Code with Jason
Code with Jason
284 - Josef Strzibny, Author of Deployment from Scratch and the Kamal Handbook
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
In this episode I talk with Josef Strzibny about his books Deployment from Scratch and Kamal Handbook, the economics of info products in the Ruby space, his new project Lake AI, and his road trip through the Balkans. We also compare driving cultures across Europe and the US.
Links:
A Snail‑Mail Newsletter For Developers
SPEAKER_02Hey, it's Jason, host of the Code with Jason podcast. You're a developer. You like to listen to podcasts. You're listening to one right now. Maybe you like to read blogs and subscribe to email newsletters and stuff like that. Keep in touch. Email newsletters are a really nice way to keep on top of what's going on in the programming world. Except they're actually not. I don't know about you, but the last thing that I want to do after a long day of staring at the screen is sit there and stare at the screen some more. That's why I started a different kind of newsletter. It's a snail mail programming newsletter. That's right, I send an actual envelope in the mail containing a paper newsletter that you can hold in your hands. You can read it on your living room couch, at your kitchen table, in your bed, or in someone else's bed. And when they say, What are you doing in my bed? You can say, I'm reading Jason's newsletter. What does it look like? You might wonder what you might find in this snail mail programming newsletter. You can read about all kinds of programming topics like object-oriented programming, testing, DevOps, AI. Most of it's pretty technology agnostic. You can also read about other non-programming topics like philosophy, evolutionary theory, business, marketing, economics, psychology, music, cooking, history, geology, language, culture, robotics, and farming. The name of the newsletter is Nonsense Monthly. Here's what some of my readers are saying about it. Helmut Kobler from Los Angeles says thanks much for sending the newsletter. I got it about a week ago and read it on my sofa. It was a totally different experience than reading it on my computer or iPad. It felt more relaxed, more meaningful, something special and out of the ordinary. I'm sure that's what you were going for, so just wanted to let you know that you succeeded. Looking forward to more. Drew Bragg from Philadelphia says Nonsense Monthly is the only newsletter I deliberately set aside time to read. I read a lot of great newsletters, but there's just something about receiving a piece of mail, physically opening it, and sitting down to read it on paper that is just so awesome. Feels like a lost luxury. Chris Sonnier from Dickinson, Texas says, just finished reading my first nonsense monthly snail mail newsletter and truly enjoyed it. Something about holding a physical piece of paper that just feels good. Thank you for this. Can't wait for the next one. Dear listener, if you would like to get letters in the mail from yours truly every month, you can go sign up at nonsensemonthly dot com. That's nonsensemonthly.com. I'll say it one more time nonsense monthly dot com. And now without further ado, here is today's episode.
SPEAKER_01Hello, Jason. Long time no see.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, long time no see. You've been on the show before, but it's been uh multiple years at this point, I think.
Deployment From Scratch: Philosophy And Scope
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I think I was just when I released deployment from scratch, and uh that was still fresh, but uh now like uh just a quick update from that time. Uh I crossed like 50,000 uh gram uh in revenue from that book. So uh it was still selling. I mean it's not like uh some best-selling book ever, but it's it's doing well.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, 50,000 bucks, that's nothing to sneeze at. Um and since then you've done other stuff too. What have you done since then?
SPEAKER_01I think people probably noticed I wrote Kamal Handbook, which was a very different approach from the first book. Um I was uh at the time in Palavan in the Philippines, and I was working on something that um never seen the light in the world. Like um it was a startup, but I didn't release it. Um and then I had like one month left, so I thought I need some kind of like um a little win, you know, like uh to finish something, because I was not like gonna finish in one month. And at the time I was using Camal, uh there were some clients I already helped with Camal, you know. There were some interest, it looked like a trend, some people had problems um trying camal and getting it up and running. So I thought to myself, why camel couldn't have a book? I mean it's a very small tool, but why not? You know? Like why not? And I could probably do it in a couple of weeks. So I set myself to do like write it just in five weeks, like full time, but just five weeks, and simply do that.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And and actually did very very well. Now the number of cells is basically the same for both books. It's like 1300 something.
SPEAKER_02So pretty good. Yeah. Nice. And we should maybe back up a second for the benefit of the listener. What is deployment from scratch? What's that book all about?
SPEAKER_01So the the thought for that book was uh basically if I would retitle it, it would be Linux for web developers. So basically, all those Linux books that I learned um during my you know Linux career or whatever, like how Linux works and so on, but just specifically made for web developers. So not teaching you Samba or some other technology you don't need, but basically really like processes, web servers, email, all that stuff. But the idea was not to pick uh any tool. So there's no Kubernetes, there is no Doku, there is no nothing. It was just like bash and how to do it yourself. The idea wasn't that people necessarily will do it that way. It was more like to understand how it works, and then they will pick a tool that they actually like.
