Welcome back to another episode of the Rabbit Hole, the definitive developer’s podcast. Today on the show we are talking about the top editor picks of 2018, meaning the top picks we chose here on the Rabbit Hole. We are going to recap some of the episodes we had, including some stats, our 52-week record, over 50,000 downloads, and the ever-looming 100th episode that is to come! Throughout the episode we will go around and talk about the three categories of episodes: the popular episodes that we thought was fun, the educational episode we thought people should listen to, and a wild card episode. So stay tuned as we dive into our favorite popular episode from the top 10 most downloaded episodes, have a laugh about our wild card episodes picks, and lay out some new goals for the podcast as we go into 2019. So let’s jump in for a fun episode!
Key Points From This Episode:
Transcript for Episode 94. Editor Picks 2018 + Mailbag
[0:00:01.9] MN: Hello and welcome to The Rabbit Hole, the definitive developer’s podcast in fantabulous Chelsey, Manhattan. I’m your host, Michael Nunez. Our co-host today.
[0:00:09.8] DA: Dave Anderson.
[0:00:10.8] MN: Our producer.
[0:00:12.0] WJ: William Jeffries.
[0:00:12.0] MN: Today, we’re talking about the top editor picks of 2018. I think the editor is being us I guess, right? Top picks we chose.
[0:00:20.3] DA: The choosers. That’s not going to be the tide pod challenge.
[0:00:24.3] MN: It’s definitely not the tide pod challenge.
[0:00:26.4] DA: Yeah, we’ll forget about that.
[0:00:27.6] MN: No, let’s leave that for 2018. I guess we just kind of want to recap some of the episodes we had. You got some stats Dave? Do you have any stats?
[0:00:36.2] DA: It’s crazy, We have not missed a single week this year. This is going to be the 52nd episode at least in the year. We’re getting close to 100. It’s a big number.
[0:00:48.1] MN: Big number.
[0:00:48.9] DA: It’s coming up. Over 50,000 unique downloads which is like, wow. I think when we started this, we were like, “If we can get one person to listen,” —
[0:01:00.3] MN: To change –
[0:01:01.9] DA: “That is like, “Yeah, I like this. I learned something,” then we’re like, “We’re good.”
[0:01:06.0] MN: Then 49,000 times later.
[0:01:10.4] DA: It is not all our moms, it’s definitely not.
[0:01:13.6] WJ: It’s mostly my mom,
[0:01:16.0] MN: And my brother and pretty much. I think we’re going to go around and talk about like we have three categories. I think we’re just going to talk about one of the popular episodes that we thought was fun and educational episode, we thought people should listen to and a wild card.
[0:01:34.4] DA: Yeah, the underdog episode.
[0:01:35.8] MN: Yeah, do you have – does anyone want to start?
[0:01:38.9] DA: Yeah, maybe we could start with the – our favorite popular episode from the top 10 most downloaded episodes.
[0:01:45.8] MN: Yeah. I mean, I can go first. This is not like Nepotism or anything of that nature but I think the Why Not Use Elixir was a great episode by the guest on that episode was my brother, Steven Nunez, and I imagine that Jacob is furious that I’m mentioning him for this show.
[0:02:06.8] DA: It was number one downloaded episode for the year.
[0:02:09.0] MN: Yeah, we’re both friends. Come on. It was just very interesting, Elixir is very popular and my brother knows a lot about Elixir so to be able to talk about that. I usually jump and pair with him on any Elixir project if necessary. I am still horrible at Elixir so that’s whatever. But that was like one of the favorite popular episodes that I had.
[0:02:29.2] DA: Yeah, I think it really resonated with people. People are really excited to hear more about elixir and what you can do with it.
[0:02:35.2] MN: Yeah, it’s pretty dope. Dave, do you have a favorite popular episode?
[0:02:39.5] DA: I really like the Episode 82, Seven Wastes of Software Development. That was fun. It was just like you and me going through seven things that can go horribly wrong when you’re writing software.
