This episode features an interview with Charlyn Gonda, Senior Software Engineer at Pave. Charlyn’s impressive career journey saw her take on roles at Google and Uber as both a developer advocate and engineer. She believes that technology is made better when people collaborate in open platforms and diverse communities. In this episode, Cassidy, Zach, and Charlyn discuss hoarding technology, being kind, and creating WiFi message cubes.
This episode features an interview with Charlyn Gonda, Senior Software Engineer at Pave. Charlyn’s impressive career journey saw her take on roles at Google and Uber as both a developer advocate and engineer. She believes that technology is made better when people collaborate in open platforms and diverse communities.
In this episode, Cassidy, Zach, and Charlyn discuss hoarding technology, being kind, and creating WiFi message cubes.
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Episode Timestamps:
(02:14): What Charlyn is working on right now
(08:13): What Charlyn’s day-to-day looks like
(12:25): What tools Charlyn uses
(16:30): How Charlyn got into the industry
(19:53): Rapid Fire Questions
(31:37): Random Segment Generator
(38:26): Cassidy’s Sage Advice
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“I get this question of like, ‘I want to make things but I don't know how to start.’ And, ‘What do you pick up first?’ And, ‘Should I buy a 3D printer?’ And my answer is always, ‘It depends on what you want to make.’ Because, if you start from the tool, while the novelty effect is active, you're going to have so much fun with the new tool. But then if you didn't have a thing that you wanted to build with it, then the novelty effect will wear off and then you're left with this fancy tool that you don't know what to do with.” – Charlyn Gonda
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Links:
How To Make a WiFi Message Cube
The Dev Morning Show (At Night) YouTube Page
Cassidy Williams: Hello everybody and welcome to The Dev Morning Show (At Night). My name is Cassidy Williams, and I am accompanied by my wonderful, fabulous, delightful co-host, Zach Plata. Hey,
Zach.
Zach Plata: Hey, Cass. Okay. I need to know, did you partake in that huge lottery that was like 1.7 billion like a week or two ago? ,
Cassidy Williams: I
didn't because I, I don't have faith in the lottery.
It's, there's, I'd rather, I'd rather gamble on something more secure. Like ftx.
Zach Plata: Oh,
Cassidy Williams: Hey-oh.
Ooh.
Current events humor. Speaking of someone who's always current with events, we have Charlyn Gonda on the show today. She's a senior software engineer at Pave. Hello and welcome.
Charlyn Gonda: Hello. Hello. I suppose all events are current, if you think about it.
Cassidy Williams: Yeah, that's true. Especially if you're talking about river. River currents,
Charlyn Gonda: right?
Zach Plata: Uh, whoa. I'm sorry. I'm sad it took me
Charlyn Gonda: that long.
Cassidy Williams: It's okay. One of those days.
Zach Plata: It is.
Cassidy Williams: Anyway, Charlyn, hello once again. Welcome. I love your setup here. Are you're in like a maker, spacey type thing. Is this in your home? Is it in a separate office?
Charlyn Gonda: Yeah, it's in my home. Um, I'm very, very happy with it. Sorry, my dog is like trying to, trying to get my attention. But , yeah, I, uh, I'm very happy that I get to have like a, like a big makerspace workshop at my, yeah, at my current place. Um, one of the reasons why we had to move out of the city is to get some space, um, mostly for me.
I'm taking up. Half of the second floor with my 3D printer and my laser cutter and my CNC machine and all that good stuff. .
Cassidy Williams: That's so much fun. The dream. That's so cool. Yeah.
Charlyn Gonda: This is my, this is my playground. Yeah.
Cassidy Williams: Well that being said, what are you working
Charlyn Gonda: on right now? Um, that is a great question. I actually don't have a current project right now.
I just finished a small one that was like a little glowy friendship bracelet. Um, I posted it on Twitter. Oh, um, and look it up. Uh, I just came back from this event called Hackaday Supercon. Um, and well, what a name. Yeah. Yeah. It's a, uh, a big, well, I guess it. Medium size conference about like less than 500 people.
Um, and it was, uh, a, a gathering of people who like to play around with hardware, hack hardware. Uh, that's so cool. But like, not in like a scary way, like in a fun way. Glowy. Servo-y robot-y way it's very fun.
Cassidy Williams: nice. glowy servo-y robot-y way is the best way to describe that kind of thing. I, I like to think of those as like hacking things together rather than like hacking into the mainframe or something.