SPEAKER_02I see. Interesting. That actually has renewed my interest in the book. I I don't remember if I bought it or not, but if I haven't, I should. Um I recently bought this book. I'm looking at it on my shelf right now. Unix and Linux System Administration. It's sideways and it's far away, so I can't read it, but something like that, you know. Um I recently started a new job, and it's a lot of like stuff where you would want to know Linux pretty well. And I'm like, okay, I kind of know Linux, but I don't know it that well, so I wanted to like bone up on my Linux knowledge. It sounds like your book is maybe a good resource for that.
What Kamal Is And Why It’s Simple
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it should be a good start for that because I personally believe that even if you don't self-host, you should really know how your application will run, but because you are the author basically of the application. So I think there should be some level of knowledge that you should probably acquire, or it will help you understand some things, you know. So, yeah, that was the motivation.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and then Kamal, let's talk about that a second. First of all, I always want to pronounce it wrong. My mind got totally fucked up by the 2024 election because you know there's Kamala Harris. Uh her her name looks like it should be pronounced Kamala. Everybody wants to say Kamala, you know, but it's it's not Kamala, it's Kamala. And then I see Kamal, and I'm like, oh, it's not Kamal, it's Kamal. But it's like, no, it's not Kamal, it's Kamal. Anyway, Kamal. Let's talk about that. What what is Kamal? I'm familiar with it, but if anybody hasn't hasn't heard about it, what is it?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, there were actually more people picking up this name with Kamala, I think. Like I also noticed it. It was inevitable. And I think a lot of people like the original name, like Mersk, like the Mersk uh reference to the shipping company. But maybe there was some copyright issues or something.
SPEAKER_02I didn't even realize. Is it like that big Danish shipping company or something?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I didn't put that together. I bet a lot of people didn't put that together.
SPEAKER_01It would be even harder to pronounce because you don't know how to really pronounce it, you know, because it's just like four letters, but it was kind of cool. But yeah, they they they rebranded. So Kamal is like a very small deploy tool. If uh if you would know Capistrano, it's basically Capistrano for the container era. So it's still written in Ruby, although you don't need Ruby to use it. You can use it from a Docker uh Docker container. And uh then it would do your deploy. It would actually call all these like Docker Run and other Docker commands for you. So uh very similar in uh in philosophy to these simple simple tools. Because on the other hand, you have like maybe the wall path system, like platform as a service, you know, uh, when they do much more for you. But Kamal is really deployment. Yeah, it can also bootstrap servers with Docker, so there's always overlap. But it at the core is really uh simple to the point tool, I would say. That brings your application, like it it builds the application with Docker, either locally or remotely, on some build server, and then it would uh push the application to the repository and then insect servers to pull from the repository to the servers and run it.
Indie Books, Revenue Reality, And Freelancing
SPEAKER_02Okay. Um I want to I want to ask you about some totally different topics. Um so you have these these products that you put out, these books, um, and it sounds like they've done pretty well. You know, it's it's not like you're making millions of dollars or something like that. Um but it's it's not nothing. And you also do you do freelance development, is that right?
SPEAKER_01Uh yes, although I didn't do as much. Like uh I left my big uh big role at Frace, like it would be already now like two years, I think. So I only did uh freelancing for clients that actually reach out to me like themselves. I wasn't I wasn't finding or looking for uh for something. Uh so I kind of survived both on the yeah, on the freelancing gigs and and the book incomes. As you say, it's not much. I don't think you can really like do it as a career unless you want to write a book every month or something. It's it's really tough. I mean, you have a book, so you can also mention how that's going. Yeah. And you probably know that it's not not so easy, and also our Ruby space is quite small. So I would say there's a lot of benefits to it. Like it's very cool. I was in Bangkok, I went to a local Ruby meetup, and not only I found people that know me because of my book, but there was already one that also bought it, right? Like he was a customer basically. And now I'm doing this road trip, and actually I met Dino, which is like a Rails developer from Bosnia, and he also bought my book, you know. And then I flew from Bosnia and he took me for amazing dinner in Animal Star, and so you have experiences like that. But you won't really build like a big career on that, I think. Yeah, maybe if you choose topic, I don't know.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, interesting. Um, yeah, that's been my experience. Um I put out my most recent book. So I've I've written a series of like ebooks, kind of the same ebook repeatedly, just like I rewrote it and tried to make a better version each time. And then the most recent version, it's called uh professional rails testing. I put that out in October 2024. Um, and it's it's it's in print. You can buy it on Amazon in print. Oh, that's right. Yeah, and that's been pretty cool. Like I went to Rubiconf in 2024, and there was actually like multiple people there who had brought their copy of the book and they wanted me to sign it. Um, and I I like to sign the books with insults, so I would sign the book and be like, fuck you, Steve, or or whatever. Um, but that was cool to see people like bring the book and ask me to sign it. I I I felt kind of famous.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah. And that's very original the way you do it. But if you if you think about it, you usually have not much space in the luggage. So if someone actually brings your book, it's like a big compliment, I would say.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah, it was a big compliment. Um, and then I've had that experience not just at that particular conference, but other places too. But the the number of books that I've sold is not very many. It's like definitely in the hundreds, it's definitely less than a thousand. And I just checked my sales stats for July. As we speak, it's July 24th, 2025. So far in July, I've sold three copies. So the sales have really tapered off.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, but I think it's also summer. I mean, in general, you're right, it will go down. It's in the inevitable. Basically, all the spikes are like some releases, right? So I had spikes when there was like Kamal Handbook first edition, and then unfortunately for me, but also fortunately, Kamal released version two, which was a lot different. I had to rework the book, which was annoying, but I could have a new launch.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it gives you a reason to do another launch.