[0:02:53.2] MN: Yeah, it’s just really painful because you know, when you read the seven wastes and you experience I, it’s just that much more bone crushing.
[0:03:02.0] DA: It’s so truthful, you know, the fact that people figured this out like for manufacturing and it just generically applies to my life.
[0:03:12.7] MN: And what you do every day. Waiting and context switch which all sorts of seven ways, knock them out, don’t be wasteful.
[0:03:21.2] DA: Yeah, I annoy my girlfriend by being like, “That’s wasteful. You got to be more lean.”
[0:03:28.0] MN: Yeah, there you go.
[0:03:29.9] WJ: My favorite popular episode was the remote only episode with Jonathan Belcher, I think that was number 83.
[0:03:36.6] DA: Yeah, that was squeaking in at number 10 from the – yeah.
[0:03:40.5] MN: Yeah, I find that really interesting, I think people who remote only are a special kind of human being. I find it very distracting for me to work remote only. But to know that the entire organization that Jonathan works for is 100% remote, is kind of insane and like really cool. Because then you can ask like those people for help on how they cope with working remote and stuff like that and like pick up all the good habits of working remote.
[0:04:08.4] WJ: Yeah, I thought it was really interesting hearing how they do summits in particular, because that’s one of the few really large remote first companies.
[0:04:17.5] MN: Yeah.
[0:04:19.2] DA: Were like they actually got everyone in one location?
[0:04:21.5] WJ: Yeah, when he was talking about how they would do companywide summits and everybody would come to a single city.
[0:04:28.5] DA: That’s so cool.
[0:04:29.8] WJ: Yeah, that was a good episode, worth re-listening too.
[0:04:32.1] DA: Yeah, or confession, maybe listening to the first time because I was on vacation when you guys recorded that and I never listened to it.
[0:04:40.5] MN: It’s pretty dope. I think –
[0:04:41.7] DA: It sounds pretty good. I might going to go back and check it out.
[0:04:43.8] MN: I think one of the things I found really fascinating about it is from the beginning to hire, of the hiring process at that company. You never hear a voice. It’s only via text message.
[0:04:58.5] WJ: Slack baby.
[0:05:00.4] DA: No face.
[0:05:01.0] MN: And Slack. No face. You don’t put no face and name, nothing, it’s crazy and then like, “You’re on a call and they’re like, they’re people, they’re voices, it’s a thing,” which is pretty dope.
[0:05:11.8] DA: Yeah, I remember, I used to work pretty separate from a team that I was working with for a while and when I first saw their faces in real life, it was amazing because they were in India, I only had like this cellphone potato cam photo of like everybody and like you zoom in, no one had a face. It was a blurry mess.
What do you guys think about like the most helpful or educational episode like something that you think would help someone else or something that actually helps you a lot when you reflected on it.
[0:05:41.6] WJ: I think mine would be the onboarding episode with Ben Jackson.
[0:05:45.7] DA: Yeah, number 44, Mike Tats.
[0:05:46.7] WJ: Nice, yeah. Man those chat were so handy. Yeah, I thought it was really interesting the things that he said about how to follow up with someone properly after they’ve been hired to make sure that you’re iterated on your onboarding process. It had never occurred to me to continue those interviews for an entire 12 months.
[0:06:06.8] DA: Yeah, I think that’s a pretty powerful idea, like, just letting people know that you continually value their input like no matter where they are, at their process in the company. Like, if they’re brand new or they’ve been there for a year, you know, check in and –
[0:06:23.0] WJ: They have so much more perspective at that point.
[0:06:25.0] DA: Right, yeah, that’s so true.
[0:06:27.5] WJ: When you ask people two weeks after they’ve been on boarded, they really don’t know what they don’t’ know.
[0:06:32.3] MN: Yeah, that’s true. When you constantly meet up with them then they can reveal more of those problems and then start knowing what they don’t know and then figure it out.