Yeah.
Charlyn Gonda: Yeah. There's something very like satisfying about physically sort of like, putting things together and then at the end of it you're like, that's the thing that I thought about and now it's physically in my hand. It's pretty cool. .
Cassidy Williams: Yeah. That is so awesome. Do you get to do that often with your day job?
Is this something that you're hoping to do full-time someday or is it just kind of a hobby that you went
Charlyn Gonda: all in on? Yeah, I think it's definitely just like a very intense hobby. Um, . I don't know that I would wanna do all of. Productionization required for a hardware engineer. Do you know what I mean? Yeah.
Kind of like, like I feel like if you are not a full-time software engineer, you think that it's all the fun, sort of like all the new stuff or like all of the cool algorithmic stuff, but really it's just about getting your tests to pass and your builds to build and like not breaking anything.
Cassidy Williams: That's, that's true.
So the, the productionizing thing is very real. I attempted it once where I ran a Kickstarter, and of course it was bad timing because it was January, 2020 right before the pandemic. But it, it was just all of the things went so bad and it, it was a good lesson in what it means to make a physical good, a reality for more than just.
Yeah, .
Zach Plata: That was a
Charlyn Gonda: cool project though. What was it? What project was it, if you don't mind me asking? Of course. It was,
Cassidy Williams: uh, so I played the board game, go, you, you know, where it's like the grid and the black and white pieces. I made travel kits for that. And so I was going to laser cut all of it. I had like friends with laser cutters to help me make all the pieces because for all the orders it was gonna be over 20,000 pieces had to be cut and it was.
A whole ordeal to like even the drawstring bags. I like hand stamped all of them and everything. Oh my gosh. It was, gosh, it was very fun in theory. But after, after making like 10, I was like, what have I done to myself, . And so, uh, once again, it's very cool to make something physical, like you say, but uh, actually productionizing is a whole other animal.
Kind of like with softer.
Charlyn Gonda: Yeah. Yeah. Seriously. Yeah. I mean, , I feel like I, I actually have a lot of friends who kind of do their own hardware businesses. Um, Ooh. They, they like sell soldering kits or they sell like, um, like one of them started selling, um, sort of yarn tools, like tools for knitters. Ooh.
Which is apparently a whole subculture. Yeah, it
Cassidy Williams: was good to say. Is, is there anything besides the needle. . Yeah, I think
Charlyn Gonda: there's like, I, I think it's like people who like to make their own gains of yarn, like the actual yarn. Oh, I don't know. Oh yeah, so you dye them yourself or like, whatever. Yeah, it's kind of a whole subculture that I was not aware of, but um, it was really interesting to like know that that was a thing.
Um, but yeah. Like that, that's kind of how she started. And then, um, it turned into more of like a, like a soldering kit, sort of glowy business. Um, wow. But, uh, yeah, she actually just did a talk on hackaday about how, um, how everything, like you, you basically have to expect that everything will go wrong in a hardware business.
Yeah. So like, anytime, anytime somebody like asks me like, oh, Are you gonna like, do you have an Etsy? Do you sell that thing that you just made? I'm like, Nope. . Absolutely
Cassidy Williams: not .
Charlyn Gonda: I made it once. I don't know if I wanna make it again. .
Cassidy Williams: But it was cool when you made it once.
Charlyn Gonda: It's very true.
Zach Plata: Yeah. Well, speaking of making cool things and productionizing, it is time to throw it to Launch Darkly our favorite sponsors, to talk about how you can think things into production.
The Dev Morning Show (At Night) is a sponsored podcast, means someone has to pay the bills around here. We're sponsored by LaunchDarkly, and LaunchDarkly is the first scalable feature management platform. That means dev teams can innovate and get better software to customers faster. How? By gradually releasing new software features and shipping code whenever they want.
Fast tracking their journeys to the cloud and building stronger relationships with business. Thanks for the money
Charlyn Gonda: LaunchDarkly.
Cassidy Williams: Wow, what an ad. So anyway, Charlyn, besides all of the cool stuff that you do outside of work, what does your
Charlyn Gonda: day-to-day look like? Yeah. Um, so I am a software engineer at pave.
Um, we build compensation, benchmarking software, um, and other HR tools as well. Mm-hmm. . Um, and my day-to-day is, um, happily mostly coding, um, which is kind of where I like to exist, um, for at least at this stage in my career. , I am sort of tech leading this project that we're, we're working on. But, so there's some sort of like meetings that I have to do or like some sort of like alignment driving.