SPEAKER_01I also had uh a new spike for that, but yeah, as you say, it will go down, and now even during summer it's even worse, I would say just happening in general.
The Tough Economics Of Info Products
SPEAKER_02Um yeah, so I was like I was thinking I was on the path to doing like some kind of info product business, um, but I never at least not yet, I've I've never figured that out. Um I I did the math. Like at one point in time I had like somewhere between two and three thousand subscribers. I still have that number of subscribers. Um, and I'm like, okay, I get so many new subscribers per year. If I have a product for a certain price at a certain conversion rate, I'd need this many new subscribers per year. And as far as I can think, there's just kind of no way for the math to work out. Like, for example, if you have a product that's like 500 bucks, like say some kind of course or something like that, um, I think a fairly typical conversion rate for that is like one percent. Like, if you have a 1% conversion rate, like that's pretty good. Um, could be even less than that, but like 1% is like not it's not low. Um, so and I I forget how many subscribers I would get per year, maybe like 600 or something like that. So one percent conversion rate on five hundred bucks, that means uh a subscriber is on average worth five bucks. So six hundred subscribers times five bucks, that's the same as three hundred times ten, that's three thousand bucks. Is that right? Because that seems seems like I'm missing a zero or something like that. But even if I'm off by ten and it's thirty thousand bucks, like that's not much at all. I'd have to like 10x and more my my um my subscription rate, and it's like I don't see where that's gonna come from. Because like the uh the Ruby Weekly newsletter, last I checked, it had like 40,000 some subscribers, and that's been around for like 10 years, and it's like you're probably not gonna outdo Ruby Weekly anytime soon, you know? So it's like if that's kind of the ceiling, then it's like shit, like I don't know if this is really viable. And I look around for other examples of like people who are making a living entirely off of Rails Info products, and there's like maybe Chris Oliver with Go Rails and stuff, but there's not a lot of examples. So I'm like, hmm, is this really a viable path? Maybe I don't want to say definitely not, but I'm not sure that I want to like totally bank on it either.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah. I was always thinking that maybe if I would be more like, I don't know, JavaScript-centric, you know, you would at least have this uh idea that it can grow. Now, obviously it would be much harder because when you think about it, like Kamal Handbook is basically a monopoly, right? And when people know my numbers, it's very hard to even like start to compete because like uh if you are second when everybody already bought my book, then you will get maybe 10% of that. It it it is nonsense, you know. So I don't really have competition in that way, but I the market is small. So like um what can you do, you know? Um so as you say, maybe a few people, maybe I don't know, like on one hand, you could probably count some people, but and some of them actually I think they combine it with consulting or or they still have jobs, you know.
Building A CI Product And First Customer
SPEAKER_02Um yeah, a lot of the people who seem to be doing great from the outside, you like talk with them privately, and it turns out they're not making that much money. It's like, oh, that's that's surprising. Um, but I've had enough of those interactions uh to to stop assuming when I see somebody who appears to be doing great to stop uh assuming they're just making money hand over fist. Um because they're often they're often not. Um so I've like taken a different path. I still I still do all kinds of writing all the time. Like I have a weekly emails newsletter and I have a monthly uh snail mail newsletter, excuse me. Um and I still work on new books and stuff like that because I kind of just can't help myself. Um so I work on those things even if I don't expect anything from it. Um I've been searching for like a viable SAS product idea. I don't know about specifically SaaS, but like some kind of product that can that can be more than just a book launch or something like that. Something that can be like instead of a base hit, something that can be a home run kind of a thing. I've been looking for that kind of thing for like 15 plus years. I I started in 2008. That's that's when I started trying to figure this out. And I've cycled through a bunch of ideas. Um but around I don't know, the late 2010s, I had the idea to do a CI product, but I thought it was like too ambitious. And I had that idea, and then GitHub Actions came out, and I was like, well, this is pointless because everybody's just gonna use GitHub Actions, and anything I could do, GitHub Actions could just replicate it with all their resources. But then the years went on and GitHub Actions never got any better. And in fact, I think GitHub Actions is just honestly really bad. And the other tools like CircleCI and GitLab, Jenkins, like all those tools, they're just they're just awful, frankly. Um and also Chat GPT came out, specifically Chat GPT 4, and I'm like, okay, like I'm so frustrated with these other tools, let me just give this a try and see how far I can get. And so I I did end up building something, and I have it working. Um, and now I'm working on getting customers for that. I I recently got my first paying customer. Technically, he he he gave me some money, you know. He he gave me one single payment through Venmo, but he still has to like convince the rest of his team and his boss to use it for real and stuff like that. So it's it's not totally in the bag yet. So I'm still working toward getting my first like real paying customer who sticks with it.