[0:06:40.5] WJ: Yeah, 12 months, they’re much more qualified to tell you the things that you should have told them in the beginning.
[0:06:44.4] DA: Yeah, what about you Mike?
[0:06:45.8] MN: I have the agile principles.
[0:06:48.1] DA: The classic.
[0:06:49.0] MN: That is a classic.
[0:06:49.9] DA: With Kevin Thomas, right?
[0:06:51.9] MN: Kevin Thomas, yes. Kevin’s a friend of the show, love having him on the show. I think this particular episode is really good. It’s something about the episodes, we were reading from a list and just being able to have conversations about the list, makes it a lot easier to be more informative and I think that if I ever have to tell someone, “Hey, here’s our podcast, here’s what we do, here’s what I do at work, these are the things that I follow, these are the tenants that I follow to get the job that I need to do.”
[0:07:23.1] DA: Right.
[0:07:23.8] MN: This is the episode, because we go through the agile manifesto, all 12 tenants, bible scriptures, I think they’re mentioned in the episode. If you are a kind of know about agile and like know one of the four like main tenants which is people interactions over process and tools. We go through the rest of the agile principles which is great.
I think Kevin is just a friend of the show, he’s awesome. So having him on to kind of go over the list with us was pretty dope.
[0:07:54.2] DA: Yeah, he knows it inside out.
[0:07:56.9] MN: That and the extreme – if you want to jump into some more agile stuff, he came through with the extreme programming, that was pretty extreme and – but I think this one going down the list made it like much more awesome.
[0:08:10.4] DA: Yeah. Kevin got some bragging rights with that too, leave us with number three most downloaded episode here.
[0:08:15.6] MN: Shout out to Kevin, what’s up.
[0:08:17.8] DA: For me, I’m going to cheat a little bit, there are actually two episodes that I really liked. One was kind of mistake tech leads make with Kelly Wu and then there was becoming aa manager with Kyle Rush from Casper. Both of those episodes like kind of hit me like a pivotal point because I was like, just in talks about like getting promoted and like taking out responsibility as like the lead of an engagement.
I was trying to do more one on one’s with people and then eventually like, when my tech lead went on maternity leave like I had to hold down the fort and like take over and it was like, “Oh, okay, this is actually like all those things in practice. Especially like Kelly’s episode. Kelly’s episode is really great and you know, highlighting things that are very easy to do that you want to steer yourself away from like, just giving people room to make mistakes and be autonomous.
[0:09:11.1] MN: Right, I think that episode also got like, also one of the popular ones but I think it is because tech lead wants to make sure that they’re not making these mistakes that are fairly common like I remember sitting in that conversation, they go like, “Oh yeah, I think I might have done that before in time or not. Let me know to that.”
[0:09:28.3] DA: It’s not me definitely. Oh gosh. Kyle was pretty valuable just from the idea of like, “Oh, is this something that is even interesting to me like this is valuable? Do I just want to hide in the corner and write code and not talk to people?”
[0:09:44.3] WJ: The thing that he said that hit me was like, “Oh, this isn’t actually permanent, you can always change your mind.”
[0:09:49.9] MN: Yeah. He called that “Individual contributor, that’s what he said.
[0:09:53.1] WJ: Yeah, it feels like such a permanent thing the way people talk about going [inaudible], it’s like well, “You could actually be sailing back, you could just change your mind.”
[0:10:01.1] MN: Yeah. That is pretty interesting. The final section we have was the underdog or the wild card episode. Anyone got any wild cards that they have in mind?
[0:10:11.8] DA: My wild card pick was the PyCon Italia trilogy.
[0:10:15.7] MN: Yeah, PyCon Italia.
[0:10:17.5] DA: PyCon. Yeah, was just a whole lot of fun putting it together. It was something a little bit different than kind of maybe a little nostalgic for having a little adventure at a conference over in Italy and like talking to people and kind of getting out there and like getting samples of like street musicians and stuff like that.
