00:00:01 Kent: What is up everybody? I'm so excited to be joined by Mark Thompson. This is Texan. You'll have to tell us what that nickname's all about, Mark. But yeah, so Mark and I met, I think, on Twitter. I don't think we met in person before we met on Twitter, which is actually describes most of my relationships these days.

00:00:21 But yeah, I think the first time we met in person was at NGConf this year, where I just like- Well, second

00:00:27 Mark time, but the first actual, actual meeting, but the second time we actually come in contact.

00:00:33 Kent: Oh, okay. Okay. Why don't you, I'm trying to remember what that first time was then.

00:00:37 Mark Oh, it was a really random time. So if you don't remember this, I don't blame you at all, but we both were at Modern Front Ends Live in London. Oh, yes. And I was lost and we hadn't like, you know, connected before that. You know what I mean? We just kind of maybe tweeted each other randomly, but not really connected. And then I was like, hey, do you know where to go?

00:00:57 You're like, man, I'm going to this hotel. And I was like, yeah, I'm totally lost. And it was a whole thing for me, but you were super kind, even like passing, you were super kind about it.

00:01:07 Kent: So. Yeah, you know, I think by then we had met online. I feel like we had. And so if I had been in the right frame of mind, then I would have given you a big hug at that point. But yeah. But I

00:01:20 Mark also had a mask on. So that's another thing.

00:01:22 Kent: Oh, yes, yes.

00:01:23 Mark A lot of people don't recognize me in a mask, which makes sense, which is why people wear masks. You know, when you do stuff, they don't wanna be recognized there. So I had a mask on. So I know that definitely, you know, contributed.

00:01:36 Kent: Yeah. Well, hey, it's been awesome to get to know you for the last about year or so that I have gotten to know you. Why don't you introduce yourself to the folks listening and Tell us about what you're into and, you know, however personal or professional you'd like to keep it.

00:01:53 Mark Yeah, fantastic. Hey friends, my name is Mark. First, I'll tell you why they call me Mark Texan. I was looking for a Twitter handle way back in 2017 and I asked my wife, I was like, help me think of something because she's really good at coming up with names of things that I want to do. And

00:02:08 Kent: she's like,

00:02:09 Mark what about Texan? And I was like, I'm not from Texas. She's like, no, not Texan, like T-E-X-A-N-E-S-O-N. I was like, oh, that is so clever. And I've ran with it ever since. And because my name is so common, if you search Mark Thompson, it's really hard to find me. But if you search Mark Texson, you'll find me in, you know, really,

00:02:29 really quickly. Yeah.

00:02:32 Kent: That was actually, that's a great idea. I hadn't thought about the the SEO Aspect of that but yeah for sure you need some moniker to make it easy for people to find you when you have a name Like Mark Thompson.

00:02:43 Mark Yeah, and when I was in high school, I wasn't even the only Mark Thompson I wasn't even the only Mark Thompson. I wasn't even the only Mark A. See, like you can use your middle initial to even further disambiguate, right?

00:02:53 Kent: Yeah.

00:02:53 Mark I can't even do that because I'm not even the only Mark A. Thompson out there. In my high school, there were 2 Mark Allen Thompsons.

00:03:00 Kent: No way.

00:03:01 Mark Yeah, totally 2 Mark Allen Thompsons. Once I was hospitalized, there's another Mark Thompson. They kept like coming in and asking me about his conditions. And I'm like, that's not me. I mean, super common name. Anyway, so I've been writing code for a very, very long time. I started writing code probably when I was 15. And then I started

00:03:21 working professionally about 15 or 16 years ago. It's been a long time. My first job was in 2006. So it's been a while.

00:03:29 Kent: Wow. Wow, man. That's awesome. And then you only joined Twitter in 2017. That sounds unheard of.

00:03:37 Mark Yeah, because I was so against Twitter. Don't ask me why, I didn't have any good reasons. I was just against it just to be against it.

00:03:44 Kent: You know, I actually feel the same way. Like there are movies that you miss and then after a while It becomes like a badge of honor like nope never saw that 1 like I know people who feel that way about the Harry Potter movies I feel that way about Titanic I never saw

00:04:03 Mark just won't watch it at this point.

00:04:04 Kent: Yeah. Yeah. It is a badge of honor. Like, nope, never saw it. And I'm proud of that, I guess.

00:04:10 Mark Yeah, I just won't watch. You cannot get me to watch Titanic. I just won't watch it.

00:04:14 Kent: That is so funny. Yeah. Well, good. That's fun to make those kinds of connections. So what have you been doing all this time in tech then? How did you get started in 2002?