Rethinking Blogging With AI Tools
SPEAKER_01Yeah, well, still congratulations. Thanks. Uh you are one half customer um uh in front of me because I think we are we had the same. Like uh I'm building products basically since basic school. Obviously, most of them never had a pay button, so you couldn't really tell if it could go anywhere. I certainly built some things or released some stuff that didn't really care, and then I see some other person do it, you know, and have uh have a success. And uh even like yeah, like maybe 10 years ago, I thought maybe I'll just do a CRM or something like that, you know, like something that you saw everywhere, and then you were like, oh well, but they are these big players, but it's always the same. I think I think you just have to ignore it and simply just do it, you know.
SPEAKER_02I'm not sure. I I mean maybe you're right, but I'm not sure. Because like there has to be an answer, I think there has to be an answer to the question of like why would I use this product instead of some other product?
SPEAKER_01Oh, absolutely. But uh as you said with um GitLab, uh GitHub, uh yeah, I I think I like it the most out of all the others, simply because at least it's like in GitHub already and like it looks the same or something. But as you say, they never really innovated. I I felt the same. There wasn't much changes or anything, uh no other look at it. And uh it's also similar for me. Like uh now I I was thinking actually what the what I should be doing, and because at the very least I have my books to promote, you know, I write blog posts and so on. And uh a long time ago I used WordPress, then I switched completely to static building, you know, like every developer basically nowadays. And then I was like, well, maybe I want to do more blocks, like every product should have a blog or something like that, and I want to again manage it more more insane way. I don't want to go back to WordPress. So I'm trying to figure out also with this Resort AI tools uh a different way how I could actually manage to write more, have more blocks, but at the same time, still like uh for it to be my writing, right? There are this tool that just generates some articles. I I don't think that's maybe that's temporarily working, but I think once we are over it, people will want again like uh other people's experiences and so on. May I may be wrong, some some logging is that, but uh uh we'll see. We'll see.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I read things that are generated by AI, but if I'm gonna read something that's generated by AI, I want to read a response to my specific question, you know? Yeah, if if I go and I find like it if if you can tell that the article was written by AI, it's just like such a turn off for some reason. Um so yeah, I I haven't even tried because I find that like anytime I let AI touch any of my writing, I'm just like so unhappy with it. Even if it's just a small modification, it's just like uh this is like not right anymore. Because kind of like every sentence and every word counts.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I'm actually using it like for corrections. I mean, originally already with my first book with Grammarly Pro, basically, they had like the first solid product in that space, I would say. But even with the corrections, you know, you thought like, okay, then I went like three times through it, like should be correct, no? And then people write me, you know. Joseph, I I like the book, but uh there were so many, so many grammar mistakes.
SPEAKER_02Same with mine.
SPEAKER_01I was like, damn.
Lake AI: Vision, Branding, And Early Blogs
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah, and AI's better now. I should take my book and just drop the PDF in the Claude and say, like, hey, fix all the mistakes and give me the file back. Um anyway, I wanted to ask you. I I saw a tweet of yours. This is kind of what prompted me to reach out to you. Um, I think you know, you share the photos of the like beautiful places that you visit sometimes, and I'm always so envious. Um, but this one was from Albania where you currently are, and I think it said something like building a startup, blah blah blah. I'm like, oh hmm, building a startup. Um were you just referring to the books and stuff, or is there something else you're working on, also?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah. So that's what I'm uh telling you. Like it uh it's basically some kind of um blogging replacement for WordPress, although it would probably do way more than that. So I don't want to really frame it as a blogging platform, but uh for now, you know that's the part I kind of started with. So it will help me to write blog. Um not just for I will also replace my technical blog, but I want to um go back to writing for uh my travels and also some other interest, you know. I want to do a little bit more, so I thought I need to manage it a little bit differently uh than just with static tools. And then I'm experimenting with um I will write the blogs, you know, some of them maybe uh AI can uh help you to also generate text, but maybe fix something, you can have your own actions. You can then uh, for example, take the blog and like like take block inside that post and uh make a new blog post based on some idea, then translate it. It will be like kind of flow that will that will make it easy to create more content than you would otherwise would be able to do as a solo person or a small team. Uh so it's still yeah, there is no uh no really public version. I'm still working on it. It's called Lake AI, uh for those that uh want to know the name.
SPEAKER_02Um is there a is is there anything out publicly yet that people can go visit?
SPEAKER_01Basically, no. Uh even the landing is not really well done or anything. But the blocks uh are live. So those four blocks. Like um, I started a new one for indie live when I want to share some like things about books, like the numbers and so on. Um so that's one. Uh also the the the book that we're not from scratch uh has a block now that also runs on Lake Key. So those are like the first kind of uh blogs I'm running. But um the original idea, even like before blogs, was actually about branding in a way, because I had like uh some assets for the books, you know. I had like this uh cat drawing or something for the first one, then I was trying to make the covers for the second and the third. So I was thinking it more like um from the bird's eyes perspective perspective, oh okay, I'm building like this brand, so I want to like put whatever I have already, maybe fix it, maybe improve it, because some of my assets are very low, low quality. So like you can you know uh use AI to kind of uh fi fix the Resolution of the image or something like that. And then you will write a blog post, then you can uh also generate the open graph images in in that style of uh of the branding you have. You know, that was kind of the idea, like to connect these bits and pieces together.