It felt like a fun experiment, some radio lab sharing or something.
[0:10:42.3] MN: You were holding it down out there for the rabbit hole out in Italy. Just being able to – I think was used theater of the mind and being able to like edit a lot of the music that was into the episode, it’s very well crafted, it thought it was awesome.
[0:10:55.4] DA: Needed a picture.
[0:10:57.0] WJ: Then like us, even when we were listening to the episodes again before we did our own intros here in the United States that was a whole lot of fun. We were just jamming, trying to figure out what it was. It is just like, I am over here on my phone actually because I want to know how to say The Rabbit Hole in Italian. Does anyone know how to say that in Italian?
[0:11:16.1] DA: No idea. I was really bad at Italian.
[0:11:20.0] WJ: If you know how to say that then tweet at us @radiofreerabbit.
[0:11:23.8] MN: There you go.
[0:11:24.3] DA: There you go.
[0:11:25.0] WJ: On the twitters.
[0:11:26.2] DA: What about you William? What is your underdog episode for the year?
[0:11:32.2] WJ: I would call out the Jacob series, you know? Death by a Thousand If’s, The Death of the Object, what was the third one that he did?
[0:11:42.0] DA: It’s TBD. It hasn’t been released yet.
[0:11:43.7] MN: Yeah, a sneak peek for the listeners. We got a sneak peek of that.
[0:11:46.8] DA: Yeah, I got The Shackles of Frameworks. That’s coming up in 2019.
[0:11:52.6] WJ: Dark stuff.
[0:11:53.9] DA: So metal.
[0:11:55.5] MN: Yeah, I think Jacob is very knowledgeable on doing various like contract, consulting work and him explaining that death by a thousand if’s when he goes to different clients is a very interesting thing because we often go to different clients and see it ourselves and we have to figure out ways to remedy the codebase when we experience this codebase that has a thousand if’s but what do you do? Don’t know what to do? Go back and listen to that episode.
[0:12:24.0] DA: Flinched eye.
[0:12:25.3] MN: I have two of them.
[0:12:28.0] WJ: What are your two?
[0:12:29.0] MN: So I thought the comment considered harmful, comments considered helpful was my wild card/fun episode because we were just talking about some of the crappiest comments we’ve seen in a codebase. I think William you were probably on vacation there at that time. So it was like, “What do we talk about?” and then like I was reviewing some code and I saw a comment and it was like, “Well, yeah we’ve got to talk about why you shouldn’t leave comments like this and what are the issues of that?”
[0:12:57.7] DA: Yeah and then looking online and seeing the history of terrible comments left in code or just hilarious comments left in code from Microsoft Windows code base and open source codebases and all kinds of stuff. I mean, I have even seen stuff like more recently than I wish we could talk about. But there is a variable in React like, “Do not use this variable unless you want to get fired,” or something like that. It was just like the craziest stuff that people put in code when they’re just like amped up on caffeine at 3 AM or something.
[0:13:37.5] MN: Adderalls.
[0:13:38.2] WJ: That like to-do, Bobby clean this up and then you get blamed and it was not Bobby.
[0:13:42.6] MN: Exactly that is the worst, oh my god. Yeah we were going back and forth with some of our war stories of bad comment as well as looking at open source stuff. That was really good. The second one I was going to announce and you guys are going to hate me, but it is definitely going to be the resolutions on how to keep them.
[0:14:02.9] WJ: Oh my god, we agreed never to speak of this.
[0:14:07.1] DA: My shame runs deeps.
[0:14:08.7] MN: Got them, yes.
[0:14:09.5] DA: I almost made it through the year without anyone talking about it.
[0:14:12.3] MN: Come on SMART goals.
[0:14:13.2] WJ: I thought no one noticed.
[0:14:14.2] MN: SMART goals, guys come on.
[0:14:16.2] DA: Okay, so tell me, Mike did you do all of your goals?