Um, but now that we're in the middle of the project, um, I get to just focus on code, um, which is fun, uh, especially because now I have. Like another engineer on my team. When I was the only engineer on this team, it was kind of hard because like there was like H one planning and sprint planning and backlog grooming and all of the, all of the things that make a team, the non-function things.
Yeah. . Yeah. Like it's very important, but also I end up sort of not feeling like I. Had finished anything really. I mean, I obviously did, but like, yeah, I, I feel
Cassidy Williams: like it's not like a thing you can just like check I finished this ticket. It's, it's like a continual work thing.
Charlyn Gonda: Yeah. Yeah. And I feel like, I mean, not, not to sort of like expand on this conversation, but like,
I don't know. I don't know how managers get their sense of satisfaction. Like you almost have to have a really concrete sense of like the long-term goals and like what you're building towards and all of that good stuff. Because as a, as a dev, we kind of have it easy. , like , like everything is laid out for you and like all you have to do.
Like crunch on the ticket. And then, I mean, the, the ticket itself could be really hard, but um, after you're done, it's like a huge feeling of satisfaction, right? , right?
Cassidy Williams: Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's kind of like, oh, this is about to be a nerdy metaphor, but it's, it's kind of like the comparison of like discreet math versus continuous math where instead of it being like a one, a zero, like check, this is done, check, this is true.
It's more. Continual improvement over time. Yeah. And, and yeah, it's, it's a very different kind of, well, like you said, satisfaction. You have to be like, today was better than yesterday. This week. This week we got some things done. And that is exactly as good as it can be. Yeah. .
Charlyn Gonda: Exactly. Yeah. I feel like, I feel like maybe that's like the, the next level of sort of, um, Put, I don't know, like next level of satisfaction in your job.
Like you kind of have to graduate from being discreet to like sort of thinking of it in a more continuous arc, cuz then maybe that makes you more future. Um, right.
Cassidy Williams: Goal oriented. Yeah. Teacher oriented.
Charlyn Gonda: Yeah. Mm-hmm. . Exactly. But yeah, I, I feel like there's like a special kind of satisfaction for just being able to get stuff done very completely.
I also think that that's why engineers have a inflated sense of how. Much of the problems of the world they can solve. Yeah. Is cause mostly people have figured out all of the most important problems before it gets to their plate and they're like, oh, I've solved all of the problems that's been thrown at me.
Surely I can solve world hunger as well. ,
Cassidy Williams: you know, . That's, that's honestly a great way of thinking about it. I, I'd never considered it from that perspective before, but yeah, you, you're kind of. These are the tasks laid out for you, do them, and you're like, ah-ha. Now I could build Dropbox in a weekend.
That's, that's not how any of this works.
Charlyn Gonda: Yeah. Right? Mm-hmm. , you find out the hard way. .
Zach Plata: Well, in your, in your day-to-day, what kind of tools are you using? Um, coding or
Charlyn Gonda: non-coding wise? Yeah. Um, well, we use, uh, A pretty similar set of, so, so it's a pretty small company, two years old. Um, oh, nice. So a lot of the peop, a lot of people kind of like end up using the same thing.
So, uh, people use VS code, um, backend and front end are type script, um, backend, front end. Whoa. . Yeah. So we we're running on react on the front end and. Uh, node Express, obviously on the backend. Um, and then we have GitHub, we have Circle ci, we have, uh, all of the other stuff like we use Recoil for state management.
Um, oh, interest. and we use sugar to keep everyone happy. ,
Cassidy Williams: when you say sugar, is that a tool or a candy that you can eat? , that keeps me happy, but I have a feeling it's different.
Charlyn Gonda: Whoa. I, uh, probably if, if we Google like sugar app, like what's gonna appear .
Cassidy Williams: Honestly, it could be a wide spectrum of things that show up . Um, could be, yeah, different. If you said I'd give you sugar to keep you happy, I'd be just like, yes, I have chocolate right next to me. But I'm realizing that's
Charlyn Gonda: probably not what I'm thinking.
No, that's exactly what I meant. Like we have a, um, a con, like a, a bar in the office. It's called a big sugar bar. Um, oh, and it's where people sort of like, Bring sweets for other people to partake in. Um, and that's how, that's how everyone is, you know, productive is because everybody's hopped up on sugar.