SPEAKER_02I see. Okay. Um different question. We we mentioned your travels. Um how long have you been? Well, just tell me tell me about your life. How do you live life? Um are you like full-time on the road, or is this just like a road trip that you're doing, then you're gonna gonna go back home, or what's what's your situation?
SPEAKER_01So when I quit uh phrase, I also left my apartment in Prague where I was living. Uh because I wanted to travel more again to Southeast Asia, which I did. Um, and then I'm usually also some months in Europe, you know, to meet friends, to meet family. And then I was again in Southeast Asia, you know, and again back. And uh I actually bought a car in that uh in that time, and so I thought I would change it up and instead of flying all the time, I will do a road trip. So it's basically the biggest road trip of my of my life. And I'm just doing like this Balkans area, roughly, you know, like this big circle or whatever it will be. And uh yeah, it's very different travel, it's kind of fun. Obviously, I now have one worry, extra worry about the car. Right. Yeah, and I I need to always find parking. So, like, it's on one hand, you are extremely flexible, and you can also take more things. So, for example, I took this microphone, right? I thought like, oh, I will record a podcast. And I didn't know like uh if uh if I will be recording really, but I could take it, you know, because it's a car. So that's kind of fun, but then the reality also is like finding parking in every place, and um yeah, with uh paid parking, it's easier. Obviously, maybe you can just say okay, I will always pay and just put in some sense of location, and that's fine. If you try to find free parking, which I was able to find in in Bosnia, for example, in in Saraivo, then it's a bit harder, but it's sometimes it's possible. So I always research the place. Um yeah, for example, now I'm in Vora, so I thought I don't want to worry about anything, and I book a hotel with free parking, so my car is just next to me.
SPEAKER_02And what kind of car did you get? Is it a Volkswagen?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I I got uh the latest uh Volkswagen Golf. It's uh just uh just the regular one, it's not GTI, although that would be probably nice, but uh yeah, it's just the just the regular one.
SPEAKER_02Nice, automatic or manual?
SPEAKER_01It's automatic, um mostly because when you are in big traffic, uh it's just not enjoyable to to drive manual. Uh one time I rented uh a Porsche Cabrio in Greece, uh like manual, and uh I found some roads that were kind of empty, and that was a lot of fun. Uh that that's that that that's the way you can enjoy manual, but I don't think like for regular driving, like in the in the cities and so on, you would really enjoy it. So like yeah.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah, that's a good point. Where I live, there's never any traffic, and so that would be that would be more enjoyable, but I don't drive a stick, I drive a uh pickup truck, so it's it's not even nearly the same thing. Someday I want to get a fun car, but not not now.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, well, pickup trucks are like very typical in Americano or so idea.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I think I've only seen a pickup truck in Europe like twice.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it's very rare. And you know, I almost bought a coupé because obviously I love coupe design, but I just don't think it's a practical car, you know, especially for maybe if I'm in the US. But here we have a lot of roads where only like two small cars, like two goats, can actually like pass each other without like problems. Uh there are wider roads, but there are a lot of roads like this, and even during the parking in on my on my trip, I park in some uh situations where if I have a coop coop, I cannot open the door, you know, like because the door is longer. So if you are just so close to the wall, like on a house or something, you just won't open it, you know. Okay. And have to find some other parking place.
SPEAKER_02And how does driving between countries work in Europe? Like I assume you just have your license from um Czech Republic, and uh you you just you don't have to do anything, you just like go into the other country, and since you have a license from somewhere, it's it's good in that other country too?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, basically, we are a bit lucky because in EU you can obviously drive anywhere and it's just easy. You know, you can even stay there and find work or whatever. And for uh all these Balkan countries, I go through, they're actually like EU candidate countries, you know. And um, yeah, I can use the use the driving license like without any issues. You do have to stop for the borders here. There are borders still, not like in EU. So sometimes there can be queue, sometimes you are lucky and there is no queue, you know. It's not um I wouldn't say it's too bad because now it's high season, like the most amount of cars, and only once I kind of had to wait maybe two hours, but otherwise it was super fast.
SPEAKER_02Okay.
SPEAKER_01And obviously, for me, like when they see me, they just let me pass. But I sometimes have to wait for other people in line. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Got it. Yeah, a a Europe road trip is definitely in the uh it's it's on the wish list for me and my family. Um, so I was kind of curious how that works.
SPEAKER_01There's one, there's there are some differences between like let's say Central Europe or some other parts of the EU and um and Balkans. So one is um in highways. So for us, we just buy vignettes, which you can do now online. So it's super easy because before the trip you just buy all the vignettes and then just go. What is it that you buy? Uh like a permit to drive on highways.
SPEAKER_02Oh, okay.