00:04:27 Mark Oh, sure, sure, sure, sure. So when I first, oh man. Wow, I'm trying to remember what got me started. So the way I got started with computer science in general was that when I was a little kid, I remember feeling like I wanted my computer to like ask me questions about my day, like a personal assistant. Oh yeah, yeah. Mm-hmm. And I was, so this is back in the early

00:04:47 nineties. So for those at home, I'm in my almost mid forties now. So I've been around for a little while, but yeah, I want to do that. And then I had started to pursue computer science around trying to solve that problem and figure out how to like get started, not try to solve like personal assistance, but like, how do I interact with the computer? How do I program? And then

00:05:07 I was lucky enough to have like a high school teacher who believed in me enough to like make me stay after school and practice programming. And then that led to going to undergrad computer science, mathematics, graduate school, computer science. And then I ended up, my first job as a Java programmer for a small company. And yeah, so I spent a lot

00:05:27 of time, spent the first, probably 40% of my career as a Java, like server side, like programmer, just doing all Java. And then around 2011, the world changed when the first frameworks started to come around. So Batman and Knockout and Backbone and so many libraries and

00:05:47 AngularJS, all these things came around. And I felt like the world was changing and I wanted to be a part of that change. And then I switched over to front end development and I never looked back.

00:05:56 Kent: Wow, man, yeah, 2011, that is early on. Like that's even early, relatively early for the Node.js days too. So yeah, that's pretty sweet. I got home from my mission in 2010 and got married in 2011. And so I was still like trying to figure out what to do with

00:06:16 my life around that time. I was sure I didn't want to do anything with computer programming. But yeah, did end up into that. And I also started with Java, but eventually found my way to JavaScript. That's when I decided, oh, programming is actually pretty fun. Was when I found JavaScript.

00:06:37 So, very cool. So, you have been doing this web stuff for a really long time. What would you say is the most interesting, with all the perspective that you have from your years of experience, what would you say is the most interesting thing that's happened in the web in the last couple of years?

00:06:56 Mark Oh, I think just the APIs on the web, like the fact that you can do things that you can do now, like accessing devices, like we're using a web-based interface to have this conversation. When I first started, that was impossible. Right? Yeah. When I first started, you couldn't even round buttons with CSS yet. You could only use JavaScript to round

00:07:16 buttons. And a lot of people who are watching this may be like, I didn't even know that was a thing. Yeah, really, you could not do rounded corners on buttons. You had to use JavaScript or you'd use this idea of like, you remember that you'd use a table and you slice up an image in Photoshop that had the design you wanted and you use that as your button like you should do all kinds of Like make

00:07:36 fancy looking buttons and the fact that you can do any of that the fact that you can play video games in The browser, I mean, I just think the web APIs are just mind-blowing now because the browsers become this ubiquitous like portal for the world. So it's really fantastic.

00:07:50 Kent: That is so cool. It really is amazing. I love seeing the cool things that people can do on the web. And I just, I know that a lot of people are saying you gotta hedge your bets and learn different languages, and I have nothing against that. Like, feel free to learn other languages. I think that'll probably make you better at JavaScript.

00:08:11 But I have just laser-focused my own career on JavaScript and the web, and that has worked out really well for me because there's really nothing I can't do, relatively speaking. I can almost hear some of the Rust level programmers out there like, oh, I can think of a lot of things you can't do, can't do. For now. Yeah, for now.

00:08:32 So yeah, the web is awesome. So since then, the web has just been your whole focus then?

00:08:37 Mark Web and mobile. I've been really fascinated with mobile devices and mobile apps, but now because of how powerful the web is, you can just take your web skills and then you can apply those to like mobile development, which again, it's like mind blowing how the APIs are changing.

00:08:53 Kent: Yeah, yeah, that's very cool. I have, I did a little bit of a stint in mobile stuff, but when it came back to the web and I'm just full web guy now. So yeah, Mark, 1 of the cool things that I really have enjoyed following you is your Good Morning

00:09:13 series. So for those of you who haven't seen what Mark is doing there, why don't you give us a little intro to what is this Good Morning series all about?

00:09:24 Mark Yeah, so Good Morning with Mark is a web series that I do. I post online, different platforms, you can find me anywhere, literally, but mostly Twitter, but you can find me all kinds of places. But the idea behind it was that I really love helping people and I really love sharing the solutions to problems that I solve. So I do it through code,

00:09:45 right? When I would teach classes, but also what about like personal like problems when you're trying to accomplish something? And I was like, oh, I could probably help people with this. And then I can also spread some like positivity out there because I don't know if you've been on Twitter before, but It can be super toxic, super quick. And it's really easy to just feel down. The world is in a very

00:10:05 interesting place. There's so much happening. I'm like, okay, I like helping people. And I really like trying to help people, you know, like feel cared for. That's a really good way for me to kind of frame it, to feel cared for. So I started this series of just motivational videos that you could watch in about a minute, right? About a minute. And then you can get, hopefully, some inspiration

00:10:25 and get yourself unstuck if you're stuck on something. And that's where I've been having a lot of fun lately.

00:10:31 Kent: Yeah, I love it. And so, for those who haven't seen it yet, there's basically a video of Mark standing and he says like, hold up a second with your doom scrolling or whatever, and then you just say something really inspirational for about a minute, like various topics, what's holding you back, stuff like that. And very encouraging

00:10:52 as well. It's not like, I know some thought leaders or whatever, these business people, inspirational speakers can speak in a lot of platitudes and stuff like that. And like, look at me, how successful I've been. That's absolutely not the vibe that Mark gives off. It's more like, I believe in you and makes you feel really good about yourself.