Cassidy Williams: That's amazing. Yes. Yeah, it's
Charlyn Gonda: pretty great. . All companies should have that. Yes. Um, apparently so. Interesting story about this company. Um, our founder is, Uh, huge health person, like a super healthy guy. Um hmm. And like he prefers hu over Soylent, you know, kind of like that. Wow. Oh, he's like kind legendary.
Okay. . Um, and, uh, there was like a small, like the big sugar bar is kind of a small rebellion against the health. Because for, I think for a long time, for half of the life of this company, I think all, even the snacks were all healthy. Like there was no soda. There was no. , unhealthy, sugary stuff to be found.
And then people had enough, you know, there was a, people rose up and demanded sugar. So yeah, , I think we're at the stage where the rebellion is winning.
Cassidy Williams: I love that. so much. Mostly cuz I can personally relate as a quick anecdote. So when I worked at, when I worked at Venmo, it was the same thing where the founders were very healthy people and so it permeated the culture.
All of the, for granted we're a spoiled tech kids, so we had like free meals and, and all kinds of free food and stuff, but it was mm-hmm. so healthy and then PayPal bought Venmo and moved into the floor above us and they had candy and. So many of us, we like befriended the security guards and we would be just like, oh, we're going upstairs for a meeting.
And we're, they were just like, we know you're not, and we were just like, get the candy bars and hoard it and it's, it's necessary. Sometimes stick it to the
Charlyn Gonda: definitely necessary . I agree. I agree. I feel. I feel like you should have control over what you, what you consume as a snack. Uh, but I, I have to say, I feel like I've eaten a lot more salad since I've joined this company, which is probably very good for me.
Mm-hmm. A lot less candy. Nice salad.
Cassidy Williams: It's good, but candy, it's good. It's so good.
Charlyn Gonda: Sweet Green is actually not bad. Oh yeah. I've come to love it. Hmm.
Cassidy Williams: Yeah. That's a good salad. Well before PAVE and everything, what got you into the industry in the first
Charlyn Gonda: place? Yeah. Um, I think I was just lucky. So, um, I think in my junior year of high school, I, there was a computer science.
course that was offered. Mm-hmm. . So this was back in the Philippines. Um, oh, I hadn't, I, I had like programmed before using HTML and css. Uh, do y'all know Neo pets? . Leo Pets. Heck yes. . That's how we got started. , they
Cassidy Williams: had good tutorials for, for like mass era's. True. That was where you learned H Tim and CSS .
Charlyn Gonda: Yes, exactly.
So that I like to, that was my origin story. Like I, I made, I love, um, profile, like customized profiles for myself and for my friends, and then for my guild, there were like these
Cassidy Williams: guilds, the guilds, css. Oh my gosh. Yeah.
Charlyn Gonda: Um, and then, yeah, and then, um, uh, junior of high school, they offered a computer science class, and I just found that that was like super interesting to me.
And then, Uh, yeah. And then I was like, cool, this is what I'm gonna do. Um, but then, uh, I actually ended up having to study it for six years because, um, wow. Six years, but like, yeah, but not like with any sort of higher education degree, just a bachelor's because, uh, wow. I, I went. , um, college in the Philippines for a year, and then I moved here, but then I had to wait a year to not pay an exorbitant amount for school again.
Mm-hmm. Because of like, not again, but like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. The, the difference between like a state, uh, if you live in the state versus out of state, um, and then I didn't know that you're supposed to have a plan. So I attended community college first, and I didn't know that you're supposed to have a plan for community college
Cassidy Williams: Oh, so that, yeah, .
Charlyn Gonda: So I had just ended up spending three years, uh, and then I got into Davis, um, and then I spent two years there because it, there, it's more of a formal, like I found. P people make plans for this stuff. So , what a concept. Yeah, what a concept. I thought that you were supposed to just take a bunch of classes that seemed really interesting.
Cassidy Williams: I mean, honestly, by doing it that way, you probably learned things better than you would have if you were just like, I just have to stick to a plan. You, you took cool things
Charlyn Gonda: probably. I would like to think that, yes, I will take. Uh, reason and retroactively apply it to my decisions .
Cassidy Williams: It was so I could be a more well-rounded individual.
Charlyn Gonda: Exactly. Yes. Not because I didn't pay attention. , it's Sorry. You're a
Cassidy Williams: software junior now. You get candy regularly. It's okay. Yeah.