[0:14:19.0] MN: Oh I didn’t do all of them. I am going to be honest. So them, I’m all right, I can scroll to the 57th line colon five to seven answer, sure. Whatever. W goes for word, B goes back for word.
[0:14:31.7] WJ: It’s way faster to do in 5-7 shift G.
[0:14:33.3] MN: Yeah, you see? I mean I can still get work done-ish and people don’t hate me when I repair with them on them. So I am like, “I don’t know what I am doing?” I have a thing or two maybe, tricks up my sleeve. It just takes a little longer for me to get her out. So you probably all are VIM experts and I am not. The second one I think I spend the day trying to do some Docker, I don’t know what I was doing. It’s crazy. Docker is crazy. People who are doing Docker out there you guys rock because I don’t. It’s crazy.
[0:15:05.1] DA: Yeah the abstraction is real man.
[0:15:07.4] MN: Oh man, I don’t know what I am doing but it is great. It looks like people Docker-ize things and know how to do, which is awesome.
[0:15:14.3] DA: I thought a lot about open source just so you know, I thought a lot about it.
[0:15:18.3] MN: You thought about that. Yeah was that it.
[0:15:20.5] DA: 2019.
[0:15:23.2] MN: Well you had something about Etherium, do you wanted to make Etherium contract? Don’t even look at Etherium right now. I mean, it was very, very high at the beginning of the year and then it went, down the dopes.
[0:15:33.5] DA: Oh my god, yeah.
[0:15:34.5] WJ: Tanked.
[0:15:35.2] DA: Crypto.
[0:15:36.0] MN: It went down the dopes. What happened crypto? You’re leaving me poor. I don’t know what to do with my money. That’s it. I’ll be homeless before you know it.
[0:15:43.4] WJ: Yeah, I think it was a good thing that I didn’t end up writing that Ethereum contract because I probably would have lost a lot of money.
[0:15:48.5] MN: Yeah, definitely.
[0:15:51.4] DA: But I will say to my benefit. I did go to a couple of conferences that did speak to them. But I just got to do those commits. Those commits are – I am accruing them with interest. That is how I’ll look at it.
[0:16:04.2] MN: There you go. We had a ton of episodes for 2018. You know what we also got? We also got some emails. So we have a podcast@stridenyc.com and there were some lovely individuals who sent those emails and I think one of the things we should do for 2019 is read them out or give them a shout out and that kind of stuff.
[0:16:23.6] DA: Yeah, I think there are some good ideas for discussions we can have.
[0:16:27.2] WJ: Yeah, we can turn those into some episodes.
[0:16:29.0] DA: We are collectively not good at email but we’ll get back to you.
[0:16:32.6] MN: Shout out to Zach.
[0:16:33.6] WJ: The Zach attack.
[0:16:34.8] MN: Yeah Zach attack, no bells and whistles now. It’s just to Zach, shout out to him.
[0:16:39.1] WJ: We haven’t had a Zach attack in a while.
[0:16:40.1] MN: Yeah, he hasn’t come through. Well maybe next year.
[0:16:42.4] DA: It’s quiet this month.
[0:16:43.3] MN: So we are looking forward to 2019. I have an announcement, my wife is expecting the birth of our son.
[0:16:51.6] WJ: Oh my god, congratulations.
[0:16:53.6] MN: Thank you, thank you guys. Yeah it’s been under wraps for some time at The Rabbit Hole but I am here to let our listeners know that that’s a thing and it’s unfortunate that I may not be recording with you guys in the New Year at the very first quarter.
[0:17:09.2] DA: Hey, paternity leave is important. You’ve got to chill with the little baby.
[0:17:13.4] MN: Yeah, I mean we’re going to be low on sleep. It is going to be tough and difficult but we’ll make it through. United States has not the greatest paternity leave but Stride does offer some amazing time that we take for bonding with our child and that is going to be great. It’s going to be awesome.
[0:17:31.3] DA: Yeah, you will come out of it like a stronger person probably with a mustache.