00:11:12 And this is, like you do this every week on a Monday morning. Is that the cadence that you're on?

00:11:18 Mark Yep, every week on Monday morning. Like right before, so you see behind me is like my setup, that's where I stand to do these videos. And I was just recording right before our conversation.

00:11:28 Kent: Oh, nice.

00:11:29 Mark To release the video for the current week.

00:11:32 Kent: Oh man, so I'm standing between your wonderful video and like tons of people who want to get said good morning to.

00:11:41 Mark Oh good, no this is great. You know what's funny about those videos and you is that I remember the first time you interacted with 1 of those videos, I was like, wow, I didn't even think that I was on your radar. If that makes sense. Right. And not because like, okay. So people who have never met Kent, this is to you friends. He is so kind and like genuine and personable. Like It's not

00:12:01 even that he acts weird. It's just, I do know about you, Kent, that your following is quite large. Lots of people always vying for your attention. You know what I mean? So the fact that I came across your timeline and that you interacted, it caught me off guard. I was like, wow, that I was even on your radar that you even had the time because how busy you are to even like watch a video, right? And so that

00:12:21 was super encouraging for me. I was like, oh, so people are watching these videos and it is, like you said, it's not the like empty platitudes. It's more like I've done this or I've been here. Let me tell you how I got out of it. Maybe it can help you, but more than anything, like you said, I want you to believe in yourself because I actually believe that most people can get what they want out of life

00:12:41 if they believe in themselves enough.

00:12:43 Kent: Yeah, okay, so let's dig in. That was very nice of you. Thank you, Mark. Let's dig into some of that concept a little bit with belief in yourself. Why do you think that it matters so much? Like, let me take a step back. Sometimes it can sound kind of corny or cheesy,

00:13:04 like just believe in yourself and all your dreams will come true, right? Like that sort of thing. But like, is that real? And what is so important about really believing in yourself? And What does that actually mean as well?

00:13:16 Mark Sure, so the reason I think believing in yourself is real and why it's powerful when somebody else believes in you, but like you really got to believe in yourself is because there will be times where you just will not have the support that you need to get through. So whenever you do anything hard, like a support system is really important. And sometimes that journey of doing something that's

00:13:36 worth doing or challenging for yourself, you won't have the support system the whole time. You may not have it when you start. And that's when believing in yourself really matters. Right? Because as you've probably noticed that you might've been like, oh, I'm gonna make this like fantastic course. And some people were like, like your first course. We were like, OK, he'll do it, whatever. But then as soon as you did it, then

00:13:56 the support system came flooding in. Everybody's like, oh, yeah, Kent can do this. He could totally do this. Yeah, you got this. Can't wait for your next 1. But what about the times when you were like, man, I'm like 100 hours in and developing this course and I'm tired. I don't know if anybody will even care. Am I the qualified person to do it? All the negative self-talking come in. And so

00:14:16 believing in yourself can be like the thing that carries you over the line, I believe.

00:14:21 Kent: Oh yeah, I 100% agree. Like, especially when you're getting started and nobody knows what you're working on. And so even if they were going to be nice and say like you can do it They they don't even know what they're saying you can do And so like yeah The only person

00:14:41 who can believe in you in that point is yourself Right, and I think having that attitude like if you don't believe in yourself, then why would you even do it? And so without the attitude, you're not going to, it's not going to be possible.

00:14:57 Mark Sure. So. And I'll be, I'll be transparent. I've had it. I've had a pretty tough go of life. Like my life has been very challenging. And I've had lots of people doubt that I could accomplish the things that I've accomplished. I've had lots of people just been like, yeah, all right. Like when I mentioned that teacher, right, who believed in

00:15:17 me, like at that time, I was just going through like a phase of like identity crisis, kinda, where I knew that I was capable and I was smart, but I didn't know who I wanted to be. And I had this teacher just kind of be like, hey, look, you can do totally better than this. Like you could totally do more than you're doing. Right. Like you're about to fail this class,

00:15:37 but I know you could be good at this. And her making me like stay behind at school changed my life because if she didn't do that, I probably would not have pursued computer science longterm or I wouldn't have had the same path that I've had, right? And got on the trajectory. So yeah, you know, so it's good to have people believe in you, but then there are times where I

00:15:57 had to believe in myself when I built my first company. It was Like, yeah, I had to, there were some nights that I was just like, man, I hate this. And nobody's gonna like what I'm making. And everything sucks. But I had to believe like, no, you can do this. You can do this, bro. Like, you just gotta keep going. Just do not give up.

00:16:13 Kent: Yeah, I think so much of what we accomplish comes from our attitude around it. And so, yeah, I appreciate your Monday videos that helps restore that belief in ourselves. Even if it's just a reminder, oh yeah, I need to have a more positive attitude

00:16:33 about life right now. That positivity is good. And I definitely appreciate that on Twitter or X, where things can be very anonymous and random strangers can pop up and kind of ruin your day. And so having a friend pop up and be like, hey, I think you're awesome, don't forget it. And that just

00:16:54 does help. It matters. It means something.