Charlyn Gonda: Sugar bar. It's great. Yeah, we have a big sugar bar. It's, it's not just a sugar bar. It's big. That's, that's a
Cassidy Williams: dream. Once. Ah, what a time. Just don't get cavities.
Charlyn Gonda: Mm, yeah. Gotta floss every day, folks.
Yeah,
Cassidy Williams: that's, that's key. Anyway, it is time for rapid fire questions.
We are going to ask you questions rapidly. So first of all, we all have domain names or project ideas that we're squatting on. What are some of your.
Charlyn Gonda: Uh, so I don't have anything super interesting. I, I'm pretty sure I still have the account, the, uh, URL for, um, this website called Day Coder, night Maker. And ooh, uh, it was gonna be this like community of software engineers that also liked to make things.
Mm. and, uh, it's really hard to make a community from scratch. Yes. So , it's just, it's a shelf. It's, it's on the shelf. It's there if I need it, but, uh, , that's a great for
Cassidy Williams: that. Just, just start it and we'll go from there.
Charlyn Gonda: But then it's like, what? Yeah, like the, the mechanics of it kind of eluded me. I was like, okay, well maybe I'll just keep making things and then see where, see, see if I just meet some people that way.
Yeah. Like
Cassidy Williams: if you build it, they will come maybe.
Charlyn Gonda: Yeah. Or I will get invited to them to see them. I don't, I don't know. Yeah. , that's how, how adults make friends. Yeah. Yeah. What
Cassidy Williams: is your golden rule for coding and working
Charlyn Gonda: in general? Uh, be kind, I guess. Mm. I feel like there's a lot of, uh, like problems that you can solve by just sort of coming from a place of kindness.
So like I try to all, I think that's like maybe, uh, I don't know if it's just like how unconditioned or whatever, but, uh, I always try to be real like, like err on the side of nices, even if somebody is doing something that like, I'm not like understanding what the motivations are. Mm-hmm. . Um, I feel like it definitely just helps, like, not just like smooth over.
uh, like working relationships, but then also it just makes me feel better, right? Like, yeah, because then I'm not stressing myself out, or like Yeah. I'm not, um, sort of giving too many spoons, you know? Like if I, um, if I, if I like, stay from a place of kindness, then um, it's like kinder to myself, but then kinder to other people as well.
Yeah.
Cassidy Williams: I feel like that's, that's a good rule in general. Everything,
Charlyn Gonda: honestly. Um,
Zach Plata: what is your favorite? It depends. Question.
Charlyn Gonda: What is my favorite? It depends. Question. Hmm. Well, it depends. Um, , Hey, maybe an interesting one is what's the best way to like get started on. , like all of the electronics hacking projects.
Mm-hmm. . So like, I feel like I get this question of like, you know, oh, I wanna make things but I don't know how to start. Right? And like, what do you pick up first and like, should I buy a 3D printer? Um, so it really depends. And my answer is always, it depends on what you wanna make. Because if you start from the tool, Like usually that's fun for the first, like the wild and novelty effect is active
Um, you're gonna have so much fun with the new tool, but then if you didn't have a thing that you wanted to build with it, then it's like, uh, it's probably like the novelty effect we will wear off. And then you're left with this fancy tool that you don't know what to do with. Um, and yeah, I've definitely, I mean, , I, I have a, I have a workshop filled with things that I've bought because I'm like, Ooh, I'm gonna make something with that.
That is, uh, uh, that I'm gonna make something really cool with it. But I didn't have a plan, so it's still sitting there. Uh, , I, that's
Cassidy Williams: too relatable. Let's, yeah. , I understand.
Charlyn Gonda: Yeah. I mean, I think, I think it's fine to get into that state because honestly, like I think of this, I think of the things around me as sort of like my paint palette, you know?
Mm-hmm. , then I can like readily grab it when it's available and then like, cuz my, my iteration process is usually very fast. , like I, I like to like see something physically be able to change it and then like, see it again. Uh, I think it's important for my process to be able to sort of like very quickly iterate.
And if I have, if I don't have the thing in front of me, then it's like that, that could put the entire project in the standstill, right? So anyway. Yeah. Uh, sometimes it's okay. Maybe don't start there, , but it depends. , there's, there's a fine line between, uh, a, a maker and somebody who collects maker things.
