Hey everyone and welcome to Developer Tea. My name is Jonathan Cutrell and in today's episode, I'm not going to fool you at all. It's April Fools' Day and last year I did a very fun episode for me at least. For those of you who caught up with Developer Tea later on, I'm sorry that it was kind of confusing for you. You didn't listen on April 1st, so you would have had to go back and actually see what date that episode released to understand that it was actually in April Fools episode. But this year we're going to do something a little bit different. And we'll talk about that in just a second. Today's episode is sponsored by Linode. If you are looking for a Linux cloud hosting provider, Linode might be the perfect solution for you. A little bit more about a special offer that Linode is providing to Developer Tea listeners later on in the episode. I want to mention one other thing, by the way, squares conference. I'm going to be at squares conference. They have been kind enough to invite me to come out. And in exchange, I let them know that I would tell all of you about it. So I'd love to see you at squares conference. It is in late April. I believe it's April 27th. We have a special deal for you if you are interested in going. But to get that deal, you're going to have to join the spec Slack community. You can do that by going to spec.fm slash slack. And you can actually message me directly on that Slack community. And I'll tell you about that special offer for Developer Tea listeners that want to go to squares conference. So I said today is a different kind of day. I'm a little bit off script here. I don't have a specific script prepared, and that's because really today all I'm going to be doing is issuing you a challenge. You know, you like I are probably looking at all the hilarious April Fools day jokes around the internet. And that's a lot of fun. But I want to issue you a challenge as the development community. And that is I want you to do something that is foolishly generous for someone else. I want you to do something foolishly generous for someone else. Now you may be thinking this is a very strange challenge for Jonathan to be issuing on a development podcast. But here's the reality. The reality is, first of all, that I'm going to share my personal views on this show as I do all the time. I'm not going to shove them down your throats. Obviously, my personal views are going to be different than yours. And I can absolutely respect that. But I also believe that generosity and doing things for other people is a fundamental core part of being human. It is a core part of the human experience. Not only that, but you will also reprogram your brain to think differently about kindness and about acting on the behalf of other people. Now you may still be wondering, Jonathan, why are you issuing a challenge over a development oriented podcast for us to do something generously for another person? Two reasons. One, I believe that the development community has a very powerful ability to be generous in a very creative way. I think the common misconception about generosity is that you have to use money. You have to use money to be generous. I don't believe that's true. I believe that you can use, for example, your programming skills to be generous. I believe that you can teach somebody something new. And that can be generous. There are so many ways that you can be foolishly generous to another person. So I would love to hear your stories about what you choose to do. And the second reason I chose to issue this challenge to this specific community is that developers have not always been seen as the most generous people. There is a large misconception about the developer culture that basically says that we are selfish. And this isn't true across the board. This is more of one of those soft definitions that developers are somehow disconnected from the human reality or that we have a lack of empathy for other people. And so we often get lumped into this group that typically carries a negative connotation. Now I believe as Developer That are response to that shouldn't necessarily be to just say, no, we aren't that way. But instead to do something about it to actually act out in generosity, act out in maybe seemingly illogically generous way, and this may require that you give up some of your own time for a while or it may even require that you do give up some money. I don't know. It's totally your choice. But I want to issue this challenge because I believe that developers have a unique ability to be creatively generous. And beyond that, let me say that I believe in the Developer Teacommunity specifically. The people who listen to this show, you've listened long enough, most likely. Now if this is your first episode that you're listening to, then go back and listen, listen to some other episodes and decide if you want to be a part of this community because we believe in humanity. We believe in the human side of development. It's not just about the languages, it's not just about the code. It's about the human experience. And so if you subscribe to that, then this shouldn't come as a huge shock to you. That I would talk about doing something that is actively and foolishly generous for another human being. Now we're going to take a quick sponsor break. And then I'm going to come back and actually read you some of the emails that I've gotten on Developer Tea, specifically developertea@gmail.com. I've received so many cool stories and thank yous. And I want to share them with you all to kind of underscore this idea that the listeners of this show and the development community in large, they understand the human side of this profession and even of this hobby if you're just a hobbyist developer. So let's take a quick sponsor break and then we'll come back and I'll read a couple of those. Today's episode is sponsored by Linode. With Linode, you can instantly deploy and manage an SSD server in the Linode cloud in just under a minute. They have eight data centers and their plans start at $10 a month, hourly billing and a monthly cap on all data plans exists even for add on services. So things like backups, node balancers and long view, all those have a monthly cap. So you can spin up a VM for full control. You log in as root. You can run Docker containers and cryptid disks. You can run a private get server and Linode runs on native SSD storage and a 40 gigabit network built on