00:16:57 Mark And speaking of the random strangers that ruin your day, 1 thing I try to do is be the random stranger that roots you on. And like this 1 person did not know her from anywhere, never met her before. She was like, oh, I'm starting my first day at General Assembly. And so I was coding bootcamp. And I just quote tweeted it. And I was like, hey, we believe in

00:17:17 you, you got this, good luck, proud of you, you can do it, you know what I mean? And just be that random stranger that instead of like, you know, crapping on her idea or be like, man, bootcamp suck there, a scam or whatever you want to say, you know what I mean? I was like, nope, I'm gonna be the opposite person. I'm gonna just push her on because I just know that when you're going through that process, that's a hard road. Boot camps are hard, right?

00:17:38 And yeah, so anyway, I like to be the random stranger that roots people on too.

00:17:42 Kent: I love that. Yeah, we need more of those. All right, Stop being the random person who says you're doing it wrong and be the random person who says you rock. That's great. Cool. So bringing it back, I guess, a little closer to web dev stuff, what is it that you're working on right now? You're on the Angular

00:18:02 team at Google, right?

00:18:04 Mark I am. I am. Yeah, so I'm working on 2 things. So 1 is the whole Angular world. So Angular is a web framework that helps you build scalable apps. And so if you've not used it before, that's totally OK. Because whenever I meet people who never use Angular, they get this weird posture about it. I'm like, it's OK.

00:18:24 I've never used some other tools either. I've never used Solid. But when I met Ryan Carneado, I was like, Hey, I could appreciate your work though, you know, but I never used it. So anyway, but, Angular web framework. Right. And so we had, you know, it's just this really interesting journey where we started out, brought TypeScript kind of, I won't say we brought it to the mainstream,

00:18:45 but we were the first framework to just really embrace TypeScript from

00:18:49 Kent: the start.

00:18:50 Mark Yeah. And we were just using TypeScript. And so that was kind of trailblazing at that time. And then we were also using observables early, early on. And again, thinking about this idea of a stream of events that happen over time that are unpredictable, programming like that, like those are things that are really trailblazing. And then I think we got into a place where we knew we needed to

00:19:10 make a core evolutionary change to the framework in order to meet the needs of the next generation of web apps. But it took us a long time to get there. I'll be honest with you. We had about a two-year period where we just lost a little momentum because we were trying to make this really significant change. And

00:19:30 so when we finally got out of it, now, you know, a lot of people are talking about Angular because we're releasing new features. We've been able to just add a lot of brand new things to the framework. But, you know, right now, what's interesting to me is how do we continue to serve developers? And so that's what I've been working on on the Angular team is like trying to figure out how do we serve developers who want to build scalable applications?

00:19:50 Like what can we do to be the best framework for you if that's what you want to use?

00:19:55 Kent: Yeah, I think I can definitely relate to the idea of like we have this thing that we're working on and it's a really, really foundational change and it's taking a lot of time and then you finally finish it and then it's just like the dam has broken and everything else comes finally. That's a really, really awesome

00:20:16 thing. Now the thing, the revolutionary, or like the big change that you were making was to move to signals, is that right?

00:20:23 Mark Oh no, even before that, it was to change our rendering engine. And so for our template rendering engine, we moved something called View Engine to Ivy. And it's an incremental view engine. And again, 1 of those things where it's like really good idea is just, I think that we maybe underestimated how long

00:20:43 it would take us, But now we're actually able to benefit from having that change. So now we can do things like signals, right?

00:20:51 Kent: Which is

00:20:51 Mark a huge thing. And then we have all these things around our new template syntax where you can do deferred loading, defining your templates. And So all these fantastic features that we get to do now are because we went through that really hard time of that migration from Vue engine to Ivy, but now we're able to just continue to keep the hips rolling.

00:21:12 Kent: Oh, dude. Okay. So I feel like there are a lot of lessons that we can learn from that, both like from a code perspective, but also from a personal life perspective. You know, like that, that to me sounds a lot like sharpening the saw and you know, all of those things that, I don't know, that just made me think of a bunch

00:21:32 of things where it's time to invest back in the foundation a little bit, right?

00:21:40 Mark I think- Sometimes you gotta do that just as a human, right? Like as a person. You just gotta like take that L and just like, I don't want to say disappear for 2 years, but sometimes you do just have to do something that has taken a long time, but it's worth it.

00:21:54 Kent: You just

00:21:54 Mark got to sit there and go through it and it's going to suck in the middle of it. What it'll allow you to do for yourself, right? Is a valuable thing. So I told you the parallels there.

00:22:06 Kent: Yeah, yeah. I think education is another 1 where it's like, you know what, I'm gonna pause shipping, you know, on my side projects for a little bit and just dedicate time to like re-evaluating the fundamentals and that sort of thing. Solidify my foundation, yeah. Yeah, that's very cool. So,

00:22:27 I'm curious, Mark, what your take on the future of not just Angular, but the future of the web, the future of software development, future of the world. Like, where do you think we're going? I feel like there's just a lot of uncertainty, right? A lot of things are happening. Where do you think the future is going, Mark?