Cassidy Williams: Once again, please stop calling me out. . I'm begging you.
Charlyn Gonda: My bad. My bad. I'm calling.
Cassidy Williams: Oh, no. Yeah. Gosh, really? Makers are just really skilled hoarders.
Charlyn Gonda: I mean, honestly, if it's giving you joy to just even have the things right, isn't that worth it? That's, that's, I
Cassidy Williams: think it's rough. That's what I keep saying.
Charlyn Gonda: That's what I keep saying. I, I definitely have a CNC machine that I have not done , like I've done the starter project for it, but then I got scared of it cuz of how powerful
Cassidy Williams: it's
Speaking of devices though, what is the oldest piece of tech that you still own?
Charlyn Gonda: Hmm. I was, I was reflecting on this question. and, you know,
most of the stuff that I own isn't really, like, I don't really have, I have a lot of like vintage inspired things. Mm-hmm. , but not like actually vintage things. Like I have, I, I once made. SD card sticker stickers that would make your SD cards look like floppy disks because they have no floppy disks.
That's awesome. .
Cassidy Williams: We can count that. That's awesome. . Yeah,
Charlyn Gonda: I guess so. Yeah, we can count it. Yeah. Oh my.
Cassidy Williams: To the old
Charlyn Gonda: tech, what is the
Zach Plata: last piece of cringey code you remember? Oh my
Charlyn Gonda: God. Um, I actually just wrote one yesterday, but , uh, good. Yes, it was, yeah, , I, I immediately messaged my coworker and I was like, have you ever written code that causes you physical pain?
And then I assured him, and he was like, mm. Maybe, maybe we shouldn't . You sure
Cassidy Williams: You wanna actually advertise? You made that
Charlyn Gonda: like, you know your name is gonna be on this piece of code, right?
Cassidy Williams: get blame
Charlyn Gonda: or remember. Yeah. No. So I did it in a way where I didn't have to. Like caused myself physical pain for, for the rest of time.
Um, if I had merged that code, I probably would've. It was like, and it wasn't even like super eg egregious in terms of its implementation. It's just I made a lot of assumptions about, uh, or I had to sort of make a lot of assumptions about like, what, when you have like a bigger system, Ye, yeah, . It's like what?
What a set of like strings would end up being in the future or whatever. And then I'm like, yeah, like this is how this current set of data looks like today. So it'll work as long as nobody. Like, and there, there's no, there's nothing that is, don't touch. Um, yeah. , there's like nothing validating the form of the data, but I'm gonna depend on the form of this data.
Yeah. Yeah. . Yeah. That's nerve wracking. Yeah. Comment was like, somebody's gonna break it immediately. I don't know. Maybe not immediately, but like . It's gonna cause me soon enough. Soon enough. Yeah.
Cassidy Williams: What's your favorite programming pun?
Charlyn Gonda: What's my favorite programming? Pun? Yeah. Oh my
Cassidy Williams: god. Hmm. There's so many options.
Charlyn Gonda: Hmm. I don't know the last time that I've thought about. A programming
Cassidy Williams: pun, they kind of come up where like if you were to ask me my favorite programming pun, I'd be like, I don't know. But if you talk about code things, I'm sure I could come up with one soon. You know, like, gosh, I can't, I can't Now. Zach, say something technical.
Charlyn Gonda: Yes, .
Zach Plata: What
Cassidy Williams: say? Say a technical sentence. And Charlyn and I
Charlyn Gonda: will come up with puns about it.
Zach Plata: Okay? Okay. Uh, today I had to write a four loop.
Charlyn Gonda: For who?
Cassidy Williams: Dang it. I was gonna say for whom? Like, you know what, this
moving on. That was good enough. .
Charlyn Gonda: You
Zach Plata: were both on the, on the same mindset though. That
Charlyn Gonda: was pretty good. Yeah,
Cassidy Williams: you could really go deep and be like, you live in Chicago, so it was in the Chicago loop
Charlyn Gonda: or something. Ooh.
Zach Plata: Oh, that was good. That was what I hit. Hope I do.
Charlyn Gonda: I do really. . The, my favorite like coding related street is, uh, one infinite loop, you know, like apples, is it Apples address?
I think that's
Cassidy Williams: Apple's
Charlyn Gonda: address. Yeah. That's what you, I think whoever came up with that is genius and should have been memorialized in the Hall of Fame and their space at campus. . Yeah.