SPEAKER_01Like one day, two days, ten days, or yearly. Usually in your country, maybe you have yearly, you you pay. Only Germany is free, but other countries you have to like uh pay.
unknownOkay.
SPEAKER_02Maybe it's the equivalent of of like the toll roads we have here or something like that.
SPEAKER_01That's what I want to say. And here they have toll roads where you have to actually like come, take a ticket, you know, queue up, take a ticket, then drive, and then at the end you have to pay the ticket, you know. So you queue again, pay the ticket. For me, the vignette system is so much better because you don't have like two points where uh cars are queuing, you know, and creating some car. So it's like way faster and very more convenient. And for example, in terms of Bosnia, I was paying the roles, uh, the roads, and they were newly built, but they were not connecting. So I had to like I use like three tolls, toll roads, which were beautiful, nice, empty, completely empty. Nobody wanted to pay uh for some reason. But in in between of them, you have to use that one road that everybody uses for free, you know, and uh it's just very, very slow, it's just full, you can't even overtake that. It's like makes no sense. Uh so I I would say like here everything is slower. It's slower and more dangerous because the drivers sometimes have like these crazy maneuvers that they do. They're afraid of. It's not as bad as people might think, but it definitely happens when you see it. Uh, and or you know they try to like always be first somewhere, even if when cars should be merging and stuff like that. So that's a bit uh a little bit annoying. And Central Europe we have higher speed limits and we even drive faster, like uh like more than half people are speeding, basically. So uh the traffic flows, I would say, in more sane uh way. So you can expect from other drivers like just normal driving, only maybe they are uh they are going a bit over limit, you know. But that's easy to account for, at least for me. And then everyone actually drives faster and is factor to the destination. And here that's not the case. Already the limits are usually lower, and people actually respect them way more. Not everybody, but like uh actually kind of respect them. But on the other hand, they do everything else, you know, everything else. Like, so that's just like one difference that big difference I noticed.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah, it's interesting the different uh driving cultures of the world, and inside the US, there's different driving cultures. Like here in Michigan, everybody drives insanely fast. Um, like the speed limit on the highway near me, it was 70. Sorry, not the highway, the the freeway. Um on our like normal two-lane roads, the the speed limit is 55 pretty much everywhere in the US, and people drive about 60. Um, and then on the freeway, the speed limit's normally 70. Um, but here the speed limit was 70, and then they raised it to 75. Um and when it was 70, people would drive like drive like 80 or 85, and now that it's 75, people drive like 85 or 90. And that's just like the flow, like 85, 90 miles an hour. Everybody's driving that fast. But then when I lived in um Austin, Texas, the speed limit on the freeway wasn't certainly 75, it was only 55. And people would drive 55 on the freeway. And I'm just like, what the fuck is wrong with all you people? Why are you driving so slow on this freeway? Um, but that's that's just how they do it there.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. How how would you say it's uh it's it with uh like um speed raiders? Like uh, you know, not not where uh when like some police car waits and uh and measure measure your speed, but like those fixed one like on the road, like how is it in the US?
SPEAKER_02Um depends state to state. Um here in Michigan, the cops don't really seem to care about speeding that much. Um having said that, I've been pulled over for speeding many times. Um but like I don't know, I I regularly drive past cops when I'm speeding here. Like I'll be going um I don't know five over, they certainly don't care, but sometimes even like 10, 15 over. There are certain 55 mile an hour roads where everybody drives 70. And so if I pass a cop going 70 and a 55, but pretty much everybody else is too, then like you're not gonna get pulled over. And then once you go, once you go north a certain distance, like the population really thins out. It's basically like anything goes up north, like speeding, drunk driving, like whatever. It's just like everybody kind of understands that it's it's just nobody's gonna get you in trouble for it.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_01So those fakes like speed cameras are not really like like so um so easy to find, like uh, or what would you say?
SPEAKER_02Not much. Sometimes, like, if there's a problem area, they'll they'll put up one of those. Like, there's a spot near me where the speed limit goes from 55 to 25, and so they have one of those signs where it ha it like displays your speed, and if you're going too much over, it'll like flash and be like, hey, slow down. So they'll do they'll do that in pro problem areas, but not like as a regular thing.
SPEAKER_01But they'll make picture and send you a fine.
SPEAKER_02No, no, it's it's just no, it's it's not that like advanced. It's just a sign that that shows you your speed to try to encourage you to slow down, but it doesn't actually enforce anything.
SPEAKER_01And you have we have both kinds, but uh there are a lot that enforce uh as well nowadays. And there's maybe one thing that I would say is the same. Like there are a lot of signs for like this speed cameras both in EU and here in the in the Balkans outside the EU. So there's maybe one thing. Only I don't know here like how often they actually send you a fine, you know. So we'll see if I get one or not.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it's interesting. It's like you know, they could put speed governors on cars and just make it so nobody can drive over 55 like ever.
Language, Travel, And Learning To Communicate
SPEAKER_01I I actually think that that's the next next thing. Like now we have like the outlinking in you, you know, that you have to you cannot even turn off permanently, you have to always turn it off after starting the car. So it's slowly, and then you know, they will say, like, yeah, you can't really drive at all.