00:22:46 Mark It's perfect, Segway, because I think the second thing that I'm working on is figuring out how to help developers find the future for themselves. So it's no secret that like, ChatGPT and AI and LL and large language model based systems have burst into the same and really changed the way that we perceive

00:23:04 Kent: work, right?

00:23:05 Mark And I think as a developer, this is the last 10 to 12 months have been a really scary time because I think that if you see things, people like, Oh, Chad GPT just wrote my entire unit test, or I showed a picture and then it created the application for me and I showed it a wireframe or I did this thing, I did that thing.

00:23:27 Like you might just feel like you're toast. You just feel like it's over. Why would I learn anything more when this is the future? And like, as a content creator, I see like these like video, you know, AI videos that now can change your language in real time and change your lips moving and like all these things, right? So it makes you feel like the human effort is being slowly

00:23:47 phased out in favor of like machine effort. I don't think that's the full story. I think that what people have to understand is that, AI is not perfect, but it is going to change everything, right? Like I don't think you can rely on chat GP. Well, somebody tried this. Somebody tried to build a business

00:24:07 with chat GPT. I'm only gonna do the things that chat GPT says and they didn't make any money. Right? Like seriously, they didn't make any money. Like none of the systems could replace the human decision-making. So the way I think about AI now, or for you as a developer, so the friends at home, if you're listening right now, here's what I would say you should do right

00:24:27 now. Learn how to build AI enabled systems, not build systems with AI, like using chat GPT to do your work. I'm saying, learn how to make applications that leverage AI. Because I think that's the future, because 1 of the things that happens is that I am completely starting to start talking too much, but I'm really passionate about this. No, no, this

00:24:47 Kent: is great. I love your take.

00:24:49 Mark So I think this, users are gonna expect more and more out of applications now, out of software.

00:24:54 Kent: Yeah.

00:24:55 Mark Right? And you should be the ones that like, know how to build those systems that can do more. And the example I've been using is like a calendar. Like imagine if you had like really smart calendar software, it's like, Oh, Kent has a doctor's appointment today at let's say 11 a.m. I already know Kent doesn't drive a car because I can tell that he uses Lyft and Uber all the

00:25:15 time. Okay, fine. I don't know if your car came, but I'm just saying. Maybe Ken doesn't have a car. So it would know to like schedule your Lyft or Uber for you, right? It'll remind you, like, it'll get, can read your appointment information all locally, nothing in the cloud, right? But locally, I'm like, oh yeah, you should fast for this. Send you a notification

00:25:35 at like, you know, the night before, at minute, like, hey, make sure this is your last meal. You got, you have to, you know, like really smart, sophisticated software that do things beyond human scale, right? That's where I think we should leverage AI, is to build software that can do things that humans can't do. I couldn't translate every book known to man, right? Humans can do it, but AI could do it.

00:25:56 I think medical space is another place where AI is going to change the world. We'll get earlier detections, you know what I mean? Like patterns will get pulled out that humans could have missed, but AI will be able to find it. But that doesn't mean we replace our doctors. It just means that we give tools that help change the way that people get served. And we should be the ones to create

00:26:16 those tools. Like don't get left out of that plan.

00:26:21 Kent: Yeah, yeah. I like that. I think if there's any good takeaway from this segment of our conversation, It's like go build something that uses AI in some way. And OpenAI's API is great. It's not the only game in town, but it is a really easy 1 to use. And just

00:26:41 get yourself a little bit familiar with that sort of thing. Build a little demo or something just so that you get used to that. I would add that learning how to leverage AI-based tools as like AI assistants in your regular coding, that's really, really

00:27:01 helpful. A lot of people will look at ChatGPT and they'll be like, look at that garbage output. This is such a terrible thing. It'll never really be all that useful or whatever. I totally disagree with that. I think you could look at a kitchen and make some meal that is garbage, of course, but you can also, like,

00:27:21 if you're really good at it, you can use those tools to make a really great meal as well. And so you have to recognize the ingredients that go into a really good output from the AI.

00:27:33 Mark I love that. Super smart. I didn't think about the kitchen analogy. It's a great analogy. Fantastic.

00:27:39 Kent: Well, cool. So I'm looking forward to our AI future. I think it's awesome. I really enjoy the tools. And actually in the workshops, I do not turn off co-pilot. I leave that on and it's very intentional and I just show people, here's how you use this tool and how you properly review the code that it generated for you

00:28:00 so that you make sure that it's doing what you want it to do.

00:28:03 Mark Wait, pause right there. That's interesting. Make sure that you review the output. So does that mean, Kent, that we still have to know how to code?

00:28:15 Kent: Oh, snap. This stuff is not taking our jobs yet. Maybe 1 day, but yeah, today, I definitely see CoPilot as like an intern that I'm working with that like doesn't quite understand all the context that I get. And maybe 1 day it will have a lot more context, but even still

00:28:35 it doesn't know everything that I want it to do. And so, yeah, you definitely need to review it. And there's more than once in the videos of Epic Web where I say, Silly copilot, that's not at all right at all.