Cassidy Williams: No, that was, that was a really cool.
Charlyn Gonda: Yeah. . Okay. That could be I, I feel like that could be considered like a pun. That's kind of a pun.
Yeah. Kinda
What
Zach Plata: is your most used emoji? ,
Charlyn Gonda: uh, the sparkle emoji. Mm, it's sparkle. Good. Goody. It's so spitey also, um, I try, I try to stop using the crying laughing face emoji. Mm-hmm. Because apparently that also dates
Cassidy Williams: me, the, the youth say that's cringe Now. Wait.
Charlyn Gonda: Really?
Cassidy Williams: I know. Mm-hmm. Yeah. It's a thing. We have to eat it.
Oh gosh. Because it's not chewy
Charlyn Gonda: Okay. I, oh no, I'm too old to
Cassidy Williams: use Chewy . I guarantee say, I guarantee someone just signed off from watching us. They're like, absolutely not. Okay. It is time for the random segment generator. Um,
Okay, so we are going to ask you questions from the random segment generator, and the first one is dev. Oops. Could you tell us a story of something that you broke?
Charlyn Gonda: Yes. Oh, there's a, uh, a particular highlight in my career is when I took down Uber Eats. Oh my gosh.
Cassidy Williams: Oh, . Oh,
Charlyn Gonda: no, . Yeah. And it wasn't just like a bottom of the funnel thing, it was at the top of the funnel.
Like nobody could boot up the app . Oh, no. But it was the. The, the nice thing was that it was only for a few seconds, but Oh, that's good. Okay. To give you some context, uh, at the later part of the funnel, at, at least when I was there, um, like people, the number of orders that Uber Eats got was about 40, a little bit more than 40 per second.
40 requests per second. Okay. And that's like at the ordering. So if you extrapolate that from, App order, like app, um, launches. It's like a lot more. I, there's maybe like there's, yeah, I'm sure there's a lot more, five x more, 10 x more, um, . So yeah, that was, that was nerve wracking. Um, and it was the most, like, the most like.
Cringe thing. It was definitely a, a bully and logic error. Oh no, it's even
Cassidy Williams: worse. Like by one error
Charlyn Gonda: or something where it's just like, Good small thing. No, it was like some assumptions were made about like what bullying were true and what were false, and then it was like maybe, I don't know, four different variables and, and one of them was wrong, so I mean, it made it.
All the way through code review. I don't know,
Cassidy Williams: like ? Yeah. At, at that point, if it's all the way through code review, that's not just you who broke it. . Yeah. That is that as many people, that's also a very good case for using enums instead of bullying .
Charlyn Gonda: Gosh, yes. Good point. Get into that another time, . Yeah, you could, you could bring down entire production services, uh, with Bulls, man, bulls.
Scary aliens. True. False. Watch out. True.
Zach Plata: True. All right. Moving on to the next random segment is Talk and Chip. So what is something that is underrated or overrated in the deaf community?
Charlyn Gonda: I think, uh, Ruby is an sometimes underrated, sometimes overrated thing, but definitely feel like. underrated most of the time because, especially, especially Ruby on Rails, like, I think people like to sort of say like, oh, like that's cool for your starter project or whatever.
Um, . Yeah. But it, it's powerful. Powerful man.
Cassidy Williams: I think, I think it got, I think it got like a bad rap for a while because it didn't scale well, but especially in recent years.
Charlyn Gonda: It's solid. Yeah. I mean like
Cassidy Williams: everything I've seen about it, I'm just like, this is a pretty dang good framework that should be more overrated.
But it's, it's very
Charlyn Gonda: underrated in general. Yeah. And I think it's because a lot of people, like it was so easy to start that either a lot of devs started projects with it and kind of like just left it. Or like a lot of devs use it for personal projects or like a lot of like people who just started to learn.
Code, like started with it, right? So I think there's a lot of like this, um, sort of impression that only people who are like doing small things or, or just getting started are using it. But I don't know, like, I like to point out that GitHub uses it. Shopify uses it. Airbnb has a part of their stack that still has it, although they, they definitely have internal devs who hate it, but , ,
Cassidy Williams: there's always a sector of devs who hates something that they use regularly.
Sure, yeah. That's, that's just what it is. Oh, absolutely. It is now time for the mild panic trivia. Fun game. Ah, panic .
