go with fake on that one. Is it the name? Because it's get yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's clever. I'm ending this call if that's serious, though.

SPEAKER_00 41:13

Yeah, I'm with you on that, actually. We'll just do correct. It's fake. Okay, it's fake. That is good. All right, number five. Uh, fungal electronics is a family of living electronic devices made of mycelium-bound composites or pure mycelium. So, like mushrooms, effectively. Fungal electronics is a family of living electronic devices. Does that sound real?

SPEAKER_01 41:36

I'm gonna go with fake, Daniel.

SPEAKER_00 41:39

I've got a horrible feeling because I think that when it comes to mushrooms, they they can eat fast. You believe it's it's actually new.

SPEAKER_01 41:47

Oh my god. I come to find out I'm terrible at this game. I mean, my record is going to last nil.

SPEAKER_00 41:55

No, what I will say is that um, if you do well on this game, then you know we have questions about you because uh the headlines are it's it's really hard to tell what's real and what isn't anymore. Um smart ring monitor oh the smart ring monitors health and provides real-time medical advice.

SPEAKER_01 42:15

I will say news. Um I I don't know if it's the latest aura. My wife has an Aura 4. You give advice. I'm pretty sure it has an AI thing built into the app now that does do advice.

SPEAKER_00 42:30

So I'm saying interesting.

SPEAKER_01 42:32

So look. Oh, Faye.

SPEAKER_00 42:34

Oh my um I think it's technical advice. I that would be risky, right?

SPEAKER_01 42:39

I yeah, I mean, she still defers to Chat GPT. So even though there is an AI agent in like baked into the app, she's still defaulting to Chat GPT to ask it questions in regards to results. So I I guess that's how I looked at it, is that it's built in that she could get the advice. But anyway. I'm an idiot. On to number going.

SPEAKER_00 43:02

I know you're doing well. I actually think maybe the the leaderboard should be an inverse leaderboard. The fewer that you get right, the more sane you are. Um Boger King will use AI to check if employees say please and thank you. Oh my god.

SPEAKER_01 43:14

See, actually, I feel like that's news.

SPEAKER_00 43:16

I feel like it could be, you know.

SPEAKER_01 43:18

I believe, I believe that one.

SPEAKER_00 43:20

Hmm. Correct, yes. Okay. We're back in the game. We've got three out of seven. On fire. Yes. Uh a rare look inside the durability lab where Apple tortures its product.

SPEAKER_01 43:32

The word tortures is strange, but I mean, I I would say news to that. I've I've seen videos, I've seen footage of like the testing on iPhones and stuff like that, like drop tests. They have to do stuff through there. Like, how do they know it can last uh 20 to 40,000 keystrokes on one of their keyboards?

SPEAKER_00 43:51

And you're correct. You're correct. Yeah. I I can see that. I think the word torches through me because I thought it sounds like a clickbait thing, but yeah, yeah, I suppose it makes sense. Um number nine then. So tiny robots use sound to self-organize into intelligent groups.

SPEAKER_01 44:08

See this now now. I'm like, all right, I went two. I'm getting confident again. You're gonna try to knock me down a peg. I'm gonna say, I'm gonna say fake, but I feel like it now I feel like I'm wrong. What do you what do you think?

SPEAKER_00 44:23

I think fake.

SPEAKER_01 44:24

Okay, let's do it.

SPEAKER_00 44:25

Let's let it ride. Oh, son of a beast ding. I will say, on previous episodes, I have said whatever I guess, just go for the opposite. So I should have probably told you that.

SPEAKER_01 44:35

Yeah, I should have asked you first. That's my bad.

SPEAKER_00 44:38

Uh audit tools updated to flag vibecode after unusual bug patterns emerge. So they will flag it as being vibe coded.

SPEAKER_01 44:46

I mean, that sounds like an awesome is that in like the browser tools. I'm gonna say fake. I'm gonna say fake.

SPEAKER_00 44:54

Yeah, it sounds like maybe there's a lot of things.

SPEAKER_01 44:57

I just don't think it it's it exists yet. I think it would be awesome, but I also think that uh which I mean I do this first hand. I will take something that I start vibe coded on like bolt or lovable and then drop it into my IDE, build it out, and remove a bunch of like the proprietary stuff that they bake in.

SPEAKER_00 45:17

So I don't mean to rush you on this one. Sorry, scientists discover a way to charge phone batteries using body heat. Some of you need that's I feel that this is unfair. This is rigged. Yeah, this is rigged. We're not having that.

SPEAKER_01 45:33

Whoever built this should be fired.

SPEAKER_00 45:36

Uh number 12. We've got AI researchers discover a method to slow down aging, which I think is spelt wrong. Uh, aging in human cells by 30%. Hmm. I need some of that because I've aged a lot in the last year.

SPEAKER_01 45:48

I could definitely use some of that. Um gonna say fake. 30% is throwing me off. That feels very drastic.

SPEAKER_00 45:57

It does. You're right. I'm with you on that.

SPEAKER_01 45:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 46:00

It's yes, yes. There we go.

SPEAKER_01 46:03

Like three to seven percent. I could see. Like I could realistically see that.

SPEAKER_00 46:08

Yeah, I know what you mean. 30. It would be we would hear about this every day, you know. Um, let's see how you did on the leaderboard, Jason. Where could you possibly be in the running? See all the guests. You're first. This is crazy, Jason. You are first. How could you do it? That's amazing.

SPEAKER_01 46:26

Uh well, I'd I'd like to thank my family and um the man upstairs. And by the man upstairs, I mean our neighbor.

unknown 46:33

Please.

SPEAKER_00 46:34

I was gonna say, keep it down. You live in it, you live in an apartment. Yeah, an apartment blog.

SPEAKER_01 46:38

I'm in a flat, I'm in a flat, and there's a guy up there. No, I'm uh I love it. Oh, actually, you're upstairs with me right now. Yeah, you could have done that.

SPEAKER_00 46:44

Yeah, I I did think that. Hey, Jason, I know you've got a hard exit to to hit in about one minute, and you've got a uh a busy life, busy job, and you've got your family as well. So I appreciate your time. Um I appreciate your time, my friend. Will we be seeing you in September, or can we wrangle it, or who do I need to call at JetBrains to make sure that you can come to the We Are Developers World Congress, North America in September.

SPEAKER_01 47:04

Oh gosh, I would love to make it there. I think anybody that has the ability to jump through uh San Jose, California at the end of September should. Um big shout out to We Are Developers here there. Great. Um, I will be in uh Dallas at Commit Your Code at the beginning of December uh September. Then I will be at KC DC the following week uh with a bunch of my team. And uh hopefully I will also see you guys at We Are Developers World Congress North America September 23rd through 25th.

SPEAKER_00 47:37

Look at that, he's doing the adverts for me. Do you know what? On that note, I'm just gonna edit you doing, I'll edit this in, you can do the advert for me, and I'll just say like Jason said.

SPEAKER_01 47:45

Ditto.

SPEAKER_00 47:47

I just want to say thanks again for your time. Loved having you on live. We're definitely going to be doing this again and maybe in your time zone next time or or near to it.

SPEAKER_01 47:54

It's always a pleasure to get to hang out with you, man.

SPEAKER_00 47:57

And you take care, mate. All right, I'll see you soon. All right, bye.