00:28:48 Mark And I

00:28:49 Kent: leave that stuff in there because I think that it's important for people to know that you don't just blindly follow what the AI is producing for you. You just, you got to treat it as a coworker that helps you type faster.

00:29:02 Mark That's right. And I think that for people, if you are like a person who wants to do your side projects, I just imagine what would probably take me like 3 weeks of nights and weekends, what, how, how much can I reduce that time if I use an AI system, right? And then how could I be more prolific with my output without, and reducing the

00:29:22 chance of burnout, because 1 of the hard things about like side projects is that you're, if you're working full time and then you're doing this at night, eventually you will start to burn the candle at both ends. Right. And so these tools could totally change the way that you do stuff. I just think that it's a mistake to ignore it. I think a lot of developers are just kind of writing it off

00:29:42 and, and maybe not your audience. Right. Well, like Maybe people who are more just like negative about it, to be honest with you, just more negative perspective, like, oh, you know, this will never be anything. Look how bad this output is, or look how wrong this code is. I'm like, it's wrong now, but you do know this thing's going to get better.

00:29:57 Kent: Yeah.

00:29:58 Mark And so what, so, So I guess 1 way to also think about it for friends at home who still may be a little scared, the baseline will change, right? So right now you have like, I have to look at Fiverr. I feel like they're at risk with all the AI tools, the people who like, you know, use templates to generate a lot of stuff. Eventually like those like

00:30:19 kind of lower level outputs will be kind of changed. And then a lot of the jobs that are kind of lower level problem solving will probably be automated through like tools, AI tools eventually, for sure. I mean, that's the sad reality. Some people will be displaced by this technology, but I'm telling you, people who are listening to our conversation, like here's how you don't

00:30:39 end up in that pile, right? Like you learn to be, like you say, learn how to use the tools and also learn how to build the tools. Like you get open AI, Firebase has a bunch of tools where if you can just include it in your app, like the AI program parts already done for you, but your app can then take advantage of those

00:30:59 features. I mean, like you can start doing that stuff right now. You should, like you said, build something small. Even if it's the version of Hello World with an AI assistant, just start to understand how these tools work so that way you are ready when the industry eventually shifts completely, you'll be right there ready, ready to go.

00:31:18 Kent: Yep, yep, 100%. Well, Mark, we've covered a lot of different topics. Is there anything that we didn't really talk about that you'd like to dive a little deeper on or you'd like to talk about?

00:31:30 Mark Yeah, I would like to encourage people mostly just like you and I. So, and here's why I say that, because I think that's something that you do is you complete really large projects. And that is a very hard skill. And people don't realize it. Because so, so here's the problem I think

00:31:50 that people run into. They underestimate how hard something is, and they overestimate how capable they are doing it. That sounds a little mean, but I don't mean it like that. I mean, you may be not capable to do it because you have kids at home, or you have a loved 1 you're taking care of, right? Like you overestimate your ability to do it or your, or availability to do it. Let's say it

00:32:10 that way. That's a little bit nicer because I think you can do anything you want. Okay. Yeah. How do you complete such large projects?

00:32:19 Kent: Ooh, yeah, you know, I start by completing smaller ones. Right? So like I, because I am much more capable of building something like Epic Web today than I was before I made my first course on egghead. And so yeah, start small and build from there. That helps a lot.

00:32:39 Mark Start small. So how do you figure out what's the smallest unit then that you should start at?

00:32:44 Kent: Ooh, yeah. Yeah, that's a good question. I don't know. I think you need those quick wins though. So you do need to figure out a way to break it down so that you can, this kind of feeds into believing in yourself like we were talking earlier. You have to have something that you can finish and then you'd say

00:33:04 I am a person who finishes stuff Mmm, and that's a good feeling Find a way find a way to break it down into something small it I think it's hard to define a general rule for how to break things down, because it's gonna depend largely on things. But if you wanna get into

00:33:25 blogging or something like that, then I would say Don't build the blog first, write the blog post. And get that published, even on like, I used to publish blog posts on GitHub Gist. And yeah, just throw up some content somewhere. And over time, you can start doing

00:33:46 a little bit more of the fancier stuff.

00:33:48 Mark Okay, 100% true story. By the time people have watched this video, maybe this video will be out before people get to see this most likely. What you just said is what today's video is about.

00:33:59 Kent: Oh, snap.