[0:17:35.9] MN: Probably with a mustache. I am just going to shave the beard off just go full mustache, shout out to my pops because that is how he rolls. I don’t think I look good in just a mustache. Trust me guys, I look freakin weird. I think we’re going to start releasing some of these episodes by weekly. Correct me if I am wrong. David and William will work shop some of the stuff so when I am able to return we can then chop it up and make these episodes. I mean we did 52 episodes, never missed the week that is pretty insane, 2018.
[0:18:05.0] WJ: Yeah and we’re going to go back to a weekly episodes after paternity leave. It’s just during the paternity leave that we’ll go biweekly.
[0:18:14.4] DA: And also to be honest with you guys, we’re getting up to episode 100 and it’s freaking me out.
[0:18:19.3] MN: Oh gosh.
[0:18:19.7] DA: So actually by the time you get back, we’re going to do episode 100 yeah.
[0:18:25.9] MN: Season two?
[0:18:26.6] WJ: The centennial.
[0:18:28.3] DA: Like, it’s going to be a triumphant return. I predict it right now. It is going to be a big whammy.
[0:18:33.2] MN: You already know. Awesome and yeah, we definitely have been recording a lot of episodes, a lot of content before my leave so our listeners are able to still get the content that they are looking for at The Rabbit Hole, which is great.
[0:18:47.8] DA: Yeah, you won’t even notice he’s gone.
[0:18:49.6] MN: Yeah, you won’t even notice. While you guys are listening to me introducing the Rabbit Hole, I am probably not sleep deprived and not having slept in weeks and making sure that my baby is alive. Keep the baby alive that’s the goal. Keep him alive. That is pretty much it.
[0:19:09.0] DA: You got this.
[0:19:10.2] MN: Hey, you guys got this. I’m sure you guys got the Rabbit Hole down.
[0:19:14.3] WJ: Keep the Rabbit Hole alive.
[0:19:15.7] MN: Yeah, pretty much.
[0:19:19.5] DA: Oh man, cool. Well thanks guys, yeah that’s a great year.
[0:19:22.5] MN: Yeah, awesome. Great year, 2018. Feel free to listen back to any of the episodes that we have mentioned. If you have any other episodes that we didn’t mention you thought was your favorite, feel free to tweet us @RadioFreeRabbit. If I am up at three in the morning I could probably check those mentions. We’ll figure it out from there.
[0:19:42.1] WJ: All right, well enjoy your new baby and your paternity-ism.
[0:19:45.4] MN: Oh yeah, it is going to be great. Yeah, it’s insane. I looked at the mirror the other day I’m like, “Wow, this person is going to be a dad. That is crazy. Poor child.” It’s really nuts.
[0:19:56.5] WJ: He’s going to be a great podcaster.
[0:19:58.6] DA: All right well I think we got to do a cheers with this sweet Sagamore rye we’ve got here.
[0:20:02.7] MN: Yeah man.
[0:20:03.6] DA: Looking forward to 2019.
[0:20:05.2] MN: Yeah, looking forward to 2019 guys, cheers.
[0:20:07.9] WJ: Cheers.
[END OF EPISODE]
[0:20:08.6] MN: Follow us now on Twitter @radiofreerabbit so we can keep the conversation going. Like what you hear? Give us a five star review and help developers just like you find their way into The Rabbit Hole and never miss an episode, subscribe now however you listen to your favorite podcast. On behalf of our producer extraordinaire, William Jeffries and my amazing co-host, Dave Anderson and me, your host, Michael Nunez, thanks for listening to The Rabbit Hole.
Links and Resources:
Episode 68: Why Not Use Elixir
Episode 82: Seven Wastes of Software Development
Kevin Thomas — PyCon Italia trilogy
Episode 71: Common Mistakes Tech Leads Make
Episode 58: Death By a Thousand If’s
Episode 92: The Death of the Object
Episode 56: Comments Considered Harmful, Comments Considered Helpful