Charlyn Gonda: Ah
Cassidy Williams: panic. Okay, so you have 10 seconds to ask some a, someone a question or compliment them. So I will do Charlyn. Charlyn, you will do Zach. And Zach, you will do me. Are you ready? . Cool. Yes. Um, Charlyn, I love the things that you make.
I think they're very cool. And my question for you is, what is the favorite thing, your favorite thing that you've ever
Charlyn Gonda: made? Ooh, Ooh. Uh, one of my favorite things that I've ever made is an l e D cube. Um, cool. And I can show you that. I can show you that after, uh, we do, we, we, we all panic together. . Okay.
Great. Okay. Awesome. Um, uh, Zach, I think you are just really awesome and you have a lovely voice. Um, what is your favorite thing to do on a weekend?
Zach Plata: Oh, my favorite thing is to get boba. Mm-hmm. .
Charlyn Gonda: Mm-hmm. . Yes.
Zach Plata: Love that. Yep. Finding new boba places. Love . Um, okay. Cassidy. Uh, I love how your content makes really complicated concepts.
Super simple to understand and it always helps me every time I need to go back to an early, uh, thing. I need to explore. Thanks, Zach. That's so
Charlyn Gonda: helpful. You are helpful. Okay. So here is
Cassidy Williams: Acube.
Charlyn Gonda: Wow. Wow. I have a, uh, you guys are too generous. It's like not even doing anything yet ,
Cassidy Williams: but it's, it's a cute
Charlyn Gonda: That has lights.
We'll, we'll see what you want. Um, I actually made a Oh, wow. Oh, oh, oh, oh. Yeah, that's it. Died .
Cassidy Williams: Oh. But hey, it's something
Charlyn Gonda: and that's awesome. Yeah. Yeah. Um, I, I made like a little web app for it to sort of like, oh, here you can kind of see it like doing all this stuff. Oh, just kidding. It died again. Oh, well, , but still
Cassidy Williams: you made an app for it too.
Charlyn Gonda: Yeah. That's awesome. I, I made like a little web app so you can, like, put messages on it and, Anyway. Oh, I'll like send y'all a link. . Yeah, man. Drop it in
Cassidy Williams: the show notes later. Yeah,
Charlyn Gonda: exactly. But it's like one of the most favorite things that I've ever made, for sure. That's
Cassidy Williams: so cool. Love it. All right. It is time for Cassidy's Sage advice.
I'm Cassidy and I'm here to give you sage advice and my advice to you is don't be a tech hoard. Or a, or a, a crap hoarder in that, yes, it's fun to collect things, whether you're collecting articles or browser tabs or a variety of things that you wanna make stuff with, but you should actually make stuff with them because if you don't have a plan in place, it's just going to be you sitting there with 50 taps.
Not that I have those open right now, or a pile of things that you want to work with someday. Not that I have that right. Do say, say, not atk. I do make things and produce things and don't be afraid to just kind of go for it, because you never know if you might make a very cool cube that dies
Charlyn Gonda: on occasion and share what you make.
Cassidy Williams: Yes. And share it. Yes. Yeah. Charlyn, Zach, thank you so much for being on the show
Charlyn Gonda: today. Yeah, thank you. Thank you. ,
Cassidy Williams: Charlyn, where can people find you on the internet? Where, what things do you have to plug?
Charlyn Gonda: Oh my goodness. Um, well, my, uh, website is Charlyn.codes. Um, you would think that that blog is about coding, but it's not.
It's about making things . Um, that's fine. And. Uh, I'm also on Twitter, although tbh, uh, if I'm still going, or t b d, if I'm still going to be on Twitter. Um, I'm also on Mastodon at Charlyn and I'm also on Instagram at chardane. Awesome.
Cassidy Williams: Love that. And once again, because making podcasts is expensive. This show is brought to you by LaunchDarkly LaunchDarkly, toggles Peaks of 20 trillion feature flags each day, and that number continues to grow, and you should use them.
You can head over to launchdarkly.com and learn about how. Thank you for making this show possible. LaunchDarkly, I've been Cassidy Williams. You can find me at Cassidy, c a
s s i d o o on most things. CTO over at Contenda.
Zach Plata: And I'm Zach. And I'm a DevRel at Rive, and you can find me on Twitter at
zachplata.
Cassidy Williams: Thank you for tuning into The Dev Morning Show (At Night).
Make sure you head over to our YouTube channel where you can like and subscribe. You can also listen to the audio
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