00:34:00 Mark Because I was saying, in this video, it's called like, stop trying to cheat the system. Because what people will do is they'll say, well, I want to do this thing. And then, or I want to learn this thing. And then they'll think of all the like tasks surrounding it instead of doing the actual thing they want to do. So instead of like writing the blog, they were like, okay, I got to build a blog. Okay. Now I got

00:34:20 to learn this framework and then I got to do this thing. And I got to do this. I got to find hosting. None of this had nothing to do with writing a blog. Yeah. But you feel so good because you're like, well, I'm learning. I'm learning. So you try to cheat the system, which is really a way for you as an overachiever. If you identify as an overachiever, for you to just do more stuff because overachievers just want to do a lot

00:34:40 of stuff. They want to overachieve. And so me as an overachiever, I've done that before. So anyway, the point being is that like what you just said, literally what I filmed right before we talked, which is just about that idea of like, don't cheat the system. Just do the thing that you're trying to do. Don't try to like, you know, add all these other things on because you're probably not going to finish because

00:35:01 you've taken on too much.

00:35:03 Kent: Yeah, yeah. You know, that makes me think of a concept that I've thought about over the years called needs-based learning. I should probably write a blog post about this.

00:35:12 Mark But like,

00:35:12 Kent: so the idea is instead of saying, oh, I'm gonna build a blog so that I can have a blog post and I'm gonna learn about hosting and stuff, you don't really need to do those things to get the blog out there. But you get a couple blog posts done and then you're like, you know what, I really need to get those on my own domain.

00:35:32 Okay, so now you need to learn how to get a domain. And then, oh, I need to have some sort of site there with, you know, I've got static content, I can just put HTML files out there. And so, like over time, And we actually kind of do this naturally on the job too. The boss says, we need to do this thing, and so now you need to learn X.

00:35:54 You jump into a project that uses Redux, and now I need to learn Redux. And so I'd say needs-based learning isn't the only way to do it. Of course, like if you want to, the problem with needs-based learning is that you skip over fundamentals that if you had those, you'd do things differently and stuff would be better. But-

00:36:14 Potentially better. Yeah, potentially better, yeah, yeah. But I think needs-based learning kind of helps avoid this paralysis that comes from just constantly feeling like you have to do all the peripheral things rather than just shipping the stuff that you wanna ship. So like do as little as possible

00:36:34 as it takes to ship the thing you're trying to ship.

00:36:37 Mark That's right, that's right. If I could go back to any side project that I've ever not completed, I wish that I would have done as little as possible. So the thing that I tell people now is that if I did another side project, like another company or try to do a startup, first thing I would do is make a webpage with the buy now button. I wouldn't

00:36:57 do anything else. I wouldn't buy any domains, Maybe a domain, maybe if it's cheap, only if it's like $10 or $5, right? Yeah. But like, quick domain, Squarespace, whatever, GitHub, just something where I can put a buy now button before I build anything. Because the thing that I think that people do is like, this is a different conversation, but I'm just saying like, like you said, needs-based. And

00:37:17 I feel like the only thing you need to know at first, if you're trying to sell something, if people want to buy it, that's what you need to know before you even like do anything else. And so I will say, yeah, if I get, put some analytics on it, If people actually clicked it, then I was okay. People want it. Right. But if nobody ever clicked it, nobody ever searched for it. I don't get any traffic to it. What do you think is

00:37:37 going to happen when you finish it? Yeah. We'll get any traffic then, which is what happened to me. This is how I know this lesson. Nobody cared about the thing that I built, even though I spent 3 and a half years building it.

00:37:46 Kent: Oh yeah. And they definitely don't care how long you spent on it, right?

00:37:49 Mark Nope, nobody cares. They still don't. Nobody's texting me like, hey, are you ever gonna add more features? Nobody's, you know what I mean? Like nobody's like into it, which is fine. I learned a lot. Yeah. But I ended up getting to the point of, the reason I was able to ship that project was because I eventually got to the point you're talking about, which is doing the smallest thing to ship,

00:38:10 right? I was just like, nope, just gotta ship, gotta ship.

00:38:12 Kent: Yeah, you know, like a couple, around when COVID hit, my sister is a accomplished violinist and has a bunch of violinist friends. And so she was seeing all of her violinists not being able to get performances and get paid that way. And so she was thinking, well, how about I put together a site where I can get them teaching so they

00:38:32 can teach people. And so she talked to me about it because I'm the developer brother, and she's like, hey, basically what she described to me was she wanted custom software for basically a Zoom-like platform, a Google Calendar-like platform, like scheduling, all of this stuff, all custom

00:38:53 software. And I told her, no, no, no, no, you don't want that. Here's what you wanna do. You set up a webpage, just use Wix.com or something, that says, schedule your lessons here, whatever, and then you manually integrate Tito.com or whatever that Tito

00:39:13 is called. I don't know that domain, but yeah. So like you got the ticketing, and then you manually send out calendar events and then you manually set up Zoom calls and do everything manually, as little as possible automated as you can. And then that way you're not out like hundreds of thousands of dollars in like multiple years building this

00:39:33 platform that nobody ends up using. And honestly, like we hear the success stories of startups and like how infrequently those are successful. And I think in large part, It's because they decide that they're gonna finish the thing before anybody wants

00:39:53 it I Think I really like your idea of just like the first thing you do is put up a buy now button and then you like Somebody says oh, yeah I want to buy this now And you figure out some random manual way to provide them the thing. Like you're not lying or anything. Like it's not like you're gonna promise something that you can't deliver. But

00:40:13 you kind of force yourself into this needs-based product building, I guess.