SPEAKER_02I don't think that would fly in the States. I think there would be a revolt. So I I I don't I predict that's not gonna happen here anytime soon.
SPEAKER_01I'm just trying to be optimistic so that um when things go one direction too much, then you know something happens and like there is some kind of correction in anything basically. Yeah. So I hope that if if it would be too straight, then maybe uh someone comes and you know abolish it or something like that. I don't know.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Um, and you mentioned that you might uh you you mentioned Romania. Um I forget if that was on the air or off the air. Um, but did you mention Romania because of friendly RB that's coming up in September? Or just because it happens to be near you.
SPEAKER_01Um there are three countries in Europe that I wanted to see and I haven't seen, which was Bosnia, Montenegro. Those I drove through now. And Romania is still one of them. So I always had it in my mind to come to Romania to visit. Also, uh benefit of Romania is that there are more Rails developers, actually, so I can meet some people, some faces I know from online, which would be really cool. And as for the conference, actually, I would love to visit the conference, but I don't know if timing-wise it will work out. Um but let's see, I still keep it open. Yeah. It's more like uh I won't make it, but uh I keep it in mind that that is, yeah, yeah. It would be nice to visit, yeah.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah, I always sing the praises of Romania whenever it comes up. Um I was really impressed by the food in Bucharest. Uh I thought it was just as good as as the food I had in Paris. Um, and then we went up into the mountains because we went to uh friendly RB a couple years ago. Then after the conference, we went up to the mountains and saw some bears and went to a lake and stuff. It was really nice.
SPEAKER_01That sounds that sounds really nice. Do you have some recommendations for food? Do you remember some name? Or you don't even know.
SPEAKER_02I definitely don't, but it was pretty easy to find good pastries. That's one of the things that I really really enjoy. In in Paris, I really liked the past pastries. In Bucharest, they had really good pastries. Um let's see. We went to like a traditional Romanian restaurant, and that was like pretty good, but like I don't know. That was just one sample. Um, but yeah, the pastries. That that was the thing that stuck out to me.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I think in general in Europe we have like good pastries, you know. And Balkan, of course, uh here's a bit different, but they have a lot of this like pies, like Burex and and stuff. Like, for example, oh did you did you hear it? Like the uh the engine. Yeah, it's so loud. Uh did not uh give me some recommendation to stop in in like before Mostar, and it was it was amazing. Uh but it's like different, yeah, different kind of pastry for for sure. But I would say in Chain Republic also we have we have decent pastries. Oh, obviously, depend on what you like, if you like cross ones or something. Yeah, yeah, it's usually harder like when I'm in uh Asia, but even if you are in like modern city like Bangkok, you will find some modern, usually like French style pastries, I would say. Yeah. Not usually like Czech bread per se, but like French stuff, yeah, I would say you can you can still find.
SPEAKER_02Okay. Um okay, here's a question for you. You've you visited quite a lot of countries now, it seems like. If you had to pick one to live in for the rest of your life, which one would you pick and why?
SPEAKER_01Um that's really hard question. I I've been to more than 55 countries. I will have to. More than 55, wow. Yes, so that's really hard. Um I like a lot about like European lifestyle and architecture and so on. And I always thought to myself, I would love to live in the Mediterranean. But it's also, for example, if I already have money because it's expensive, if I have a family, you know, and so on. Because, for example, if if you are just uh a single guy, I think one of the best places is, for example, Thailand, you know, or something like that, because you meet people uh way more easily, both like travelers but also like locals are just nice. Maybe some of them, I don't know, uh, might pretend to be nice, but like you feel this energy, you know, like this crazy energy that's there. And in Europe, I just don't feel it at all. Like Florida is beautiful, but not really it's just not really the same. So if I have figured out my life and I have my money, you know, and my startup, like AI, makes uh so much money. I could imagine myself living in the Mediterranean area. I don't really care which country because they're all really good. Could be Greece, but you know, they're all so nice. Uh maybe with a yacht or something. That would be lifestyles I I would probably pick if like I can just design my life. But uh for practical reasons I would say Thailand because uh really good food, nice people, and they're also like a lot of tourists who always also meet Europeans and so on. So hopefully that's that's enough of an answer. Oh, yeah. Otherwise, really choose. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah. I was just curious. 55 countries, that's a lot. I visited maybe like seven or eight countries. Uh most Americans have visited exactly one country, um, which is the United States. Um which, you know, people get shit for sometimes, but it's like you gotta go so far to get to a different country, um, other than Canada or Mexico. And it's like there's no offense Canada, but there's not often a lot of reason to go to Canada, because it's like there's not really much in Canada that's not in the United States, you know.
SPEAKER_01I I definitely get it. Like uh if you are European, maybe you can choose Canada to go, but if you are American, like uh there is probably not so much to convince you, I would say. And by the way, you United States is the one country I haven't been to yet. Definitely want to go. But haven't been to and I actually want to do a road trip as well. Uh and I would like to rent some proper American muscle car. Oh, yeah. And do it for the style, you know. Yeah, that wouldn't be that would be nice.