Intel E5 processors. So speed of that network internally is not a problem. Beyond that, Linode has a seven day money back guarantee. So if you're not happy with the service, obviously there's no risk involved. Now if none of this has commenced you yet, then hopefully this next part will. Node is offering you a $20 credit at checkout simply for using the code Developer Tea 20 and you can get that code automatically applied by going to linode.com slash Developer Tea. Thank you so much to Linode. Of course, that link will be in the show notes at spec.fm. So we've been talking about the challenge that issued to you to do something that is foolishly generous for another person. And once again, you are still listening to a development podcast. I know it doesn't necessarily sound like all of the things that we talked about in the past. But once again, this is a part of the human experience being a generous person and reversing this misconception that developers are not generous or that we don't understand the human experience. And I want to share with you some of the truly human stories that have been sent to me since we started this podcast, a listener named Matt wrote in very recently. He said, Hello, Jonathan. I will try to keep this message as short as possible. But I just wanted to extend my thanks to you for everything you do. Your podcast has been instrumental in my getting hired at my first developer job. I started listening to Developer Teaalmost a year ago. Wow. I just started learning to code in PHP through Treehouse. I wanted to hear more about development as I drove back and forth from my job and stumbled upon your podcast, many of the soft skills as well as a lot of the lingo and basic immersion into the community of developers have helped me maintain interest and ultimately land my first full time developer position. Thank you for all that you do to keep Developer Teaup and running. It has been an important facet of my routine, Matt. So this, thank you. I wanted to read it to the Developer Teacommunity because you all are actually responsible for Developer Teajust as much or more than I am. The community that he's referring to here is you, this lingo that he's referring to, that comes from this collective conversation that we're having. And if you didn't listen to the show, then Matt wouldn't be able to listen to the show either. So thank you to Matt and thank you to everyone else who is listening because this is just a fundamental part of the human experience is learning from each other and sharing in these conversations together. The next email that I received was from Fabio. Fabio says, I'm a London-based front-end developer who's been going through a deep burnout phase lately and desperately tried to get a hold of myself. I just wanted to say thank you because in the thousands of ways I tried to change my approach to work, to improve it, to live it better, a big game changer was to start listening to Developer Teain the morning while I'm out for a walk or coffee. Anyways, before starting the working day, it's kind of therapeutic for me. It relaxes my mind and gives me that boost to start the day off on the right foot. I'm pretty sure there's people out there who really benefit from Developer Teaso keep up the good job. Thank you again. I wish you the best. And so what you'll notice here, and this again, all of the credit goes to the Developer Teacommunity because without you, the show wouldn't exist. We wouldn't be able to have these conversations. I'm not saying anything incredibly novel here. I'm just trying to have conversations with all of you, right? But what Fabio is saying here is that that community has helped him get through burnout. It's not about revealing some magical part of a language that he never saw before. It's not about enlightening from that side of things. It's about the human experience of burnout and sharing in that conversation with the other people who are listening to the show and sharing with me on the show. So Fabio was able to get past his burnout because he was able to really focus on that human side of the experience. And we're going to do one more email here. This email came from Beth. Beth said, Hey there, I have been listening to you for about six months. And outside of tech news today, you are the only other tech podcast I listened to. I do get news elsewhere, but you have a great combination of soft skill discussion, dev discussions, and great interviews, your interviews, and some of your softer skill episodes are the best. You inspired me to start blogging a bit more. So thank you. See again, here we are talking about soft skills episodes on a developer podcast. And once again, this underscores that the community who listens to this show that you are focused on the human experience and you are developing your skills not only as a developer, right? Not only as a programmer, but also as a human as someone who has empathy for other people who understands that human coding is a real thing that you're creating software primarily for other people. And so empathy is so important and understanding the human experience that is core to being a good developer. So thank you so much for listening to the show. You are the ones who make this possible. You send in the questions. We have the conversations with you that keep the show running. So thank you again for being a listener of this show. Once again, the challenge is to go out and do something that is foolishly generous for another person. This has nothing to do with you giving money necessarily, but instead with you giving something your time, your skills, and it can be money if that's what you feel like you need to do. But I'm going to leave that up to you. I would love to hear about it. You can reach out to me at Developer Tea at gmail.com. I will share some interesting stories on the show as long as you feel comfortable with me sharing those. Thank you so much for listening. Thank you again to Leno for sponsoring today's episode of Developer Tea. If you're looking for a SSD cloud hosting solution, Leno may be the perfect option for you, especially if you run Linux. And if you're looking for a service that has monthly caps on on all their fees. So go and check it out, Leno.com slash Developer Tea. That will give you a $20 credit at checkout just because you're a Developer Tealistener. Thank you so much for listening to the show. And until next time, enjoy your coffee.