00:40:19 Mark Right, I mean, so if I did it right now, exactly what I would do is, if they clicked on buy now, I would take them to like a Jot form, or like a, what do you call those types of online forms?

00:40:30 Kent: Yeah, yeah.

00:40:30 Mark For like a wait list. I'm like, okay, I won't take any money. You know what I mean? But it's like, oh, you're interested in buying this, great. We're still in development. You know what I mean? Be the first to be notified when this is available. And then I would wait to see how many of those I got. Yeah. And if I got like a thousand, I'm like, oh, people actually want this. And they'll pay

00:40:50 the price that's listed on the website for it. Right. And so, yeah, again, this is learned from years of kind of false starts with building products, then building an actual product, and then reviewing all those lessons in my brain of like, oh, yeah, this is what I would do if I were to do it again. Will I ever do another product?

00:41:11 I don't know. Maybe, but it's hard for me to be like, Yeah, let me, I don't know, I wanna focus on the video stuff right now, right? Like that's my product right now is video stuff.

00:41:23 Kent: Yeah, you know, that makes me think of whenever I am advising family about things that they wanna start doing, like whether it be content related stuff or actual some sort of product. Like my sister teaches piano lessons, different sister. And I always, I have another sister who

00:41:43 was into softball and she would teach softball lessons. So anytime that they come to me and say, hey, what should I do to get started? I always say, put up a mailing list. Get a mailing list going. And that gives you a really good idea. And then I did that with Epic Web, and once I had, I mean, I already had a pretty good mailing list, but once you

00:42:03 have a number of people who are interested, then you say, okay, I'm gonna do a live workshop. Like, the thing that comes out of Epic Web is a bunch of recorded videos, but I do the live workshops so that I can make sure that the material that I'm gonna record is gonna be worthwhile for people. And it also gives me a good idea, understanding

00:42:24 of like, will people buy this thing by actually having them buy it? And so while a in-person or live workshop doesn't scale as well as what Epic Web is supposed to, by kind of doing as little as possible, the manual labor required to make that happen, I can really test

00:42:44 the waters and see not only are people willing to buy, but is this a product that people are gonna be happy with and I can fine tune things before I really commit. This actually makes me think of Elon Musk and Tesla and how they over automated the Model 3 line where like 2017 or

00:43:04 whenever that was, that yeah, it was before that, like 2014, something like that. They just like automated the entire process and it just almost destroyed the company because they automated stuff before they knew. You're solving the problem before you have it. And so you come up with the wrong solution. So anyway, yeah, lots of thoughts there.

00:43:24 Mark Oh man, we can have a ton of conversations. You know, next time we're in person, let's make sure we get a meal and just like, Yeah, yeah. Have some more and just talk. Because I think that the way we approach problems is similar. And I think there's a lot that I could learn from how you've done things. I mean, yeah, it's really, I don't know. I like the way you approach it, like doing the, because right now, 1 of the

00:43:44 things that, Well, I know we're running out of time. I'll just say this last thing. Working at a large company, it is really hard to get green lit to do certain projects because we worry about scale, which is reasonable, right? Google scale is very different than your local shop that has 5 developers, you know what I mean?

00:44:05 Scale is very different. But sometimes I have to remind people like, Hey, look, sometimes you just got to do things that don't scale until you can't do them anymore because then you know enough about how to like scale it at that point. But you don't even know what you need to scale if you just start with scale first. Sometimes you can start with scale, but sometimes you just gotta do stuff. And then you're like, oh yeah, this doesn't scale.

00:44:25 Okay, I need to automate this, or I need to change this because this is not working for me. But like I said, you don't even know it's working because you haven't done anything.

00:44:31 Kent: Yeah. Yeah, 100%. I'd love to get a meal with you. So next time you're in Salt Lake or next time I'm in your part of the world, which is, where do you, where are you living?

00:44:40 Mark I'm in Chicago now.

00:44:42 Kent: Chicago, okay. I think I've only ever been to the Chicago airport, but next time I'm over there, we should grab something. It's been awesome chatting with you.

00:44:51 Mark We might be at an event at the same time. I mean, I'm moving around a little bit.

00:44:57 Kent: So sweet, it was awesome chatting with you. What's the best place for people to keep up with what you're doing and stay tuned with what you're working on?

00:45:05 Mark Yeah. So, if you want to hang out with me and know what's going on, you can find me until it goes away, twitter slash x at Mark Texson. That's M-A-R-K-T-E-C-H-S-O-N. But if you just search Mark Texson, you will know exactly where I am because I'm the only 1 right now, so.

00:45:25 Kent: Nice, yeah, way to get that SEO juice going. That's good stuff. Yeah, my

00:45:29 Mark wife is brilliant. Like you said, my wife is great, by the way.

00:45:32 Kent: Yeah, that's right.

00:45:34 Mark She's great. She's really great.

00:45:36 Kent: Cool. Hey, thanks everybody for listening and we'll catch you all

00:45:39 Mark later. Peace.