SPEAKER_02Um, well, if you come to America, you can come to my house and you can drive my pickup truck and we can shoot guns.
SPEAKER_01Oh, that sounds awesome. Yeah. I might accept that sounds an experience for sure.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah. Um, let's see, we were talking oh, yeah, in in all your travels to all these different countries, um, have I I assume that you found that English gets you by in quite a lot of places. That's kind of the common language for a lot of people. Um, but do you speak any other languages or have you learned languages specifically to visit a place?
SPEAKER_01I was learning also German in school. I'm half German, so I chose it to know a little bit of German, you know, if I'm a passport holder. Uh but um never used it for travel apart from yeah, Germany. Of course, yeah, in Austria, but in the already like the dialect is so different, like it's very hard to understand.
SPEAKER_02Between Germany and Austria.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and also Switzerland. Like, I remember when I was a kid and I had uh my new like German passport and we were driving with my family. I was actually the driver, and we were stopped at the border because before we had all these borders, right? Like now it's easy, but it when I was a kid, we all always had to stop with every country. It was it was hard because Europe is small and you just drive one country in three hours and you have a border. And I remember they came to my car and they saw my passport, so he wanted to chat or something, you know, he was saying something in Swiss German. I didn't understand a thing. Oh wow. I like obviously I I felt stupid, but like um so I just uh used my level of German to say in a few sentences that like uh yeah about uh that we are Germans and coming here and whatever, like I could explain. Uh but I couldn't like really listen to what he's saying. Like I simply explained what I thought like I should be saying at the border and that's it. And then uh I'm very basic of Spanish and Russian, but that was very, very little. And when I was in Colombia, so as you say, English gets you by almost everywhere, like in Africa, Asia, really good. But in South America or Central America, that was all Spanish, and uh that was really difficult. Like I had really difficulty to communicate. I remember I was like in a famous district in um Medellin, and I just went to McDonald's, and I just wanted to say like Coca-Cola without ice, and they didn't understand that. In in kind of like touristy area, so like that's level of English that was there, like none, you know.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, interesting. Yeah, I've had very few experiences where I've like had to speak the local language, like there was no option, um, which is something that I've always wanted, you know, because it like would really put you to the test when you can always fall back to English, it kind of for me it takes the fun out of it. Um I I I've uh been learning Spanish for a number of years, and we went to Puerto Rico a couple years ago, but everybody spoke English, and so I was really disappointed because I'm like, uh, this is this is no fun. But then when we went to France, um most of the like native French people spoke French, but there were a lot of Arab immigrants who only spoke Arabic and French, and so with them, French was the only option. So that was kind of nice to to have to speak French with them. And then we went to Romania, and you know, after going to a Spanish-speaking country where I could like uh speak Spanish when it was like occasionally I'd run into somebody in Puerto Rico who didn't speak English, and then French, I could speak some French. Then we went to Romania, and I kept like going up to a counter at a at a restaurant or something, and like I would like open my mouth and I would think like okay, I'll just switch to Romanian now, but it's like, oh wait, shit, I don't actually speak Romanian, and I felt like a complete idiot. Uh like there there wasn't English was not so ubiquitous there as like Puerto Rico or or France, and so communication was an actual issue, and I felt so stupid because I couldn't communicate with people, and after that I was like, never again. I'm I'm gonna learn at least a little bit of the local language before I go somewhere.
Final Picks And Where To Find The Work
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I know one Romanian sentence, maybe I could use it. I don't know.
SPEAKER_02Oh, what is it?
SPEAKER_01It's like uh I bought uh tomatoes at the at the market, you know. But uh I I use it every time I met some Romanians and they were all laughing, so it was definitely useful.
SPEAKER_02I can say bona ziwa, that means hello, and I can say yeah, I I used to know thank you, but I don't even know that anymore.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. But I'm so envious about like in English native speakers because you just can either know just Spanish or French, you know, learn it well, and you will speak with most of the world, you know. Right, yeah. So that's really that's really nice. And then you don't, you know.
SPEAKER_02Right, and then we don't. Yeah, all right. Um, well, we're probably about at time. Um, so before we go, last question that I always ask is if there's anything you want to share with people, stuff you want to put in the show notes, all that stuff.
SPEAKER_01Um not sure. I was I was not prepared, although I we probably already did it once.
SPEAKER_02Well, there's deployment from scratch, then come all handbook.
SPEAKER_01But if yeah, obviously they should check out uh Kamal Handbook and also I made a video course, so if they prefer video, Kamal DevOps, uh Kamalcourse.com. Uh but I can maybe uh recommend them one book. Uh it's like called My Indie Book by Tony Din. And uh that's someone that went uh to build indie product but were actually successful, so you can uh you can learn how he how he did it. I'm reading it now during this holiday, so maybe it could be uh uh a footnote.
SPEAKER_02Okay. Well, we will add that stuff to the show notes, and thanks so much for coming on the show.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, thanks for having me.